February 9th, 2009

The mulitouch future of RIAs

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 5:52 am

Categories: Design, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Multi-touch, Rich Internet Application, Ryan Stewart

I’ve been really enjoying Richard Monson-Haefel’s blog on multi touch lately. Now that RIA technologies are able to do so much, it’s become apparent that the mouse and keyboard are simply too limiting as input devices. The maddening number of iPhone clones that do “gestures” but not true multi touch continues to leave me underwhelmed at the space. But with the iPhone and larger devices like Microsoft Surface or multi touch startups like Intuilab show that there’s a lot of innovation around these new interfaces and I think there is a very significant role for RIAs to play here.

We already know that Windows 7 will have multi touch support which means that anyone building WPF applications can incorporate multi touch functionality. Snow Leopard, Apple’s newest operating system, supposedly will include it as well but what I want to see are the RIA plugins include it: Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX, etc - because I think that’s where the exciting cases are.

Those plugins were built from the ground up to be rich in animation, multimedia, and experience - the perfect use case for multi touch. But I’m also very excited about what’s starting to happen with real time communication and collaboration with things like WCF and Cocomo. The web seems to be ready for real-time to take off, so we’re getting to the point where we have very rich data layers underneath extremely powerful user interface frameworks and technologies. The only piece that’s missing is an input mechanism that can actually make some of these things less cumbersome to use.

As the UIs and the data become more complex, there’s going to be a draw to move to better ways of actually interacting with the content. Multi touch technology gives us that, and as we’ve seen with the iPhone, people pick these applications up very, very quickly. That usability boost is critical if we want to start seeing widespread adoption of the more interesting user interface ideas out there. We’ve got all the parts of the puzzle, but it’s taking more time than I would have liked to bring it all together.

Apologies for the long hiatus. Between Christmas, a vacation to Japan, and everything else, things have been hectic. But hopefully I’m back with a vengeance.

November 10th, 2008

Aviary launches with brand new domain, pricing model

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 1:54 pm

Categories: Design, Flash, Flex, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Desktop, Domain, Pricing Strategy, Tool, Aviary, Productivity, Ryan Stewart

This is a bit old, but I haven’t had time to dig in and play with the public version of Aviary until recently. After a long beta period they’ve officially taken the wraps off of Phoenix, their bitmap editing tool and consolidated everything under the aviary.com domain. The launch not withstanding, the Aviary crew has been very, very busy and Aviary continues to be one of the most innovative set of RIAs that I’ve seen.

The beauty of Aviary isn’t the set of tools or the fantastic design and branding - though those all help - but how they’re building up their community. On their blog they’ve got a ton of samples to get you started. And baked into the tooling are all the steps that you take to create the end result. That means that if you want to, you can share all of the steps and settings that you used for your masterpiece. New users can look at that and figure out exactly how to get the most out of the tool. They’ve become famous on digg for their various creations. They’ve also started to roll out a way to make money by pricing the service at a couple different tiers. Hardcore users can choose between Green, for the people who mostly use Phoenix, and Blue, which gives you access to the whole suite of tools.

But one of the subtle beauties of Aviary is that it’s all cross platform. One of the reasons I’ve been using it lately is because I’m trying to switch more of my work to Linux. There just aren’t a lot of great design tools for Linux, but Aviary’s entire suite is built on the Flash Player and so it’s cross platform. They’ve even got a Firefox extension that lets you do things like take screenshots from the desktop and helps blend the browser sandbox with the desktop. It’s a pretty good bridge between online photo editor and the functionality people expect on the desktop.

So keep an eye on Aviary. They should be releasing more of their tools soon, but I think they’ve really nailed a lot of big parts of rich Internet applications. They’ve got a very functional tool, a rich user interface, and a passionate design community.

Thanks to Flash Speaks Actionscript for the reminder.

August 24th, 2008

5 Photosynths that let you jump into another world

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 11:09 pm

Categories: Design, Microsoft, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Photograph, Photosynth, Ryan Stewart

Photosynth launched last week to a lot of fanfare and it’s definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen come out of Microsoft. It’s also one of the more interesting RIA examples out there. It provides a really great user interface and a level of richness for photos that the web hasn’t ever seen. A week after launch there is a decent collection of “synths” out there which show off the technology pretty well. I found 5 that are unique, interesting, and will absolutely take you away from whatever you’re doing and put you in another world. I can’t wait to see more people use this (and to see it available on a Mac). So put on some music and get ready to jump around the planet.

