As I wrote in an earlier review of Google’s “iGoogle” home page feed aggregator, my biggest issue with the tool was its limited design options (”themes”). For those that remember the earlier days of iGoogle, a max of about 10 themes existed, all of which were rather campy and poorly designed. While I’ve always admired Google for its ability to show restraint in design (and therefore promote simplicity and ease of use), I feared that these new themes were sending a signal: Google was headed in the direction of AOL, or, design for the masses. [ more… ]

We’re all familiar with the ideas of backwards compatibility and graceful degradation. Now it’s time to embrace the idea of progressive enhancement.

Like backwards compatibility and graceful degradation, progressive enhancement is not a new idea. At its simplest, progressive enhancement means that a system will provide a base level of performance, with higher performance provided for clients which can handle it. But the base level of performance must be such that it provides everything necessary to achieve the goals of the system.

For the web, progressive enhancement means providing a basic level of content for everyone, even the most primitive browsers, and then adding in more content (like multimedia) and capabilities (like fancy Flash navigation or form auto-complete) for those who want it and have the resources for it.

Progressive enhancement is surprisingly easy to apply to web projects. The industry best practices of semantic markup and separation of presentation from content provide a great foundation, and from there you can apply some simple techniques to progressively enhance that base. AJAX techniques, for example, are excellent choices for progressive enhancement, though it’s very important not to rely on AJAX as the sole provider of necessary function.

The biggest myth about progressive enhancement is that it severely constrains design and creativity, requiring a sort of “least common denominator” approach to producing websites. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. With a solid foundation of semantic markup and standards compliance, it’s easy to use progressive enhancement to create amazing websites with rich interaction and multimedia capabilities.

The benefits of progressive enhancement come directly from the basic level of content it provides, which is aimed at everyone. Progressive enhancement assures that even simple user agents can access your content and parse it correctly, which assures accurate search engine placement as well as a basic level of accessibility. And you’re still providing a top-notch interactive experience for the majority of users who have modern browsers and the resources to handle it.

- Jon Reid, Interface Development

The limited edition, artist series sneaker seems to be growing even more popular than sport-specific shoes. To take advantage of this trend, Adidas Originals partnered up with 180 LA to create a web based series called “The Left-Right Project”, that will be rolling out this Spring and Summer. Using car-sized shoes, and artists to represent the respective American coastlines, West coast artist Sam Flores is painting the Left shoe, while New York based Surface to Air is making the Right shoe.

So why is this relevant to interactive? Well, it’s spectacularly relevant web-based content that has been lighting up the blogosphere. The site provides videos, and photos, etc, but that content spills out onto YouTube and other Social channels, but more importantly, all the right blogs have picked it up to make it a pretty intense EPR campaign. I want one to paint!

David Schell, Creative

If only Interactive was more ice cream parlors. When I was a kid, growing up in the South, we often visited Baskin Robbins to explore the world of flavors. I remember thinking that the bright pink and white brand experience was “immersive” and inviting. In kid’s language, a parlor visit was just plain fun.

Baskin Robbins did a good thing. They created a brand capable of surrounding customers. A visit to their ice cream parlors allows you to taste it, sit with it, share it, interact with it, and make the visit your own personal brand experience with family & friends.

The immersive Baskin Robbins experience is great brand strategy in action. We can all take a few notes and apply that same immersive experience when designing a darn good Website. Great Websites invite you to sit back (in the pink plastic chairs), explore (the 31+ flavors), navigate (grab a plastic tasting spoon), and collaborate (invite your family & friends).

I don’t know about you, but ice cream parlor terms are now going to be part of my Interactive vernacular. Such as: send us your favorite flavor, Very Berry Strawberry or Pralines and Cream, and we’ll pull up the pink plastic chairs.

Allison Kent, New Business

http://www.everywheremag.com/
http://www.jpgmag.com/

(1) Document your travels or pics
(2) Upload your pics, your stories, your thoughts
(3) The community votes
(4) The editors curate
(5) Selected items get published and contributors get paid

Great model in an age when the printed word is dying to keep up…

Paige Kobert, Creative

Texturemedia is committed to following web standards in all of our projects. Web standards provide a basis for our technical innovation, and help us produce our award-winning designs on the web.

We recently completed a project for Boulder Associates. The project is basically a portfolio site that showcases their beautiful architecture. The majority of the site is rendered in Flash, providing a seamless user experience from one section of the site to another:

But what about people who do not have Flash, or who choose not to use it? What about people who are disabled, or who have other special needs? By applying relevant web standards, and by careful coding, we were able to produce a site that degrades gracefully even in the most primitive of browsers.

Lynx, for example, is a text-only browser that has been around since the beginning of the web. And while it cannot display any of the images in the portfolios, the rest of the content on the site is still perfectly accessible:

Standards compliance also works well with search engines, since most search engine indexing services are based on the same standards themselves.

It would have been easy to produce a site that was flash only, and presented the usual “you must have flash to view this site” message for anyone who didn’t have Flash. But going the extra step not only makes for a happier client, it makes that little bit of the web a better place.

Jonathan Reid, Technology

The online (and mobile) life of a traveler.

While it is easy to think of online activities in a vacuum, we need to remind ourselves our online behavior is affected by the context of our offline lives. How we work, how we use the Web, what type of equipment we use (e.g. desktop, laptop, handheld device), and how we conduct our daily work will all greatly affect our interactions with online services. Here’s a recent example: while I don’t own a Blackberry, I was recently traveling out of town for a wedding and I wanted to check the status of my flight. My friend graciously offered his Blackberry for me to use. I navigated through the various menus, and finally navigated to United to check my flight. I was astounded. The site was coded in a language that clearly did not communicate well with mobile devices. The page was virtually blank and only displayed the most prominent main navigation links. I was, however, able to find the “contact” link so I could get their phone number (which, of course, defeated the purpose of visiting the site). Upon navigating to the “contact” page, I received an odd error message. Although tempted to throw the Blackberry out the window, I hit “quit” and placed the device back in the car’s storage console.

This interaction struck me as odd, but not surprising. United is in the travel business, right? One of their primary target audiences is the business traveler, right? Most business travelers probably use handheld mobile devices, right? Imagine how much United could increase customer satisfaction if they better understood who was using their site and how they use it.

Peyton Lindley, Interaction Design