Usability Counts | User Experience, Social Media » Flash

Cool Website Tuesdays: Balthaser Studios

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:17:49 +0000

This is was once cutting edge Flash work. Scary.

Jakob Nielsen probably thought it was 99 percent bad.Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: Senior Level Front End Developer In Los Angeles, California

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:00:44 +0000

I’ve been receiving inquiries about posting jobs here. Because of this, I’ll be posting new opportunities every Monday. Some of them aren’t pure User Experience, but they do have some kind of User Experience or SharePoint slant to them. If you see anything here, or are looking for a job, send me your resume at jobs@usabilitycounts.com. Recruiters, also send along a note, I’d like to offer the blog as another channel.

Senior Level Front End Developer, Southern California

The opportunity

A stable financial services company is looking for a Senior Level Front End Developer with three years experience to join their web applications development team. The company provides financial advice and tools to their customers, and is well positioned to survive to current downturn in the financial market. They may consider the right candidate if they have experience in a J2EE environment and are looking to expand their skill set.

The position is full time.

Requirements

Rich Internet Application (RIA) development experience, preferably with AJAX, Flex or Flash
Experience with Java Server Plages
Experience with Actionscript 2 and Actionscript 3
Advanced HTML, CSS and CSS-P skills
Advanced JavaScript skills

Pluses

Java Experience
Experience with web analytics platforms like Omniture
Experience with content management systems

Background

Good communication skills
Advanced technical leadership and mentoring capabilities
Well versed at working with User Experience teams and processes
Experience working in a corporate environment
Proven track record of delivering innovative solutions

Pay Range

Full time: Depending on experience

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Career Mondays: Flex Developer In Los Angeles, California

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:00:39 +0000

Senior Level Flex Developer, Southern California

The opportunity

A technology product and services company is looking for a Flex Developer with two years experience to join their User Experience team. The company is international in scope and a leader in their field, and their client list includes Fortune 500 companies that use their award winning, enterprise-level products and solutions. They may consider the right candidate if they have experience in a J2EE environment and are looking to expand their skill set.

The position is either a full time or contract.

Requirements

Rich Internet Application (RIA) development experience, preferably with AJAX or Adobe Flash
Experience with the Adobe Flex development environment
Advanced HTML and CSS skills
ActionScript skills
JavaScript skills

Pluses

J2EE Experience

Background

Good communication skills
Well versed at working with User Experience teams and processes
Proven track record of delivering innovative solutions

Pay Range

Full time: $80,000 to $120,000
Contract: Depending on experience

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MySpace Mondays: Mini Golf

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:00:06 +0000

Mini Golf is exactly as it sounds — a miniature golf course played through a Adobe Flash application right there on MySpace. It sounds like a nifty idea, but there have been a fare number of Flash applications that have done the same thing, some of them better with a high quality, and this one asks you to buy the gold version the page.

It’s fun, but tough. The one usability issue I have is there is no way to preview the complete hole (move the cursor around) to see where you have to shoot.

The other issue: it’s a social networking site. You would think a ranking system would be in place, versus your friends and everyone on MySpace. But alas, it’s a one player game, essentially.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

Usefulness: 2
Usability: 2
Fun Factor: 4
Stability: 5
Monetization Opportunities: 4

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MySpace Mondays: Flash Photo Viewer

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:00:48 +0000

The real goal of MySpace opening up their site to external applications is so developers will extend the profiles and give the end users more functionality to view their MySpace content. Flash Photo Viewer is a good example at an attempt to extend the functionality.

Flash Photo Viewer is exactly what it’s titled: an application built in Flash that loads on your photos on your home page, profile and canvas so you can view all your photos in a scrollable list, and see a larger version of a photo in the primary window. Click on that photo, and a new window displays the full version of the photo. While you view the profile or home page, the viewer goes into slideshow mode.

The application isn’t very complex, but it doesn’t have to be — it does exactly what it advertises.

The application design has a few issues though. It looks the the developer didn’t build separate Flash applications for the User Home Page, User Profile and Canvas, so the size of the slideshow controls is painfully small on the profile and home page. Additionally, the interface is clunky, not polished.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

Usefulness: 4
Usability: 3
Fun Factor: 4
Stability: 4
Monetization Opportunities: 3

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QuickTip Sundays: Ted – Ideas Worth Spreading

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:00:01 +0000

Use Rich Media With A Purpose

This is not a criticism — this is actually a compliment. Ted.com does an amazing job making Flash relevant with this page design, using large images are very prominent business and social leaders to create a very visual experience. Select an option on the left (say, technology), and the page reshuffles like a tag cloud to present new speakers. They could have built this using DHTML — the page still would have been fairly heavy — but it’s really aimed at an audience that already has a fat pipe to serve up this content.

Content can be ordered and sized by different faceted filters (woo hoo!), and if the visualization mode is too much for you, you can resort to a list view (how Web 1.0). You can even view the number of comments and times each was emailed to friends.

Another tip: it would be even cooler if the boxes could be dragged around and re-ordered to see certain topics large.Similar Posts:

Best Uses Of Flash, From Google Webmaster

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:00:54 +0000

Flash is overused, but this is a good article on the best uses of Flash. Some of the points are pretty much, “duh.”Similar Posts:

MySpace Mondays: Pokey Review

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:00:11 +0000

I’m going to start reviewing the applications of MySpace I come across that I think have some value. Most of them have a serious fun factor — did you really think any of them were going to be actually useful — but there are a few of them that truly extend the profile.

Not all applications are about usefulness: Pokey is this great little animation of your own little pet on your home page. The dog fetches frisbies, digs up bones, needs to eat. There’s a definate fun factor here, and the animation is one of the best I have seen for a while.

Don’t pay enough attention, the dog barks. Go away for a long time, the dog sleeps. Feed the dog, and a bag of dog food appears (I hope they are charging Science Diet for showing the bag and logo). It’s cute, but I don’t think it has a ton of lasting power.

It’s easy and fun to use, but there are no viral functions to the application — it just seems people just add the application through the application gallery, and you would think they could use the dog to send messages.

There are no monetization applications for this now. We’ll see where it goes.

Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):

Usefulness: 1
Usability: 5
Fun Factor: 5
Stability: 2
Monetization Opportunities: 1

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Expression Program Manager: To The Applicant, Understand The Market

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:12:41 +0000

I work with a lot of rich media developers at my current position, and we’ve been trying to make the journey to SilverLight, a new technology by Microsoft (and a competitor of Flash). It does some really cool things (the whole non-compiled thing will be a plus once they work out some of the details.

I’m not saying it’s a me-too technology — there are some very obvious advantages to it, beginning with standardizing on a programming language people actually use instead of something specialized like ActionScript, but we’ve had the hardest time adjusting to the workflow, and a lot of designers are afraid of this much like they are afraid of Flash CS3 Professional because it is such an adjustment. It was hard enough just moving over to the whole motion graphics world, and now many designers and developers are expected to relearn the application to a certain extent.

To the person who applies for this job, please remember how your job is better adoption in following ways:

It’s not enough just to have timelines — the application really should be easy to use for designers because they are not programmers
Make some of the interactions easier to explain like, “how do you make a button so it has the multiple states”, maybe even adding wizards like, “create a new button”
Produce a product that can actually align text better (text alignment should be one of those 1.0 items, not on the 3.0 product list)
Cater to the designers that ditched Flash when it moved to Actionscript 2 to Actionscript 3
Most of all, it’s about user adoption and talking to your audience — if you don’t do that, no one will use it

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