Future of Site Design

We just held an event where Alex Limi, User Interface Designer at Google,
Bill Scott, Ajax Evangelist & Design Manager at Yahoo, and
Luke Kowalski, Corporate UI Architect at Oracle spoke to the Future of Site Design. It was highly interesting to get the viewpoints of some of the top companies on the web on this subject. And also, not surprisingly, the answers were not all simple.

Here's a re-cap:

pendulum swinging back to the level of interactivity of the desktop experience e.g. drag and drop capability.

RIA performance issues need to be balanced i.e. balance of ajax applications and performance issues.

more drag and drop use.

equivalent facilitation of accessibility i.e. alternate renditions of UI for handicapped users.

more stateful applications requiring less clicks and providing more feedback.

enterprise to consumer mashups e.g. portals.

hosted applications e.g. Google docs and spreadsheets.

tools being created for mobile platforms e.g. FlashLite.

less use of gratuitous animation.

running ajax locally and syncronizing when back online.

should be more careful consideration given to localization issues.

2007 will be the year of the ajax blunt.

key to site design for future is the user i.e. understanding their pain and pleasure points.

use of patterns to create better sites.

will see more direct manipulation of sites e.g. inline text editing, etc.

more selection mechanisms will show up on sites and boggling of it.

use restraint in implementing technology.

think of page as shareable objects versus just content to create mashups

improved discoverability

just-in-time content in context

offline storage

blending of the desktops and the web e.g. Google Earth, Adobe Apollo, and Microsoft SWPF

Other emerging themes for the year include:

Simplicity is expected to be a theme going forward.

Web 2.0 design elements such as radial edges, gradients, larger text, etc. are all expected to maintain their allure.

Widgets and the widgetization of the web, both desktop as well as mobile, are also expected to be a driving force for this year.

Time's Person of the Year: You

In case you missed this. Yes, "YOU" have been selected as Time Magazine's Person of the Year  "...for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you." Congratulations!
Read the article.

Search Engine Friendly Design

Designing a search engine friendly site can sometimes connotate images of bare bones, back-to-basics, esthetically-challenged sites. But this need not be the case. Design is not a science; it's an art and designing a search engine friendly website doesn't have to mean compromising on design and usability. It just means there's yet another ball in the air to juggle in the continuing quest to meet both users' as well as business needs. We all know the old adage 'build and they'll come', and we all know equally well that this is defintely not the case. A search friendly site is about improving your findability in the vast black hole that can be the internet. Some of the ways that this can be achieved are as follows:

- Keywords: ensure your page content includes relevant keywords that can be picked up by the search engines and that users can also quickly find once they arrive on your site.
- User Vocabulary: use words and phrases in your page copy being searched for by your target audience(s).
- Imagery: use alt tags on images as they are indexed by the search engines; however, go easy on the imagery especially as it relates to critical content as you don't want to risk a missed search marketing opportunity.
-Rich Media: Flash is making a resurgence and is better search engine optimizable; but, consider its appropriate usage. Understand how to make your flash movie search engine friendly, how to embed the flash object in your code to improve its indexability, and the overall limitations of flash search engine optimization.
- Code: keep your code clean and well-formed for easier indexing.
- Text: you can't go wrong with plain old html text; so, emphasize it via bolding as this is weighted more with search engines, and add a plain old keyword rich statement somewhere on the page, even at the bottom.

The WebGuild also recently had an event on Advanced Search Marketing and there were some great tips discussed by the panel of experts. See http://www.webguild.org/meetings/archives.php and the related Searchnomics blog post.