Visual Browsing with Google Maps

I often daydream by looking at maps, wondering what places look like up close, what it would be like to visit. Web search has existed primarily as a textual experience since my first use of it in 1994 at MSU. I remember using Netscape and a MAC in a computer lab at MSU to search the Ultimate Band List. The web has increasingly become more visual. But search has remained a textual experience. Meaning to find content, the user must type text in a box to receive a textual results set.

William Gibson in his 1984 Novel Neuromancer envisioned a sea of icons and symbols, and 3-d images in cyberspace for hacker cowboys to sift through and interface with. Bobby or Count Zero in the sequel to Neuromancer is barely literate, but he can interpret the hieroglyphs in the net with ease.

Google Maps new feature where the user can view images and Wikipedia entries is a step towards a visual user experience of the web, rather than a textual one. This move, for better or worse, I think represents more closely how the brain works. I think the human brain works closely with a combination of images and places more so than it associates text to results. As most of the user tests indicate that users type very broad search terms to begin with, and then narrow down their search terms as they progress towards a final result set, I think this hypothesis makes sense. If a user had a visual map of the subject of their search, they might be able to find content that is more meaningful with greater ease.

Another good example is the Web MD symptom checker. However it is pretty limited in it’s functionality. Imagine merely opening your browser and using a human body to click on where it hurts, and then narrowing your search based on the visual representation of the anatomical area? In light of my recent injury, searching for the name of the tendon that hurt was painfully awkward. It might have been easier to simply visually navigate to the area that hurt and then narrow down from there. Granted there is no real panacea against text searches, as we are linguistic animals as well as visual ones. But a combination of the two would certainly allow the internet to service varying levels of literacy and search behavior.

As to the functionality itself? I was searching for Grand Island in Lake Superior and found the more tab. I clicked and then watched all of the little icons appear on the map. It’s a good user experience. Wikipedia is obviously a mixed blessing as anyone knows. Whatever users create for that entry is what’s listed for better or worse. The Wikipedia articles open in window and can be easily dismissed. The google image results are from Panoramio. My only head scratcher is wondering if these are the the most relevant, most visited, or specially selected by Google to appear for that location?

I am a huge proponent of literacy, but also a big proponent of usability. Not everyone’s brain works the same way, and the internet should service everyone. Hopefully this tangential development is part of a larger area in Google’s future for vertical and blended search. My other hope is that a non-commercial version of this remains intact with the ability to toggle ads on and off. Despite my occupation, I would hate to see weekend cottage rental advertisements littering a search for information about an island. Context is very, very important.

My favorite part so far is watching the map become sparser and sparser for information as you scroll very far north, or very far south.

Enjoy!

tags: Count Zero   Google   Google Maps   Neuromancer   Search   Search and Literacy   Search Behavior   SEM   SEO   User Experience  

XML Sitemap Generator for Google Webmaster Tools

I found this site XML Sitemaps for Generating XML sitemaps for Google Webmaster Tools.

The tool is free if you are trying to index a site that has less than 500 pages of content. There is a paid version of the tool for sites with more than 500 pages. The options are fairly clear and I think the XML looks pretty simple. This seems to be a good option for either the lazy or the XML inept.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes. It would seem that for folks who are trying to get some very basic SEO in place an auto-generated Sitemap is not a bad idea. As the search engine will spider the xml sitemap and index it your basic search relevance and ranking is more likely to be elevated.

I’ve just entered mine and will see how it progresses. I may have to replace it in a while after I’ve added more content.

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It doesn’t happen very often, but I thought I might like to write about a good Flash experience lest I be labeled a Luddite. Derrick Mayoleth’s blog listed this LA Times Article.

This flash piece despite the fact that it does pretty much take over the whole content area is visually impressive enough to make it worth your while. But it isn’t just aesthetics or subject matter that makes it appealing.

Size

The size of the element is big enough that it causes a scroll on the screen. No big deal the fold as we know is dead anyway. But this element still works because of the way it is embedded. The page is already scrolling due to the large amount of navigation and the content on the page. The Altered Oceans element also has no hard borders and breaks on the edges to hide . The element also h

Prevalence and Balance

This flash piece also has prevalence, meaning everything has weight and balance. The large image of the sewer pipe draws your eye and the header element to its right clearly explains what you are looking at and why. The overall header while somewhat muted in black is styled differently but appropriately to let you know the overall title of the piece. The white text to the right explains exactly how many pieces are in the expose and who wrote and photographed it. The call to action area with the message board is present, but not loud.

The sections are laid out in a logical fashion and have good imagery and clear readable text. The highlighted section, “part one” is faded out to indicate which section you are currently looking at.

Navigation

The navigation is very straightforward. There are no hidden options or surprises. There is an absolute minimum on iconagraphy. What little symbols are used are accommodated by sensible text such as “Read Story”, or “view”.

Small Problems

The flashing numbers area is the only area where I might have done something different. The stats that flash across have a short delay, and every time I looked it seemed like they were fading out to the next stat. Slightly aggravating. It would also have been a good idea to tie these into an article and make them clickable.

