It appears to be built on Rails (which I’ve been having a lot of fun with lately) and allows for adding music, photos, videos, blog posts and the like. It seems as though they’ve gone to a lot of trouble developing an interface that is easy to use, and the final product is very pretty.

The music player is fantastic – you can store your playlist, get recommendations from others, etc. The player is brilliantly simple to use. You can even plug virb into itunes and access your music from there. The artists putting music up there are really good too.

They’ve made it easy to customize your page as well – instead of resorting to hacks like div overlays and the like, they’ve baked massive customization right in. I’m sure myspace hacks will run in and ugly the place up in time, but there are some really pretty pages are already up there. Hopefully when it launches folks will look to them for inspiration vs. the monstrosities they’re used to.

I have no idea whether this thing can take off (maybe they don’t care about toppling MySpace – what’s wrong with carving out your own niche on the net and being happy with it?) but I wish them well. It’s very well thought-out, and the dozens of other social networking sites out there could learn a thing or two from these guys.

Unless I want to open a new account.

I needed to open a new checking account and decided to do so online. I live in New York but still use Colorado for my permanent address. When I set up the account I specified Colorado as the state I’d like to bank in. After completing the application you’re told to wait five days, which I did. You’re then told to print out a bunch of paperwork, sign it and mail it away. You’re then told to wait some more.

You’re then told that the bank mysteriously set up your account in Florida, via a middleman in North Carolina. You’re told that they don’t really know why this happened, but as a result, they’ll need to change your application to Colorado. Then they tell you to wait for approval.

Then they tell you to print out the same forms again, sign them and mail them to a new office in the state in which you’re banking. Then you’re told to wait.

You then discover you’ve been approved – not by receiving an approval, but by receiving two emails. One tells you how to order checks (you just have to call with your account number that you don’t know,) and the other tells you how convenient your online banking will be (you just need your account number that you don’t know and you pin that you haven’t selected.)

You then try online chat, but in order to have a conversation you need to know your account number and, you guessed it, your online pin – a second pin number that you also haven’t selected.

Online banking is a beautiful thing, but online account creation leaves a lot to be desired.

Our company had been searching for a project management solution for a long time before I first joined the team. They had evaluated the pros and cons of Microsoft Project and other tools, and had deemed them all too user-unfriendly for their purposes.

In I trotted with the diea that we use Basecamp, then a fairly new tool on the market. It’s brand promise is that project management will be painless – the interface is elegant, it doesn’t take any time to train new users, and it allowed us to keep in contact with our clients on a regular basis. The company embraced the idea, and I looked like a genius.

Fast forward to today – we’ve been using Basecamp for almost a year now, and every project we’ve started (roughly 250 of them) are in the system. As much as possible, we’ve moved away from email communication to posting messages and attachments on Basecamp. It was a little hairy (think 150 late milestones greeting you every morning, 150 to-do’s that someone in the company has to update every day,) but it got the job done.

Until yesterday.

I’ve long had a reputation for doing something first, then asking for permission. Usually it makes me look like the proverbial ‘go-getter.’ But sometimes it blows up in my face.

We had a server that wasn’t being utilized much. It seemed like the perfect repository for all the files we’d be storing in Basecamp (nearly 8 gigs as of last week.) So of course I set this up without asking for permission, without really notifying anyone. Why deal with IT and all the headaches that comes with? I had the access info to set everything up myself – let them deal with the 30 other things they have going on.

Yesterday, they shut down the underutilized server. And every file that’s ever been stored on Basecamp – every design mockup, every revision of copy, every data set – was wiped off the face of the earth.

We were able to back it up after discovering the problem, and we have the 8 gigs of files in safe hands. But clients can’t get to them. And since we used Basecamp, and agreeing to what amounts to a ‘use at your risk’ policy in doing so, we can’t make any modifications to the file paths to represent the new location of said files.

I’ve learned three lessons in the past 24 hours.

1. There is a definite downside to a limited customer service model.
2. As much as it pains you, it probably makes sense to talk with IT before making minor decisions…like where to store every piece of client communication your company has.
3. I’m going to be fired within a week.

Andy does a great job of focusing on creating a “usable” site – reducing the number of competing elements, being consistent with links, etc. But while he does quite a bit to create a page that adheres to the guidelines put forth by the many usability experts in the marketplace, the focus on structural usability leads to a site that ignores some other factors that can lead to a good experience.

Andy’s effort is below – I dig the rounded corners, the use of color, and the overall simplified look:

The biggest issue I have relates to the use of language, or more specifically the lack of language. While a site that is superfluous makes for a subpar experience, a lack of language can leave people wondering what to do. All it takes are a few well-chosen words to orient the visitor and give them a sense of what your space on the web is about – and how it can help them.

