Leon’s image mosaic is made up of the things that, as the name suggests, inspire him. The idea has taken off somewhat, and I got thinking about who and what inspires me. I don’t want to sound too corny, but what inspires us as individuals is what fuels everything we do. So, while I had breakfast this morning I pulled together my own “inspiration portfolio”.

All of this makes the app much easier and natural to use. And it easily meets Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for the iPad (UX Magazine posted an overview earlier today). Especially these two bits:

The best iPad applications give people innovative ways to interact with content while they perform a clearly defined, finite task.

Whenever possible, add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. The more true to life your application looks and behaves, the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it.

At the moment the main interaction flow is top right to lower left for right-handed users (see below). The termination point varies (there are three options), making the swipe action either fairly convex, almost straight or completely straight and diagonal. This makes perfect sense in relation to the way the information elements will be displayed in the app, and the way one will want to interact with them in order to improve them (i.e. performing the “clearly defined, finite task”).

The work continues.

4square and Gowalla check-ins to my iPhone (without me having to run their apps). If someone I know is at a coffee shop close to where I am running errands I wouldn’t mind joining them for some slack-off time.

Tweets with playlist links to Spotify. Shared play lists are lovely if I’m listening to music.

Tweets with post links to my feed reader or browser. Interesting posts are at their most valuable to me when I’m trawling the trusted ol’ feed reader.

Project updates to CodeSlam, Huddle, Basecamp.

Video links to Vimeo.

Just a thought.

There is more to this behind the scenes of course, including company wide renter verification, assignment of equipment to a particular person etc, but the challenge is to make the check out faster. The behind-the-scenes complexity should not be seen or experienced at the counter. So far so good. Prototyping is up next.

Here are the three screens. The code on the last one is auto generated and allows the renter to open the rental lot exit gates and drive off with the gear.

Here are some of my step-by-step notes and drafts from a concept exercise on behalf of a well known charity. The starting point example is actually based on two different donation screens, but we agreed that it would help get the point across within the charities organization if we started with a “worst case” example.

So, the goal with this exercise was to create a screen that encourages more site visitors to give, and give larger amounts. I don’t know if these ideas will ultimately be used, but they illustrate ways of evolving the user experience in a way that should increase the amount of money collected.

The starting point

At the start of the project the center of the donations page has the words “Charge me” followed by one drop-down menu with well over 50 (yes, fifty) options starting at $2.00 increasing by one dollar up to $30 and then in larger increments up to the $1000 mark. The second menu has only one option: zero cent.

Round 1

We remove the second menu. It offers no value (literally) and has a negative effect on the overall impression of the charity at the point of transaction. And it is a transaction, even if that particular word is sometimes seen as inappropriate in the charitable context. I believe calling something by its real name makes it easier to resolve any issues that surround it.

Also changed the copy from “Charge me” to “I am donating”.

Round 2

In-person donations at this charity average a respectable $30. Online donations come in at an average of just $17. I am certain the very long drop-down menu is part of the problem. It includes over 50 options and initially they only increase by one dollar at the time. It takes a lot of scrolling to get anywhere.

I cut the donation options from 50 to just seven. This offers a good range, and makes sure all options are always visible. The amounts also represent those the charity know, based on both offline and online experience, are likely to make people whip out their credit cards. The new amounts are $20, $30, $40, $50, $100, $150, and $200.

This intentionally puts the minimum donation amount over the $17 average. It is a slightly risky move but with large potential upside.

I also did away with the drop-down menu and replaced it with a clear display of all the amounts plus radio buttons. Clear and simple.

Round 3

Until now focus has been on tweaking what is already there. Time to make a big move.

A problem with donating is that even when we are giving a relatively small amount, say $10 or $20, the money suddenly feels like $100 or $200 and we might hesitate to give it up.

To work around this I remove the seven donation amounts, and replace them with a large bold field with “$20″ in it. This establishes the giving of something tangible like a twenty dollar note as the normal, logical thing to do; “Of course I should give a twenty, anything less would be silly”.

Before I visualize the effect of the donation I put a nice big button with the copy “+20 I can help more” next to the amount field. Each click raises the amount to be donated by 20 dollars. It shamelessly (for a good cause) plays on pride and generosity.

