Recently, intranets and enterprise systems are being met with s host of new “social web” requirements. How are these new requirements bleeding into the corporate culture? How successfully are these requirements being integrated? What are the challenges, what are the risks and how do you define success?

Our study looks at internal company networks and how they are or are not employing social media as a means of increasing or aiding communication, collaboration, process management and productivity. Our initial responses are giving us a better idea of the importance of social media on the company intranet as well as where issues currently exist that might be preventing companies from making use of the technology.  We’re confident this will be a valuable report.

Our responses are coming from hundreds and potentially thousands of people at all levels of their organizations. We expect that this approach will give us a more accurate representation of the current conditions.

Survey participants will receive a pre-release version of the report when the results are compiled.  Take the survey!

The survey should only take a few minutes to complete. For all questions, there is a “n/a” (not applicable) answer if the question does not apply to you or your company.

About Limina

Our user experience research and design consultancy specializes in user research and complex information design which includes multi‐layered workflows and complex visualizations. We improve user effectiveness, make products easier to learn, operate, and more meaningful in their function.

If you have questions regarding this report and our research program, please contact Mimi Knowels (mknowles at limina-ao dot com).

So, you’re lead engineer on the front end web team and you’ve just been handed your UI specs hot off the press.  They look great, the product management and design team are throwing high-fives…  but you’re worried about how to implement all of their fancy ideas; drag and drop, sortable tables, in-line editing, etc.  Moreover, how do you know when it’s appropriate to use them?  What are the rules?  When do you use an accordion over a tabbed UI and why?

Thankfully there are a bunch of UI Pattern libraries out there on the web.  Some are heavily information design focused others have user generated content and some that are more developer centric. In this post I’ll share some example sites, discuss their significance, benefits and short comings, then I’ll shamelessly plug the need for working with an experienced professional to help you navigate through UI Patterns… aka Limina.

The O’Reilly Guys

http://designinginterfaces.com/ (formerly http://time-tripper.com/uipatterns - soon to no-longer exist, or the 3yr old claim states).  Now, this is a great source of information if you’re looking to understand when, how and why to use various UI patterns.  Their web UI counterpart: http://designingwebinterfaces.com/explore.

Benefit: Both sites provide visual examples (not live demos) along with comprehensive writeups on each pattern.  If ever faced with making the decision between checkboxes vs. multi-slection lists or radio buttons and single selection lists.  This is your destination for truth.

Falling Short:  The site is static, no comments from the community, examples are slowly becoming out dated.  Most importantly, there is a lost opportunity to link out to live demos, and sample code to help the wayward front end developer to get their feet wet.

The New Guys

Okay, maybe Infragistics has been around for a while, but they just recently released Quince, while this site is yet to support user commentary, it does have a number of bells and whistles that give the O’reilly folks  a run for their money.  (Here is one other  dynamic / community oriented repository that I won’t expand on, but feel is worth mentioning -  http://ui-patterns.com/)

I have a personal problem with the over-use of  Silverlight which mearly adds “Pizzaz, for the sake of Pizzaz”.  The features, functions, organization and structure alone are what make this a great site, I can do without the crazy coverflow and overlays which is really tiresome after the first 5 minutes.  It’s a good example of “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Benefits: This repository is dynamically fed by a community of UI experts and patrons of the topic.  It provides a rating system which tracks implementations and approval of the patterns.  Community members can submit further examples and write ups of patterns.  Comprehensive write ups on the patters addressing; The Problem, Solution, Context, Rationale, Implementation, Resources and Tags.  They’ve integrated distribution and syndication tools to post or subscribe to content on their site.  They’ve categorized the repository by User Tasks, Tags and Wireframes and added some niceties like; Recently Viewed , and Simple Search and Filters.  Their broad and  deep repository is rich with examples and is growing daily.  Subscribing to the site makes it easier to keep up with the changes.

Previously overlooked by the Limina team: User Comments – currently below the fold on the Pattern Viewer. This will be addressed in their next major release.

Falling Short: While Quince took one step further to link out to live examples, they still don’t provide technical details or code samples for back and front end support for the patterns.  This may have to do with Infragistic’s presentation layer product and the need to conceal their secret sauce.  Correction: This is out of scope for Quince’s technology-agnostic and UX-centric UI pattern guidance. This is why the next category is so much more intriguing…

The Developers – JQuery

Who, in all User Experience Cocky-dom, would have thought that it would take a couple of smart developers to start pulling it all together?  Over that past 10 years a slow movement of front end javascript, css and html developers to iteratively produce, share and modify non-standardized functions, effects, controls and more on various repositories like DynamicDrive and JavaScript.com.  While these repositories had the beginnings of some good ideas, it lacked a stable framework for extensibility, consistency, and clean standards that would make for a manageable UI.

Not too long ago, frameworks like Script.aculous. Protoype, MooTools and JQuery unleashed their powerful js libraries.   For the most part, pitting these libraries against one another will demonstrate a mish-mash of pros and cons that more or less put them on a level playing field.  I singled out JQuery due to the earnest effort that have made to compile their components, modules, widgets, effects and interactions into a UI pattern repository, built on top of the JQuery Javascript library to create highly interactive interfaces.

Benefits:  One of the best parts about the JQueryUI library is that they not only provide working demo’s, but that their demos are hooked up to demonstrate subtle modifications that impact their use.  They provide code samples and technical overview and configuration options.  In all of their examples, they have taken into consideration; user feedback, interaction affordances, and high-level CHI principals, which makes huge strides towards closing the gap between standard usability heuristics and front-end development.

Falling Short: Granted, this is just their first pass at compiling their patterns and not to discount JQuery UI achievements, but they have just begin to scratch the surface.  Their repository will be greatly improved by rolling up components and widgets into mature UI patterns that take context into consideration.  Both Oreilly and Quince got this part right.

You have your homework cut out for you.  We recommend you study up on your pattern libraries, usage rules and stable code repositories.   Keep in mind, no combination of, or independant,  UI Pattern repositories are sufficient to replace a good user expereince research and design team.  Even the most rich interactions and highly functional UI’s will fall short in the face of un-met or miscalculated requirements.  We’ll be here for you when you need us.

-Jon

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.