1 – The mobile phone is the first personal mass media
2 – The mobile is permanently carried media
3 – The mobile is the only always-on mass media
4 – Mobile is the only mass media with a built-in payment mechanism
5 – Mobile is only media available at the point of creative inspiration
6 – Mobile is only media with accurate audience measurement
7 – Mobile captures the social context of media consumption

These are not necessarily unique observations. But Ahonen’s perspective is one that puts mobile in the context of the media that preceded it, showing just how far technology has come. As an example, consider his first point, that mobile is the “first personal mass media”:

Never before was any mass media assumed to be private. Books and magazines are shared. Movies watched together. Radio we can have the whole family in the car listening at the same time. Records are played to a roomfull of wedding guests by the DJ. TV is watched together by the family. The internet is semi-personal, but often the PC is shared by the family or business employees. Our secretary or IT tech support (or Human Resources staff) may read through our emails. At home our parents often “snoop” what the kids do on the family PC etc. The internet is not a personal media, even if it often seems like it. But mobile. That is mine, and only mine.

Although the stats and facts are a little dated (the iPad had yet to make its debut), his post is a good read, and a reminder of why mobile represents an exciting opportunity in terms of creating innovative user experiences. It’s not just about Angry Birds.

This Microsoft production is one of the vision videos that’s been making the rounds:

It’s cool, but also cold. And it’s one of the best of the bunch (Corning’s A Day Made of Glass is also very good). Others, such as the awkward imitations produced by Research In Motion (Blackberry) invite only ridicule.

Interface designer Bret Victor has produced an intelligent critique of the Microsoft video (and, by extension the whole genre). He starts by reminding us of the incredible sensory and manipulative powers of the human hand:

There’s a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called “work” for millions of years.

But what is the sensory experience of Microsoft’s future (and Corning’s, and Apple’s, and RIM’s)? It’s the feel of glass. It’s “glassy.”

Now read this: The 5 Best Toys of All Time. I think you’ll get my point.

But then Google released its redesign of Reader, and we went from this:

to this:

[Image credits: SheGeeks.net]

Google calls the design “cleaner, faster, and nicer to look at.”  But after reading their announcement more closely, it’s really more about creating a tighter integration with Google+ by turning off Reader’s friending, following, shared items and comments in favor of similar Google+ functionality. Which is okay, since I do see the point of consolidating Reader’s social aspect with Google+. But the redesign has actually made sharing harder, not easier. Former Google Reader Product Manager Brian Shih puts it this way:

Keep in mind that on top of requiring 3-4 times as many clicks, you also now must +1 a post publicly to share it, even if it’s shared to a private circle. That bears repeating. The next time you want to share some sexy halloween costumes with your private set of friends, you first must publicly +1 the post, which means it shows up on your profile, plus wherever the hell G+ decides to use +1 data. So much for building a network around privacy controls.

But then later, an update:

It turns out there is a way to share without +1′ing first. If you click on the top right “Share…” field on the OneGoogle bar [the bar at the very top of the pane], you can bypass the +1 button. It’s just completely undiscoverable.

Sounds like a dark pattern to me.

But let’s put Google+ aside, since sharing wasn’t why I used Reader in the first place. It was about the content. How quickly can I see what’s new and get to an individual story? From an information design perspective, I’d think making the design cleaner would mean maximizing space for original content. Rather it seems they did the opposite, with a thicker/more spacious header bar that pushes content further down the page.

From a visual design standpoint, greeted by a new absence of color, I wondered if they were trying to make it look like a traditional newspaper, removing colored elements as if they were distractions? While there is such a thing as too much color, the new Reader goes overboard in the other direction. With black, white, and grey being the dominant scheme, it’s hard to tell what the priority is in the UI. Google even eliminated the use of the bright blue link color that facilitates scanning.  Now nothing stands out–except for the bright red Subscribe button and the blue Search button.  Maybe it’s time to revisit the pluses of eye candy.

Kvetching aside, I suppose I will get used to the new direction (assuming I don’t switch feeds first).  I also guess I had better brace myself for the upcoming Gmail redesign.

And yet the typical approaches to rendering a user interface–dropdown lists, calendars for date picking, rollovers and accordions for menus–seem to be lacking in the creativity department. Is this really the best we can do from a design standpoint? How do we infuse our interfaces with innovative approaches that delight and surprise users while letting them get things done?  Mike Heydlauf suggests thinking outside the box by designing within a smaller one. In other words, consider constraints as a creativity aid.

