These process objects represent the few most important processes inside my web app with related status information and some objects attached as well as monitoring the status auf the attached objects. This can include some kind of versioning, validation flags and others.

So it would probably be much better integrating these process objects in your database, thus keeping track auf the dynamic aspects of your data and beeing able to create more fluent and responsive processes for users.

What was very impressing to me, were the enourmous capabilities of the Facebook API, which allows developers to implement whole applications inside the facebook plattform. With currently 180 new applications per week, facebook is growing extremely fast being one of the largest communities worldwide. So probably, if I were an entrepreneur with some kind of web service offering something unique and I had a small community, I would think about opening my system towards web developers or attaching my page towards huge communities like Facebook or MySpace.

Furthermore I’m convinced that the cross-Desktop-Internet-application is also very important. So thoughts leaving the borders of the browser enables us of creating complete new applications which were impossible till now. Adobe AIR and and the Microsoft Presentation Foundation are one step towards this direction, but still not really enabling the open-source-coder-community to get started developing this kind of applications. Therefore we are waitung for the first really applicable solution to get the same application running in the browser and one the users desktop at the same time.

Although creating such a functionality at this time will probably bring lot’s of attention to your site, what still matters is the benefit for your users. From the 190 new Facebook applications per week are probably 179 complete crap and only 200 users will ever use it – just as readers read blogs. Therefore it is important, to implement something which makes handling easer, user experience greater or just leaves some funny smile back in the users face. Everything else is something the world does not need…

The third thing is “focus” – do something special, but do it best.

To summarize the article: the industry is hoping to invest in the future and is aware of only a few users stepping in their subsidiaries every day; a major problem of SL is the navigation, lots of areas are hidden and can only be accessed by accident; the rendering engine of second life is from the 80th and denies up to date functionalities for the users.

Although I believe that Adobe Air is the wrong way. I think it gives us an impression on the main direction we are heading. Furthermore the excitement of all think-about-the-web-ers ist partially understandable, but whats missing (as for other “nice” and innovative technologies) is the hands on fantastic ground breaking application. Although Pownce has its Windows Client created in Adobe Air, its web interface was still done in Django showing that Adobe Air seem not yet ready for production. And even Kuler can not really get me excited. Just seems like a nice little toy, I do not need.

So looking at this development, I’ waiting curiously for the first substantial application showing the capabilities and the new possibilities of User Experience

• »Implementing an RSS-Feed and including it into the Auto-discovery-feature. => Tschitschereengreen RSS Feed
• »Added Microformats to our contact page
• »Got all pages with W3C conform html code.

So as we all know websites like Amazon or eBay are switching their contents displayed for every user based on information they aquired while the user was browsing the page.

So what happens, if we apply this to an Web2.0 application: The longer the user is using the web app the more “professional” look and feel he will get provided, making his clicks more precisious and bringing him faster towards the desired results. In parallel the user just registered, will see an very simple and intuitive interface guiding him through the functionality.

I’m wondering if this will work as well as it sounds or if I missed some critical aspect…

[Update] – take care that the user can influence the communication level by himself. (e.g. in Settings => display options)

This is very interesting due to the fact that one aspect of Web2.0 – all the AJAX and the resulting application@yourbrowser stuff – is mainly relevant because it puts in place a new level of User Experience: pages are loading faster, items are starting to move or sliding in/out, recommendations appear and JavaScript is emulating visual affects which where used to be exclusive Flash-Domains.

For us the word User Experience became much more important in the last months due to analysing various services regarding their success factors and searching for the reasons why they succeeded their competitors.

One aspect which came to my mind – while looking at the products we are developing – reminded on something I heard at some business administration class at University: The Transaction Cost Model. The Transaction Cost Model assumes, that for influencing an existing system in some way, you have to invest some amount of ressources. And as an “investment” you expect some kind of return. If this does not happen and you get no return on your investment or even the return was below your expectation: you will stop investing – except you got the impression, that your final outcome will compensate the whole effort.

If you apply this model to your thoughts of User Experience, you will end up checking all the processes (the user can follow in your web app) for rewarding all the clicks the user invested in your page.

Furthermore, if think about User Experience in the context of the Transaction Cost Model: your target of creating user experience should be returning the user as much as possible for his invested CLICK (no ‘s) and avoiding leaving the user alone with no return on his investment (even if an error in your application occurs).