Designing for Flow by Jim Ramsey

Login friction

2008-06-24T22:39:23Z

Signing into a site that you have already registered with should be a smooth experience, but I've recently been frustrated by my own lack of foresight. I have three different email addresses that I use to sign up for various services on the web. I have a Yahoo address that I've had forever, a Gmail address, and my Six Apart address. Unfortunately, I haven't been as careful as I should have been about which address I use to register and I sometimes find myself having to try each of those addresses (and a couple of different passwords) in a frustrating attempt to login to sites that I visit relatively often.

This is a case where the assumption has been made that people know their email address (which is usually a pretty solid assumption), but in my case I've created friction for myself by not using the same email address every time.

It's my own fault, I know, but there is a way that sites can help me with this problem: tell me whether the email address is wrong or just the password is wrong. If the email address that I've entered exists on the system don't just give me the generic "Login is incorrect" message. The error messaging should state either "This email address does not exist on our system" OR "The password you have entered for this email address is incorrect." I know that would make my life a little easier.

Thank God for Google Alerts

2008-05-07T05:23:34Z

I have a Google Alert for the phrase "designing for flow" which, as you might imagine, doesn't get used very often, so when I got an alert about it tonight I was intrigued. The summary of the article that was included in the Google Alert email was very familiar.

For some reason someone called Abbas Gandhi had posted my complete A List Apart article without attribution to a Blogger blog called "My Journey as a Designer." The odd thing is that it's one of only two posts on the blog and the first is just lorem ipsum. I'm actually kinda flattered that out of all the fantastic ALA articles published over the years this person chose to steal mine. I posted a comment calling attention to this fact, so I'm not sure if it will be removed by the time people read this, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Anyway, the moral of the story for all writer/designers is to create Google Alerts for a distinct phrase in each of your articles so you can catch people trying to pass of your writing as their own.

Just to be clear...

2008-01-29T06:03:53Z

"Designing for Flow" doesn't mean creating a challenging user experience. It's simply a recognition that web apps are becoming more and more complex and are helping accomplish tasks that require more time and effort. All sites that seek to help people perform complex tasks are capable of inspiring flow in users.

"Designing for Flow" just allows you to measure your site against four simple rules: does it set clear goals, provide immediate feedback, maximize efficiency and allow for discovery? You can make these assessments on a site-wide level or in reference to a specific task. However, it's not a replacement for proven usability techniques like those found in Don't Make Me Think or Designing Web Usability. "Designing for Flow" is a filter through which to view the design of your website.

David Rakoff on his personal experience with flow

2007-12-06T01:25:12Z

In this episode of This American Life, David Rakoff talks about flow (and gives you the correct pronunciation of "Csikszentmihalyi"). The first act, which is about the World Series of Poker, is also excellent.

A List Apart

2007-12-04T02:41:33Z

My article about designing for flow has been published by A List Apart.

I've been reading ALA for years and I'm really proud to have been published there. Many thanks for everyone at ALA for all their help and guidance.

Feeling the flow

2007-12-03T21:22:15Z

I've been thinking quite a lot lately about flow, the mental state of being completely absorbed in a task, and how that might apply to the design of websites. I'm finding it very interesting so I've decided to devote my blogging efforts on this site to that topic. I'll be adding more about designing for flow very soon.

Where do I login?

2007-10-25T05:23:28Z

If you're familiar with Basecamp or Backpack (both from 37signals), you know that when you sign up you're given a special URL to login to your account. It's usually something like "username.backpackit.com."

Let's say that you haven't used Backpack in a while and you go the homepage and find the login link (which is tiny and easily missed) but when you go to the Backpack login page, instead of a login form, you're given instructions about your login URL.

Personally, I've never liked this system. I don't use Basecamp or Backpack very often and always forget to bookmark my login URL and am always frustrated when I can't login from the login page.

Tonight I was trying out StikiPad and found that they give users a login url, but they also allow you to login right from their homepage.

I'm a big fan of 37signals, but on this point I think StikiPad does it better.

Go Search

2007-10-23T20:14:57Z

I've been using a wiki to do some documentation recently and I suddenly noticed that the search form has two buttons: "Go" and "Search." After a some experimenting, I realized that pressing the "Go" button takes you directly to a page named whatever you typed into the text input (/wiki/test) and pressing the "Search" button searches the wiki for that term. Even if the buttons serve two discreet functions, you have to admit this is hardly intuitive.

Apple's website

2007-10-15T22:00:15Z

I'm kind of an Apple fanboy, but there's this one thing that's been bothering me. Apple redesigned their site a few months ago and and combined their logo, navigation and search into a single gray bar at the top of the page. I like the simplicity, but what drives me nuts is that when I look at the site in Safari, the bar becomes almost invisible to me. It looks so much like the browser chrome in color and size that it just seems to disappear. I really don't get what they were thinking.

An Event Apart

2007-10-08T21:10:04Z

I went to An Event Apart last week here in San Francisco with my fellow Six Aparters Chris Basey and Byrne Reese. Overall, the conference was excellent. The two obvious highlights for me were Jason Santa Maria's "Design Your Way Out of a Paper Bag" and Doug Bowman's "Design for Scale", both of which were informative and inspirational. These guys are two of my biggest web design heroes and it was great to not only see them speak, but also to talk to them for a few minutes at the conference. Jason Santa Maria was very complimentary on the new movabletype.com design.

Erin Kissane's "Content Strategy to the Rescue!" and Jeffrey Zeldman's "Writing the User Interface" were also really interesting and gave us some great ideas.

For shear entertainment value, Jared Spool was hands-down the winner. His presentation, "Why Good Content Must Suck" was really funny, as well as thought-provoking.

This was the first web design conference I've been to and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the presentations and the friendliness of the other attendees.

Why is my home phone so dumb?

2007-09-05T22:46:13Z

We have a cordless phone at home that we don't use very often. Mostly that's because I don't have any numbers programmed into the cordless whereas and I have all my contacts on my iPhone.

So, why hasn't someone made a better cordless phone?

I want a home phone that can sync with the contacts on my Mac via wifi and a small screen with an ipod-style click wheel to navigate -- wouldn't even need a touch screen.

All-Star Game logos

2007-09-05T16:46:09Z

Nice article about the logo for next year's All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium. I loved the logo design for this year's game here at AT&T.

CSS Beauty upgrading to MT4!

2007-08-20T17:14:20Z

I'm glad to see that CSS Beauty is upgrading to Movable Type 4. I'm hoping that they'll include the new movabletype.com site in their gallery :)

Movable Type 4

2007-08-15T23:26:14Z

We released Movable Type 4.0 last night!

I joined the team late into the process of creating this new-and-improved version of the popular blogging platform, so my contribution was small by comparison, but I did design the new movabletype.com website. I'll be posting about some of the details of the design soon.

Nooooooooo!!!!!!

2007-08-15T23:13:56Z

Update: A truly wonderful Genius at the downtown SF Apple Store replaced my iPhone. Hooray!

I was here with the rest of the Movable Type team at the Six Apart offices late last night for the release of MT4 (I'll post about that separately). I was walking back into the conference room where we had our 'war room' set up and I bumped into the table. I didn't think much about it until I realized my iPhone was in my pocket. I took it out and -- horror of horrors -- the glass was cracked. I let out an expletive that can't be repeated here. It was a tough way to end a long day.

I'm hoping that Apple will replace it, but I'm not going to hold my breath.