Informational Geometry

This Sunday the New York Times reported that growth in online retail is slowing. They cited the usual vague business analysis of why ecommerce is expected to slow, while overlooking obvious design and user experience reasons as to why this is happening. Read the article: Online Sales Loose Steam I would argue that the user experience of shopping online is stale and outdated. Most online store 'templates' are much smaller than they need to be. They look as if they we're designed 7 years ago and never updated to be targeted for newer, larger monitors. Many top ecommerce sites really don't take advantage of todays high speed, broadband, connectivity in their UI. For example, today we have the ability to offer consumers HD (high definition) photos of products, but we don't. In fact, I'm sure retailers already have HD product photos for use in print catalogs, so why can't they leave them in high resolution when they put them online? And ther...

On Thursday May 24th I got to go to the facebook.com developer conference, f8 where facebook announced some major new features. Now anyone can develop an 'Application' and share it with the entire facebook network. These apps can be anything! Best of all, facebook will let you build a store, or use advertising to generate revenue through your app. I designed a game for Prosper.com called Fantasy Banker. Go ahead, play amongst your friends. Facebook has over 25 million users and expects that number to double in the next year. They rival google in web traffic, and they capture a young, internet savvy audience. I think they are successful because they have a truly personalized interface (that works, basically because it puts together and displays tons of dynamic, contextual, user information). The personalization creates a voyeuristic quality, and a wonderful user experience in facebook. I really enjoyed f8. I actually got interviewed! Thank you Prosper for letting me des...