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Five Myths of RIA UsabilityLaurie Gray, Senior Consultant, OneSpring

March 18, 2008

3© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

2008: The State of the Web

• “People have no idea where they are, how to get to where they want

to be, or even what their options for travel might be…You might assume

that designers would be putting high effort into ensuring that their users

were given every possible cue as to form and function, but nothing could

be further from the truth. Instead, designers are creating invisible

buttons, checkboxes that look like radio buttons, jumps across the world

that are indistinguishable in appearance, but not behavior, from a jump

two paragraphs down the page…”

4© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

2008: The State of the Web

• “People have no idea where they are, how to get to where they want

to be, or even what their options for travel might be…You might assume

that designers would be putting high effort into ensuring that their users

were given every possible cue as to form and function, but nothing could

be further from the truth. Instead, designers are creating invisible

buttons, checkboxes that look like radio buttons, jumps across the world

that are indistinguishable in appearance, but not behavior, from a jump

two paragraphs down the page…”

• Bruce Tognazzini, Ask Tog

• October, 1998

5© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

RIA’s:

• Software

• Above the level of the operating system

• Universally available

• Any computer, any context.

• Run them in the web browser, desktop, or mobile devices

• Powerful user interfaces

• Work or play in ways that are familiar, intuitive, and exciting

• Leverage the best of the web, without sacrificing the power of the

desktop

• Tony MacDonnell

• Inside RIA

• http://www.insideria.com/2008/01/the-ria-elevator-speech.html

6© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Who are the RIA Players?

• AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)

7© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Who are the RIA Players?

• FLEX (Adobe)

8© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Who are the RIA Players?

• AIR (Adobe)

9© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Who are the RIA Players?

• Silverlight (Microsoft)

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Who are the RIA Players?

• Others:

• Java (Applets, JavaFX)

• Open Source: Laszlo

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #5

• RIA’s provide the perfect vehicle for sexy,

splashy sites

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #5

• RIA’s provide the perfect vehicle for sexy,

splashy sites

RIA’s are amazing tools for complex, transactional, data driven web sites.

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #5

• RIA’s provide the perfect vehicle for sexy,

splashy sites

RIA’s are amazing tools for complex, transactional, data driven web sites.

Data Visualization:

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #5

• RIA’s provide the perfect vehicle for sexy,

splashy sites

RIA’s are amazing tools for complex, transactional, data driven web sites.

Data Views:

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #5

• RIA’s provide the perfect vehicle for sexy,

splashy sites

RIA’s are amazing tools for complex, transactional, data driven web sites.

Of course, they do turn out the sexy, splashy, and fun sites, too:•Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer•Academy Awards Website•VW Finder (UK)•Google Maps

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

• “RIA’s bring people-centered design to

information workspaces.” Forrester, 2007

Myths: Myth #4

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

• “RIA’s bring people-centered design to

information workspaces.” Forrester, 2007

Myths: Myth #4

“I will say that most, if not all of your users will have no idea

whether your app was built in Flex, Silverlight, or AJAX, or

event [sic] know what those words mean. They will have an

experience with your application, and if its a bad experience,

regardless of how great the technology is, they won't come

back.”

Peter Baird, UX Consultant, Adobe, May 03, 2007

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #3

• If you’ve designed web sites, you can design RIA’s

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #3

• If you’ve designed web sites, you can design RIA’s

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #2

• It’s just like our software! Of course our users will understand

it!

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #2

• It’s just like our software! Of course our users will understand

it!

Is it software?

Is it the Web?

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #1

• Because of their very nature, RIA’s provide a better User

Experience than traditional HTML sites.

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #1

• Because of their very nature, RIA’s provide a better User

Experience than traditional HTML sites.

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #1

• Because of their very nature, RIA’s provide a better User

Experience than traditional HTML sites.

25

© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #1

• Because of their very nature, RIA’s provide a better User

Experience than traditional HTML sites.

26

© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #1

• Because of their very nature, RIA’s provide a better User

Experience than traditional HTML sites.

27

© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Myths: Myth #1

• Because of their very nature, RIA’s provide a better User

Experience than traditional HTML sites.

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Call to Action

• Read, read, read!

• Experiment

• Assist your development team

• Collaborate and move toward standardization

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

Resource List

• Slide 3: http://www.asktog.com/columns/015WebDesignRant.html

• Slide 4: http://www.insideria.com/2008/01/the-ria-elevator-speech

• Slide 6: http://maps.google.com

• Slide 7: http://sproutbuilder.com/

• Slide 8: The AIR Ebay Desktop

• Slide 9: http://sl.weatherbug.com/?zip=30328

• Slide 13: http://www.mpggenie.com/Mpg-Genie.cfm

• Slide 14: http://www.sensorpro.net/flexicharts/dashboardMain.html

• Slide 16: http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/pdfs/Forrester_RRogowski_BusCase_for_RIAs3_07.pdf

• Slide 17: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mc/archives/experience_design/index.cfm

• Slide 19:http://idea2reality.net

• Slide 21: Phoenix Image Editor, http://a.viary.com

• Slide 23: http://www.zapatec.com/website/main/products/slider/demo.jsp - slider.html

• Slide 24: http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/slider/demo.html

• Slide 25: http://blog.flexexamples.com/2007/11/03/toggling-a-flex-slider-controls-tickinterval-property/

• Slide 26: http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=780

• Other good stuff:

– InsideRIA

– Ryan Stewart

– Jesse Warden

–Adobe Labs

–Adobe Flex

–Silverlight developer’s site

–Mozilla/AJAX developer center

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© 2008 OneSpring LLC. All rights reserved.

• Questions?