For the May NoVA UX meetup, Microsoft Dev Evangelist Andrew Duthie gave the group a presentation on the design thinking behind Windows 8. He described three influences–Bauhaus design, Swiss typography, and motion cinematography–and five design principles that guided the team:

• Do more with less
• Pride in craftmanship
• Be fast and fluid
• Be authentically digital
• Win as one

For more details about each, check out Andrew’s presentation.

Next, applied psychologist and human factors engineer Bill Killam talked about how user perception and various kinds of cognitive biases can affect usability testing. Here’s an example from his talk:

“You are shown a picture of a person running for office
and asked if you think they will win. There are far to
many variables for you to make a good prediction, so the
task is too hard for us to work out consciously.
As a result, our unconscious substitutes the hard
question for an easier one – does the person look like a
person who will win? Our unconscious provides an
answer to that new question, but our conscious self
reports it as the answer to the first question without
realizing the substitution.”

Read about other perception problems, biases you never knew you had, and how to apply testing techniques to overcome them in Bill’s presentation.

Next month’s meetup will be the first birthday for NoVA UX. Stay tuned for details about the festivities!

What does “mobile” actually mean?

On the go?
A small screen?
A touch screen?
Handheld?

Unfortunately, the term “mobile” is used to describe many different things.

So how do we design for something so vague?
How do we know whether or not we should even try?

Rather than jump on a particular “mobile design” bandwagon, it’s more important than ever for us to cast aside the generic cure-all solutions, and instead embrace each product as its own unique design problem. This is precisely what User Experience (UX) professionals do best, and there are many proven UX methods that are ready to help us navigate these new, nuanced problems.

Let’s take it one principle at a time…

1. We aren’t our users, so we need to research.

We could listen to our gut, throw darts at a wall, or just start with the problems that we’d most like to solve, but I recommend UX research. UX research aligns teams, removes fear, and improves chances of success.

Talk to your target audience (either in person or using free surveys). Ask them what they do now. Ask them why. Listen. Ask follow-up questions. Give them something to use. Watch them use it. Review analytics. Take lots of notes. Review your notes. Ignore one-off requests. Focus on underlying patterns.

UX research has always been about studying user contexts and mental models. These design considerations must now include screen sizes, input methods, physical contexts, attention levels, and more. With a little bit of research, you might find that you only need to design for a couple mobile devices––or none at all.

(Bonus: Download this free tracking tool) 

2. We have limited resources, so we need to prioritize.

If you haven’t yet faced the cold hard truth, let’s face it now together: we cannot design for every user in every situation. Time and resources are limited. We can’t solve for every device in every context. We need to choose our battles. Make a list of the most likely use cases. Rank them by scope and impact. Separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves. Decide if enough users are even trying to use your product on a new device.

By throwing out less common use cases, we open up opportunities to better serve our primary ones. If we have to design an app for a smartphone, this fact is amplified; there’s only so much room on the screen, space on the hard drive, power in the battery, etc.

3. We can’t predict everything, so we need to design for flexibility.

Even when we’ve done our research, there is still a lot we don’t know. People and technology will always surprise us with new contexts. There are thousands of potential ways in which a given product might need to work. Try (within reason) to design products so they still work with unexpected constraints. It doesn’t matter if the 320px window is on a desktop, a smartphone, or some new, unforeseen device; it would be nice if it didn’t break.

The Result?

If we follow tried-and-true UX methods, we should end up with a rather obvious product design strategy for all relevant devices. Whether it’s building an iPhone app with 3 features or a responsive website with 900 pages, the decision should be clear. It’s impossible for a product to work on every device, in every context, but it should work for the vast majority of users.

Here at AddThis, we serve millions of websites. So, we don’t get off too light. Our tools have to work for billions of users all over the world. But, if you find that all of your users still prefer a 1070px monitor, keyboard, and mouse, your job will be a bit easier.

But you might want check again in a few months.

Both companies use comprehensive testing strategies, and multiple analytics tools like Google Analytics, Omniture, and Adobe’s Test and Target, to optimize conversions and revenue. CustomInk shared strategies for refining their unique online + offline ordering process, and ThinkGeek described how they do sophisticated testing with a very small team.

