The RIA mirage
Google brought great things to larger public. One of the key things ofcourse has been what is now termed as AJAX. But too much focus has gone to the technology and less to the experience built behind. I see organizations asking for AJAX professionals, when essentially they should be looking for Interaction Design skills which define what must be built and then right technology can be chosen.
Yahoo maps beta is just been launched, while it is good (I especially like the ability to add a sequence of addresses), the interface has been kept very cluttered, too much stuff with too much demarcation. Case of over engineering the visual design and lack of prioretization. While technology mirrors Google, yahoo looses on Interaction desing perspective impacting customer experience and hence product adoption.
Look at these two screens:
Google: http://www.googlemaps.com/lochp?hl=en&tab=wl&q=
(Google goes by the rule that only functuionality which is used 80% of the time is visible upfront on the screen, rest is hidden. That's an important decision to make. )
Yahoo: http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/#
Net net I think, Google success is not technology, but experience they have been able to build, form providing large real estate on screen for the map to simplifying look of the map, to mapping user interaction to specific points of the map and so on. Yahoo has followed technology, but missed out on key driving principles.
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1 comments:
You hit the nail on the head when you wrote “I see organizations asking for AJAX professionals, when essentially they should be looking for Interaction Design skills”
While there is a lack among stake-holders/developers about Interaction designs scope and responsibilites, we as designers are also to blame. Look at the amount of thinking that goes behind the SRS document that business analysts produce. Wish ID designers also pay the same amount of detail to the documentation of design and explaining people why a certain solution is more important than another.
Many from the interaction design community do not know how to document a process flow. The awareness of ID methods is there in a few, awareness should be spread across the Community.
Coming back to the original topic on Google vs. yahoo, I think you are bang on as always on the observation. Google is still years ahead of competition in user experience, when it comes to free weblications. (Though not gmail, but that’s another day, another story
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