Friday, July 25, 2008

Checkboxes. A Response.

For those of you that have been pining for my third entry in this completely unloved blog, the time has arrived. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. I must say first, that for some reason or another, I have been recently paying more attention to the ramblings of the local IxDA crowd. This is not to say that I am becoming one, nor that I feel compelled to spend my free time writing books about the things that I take for granted, or create on a daily basis, but I have been reading a bit more on the topic, and between winces at the analysis of the simple, I take in some good... and I feel mildly less jaded.

My colleague recently penned a piece regarding checkboxes in RIA applications that I felt I needed to respond to... In part because I am now the butt of jokes around the Laszlo world headquarters, but also because I have a fiver riding on her forecast: She believes (with enough tenacity to bet said $5) that Outlook will have checkboxes for multiple selection within 5 years.... I, and some of my dear design cohorts lean the opposite direction. Partially, at least for me (I can't speak for the team) this is derived from a distaste, which borders on fear, of devolution.

In the last 6 years at Laszlo, I have, again and again, checked in with all manners of marketing, sales, engineering, and management, to plot our course. I have been a staunch advocate of the RIA, and in many cases an architect, since a time before such a term was minted in the design-career space. I firmly believe in the evolution of user experience, and in the slow-by-internet-standards, but light-speed-fast-by-any-other-standard of the internet... Which is why I took Sarah's wager.

The truth is we already have checkboxes (and every other HTML-mandated contrivance). There are NO mainstream communication products (that I am aware of) that replicate an HTML experience without an HTML equivalent. What this boils down to is a fork in the stream. There is not one major ISP or CSP that has decided to forego the fork and forge ahead to the Webtop land of desktop equivalent interaction. Why is this? For exactly the points that Sarah makes in her entry. There are at least 15 years of precedence that need to be migrated. This does not happen overnight. That is understood, and fine... but the fall-back is readily available. Can't hack drag and drop? Have issues w/ shift+select? Then HTML is your friend. Be there. Enjoy the mildew.

For the rest... for the kids... even for those that managed to exist pre-web-introduction, or post-web-introduction, on their desktop, dragging files from one folder to another, shift-selecting multiple files, etc... I have a place online that you will cherish... If my employers will let me.

I am fighting an uphill battle. This issue is a future issue. We want our clients to stop offering HTML mail and switch entirely to an RIA approach. This necessitates a middle ground. A concession. This means that we need to straddle the past and future. It is an interesting and aggravating challenge, and one that (for the now) does not matter.

I want the cleanest, most consistent, simplest interface design possible. I have spent the last ten years promoting such a thing where I could make headway. I want evolution. I want people to make a small leap from the things they do intuitively, daily, on their desktops, to the internet. A tall order, I am now convinced.

I do believe, however, that in internet-time, this is only a stone's throw. This is the main reason I so adamantly oppose the coddling that the dual paradigm of checkbox + shift-click suggests. Something I picked up from Darwin.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

web two point whatever

Wikipedia says that the term "Web 2.0" was coined in 2004. If that is true (and I have no reason to doubt it) then I am even later out of the gate with this than I thought, but what kind of a RIA designer would I be if I didn't have something to say about this subject. I know there have been reams written about whether or not it is aptly named and even a lawsuit or two, so I wont bother with any of that. I actually couldn't care less what it is called; like the vowel-challenged sites and applications that have emerged, it is less about the name than what it enables. The fact that people are using new technologies to further the abilities and usefulness of online experiences is what matters to me. There is a growing realization and acceptance that the Web is a suitable vehicle for real applications, managing rich media and allowing meaningful social interaction.

