–Engage

Ever since the Facebook (We own your content) debacle of awhile ago, I have been thinking about how products and services move from being just a product/service to becoming a platform to really becoming a utility (no matter how much they resist). Most organizations don’t even acknowledge this transition until it is too late, and even fewer plan for it happening in their strategy development.

But what does this mean to us as designers and what does it mean to us as builders and users of systems from a sociological level?

I’m going to jump to the punch line…

1) The Iranian elections have underscored how private services are required as tools on top of the open network. The Internet by itself is meaningless with the applications, cum platforms, cum utilities that run on top of them. There is now almost an inalienable right that exists on these platforms as they have become even more important as part of the 4th and 5th estates or even form the creation of a 6th estate.

2) As noted above the debacle of Facebook attempting to claim ownership of people’s content would be the same as my ISP trying to do the same. They manage my SMTP services which are required for sending basic email in the same way that Facebook is used for comments, photos, messages, etc. It is on a different layer of the platform, but IS a part of the platform and like the ISP itself is now a utility for 100′s of millions of users.

3) The AT&T, Apple and Google Voice controversy also highlights the issues surrounding platform and utility. While no one would ever deny that AT&T is a utility, Apple is finding itself as a higher level stack on that utility, in the strange position of being judged as a platform on that utility and thus may be expected to have the same responsibilities of fairness and openness that AT&T is required to maintain.

As designers/developers …

Apple obviously is a design it for the human company, but it does so at with a design philosophy that is quite parental. It creates an environment that coddles and protects the humans who use their products and services from themselves even if it means creating artificial and arguably damaging limitations.

This design philosophy works when one thinks about tools and services, but begins to fall flatter when one thinks about a platform for developing and definitely falls apart when we think of that platform as a utility service (or the embodiment of a utility service).

Yes, I know it is very fair to say that AT&T has lots of options for different platforms and each platform can decide how open it wants to be and thus the end user is making a CHOICE and is not limited at the utility level.

As designers though when we design tools we need to put a heavy emphasis on envisioning our tools distant future to understand how a simple tool like Twitter can become a requirement for free speech and democracy. This is not just an academic task, but it is one that helps designers and engineers build today extensibility into their tools based on that understanding.

The best way I have seen to do this is through storyboard and video scenario prototyping. Obviously, you have to be mindful of your resources. But what I have seen in too many organizations is the lack of forethought. They boot strap to start w/o thought to the future (3-5yrs out) and hit a wall b/c their funding efforts do not allow for a re-construction which is required for this sort of movement. Most successful orgs I’ve seen embed this extensible growth into their original development/design path.

This is a bit slow to take off, but it really is worth the watch.

It is an amazing exercise by the folks at Multitouch-Barcelona to try and understand how humans perceive the computers in their lives. GREAT work!

This is an example of what I’ve been thinking of for the student design competition for IxDA where students will be asked to do IxD to define IxD (this isn’t that answer, but the right framework).

Hi from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

After a debate on the IxDA list, I feel pushed to make this inquiry: (was going to tweet but way too long)

This might sound a bit off-putting, but I’m feeling desperate. Can someone please show me a Goal Directed Design or Contextual Inquiry project (any formal UCD methodology) that has had the same impact as the following products: Amazon, iPhone/iPod/MacOSX, Windows, NetFlix, TiVo, eBay, Craigslist, Google, WikiPedia, Facebook, etc.

Doing usability tests is not enough. I want to see an entire methodology from concept to deployment. If it is just an off research study or usability testing then it is just about philosophy & tool kits and not methodology.

I really hope there is something out there. Leave your comments here please.

So just this week Dr. Linda Ciroco (@lindaciroco), the Director if Innovative Teaching & Learning asked me to speak to a great of faculty here at the Savannah College of Art & Design (@scaddotedu; and many more!).

When confronted with this invitation, of course, I jumped at the opportunity. I mean I am starting this Twitter client project (@tweet101_org), and any opportunity to be considered an expert Twitterer among my peers can’t be a bad thing. But then I felt overwhelmed. I just realized that for almost all of my peers, the first thing I’m going to have to do is well “define the damn thing!”. What the heck is Twitter? So I have no idea when I’m giving this talk, but I thought I might as well start putting some ideas out there into the cloud and see how it responds.

So, what the heck is Twitter?