Boats by Chihuly
Chihuly has always been famous for his glasswork. In this Photosynth you get to see it like never before. You can zoom around the boat, and drill into detail. It’s a perfect example of how art and technology can blend to provide a really great user experience.

Climbing Aegialis
Not only is the scenery good, but making a person the focal point of a synth makes for a very interesting visualization. As you click through different views you can watch the climber move along the rock. As the background changes you almost get the sense that you’re the one doing all the hard work.

Halo 3 Zanzibar
Played Halo 3? Then this level will be familiar. Using screenshots of the game we’re able to jump into the middle of the Halo world like it was any other place on Earth. It’s got a bunch of photos and it’s really cool to zoom out and watch the 3D shapes form.

Stonehenge
National Geographic did a bunch of Photosynths and I thought Stonehenge was one of the best. They took more than 400 photos of the ancient monument which gives the user complete control over what and how they want to see it. It’s one of the more complete synths on the site and you can spend hours crawling over the rocks and stones.

Scoble Family Room
Yup, Scoble synthed his family room. But in doing show he proved that Photosynth is also great for small spaces and family memories. With only 50 photos, Robert was basically able to recreate his room which makes for a great way to share with friends and family (and the entire Internet). But the small space means it’s easy to move around and is a great demo for showing how well Photosynth can stitch together basically anything.

June 30th, 2008

Is designing for the small screen more fun?

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 9:29 am

Categories: Design, Device Central, Mobile-Web, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Desktop, Application, Mobile, Mobile World, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Ryan Stewart

I have completely fallen in love with my iPhone. As far as I can tell it comes as close to the perfectly designed device as possible and it seems like I’m discovering cool usability aspects all the time. Things like when you get a text message with a phone number or email address you get a little blue arrow that lets you email/call or add that to a contact. Doing that on my Blackjack is a pain. And it got me thinking. Is designing for the small screen more fun than designing full fledged applications on the desktop?

Part of me wonders if that was one of appealing things of first moving to the web browser. Creating desktop applications was always kind of tough but customizing them was VERY tough. You were basically stuck with the same component set that everyone else was. But in the browser you could do whatever you wanted. You could get creative with new kinds of UIs and you could basically make components and applications look however you wanted them to look. The browser had a lot more freedom than desktop applications.

On devices it seems like we have even more power to get creative and less room to work with. Instead of thinking about how an application is going to look on a gigantic monitor we only have a small screen. Which means we have to focus on the user interface. We have to design applications that fit a bunch of information into a tiny screen. It’s kind of a fun design problem. The iPhone software nailed it and I think the plethora of iPhone applications out there do a pretty good job as well. My favorites are the Facebook application and the Brightkite application.

As mobile platforms become more mature, I think the payoff (gigantic numbers) and intrigue is going to make them a first class design environment. More designers are going to want to work in the small space because of the freedom and creativity it provides. That means we’re going to need good, solid design tools for the mobile world. Adobe has been doing some of this with Device Central but I think there’s still a long way to go and that it’s anyone’s game. Designers tend to be very sticky and it’s hard to get them to switch from what they know, but a really good design tool targeted at the mobile world could possibly do that. I think in some ways the mobile world is the Wild West of design and there’s no sheriff in town yet. In fact, I’d say we’ve barley got a town. That means there’s lots of opportunity for money in these parts.

February 4th, 2008

Singularity, the first large-scale online web conference is unveiled

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 5:34 pm

Categories: Design, Flash, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Speaker, Rich Internet Application, Conference, Web Conferencing, Internet, Ryan Stewart

This is pretty neat: Singularity. Aral Balkan is putting on what he calls the “first large-scale online web conference in the world” and his list of speakers is a great mix of design, development, and standards that make this a really interesting conference for anyone interested in rich Internet applications.

