Sunday, March 06, 2005

Rich Internet Applications (PANEL: Dennis Schleicher, Jennifer King, Tara Diachenko, Pat Callow, Gene Smith, Livia Labate, Todd Warfel)

Session description

Panel includes *Liv Labate, Comcast

Visualization: transitions and movements, flows
- riding in car: slow to fast: telephone poles -> wires -> up and down wave

- Schleicher (IA, J Walter Thompson): idea for panel inspired by oddpost! "pushing the limits" of the Web

- beyond desktop: problems with always-on, always-connected
[ct: info-sipping vs info-drinking]

JENNIFER KING, JWT: White Castle Online Nutritional App

- recommendation made to client, not live yet
- serve up info based on geog location
- audience: less tech-savvy, low-income
- end result: decisions based on nutrition data
- different locations may offer different foods
- competitive baseline: nutritional matrix
- simplifying constraint: White Castle has limited menu

Solution
- rethink linear process, all happening in one place
- consider data sources (prob. XLS from client, build their own XML)
- consistent interface
*all data lives w/in app


TARA DIACHENKO, JWT: Ford Vehicle's Towing Guide
- app did not work on demo, didn't test before prezo!

*asynchronous presentation
- decrease latency, app already thinking of data on next page while you're tooling on the current one

Interactive
- for older users, may not want completely smooth process, continue to use stepped process
[ct: speed of experience should be choreographed for user context, slow fast slow fast fast fast slow]

Visual continuity and display
- context: people starting to be frustrated w/ any kind of page refresh
- transitions: smooth changes between elements and views
- document transitions

Stateless/seamless
- don't need to have pagination process
- everything in one view, ideally
- if not appropriate, use transitions (e.g., overlays) for more seamless

Communication
- send towing spec to vehicle configuration tool

RIA = web + software + communication


GENE SMITH: Content Architecture Richness

Why richness?

*What is richness?
- visual design
- transition (meaningful, transparent, how data is being transformed, result of user action, start anywhere, reducing latency)
- interactions (user events - *impact on metrics, reactive interfaces vs all-or-nothing)
- integrated rich media (audio, video)

Transitions
- make the gutter (space between states) meaningful

Reactive interface
- scaled response to events, not all or nothing

*Flash vs AJAX
- AJAX: no graphic control?, somewhat transparent transitions, difficult to integrate rich media
- Flash: no built-in measurement, no built-in logging, look at user events vs server hits

Traditional apps
- task-focused, business-oriented, e-commerce, configurators

Possibilities for content
- visualization: Newsmap, Map of the market,
- exploration: Music Map
- asynchronous presentation: CBC radio 3
- cross-channel interactivity


*LIVIA LABATE: The Future of Web Apps
- Design Mgr, Comcast High Speed Internet

Death of the page
- break free from page paradigm

"Traditional" uses
- task-focused, business-oriented, e-commerce, configurators
- *rich content delivery, *communication (and other devices)

Rich content delivery
- better design (content visualization, exploration):

New Comcast site is completely Flash
- assumption was had to be Flash (we're a broadband co)
- but want to leverage how we use it
- Comcast.net serves partner feeds, lots of data normalization

*We are going to leverage _from_ desktop (rather than moving to desktop)

The Fan
- video player

Communication
- asynchronous presentation
- cross-channel interactivity (think of structure)
- multi- modality (converging elements, views)

*Learning from Mistakes
- metrics (adapt success metrics - no page hits)
*- behavior tracking is part of designing
- behavior tracking implementation (tools are not efficient)
- surf track buttons

ct: What metrics? What behaviors? are they tracking

ct: What is up with the Fan?


TODD WARFEL: RIA Challenges (Opportunities) for IA

Comparison of RIA methods
- Flash seems to be strongest, relatively low cost

User expectations
- not being able to do desktop functionality thru browser

Appropriate Domains
- Shopping
- Shipping
- Transactional (banking, investing)
- Dashboards

Seamless (less intrusive) transitions

Examples
- Macromedia Central
- Mastercraft boat builder

Deliverables
- wireframes + storyboards
- interactive wireframes (prototype!)

*Nobody mentioned Flex as a dev tool

*riaia.com

DISCUSSION

*- Travelocity looking at RIAs (accessibility issues), need to be able to do white label functionality, internationalization

Talked w/ Livia Labate, Design Manager, Comcast High Speed Internet