I love Google Search because when I search for something, there’s some magic Fortune Teller that Google has locked up in a server room somewhere that knows exactly what I’m looking for.

So I was excited by the recent launch of Google Suggest, the new auto-complete on Google’s home page. As you start type, Google’s servers are busy finding and returning related search terms. This is a great idea, but the results don’t seem nearly as precise as I’ve come to expect from Google. I’m guessing the Fortune Teller does better when responding to full terms than to just a few letters.

My suggestion for making these results more on target is to personalize them. Google knows my search history, and the types of things I search for. Therefore they should be able to give me better responses in Google Suggest.

This is noticeably missing because I’m used to using the Google Search box built into Firefox. This search box has an auto-complete which includes both my recent search terms (at the top) and other matching (non-personalized) results below. While only the top part of the list is personalized, the top matches have been valuable enough that I will continue to use this over Google Suggest.

One side effect of implementing this sort of functionality is that the more personalized your results become, the less diverse they might be. But I’m sure the genius’ at Google can figure this out too.

Well, I’ve been playing with my iPhone for about a week now, and am impressed overall. Its great as a phone and simple PDA, but the rest of the “productivity” functionality is way behind the times. Most of the issues I’ve found result from the core functional design that cannot be changed (or can only by partially solved) by third party applications.

Granted, its a phone first, and computer second, but my last phone (Palm Treo 700p) seemed to do the job just fine. Despite the smaller screen and less glamour, I felt the Treo was more capable in two big areas (for me):

• Data Storage: Both the Treo, as well as all previous iPods, had the capability of being mounted as a hard drive over USB (and SD Reader). This saved me from having to carry an extra USB/Flash/Thumb Drive. While that’s only a few ounces, the bigger result here is that this problem trickles through all the iPhone applications. This means that (except as read-only) there are no email attachments, web downloads/uploads, and any third party app that would need access to documents (such as an eBook reader) must provide its own proprietary uploader (or web storage). Granted, there are a few third party apps that try to solve this by either mounting over WiFi (DataCase), Web (SugarSync, MiGhtyDocs), or a proprietary uploader (FileMagnet). My testing of all of these solutions shows them as very slow and fairly buggy. Enough to where I would not trust using these as the primary store for a few gigs of documents. Not to mention that they don’t solve the root problem here because the documents are only available in the restricted sandbox of that single application. While Apple has not commented on the reasons behind disabling this functionality, my gut tells me that resource priorities and security concerns have taken precedence over usability. Hopefully over time Apple can provide a solution.

• Office Suite: A sibling to the above problem is that the iPhone does not have an Office Suite. There is no mobile version of Office/iWork/etc. The iPhone does have the capability (and plenty of sandboxed Apps) to display these documents when found in web pages or the third party apps listed above, but cannot edit them. Granted, you would probably not do your main editing on the small screen, but I definitely used my Treo often for touch-up work while on the road. I’ve used the Treo to make last minute changes to Powerpoint presentations, my resume, or Word Doc proposals, etc. This deficiency is visible in both native iPhone Apps and Safari, neither of which support even basic rich text editing (I take lots of notes as RTF’s in TextEdit). Again, I’m guessing that the cost outweighs the benefits for Apple here, but for me this is a big thing.

These issues hit me pretty hard today because I’m off on a quick 1 day business trip this afternoon, and although I won’t need my laptop during my meetings, I’m forced to lug it around just to review a few PDF’s, DOC’s, CHM’s, as well as review and update my RTF notes. I can probably find a combination of various iPhone apps to handle my needs (if i convert my notes to plain text), but I don’t have the time and have come to expect Apple technology to “just work” and not require all these “band-aid” solutions. (And I shouldn’t have to buy yet another device or mini laptop to do this.)

Well, after pretty much everything going wrong dealing with AT&T for around a total of 8 hours in phone support or in store, I finally got my iPhone up and running on Friday, and here’s my take after the first weekend. I’ll try not to repeat everything that has been said already, other than to summarize that the iPhone is great however the battery and 3G network are laughable.