Some consider twitter to be part of the class of web applications called micro-blogs. Of course, attempting to define hype with hype isn’t going to help anyone. But seeing is believing.  As I see it there are 2 classes of micro-blogs. The first are like twitter. Short message text only systems which are optimized not just for the web, but for Short Message Service (SMS: 160 char limit). These are Twitter, Plurk and Identi.ca. How these are considered the same as micro-blogs like Tumblr and Posterous kills me. The latter being a mixture of short concept (no real limit) blog posting, link sharing w/ commentary, and media sharing also with commentary. They almost all have the same features as full on blogs like Blogger, WordPress and Moveable Type, except that they are usually focused on sharing existing material instead of complex content management (though they have been evolving). This is to say that I don’t really think that these are really micro-blogs any longer. Oh! and full blogs have established options focused on sharing as well. So there really isn’t much difference any longer.

So … What is Twitter? (take 2)

Well we established that it is about short messages and that mobile phone text messaging is at the core of Twitter (and other nano-blogs–heh heh heh!). While people would love to have more characters to type their messages, there has been an amazing effect created by this limitation. There is a release of pressure associated with long message composition, an instant gratification, and a succinctness to the messages. Lastly, there is a pervasive repetition of messages that make up not a collection of statuses and thoughts, but can be connected together to represent an ambient intimacy between those that post and those that read those posts.

Soooo …. Tell me!!! What is Twitter?

It is a social network. What is a social network? Well, I’m sure if you google it you will find tons, but here is my basic take on it. Social networks all start with a basic concept of targetting two sides of the conversation. For the most part Twitter is about focusing a conversation on who you “listen” to. Other social networks focus on who you talk to. Now, Twitter does let you control who is listening to you, but that is not the focus of the tool.

But that isn’t much of a network, right? Where the network comes in is in the systems ability to introduce you to the connections of other people. There are a few ways that Twitter does this, but the main way is that you can look at the incoming and outgoing connections of those whom you are connected with. The presumption is that if your connection is insterested in that person, maybe I should be. Or! its just a collection of connections you didn’t remember. The other way is through the messages and this gets a little complex (and will be discussed below). The short version is that people reference their connections in their own messages. If those connections allows others to view their profiles then you can learn about them.

Ok, Ok, are you ever going to tell me what Twitter is?

Twitter’s initial intent was to be a place where you can let people in your network know what you are up to. Where you are. What you’re eating. What movies you are watching, etc. etc. But then something happened. Someone would say, “Hey! I’m headed to this bar.” and someone would say “@johndoe, I’m headed to the same bar! See ya there!”. So just like in email, where we use the @ symbol as part of the address we send emails to someone, the concept of using an @ as a form of code or markup to tell someone that a message while public (as there are ways of sending private messages within the Twitter application) is intended for whoever uses the Twitter ID, johndoe.

The back and forth didn’t end with simple one-offs though. People have used this system of responses as a means to hold full in the public’s eye conversations. [Oh! did I mention that the vast majority of people on Twitter allow their messages to be seen by anyone in the world? Not quite there yet.]

I still don’t know what Twitter is. A public conversation?

Well, no, or should I say, yes, but not just yes. That same @[id here] method was not just used to create “replies” to people’s posts, but also became a way to mention someone. As in, “I’m in the bar with @johndoe and he is totally …” Or! it became a way to give credit to someone: “@johndoe sent me this link to a youtube video you have to see. You’ll be LOL in no time [shortened link here].”

This became known in Twitter-land as a mention. I’m sure I’m forgetting other uses for an ID, but they basically are all the ways you might virtually address directly or indirectly another human being by name. This concept of using an @ symbol became so prevalent within the system and so well understood that Twitter itself created internal modules to take advantage of the markup. For example you can hit a key next to a person’s post that will autopopulate the post input text box with the @[twitterID] so you don’t have to type it yourself. AND! if you use a method like this instead of typing directly, it will even tag that reply as connected to the message you are replying to. I can go into more detail about all the new “@” has been made to function, but this going into more detail I can spare here.

Argh! I still don’t know what Twitter is? conversation? reference sharing? …

… There is so much going on how do I keep track? Well, there are systems in place on twitter, some of which that grew out of the user base before being assimilated into Twitter itself that help users manager all this data. The first is the hash tag. Hash or pound symbol (#) like @ has been used to markup the messages being sent through twitter. They work in tandem with special Twitter clients (more on this below) and with search engines. If you put a #-tag in front of a text string, you are in essence tagging the message so that it can be found (and re-found) by anyone very easily.

