Tag Archives: chrome

Modular Innovation 201

Posted on by Jeremy Horn
10

image What is Modular Innovation?

Modular Innovation can be briefly described as the products and platforms consisting of or facilitating…

  • Relationships (people-people, products-products, people-products)
  • Control of Experience (from creation to storage to interaction)
  • Ownership of Content (personal content from comments to friend lists and more)

You can also see the trend, itself, being referred to as “Modular Innovation,” much in the same way the term “Web 2.0” is still used today.

The products and concepts that constitute Modular Innovation are those that connect, enable, produce, enhance, extend, and make use of these relationships and, in turn, users’ online experiences with them.

Modular Innovation is increasingly everywhere these days…
Facebook Connect
@anywhere
Crowd sourcing
FourSquare		 API’s
Expensify
Plugins
Chrome		 Data exchanges
SugarSync
Google Maps
PBWorks

… and many more products, forms, and methodologies.

For the rest of the article, I will walk us through the path of the online product from a time before the prevailing trend of Modular Innovation to today, and set the scene for what is to come.

Web Problems 2.0

It’s hard today to find an online product that hasn’t in some way been touched by Modular Innovation. You might look to the old blogs as a pre-Modular Innovation, with their initial incarnation as log-oriented websites, and the most rudimentary relationship common between website and website visitor of the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 eras.

Some products still holding fast to the ways of the Web 1.0 and 2.0 worlds…

Web 1/2.0 Products Missing Modular Innovation…
JD Supra
http://www.jdsupra.com/		 a forward thinking legal 2.0 product leveraging the UGC of the legal community, but starkly lacking a public API allowing for the accelerated growth of the community by way of 3rd party apps for participating
Turbo Credit Solutions
http://turbocreditsolution.com/index.php		 all the entered information is one way; there is no extracting of entered financial information or connecting to any of the services it purports to help with, nor any other desktop- or web-based financial tools
CommandShift3
http://commandshift3.com/		 fun and wonderful experience, but lacks any sort of ties to the outside world beyond its basic screenshotting functionality; it could, for example, allow for the creation of accounts, remember expressed views and comments, allow users to save these comments, allow for a widget that can be inserted on websites of recently reviewed / rated items

Interestingly … A Flickr

The very popular product, Flickr, launched at the start of the Web 2.0 age has prospered, in no short order due to its understanding of the importance of interconnectivity and relationships, built into its early foundation. Flickr demonstrated a unique foresight into what would propel it onward through Web 2.0 and beyond, by embracing many of the, at the time yet defined, underpinnings of Modular Innovation.

Building Blocks

Building upon the pre-Modular Innovation archetype of blogs, discussed in the previous section, the Modular Innovations that are blogs today are now seen with clear characteristics of Modular Innovation like…

Allowing bloggers to download / export their content (and often upload it to other locations and competing blog platforms)

Connecting Twitter and Facebook in various manners

Permitting bloggers to drop-in custom plugins and even full commenting sub-systems

In Web 2.0, we had looks, feels, AJAX and communities. Through Modular Innovation, we have relationships, modular products and other services that facilitate the relational parts… all the components, and the Internet environment within which they, Modular Innovations, thrive.

A Modular Innovation can be small, a feature or mini-mini-product, or large, a module-connector service, a social network. Modular Innovations alone, and more so when combined, lead to users’ information that is increasingly…

Portable
Shareable
Interoperable
Customizable
Redundant / Replicated
Accessible

…and, basically, their own, the users’, to do with as they wish, to control via the Modular Innovation(s) within their personally controlled online user environment —a user experience both open and dynamic.

Modular Innovation puts the people in control – of their content and their interaction with it. The people can easily share their data, export it, import it, customize privacy, across different social networks, products and other environments. Their data becomes modular, flexible, and portable. Users’ experiences consist of many modules that make up their total user experience. Content and functionality, with greater Modular Innovation becomes further decentralized across these modules, each providing a single, small or large, set of abilities or experiences, that together break down the walls (silos) that are the proprietary platforms, and empower the people, the users of the Internet, to be in charge of their data and their experience.

