Hey browsers, are we there yet?

Posted on 4 July 2011 by ninamehta

Quite simply no. Dave Winer recently wrote “web browsers are done. Feature complete.” I refute this for a reason I perceive to be quite obvious: browsers must keep changing because people keep changing. Their needs, their wants, their economies, their mood and their lifestyles all influence what needs to be done next for the web.

URLS
How we get to wherever we’re going on the web has already changed. When the web formally and broadly platform for how we distribute information and communicate it will become more obvious why browsers have a long way to go. With Icann’s announcement to increase domain suffixes available, we could potentially travel to http://fanta.coke or http://maps.google instead of a traditional .com, .org, .gov suffix. Chrome released the omni bar which merged manual URL entry and the search for content. Browsers (on many devices) serve as portals to information and the web as as a platform for Saas then there is much work to be done. URLs are fading to the background as a primary way to navigate to information we seek.

Saas
At myGengo, I worked on a web-based UI for translators (not shown). Before they were either using Microsoft Word or a plain text editor. Professional translators who do mountains of translation use professional tools like MemoQ (right). The software allows translators to work relatively efficiently but a lot of UX needs are unmet. I worked on this problem. My goal was to improve what myGengo had already built and weave in the powerful features these pieces of software have. I needed to do it in a way that makes sense and moves the language, translation and communication industry forward. All of course, to be done within the browser.

Universal Logins
I worked on the alpha launch of RockMelt. What their service does better than any other browser is the universal login. It’s front facing, it’s required, it gives users more context and it’s quite clear what happens as a result of the login. If or when they (or Chrome or Firefox) leverage universal logins beyond personalized data synced, I think we’ll see more fluid way to explore the web. When we can eliminate or reduce login barriers while still offering personal security and stability and clear communication to users what has been done, we will move the web forwards.

The CR-48 Chrome Notebook (rigt) seems to be working towards this goal I reviewed the Chromebook in April. To promote an idea that the web is where we can do all of our computing is an idea they are working to materialize. It has a ways to go but the philosophy is not wrong.

‘RockMelt is just a bunch of plugins’
I get a lot of questions about RockMelt. They recently raised $30 million in funding and people ask me why. They tell me it’s either too noisy or it’s the same as all the apps or plugins they’ve added to Chrome or Firefox. How many people know what a browser is, how many know what a plugin or app is? I don’t have the numbers but my prediction is quite low.

When people ask about Rockmelt, I say:

RockMelt users LOVE the RockMelt. First and foremost. And it’s true.
Their team and projects are well managed and organize.
The team had a diverse (technical and cultural) background whom are wonderful, smart people.

Anyway, let’s say it is a browser with a bunch of plugins patched on top. What’s the harm in doing a little legwork for your users? A browser with features for people who love consuming and producing content on the web is not a bad idea. It would be interesting to build a browser business where you just package up features and distribute them to niche audiences. Do you think cheese heads in Greenbay would love an ESPN browser? Or the brokers on Wallstreet, with a Bloomberg browser? Is their an audience for the Sudoku, Crossword, Plants vs Zombines browser? I’ve been wanting to see RockMelt is opening up a door here.

Mobile
The obvious bridge for mobile and desktop browsers has been syncing content. I’m excited for the next stages where we have smart and helpful geo-location services, better ways to communicate fluidly across platforms (and Facebook has done a good job with this so far) and brilliant ways to find exactly who or what I’m looking for (even if it’s something to suck time while I wait) depending on what I’m doing and how I’ve been browsing.

I can understand why Winer wrote the post he wrote. But I would like to learn from him how he thinks technology, economy and culture will more forward without the (desktop, mobile, wrist watch, taxi cab, restaurant menu, etc) browser being a primary portal for business and play. Look to for Globe Trekker (who makes a good discussion about HTML standards) and Adaptive Path for alternate perspectives. I welcome yours in the comments.

What Winer’s post does do well is motivate an important conversation in a public space. If the internet really was some kind of information super highway, Winer would be sitting in the back seat asking “are we there yet?”

Everything and nothing is interesting

Posted on 30 June 2011 by ninamehta

I don’t care much for the adjective ‘interesting’. To describe something as interesting generally lacks any kind of qualifier or value proposition. To describe something as interesting is a way to suggest that you have offered an opinion without actually having done so. It’s empty.

