I’m a firm believer that all that happens, happens for a reason and that there are always lessons or positives to be gleaned from all situations. One thing that swine flu has brought back is the importance of personal hygiene but also that work is not more important than our lives. It’s only now when a flu that can kill us – and all those we infect – appears that we put health, family, and consideration for others back above getting into the office at all costs.

Of course, the relative efficiency of working from home these days helps ‘ease the pain’. A recent survey even found the majority or significantly more people (can’t remember which!) now rate money as not the most important thing in their lives. For me, that’s definately a good fall-out from swine flu and, to a slightly lesser extent, the credit crunch. The effect of the credit crunch was probably more about getting us to seriously consider our purchases, on their own individual merit, now that we don’t have endless streams of credit and sky-rocketting house prices to sustain our consumer habits. These lessons will stand us in good stead for the years to come … until we forget them again. No doubt other ‘crises’ or ‘turning points’ will appear to remind us again. Fish Flu perhaps?

As the normal everyday user merrily uses their selection of social networking platforms (mine are twitter, facebook, linkedin, delicious) there’s a constant battle between them to steal users, and improve their own offering with this ultimate goal in mind. This is great for us as it leads to improved sites, more useful web utilities, and a better all round experience. Working in an agency, we’re occasionally asked to start new online communities. It’s not easy.

To be truly useful you need people to sign up and often the main reason people sign up is because ‘everyone I know is using it’. Of course that is more the case for Facebook where the very personal style of networking (with photos, relationship updates, sending gifts, etc.) meant you ‘needed’ to use it to effectively stay in touch with people you already knew. As someone on Twitter (a great source of learning) put it: Facebook’s for people you know, Twitter’s for people you want to know. In effect, once a site like Facebook grabs the lion’s share of ‘your’ friends there’s no reason for many to leave.

Add in the fact many users don’t demand the most sophisticated functionality, there’s even more inertia for users to switch platform. Other platforms like social bookmarking may be less tribal, or more individual, so as long as I find something better or cheaper, I can move knowing I’m not leaving my entire social life behind! A social networking platform must be useful. It has to do one thing well to survive. Linkedin helps people connect professionally without polluting the space with holiday photos or ‘fun’ videos. Flickr is all about photos. Ok, they do video now but can anyone outmuscle YouTube with the headstart they have. The sheer volume of videos they have up there mean for videos that’s often the first port-of-call. As a direct result, they get more videos. It’s almost like a vicious circle. Finding a niche is always a good starting point.

Platforms like Ning do this well. Letting people build their own networks around specific interests. However, I think it’s still all about numbers. The more people you can get signed up, the greater the pressure on the rest not to get left behind.

For work I’ve been auditing a car manufacturer’s site, particularly its data capture mechanisms. I’ve come to the conclusion that as well as the usual guidelines – don’t ask for more than you need, tell users what items are mandatory or optional, and tell users what you plan to do with their personal details, etc. – form design is so, so important. A form that’s just a long procession of input fields just scares users but I think it also gives the impression that little love went into designing this page. This reflects badly on the site as a whole. Users should be directed through the form in much the same way today’s users are directed or enticed down long web pages.

The use of colour, grouping of information (so it’s less one huge form and more a form with a few different logical areas), typography and visual hierarchy, a friendly and trustworthy tone of voice, and clear calls-to-action are also very important. The design of the form is vital too.  Sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. capture data in engaging and interactive ways – not solely dependent on the standard input fields, radio buttons and checkboxes. For the user it’s more of an experience than a chore – like filling out an online tax form.

Yesterday it dawned on me that the advent of social networks, email and the internet as a publishing platform means two things for future generations:

1. Kids will never, ever lose touch with their childhood friends anymore (unless they want to!). An email adress (or parents exchanging email addresses / facebook IDs / Twitter IDs …) will be enough to ensure you can find that person decades later in one morning session on Google.
2. Decades later, I’ll have to live through my kids going through my Twitter / Blogging history, in full public view, on a boring summer afternoon while I’m at work.

Something we’re not fully understanding at the moment – because we’re so enthralled and entertained by the current Web 2.0 platforms – is the longevity the content we generate can potentially have. Whereas we learnt about previous generations lives through tatty old photos and stories relayed to us, future generations probably only have to spend an afternoon on Google to unearth our most detailed thoughts and postings from years / decades back on various social networks, blog platforms, forums, and so on. They may be able to re-live years of our lives on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis; mapping out what we did, where we were, what we thought, who we were with and photos / videos of the event. That’s somewhat freaky … but I suspect we have to get used to this fact.

Even websites that were taken offline a number of years ago can be dug up through the Wayback Machine. Using this site, I unearthed previous incarnations of my website and was horrified at my primative (alright, I may not be much better now) web design skills back then.

Things you say and do on the web, echo for eternity on Google …

Btw, if my kids are reading this, hi!

They’re often dull and unusable. Due to hopes of relocating, I’ve found myself using the Southeastern Railway site quite a lot recently.

So far, they’re my favourite train site. Their homepage has a good balance of space, textual content and visual imagery and calls-to-action. Things I, as a passenger, need are within reach: journey planner, station information, and so on. I also like their use of colour to draw attention and differentiate.

I particularly like their journey planner (below) that provides journey information on rollover in the box above the long list of train choices.