Under the “I can afford…” button I add a text link option: “I can’t give more than $10″. This lowers the amount in the field and displays the message “Giving, not the amount, is what matters.” Making it possible for people to give, even if it is a bit less, makes perfect sense.

Round 4

Another challenge with charity sites is that one rarely gets a really good idea of how the money will be used. Food for poor people in my city, or schoolbooks for kids in a developing nation, or tools for farmers, sound good but they are still quite abstract. In this round we fix this problem by visualizing the result of the donation.

To the right of the donation amount I add a headline: “30 families in this area need your help”. Underneath it 30 family icons (with different numbers of parents and kids) represent the families.

The idea is that for each 20 dollars one of the icons would be highlighted, i.e. your money benefits these people.

Still I didn’t feel this was clear enough. So for each icon that lit up, I added a call-out listing what a family would receive for the money. For example a bus pass, seven breakfasts and a weeks worth of lunch boxes to take to school.

Much better. Plus, imagine if if you are the person donating money and suddenly changed your mind… It’ll be a lot harder to do when you have to picture a family missing out on breakfast and lunch for a week.

Conclusion

The goal with this exercise was to create a screen that encourages more site visitors to give, and give larger amounts. At the end of it we had two alternative solutions. The first one (round 1-2 above) uses small improvements to create a better experience. The other completely rethinks how online donations look and work (round 3-4).

Time will tell if these ideas get used, but at the very least they illustrate ways of evolving the user experience in a way that should increase the amount of money the charity collects.

To learn more about designing for charities, including the importance of having a funding goal, stating a clear mission, offering other ways to help and so on, please see “8 tips to design a charity website” at the Webdesigner Depot.

How would you improve a donation screen? What is the most important thing on a charity site? Share your thoughts in the comments or via Twitter where I am @orvet. Your tweets will turn up below if you include a link to this post (bit.ly works perfectly).

Right now, this is how achingly “most minimal” the site is…

The site’s name is only visible in the browser, not on any of the pages.

The only subscription option is the feed icon in the URL field (Chrome is a challenge here…)

No post date

No title

No author

No tags

No categories

The favicon is a white square

The date, title, author, and category are visible in most feed readers, which is part of the idea. We’re moving much of the display of data to other apps than the browser, while making the browser based web experience very clean and hopefully enjoyable.

There are still a few hurdles to overcome before  launch, but for now it’s all systems go behind the scenes. If the project gets the final go-ahead it will most likely have a soft launch in March and be fully live and functional in its minimal glory in April.

To a lesser degree I have thought about the devices themselves. This makes sense as some 40+ readers are scheduled for launch in 2010. In this post I do however slide a bit between content and device, it is impossible not to as both of the concepts I cover here are just that – concepts.

My thoughts about digital content were brought to the forefront last week when Björn Jeffery of Bonnier R&D showed me their just released Mag+ video.

Any concept video will inevitably be compared to the Time Inc offering and to a lesser degree that of Condé Nast. And there is much to compare. Including the level of attention and activity needed to enjoy a digital magazine as conceived by these publishers.

Time Inc’s tablet magazine

Let’s start with the offering from Time Inc. Based on the video there seems to be a fair amount of work required to read a magazine. It is what I call a “lean forward ” (source) type user experience: a high level of attention is required to complete the task at hand. Not least because of the forced UI: The tablet needs turning from portrait to landscape, and back to portrait depending on the content. Multiple navigation methods easily lead the reader astray. There are multiple menus, and even multiple choices when none are needed.

Chief among the latter is the concept of moving the “spreads” around to decide the order in which one wants to read the magazine. I guess the Time Inc team got this idea from the process of crafting magazines – Editorial teams usually stick every spread from the up and coming issue on a wall and move them around to get the right flow of content. Great for them, a waste of time for us: swiping past a couple of pages is quicker than identifying thumbnails in a grid, rearranging, making sure one did it correctly, then going back to the start and finally reading.

In my opinion the Time Inc team seem to think more about transferring a paper product to a digital device than considering what their readers might want from digital content.

This is where Mag+ from Bonnier R&D shines. It is clearly a “lean back”, or “sit back and enjoy…”, type experience; low activity, more enjoyment.