Everything in the world is interesting. Anything that is not interesting just hasn’t been looked at or considered with enough perspective. To describe something as interesting has no positive or negative value, it generally does not emote a strong emotional and often is void of critique on it’s own. It only implies that the former comment has interest; saying something is interesting doesn’t even invite further conversation.

Please describe nothing as simply ‘interesting’ unless you are trying to be polite an avoid saying you do not like it.

Poor ways to use the word interesting
“What do you think of my shoes?” “They’re interesting.”
“I think your mixes have a distinct sound.” “Interesting.”
“I went to an interesting art show.”

Better ways to use the word interesting
“What do you think of my shoes?” “It’s interesting how the color of the heel compliments the sole. I love the design.”
“I think your mixes have a distinct sound.” “Really? What do you hear that’s interesting?”
“I went to an art show that changed how I think of shadows. You can do so many interesting things with light.”

City Quotes

Posted on 23 June 2011 by ninamehta

Very rarely do achieve the 0 inbox. I archive everything and try to be awesome about replying to important messages. I’m always going for 0 but it’s a rare occasion that I get there. Upon this celebration, I decided to clear out the 9 half written letters in my drafts as well.

I’ve had an email titled London Quotes in that folder since 2007. Every time I go to clean up my drafts, I leave this one email there. I’ve had nowhere else to put these short summaries of what a very special time of my life was like on the Thames. So world, here they are.

You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
Yet in its depth what treasures!
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

“I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.”
-VS Naipaul

This melancholy London—I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.
- William Butler Yeats

One would think London was a depressing, upsetting unhappy place but it was quite the opposite. London is a glorious place. Be whomever you wish to be there and do whatever you like to do. I learned more about myself there than I had anywhere else prior. London is a different kind of city. It’s magnificent and impossible and that’s what makes it fantastic. You can float through it and be completely lost and found all at the same time.

In August 2010 I created a new email drafts called City Quotes. Anyone who knows me, knows I love urban centers. My goal is to collect a quote about each city I’ve fallen in love with and do an art piece. I kept these quotes in my email drafts so I would continue be reminded they exist instead of getting lost in a Google Doc somewhere. The idea for this project still exists but it needs to live in public now.

It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.
-Mark Twain “Life On The Mississippi,” 1883

There are almost no beautiful cities in America, though there are many beautiful parts of cities, and some sections that are glorious without being beautiful, like downtown Chicago. Cities are too big and too rich for beauty; they have outgrown themselves too many times.
-Noel Perrin, Third Person Rural

And now I have zero emails and zero drafts. Guess I better start working on that project.

The Westernization of Hair

Posted on 11 May 2011 by ninamehta

There’s a cultural, regional shift happening around the world. It’s showing up in a lot of places, including right here in our lovely locks. With the democratization of information, many people have access to heaps of information. Articles, music, videos, photos and cinema. The West has a solid hold on a lot of that information and distribution power, which is influencing much of the digital and sociophysical landscapes.

But fair to say, a result of globalized media is globalized culture. We are connected with each other in so many ways, it’s inevitable that we begin to desire and adapt our behavior and fashion by what we see–even if it’s physically, very far away.

I left my hair straightener, dryer and potions of lotions at home, during my December trip to Botswana. My follicles flew freely. But my hair became quite the philosophical topic of conversation. People kept calling me “white” in Africa, local friends and otherwise. I’d put my arm next to theirs, compare skintone and sometimes be darker than the accuser.

“You have white hair,” they’d always say.. I didn’t have “African” hair and I didn’t have “Asian” hair. I had European hair, so I was white.

My new South African friend Lucky, (above), said, “Africans will always look at your hair first,” to guess where you might be from. Commentary usually followed by mention of my “white” eyes, noes, forehead and other white features.

Only later did I learn about the mega-hair-wave market that hacks off pounds of Indian hair to into African weaves. Watch Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair. It is actually a very well researched, articulate, opinionated, educational, pointed and hilarious film. He exposes the billion dollar business of pain and suffering to tame the tresses. But why? For what reason have these women decided to put thousands of dollars a month to make their hair look smooth, flowing and shiny like their European sisters?

I tucked that question away until I got to Japan. Here, in Tokyo, women and men with seemingly beautiful, straight, shiny black hair mutate their natural style. I see (unnaturally) blonde and brunette Japanese men and women. Though I am staying in a cosmopolitan fashion district. I presume people are much more likely to make the self-expressive dye-job leap. But, I want to know why.

