No, The Check-In Isn't Dead

Blog post highlighting the argument whether check-ins are an important component feature going forward, or a passing fad (I'd argue the former.)

The author proceeds to posit that a check-in feature is just that – a feature – that exists to tell the app you're doing something, and to share that something with your friends. I suspect there's an affinity component as well – I'm going to be less likely to check-in to a place I don't like, or with which I don't want to associate myself.

Thus, the inverse is true: if I check-in, I'm expressing at least a neutral and more likely positive regard or relevance to me for the "brand" of that place.

Do you agree? Are check-ins a passing fad or here to stay? Do you think checking in means more than just passing along information?

Read more on Business Insider:  No, The Check-In Isn't Dead

This Is What Skype 5 For Mac Should Look Like

Seems there are some very angry Mac users of the latest version of Skype. One person took matters into his own hands, and redesigned their interface for them.

Read more:

This Is What Skype 5 For Mac Should Look Like

A little bit of history repeating

I like to use Things, a task management application, to wrangle all my day-to-day todos and projects. After trying several different applications, I chose Things largely because it seamlessly syncs to my iphone, ipad and mac laptop, and has just the right mix of powerful features that don't get in the way of just wanting to quickly manage todos.

This post from Cultured Code's blog describes the team's approach to designing just one dialog: creating repeating events. This potentially complex interaction has been done very well, and very badly, in various calendar and todo applications. Here's an example of a team that got it right, and how they approached the design process.

Habemus Dialogum – We Have a Dialog


 P.S. For those recognizing the lyrics referenced in the title of this post:

Designing Search: Best Practices

Back in July, Tyler Tate and H. Stefan Olafsson authored a great collection of best practices for designing search functionality: how a search box should be presented, how results should be formatted, and more. (Be sure to check out the section about faceted navigation.)

They reference Marcia Bates' landmark "berrypicking" article from 1989 about search and information retrieval – definitely worth reading if you are interested in search interfaces and interactions.

Read more:

The Scent of Search Johnny Holland – It's all about interaction » Blog Archive

Making User Interface Elements Difficult to Use By Intent

Nice write-up by Jacob Gube describing situations in which it makes sense to design an interface to be harder to use:

1. When using the interface element is costly to the user if used by accident
2. When there’s an overall improvement to the UI as a whole
3. When the cost of maintaining a feature is costly to the provider if used frequently

Read more:

Making User Interface Elements Difficult to Use By Intent

11 Principles of Interaction Design explained

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

 - Albert Einstein

Paul Seys, a UK-based user experience designer, describes 11 core principles of interaction design, including one of my favorites, Cognitive Load. Put simply, don't make users think.

• 11 Principles of Interaction Design explained

App Icons on iPad and iPhone

Handy for those doing mobile application work for iPad and iPhone:

Technical Q&A QA1686: App Icons on iPad and iPhone

Follow: A New AddThis Labs Experiment

This morning we released a new feature in AddThis Labs called AddThis Follow. You've probably noticed "Follow us on Facebook..." and similar links on various websites you've visited. We thought we'd offer our AddThis publishers an easy way to not only quickly add this feature to their site, but also track clickthroughs to their social profiles right in their AddThis analytics console.

I've added my own Follow menu to this blog, over on the right side of the page.

This new feature supports social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, RSS, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, YouTube and Flickr. Once visitors start using it, I'll be able to go to my AddThis.com analytics, switch from "Sharing" to "Subscribe/Follow" data and track how my visitors are connecting to my various social media profiles.

We'd love to hear what you think of this experiment; would you use it? Are there things you would add or change? Give us your feedback in the AddThis Follow forum.

Get a Follow menu for your own site here:

• AddThis Follow Labs Experiment

Read more:

• Justin Thorp's official blog post

Fun with dynamic features: MSN article template

As I was skimming through the morning headlines and tweetdeck channels, I came across an MSN article about the first hurricane of the season, and was struck by how many dynamic HTML features had been packed into one article template. MSN must be testing these features, because in the time it's taken me to write this, they've added one and replaced another.

Check these out:

First, a persistent global header above "Today's headlines in two minutes"; also note the persistent app drawer at the bottom and icons on the side, more about those in a minute:

As you scroll down the page, "Today's Headlines..." scrolls away leaving the global header (which will scroll away momentarily...):

Each of the icons on the side follow you down the page as you scroll; each opens to provide a link to jump further down what is becoming a very long page:

If you decide at any point to share something, that persistent drawer at the bottom slides up:

And if you keep on scrolling down the page, you'll find the rest of the text behind a drawer control, and encounter rich media like videos (which you could have jumped down to by clicking one of those icons on the side):

But we're not done yet... next, you'll discover comments, with more expandable drawers:

And finally, the pièce de résistance, a draggable timeline of videos:

MSN must be testing these features, because in the time it's taken me to write this, they've added two other features: a storm tracker at the top of the article, and instead of the draggable videos, a trending chart of content:

Rich interactive experience, or dynamic templates run amok? What do you think?