Got a fantastic, unsolicited email from my father-in-law, who while getting frustrated with Yahoo Movies coined a new law: the Law of web page sprawl.

Dear Josh,

http://movies.yahoo.com/

If you go to Yahoo.com and click on movies (left side of screen) you come to the above web-page.

The annoying thing is it took 19 seconds for this page to completely appear. Nothing wrong with my computer. Just with the page – there is tooooooo much there.

Anyway, I just thought I would send this to you as you mentioned how a cluttered web-page seems to grow even more cluttered by virtue of the ‘LAW OF WEB-PAGE SPRAWL’. And Yahoo is a perfect example of this ‘effect’. For instance, they totally screwed up their TV-listings page also.

The YAHOO! TV page used to load quickly and you could find out program information quickly and easily. So they changed it. Now it is so ungainly and slow, I have stopped using it.

‘Media-brainiacs’ at the biggest companies dictate content based on advertising over convenience….in other words….the heck with the user.

After all, he’ll say, “LIVE WITH IT”. I shouldn’t be too surprised. Media, radio and TV for example, is always trying ways to squeeze in ever more advertising.

How much do they think people will put up with???? I think that this is the question I have begun to ask myself. The media keeps pushing the limits of advertising and programming (expanding the former and squeezing the latter) …. is there any limit?

The web is now ‘THE MEDIA’ and as such (at Yahoo at least) they’ve been exploring this question – i.e. “WHAT IS THE LIMIT TO THE USERS AD TOLERANCE AND MAXIMIZING ADVERTISING REVENUES?”

I know that they are doing this. So sometimes just being aware of it is annoying in itself. At other times I just sigh and say, “LIVE WITH IT”.

I have to hand it to them. In recent years the ad-man and ad-woman has me convinced that he is informing me – at the same time he is pitching his product. If I am not mistaken, the snake oil salesman used a similar tactic.

Ed

Again, this was unsolicited. How long did he spend writing this? How many times does his frustration have to hit the boiling point before he writes this? My guess is that he’s been frustrated for a while.

Now, this is why social media (and the design of it) is so important…

Continue Reading: Yahoo Movies and the Law of Web Page Sprawl

Lots happening! Updates to the reading list, loads of conversation in my referral logs, and an interview on WebWorkerDaily.

I’ve had some great comments on my Social Design Reading List. Thank you everyone for your suggestions, corrections, and pointers to interesting things! I’ve been updating the list as fast as I can. Just this morning I added about a dozen books….including two on my must read list.

Helen Walker has an interesting new way to collect design ideas: Web Design in Quotes. I’m flattered to be included alongside some of the real web design maestros out there. Cool!

An interesting discussion on the Rise and Fall of Friendster on the IXDA discussion list. A bit further down in the comments they discuss personal value vs. social value. Prof. Mauro Pinheiro correctly argues that there are sites that rely on the presence of more than one person to provide value. Yes, there are exceptions: social network software and groupware are two exceptions to asking the question “Is your application useful even if nobody else uses it?”. (I’ve since amended my talks to point out those exceptions)

Matthew Hodgdon writes that Information Architects should start adding social design to their toolset…for those of you familiar with my rather controversial stance on IA all I can say is…gulp…

Continue Reading: Weekend Update: Reading list, referral logs, and an interview

“The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.”.

This quote by William Gibson (often reprised by Tim O’Reilly) is bantered about in tech circles whenever people get the feeling they’re glimpsing the future. It was particularly appropriate for the iPhone launch last June, when countless people pointed out that the touch-screen has been around for a long time.

The quote also pertains to web application design and the research teams need to do in order to make great software.

In a talk I gave the other day on social design, I went on at length about how you need to design for personal value before social value. (I’ve long called this the Del.icio.us Lesson). I illustrated how most successful social web applications provide personal value at their most basic, using social value to augment it and make it better. So YouTube is a great video storage application first…and it also has great sharing features if you choose to do that.

(As a counter-example consider Technorati Tags, which provide social value but don’t provide personal value. One word: SPAM)

A software designer from the audience asked the next logical question (a question I get a lot!)…

Continue Reading: The future of your social software is already here

A conversation I had today rewired the idea of the Long Tail for me.

