The team at WebVisions released audio from my Web Application Page Hierarchy talk at this year’s conference. In it I discussed how we use the Web and why understanding how we make sense of what we see allows us to create Web applications that communicate what they do, how to use them, and why people should care to try.

Audio from the talk:
Web Application Page Hierarchy (12.1 MB MP3)

Slides from the talk:
Web Application Page Hierarchy (4.2 MB PDF)

The introduction includes some basic gestalt theory (which may be a review for some people) while the bulk of the talk walks through numerous before and after designs, redesign processes, and more to highlight how the principles behind visual communication (that govern how we see and therefore use the Web) can be used to effectively convey messages, outline actions, organize information, and structure data.

From the official description
When a potential customer makes it to one of your Web application’s pages, what will they do? Do you want them to sign up, contribute their knowledge, make a purchase, dive deeper into your content? Clearly, these are decisions you don’t want to leave up to chance.

In this session, Luke will outline the way people naturally scan Web pages and explain how you can guide users through key content and actions using visual hierarchy to construct meaningful, prioritized page layouts. You’ll be taken through several before and after examples with explanations of how a page’s content was prioritized, why, and how that priority is being communicated to users so they don’t need to rely on chance to use your Web application.

Tags: webvisions07, visual communication, visual design, Web applications, form|function

a real-time game based on oceanic exploration & shark research. online players take on the role of marine biologists who seek to learn as much as possible about sharks through advanced observation techniques. in the Shark Runners game, players control their ships, but the sharks are controlled by real-world white sharks with GPS units attached to their fins. real-world telemetry data provides the position & movement of actual great white sharks in the game, so every shark that players encounter corresponds to a real shark in the real world. ships in the game also move in real-time, so players receive email or SMS alerts during the day when their boat is within range of an encounter.

[link: areacodeinc.com & discovery.com|also at oreilly.com]

a huge collection of data visualizations aiming to explore Major League Baseball teams’ game scores going all the way back to 1814. scores from baseball games are “bivariate data”, with each variate being one team’s score. the distribution of baseball scores can be viewed from a bivariate point of view, & then be filtered by other attributes such as day of the week, day/night, month, starting pitcher & so on.

can anyone spot any interesting patterns apparent from these diagrams for the non-experts between us?

[link: vanderbilt.edu & baseballplot.blogspot.com}thnkx Jeff!]

a website dedicated to presenting the hygiene scores of San Fransisco restaurants, as determined by official hygiene inspections performed by regional health departments. scores are represented by minimalistic sparklines & line charts & simple color coding.

[link: cleanscores.com|thnkx Nick]

a dynamic visualization of an email inbox, based on the metaphor of microbes. all emails are categorized in 6 person groups: family and friends, school, job, e-commerce, unclassified, & spam.

an animal conveys the condition of an email message: the age of an email is shown by the size & opacity of the animal. the status of an email (i.e. unread, read, responded) is shown by the number of hair/feet & velocity. users can select messages & group them by different attributes, such as sender, status or time.

[link: carohorn.de & carohorn.de (mov)]

see also email thread & email mountain.

In today’s SpoolCast, I had the opportunity to speak with Gerry McGovern. Gerry is a widely-acclaimed speaker author and consultant on the topic of web content.

UIEtips 7/31/07: Common Pitfalls of Social Web Applications, Part II
This week, UIE turns 19 years old. Over the years, we’ve seen technology come and go, features grow and shrink, and interaction styles dramatically change.
What used to be just a person interacting with a screen has become something more — people interacting with other people, […]

Why bother with a dozen roses when you can send your true love a dozen gooey, still-warm-from-the oven cookies? Customers in the Minneapolis area may be asking just that once they discover Tank Goodness—a micro-bakery run by a husband-and-wife team right out of their own kitchen. Having earned a reputation for almost always showing up with a plateful of cookies when visiting friends, family and neighbors, Anne and Dennis Tank decided to take a gamble on the cookie business—and they seem to be playing their hand quite well.

While the concept is not entirely new, Tank Goodness earns marks for exceptional execution and branding. Their signature oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are made from the finest ingredients, including fresh organic eggs, Ghirardelli chocolate chips, premium all-natural flour and butter from a local creamery. For USD 20, customers can order a dozen scrumptious treats to be delivered via the Tank Goodness Mini Cooper to a home or business in Minneapolis—surely a welcome indulgence at meetings, parties, or to lift the spirits of someone having a bad day.

Customers can place orders by phone or fax on weekdays between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., and Tank Goodness will make every effort to deliver within one hour. Of course, this obviously limits the geographical area the business can serve—but leaves lots of room for fellow bakers to launch similar ventures in their own regions. The “city wide cookie empire” is sticking with its signature cookies for now, but may expand its offerings in the future. Since Tank Goodness already has the branding and recipes down, maybe they’ll consider a franchise. And are micro-bakeries the new micro-breweries? We’ve been spotting a lot of them recently. Related: Campus cookie calls, Chichi cupcake delivery and Pop-up bakery.

Website: www.tankgoodness.com
Contact: info@tankgoodness.com

Spotted by: Anne Rogan