But I did want to do a quick write up to discuss some technology vs. design experiences so far. I give Apple alot of credit for the simple and intuitive interfaces used in the iPhone (and iTunes to manage it on your computer). I’ve got some issues with over-simplicity here, but I’ll save that for another post.

For now, I wanted to discuss a few things I found while building my first iPhone App. Now, I started out easy and just built a web-based Safari app (to get a quick start) rather than learning the native application SDK (which I’ll tackle next). If you’re not familiar with iPhone web-app development, there’s a great User Interface library (iUI from Facebook’s Joe Hewitt) which developers can easily implement to simulate most of the iPhone’s capabilities in Safari.

So I grabbed iUI, and threw together a quick application to show each DC Metro Station’s next train arrival time. I figured this would be very handy for me when I’m on the go to see how much I have to rush (or stall) to get the next train. The basics are working if you want to check it out (on your iPhone) over at metro.orangewiz.com, however I can’t guarantee this will be speedy or stay up (or even stay there) permanently.

The major issue I found with the iUI interface is that it is AJAX-based by default. If you’re not familiar with this, AJAX basically means that data chunks (and in this case full pages) are loaded into the current page without having to reload the whole current page. This is great for many things, such as the new Google Suggest which is basically an “auto-complete” that loads and displays related search terms as you type in the search box. However, AJAX has some real disadvantages when not used properly.

In iUI, AJAX is used to simulate the iPhone’s “sliding screen” feature (seen in the first few seconds of this video) to fully load the next page and animate it sliding in over the current page when you click forward. This is some great eye candy, but is not very practical for my application. Loading the next page into the current page (without actually changing pages) means you can’t bookmark anything. In my App, I really need to be able to bookmark my home metro station that I use most often, rather than having to navigate through all the stations from scratch. Luckily, iUI lets you override this default behavior to deliver bookmarkable (but non-sliding) pages. (Techie info: use “target=_self” to bypass the AJAX swipes.)

In most cases, my recommendation would be to only use AJAX to alter small individual components within a page, rather than loading in full pages. Of course, there are places where AJAX on a larger scale makes sense, but only when your users will not have to repeatedly navigate through a maze of links to get to content they will access frequently. Google Maps is one example where almost the entire page is AJAX so that you don’t have to reload a full new map just to scroll around. In this case, this provides so much of an advantage over the alternative that its worth it. And Google is smart enough to provide a “Link” option in the upper right hand corner where you can Copy/Paste (and therefore bookmark) a link that will bring you back to the exact same spot on the map.

Lesson here: Just because you’ve got the technology to do something, doesn’t mean you should do it. Just because its “slick” doesn’t mean its usable. You need to take into account what the impact on your Users/Customers will be and how that technology can be used as a benefit, rather than a hindrance to them.

As a professional working in the web industry, I’m a big believer in promoting good design, intuitive usability, and clear Information Architecture. My top design principles (more to come on this in a future post) include: Clarity, Consistency, and Intuitiveness. In a great article on SmashingMagazine, the importance of Simplicity (one of the ways to help achieve Clarity and Intuitiveness in design) was discussed and pointed out that:

If the user can’t find what she’s looking for right away, she’s gone. It’s crucial to have simple web designs to allow the user to quickly find the information they need, especially if you are selling a product.

This is a great article and does contain some good examples that can be used as design inspiration. However good design is not enough. You can have the best design in your market and still fail. And vice-versa, you can have the worst design and somehow come out on top.

Google Search is often hailed as the #1 example of how simple design will lead to great success. However this is not really the case. When Google Search first came out, I heard over and over again that “Google [Search] is great because its so much simpler and gives me much more accurate results than other search engines.” People only attributed the simplicity to Google’s success because it hadn’t been done before. What really kept people coming back though was the quality of the search results. Google Search is not the best ONLY because of its simple design, but because of its combination of good design, great technology, and smart business practices.

On the other side of the spectrum you’ve got most of the social networks, such as MySpace/Facebook which have horrible designs and overly cluttered interfaces, yet people can’t get enough of them. Many competitors try to enter this market with either better interfaces or better features, but have yet to make much traction. In this case, its the business-model completely eliminating the need for a quality product. Peer pressure leads to exponential growth and it doesn’t matter how bad the product is.