Sessions and pricing haven’t been announced but it looks like the date will be October 24th - 28th and may incorporate local events while keeping with the online format for all of the speakers. As the about page notes Aral has been a part of the Flash community as well as the open source/standards community for a long time and part of the goal of this conference is to bring those two communities together which is always a good thing. It also sounds like they’re going to be very open about the planning and orchestration of the conference.

I think it’s a cool idea and I hope it picks up a lot of momentum. I also hope we see some RIA-slanted speakers put into the put as well so if you have topic ideas, submit them. Thanks to Samiq for the heads up!

December 14th, 2007

Natural experiences with software

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:49 pm

Categories: Design, Picnik, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Software, AJAX, Rich Internet Application, Ryan Stewart

In episode two of our RIA Weekly podcast we talked with James Ward about some of the enterprise Flex out there. (I’m hoping to get someone from Microsoft to talk about Silverlight 2.0 after the break) One of the things that James talked about really got my attention. He noted that a lot of the new user interface paradigms come from real life. Translucent windows, rounded corners, and depth. Having that more natural experience makes the software feel more friendly and adds to the emotional attachment that I talk a lot about.

What’s great about rich Internet applications is that the natural experience is baked into the platform. The entire family of RIAs worked hard to differentiate themselves from what the rest of the web was doing. Standing out through more natural interactions and UIs was an easy way to do that and it’s moved the entire industry forward. In some ways it fits very well with what’s on the minds of society. More natural software seems to go hand in hand with things like environmentalism and being more green. And look at how drawn you are to applications like Picnik and Yahoo Vista Messenger, two applications that make great use of natural UI features.

Ultimately I think that’s the kind of differentiator that the more powerful RIA platforms provide. Ajax is great but it still feels kind of flat compared to more expressive technologies. There can obviously be some very badly done expressive user interfaces, but using natural features makes the application stand out. With great power comes responsibility, but I think James made some great points about how and why natural interfaces in RIAs make a lot of good sense. Even in the enterprise.

November 1st, 2007

Interaction08 information - a conference for interactive designers

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 7:14 am

Categories: Design, Rich Internet Applications, Rich Media

Tags: Rich Internet Application, Conference, Interaction08, Ryan Stewart

The Interaction08 Conference in Savannah announced it’s full schedule this week and it looks like it’s going to be a great event. Interaction08 is the very first conference being put on by IxDA, the Interaction Design Association. It’s a conference aimed at bringing together interactive designers and showing them what’s coming up and how to apply new technologies to their current work. I’m a huge fan of anything that enhances the interactive design space and I think this conference will go a long way towards that.

There are a number of good speakers from the interactive design world including Jared Spool and Chris Bernard of Microsoft. It also looks like there will be quite a few interesting sessions covering a ton of topics about user interaction, interface design, and user experience.

The sessions seem to be pretty broad interaction design topics, which is great, but I do hope there is a bit more focus on RIAs next year. Microsoft and Laszlo Systems both have a talk, so there is some RIA representation there, but I’d love to see a track or a few sessions dedicated exclusively to the problem of designing interfaces and experiences for RIAs. All that said, I think this is going to turn into a huge event that brings together some of the rising stars of the interaction design community.

I’m planning on going and while Thermo/Adobe doesn’t have a session, I’m sure there will be a lot of questions and I’m hoping I can answer them. They’ve extended the early bird deadline by a few days, so head over and sign up. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor of what should become a very influential and interesting conference.

August 30th, 2007

The 'undo' problem is why web applications aren't there yet

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 1:35 pm

Categories: Design, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Desktop, Web, Web Application, Rich Internet Application, Ryan Stewart

I just screwed up. I accidentally marked all of my Google reader items as read when what I intended to do was mark a specific folder as read. If this was a desktop application I could hit undo and I’d back up, have all of my data the way I want it, and be ready to read all of the delicious feeds I’ve been missing this week. But Google Reader is a web application, so I can’t do that, I’m just SOL.

This is one of the huge, huge problems with web applications that we haven’t talked about much. Web apps are great. They’re easy to get to, they store your data in the cloud and they’re fairly ubiquitous. But we haven’t gotten to the point where we can replicate true desktop paradigms on the web. Because the web was primarily a document medium, we didn’t have to think about application problems like states or offline issues. But now we do and while we’re making a lot of progress, there are things keeping us from fully making the jump.