I also found the search box troubling. eBay recognizes (and probably has the research to back it up) that some people search while others browse. Leaving the site’s ‘departments’ out of the site would likely cost you a number of visitors, since the categories give the buyer an idea of what’s available to them. It’s the same reason blogs and social networking applications have embraced the concept of tagging – you might not be sure what you’re looking for immediately, and it’s often fun to just poke around.

Seth Godin talked years ago about the concept of a ‘banana’ – making it very clear what you want to draw the visitor’s attention to. While I agree with Andy that the gift guide promotion is a bit overkill, it remains a much more important ‘banana’ for the visitor than the ‘featured items.’ Banking on a list of random products (real estate near the Grand Canyon, a banjo, etc.) to reel visitors in isn’t likely to succeed. A promotion that appeals to everyone (Christmas shopping) serves as a much more suitable lead-in.

Reading Andy’s submission got me thinking about how I’d handle such a redesign. Given that I’ve had a few days to relax, my brain has felt slightly recharged, compelling me to take a similar crack at it. As I mentioned, I liked a ton of what Andy did. I tried to work with his first effort and improve it since he’s done a lot of quality work already. After incorporating my suggestions above, my humble submission is as follows:

I’d love to hear your thoughts – feel free to pick it apart, continue to improve it, or go in a completely different direction. Exercises like this are good ways to refine one’s eye for sites that are not only functional, but effective. I thank Andy for giving me something very solid to work with, as well as for the inspiration to tackle such an interesting design scenario.

I wonder if this whole concept of user experience needs to be re-evaluated.

For the majority of “user experience” people out there, the craft is primarily a technical one. It’s about expediency – moving someone from one place to another as quickly and easily as possible. Admittedly, it’s a noble and worthy goal – we’ve all been to way too many sites that are confusing, awkward, and underwhelming.

But it seems to me as though there’s a whole lot more to creating a satisfying user experience than employing lots of white space and using breadcrumbs. We should certainly work to make our sites as friendly as possible to navigate around, but we also must acknowledge the other goals of people visiting our pieces of the web.

Tom Peters took on Six Sigma about 10 years back for similar reasons. While he undoubtedly recognized the value that quality control can have in improving the lives of both customers and organizations, Peters places it not as the capstone of effective business strategy, but as the cost of entry. Thing is, a product or service that is predictably boring is still boring.

The same can be said for designing online experiences. I’ve worked on enough sites to know that crafting an extremely usable site that is dull, irrelevant and uninteresting doesn’t do anyone much good.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you look at the bulk of the sites that brought in usability “experts,” you might surprise yourself. The sites are very clear about what’s a link, what the navigation scheme is, etc. But by focusing on the organization of the content, they’re missing a big piece of the puzzle – whether the content should be there in the first place.

The web is not just a medium for disseminating information in the most efficient way possible. People spend hours upon hours online, for a myriad of reasons – they could be lonely, and are looking for a place to interact with other people or feel like part of a community. They could be looking to unwind and forget about their problems for a bit. They could be looking for an avenue for self-expression.

For too many sites focused on usability, the function is proceeding the form. Because they don’t engage with their visitors emotionally, don’t appeal to their sensibilities, and lead with the assumption that the “user” is just looking for content “chunked” appropriately, they are most likely less effective than they could be.

Six Sigma changed the world of business and made quality goods an assumption in the minds of consumers. But Six Sigma is now the staring gate – today’s business buzzwords aren’t about quality but about “experience” – being intentional about the way the company interacts with the customer. As the Internet continues to get more crowded, sites that are deemed “usable” will simply be the foot in the door. The big opportunity is waiting for the companies who realize that “user experience” design is 10% about a usable site and 90% creating an experience that resonates with people.

Jakob Nielsen on ClearType, the plugin from Microsoft that anti-aliases screen text to make it more readable.

“ClearType will make this user at least 10% more productive while reading from the screen, for a gain of $2,000.”

I’ve had it for a few weeks now and I actually have enjoyed it quite a bit. You don’t notice it until you go back to looking at another PC monitor – then the difference is pretty stark.

Windows is starting to really gain ground on Apple….circa what, 1995? Anyway…you can grab it here.

via Designorati.

The main difficulty is that the elements don’t all merit the same space. Some pieces don’t really justify a large amount of screen real estate, while others would look downright silly if they’re too small. So we decided on two sizes – should make things fairly straightforward.

But if elements are turned off, the placement of the remaining pieces looks strange, especially when a larger element is removed. What does one do with the missing space?

The app has no advertising (nothing we do does,) so slapping in some random ads isn’t an option. The funniest scenario is for the school that only has one module (which happens.) What happens to the page then?

We’re close to rolling it out, but it’s been an interesting challenge. I’m curious how other people would address it…

And they said you couldn’t learn anything from Tetris…