Matt from 37Signals details what JetBlue did right and what they did wrong during last week’s airport delay fiasco. It’s an interesting look at how all the pieces of an experience (web, phone, face-to-face) work, rely on each other, and sometimes fail
spectacularly.
technorati tags:jetblue, userexperience
Larry from work pointed out DENIM, a tool for early stages prototyping. This tool looks like it has a lot of potential for those initial "sit and sketch ideas" sessions that start off every project and are often the most difficult to capture. ("Does anyone have a camera to take a picture of this whiteboard filled with our ideas?")
technorati tags:denim, rapidprototyping, design
Pipes is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.
Yahoo! Pipes, is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive web applications I’ve seen thus far. In a few minutes, you can mash up very distinct data points, run them through several filters based on user input, and get back results, all while using one of the most supportive web interfaces I’ve seen. Yahoo! has really done something here.
I am curious to know why there’s no IE support as it may be limiting to a wider auidience, but I bet Pipes’ target audience &ndash people like us – are going to skew Mozilla- and Safari-heavy anyway.
Definitely take the time to check out Pipes, if only for the interface. It’s easily the closest a web application has gotten to a desktop application that I’ve seen. Everything is there, from the bendy pipes joining objects together, to context-based tooltips, and really nice uses of alpha transparency. The interface really shows the power of drag and drop as a metaphor for interacting with modular applications: in cases like this, drag and drop is not just a gimmick but a powerful way to interact with objects on the screen.
Yahoo! has certainly created a delightful experience, one in which you can walk in a novice and become advanced in a matter of minutes. Spectacular job.
I try to stay away from Flash altogether, but when I need to integrate it in the future, I’ll be using SWFObject.
