The Aggregated web

What is the next step for web? Where will we be in 3 to 5 years time? What will the new web look like? Let me share a theory with you.

The semantic web is often talked about as the next big shift online. Information marked in smarter ways so things will be infinitely easier to search for. Will the next step for web be the semantic web? Probably not since there is no real technical platform for this. Nothing that has been widely accepted by developers at least. And in web that is really what matters.

No instead we’re already seeing the next step in web but only through the corner of our eye.

The next step in web will be the Aggregated web. Yes, that simple. While we are seeing more and more sites that aggregate feeds about the site or news about the common topic on the site these are really only precursors for the aggregated web. As mobile devices improve and more and more services offer APIs we’ll see a shift from surfing the web to using services and information in real-time in the real world. A huge leap in integration between the real world and the web. In fact, we’re already seeing this trend with the iPhone and stream of Android phones on the market.

Information is simple to find through search today. As more and more services offer open APIs to support different interfaces and devices we’ll see a trend for information to become less tied to design also. Eventually most services and information on the web will be data streams with replaceable layers of interfaces.

So finding information about a topic on your cellphone, tv or laptop will be equally simple and fast. But the visual display of that information will probably differ, both in complexity and according to the users taste.

This will eventually spawn the trend for interesting interfaces aggregating the information you’re looking for, real-time or otherwise, wherever you are. This is why I think the next step for web is the Aggregated web. Services are already popping up in a wide variety of styles and devices, just look at Twitter. When enough interesting services, and enough interesting information, has migrated to this sort of technology the interfaces on the web today will just not matter.

To finish with a situated example; your pen might feed information regarding grammar as you write while your fridge might aggregate special offers from stores near you. Sound like a poor 1950’s vision of the future? Wait, I just got an offer from my local store via Twitter on my iPhone. All these devices really need is upgrade to Android and these examples can be used today.

Welcome to the aggregated web, you heard it here first.

Video service explosion

One of the reasons Hollywood is putting up such a fight against piracy is that Bittorrent has become the main delivery of video content in the world (excepting Youtube which Hollywood does not consider a threat, yet.).

But recently things have started happening. iTunes launched it’s video store a couple of years ago and while it is only available in the US so far it is delivering a lot of content. Hulu, Voddler and Netflicks are also showing the market another way to make a profit. The list goes on and on as new companies try to change the way the market works.

While I find this to be a great development I’m a bit sad that companies need to out compete the old system just to deliver content in a way that pirates have been doing for over ten years. But I guess change is, as ever, ver hard for Hollywood.

Until one of these services can offer a large amount of content for sensible amounts of money in Europe however, I think I’ll stick to my newest find HDMT. A great international streaming service for new movies and TV shows, all in HD.

UX needs a common language

After a short debate with @miakolmodin about the difficulties of building a portfolio when what you do is design interaction we stumbled upon an interesting flaw in the design process.

User Experience has no language. Now this might sound a bit redundant but all development needs language to convey principles and models that are often used. Why, for example, are we still trying to convince people that simplicity in interfaces is a good thing?
We should have a word for this model of design that literally means “grade of simplicity in the interaction, with overtones of how good it is”. Just to speed up the process.

So I figured I’d give it a go shortly. Thanks Mia for a great idea!

How to improve learning

Had a few minutes over to finish my short presentation on education reform, I hope you like it. Feel free to ask about anything you feel I’m neglecting to mention, should extrapolate on or if you think I’m just plain wrong.

Business Card Design – minimalist color fetish

Another business card design, this one with a slightly less hidden fetish for the mint/new spring green that I really like. For some reason this color represents the color of sunshine and happiness for me. Has something to do with new leaves on birch trees in spring but that’s as far back as I care to identify the emotional response.

 

Minimalist color bombardment

 

 

The card had, besides the clear fetish for green, a slogan about design that I regularly use as a mantra and a short pitch about why I can help improve your product. Not the most convincing one I’ve written but still alright. The typography of the pitch is a bit dodgy as the wording wouldn’t let me balance the characters by reshaping the sentences. Might return to this one.

Business Card Design – minimalist typography

I realized last weekend that I’m missing a proper business card. Time to design one.