As modules leverage open standards, people are increasingly able to publish their content to multiple destinations, manage their content across a variety of products. As Modular Innovations relationally increase so too decreases, as is being seen by way of …

OpenSocial,
Facebook Connect,
Twitter @Anywhere,

… the need to re-find friends, or re-re-re-publish one’s content, as well as port and integrate their personal, content creations with other services, other Modular Innovations. Modular Innovations are increasingly empowering the user through the enabling of greater flexibility and control of interaction with the user’s own data. Data that, through more and more Modular Innovation, is becoming …

increasingly portable,
increasingly integrated,
increasingly customizable.

Products that are or facilitate Modular Innovation are the ones that have proven themselves among the most persistent and continue to gain increasing acceptance in the current evolution of the social and interactive relationships of the Internet.

Looking Forward

There already exist many complex frameworks actively being developed and evolved that will definitely be major influences in shaping the course of Modular Innovation. These modules, or Modular Innovations, can represent a single or group of features and functionality, or a service or framework that augments or allows for new inter-module relationships to be established.

A Modular Innovation often described as a framework that “allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries.” aka Semantic Web

A Modular Innovation that represents an image oriented feature set that allows for the easy connectivity to and from other resources as well as the inclusion of the production functionality within and between other Internet products. aka Flickr

Through combining and connecting and customizing modules, an owner, a user, is in control to customize their full experience and interaction with their own content as well as that of others.

Through the connectivity and relationships of modules, users’ ownership of the content that flows through is also strengthened, as well as those relationships among the people with each other and the Modular Innovations with which each interacts.

As the tendrils of Modular Innovation deepen and spread, the user experience becomes progressively more defined by the modules and the relationships between the modules and the individuals using them, not the network or any single product (or feature).

Enjoy, Discuss & Tweet!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

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Shining Chrome

Posted on by Jeremy Horn
4

desirabilityQuick-UX provides for the rapid, simple and quantifiable assessment of a product’s User Experience (UX). In answering the question of Desirability, “Do I want to use it?” the sub-category of Aesthetics is one of frequent discussion, especially in the latest wave of online products and how they handle content presentation and interaction.

Today, in the same spirit of Quick-UX, let’s take a quick look at an Internet product with an Aesthetic value of 2.

Example: Clean, Sharp, Pleasing and Enjoyable (value = 2)

01_chrome

A good example of the Aesthetic variable value of 2 can be seen in the newly released Chrome browser, from Google. Chrome provides a very minimalistic experience, incrementally revealing more information, on-demand and non-intrusively, right when the user needs it. Chrome also makes sound use of transitions to draw the user’s attention to new events and actions further increasing the pleasingly simplified experience of the product.

As the user types into the single textbox, the browser infers what information and actions the user will most likely want to take – presenting the decisions and options at an appropriate time.

02_chrome_incremental

Opening a new tab, the user is confronted with a simple transition, bringing subtle, non-disruptive, attention to the unique tab region as well as the location of the newly created tab.

03_chrome_animation

Even the “status bar” only appears when there is something to display (e.g. mousing-over a link).

04_chrome_status

Over the course of this series I am providing real-world examples of Aesthetics values…

Clean, Sharp, Pleasing, and Enjoyable (value 2)

Incomplete (value 1)

Overload (value 0)

Subscribe now (click here) to make sure you don’t miss any part of this series exploring the Desirability and Aesthetics of Quick-UX, the quick and easy method of generating quantifiable and comparable metrics representing the understanding of the overall User Experience of a product, as well as other insightful posts from The Product Guy.

Enjoy!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

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Where Google Should Not Do More

Posted on by Jeremy Horn
7

chrome_logo With the latest browser launched upon the great sea of already existing browsers, a common thread has begun to develop from numerous sources and blogs. While not uncommon for new, online products of all types, from all companies, I find myself with a unique and different opinion from most.