Now, I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to see higher quality (and better designed) web products out there, but it just isn’t needed everywhere. Some quick tips for product success:

• Start by concentrating on a solid business-model. Come up with something that solves a problem and you’ll have demand for your product. Find a big enough problem to solve and you won’t be able to hold back the swarm.

• Scalable Supply: There’s nothing worse than the store running out of your kid’s new favorite toy after all his friends got one. Implement Technology that will scale with your product’s demand. And there’s no point in spending excessive amounts on supply until the demand is (almost) there.

• Customer Focus: Figure out how to tweak your product’s design to best serve your customers. Without customer satisfaction, even the best business plans will fail. And scale this appropriately as well. Figure out what your users want and need, and then weigh those against the business impact of not providing those wants and needs.

• Refine. Having a successful product means you’ve got to keep up with market changes. Your customers tastes will change, your business will grow, and technology will innovate. In the Social Networking world, that same exponential growth that made you successful can quickly lead to a wave of customers moving on to the next big thing, leaving you in the dust. Revisit the first three tips often to make sure you’re keeping up with the times.

Business, Technology, and Design (which in this case represents the Customer component of the Triple Confluence) must be balanced in order to achieve success. This is just another example of how the Triple Confluence is an additive principle (and not a constraining principle like the Triple Constraint). Good design can help, but without good business and technology your great design will end up on the cutting room floor.

Yet again, the traditional media industry has failed to capitalize on the business opportunities available with new media. According to TechCrunch’s sources:

… eMarketer put out [an estimate] on Friday that NBC’s Olympics video ad revenues came to only $5.75 million. That compares to $23 million that CBS made from video ads when it streamed the NCAA basketball tournament live on its Website in March. … NBC paid $900 million for exclusive video rights to the Olympics, meaning that its [TV advertising] profits will be about $100 million.

It is unknown how much of this $5.75 million revenue is actually profit.

Around the internet/blogosphere, this small showing has been attributed to many things, including NBC’s usage of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology (a new technology in the already Adobe Flash-dominated web video market) that is not browser-agnostic, as well as its restrictive scheduling and content exclusivity. And while these are not “life-or-death” obstacles, obviously these are purely business decisions without any input from the customer. Based on the accounts I’ve read and my own experiences, people would most likely want a seamless experience using the technology they already have and the ability to watch truly live streaming video rather than having to wait until after the TV broadcast for replays. And when you take into account the “Web 1.0″ style of content exclusivity, NBC has fallen again behind the times.

From strictly a design standpoint, I believe NBC missed the boat on this one due to poor information design. The designers of the site payed little attention to the Information Architecture of its content, providing many duplicative (and therefore confusing) navigation paths throughout the site. As I clicked through the site in what I believed was a linear pattern, it turned out the website was constantly jumping me from section to section without a steady anchor as to where I was at any moment (or how to get back to where I came from). Granted, this is not an easy problem due to the complex multi-dimensional nature of the content (which could be possibly navigated by sport, country, athlete, date, etc), but I can’t believe NBC came up with the best solution. I’m sure many people, like me, never got that far on NBCOlympics.com as I was quickly overwhelmed by the site’s Information Overload. And this doesn’t even take into account the video content which surprised me by how many pages I had to go through to play a video after I actually found the one I wanted. Overall I left the site after 10 pages or so of finding nothing I was looking for (and only what NBC’s editorial team was pushing).

Unfortunately this can only be bad for the consumers in the long run, as NBC (and other similar business) will only see this as a proof of a bad market, rather than fixing the root of the problem by meeting that market’s needs.

Online personal finance product, Mint, has redesigned its website based on user testing. According to TechCrunch:

… Mint has been bucket testing various redesign formats with some users and is seeing conversion rates increase by 20% over the current site. … That equals “hundreds of thousands” of more registered users over the course of a year given their current growth rates..

This is a perfect example of the concepts and methods discussed in my last article discussing balancing Business vs. User needs. In this case, Mint not only figured out what its users want, but also measured how those wants would affect their business.