GregBellDesign

I have to say, in my limited time of surfing the mobile web, Yahoo!'s mobile site is the best that I have seen (this includes flickr).

It seems like they are putting a lot of effort into making a good user experience online. I just thought that I would share some screenshots of what it looks like on my mobile device (Cingular 8126).

Yahoo Mobile Home Page

Good use of icons to show navigation items. Also, the navigation list is simple, uncluttered and easy to navigate with a keyboard.

Yahoo Mobile News Page

Another style of listings, but also easy to navigate. Short titles allow for very little text link wrapping which makes the list easier to navigate.

Yahoo Mobile Headline News Page

Longer titles, but because they are numbered, they are visually distinct enough to make it easy to navigate. Also, only the essential information is shown allowing for quick download and less clutter.

Flickr Home Page

Simple and elegant in classic flickr style.

Yesterday, I wrote about my research question. Today, I would like to look at some of the task categories people are completing on their cell phones and pda's using the web.

This list is more of a starting point for discussions than a finished product. I will be using this list to start having discussions with people to find out what types of sites they are visiting on their mobile devices.

My starting list:

• Photo Sharing / Services
• Personal Radio
• Online Music Stores
• RSS Feedreading
• News
• E-Commerce
• Maps & Directions
• Spreadsheets
• Finance
• Blogging
• Search
• Games

For my research, I plan on narrowing this list down to 8 - 10 clearly distinct categories.

To me, the category of e-commerce can be blown apart into many smaller categories that would be far more directed in terms of a study. The smaller categories could also be more representative of what users are actually doing online. For example, you may want to look up a review of a book on amazon, and possibly buy it, but you probably wouldn't be browsing through their entire listing of housewares for your new set of pots and pans.

So, the plan is to narrow this list down to what users are actually doing online with mobile devices.

This year at school I will doing research and usability testing on websites viewed on mobile devices. I am extremely interested in how information architects and visual designers are currently designing web sites for small screens and how the small screen experience can be made better.

The first part of my research will be looking at the current state of the mobile web and figuring out what type of visual standards have emerged. I have drafted a research question, with the help from Karyn Zuidinga, that I think nails what I am trying to accomplish.

Research question: What display standards (graphic design, information design, interaction design, and content) exist for websites and web based applications on mobile, hand-held devices?

I plan on looking at sites and recording data in regards to each of the display standards mentioned above.

My next step is to figure out what sites to include in the research. I am currently working on a list of site categories that I would like to deal with, then I will try to find 5 - 10 sites for each category. I hope to look at about 75-80 sites.

If you know any cool mobile research or are interested in this topic, leave me a comment and we can chat.

If this isn't a quality usage of ambient signifiers I just don't know what is: The Remember Ring. When the date that you set is coming up, the ring will heat up for short periods of times to remind you. What a great concept!

I would love to see somebody take it one step further and couple it with some initial ubiquitous computing concepts. For example, all of my meeting reminders could be synced (without actually having to dock it) with my ring. I would then know, without looking at my clock, that the time has come to change tasks.

Between The Remember Ring and the soon to be released Phone Watch, tech geeks may just be getting somewhere.

Ross Howard wrote a very interesting article on Boxes and Arrows called Ambient Signifiers. The main concept of the article is how we, as designers, can add more ambient signifiers to websites to make them more usable and give users more subtle cues as to their location and state within the system. Ross uses a great example of what an ambient signifier is:

"When on my regular commute on Japan Railways (JR) East’s Chuo-Sobu line out from the town center to the outer suburbs where I lived, I noticed that short, simple chime melodies sounded on each platform as the train was waiting for passengers to get on and off. I noticed that these melodies were different for each station (indeed, Miyama station, which disembarks to Tokyo Disneyland, plays the theme to “It’s A Small World After All“)."

Each small chime allows users (passengers) to "feel" when they were at the right stop or when they have gone too far and need to go back. He goes on to discuss ways of utilizing this methodology with website designs.

One important part of this concept, that wasn't made explicit in the article, is the fact that the user will only start picking up ambient cues over a period of time. So, these ambient cues must not take the place of more explicit cues, rather they should add anther layer to enhance the overall user experience.

While the article was very heavy on the use of colour as ambient cues, I am excited to see what other types of cues people can think up. This one will be in the back of my head churning away for the next couple of days, I am sure of that. Great article, check it out.

Banff is beautiful! Especially when it is inhabited by some of the best minds in UX today. The CanUX conference was a great experience. I would definitely recommend it to anybody who is interested in attending next year. There were some amazing speakers as well some awesome conversations sparked by the insights of the group.

One of my favorite presentations was done by Microsoft Windows Client Usability Lead, Joey Benedek, on testing, measuring and validating visual design (desirability). I found this extremely interesting because of my past as a visual designer.

He discussed three methods that he used to test and measure the visual design of the upcoming Microsoft Vista.

1. The Microsoft Desirability Toolkit
2. Instantaneous Reaction Dials (like they use to test movies)
3. Electromyography

The thing that really interested me about the talk, and he didn't talk about this too much, was how the desigers used this data and how they felt about receiving it. I would be very interested to know how much the data and research actually dictated the design process, from the designer's perspective.

Visual design is such a difficult thing to measure and quantify, but I think that Joey's research is moving in the right direction. It should be a very interesting topic to watch over the next couple of years.

The New York Times has a very interesting interface to view the 2006 US elections races. It can be found here.

The interface shows the information in a very easy and digestible way, as well as lets you narrow the information down to very specific races and details. I haven't played around with it too much, but so far it seems like it is very usable.

Check it out.

I am not too sure how I came across this, but I did => kevan.org/extispicious. It appears to have been around for a while, but this is the first time that I have seen them.

There are two versions, the text version as well as an image version. They both take your delicious user account name and create a visualization of the tags used within the given account. Although the idea itself is not revolutionary, I do like being able to see this type of data in a more interesting way.

I find the text version to be far more interesting than the photos version, and it also allows for more interesting navigation possibilities. I wonder if someone could push the navigation even farther. Maybe you can zoom in to see some of the smaller links and move around the space a little bit more. As an exploration tool, this could be very cool. But as a tool to find what you are looking for, the delicious UI is working pretty well for me.

Here is my text version:

Update: If you are interested in other delicious visualization tools chek out the Visualizing Delicious Roundup from Solution Watch.

Welcome to the newly redesigned Greg Bell Design.com. A new site for a new year (school year that is). I still have some work to do, but the main pages are in working order.

I felt that it was time for a new look around here, as well as a major structural change. The site no longer pushes to my design portfolio. Instead, i am allowing for a more organic experience through my writing. I am looking forward to filling this space with User Experience information, links and knowledge.

First stop will be the CanUX conference this weekend.

Cheers.