Bonnier R&D’s Mag+

The first clue comes in the upfront statement of the Mag+ team’s aim to maintain “the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines”. Reading magazines is often an alone time activity (at home after a long day at work) and sometimes a down time activity (commuting, standing in line at the post office) activity.

Judging by the concept video the Mag+ does not want to get in the way of the reading experience. The intuitive navigation is proof of this:

Find: swipe left or right. Reminiscent of the way content is revealed to us when we turn pages in a print magazine.

Explore: scroll down. Similar to how we read a page of content, top down, and explore other vertical point media.

It is an intuitive experience. The interaction is purpose driven.

Mag+ also addresses the “power of accomplishment”, proof that we are completing what we started. This is done by a simple visual indicator for how much content has been seen and how much lays ahead. It might seem like a tiny detail, but this level of transparency is important if we are to feel any sense of control over our time as well as have a sense of expectation of what we are about to enjoy.

Compare this to sites, emails, tweets, and Facebook updates. They are endless. As a side note, I have a theory that GTD became such a hit in our culture of endless information consumption and interaction, not because it helped us do things, but because it showed us that we had done things, that we had accomplished and completed.

Why are the Time Inc and Bonnier offerings so different?

One of many reasons might lay in the countries where they were conceived:  Time Inc is North American, the Mag+ is mainly Scandinavian.

Two observations:

When my American friend’s show me something in a magazine, the starting point is often a photo or an illustration. My Scandinavian friends are likely to point to, or read out, a paragraph of text as the starting point for a discussion. (I am generalizing but it is a recurring observation and worth mentioning in this context.)

American television and movie fare tend to be flashier, bigger, louder and higher paced than their Scandinavian or European equivalents.

These observations manifest themselves in the two magazine concepts. Time Inc has chosen its Sports Illustrated title to demo their offering: video of a running NFL player is flashy and visual (and comes with sound effects). Presumably this is not just title specific but something we can expect from their other magazines as well. Time Inc is betting that this is the way to satisfy an audience that is visually driven and has grown used to a high-powered visual diet.

Bonnier is serving an audience more in tune with a lower key type of content; reading more than watching. Mag+ shows off a concept with minimal or no non-user initiated movement or audio, focusing on the reading and viewing. In short a more low key and traditional magazine experience.

I won’t type out the details here, the videos clearly illustrate the different approaches.

At this point it is fair to consider what it is we as readers want from our magazines. My personal view is that when I read a magazine, even a sports magazine, I want to 1) read, 2) a magazine. Not watch ESPN or Sky Sports. Watching TV is a different activity for a different mindset and a different time and place. After all my expectation of a magazine, paper or digital, is that of a magazine.

In this regard I don’t think there is much difference between American and European (or any other) readers. If it’s a magazine, it’s a magazine. Because of this I think Bonnier has the upper hand.

Condé Nast

Before we continue, I want to briefly mention Condé Nast’s digital magazine concept. From what I see in the video (this clip has very loud sound) it is little more than a glorified PDF reader, not too different from Zinio. In my opinion this makes it impossible to evaluate on the same playing field as Time and Bonnier. If this is all Condé Nast can to bring to the table, expect it to be a quick fail.

Next up – Room for improvement

Neither of the magazine concepts, or the devices they are shown on, are yet available and we can be sure that they will all (including Condé Nast’s entry) improve and evolve before we get our hands on them.

And they need to get better. Mainly because of something I mentioned in my previous post: “Audiences will have high expectations on a device that mimics something familiar, like a book or a magazine [...]“.

The concepts also need to offer enough value for people to invest in the readers that will carry the content. Does value equal more flashy video, endless options, a good user experience, better delivery of titles, video, live updated content, or something else?

The expectations will also be high when it comes to what the magazine stores will look like and how they’ll function. Both concept videos should have addressed this as a way to anchor the rest of the demo.

And what happens with the content I share, annotate or mark with a dog ear? Here expectations come from feed readers, browser, bookmarks, and status updates on Twitter etc.

The answers are key to the added value a digital magazine can offer as opposed to a printed one.