The funny thing about all of this, at least from my perspective is that the majority of the hoopla revolves around techno-battling. My technology versus yours. I find it even more amusing, and perhaps telling, that I am actually actively involved in this - all my years working with Laszlo engineers and LZX developers has led me to join the cause, brandish a stick and start jabbing it menacingly. The crowd is thickening, and we are deep in the fold. I often-times have to remind myself that the technology is not exactly my battle. I don't write code, but I rely heavily on those that do, and besides, our technology really is better than theirs. Somewhere down the line I may provide a completely unbiased designer's comparison of Web 2.0 technologies - won't that be fun.

Beyond the stick wielding there is a poignant message that I try to keep clear: Whatever the name, or the underlying technology, amazing things are happening. The "Next Gen" dreams of yesteryear - the untouchable software gems we envisioned during the dotcomboom, are within reach. We have the tools to improve the way interactions occur online. I will happily, and perhaps with a bit of told-you-so, show you 6 year old working prototypes of RIAs we built here - or even older demos of cooler things, but that would mostly make me seem angry and cynical... and I would rather join the excited masses, and make new, better applications than remain another day in my dark little hole of self-righteous indignation. Rock on Web two point whatever... rock on.

Monday, May 14, 2007

hello world

My intention in creating this blog is to allow myself a place and time to delve a bit more deeply into the small gears of design theory, as well as the daily application of design in the creation of software. Doing this has been a long time in the procrastinating. I have resisted writing for a number of reasons, which I will undoubtedly dwell upon in future entries, but for now, I will provide an introduction to etch the surface of this tabula rasa.

First, a brief history. Perhaps because my father is a professor emeritus of history, or due to my mother's studies in the classics, or my own nostalgic bent, I nearly always feel the need to preface. The story of a plant's bud, for me, is likely to begin with a trip down the trunk and into the earthen roots before moving on to the topical subject of the new growth. This drives some people to distraction, and I have tried to temper the pre-story; often beginning closer to the action than I would without constraints. You have been warned.

I used to do similar things to what I do now, but with different results. I have almost always done design on a computer. and almost always on a Mac. There was a brief time in my professional nascence where I did things like cut Rubylith, spec type from a book, count characters, and use a stat camera... I have just dated myself, and will likely continue to do so. The first version of Adobe Illustrator I used was called 88, and it wasn't because there were 87 versions prior.

Pixels have long been my medium, but for half of my career, those pixels were carefully arranged to be served to the public as overlapping translucent CMYK ink. The ink was slathered across great sheets of paper in patterns of at least 300 dots in every inch. There was an excitement in this process. The knowledge that expensive plates had been made, that the Heidelbergs were running at speed, that the die-cutters would soon be slapping their custom-crafted razor blades against the perfectly registered and now dried paper, and soon to be converted by clever robotic machines or underpaid hands into boxes, or brochures, labels, or stationary. A grand, nerve-wracking, early morning endeavor in massive, corrugated steel warehouses on the outskirts of somewhere. Fantastic, beautiful, expensive and wasteful.

My days, still, are filled with pixel manipulation, but now what I see is what you get. Screen resolution - low resolution. Colors generating light as opposed to reflecting it. The methods involved in producing these screens has changed a bit since I began down this path, and the presentation, interaction design and quality of the product have vastly improved. My first internet software gig was a registration wizard for a modem company called Global Village. The software, such as it was, was designed to conform to a 4 bit web-safe palette, and was compressed to within an inch of its life to fit on a single-side floppy disk. The "wizard" was led by an illustrated persona of a "world-traveller" drawn by my good friend and colleague Beate Fritsch. It was a drastic departure from the packaging design we had been doing, and a trial-by-fire initiation into the world of internet software design. This uncharted territory held all of the same design challenges, with new constraints and the tantalizing dimension of interactivity. I was captivated.

Many years and many, many projects later, I am working with an amazing, talented group of engineers in product development at Laszlo Systems. Everyday we are serving up crazy-cool software, built using the OpenLaszlo platform and now the Webtop framework. There is a long history here. Most of it is interesting, some frustrating, and all of which I will likely refer to in more-than-passing detail - If, indeed I keep my promise to do a bit of writing here.