I want to know more about Western culture. I want to know more about Japanese culture. I want to know more about African culture and I want to know what media these people consume. Online, on TV, on the radio, in magazines and in advertising.

I want to know what happens in their minds when they wake up in the morning and decide, “This looks good. I want to look like this.” Why does the West have a hegemonic hold on hair culture? Or does it? Is there a silent, cultural, confirmation that European culture is the highest of high fashion? Is there an unspoken agreement in Tokyo or Cape Town when locals make minor mutations to their image?

I don’t know.

But I’d like to find out.

What happens to a community when they are all of a sudden flooded with mountains of new information? It gets localized and appropriated. And behavior changes and former generations remember the good ‘ol days. To whom does the responsibility belong?

I never really thought much about my hair culture until very recently. I’m as guilty of mutation as any of the women and men pictured above. My hair has been red, green blue, purple and once or twice, blonde on accident in a few spots. All the while I’ve applied dangerous amounts of heat to my hair daily for a more ‘orderly’ look that frizzes up at the mention of moisture in the air. So where does this leave us? Does the West have ah old on hair or is it just a horse of different color?

What are we going to do about the news?

Posted on 28 April 2011 by ninamehta

During the second and final year of graduate school I worked on a research and design project related to news, design and storytelling. I created Newskite, a platform to engage people around the world about major global current affairs. I presented my capstone (that’s like a design thesis) to my faculty and peers at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana last night and to alum and friends via ustream.

Presentation Video

Scrub to 01:02:00 for my 15 minute talk. You can follow along with the slide deck below.

Slidedeck

Audio Stories
Edited collection for presentation

Full stories

Poster

Gratitude
Thank you to very many many people but especially to professor Hans Ibold who pushed me hardest and mentored me more than anyone else at Indiana University.

Feedback
I also received constructive feedback written commentary.

Tweets during and soon after the presentation

Carl Alviani: What Do You Do Anyway? Describing IxD to the Outside World for Students

Posted on 15 April 2011 by ninamehta

Carl Alviani, writer and editor at Ziba took some special time to talk over Skype with a small group of Human-Computer Interaction Design Master’s students at Indiana University in Bloomington. He a talk similar to that from Interaction’s 11 Conference in Boulder.

Wesley Michaels and I tracked him down in Boulder and asked if he would share his insights with our peers who couldn’t make it to the conference. His invitation was part of our semester long research and design project to improve the professional development resources for HCI Master’s students in the School of Informatics and Computing at IU.

Much of our community is struggling to communicate what we do and why it is important. Carl emphasized how important it is for us to tell stories that have characters and tangible examples. Otherwise, people will continue thinking we do magic, or do nothing. The best thing we can do is open a dialogue with people who don’t understand what we do and above all–thank them for being interested in the first place.

Major Points

An example would be useful about now. Got a GPS device in front of you? Talk about it.
Tell an “IxD at work” story that people can see.
Don’t sweat the edge case. It’s ok to start by saying we make website or phone apps. Something like that is tangible and can open a dialogue.
It is your job to shield the world from IxD’s internal debates.
Start where the listener is. Think of your listeners as users. Then have a user-centered designed conversation. You know how to do that!

Q&A with students

Is UX and IxD a buzzword? Not necessarily. A buzz word is when usage exceeds comprehension and maybe more people are using the word but don’t know what it means.
The best work comes from identifying part of a project where you can have an impact.
The industry will benefit as a whole from students coming from young programs. From schools will come more agreements on terminology and practice in the profession.
It’s common and expected for interaction designers to inherit and learn new tools fast.
There is a difference between user research and market research just as there is a difference between users and consumers. When designers engage in research they come out of their research transformed and empathetic.
Getting excited about work is essential. You can begin to think, “do you have any idea of what this will mean to people!?” When you have a person in mind you can really talk about solutions and begin to solve them.
Play well with others.
People can be very creative. Even or especially non-designers. Let them know you realize that and draw on it. Be interested in them and make sure they know.

Carl, thank you so much!

What is this thing called? Deremediation?

Posted on 12 April 2011 by ninamehta

What is it called when our minds see something in nature that looks and feels like a remediation of technology? Deremediation? Probably not, because I made up that word.