The Long Tail, or the death of the product shelf (where shelf space becomes irrelevant when content is digital) brought on tremendous change in the economics of distribution. Netflix rents most of its movies from the catalog of past movies, not from the current list of blockbusters. Same with Amazon and books, iTunes and music. Christopher Anderson goes into a lot more details in the book he wrote on the subject: The Long Tail.

When content is digital, a public good, it is freely distributable by electronic means. It is infinitely copyable at 100% fidelity. Moreover, as the Long Tail shows, libraries of content can be built cheaply which provide value for the long term. Once Google digitizes all the books in the world they won’t ever have to again.

In other words, all content is available at all times.

What does this lead to? The Paradox of Choice! There are simply too many things to choose from. Which of the thousands of movies on Netflix do I rent? Which of the books on Amazon do I read? Which of the songs on iTunes do I listen to?

In the past, we listened to either the creator or the distributor for help. Since choice was limited, they would steer us to something in their limited selection. You either went to one of the movies at the local theater, or you didn’t watch a movie. You either bought a book from the book store or checked one out of the library, or you didn’t read. If you were lucky enough to be near a creator (like a rock band) you either went to the pub to listen to them or you went without live music.

The creator and the distributor, however, had a problem. They were always and forever biased…

Continue Reading: Did the Long Tail Beget Social Design?

According to Businessweek, Facebook may soon be changing its new Beacon feature, which shares personal information (if not identifying you personally) with 3rd party sites outside of Facebook. I wrote about the feature in Facebook’s Brilliant but Evil Design

Interestingly, most people, including the group MoveOn.org, seem worried about a different symptom of the problem than I was. Most people are worried about what happens when the shared information gets back to Facebook, and their Facebook friends see their outside activity. For example, if someone rents Footloose on Blockbuster.com, all their friends on Facebook will see it. I personally think that Footloose is a brilliant movie, but some people might be embarrassed by their friends seeing they rented it.

My main concern was that Facebook and Blockbuster were talking at all.

Continue Reading: Facebook’s Growing Design Problem (and a proposed solution)

Just in time for the holidays, I’m releasing a much requested feature here at Bokardo:

Social Design Reading List

Over the past few months, lots of folks have asked me for a social design reading list. I started putting one together a while back, but it’s a lot more work than I originally anticipated. It’s hard to put together a decent list of books on a subject that doesn’t quite exist while also keeping that list to books you’re familiar with while also making sure those books are good.

As you browse the reading list, you’ll notice a few things. One is that almost all the books are soft-cover and relatively inexpensive ($10-$20). I tried to include easy-to-read books that you can take with you while traveling or actually hold up in bed. Second, you’ll notice there are only a few books on social theory and design. That’s because there just aren’t that many! I have included a lot of other web & interface design/development books I have found value in, so this isn’t exclusively a social design reading list. And, of course, people building social web applications have to do all the other parts of design as well.

If you do know of some books that should be added to the list, please let me know either in the comments or by contacting me. So far I’ve kept the list to books that I know and have read (at least parts of all of them). I’m sure there are others, but I didn’t want to include all books about social media, I only wanted to include the very best ones.

Why did I do this as an Amazon astore?

Continue Reading: Social Design Reading List

I have rarely received as much feedback about a piece as I did for Do Canonical Web Designs Exist?

In that piece, I argued that Armin Vit’s Landmark Web Sites, Where Art Thou? was wrongheaded because he was judging web design from a graphic design standpoint. In my experience people aren’t very good judges of web design…and I’m including me, you, and anybody else. Only through actual use can we come to some conclusion about how good a design is. The act of using a web site changes meaning, passion, and value.

Here are some other, similar posts worth reading.

In Defense of Graphic Design on the Web – Christopher Fahey completely disagrees with me. He sees Armin as looking for landmark “graphic design on the web” and not landmark “web design”. If that’s the case, then as I say in the comments I’ll gladly bow out of the discussion and let the graphic designers tear up th carcass. But if Armin meant landmarks of “web design” (which I think he did), then I stick to my story…

I’m not a designer, but I play one on this blog – Jen Spadafora suggests that web sites really can’t be landmarks because they change so much. She points out that Amazon’s tabbed structure, certainly up there in terms of canonical web design, isn’t even there anymore. And, I would add, neither is Paul Rand’s UPS logo…

Continue Reading: Canonical Web Design, Redux

Seth Godin writes how 8 billion dollars worth of gift cards seeps through the cracks each year. Astounding number. He rightly points out the reason we buy so many gift cards: it is not socially acceptable to give cash as presents. But when we shift that cash into a gift card, we lose the risk of giving an unwanted gift while giving something more socially appropriate.

