O’Reilly: Inside RIA

This platform released today provides an effective solution for slaying one dragon, but a much scarier dragon lurks atop the mountain I call form factor. The danger is in thinking that we have a platform for developing universal experiences, when the truth is, that we have a platform that provides us with a universal runtime to build experiences upon. Just because your code is cross-platform, doesn't mean that your experience is.

The "Bad Usability Calendar" reminded me that it's just as important to look at mistakes as it is best practices. Here's a couple resources you and your team can use immediately to avoid common user interface pitfalls.

Given that I believe RIA technologies should only be used to improve usability and user experience in web software, I'm ecstatic that the role of the usability specialist is getting wide spread attention. It gained a spot in the U.S News list of Best Careers for 2008.

I just saw the new Google Data Visualization Gadgets over on Infostehtics, apparently they have a whole bunch of other charts too. Sounds like they're pretty easy to use. I think this is definitely just the beginning of trend in easy to use, but rather specific, RIA mashup UIs.

As we go hurling down the road of RIA innovation it's nice to have some guidelines and tools to help us create better user experiences. I think user interface design patterns should in everyone's toolbox. They help us come up with new ideas for our UIs, it helps us communicate inside and outside of our team and finally it helps us to avoid common pitfalls.

So if we are talking about supply and demand we have to define the two sides of the equation. The demand side is outside-in, it is the emergence of an "Experience Oriented Market" within a vertical. The supply side is inside-out, and it is called Design Maturity.

The reason I say "Whose Coat is this Jacket" is because if everyone uses the term application or website to describe everything, then it really means nothing at all. That gives us no basis on which to form judgment on whether or not deploying rich user interfaces makes sense. Without a hard definition of "true functionality", we are unequipped to create any kind of real distinction between the two terms to try and make sense of it all.

Recently, Jakob wrote a column titled "Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous". This is another one of those columns designed to get people stirred up. It addresses some of the components of the Web 2.0 movement including: rich internet applications, social networking, mashups, and advertising based business models. He builds an argument that claims that companies should not get caught up in the hype surrounding Web 2.0 while working with their current web properties. They should instead focus on getting the fundamentals, or the Web 1.0 features perfect.

A quick hello from Andre Charland, packed with his background with the web and goals for involvement this site and pushing RIAs and user experience forward.

I'm thrilled to be part of the rich web movement and hope you can help us here at InsideRIA spread the good word on the benefits of RIAs for end users, establish and evangelize best practices and of course build "jaw dropping" user interfaces!

Almost everyone in the tech industry is familiar with the concept of an "Elevator Speech". You meet someone for the first time, they ask you what you do, and your job is to very quickly explain it. Who knows, it may be a potential client you're talking to, so you have to make sure what you say is precise, exciting, and positions you as an expert in their eyes.