Lots of back and forth in the comments on how regular folks don’t use the address bar like they’re “supposed” to — money quote from the comments –

I don’t think us web geeks have any idea of the heinous crimes that the average user is committing out there.

Design seemed to figure directly into business results. Here’s a short money quote –

The productivity gains from polishing the user experience are well worth the cost of going beyond the first design that comes to mind.

Methodologie is an incredible brand design firm with a great specialty in Corporate Social Responsibility communication and Annual Report design.

I get to work with an award winning interactive team and am looking forward to a great 2008.

Also to note — I’ll probably be posting less on elearning specific topics (when I post right :) — will be moving more toward the identity of the blog becoming “Bryan Zug’s Flat Hatter Collaborative”.

Just found out that the guy who made it, Michael Wesch, will be discussing the video at the Web 2.0 Expo today today at 4:00 pm.

It all takes place at the Web2Open gathering that is an unconference running in parallel (and in conjunction) with the main conference.

This is the kind of loosely coupled teaching/training that is going to take us into the next “age”.

He really helped me get my head around some of the foundations of designing these next generation online social experiences.

Highlights quotes were:

• “Social apps is the world that IM has made”
• “I am made greater by the sum of my connections, and so are my connections”
• “I give up personal productivity for network productivity. I sacrifice for the group.”
• “Fashionista recommendation is a different UI than a feature lookup (size, color, etc)”
• “What happens when the money gets serious? Well, what happened to the blogs? TechCrunch is no longer a blog per-se, it is a media property.”
• “Reputation is fragile both online and offline. Squander your rep and CBS may fire you.”
• “I often play psychologist for social apps. I set them on the couch and ask about their childhood.”
• “Find people who tag items the same way you do and you will find a social group based on shared ways of thinking and speaking.”
• “To understand social apps, you have to be in the flow, not outside. You can’t get it unless you are using them and you can’t explain it to people — you’ve got to do it. You can’t learn Karate by thinking about it”

Took notes in MindManger — here’s the .PDF or the .MMAP files.

If you are here for the conference, shoot me a note or twitter me (bryanzug) and let’s hang out.

Am looking forward to Stowe Boyd’s 3 hour workshop this AM on ‘Building Social Applications‘. I hear he know his $#!7.

Also — the first Ignite session outside of Seattle is happening tonight at the Expo. Brady has put together an excellent lineup — including Justin.tv — should be interesting.

Best quote –

“What if you could engage users in a story for about half the time, yet have them remember about 34 percent more of the content?”

Visit the article for cool screenshots of the noted before and after design. Main takeaways are that retention increased with a redesign that emphasized –

• Increased white space
• Concise main idea
• Removal of unnecessary images
• Shortened lines of text
• An added graphic for each restaurant ranking