Design tips for Rich Clients

RIA’s have been sprouting all around us and every web application (and website) seems to have some ‘richness’ in the interaction that it provides to its users. From information browsing to task based applications, users now have a rich set of controls and interactions that allow them to have a more efficient and satisfying experience.

The interaction guidelines for making web applications ‘rich’ traditionally came from Rich clients (Desktop Clients). But as web applications were deployed in a web browser, they were unable to simply follow the guidelines; instead they had to adapt them to the platform.  As web applications evolved into RIA’s, they introduced some new interface and interaction styles.

Desktop applications have already implemented a few typical web idioms (Hyperlinks, Back buttons), and here are some newer interface and interactions that can be ported back to Rich Clients. These may not apply to all Rich clients but could be used creatively to enhance the user experience where possible.

Organizing without Menu’s (Tabs and toolbars)
Many RIA’s do not use traditional cascading menus as means of organising the applications functionality (normally this is to avoid having 2 sets of menus); instead they use tabs and toolbars. This reduces the time spent searching for functions and also allows for a better way to view and manage content.

Integrated popups

In order to reduce window clutter and to keep the interface visually lightweight, many RIA’s have rich interactive integrated pop-ups.  This allows the users to see the context of the popup content and also have multiple popups open. These popups can show details (Image and text) and also be used to add or edit object properties.

Motion

Although traditionally motion and animation has not been used widely, many RIA’s do a very good job of using transitions and effects to present information, convey organization and show movement from one part of the application to another. Motion provides the user with an added feedback of space and time rather than objects magically appearing and disappearing. Examples of this are: Steps in a Wizard flying in and out, panels sliding, window and objects growing/shrinking as they are brought into view.

Look and Feel/ Branding

Rather than simply inheriting from the operating system, RIA’s have their own look & feel and branding. We are seeing more of this in rich clients (Yahoo messenger, MS Office 2007), but there is a lot more that can be done to help products both stand out and achieve higher usability.

Although it may seem ironic that Rich clients are adapting designs from web applications, as designs evolve and more applications and users take to the internet, this maybe something that can help provide the users have a unified experience.

Creating and using the best design to make your product more usable is just one of the services provided by Limina.

-Vikram Dere

So lets face it, the cloud computing race is on.  Back in August ’08, Business Week predicted that Apple, Amazon, eBay, Google and Microsoft will be top contenders for the for the lead, based on transactions, user experience and presence.  Since then we’ve seen a flurry of organized activity from Microsoft Azure to make sure they gain the ground necessary to take and hold poll position.

Looking back, rich “desktop” user experiences on the web haven’t really been around for that long…  companies like Netvibes and Pageflakes made their introductions among others back in 2005.  In just 4 short years, the rise and conquest of startpages and widgets have been an on-going struggle, giving way to social networks and application frameworks like Facebook and Google.

A common challenge to all social application frameworks is, how do you get the content out, and share the experience outside the framework?  Widget distribution companies like Clearspring and Gigya were quick to knock down the walls between and across social platforms, but where does this leave us and where are heading?

Flashing forward to take a peek at what’s around the corner. Hakan Bilgin, has just released his beta of Cloudo opening up his Web OS-like GUI to developers to write applications to share across the open Cloudo network.

Cloudo’s UI looks, feels and works the way you would expect any Desktop OS to function, taking features and design elements from Windows and Apple.  As developers take advantage of this platform, it will prove to be more useful to the pedestrian user.

Like startpages & widgets, this could be the first wave of cloud computing ground swells that will soon be emulated, consumed and taken over by Business Week’s predicted leaders.  In the meantime, round one belongs to Hakan.