This has led to a few amazing scenarios:

The first of these is event management. Ya see everyone at an event can post messages about that event all using the same tag. Then for people who are interested, instead of viewing a stream that is generic, they can view a stream of all the messages using that tag. Try this one! So whether you are attending the event or want to read other people’s tweets from the event, or want to see what everyone is doing, you can do that search. What’s better s that doing that search will expose you to everyone who has allowed their tweets to be seen by the public who uses that same tag. So you just aren’t limited by whom you normally connect to. and THUS can learn to connect to new people.

Another scenario that in some ways is more basic centers around special topics. There have been 3 historical events in the last 12 months that have demonstrated the amazing power behind Twitter as a service:

1) The Presidential Election. Besides all the hype around the @BarackObama campaign’s use of social networking, the conversation hit new levels in the last month of the election. Twitter.com itself created a special interface for people to connect around the political discussion. It required the use of a hashtag like the ones mentioned above so that it can search against a thesaurus of strings and add them to the conversation thread at http://election.twitter.com/ . But this wasn’t so much a conversation as it was part brawl and part affirmation echo-chamber. Some TV networks started using either Facebook or Twitter to add a personal connection to their coverage. CurrentTV in particular added people’s tweets that had the tag #current on them (after going through editorial) to the bottom of the screen during the presidential and vice-presidential debates. (It took me to the last debate to get my 140 characters of fame up on TV and I had to rewind to catch it after a twitter friend told me it went up some 10 minutes after I sent it.)

2) The Mumbai terrorist attacks was a horrifying event. But many people didn’t sit in front of the TV watching on CNN, but instead were getting primary source witness messages from the ground and knew much of the information in intimate detail way before the standard news channels. In fact, the standard news channels started reporting on what Twitterers were saying more than their own journalists.

3) This same theme exploded during the resistance to the Iranian elections in 3 directions. For the first time we saw a power try to shut down access to the social networks (especially twitter, facebook, flickr and youtube) and we saw that these same networks were the most invaluable source for information gathering by anyone. They were not just a source of getting information, but of sending information. So many of these messages were cries for help (thus the first part). And of course there was the dialog going on about it. The other thing that started happening was a huge show of support from the international community for the protestors. People would use colors and ribbons (green) to show their support. This has since inspired less altruistic photo manipulations and avatar styles.

People have created other markup systems. For example if you put a “$” in front of a string the system thinks that it is something related to a stock. So if you were to post something about microsoft that you think investors would be interested in you might do something like this, “#microsoft $msft is reported to cut pricing of Windows 7.”

Because the system has to work on the most simple text entry system in the world–mobile phone SMS–it is basically a glorified command line interface, which affords the possibility for the user based to keep on innovating new uses and encode new management tools without having to wait for the owners of the software to do anything about it first.

Ok this is getting intense, but I still feel like I don’t know what Twitter is completely?

That’s right, you don’t. It is sorta a “blue pill” thing. (“I can’t tell you what the Matrix is, I have to show you.” -Morpheus)

And this is where it gets techie, complicated, but oh so interesting. I would put a wager down that most people do not use twitter.com for most of their interactions with Twitter. Twitter from the ground up is first and foremost an application interfacing program (API). What this means is that Twitter has made available to anyone who wants to a collection of methods for extracting and inputing data into their system. In this way, other vendors can create software on a host of platforms to take on any number of focused tasks or points of view for user experiences. Many charge for these special applications (especially iPhone apps) and some make money by displaying advertising. I use the latter type of tool.

Image from Tweetie--A MacOS Twitter Client--with an advert in between the messages.

Now some use these APIs not just to Tweet, but they also create other types of tools that either utilize Twitter as a connection process, login ID, or a  host of other ways.

Is this really all there is? Doesn’t sound helpful, or productive?

As mentioned before there is searching around tags, but also just around generic strings. Many people and organizations use this capability to their advantage by constantly searching strings (or getting a feed that auto-updates based on a search criteria. Post a message with the string of “comcast” or “whole foods” in the message and you are bound to get a reply eventually from someone who’s tasked with monitoring the Twittersphere for those strings to see if you need “help”.

Besides customer service others are mining the text of the messages to discover trends. In fact, trending has become such a big deal that Twitter itself gives trending topics a primary place in their home page and the twitter stream view itself.