Google has just released its own web browser, Chrome. And everyone is telling Google to add more, more, and more. In most every other circumstance, especially as it relates to the products that Google produces, I too, frequently opine for more and better user experiences and features within the Google line of products.

However, now, for once, Google would be best served NOT LISTENING TO EVERYONE!

Why Google Chrome Isn’t My Default Browser

What’s Missing in Google Chrome

Google Toolbar missing in Chrome!

Hands-on with Chrome: Google’s browser shines (mostly)

Chrome Not Ready for Enterprise

Chrome to Get Extensions – Just Not Yet

Many are asking for a lot more, from RSS and plug-ins to toolbars, to more buttons, and even ActiveX (something no browser, other than Internet Explorer will ever support).

Wrong More

The more that is being asked for is the wrong more. It is the more of buttons and toolbars and widgets and doo-dads. The right more for Google’s Chrome is in intelligence and intuition, in a minimalistic and welcoming environment, where the products of the Internet take center stage, and the browser with all its new found simplicity fades into the background.

Minimalistic Good

01_good_stuffChrome has been designed with clear effort to provide a browser-minimalistic view. It is one in which the browser becomes more the portal through which the Internet can more closely connect with the user; a lesser point of interaction and distraction from the main goals of products and people online.

Good highlights…

  • The tabs, from their placement at the top edge of the window to the improvement of user interaction flow through the introduction of such elements as transition animations when adding and removing them.
  • Faster and more responsive environment. From the opening of a new window, to the easy visual selecting from the most frequently visited sites, bookmarks and closed tabs — presented at just the right moment … opening a new window (not persistently taking up valuable window real-estate).

Right More

While many of the desired features from the masses may make sense, that should be considered within the new paradigm being presented by Google – making the browser and the use of the products of the Internet EASIER, MORE INTUTIVE, and more ACCESSIBLE to all. People don’t need more buttons and menus and other strange icons and graphics. Rather, people need a browser that will better understand the user, and better present just what the user wants, when they want (or need) it. That is the new experience, the new concept currently being presented by Google. This is a very challenging and admirable path to take. And hopefully, Google will be able to hold fast and not diverge, and become just any old browser, but a new innovation in web browsing that elevates the web experience.

Needs work…

  • More intuitive integration of bookmarking concepts. Chrome did well in minimizing their presence, but does not currently do well in user interaction post- and during bookmarking.

02_bookmark

  • Other companies will want to integration and include plug-ins and other types of extensions for the browser. Google will need to spend a good deal of effort in introducing a new framework within which the developer community will be able to integrate with the intuitive and minimalistic elements of the browser, not negatively impacting the current minimalism that has been achieved.

No More

People are comfortable with the same old thing. People knowingly, or subconsciously, will request and guide and suggest and desire that old familiar feeling. People like what they are comfortable with and will try to coax Chrome into a format resembling the Internet Explorer or FireFox experiences, but in a Google shell — – if that happens you might as well have just shut down the project.

The goal of Chrome appears to be in the desire to shift the online paradigm (as well as further seed the development of G1 apps) — making online interaction more inviting, easier, faster, and more intuitive – even in areas that people don’t realize these improvements are needed. Therein lies the true promise and value in the future of what has currently been presented as Chrome.

Chrome presents a wonderful opportunity, to show people a concept of interacting with the products of the Internet in a manner that perhaps none have imagined, and based on the advice being thrown around, may be near impossible for many to fully comprehend the implications.

But, if Google ever listened to anyone before, listen to me now — DON’T LISTEN TO THEM! Ignore the prevailing advice of the masses about what the browser needs and what interfaces and buttons are missing. Google has notoriously done a poor job of presenting a good online user experience (iPhone apps being the most notable exception).

However, now with the newest browser in town, Chrome, Google must strive to adhere to and strengthen its embrace of this new minimalistic paradigm of interaction with the online world and carefully decide where they, Google, should do more, and where Google should (definitely) not do more.

Enjoy!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

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