Desire paths and routes to data

Desire paths are the worn tracks you sometimes see, cutting across a patch of grass, or through a hedge, where people frequently take a shortcut, rather than the designated path.

In terms of design and usability, perhaps we could begin to think about this when we create websites and applications. If we learn from what users actually do, we can aim to create better paths to data and information, and thus a better user experience.

Desire paths in Oslo, Norway

Topic Tweet

So, after having a quick play with Adobe catalyst this morning, I thought I’d create something a bit cooler.

In summary, I quickly designed an interface for the application in Illustrator, imported the resulting AI files into Catalyst and then created the buttons, scroll panels and data item definitions. I then took the resulting FXP file (saved by Catalyst) and imported this into Flash Builder to add the data connections so that I could pull real data into the application! The purpose of the application is to allow a user to type in a topic e.g. Flash, interfaces, etc. and then search twitter to find ‘tweets’ about this topic.

This application is not finished by any stretch of the imagination, but I created it in about 20 minutes…something which would have been difficult to do without Adobe Catalyst & Flex Builder. All in all, I had to write about 20 lines of code to get this working.

The application is available here and I could create a desktop application using AIR straight away, but maybe I’ll do that when this thing has more features!

The purpose of this post is to demonstrate just how quick it can be to create prototypes of applications!

More on Adobe Flex Catalyst

After playing with a design I created for an Interfaces website (which in eventuality we decided not to deploy for fear of having too many websites! ), I simply imported the Adobe Illustrator file into Adobe Flex Catalyst and created a simple ‘website’ in less than 5 minutes with transition effects and everything.

You can see it here.

Also, I exported an AIR application from it as well, and this can be installed and run from your machine, whether it be Linux, Mac or Windows.

You can download it here.

I will be demonstrating the rapid prototyping capabilities of this software really soon, with a slightly more complex application, perhaps based on a current service at the EBI to show you what this stuff can do! The software is a bit buggy and I’ve had a few complications, but I can’t wait for the full version to get released!

Eamonn

Review: the Scientific American homepage

During her talk at the EBI, Sue Keogh included a slide with a screen grab of the homepage from the Scientific American website, and told us that the content is well-presented, and is helped by good design.

But there are lots of links on that page… lots of options. Why does it work, when other similar pages fail? Here a few pointers…

Thanks to Mark Bingley for double-checking this review.

Scientific American homepage – the good bits

http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Adobe @ Devoxx

General
So, adobe were at the Devoxx 2009 conference presenting a number of their new tools and giving an brief overview of future releases. A number of interesting things came out of the talk, some of which I was aware of, others of which I was not.

Devoxx ‘09 – http://www.devoxx.com/

Hi all,

I’m at Devoxx in Antwerp this week and there will be a few talks on rich application development from people like Romain Guy & Chet Haase. They are really the guru’s in the world of user interface development both for Swing & JavaFX (in the Java world) as well as Android (google’s mobile phone OS). I’ll be blogging on their and other related presentations here!

Eamonn

Talk: Dec 10th – Redesigning BioMart

Dado Marcora has been working hard over the last few months to redesign the user interface of BioMart.

He will give a talk, explaining the decisions he has made, and what impact they will have on improving the BioMart user experience.

WHERE: Courtyard Room, EBI
WHEN: Thursday, Dec 10, 14h00

Round-up of “Seven Steps to Writing Web Copy”

Many thanks to Sue Keogh for coming down to the EBI, and giving us an intersting and insightful talk about writing great text for websites. Thanks, too, to everyone who attended. Sorry that so many of you had to stand!

Sue’s presentation will be made available as soon as possible is now available below, but Jenny and I thought we could usefully add in some extra notes and links to reading material, to follow up from her talk, and so that you can find out a bit more.

(This talk was given on Nov 11, 2009)

Cambridge Geek Day – cancelled

Unfortunately, the Cambridge Geek Day that I mentioned recently has been cancelled. Well, “postponed until 2010″, which is as good as being cancelled!

EMBL EBI now has a user experience analyst

Given the interests of this group, I thought that you all might like to know about one the EMBL EBI’s newest members of staff – Jenny Cham, user experience analyst.

Jenny’s role is to gather and analyse information from service users and software developers to improve the style and structure of tools and databases on the web.