Keeping the social web at bay

Adding tools that connect the digital magazine experience to the social web must be a tempting prospect. My recommendation is do it in extreme moderation, and only contextually.

Where and when we read magazines, and the role of that time and space, will not change because print goes digital. Magazines (and books) are, and will for a long period of time, still mainly be read mostly during alone time and down time.

Social is a direct contradiction to the former, and just one of many options during the latter.

Any connection to the social web must be discreet and contextual. A digital camera magazine should indicate which point-and-shoot camera is the most popular, it could even show me which of my friends have one. A food mag, or cook book, could show me which bouillabaisse recipe is the most popular. And I should have the ability to fire off a quick link to my network if I choose.

That is all fine. But no article voting results or info on what my Facebook friends like while I am reading. That has a time and place (for example when I buy the magazine). The old adage “just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done” is more true than ever.

Magazine publishers need to understand that human behavior (as opposed to cultural behaviour) won’t change over night, or even in a generation, just because there is new technology available.

That’s something to write about in a magazine.

What do you think about the two different concepts? How are Bonnier and Time Inc getting it right, and do you agree that a feeling of accomplishment is important? Please let me know in the comments or @orvet. (BackType is also activated, your Twitter feedback should turn up below if it includes a link to the post.)

When screens are intended for a single purpose I’d like to think we will see better user interfaces. If devise X is made to access and interact with content Y, then interface Z can be well though through, highly functional and relevant. That’s what I am hoping for. Here are three reasons why I might be right, one for each category of stakeholder.

Audiences will have high expectations on a device that mimics something familiar, like a book or a magazine (the early feedback on the original Kindle was deservedly harsh).

Newspaper and magazine publishers can not afford to get it wrong (the clever ones will involve a UX team from day one to increase their chances of getting it right).

The relative simplicity of some of these screens will allow manufacturers to make improvements faster than they would on PCs or smartphones.

It could all still go horribly wrong. But for now I’d like to think it won’t.

Ronnestam also posted about this subject over the weekend. I recommend reading it.

Related posts:
Ten predictions for 2010
Four misconceptions about UX (and some basic advice)

The easy one

The iPad and Courier (and all the other pads/tablets/booklets) will change our behavior and challenge our thinking on interaction, location, entertainment, communication, payments, value and engagement, to name a few. Crazily exciting, and a certainty.

Update: The CrunchPad was declared dead on November 30. Bummer, I wanted this one really badly.

The other easy one
Chrome OS will be next year’s best attempt at making sense of the disparate inventions, concepts, networks, events and information habits that make up the web of today and that are making old tech and behaviors obsolete.

The third easy one
Spotify will thrive, and be acquired by Apple. Spotify is a threat to iTunes (well, sort of, …ish), it would be a good complement to selling tracks, the businesses would probably see eye to eye on innovation, and there is a lot of crossover among us fans. And Apple has the cash to spend.

Update Dec 4: Apple has acquired that other really good music service, Lala. My guess is Apple still have their eye on Spotify.

The maybe
More and more ad agencies join their progressive industry peers in teaching clients that…

• People beat consumers
• Topics are better than messages
• Something useful, entertaining or informative trumps everything else

The probable one
Twitter goes all stable on us! Less of the Fail Whale in 2010, then.

The other probable one
Facebook keep making weird changes that baffle everyone. Butthat’sokbecauseweloveyou.

The let’s-hope-so
Newspaper publishers everywhere learn from the  brilliant “stacks” presentation by The Guardian’s Open Platform advocate @jaggeree.

The unlikely-but-I-can-dream one
Proper Swedish/Finnish style broadband comes to the US, or at least San Francisco. That way I don’t have to be embarrassed when fellow Swedes come to visit. “Yes, 5 meg down and 1 meg up is considered FAST!”

The likely one
The LinkedIn Platform will help businesses understand social. They will still need help though…

The one to end the list on
Most of my predictions will turn out to be wrong.

But that’s ok, we work in an industry that is all about change, innovation, and evolution. Making qualified guesses, and acting on them, is part and parcel of what drives our industry. I predict that won’t change in 2010.

Thank you for reading! What are your predictions for 2010? Fire off a quick one via Twitter (@orvet), I’d love to hear them!