Tools that utilize the above mentioned APIs allow users to manage their own trend interests, connections. Many manage multiple twitter IDs that supposedly focus on different types of messaging like email discussion lists or newsletters.

There are better people than I who can address the business side of Twitter. For me it has been a mechanism to reach out on a more regular basis to people in my community of practice and expand my exposure of my personal brand as a thought leader in my chosen field of interaction design.

Deep breath … There can’t be more to something that only sends 140 characters per message, can there?

So going back to the original intention of Twitter as a means of expressing what you are doing now, or where you are or what not. Leisa Reichtl (@leisa) was the first to coin the phrase “Ambient Intimacy“. My interpretation of it is the feeling we get by being exposed to these small seemingly inconsequential 140 character blips. In fact, this piece also by Leisa is even better. I just love the title, “Why I care what you had for lunch.”

My own experience of this is due to the fact that I’m a global person with colleagues turned friends alll over the world. Through the quips, reports, and discussions, I get these faux moments of intimacy through the reporting of the mundane, but it is in the mundane that we learn so much about each other.

Of course, there are other channels for the same thing. The status messages on Facebook have the same effect, not doubt. But the rest of it is just slightly skewed that it all feels different on Twitter than on Facebook.

Ok, Ok … even if there is more, I can’t take it …

And I’m sure I’m forgetting something to, but at 2500+ words, I’m sure I lost a ton of people already. And at 1:30a I don’t think I can cognitively deliver anything useful any longer.

The most important thing I think I want people to know is that Twitter cannot be summed up as a “conversation” or as a “broadcast”. It is that, but it is also a combination of so many other things that make it hard to peg (thus the now 2600 words).

A link to this will go out on Twitter, Facebook and Google within a couple of hours of the posting and I hope all the other experts out there, chime in, in the comments, and help me complete the picture. I just hope i did Twitter justice.

I look forward to people adding their own take to my attempt here.

Oh! I am currently researching an open source design project for designing a next generation twitter client and open education initiative called Tweet101. On Twitter it is located at @twitter101_org and on the web it is http://tweet101.pbworks.com/

Eric Reiss (@elreiss) from Copenhagen asked me in a private tweet, what’s my trick for conversations on Twitter. I told him so long story in the reply that I won’t bore you with. What I will tell you is the short version. I just like digital asynchronous conversations. I’ve been doing them since usenet/fidonet days when I was 1/2 the age I am now (even younger, b/c I’m older than most people think). But I also think that its because I love to engage people in this way. Discussion, argumentation, bitter fighting (for fun) is like water to a fish for me. So in the schema of approachable to enjoyable, it doesn’t have to be that easy for me to want to join in, provided the topic and the people involved are those I want to engage in and with.

But as a designer, I have listened to people like Eric (usually in wonder), but also in an attempt to understand. I mean, what is wrong w/ Twitter for conversation? With IxDA’s email list? and whatever else people have complained to me about over the last 20 years? Is there even a right way for everyone to chat or converse online? in real-time? asynchronously? in combination?

I’m not sure I have the perfect answer. People/organizations with a lot more resource are taking on the issue better than I can. I do think it is such a complex issue, and one that really hasn’t been given the real-world attention it deserves.

Even though I have said that I don’t quite get Google Wave, I do think that the work they are doing is ON that path of taking on this important issue. Who else is dong work at that level? (seriously, I’d love to know. Is anyone outside of university putting stuff in the hands of real people like Google Wave?)

But right now, I’m all about Twitter. And the initial question from Eric (@elreiss) got my attention going and I think I may have just come up with an interesting answer to the Twitter conversation problem.

First off, we have to realize that there are conversations and then there are conversations. HA! … What I mean is that the best conversations on Twitter are always the ones that started from a spark and not a call to communicate. Someone says something either provocative (on purpose) or quite innocently that someone else grabs onto and then boom! a conversation starts. This is not the same as a person saying, hey! let’s have X chat online from 7-8. It is this former type that I’m interested in here. (Maybe my suggestion can help the other type, but I don’t know.)

Ok, so here is the idea … non-timeline channels. (or some other metahor: room, closet, courtyard, cube, carol, etc.

Here’s what I imagine. Someone posts something that sparks a discussion. A back and forth begins. At some point someone does the usual (this would be better outside of the 140char limit). Instead of saying that, they would create a break out.

There would be a link put on the status icon of a person who is in a breakout. That icon has a hover over text w/ the breakout topic and anyone is free to join it (some sort of spam/undesirable removal system in place).