The video player not being integrated into the main element seemed to take a long time to load and then had a lot of flourish with little delivery. Also the video controls did not have standard elements such as a volume control. As a more advanced user, I can use my system volume but why make me do that? Put in a volume control on your flash player.

If it was me I would rethink how to incorporate the video player into the main element, rather than navigating to a second window. But the videos were well worth watching once I was in them. Also they had a really cool feature where you could use a slider bar to increase or decrease the size of the video on the fly. A+ for that, but the time would have been better spent on a volume control.

Good Execution on a Simple Design

Most of the time when I see Flash I see it used poorly for no effect. Here it actually made for a good user experience and made me want to read the articles and see the content, instead of inhibiting my ability to do so with non-standard controls, and poor performance.

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I’ve had these on a hard drive for ages, and they are a bunch of what I think of as great photos of the family and our honeymoon trip to Ireland.

Enjoy

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Ok, my work life has been interfering with my enjoyment of web sites for some time. I may have to step onto the pulpit here to proclaim the importance of usability on the web.

My daily work consists of working on corporate consumer sites, designing usable interfaces for the web. In this work I look at a lot of web sites and I have a mental list of quite a few that really irk me. But nothing irks me more than when I am interested in a product, a product I may purchase I might add, and then I am presented with a user experience that is so poor that my desire for the product is totally killed.

Crumpler Bags is just such a site and a product. I was reviewing one of my favorite blogs, Commutebybike.com and found a cool image of the Crumpler hard laptop case. Wow! Cool product. So I go to the web site. Low and behold, it is possibly the worst consumer product web site I have ever seen. That is a stretch, there are worse. But it is pretty bad. Let me give you a few reasons why.

• Navigation

  All Flash sites can be done well, or poorly. Typically the failing is in how the information is laid out, (or the information architecture), and how the navigation is handled. On the crumpler site when I finally receive the home page after watching their none too clever flash loader, I receive their home page. The home page has no text navigation present on the page by default. The user has to roll over each item to reveal its meaning. Clever, but pointless some text above or below each item to indicate to the user what each item is would instantly allow the user to see what they wanted to click on. All of the navigation is non-standard and tells no story the user is familiar with when the page finally loads.
  User’s don’t care about your clever artists, they want your information. If they don’t find it, they will go somewhere else, so why make them guess.

• Annoying Music

  This is more of a pet peeve than a usability issue, but why would you put annoying/blaring music on your site by choice in 2007? Why…. And then to make it worse, the shutoff for the music was the music symbol in the lower left. Why not make the music off by default and if the user happens to find your icon they can turn it off and on at will, rather than coming to a page with annoying music that is controlled by non-standard navigation that is not labeled.

• The diarrhea button

  I have a sense of humor, the diarrhea button was pretty sweet. However the chain pull where you have to click and drag to clear the poop from the screen was a drag, it took me a while to find it and know what it was for. Maybe a little text to explain it would help? More non-standard controls that interfere with finding information, no matter how much it appeals to my juvenile sense of humor still makes a poor impression.

• The shopping experience

  I finally find the computer bags link on the bottom and go to the shopping experience. All of the products are listed in a scroll bar frame at the top. Not great, in terms of being able to see all of the offerings at once on one page that scrolls, (yes user’s scroll), but it’s ok. The computer bag is selected on the page, I do have some clear default options that are labeled. If all I wanted to do was go with the default option and click to add the item to the cart I would be fine. But let’s say for now I wanted to look at the tech specs first. The tech specs display below the product area, and are displayed on a color background that is hard to read, not organized very well. As red/green color blindness is the most common amongst men, 7% of most adult male populations, why, oh why would you do this?....

  Let’s say after not being able to understand the nav, or shut off the music, or clear the diarrhea from the screen you chose to purchase this computer bag. Once on this screen, I have a page where I am being asked to make a purchase decision on a colorful product, with no picture of the product. I have to select the product with the tiny drop down box, with no color sample from a color abbreviation name. So let’s say I can’t remember what color red/dk red is, how do I go back and look at the color on the last page? Oh sh#t I can’t. This page has no navigation to go back to the previous page to look at the color selection. So I hit my back button to look at the color selections. Now I’m pretty sure I like red/dk red, so now I am going to go back to the cart, oh sh#t how do I get back to the cart? Hmm there is no navigation to do that. I can either click add to cart, or use the forward button in my browser. I’m pretty savvy, I hit the forward button. Oh terrific, it adds another bag to my cart, now I have to remove the second item from my cart.

  Guess what, no I don’t! I’m leaving the site and buying another Chrome Messenger Bag product because their site kicks ass.

  User testing and thinking about how someone will actually use the web site you make will sell your products.

  You can still have your diarrhea button, but you gotta get the basics down first.

  Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

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My photo galleries are available here:

Picasa Web Galleries

I’ve found picasa to be one of the better web galleries out there. The usability on the application is really excellent. They also don’t have the silly bandwidth limitations that Flickr does. I also like the google mapping feature that accompanies each gallery.

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