Such a small, yet large, difference.

In Chapter 4 of The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler discusses a similar distinction between “extrinsic” motivations and “intrinsic” motivations. Extrinsic motivations come from the marketplace, and involve money. They are appropriate in some situations and not others. Intrinsic motivations come from within, such as pleasure or personal satisfaction. They are also appropriate in some situations and not others.

This distinction is important in social design because so many of the activities people participate in online are motivated from a desire of social standing, not economic standing.

Take the case of a New York Times article recommendation. If I send a link of a NYTimes article to you as a friend, my only motivation is social…intrinsic…and it’s probably a small one at that. I saw this article and I thought you might like it. My reward might be a small up-tick in your opinion of me.

But if I’m getting paid money to give you that recommendation, then my motivation is in part economic, and that changes everything. You are now suspicious of the gesture…and my reward might actually be a penalty…your opinion of me will most likely deteriorate.

When friends deal with friends, money often makes no sense.

Continue Reading: Facebook’s Brilliant but Evil design

Armin Vit at Speak Up asks: Where are the canonical web designs?

“Milton Glaser’s Dylan poster. Paul Rand’s IBM logo. Paula Scher’s Public Theater posters. Massimo Vignelli’s New York subway map. Kyle Cooper’s Seven opening titles. These are only a few landmark projects of our profession. Design solutions that, in their consistent use as exemplary cases of execution, concept and process, don’t even need to be shown anymore and that, for better or worse, (almost) everyone acknowledges as being seminal works that reflect the goals that graphic design strives for: A visual solution that not only enables, but also transcends, the message to become memorable in the eyes and minds of viewers. Whether these projects are indeed as amazing, relevant and enviable as we have built them up to be is cause for a separate discussion but it’s safe to say that, as far as designs recognized around the profession, there are a certain few that invariably make the list, usually without question. Myself, I could list projects in every category from logos, to annual reports, to magazine covers, to packaging, to typefaces, to opening titles that could be considered landmark projects… But when it comes to web sites, I can’t think of a single www that could be comparable — in gravitas, praise, or memorability — as any of the few projects I just mentioned. Could this be?”

Armin then goes and mentions the obvious answer: Google.

But this is not an acceptable answer for him, because…wait for it…the logo sucks.

To talk about Google in terms of its logo has long been a pastime for people who care about logos. For years I’ve heard the same argument from people who want nothing more than to get rid of the “Mickey Mouse” logo, as it is often described.

Armin’s point is that while Google seems to be better than Yahoo, it is still plagued with a bad logo. He’s not “moved or inspired” by the design. Therefore, he reasons, it is not canonical design. Canonical design, in his mind, is one that practitioners of the medium look to as exemplary.

But, frankly, I think Armin has missed his own point…

Continue Reading: Do Canonical Web Designs Exist?

Fellow North Shorer and superstah designer Dan Cederholm has released Foamee, a social web application that tracks who you owe beer to and who owes you a beer. Dan has a nice writeup on his motivation for building it.

Foamee is an interesting app, and not just because it involves drinking more. I find it fascinating because it is entirely reliant on the Twitter platform (at the moment, anyway). All messages in the Foamee system are Twitter messages.

For example, when you Twitter “@ioubeer @bokardo for allowing me to procrastinate by reading your blog” you are telling the Foamee system that you owe another Twitterer beer. Foamee keeps track of all of the IOUs so that at some point in the future you can make good on them.

In addition, all the information that Foamee knows about you comes from Twitter. Each Foameer? has what could be called a profile, but it is not editable and is made up entirely of information from Twitter: your handle and avatar as well as your IOU information that you’ve sent through Twitter. As Dan points out, this makes it nice and easy…no more profile information to add or import. Nothing to do! Nice.

When Dan was telling me about this app the word “barnacle” seemed to fit. So I think I’ll call this type of application a “barnacle app”. It attaches itself to Twitter and kind of filters through certain things it wants to keep. It can’t exist without Twitter, and in terms of getting up to speed that’s most definitely a benefit, not a liability.

So congrats to Dan on his latest creation: Foamee

Continue Reading: Foamee: a barnacle app for indebted drinkers