One of the popular quotes of the evening was from ThinkGeek’s Matt Chwat: “Our definition of Lean UX is that we’re lean on UX.”

CustomInk described their experiences developing faceted search for t-shirt ordering, and how its efficacy changes with different audiences and contexts. We also explored how both companies wrap customer service and community management feedback into their design and development processes, keeping the focus ultimately on their customers.

Both companies brought along some fun giveaways; six attendees scored gift bags from ThinkGeek, and one lucky attendee won a $200 gift certificate towards a CustomInk t-shirt order.

As always, we had a lively Q&A throughout the evening with an audience of local designers and developers in the Northern Virginia area.

We’ll look forward to seeing everyone next month, when Andrew Duthie will talk about how Microsoft designs for both mobile and desktop products, and Bill Killam will dive into strategies for usability testing.

If you’re interested in attending these events, join us at the NoVA UX meetup group.

One of the driving factors behind this blog refresh was to make it more responsive and mobile-friendly… so whether you’re viewing it from your preferred browser, tablet or smartphone, it’s now be much easier to read than before.

The photos on the side were taken around the office, so you also get a glimpse of what it’s like here at AddThis. If you refresh it a few times, you’ll see new photos being loaded… and not to worry, we’ll be adding more shortly.

p.s. In case you’re curious, foosball remains king around here, though I still manage to sneak in some Halo 4 action every once in a while.

URL design discussions for RESTful web services often degrade into debates over pluralization and parameter names. There are a couple of principles I like to use to keep things simple.

1) Using your API should feel like using a filesystem

• Endpoints used to create, list, and search for entities should look like directories, e.g. /users
• Use a plural noun so it feels like a directory of users, not a user controller
• Endpoints used to read, update, and delete individual entities should look like files, e.g. /users/charlie

2) All calls to a given endpoint should return the same type

• Either apples, or oranges, or a list of oranges, don’t mix them up
• File-looking endpoints should return individual entities
• Directory-looking endpoints should return lists of entities

We may be bikeshedding here but I think your API will be more intuitive to newcomers if you model it this way.

• Consistent response type per endpoint simplifies deserialization for clients, no switching needed
• Once you agree on a contract it’s easy to mock up with static files on a server
• Clients can start working with your mockup before your code is finished

To read the rest of this blog post, head over to APIUX.

Last night AddThis hosted the the March NoVA UX meetup here in our Vienna, VA headquarters. We had two speakers:

First up was Alex Kalinovsky, CEO of CreamTec LLC, who gave a talk about visual UI testing. Alex talked about the importance and challenges of visual interface testing, described current tools and methodologies, and then introduced his company’s solution called Screenster. You can check out his slides on SlideShare.

Steve Wendel, Principal Scientist at HelloWallet, spoke next. He described strategies for designing products and interfaces that promote behavioral change – Action Design. He describes Action Design as building good products that are effective at changing behavior, so people can do things that they want to do but haven’t been able to do before. You can check out his presentation on his company’s blog. Steve also organizes the Action Design DC meetup.

For next month’s meetup I’ll be moderating a panel discussion about e-commerce user experience design with design leaders from local retailers ThinkGeek and CustomInk. If you’re a UX professional in the Northern Virginia or DC Metro area, come join us on April 10th at 7pm here at AddThis HQ.

In addition to this project’s cool factor, the updated decor will contribute to company morale and demonstrate to future employees how awesome it is to be a part of the AddThis family.

Here’s what the room looked like before:

We didn’t win the hackathon competition, but our project placed 4th in the popular vote. Here’s what we came up with:

If this looks like fun to you, check out our careers page. We’re always looking for talent and great minds to join the party!

He began by talking about memory, perception, and the systems of our brain that control them. Since our attention is easily distracted and much of what we think we see is actually constructed by our brains, as designers we can use techniques such as visual cues and story-telling to guide viewers through interfaces more effectively.