People who are in the breakout can tag specific entries in the system (or even string selections) as full tweetable. This can serve as bait to get the more people into the breakout and let others know the content.

Then, like favorites, a breakout can be tagged so that it is added in a similar way as a tweet in a favorites like repository, or some other way to be made historical.

Does tinychat.com already do this? I’m not too sure it has all the pieces yet. I know it does some pieces in a slightly annoying way. But it also is sorta outside the eco-system in an odd behavioral way, too, from my experience.

What do other people think?

(I started this post over 3 months ago and finished it today. Sorry if it feels a tad disjointed, but I still like it. Hopefully you will gain some inspiration and motivation by it.)

In 2008 I had the pleasure of co-chairing the first Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference, Interaction 08 | Savannah. My partner in crime, Dan Saffer, provided a tapestry weaved through his vision of what would make a great program for the interaction design community, and I had a shared vision of what the conference experience should/needs to be.

There were many success criteria that anyone sets for themselves but the overwhelming response (and associated almost 200 person waiting list) of Interaction 08 were the pre-success factors that led to more important ones later, such as rave reviews and well the number of returnees to this year’s, now 2nd annual, conference, Interaction 09 | Vancouver.

The new chairperson, Greg Petroff, under new constraints led a tremendous team of volunteers to create an even better event than its predecessor. Greg, followed much of the same parameters of programming that Dan set up, with is own unique twists, and he had a different city with different challenges & opportunities that he was able to use to his advantage to create a great total experience.

As the logistician, in my organizing of the 1st conference, I was convinced that the logistics made the event, and I was totally wrong. They frame the event, but they don’t make the event. What makes the event are the people. Hands down, this year had an energy and a sense of community that last year did not. The critical mass of Twitter & Facebook had an undeniable effect on how people not only communicated, but also related to one another before, during and now even afterwards.

People talk about the “summer camp” atmosphere of the conference, but not in a bad cliquy way. Why? Because anyone and everyone can have instant entre into the world of the camp itself. There is an almost zero barrier to entering the world of Twitter and following being such a passive act with little obtrusion to those you are following, means you can connect anonymously and assert yourself on your own terms.

But the conference was not Twitter by any means. The other piece that people brought into the conference is their voice. The voice of the conference was everywhere. The true desire to use our skills and talents towards improving the human condition was infused throughout the conference. This wasn’t by design, except to say the design was to let the natural voice of the community find itself. It came through the organic conversation between speakers and attendees and sometimes between speaker and speaker.

Being at the center of it all, I often wonder if I’m just kidding myself. Is this feeling just for me? Did all 450 or so people at the Four Seasons & Fairmont in Vancouver have any semblance of the same experience? (Please let me know if you didn’t.) I am constantly challenging this, so I don’t get too myopic in my world view.

What I hear though is that many, and I would argue most of the people I met (many of whom for the 1st time physically or virtually) had some level of contentment and connection to what was created in this gathering.

But back to the voices and what they were saying and how they were saying it. Despite the many technical difficulties the one recurring thought I have when I think about this year versus last year is that we all from keynote to lightning round speaker to hallway conversationalist matured. Our tones, our topics, our means of connecting with one another have all gotten more professional, more intelligent, more thoughtful, and more human.

The other piece of the conference that was there for me, was a sense of positivism. Not necessarily optimism, but positivism. What’s the difference? Well to me, one can still have a sense of the negative nature of the world we live in, but still feel as though they can have a positive effect towards changing it. Obviously, the sustainability folks (talked about on many other forums) have put out their call to arms to help save the world, but Dan Saffer & Kim Goodwin put out in my mind an equally important call to arms–BE DESIGNERS!

Dan Saffer’s presentation did a great job of invigorating the audience about what is at the core of what we DO and to get out there and just DO IT! Kim’s was more reflective and urged us to understand the connections between us as people/practioners as human beings, and to take on the challenges of our practice, especially the one of education.

As the next Interaction conference looms, back to Savannah, where I now call home and hosted by the Savannah College of Art & Design, which I now call employer, I see something even more new beginning to grow. A next step for the interaction design community and the user experience community as a whole.

1. The frame we are creating for Interaction 10 | Savannah is going to be completely different. The new co-chairs, Bill Derouchey and Jennifer Bove (@billder & @jlb), have been listening, but also exploring the possibilities of what we haven’t thought of before. They are designing with the help of a great team a new type of conference. One that the UX community has not seen before.