For example, Instagr.am is an service that lets people saturate and filter their photos. They are what researchers Bolter and Grusin would call a remediation of old film cameras. Months ago I was driving on highway 280 near Half-Moon Bay between San Francisco and Mountain View. I thought the rocks I was seeing looked a lot like the fake rocks I saw at the Universal Studio’s movie set. The movie set rocks were of course meant to look like real, natural rocks.

What is it then? What is it called when our mind begins processing things in the natural world as if they are produced by technology? Maybe it’s not anything except you thinking I’ve gone absolutely mad.

Designerly eyes on the Soviets today

Posted on 12 April 2011 by ninamehta

There’s lots of news today about the Russian region that’s worth your attention. The above is the image on Google.com of “Russia’s Yuri Gagarin on Tuesday, replacing the logo on its homepage with an image of the first man in space and a rocket that a visitor can launch with a cursor.”

Celebrating Space Exploration
The BBC reported Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says space exploration is still a priority for Russians. For the international community, we can argue important attention to further the sciences is good news. Celebrations for 50 years of space exploration. Great. However this anniversary for Russians comes with unfortunate reports from neighboring Belarussians.

Bombs in Belarus
In Belarus, security is extra tight today after a bomb killed 12 and wounded 150 people in a Subway Blast, a country otherwise known to be a relatively peaceful place. For those skimming past the little sister of Russia, attention is back on Chernobyl in the Ukraine.

Eyes on Chernobyl
The severity of the nuclear crisis rating in Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has risen from 5 to the highest level 7 today. This level has only been reached once before in the 1968 Chernobyl (now Ukraine, then USSR) disaster. Though, the amount of radiation leaks is on the decline, it’s unknown if the case is as severe as in the then USSR.

On Design
So how do these smattering of news stories fit into this blog? Each bit in this roundup poses a design challenge. These are a serious, big, enormous design problems that really mean something. Industrial, communication, travel, information, experience, interaction, graphic, material design. All of that and more. Well designed user experience is essential here. It counts–maybe even more–in a high risk scenario. Good design is not always making people “feel good” but a holistic, felt understanding of complex individuals, groups, politics, constraints and environments we must consider when design something that effects people.

Designers, engineers, techies and media people alike, I bet something above has something to do with what you’re working on today. It’s your job to think about it even if the Soviet Empire’s fall lives in your history books. How unfortunate would it be if we closed our eyes to the rest of the world and dipped into a Rooseveltian Isolationism? *sniff* Do I smell a New Deal? Designers working on policy is a whole different (exciting) conversation. Food for thought. I hope I didn’t ruin your Tuesday.

The Chemical Brothers track Leaving Home just came on my Last.fm radio. What timing.

[Image via Google & AFP]

Brilliant (free) services for better reading online

Posted on 10 April 2011 by ninamehta

Below are my favorite bits of technology that make life less complicated and truly better. Happy reading.

f.lux makes your eyes happy

My entire life has changed because of f.lux. I usually wake up before sunrise and when I don’t it’s because I have worked late into the night. Throughout the day f.lux adjusts the tints on my screen with based on my location and time of day. At night, my screen has a slight red-orange hue (tungsten) that keeps me from squinting at my computer and burning my eyeballs. Doing graphic design work that requires precise attention to detail and color? No problem, there’s an easily accessible feature to disable f.lux for an hour. If you try this for a week and still don’t love it, I’ll give you your money back!

Thank you to Damion Junk and Samantha Merritt for introducing me to this great free software f.lux.

Readability wipes away website clutter

Big surprise that I read a lot of news–from a lot of different sources. Blogs, journals, news sites and so on. Because the media industry wants us to click on more links, more share buttons and more ads we are bombarded with visual noise. Readability is a bookmarklet you can add to your toolbar that wipes all of that away. I dream of a day when design is so good we don’t need Readability. But until then, one click to quiet salvation is not so bad.

Their bookmarklet is free or you can pay $5 a month for bonus Instapaper-like features.

Single Page for New York Times helps you click less

This is way I wish all technology worked, quietly in the background. The one click Chrome extension makes all New York Times stories one page. You know that 12-page essay about lemon farming in Brazil? While you’re clicking next, next next, I’m smooth sailing down down the coast Rio sipping lemonade and not a penny spent. I wish I had this for the entire internet.

