A while ago, the iPod Touch, iPod Shuffle, and iPod Nano user interface designs were all subjected to a variety of tweaks by Apple, although the iPod Classic model was left as is.  The changes are meant to boost usability, intrigue new and old customers, and make the new generation of iPods more accesible than ever. Some of the new developments for each product include:

•    iPod Nano: Smaller size, added touch screen capability, lost camera.

•    iPod Shuffle: VoiceOver capacity in 25 different languages in addition to a larger size and smaller price; at $49 it is the cheapest iPod to date.

•   iPod Touch: Improved screen and battery life and a front-facing camera that allows users to make calls via Skype to iPhone 4 and other iPod Touch users.

Several weeks ago Netflix, an American a company that offers online streaming and online flat rate DVD and Blu-ray Disc rental-by-mail, released its new iPhone app that is designed to allow subscribed users to stream TV episodes and movies directly to their iPhone or iPod Touch at no additional cost.  The announcement of the new Netflix app spiked the organization’s shares by 2% and Google searches were trending towards “Netflix Android” with many Droid users wondering when Netflix would release an app for their phones.  Netflix releasing an app only for iPhone can be seen as a good marketing strategy as it makes the services that much more enticing to non-Apple users.  If and when Netflix decides to expand their application to Droids and other smartphones, users will no doubt be chomping at the bit to download it.  Another bonus is that since Netflix is a subscription based service, people may be more willing to sign-up purely to use the services on their smartphones despite the fact that the user interface design might be a challenge for older users in comparison to the larger home PC screens.

The Netflix app user interface will allow members to organize their materials by personal preferences, genres, new arrivals and individual instant queues.  Members will also be able to access their Netflix content from both 3G and Wi-Fi networks, though Wi-Fi will provide faster and more reliable streaming and downloads. So after you have finished downloading music, checking email, and Facebook stalking, you can always watch a movie on your iPhone—if you even have the time left.

Another property in the Google monopoly

Google’s Call me feature invokes images of Skype, except it is integrated into every internet user’s control center: email.  If Google is able to turn Call me into an easy and internationally accessible part of their platform, it could provide Skype a fair bit of competition.  Integrated user interfaces make things easier for the user.  If users only have to log into one service to email and make phone calls etc. an organization like Skype could take a hit because they do not offer the wide range of features that Google, and by extension Gmail, does.  Luckily for Skype, not everyone is a Gmail user.  Still, Google’s newest feature shows once again that they are fearless about trekking into various internet services terrains and are not hiding the fact that they want a share in all of the properties that make up the world wide web. So is Google trying to create an internet monopoly?  That’s a bit of a sensational stretch, but at the very least Google makes it clear that they want a share in everything and do not want to make life easy for their competitors.

The implications for UX and usability design

If the media and advertising industry is digitalizing itself then obviously interface design concepts like usability, user experience design etc. will play a central role in the implementation of new digital business practices.  Companies will need online advertising and commerce to be as efficient as possible while maintaining an element of authenticity and desirability known from the traditional print environment.  Thus, the market for those specializing in UX and usability design will be wide open and full of opportunity.  This will likely lead to innovations in the UX and usability design fields as the cutthroat world of digital business will force designers to gain the competitive edge not just in creativity and productivity as usual, but also in measurable impact, such as online conversion rates.  Hence one may well argue that a growing digital media industry could mean a creative renaissance for the usability and UX industry as well.

But even if screen designs have already been made in some hi-fi graphics software (e.g. Photoshop, pidoco° can add value to the process by bringing interactivity to static screens. Adding ‘click areas’ to the finished screenshots enhance the collaboration and interaction capabilities of a former static screenshot. Colleagues, clients and test users can now easily be integrated in the designs process and online discussions can be held. Just like web conferencing, but with real-time editing never seen before!

The pidoco° screens design software consists of three main modules which complement each other perfectly. Together, they enhance the interface design process and optimize the general workflow in all stages of interactive web design.
Digital prototypes are quickly sketched with the Prototype Creator (just by drag&drop) and can later easily be shared and reviewed by colleagues, test users or clients. If there is need for even more in-depth feedback on individual aspects of the use cases, just use the digital interfaces to perform a easy to set up remote usability test where moderator and test user are connected remotely by a shared screen and an integrated phone. All modules are aimed to increase productivity of the interface design process and ease communication within the team.

For the people who are into screen design, Rapid Paper Prototyping is an old hat! But ever considered doing interface design on screen?

With pidoco’s web-based prototyping software, interaction designers and web developers can save valuable time, easily integrate other stakeholders and build better interfaces for the internet.