RIAs haven’t solved this problem either. But because RIAs started with the idea of building real applications on the web, we’re closer than other technologies. But it’s funny because the forces that pull us in the direction of desktop applications also pull us towards the web. If you figure out a very robust way to incorporate states (so you can add undo functionality) then how do you deal with people that want to deep link into an RIA? Should you be able to link into each stage of the undo stack?

Technologically, blending the web and the desktop isn’t hard. It’s blending the features from each that’s difficult and it’s why RIAs are such an interesting problem. We’re all still figuring out what to take from the web world and what to take from the desktop world. I want Undo in my rich internet applications. The question I what I need to give up to get that.

Some good background (not a new problem):
Vandewal.net - state on the web
John Dowdell - good comments, including using the back button.
BoagWorld

Image courtesy of NewbieGamerBlog.

August 29th, 2007

Why a good designer-developer workflow is important

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 12:07 pm

Categories: Design, Devigner Workflow, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Software, Developer, Brain, Apple Inc., Workflow, Ryan Stewart

The “designer-developer workflow” has become almost a buzzword among the people following rich internet applications but it’s something that I continue to think about and I want to make sure it doesn’t lose meaning. Designers have always been able to create beautiful experiences. Whether that’s a painting, a sculpture, a web page or some form of artwork, they know how to evoke emotion and reach out to the people viewing the piece. They appeal to our right brain. Developers on the other hand are task oriented and are obsessed with making things work and adding function. I think every developer also wants whatever they’re creating to look good, but ultimately the left brain can’t appeal to our eyes as well as something a designer would cook up.

Just like human beings, it’s when the left brain and the right brain come together that we really excel. Anyone who has been in the industrial design world knows how powerful the combination of form and function can be. Apple has created a $115 billion company based almost on that premise alone. In the software world we’ve never had anything like that. It’s easier to manipulate physical objects than it is to manipulate bits. The processes for creating beautiful things has been perfected and refined over hundreds of years. But not in the software world.

If we’re going to start seeing beautiful software we need to make it easy for the right brain and the left brain to work together. It’s a sophisticated problem. How do you combine a designer’s vision with the requirements of productive software? How do you help designers take their ideas and turn those into interfaces that developers can code around? That’s why the designer-developer workflow is so important. Once you make it easy for them you give both designers and developers the freedom to push what’s possible with software. You’ll end up with experiments in usability, design, and interfaces that will help make software better. There will be growing pains, but ultimately end users will win.

The key now is to figure out what that workflow should be. I’m looking forward to a lot of spirited debate around that. Once we convince more people of the value we can start to have conversations about best practices. That will be a lot of fun.

April 10th, 2007

RIA summit: "Unleashing the Power of Rich Internet Applications"

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 11:43 am

Categories: Adobe, Apollo, Design, Experience, Rich Internet Applications, eBay, effectiveUI

Tags:

Adobe and effectiveUI are putting on a free Rich Internet Application Summit on Thursday, May 3rd, in Denver that I'll be a speaker for. While it's obviously targeted at Adobe products, it's going to be one of the first conference I've seen that focuses on the business side of Rich Internet Applications. There are representatives from Forrester, eBay, and Adobe as well as Anthony Franco, a managing partner at effectiveUI.

The agenda includes topics like the business case for Rich Internet Applications, what kinds of experiences you can create with Apollo, and how important user experience can be when delivering applications over the web or on the desktop. The final session is a panel with all of the speakers talking about the future of RIAs and how they'll affect software. I'm covering the Rich Internet Application ecosystem, so I'll be giving an overview of Adobe's technologies and where they fit. I'll be talking about mobile devices, the web, the desktop, and how RIAs can span all of those for the best reach.

As I said, it's a free event, so if you'll be in Denver on the 3rd of May, you should head on over and register. It runs from 8:30 to 2:00 and is being held at the Adam's Mark Hotel. Even if you weren't planning on being in Denver, it's a great place to take a trip, and this is as good reason to schedule a long weekend of skiing or hiking or just hanging out in the mile high city.