Next, John walked through how we make decisions based on what we perceive and remember – and how easily those memories can be lost. He gave an example of a checkout process that offered a discount code at the beginning, which was forgotten and inaccessible by the end when payment was expected – not a good experience indeed. He then walked through strategies that designers can use to enhance interfaces that help the viewer make decisions such as registrations or purchases, such as:

• asking for smaller commitments to build up to bigger ones
• providing social proof – others who bought this bought that too
• giving perceived control to the viewer – “build” your dream car

For more details, check out John’s slides and join us for upcoming meetups about designing for behavioral change, e-commerce, and usability testing.

• Lots of extra cross-team collaboration
• Many amazing and brilliant project presentations
• Developers passed out across the office

For those not familiar with hackathons, they are our 24-hour sprints of innovation. A-Teamers group up, or work alone, on a new project outside of what they are currently working on in their day-to-day. The energy surrounding a hackathon is always fun and familial. They are a very important part of the AddThis culture.

WINNER: Telepresence Roomba Robot

The winning project of this installment of all-night coding was quite impressive. The team went out to solve a common challenge we face at AddThis. Since we have multiple offices across the country, sometimes communicating and collaborating requires extra effort. So, the team created a telepresence robot using a Roomba, a MacBook Air, foamcore and a rocket launcher. And the entire thing was controlled from a Google Hangout! See it in action:

Congratulations to the winning team! It was well deserved.

Honorable Mention: AddThis Garden

The unofficial “runners-up” also deserve Earth Day Award 2012. “AddThis Plant” went on a mission to “green” our new HQ office in Virginia. It is an extensive project of plant growing, caring and loving with the end goal to have a nice array of beautiful oxygen-producing decorations for our work space. Check them out:

And those are just the official winners! There were many other brilliant and noteworthy projects that did not go unnoticed or under-appreciated. Some of which will be used to make everyday AddThis processes more efficient — a win all by itself!

Like this? Check out more posts about AddThis Engineering.

We’re happy to announce major updates to the AddThis sharing tool suite: the new design we’ve been testing in AddThis Labs graduates today, with a slew of new features. Go grab the new code!

We’ve written before about the mind-boggling amount of data every day, and how we use it to provide insights both to our publishers and into trends across our network. But we also use data to drive and refine our own processes and designs. Today, we’ve used what we’ve learned to make sharing even easier, and more personal. That means more engagement from your visitors, more sharing, and more traffic for your site.

Simpler design.

First, we have a new look. We’ve streamlined and simplified the compact menu. We’ve made our email form a lot easier to use, like the email clients you’re already familiar with. Our expanded menu’s been optimized for faster sharing to the most popular services in your region, and easier searching for your personal favorites. (As always, we’ll highlight the services you use for even easier sharing next time.) We’ll take advantage of jQuery on pages that already include it for simple but lovely transitions. And while our new platform takes advantage of HTML5 and loads of modern browser features, we won’t leave you out in the cold if you’re stuck on IE6–though, seriously guys, it’s time.

In Labs, the updated design increased sharing by 11%. In production, it’s going to do even better–due to our second major update.

Instant sharing.

Sharing to Facebook or Twitter used to mean popping a new window. That’s fast, but we figured if we made it even faster, more people would be sharing your content. To that end, we’re introducing “instant” inline sharing to the most popular social networks. If your users link their social accounts with AddThis, they’ll be able to share directly to Facebook or Twitter without even leaving your page. The new inline interface means there’s no extra page load–that means more unimpeded sharing. Even better, once a user authenticates, they’ll remain logged in on every single site with AddThis, until they log out. Everybody wins.

Adding social sign in to our sharing tools doesn’t just mean it’s easier to share. It also means it’s a lot easier to personalize your AddThis experience–easily choose the services you want to see once, and you’ll see them across all the sites that use AddThis.

Pain-free pinning.

Our recent updates for Pinterest are fully integrated with the new design. We’ve created the simplest and easiest way to integrate with Pinterest: almost no work necessary! Put AddThis on any page you want to make pinnable, and we’ll show a simple, elegant lightbox to showcase all the images on your page for your users to pick from. You can always specify your own image, too, if you want! We’ve found this feature can boost sharing to Pinterest by 20% or more.