And since I’m at home, sick but not dying, I took the time to do a couple of sketches.

 

Minimalist Typographic Business Card

 

 

This card is based on the very popular typographic design posters you’ll find floating around the web. Complete with a more minimalist front with the logo from my current WP theme design (not launched, still sketching and tweaking)

Creating a minimalist WP theme

These are just sketches for my WP theme. Just getting ideas out to test them visually. Experimenting with design is really an awesome process and I wish we had the tools to do the same with interaction without involving a group of developers and spending a lot of money.

Portfolio showcase design

 

Experimented a lot with gradients and feedback as if the objects had a real world existence.

Worked pretty well but not at all to the degree I was looking for. Getting users to experience fake tactile experience through Gestalt Closure is really hard without sound.

 

 

Blog with portfolio images

 

Here I tried relying more on the grid to make the site look structured and clean. But I bailed out in the last minute and added a few details outside the grid that didn’t work at all.

 

 

 

lifestream design

 

Here I was just trying to present a lifestream that could work as a living resume of my entire life. Before long I realized that what I really was designing was an XML feed. Not at all what I had set out to do.

 

 

 

Interactive businesscard

 

Testing out the idea of a virtual business card. But it started feeling cheap really early. The point of a business card is to be able to hand it around. A website doesn’t have the same appeal for the function. If I wanted you to find out exactly who I am I’d probably hand you my resume, not my site.

 

 

Lifestream with a presentation of me

 

This was one of the most interesting models I tried. Another fake spatial space website but with equal amounts of information about me and information that I wanted visitors to see. Worked pretty well but ended up a bit cramped. Not far from my current direction though.

The sickness of actually liking your job

My friend called me a few minutes ago.

Friend: Hi J, what are you up to?

Me: I’m working.

Friend: I thought you were sick?

Me: I am.

Friend: So why are you at work?

Me: I’m at home, got a fever and feel terrible.

Friend: …and you’re still working?

Me: Yeah.

Friend: What the hell is wrong with you?!

Me: …I honestly don’t know.

Real time search – the problem

Both Google and Microsoft’s new search service Bing has partnered with Twitter to provide real-time search results for queries. This is great news for finding valuable information but it also creates new problems to overcome; filtering out the irrelevant data.

Search today is based on relevance through counting the number of links to and from a site. This relevance also weights the linked sites. This is the basic idea behind Google’s PageRank system. But its fundamentally flawed, namely the older the site the more information and weight it can get. Google has of course tried to minimize this affect but it’s still visible when searching for certain topics.  Google “next apple event” for an example. The search result is completely useless.

Twitter however has the opposite problem. Without a system like PageRank to value the posts a lot of relevance comes from time. The latest posts are the most relevant. But this also means that topics that aren’t current might not yield any relevant information available. So the time problem is reversed from Google’s PageRank time problem.

So how will we solve this? Well, I don’t have a definitive answer of course. But I’ve more and more come to believe in crowd sourcing as a means to get accurate data. Perhaps relevance can be calculated not from the content itself but from how we interact with it. If users can be filtered out from bots (usage patterns for bots are really hard to mask over time since the cloud could potentially remember ever mouse move they make) relevance could be weighted from number of users who actually read or view the content.

No doubt Google has teams working on this. And no doubt they will eventually buy some small startup doing it a lot smarter than they are. It’s an interesting problem nevertheless.

Tools are not your trade

We all showcase skills we have by listing the tools we’re proficient using. Usually on our CV or talking with friends and business contacts we say things like “I use X to do Y” or similar. I just realized that this is somewhat strange, for any task a tool might be more or less important. In some extreme cases the tool is the task and knowing how to use it is essential for the job.

But for knowledge workers, when is Photoshop really a critical skill? Graphic design is the real skill, with the addition of experience using software designed specifically for the task. Would a switch to painter really make all that skill obsolete?

This is most striking for programmers. If you know how to code a web app using an object based language, which language tends to be irrelevant. Sure, knowing the language a company uses beforehand is an advantage. But certainly not crucial, anyone new to a workplace has to learn the specifics of that job anyway.