I have been doing some research into User Experience as well as User Interface for building easy to use websites. Building a site that functions for the basic users as well as advance users is important. You want something that caters to the herd, but also the web developer user type who complains when you add a new link. User Experience and User Interface is very important to me and I plan on posting up some more of these types of articles in the upcoming weeks. I think everyone is a closet designer in some sort (including me!) and finding websites that “just kill it” are a great for inspiration. Remember, Picasso once said, Good artists copy, great artists steal. I complied the top 10 websites which I find have amazing User Experience. (in no particular order)
Digg
I have been an advivd fan since October of 2005. Their designs and implemmtation has been in my mind one of the first dare I say web 2.0 sites. Their main designer, Daniel burka has done an incredible job. I got a chance to meet Daniel at SXSW and got a little estar strucked. He has put down some killer designs as well as layer out an amazing UX (User Expeirnce) not only from digg but also from silver orange, and of course pownce. The usage of javascript on digg is what makes it truley great! As well as the amount of clicks or lack thier of. Even the digg bury comment system is being ripped off!
del.icio.us
Ok so maybe I’m an addict, but its so simple to create an account, add bookmarks, and even tag sites for your friends. Some sites should stick to the basics and that is what del.icio.us is! The user experimce could be improved with a nicer user interface, but that may ruined the experince of bare metal social bookmarking.
Popurls
For this of you who have not checked out this site, go now, its simple, clean, and takes away my active feeds on google reader. Think of morning news, a quick glance at work or on your iPhone in the morning (they have a nice iPhone interface). Basically the user interface is just some RSS feeds on 1 page, but they do have some other in-depth features if you create an account. Although what is so unique and great is that the mouseovers on articles give more meat and detail, but still let me view the titles and quickly view the content. The layout of video screnshots and flickr images is just amazing. More recently I have started to customize this landing page an show more articles. The user experience is just amazing and simple. It’s very had to stay clean and simple, but popurls does and amazing job.
Animoto
I had the prevelge of sitting next to one of the cofounders on my way back to NYC from SXSW. I checked out the site and dam! You put in email, select a bunch of images and in a couple of minutes they email a link with you meet music video. I am very impressive with thier upload system for showing the status as well as which file their uploading in near to real time. The user experince simplifies the problem of uploading a lot of images one by one, massive props to the developer who had to deal with all that javaacript, as well as the video remix code to match the images and music, a great product and experience.
37 signals
Need I say more? For the company that prides themselves on keeping it simple and barebones, they offer a simple user experiene and focus on keeping out features and focusing on what users really need and use the product for.
Apple
The company that always puts design infront of features. (short rant: Although seriously can you guys make an update within the same year you launch a product, WTF, no delete mail from (insert date here) like my crackberry, sorry!) The experince researching and buying a product from your online store is almost compaired to the experince of going to thier Apple stores, simply remarkable (Yes, I know I am a bit of a mac fanboy). You just kill the ease of buying a product online and offer a great design to showcase the products. From their website to their software and even their powercords on macbook’s (gotta love the magsafe!)
Muxtape
This project started out as a User Interface experiment and now offers a great user expeirnce. The site is simple, create an account, upload your favorite 12 songs, done! You can find new music searching and finding other muxtape users and listening to their favorite 12 songs. Simple concept, simple solution, just amazing! They have received a LOT of PR the past month and even recently presented at NY Tech Meetup, which I attended. Hearing Justin Ouellette, the creator, speak about adding your own amazon codes to muxtape so you can make a small cut if people choose to buy your songs/muxtape leagally online is pretty interesting. This website is changing the way we think and can possible allow both finding new music and actually paying for it, very interesting go check it out.
bla.st
Bla.st is a free advertisting newtwork and web directory. The site is actually for sale, funny enough, but the user expeirnce when coming here is very uquine. The human mind can only hand 7 uquinie items at a time, so web designers/developers focus on navigations that limit to 7 top choices. When presenting over 50+ we various blogs/websites on a page that people can mentally handle is hard. Some how this site offers not only a simple image referencing each site, but also add a little bit of Ajax to do some mouseover tooltips that give some information and an enlarged image, is just a great user experience. Another site that is similar in style, but for design inspiration is cssremix. CSSRemix seems to be having some server issues, but be sure to google it and check out the cache page. Bla.st is also unqiue in offering a variety of viewing options so for those geeks who want to view 100+ directories on their 30in Apple display they can, as well as the older generation who do NOT want to grab their glasses, they can switch to large images.
Twitter offers an amazing User Experience. If you are into mircroblogging, keeping track of what your friends are doing, and/or just want to join the converstation, check it out! Twitter is something that I have been trying to use much more (follow @jmurch) since SXSW. I have recently “upgraded” my iPhone to jailbreak and starting to check my twitter even more. I am using Twinkle which combines Twitter with geolocation, so now you can see where I am at while I am twitter. This is very intersting if you have lots of friends in a small area, like college? Think about the fact that you could be at a lame bar, and your friend tweets something and you notice their a couple of blocks away where its happening, you can just go over there. Okay, maybe this is a bit more of an extreme case, but I know for SXSW twitter worked great! (while it was up!)
The King? Seriously the fact that they count how many characters are on thier home page is deserving of a write up. They do many focus groups and are able to keep the look, feel, and brand the same across so many microsites. Ftom the beginning of search without those crazy flashing ads to keeping it simple while showing images, maps, and web links to help find that answer to what you are seachong
You made reading Rss, email so enjoyable and even offer quickkeys for us mouse haters. Google calendar is an experimce online that everyone needs. When calendars were all the rage and 30boxes was the shit google dropped the bomb and build a simple, elegant, and so east my mom uses it, the fact that I can share calendars, make public, and now show off my callendar so others can make plans, genus. I rember coding my own caledwr and wanting to create these features but college woe was keeping me busy.
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Good site and good article.