The idea that constraints help creativity is not a new idea, but Heydlauf wants to up the ante by introducing artificial constraints  as a way to “design solutions to problems we might not even have.”  His reasoning:

The point is not to come up with an outstanding solution, but to flex creative muscles and fill our toolbox with ideas that might lead to an outstanding solution to a different problem somewhere down the line. In short, the value is in the journey, not the destination.

To demonstrate, Heydlauf proposes a common “problem” in UI (developing a control for selecting both date and time), introduces not one but two artificial constraints (data input via mouse, and input with only one click), then walks us through a range of possible design solutions (several of which he admits are “truly awful”). It’s a fascinating view into his thought process, especially when he considers “real world” objects as new UI models (hence the title of this post).

This article is a good reminder that innovative solutions are a result of taking the time to explore possibilities and not using the tried-and-true just because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”  At the same time, though, I’d be interested in seeing this tactic applied in the context of a real project (or is it even possible?): How do we incorporate feedback to ensure our new approach makes sense to actual users? How do we fit exploration into a schedule that meets hard deadlines?

IBM Many Bills is a search engine that presents U.S. Congressional legislation in strongly visual format. Each bill is presented in a single vertical column with metadata at the top and sections in descending order. Sections are color coded to delineate their subject. You can show and hide sections of the bills you have found by subject (in a nice accountability feature, a rollover tells you how confident a subject assignment is), save specific bills, and view the actual text.

The color-coded sections allow you to view results in “minified” form, or as an extremely condensed “collection”, such as this group of American Housing Bills:

Many Bills is compelling on several levels. First is the hope that this kind of presentation can help make the legislative process more transparent to both experts and the general public. Second is the project as a model for content-specific search. By understanding the structure of the data, the Many Bills Team presents it in a way that facilitates findability and understanding. There is some risk that the team’s information architecture and design decisions could reinforce conventional thinking at the expense of the unexpected insight, but the source data is available to anyone who wants to try a different approach.

2. Blogger Ann Althouse reduces the reductive aesthetic:

Oddly, I came away feeling that the 10 principles were all the same, and if that principle was simple functionality, the make that one thing into 10 is a violation of the principle itself. But then Rams wasn’t purporting to dictate the principles of website content, so there really is no paradox.

3. Could you have one principle with ten examples and still get the page-views? Lists are so addictive.

Here’s the problem: organizations are the context for our work, and when it comes to the web, organizations are broken…

Although we’re comfortable with the idea that the web is critical to organizations, we often miss the corollary: the web has changed the way organizations operate, and in many cases it’s changed their business models, too. When executives can’t see that, it causes a crisis. Welcome to your daily web-making reality.

Now some of Kahn’s exhortations cause me to roll my eyes. I’ve worked in a number of information-related fields in my career and I’ve heard variations on “we are the change agents” and “executives don’t get it” all the way through. But Kahn is right to demand an organization-wide framework for web development and he is right to point out the need for governance and measurement as well as strategy and execution.

And when you see an organization really commit to a comprehensive web strategy with creative follow-through, the results are obvious.

As it turns out, we have a way to prevent gangs of humans from acting like savage packs of animals. In fact, we’ve developed entire disciplines based around this goal over thousands of years. We just ignore most of the lessons that have been learned when we create our communities online. But, by simply learning from disciplines like urban planning, zoning regulations, crowd control, effective and humane policing, and the simple practices it takes to stage an effective public event, we can come up with a set of principles to prevent the overwhelming majority of the worst behaviors on the Internet.

Dash follows with a list of concrete actions responsible content owners need to take to manage the crowd. It all starts with having real people moderate the content. Dash links to Robert Niles at Online Journalism Review, who states flatly: “If you can’t manage comments well, don’t offer comments at all“.

It’s easy to get seduced by the lure of a single sign-on. But managing multiple user accounts actually isn’t as much of an annoyance as we think it is. For me, it quickly became clear that my single Google account had mixed and muddled my personal and professional services and data.

Link through to take the survey about which Google services you use (with some notable omissions), and learn about the various alternatives Romero discovered.

The relaunch has given us the opportunity to update our portfolio and present the popular dD Orrery on its own page. For the latter we’ve created free Mac and Windows screensavers you can download.

Let us know what you think.