Adblock makes websites quiet down

New York Times Standard vs New York Times with Adblocker

I did some browser to browser comparisons and the free Adblock definitely works. It also apparently it won the about.com Reader’s Choice Award in 2011–for what that’s worth to you. My favorite part is no longer having twirling, dancing motion ads crying for attention. Hulu ads got you down? Try pressing the “mute” button; that trick always works.

[photos via f.lux and heychristine]

Why journalists should pay attention to visual.ly

Posted on 8 April 2011 by ninamehta

There is an remarkable amount of opportunity to do game changing work in the journalism space. There always has been and there always will be. Why? Because there will always be uncovered stories, truths and narratives to be told. There are always people, problems and more than two sides to an issue.

I’ll start by telling you about my transition from being a news designer to interaction designer. Then I’ll talk about visual.ly at large.

I’ve been asked how I made the leap from one field to the other. Really, folks, they are one in the same to me. Both roles share the same toolbelt: sketch, iterate, prototype, reflect, tell stories, interview, explore, think big, collaborate, write and design at all fidelities.

People ask me why I made the leap

Why did I jump the journalism ship? For me, there really was no other choice. I wanted to improve the quality of how we learn about what’s happening in our world, what I think news does. To do this, I needed new tools in my tool design belt. So, I went back to graduate school to study HCI.

The other reason I jumped ship is actually quite sad. I tried and tried and tried to motivate digital approaches at various media organizations I worked for–not just one in particular. And my freshly graduated tech savvy peer/colleague journalist friends were all trying to do the same thing. Some have been successful. But most of us realized weren’t going to get anywhere until publishers were willing to invest in the future of digital, in a real, thoughtful, way.

Sure the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and other major news hubs pump out fantastic digital work. But we don’t talk as much about solutions for readers of all the gazettes, journals and couriers across the country. That’s why creating a platform can be so powerful.

I wasn’t going to make progress any time soon in the old boys club, so, I jumped. I didn’t want to spend any more time commemorating the good ol’ days, I wanted to design for the future.

Do I look back? Of course. Do I want to go back? No. Am I obsessively grateful for all of the brilliant mentors and experiences I’ve had? Of course.

People ask why I went to graduate school

In my grad school application I said I wanted to work on the news problem. I said I would graduate and leave the traditional news community for a while and arm myself with education and experience at smart tech companies. And when the timing and opportunity is right, I would work in this opportunity space again. I had a really nice metaphor with light and darkness.

People are doing things outside journalism that benefit media

I’m writing this post today because it relates to visua.ly which has me oozing with excitement.

Watch their demo at 500 startups. Scrub to about 34 minutes in.

What Visual.ly does

celebrates story + data +design
connects dataviz pros + advertisers + publishers + compelling content
is a platform
a mix of design, journalism and analysis

The cofounders, Stewart Langille and Lee Sherman come most recently from Mint.com, the infographic heaven for visualized data about your money. They are taking advantage of a space and area that has never been more important and had more opportunity. Watch the video and see how they view the future.

They are trying to solve the problem of “big data” and are “targeting publishing and advertising.” A publisher has a monthly with subscription with Visual.ly which connect them with third party data sets, designers, analysts and an an editor who oversees the creations of these visualizations.

I’ve said this many times before, and I’ll say it again, if journalists in newsrooms don’t take serious, thoughtful action to move the news industry forwards, other people will. Quoting myself:

Newspapers, radio and cable television should be taught in media history classes. Students should be taught to produce for and think about Mobile apps, Google and Apple TV, Ubiquitous Computing, Virtual Environments, Chat clients, Facebook, Twitter, Bloggers, GPS devices, etc. The list goes on and on. If the medium is the message, it’s time to open our eyes to everything else out there.

We should have invented Twitter. We should have invented RSS feeds. We should have invented Craigslist and Groupon and Youtube and the iPad and Google Search and Yelp. It’s okay to hire developers. It’s okay to take a risk. If people inside the news industry don’t change the model, people outside will.

10 August 2010

Visual.ly “gives publishers the horse power of a New York Times visualization team without the cost; New York Times has 40 people on their visualization.” It’s curated crowdsourcing. ”Using our data, or their own, users can grab-and-go making amazing visualizations” the founders say.

Watch their interview with TechCrunch to learn more about how it works.

So, to my dear friends in newsrooms, fighting the good fight, every day, whatever you do, keep moving forward. If your editor is not taking advantage of your potential, work for someone who will. If no one will, start doing whatever you think needs to be done, yourself.