2. SCAD is working harder to make sure the logistics are even that much better than before. We have more venues (none are hotels, except for the pre-conf workshops) that really bring out the spirit of both SCAD and historical Savannah. Two venues date back to the 1700′s.

3. But this isn’t about history, but more about inspiration. This event will have new voices emerge (or old voices using new tones) that include student contests, interactive art exhibition and film documentaries.

4. Don’t just listen, but get active, engage, do. The pre-conferences aren’t going to be the only place to engage in dialog, or work with your hands. There will be inspirational talking heads, but there will also be discussions and activities to participate in both days of the conference.

There are a few things from the ’08 conference to continue to look forward to. Odds are the weather will be better than Vancouver (we have a 67% chance of better than north of Dixie weather in Feb in Savannah). And most importantly we are planning on bringing back our old caterer for a couple of the parties. Our event at Interaction 08 | Savannah won our caterer accolades in the press all around the Southeast. So she’ll be coming back.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, there is the most important thing again–the voices. There is no better voice to bring to Interaction 10 | Savannah than your own. So bring it. Make a submission of the various types of presentation and leading opportunities and rise up in chorus with the many others who will be presenting and leading this coming February.

I’d love it if peeps would leave a comment if they have even the slightest inkling that they’d like to lead something at Interaction 10 | Savannah. But more importantly go to http://interaction.ixda.org/ and submit your abstract(s) for consideration.

See ya there! (I mean here! I live here now!)

Through AIR, standard web and WebKit there has been a proliferation of applications whose data almost completely resides on the network and is accessed through a series of APIs. In many cases the elements that make up the GUI itself are also distributed over the network making them even thinner as is the case with Web-based applications.

The reason these application environments exist is to aggregate and add a touch of special sauce to the data that they get from their own as well as from 3rd Party sources. They wrap up the data in usually a much better bow (if they are to be used at all) than before they existed.

I have been paying special attention to a class of thin applications that have been growing ever mightily over the last 2 years–Twitter clients. There are 3 standard varieties of twitter clients that I’m considering here: Adobe AIR, Web-based or WebKit (for iPhone & other mobiles), and platform native clients (iPhone apps, Blackberry apps, Mac, Lin, or Win native).

Regardless of platform or mode of development and distribution most of these applications try to achieve almost the same exact functionality. Here is a list of common functionality:

• Read your home feed
• Read your mentions (@you)
• Read DMs you sent
• Read DMs you received
• Read your personal feed
• Post an update
• Post a reply
• Post a DM

Other features that are prevelent but not in all clients:

• ability to retweet
• view reply threads
• Add to favorites
• see your favorites
• See user profiles
  • recent posts
  • favorites
  • #’s of followers/following
  • List of followers/following
  • Ability to block
  • report spam
  • mentions of that ID
  • (links to other info like location & links in description tend to go to browser as it is uncontrolled data and not controlled by the API, though I could see location being more controlled, as some apps have done, now that I think about it.)
• do searches
• save those searches
• create user lists/groups
• Open links from tweets into embedded browser
• Ability to email links
• Copy links
• retweet links (alone)
• From embed browser save to instapaper or similar service
• run multiple accounts (or toggle between multiple accounts)
• Notifications (home, mentions and DMs)
• Ability to shorten URLs (pick URL shortener)
• Ability to add a photo (choose twitter photo site)
• Ability to update your location on your profile
  • include update in a tweet
• Then there are the host of options for all this stuff as well.
• Facebook support.
• display images
• call out link titles

We have to be realistic. There are many different types of users of Twitter. So it is great that there are so many different clients to choose from. Ya know, we all can’t drive SUVs or MiniVans, right?

But regardless of the collection of features or more importantly how they are arranged, is how they are made available to the user. One of the great things about the Twitter eco-system is that most of what needs to be delivered to an end-user even if not directly part of the Twitter offering can be obtained through the 3rd party’s APIs or otherwise crunched out from structured HTML.

What does this mean? This means that there is almost no reason for a Twitter client to throw you out of their environment for almost any bit of Twitter and other related info. And this is especially egregious when the application you are working in, is not in a web browser itself. But web apps regardless of type are not out of the clear. With use of Prism in most netbook refreshes and Fluid on Mac and maxed out windows in mobile web browsers (w/o easy tabbing) opening links outside the initial primary environment is annoying at best and just a real hardship on the user interaction load, which is completely and utterly unnecessary.