You can add all these capabilities to your site with one simple code snippet. Take a look and try it out!

Our plugins for WordPress, Magento, and Shopify will be updated this week to support the new surfaces.

Questions? Comments? As always, we’d love your feedback.

At AddThis, we’re always excited to participate in local events where technology professionals connect and collaborate, such as Refresh DC and our own Big Data DC meetup. Since our headquarters are based in Northern Virginia and I didn’t see any local UX-oriented get-togethers, I thought it would be fun to organize a new design and user experience meetup group called NoVA UX.

At our first event Jon West of LC Technologies provided a hands-on demo of the Eyegaze eye-tracking system. After a quick overview describing how eye-tracking research works, the group got to try out the system for themselves. Jon even demonstrated how eye-tracking systems can be used to allow people to type using only their eyes – it’s easier than it sounds!

If you’re interested in interface design, visual design, usability, or one of the many other disciplines relevant to user experience, and are local to the DC metro/northern Virginia area, come check out our next event on August 16th. We look forward to seeing you there.

It’s a small update, but Twitter has refined their icon once again. Their bird has evolved several time over the last couple years. We’ll be updating all our button styles to match their latest visual identity.

New Icons:

Old Icons:

If you have AddThis installed on your site, we’ll automatically update your icons. We’ll be rolling the new style out soon. What do you think of the new look?

Last week we changed our name and launched two new tools. We also changed our site’s design to celebrate our new brand identity. Here’s a quick look at how we made that happen.

To start off on the right track, we spent two days with our executives defining business goals and the specific groups of customers we wanted to reach. Then the group had some fun with word association, brainstorming phrases that each person felt captured the “feel” of the brand. This helped us decide which aspects of our new visual identity were most important, but also helped build consensus around the evolving creative direction.

From there we looked at different color palettes, fonts, and image styles to arrive at a design that was more light and friendly, but still captured how much we love big social data and statistics. In the end we hoped to maintain some of the heritage of AddThis, but also spread our wings a bit with an expanded visual vocabulary.

One of our favorite parts of the new design is our home page, the first to include live data. Visitors can watch sharing happen all over the world, and discover interesting facts we’ve uncovered from the huge amount of data we see every day.

So what do you think? We love feedback in all shapes and sizes, so drop us a comment below. And as always, thanks for using AddThis.

After an introduction by Danny Hope, Paul Kinlan from Google kicked things off by presenting a working demo of an image editing application built with Web Intents. Then, as part of my presentation about AddThis I had the opportunity to share with the team what bloggers and other larger publishers care about with regards to sharing tools and functionality. After my talk, Shane Caraveo from Mozilla provided a comparison of the original F1 sharing tool developed by the Mozilla team, and a more recent client-side interface they’ve been working on. Finally, Glenn Jones, one of the event organizers and founder of Madgex, posed some important questions that would help frame the recurring themes of the day:

• How important is “social proof” – a propensity to share because a share count or a list of friends who also shared is displayed
• How important is recognizability of social icons like Facebook or Twitter, compared to a button that simply says “share”
• How should we balance the automated discovery of available “services” such as Facebook with explicit customization of sharing tools by publishers and “favorites” selected by their visitors?
• How much of Web Intents belongs in the browser, versus on the page?

After our presentations and a survey of participants, we distilled everyone’s questions and ideas into several topics for breakout groups, including the interplay between the browser and the page, the linguistics of verbs and objects, and how to achieve critical mass of Web Intents.

Each group of 2-5 people met for several hours and then presented to the team at the end of the day. My team developed personas for different types of publishers and service operators to help the team understand ways that Web Intents could be beneficial, but also the kinds of questions and concerns each might have.

All told it was a productive get-together, and a great opportunity to meet a number of smart, passionate people. I’d like to thank Glenn, Danny and Andy again for inviting us to attend. While I was flying back to the United States they were working diligently to compile the day’s efforts in a wiki for public use and ongoing work. Look for additional details by following #pushwebintents.

A Design Push brings designers and technologists together to collaborate on a variety of technologies. For this first Design Push, we’ll be working on Web Intents, which make it easier for site operators to offer visitors a more personalized way to interact with content.

