Massive Amount of Scrolling
My wife started an M.I.A. station for me this evening on Slacker Radio. She began browsing Google photos while listening to Paper Planes, and happened to stumbled across Shawn Mortensen’s photography site. The photos were so incredibly cool that I hardly noticed that my wife was side-scrolling through an enormous portfolio. The experience was similar to that of reading a picture book without a cohesive story.
Afterwords, she moved on to her neck of the blogosphere, checking out Dooce and Craftzine. I noticed the similarities to the massive amount of scrolling it required to move through Shawn Mortensen’s site — except this time, she simply flicked her mouse wheel. This enabled her to move through a more complex story much faster, without any mouse or keyboard clicking, or any decisions other than scrolling.
Looking at the simplicity of these two scrolling sites, I wonder why we have landed so concretely on a set of prescribed paths to experience the web. Why not scroll along a path of interest through Wikipedia instead of clicking on a specific keyword? Do we really need to take the word “page” so literally as to treat each web page as though it belonged in a book? Or are we beginning to explore a whole new path of knowledge building?
The Freedom to Work
Over the course of my days I have encountered numerous requirements: The requirement to eat, the requirement to look both ways, and so forth. It would stand to reason that many more requirements are found in the World of Business: The requirement to pay, the requirement to deliver, etc. And then you have the job requirements, from nine to five, with a half hour lunch break, preferably wearing business casual.
Those are the requirements, which are essential for things to work, but what about the freedom to work? When I first asked myself this question I couldn’t imagine what it meant. Freedom and work practically seem antithetical. But then I remembered where some of my best work was done: Everywhere! Anytime! Oftentimes, at 1 in the morning when I’m suddenly drawn to work until well past my bedtime.
The freedom to work is simply the ability to do what is required however you see fit. When you have one day to finish developing a mountain of code, head to the mountains and crank up some Skynard. Or, grab your whole department and hang out at the park in order to road map all of the new customer requirements. It doesn’t matter how you do it. What matters most is that you get the job done on time.
What do you feel about the freedom to work?
Silverwave: Silverlight for Google Wave
The recent launch of Google Wave has got me thinking about a new set of Controls for Microsoft Silverlight. Each of the new Controls would enable designers and developers to connect with the different components inside Wave. This would bring together two of the latest innovations to the User Experience on the Social Web: the revolutionary interpretation of how we communicate with Google Wave and the next generation of User Interface Design with Microsoft Silverlight.
My hopes are that, 1.) Such a project be released into the open source domain, preferely by one of the many excellent Silverlight development companies who currently have open source Controls publically available, 2.) The project be names Silverwave, and 3.) An additional Theme in the download which transforms the Interface into Liquid Metal — known, as course, as the Silverwave theme. A liqud metal version of the Google Wave logo would be cool but not entirely necessary.
(This is, of course, merely a concept. As an Experience Designer I can attest to the simplicity of Microsoft Silverlight and would rejoyce a marriage with Google Wave. Being that Wave is due to be released later this year on Google Code as an open source download, I believe this would be an excellent opportunity to couple the adoption rate of both these technologies, while showing two of the biggest competitors on the web what can be accomplished through the power of collaboration!)