I know that almost all of these apps are sold on the cheap at best or free, but for the ones that use ad support or are charging anything at all, you have to be doing better.

What really kills me is when a company like IconFactory do some amazing work in iPhone in this specific regard, but don’t have the same level of detail or support in their desktop application. Makes me cringe.

But this isn’t about iPhone applications. It is about any thin client. Why leave the primary environment of your application for any of the following:

• open a map
• open a calendar
• view an image or video
• open an article w/ an RSS feed/address reference
• etc.

So before you think you can short-cut your app dev time by saying, “but we can just open a browser window and get to the same info that way, ” realize what you are doing to your end users. You are basically telling them, that your services are incomplete.

The equivalent happens when your DSL provider tells you to call your telco. You feel let down and out of control. Imagine what happens when you have consistent and controlled service from the same entity. You feel like a human and not a hot potato.

All of this is further inspiration as I continue working on my Tweet101 project (http://tweet101.pbworks.com) where I’m trying to marry a complete software design course with an open education project with an open source design project. If you are THIS interested in twitter clients, software design, &/or education then feel free to join the project.

Ping me at @daveixd or @tweet101_org if you have any questions or comments (or leave a comment here, or join Tweet101)

Yesterday, I decided after reading @fabwteets amazing links come across my timeline for about 2 weeks now, to do the same.

I have connected my Shared Articles RSS feed to Twitterfeed.com. So now whenever I share something in Google Reader, that individual post will have the title and the link reference posted to Twitter with the tag #dLink.

I share articles mostly about interaction design and all that is tangentially relevant to that topic. But sometimes there is more fun stuff, especially now you can share stuff that isn’t in your feed in Google Reader (stuff you just find, like from other’s tweets). So instead of just a retweet, I can do a retweet AND a google share.

So if you don’t already, you can find me & then follow me on twitter at this ID: @daveixd

If you don’t twitter (like you only ‘Facebook) I’m going to have an upcoming piece about why I Tweet more than Facebook and a little tutorial on what twitter is and how to own it without it owning you.

In an earlier blog post I announced my intent to start a new project. One that is really 2 projects in one.

• An open source education project
• an open source design project

After making that initial post I started a wiki which I’m now calling Tweet 101. On that wiki you can get much more info about the why’s and wherefores of what Tweet 101 is all about. Most importantly though you can sign up to participate.

While I’m still looking for specific people to join me as co-teachers in this project, it is open to ANYONE to participate in its framing, commenting and other forms of contribution.

One of the newest forms of contribution now open is the Twitter client feature request capability. You can use this google form, or more simply just shoot a tweet with either #tweet101 or @tweet101_org (the latter being the Twitter ID for this project).

But the best thing to do is just request a login for the wiki itself and start making contributions right on the wiki.

So if you have any interest in …

• creating a platform for open source education
• working on what it would mean to do open source design (not code)
• designing a kick-ass twitter system
• teaching people over the intertubes (remote & open teaching)
• expanding software education
• learning everything it takes to design great software systems
  • interaction design
  • visual design
  • social interaction design
  • research
  • validation
  • strategy
  • and more
• or just having fun!

… come to Tweet 101 and sign up to participate.

I’m just thrilled pink that Interaction 10 (The 3rd Annual Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference on Interaction Design) will be coming back to Savannah and being hosted by the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD). Interaction 08 | Savannah was indeed a special moment on so many levels for me: 1st IxDA conference, me being co-chair, and it being the start of my relationship with SCAD. (Videos from interaction 09 | Vancouver are available too.)

It’s return is a testament to the amazing people at SCAD and how much they put into the first event and how much they enjoyed having us. It is also a testament to how much value SCAD sees in the IxDA as the global organization for Interaction Design, how much they value interaction design as a unique and vital design discipline and how much value SCAD themselves has gotten out of their continuing and growing relationship with IxDA.

But right now, it is about you all. Any conference is first and foremost about the content, but content can only be as good as the format and structure and even interactions enabled for creating that content. This year’s co-Chairs @billder & @jlb (Bill Derouchey and Jennifer Bove) have done an amazing job of taking the best parts of previous years and listening to the IxDA community to create some amazing new format options.

Take a look at the great new web site. You will be happily surprised that there is more going on than just a bunch of talking heads. Go on! Take a look!

And you can also follow the Interaction 10 world by following @ixd10 on Twitter.