Derived from a similar specification used by Android mobile phones, Web Intents determine what kind of actions (“share”, “save”, etc.) a user might want to perform on an object (a page, a picture), and which methods that particular user prefers. The group will focus on the various user experience and technical challenges specific to these kinds of interactions.

As we’ve built AddThis and OExchange, we’ve pursued similar goals in order to provide social tools that meet the needs that publishers have said they care most about:

• Easy installation and customization of in-page tools
• Performance, reliability, and security of any 3rd party tool
• Increased traffic and audience via optimization and personalization
• Support for rich embedded experiences offered by services like Facebook and Twitter such as Like and Follow
• Comprehensive tracking and reporting
• Opportunities for promotion and monetization

I’m looking forward to exploring ways that Web Intents can help publishers achieve these kinds of goals. Also, I’d like to extend our thanks to event organizers Glenn Jones, Andy Dennis, and Danny Hope for the invitation. If you’d like to follow the day’s activities on Twitter, we’ll be using the hashtag #pushwebintents.

Which pages are trending, right now? Which searches are bringing traffic to your site, and what words are visitors copying in order to search or email friends? What interests your visitors, and what are they saying about your website or blog? Find out the answers to these questions using your newly expanded AddThis Analytics Live View.

What’s Live View?

The AddThis Analytics Live View provides a look at what’s happening right now, across your site or for a specific page, including:

• A map showing where people are interacting with your pages
• A list of your top content, right now, based on shares and traffic back to your site
• Your viewers’ interests, and what they’re saying about your content on Twitter

The Live View also introduces new types of information to help you understand how your audience is interacting with your site:

• Searches: How many searches are bringing traffic to your site? What are your visitors looking for? Live View displays a list of top search keywords and phrases.
• Text copy tracking: While searches indicate what brought users to your site, text that visitors copy can help you understand what they found interesting, and whether these keywords align with your search meta-data to help maximize SEO. Learn more…

Zoom Into a Page

Interested in a particular page that’s trending? Zoom in for a closer look by clicking on it’s title, and discover how your visitors are interacting with that page, what searches brought them there, and what your audience is saying about that page on Twitter.

What do you think?

We’d love to hear what you think about the new AddThis Analytics Live View. Drop us a line in our forum with your feedback, and if you have any questions or need technical support, please visit our new Support Center.

• Check out your Live View

Ps. Can you find the easter egg on our homepage. If you like it, give Foo a high five.

Our team wanted to take a moment to thank CustomInk for taking us on a tour of their office. They have one of the coolest spaces in Tysons Corner. They make great shirts and their team has a penchant for customer service. If you’re looking for inspiration or need to order some gear, check ‘em out.

I’d like to take a moment to thank our team for pulling together a nice refresh. In particular, give Foo a pat on the back for a job well done. It’s really exciting to see everything come together, in terms of visual continuity and experience. Let us know if you have any feedback.

P.S. On a completely tangent note, anyone playing Gears of War 3 tonight? Drop us a message if you want to play multiplayer or horde mode with the AddThis team. Our Xbox 360 gamer tag is “Clearspring”. ^_^

Share at the Speed of Chrome
We’ve updated our Chrome extension with “speed” in mind. Like you, we’re a huge fan of discovering interesting content and sharing it with our friends faster, with less clicks. Our new extension includes inline sharing to Facebook and Twitter, more customization features, and an updated visual design.

Quicker Sharing to Facebook and Twitter
Sharing to Facebook and Twitter will appear as a small inline window. All you have to do is authenticate once, and sharing becomes even more convenient. Here’s how it works if you share to Twitter…



More Customizable, with Over 300 Popular Services
There are other places I like to share to other than Facebook and Twitter. For me, I’ve customized my menu to show services like Instapaper, Gmail, and Tumblr. To customize your own menu, select “Options”. A new tab will open, and you can start customizing your menu as well as manage your connected accounts.



Download AddThis for Chrome
If you haven’t downloaded our extension, click on the image below. As always, send feedback and let us know what you think of the new design. Ps. If you like what you see, give a big high five to Angel and Foo for pulling this awesome update together.