Rapid Paper Prototyping has already been established as THE way to get a web-application started. The basic concepts of the layout will be put on paper and tossed around in the team. This prototype will then be put through a refinement process by implementing feedback from different stake holders. This paper prototype will finally act as a rough guide for the whole project – from beginning to the end (but is there a real end?). Some screen-designers even use these very limited paper prototypes for running usability tests. Retrieving problems in the use cases in the prototyping phase can save a lot of money, since later changes in the so called ‘finished’ web project are minimized.

However, there are several drawbacks to Rapid Paper Prototyping.  Paper prototypes are difficult to add to the document servers and also difficult to share between team-members. Scanning paper prototypes and making them ‘clickable’ for web testing is also a time consuming task as we all know!

That is why many companies create their sketches directly in MS PowerPoint or MS Visio and have them distributed to the relevant sources. True, that way one can share the screens more effectively but it is not really more dynamic than making copies of a piece of paper handing it to the team. The prototypes still do not show the real capabilities for test user excitement:  links, dynamic menus and work-flows etc. cannot be reproduced effectively and need to be explained individually in long paragraphs. Again, more time and effort has to be invested to get the message across.
A small company from Berlin, Germany has noticed this problem and made it their duty to tackle it by providing a really nice web-based interface design software.

In the project driven media world, where fast reaction to special customer demands is king, free-lancing and outsourcing is business as usual. Temporary project teams get assembled by required skills, experiences and availability. But if you like it or not, this flexibility in hiring resources on demand is needed to withstand the pressure of low margins and increasing competition in the agency world. But this constellation also serves media buyers (aka customers) best, since they get teams with special qualifications for their individual project requirements.

In either case, the media world relies more than any other industry on personal networks. As a result we can see project teams with people from different backgrounds, professions and sometimes even different native languages (speaking of off-shoring). New communication trends and technologies emerging every day (just remember the introduction of social media) very specialized and always new skills are constantly needed. Therefore today, the task for project managers is not only to know a lot of qualified freelancers from the latest technologies, but to get them together and make sure they collaborate like one single well lubricated machine. To deliver projects on time and on budget, the team needs to communicate well, since the somewhat binding corporate culture does not exist.

But the question remains up to which point the cost reduction through outsourcing and hiring professionals on demand, is compensating the increasing cost for communication in such projects – or how to constrain the rising cost of communication. But we suggest not worrying too much, since there are some nice tools for online collaboration especially for the media guys.

This completely web-based tool helps interaction designers to communicate the work-flow concepts and specs (as interactive interface mockups) of a new website to developers, customers and other stake holders in the extended project team. All communication takes place online (just a web browser is needed) and all team members can collaborate in real-time (or asynchronously) on the same wireframes, tracking and influencing the different stages of development. What makes it special for screen designers; it’s not just collaboration, but also a great wireframing and usability testing tool. It basically transfers the idea of rapid paper prototyping to the web and adds a lot of helpful testing, communication and collaboration features.

Developing user-centered software applications is a dynamic and iterative process of designing and testing. But given the fact that the drafted interface concepts might be overhauled anyway after testing, the trade-off between creating high-fidelity prototypes and investing as little time as possible in something that will be thrown away has to be made.

This trade-off really asks for a fast visualization method and therefore some clever designers and programmers invented Rapid Paper Prototyping. Quick and dirty interface prototypes are sketched with pen and paper to be tested (and re-designed) with all the limitations physical paper brings along.

But today, in the digital age, Rapid Paper Prototyping has grown up! The era of digital interface prototyping has begun. With digital wireframing tools you can create interface mockups by drag and drop from prefabricated stencils (elements like checkboxes, navigation bars etc.). Unlike paper, these digital interface prototypes are completely interactive with animated navigation, real type-in form fields and linking between all pages through buttons and text links.

However, the world is not just brilliant with digital interface prototyping. Although the prototypes are available in a digital format, theoretically allowing to share and interact on the concepts, many wireframing tools lack useful collaboration features. But given the fact that life in an agency circles around projects with different internal and freelance team members and sometimes several locations, (online) collaboration becomes more and more important.

Also the fast and steady technical invention of new web and interface controls (just imagine how Apple’s iPhone has influenced user behavior in the web), make it hard for the interface design tool providers to keep pace with development of the latest controls and a natural lag until these controls find its way into the wireframing applications is imminent.

But imagining the funny fact that these new and behavior breaking controls also have been developed and tested with interface design tools like the ones described here, the future looks bright for digital interface prototyping.

So we only can recommend testing these interface design tools since they all offer free trial periods of some kind. As a good example of what’s state of the art in the field, we have listed a completely web-based wireframing software with many interesting real-time collaboration features in the resources box.