cullmanndesign blog

Google celebrates their contributing doodlers.

If you have worked as a Graphic Designer or Art Director for any length of time, you’ve been asked to integrate a chart into your design. There are some innovative and inspiring ways to create informational graphics—it’s an art-form in itself. In some cases, the experience and craft is stifled by having to accommodate changing data. For the web designer or developer, there are additional hurdles: clarity of data, being able to showing values for large data-sets, updating data frequently, how to present that same data for search engine index.

Google has introduced a tool that may help alleviate some of the designer and developer’s burden: Google Chart Tool. This new service from Google allows you to use a generated image or, via javascript, a live rendering of your data on your webpage or presentation. The solution includes a gallery with a huge selection of graphic solutions to present data in a variety of forms.

Your chart can be fed data from a huge variety of sources. The most simple is to create your data parameters in Google Docs and “connect” that data to your chart for real-time updates. Google also provides an embedded data solution that allows you to provide plain-language data within your page. Although there is no documentation the data is enclosed in Google’s tagging structure and will likely be indexed for search and categorized as “charted data”. This can be an advantage to content that relies on the expression of data as a business model or a differentiator. The charting API (Application Programming Interface) also allows you to tie your chart to a wide variety of dynamic solutions including JAVA, JSON and XML.

Although the solution provided by Google is not a replacement for good graphic design and creating a comprehensive design solution for your information, it does give designers and developers a tool that allows for flexible inclusion of data into a web design and separates presentation from the data itself. It is crucial to remember that using Google’s (or any third-party tool) for charting will have you relying on that party for your site’s integrity. If the service changes or goes down, your data may not display properly, or at all. These same solutions will give you a great looking solution without creating a custom code or constantly updating data and give you more opportunity to focus on making your site’s design great.

Learn more about information graphics and design around data and take a look at some of the sites and books below:

Edward Tufte
Flowing Data
Infosthetics
Jakob Neilsen

Google has begun using “personalized search” as the default solution for returned search queries. Until now this service, which uses your profile and previous search behavior to organize your SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). What does this mean to developers? To Marketers? To anyone who creates content or wants to drive traffic online? It means that the game is changing again.

Personalized search will increase the quality of the links that Google is providing. In addition to being able to combine referral metrics, time on a given site as well as several other criteria, Google users can “up” and “down” position search engine results on the page. This information is then aggregated to better compute the proper SERP position for a given URL for the next visit. Sites repeatedly ranked “down” will begin to not appear as high in the results page and previously “deep linked” sites may now rise based on user feedback.

To content creators, designers and developers, this means that user experience and brand loyalty are more important than ever. The more a user visits and has a positive experience, the more likely that person will be to “up” your ranking when searching for content found on your site on the Google results page. In addition, the more time a person has invested with your site, the more likely that person is to post a reply, post a link on twitter, link to you via facebook. All of these channels strengthen your name recognition and lessen the chances that someone, when given a choice, will keep you as part of their search results and not “down” you to the second or third page of the SERP.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true with users who have a bad experience on your site. Users who prefer that not to see your domain in their Google search results can have your domain lowered in their results field or removed completely. Although Google has not documented the specifics as to how they are handling domains in their search results that are repeatedly removed, it is likely not a good thing if you would like maintain your position.

Reading this post, you are likely trying to determine what this means for you, a web site designer, developer or content creator: In a larger context, it means very little. You should still focus on good user experience, good design and making your website accessible to all types of browsers, devices and of course search engines. On a smaller scale, you should keep personalized search in mind when you are writing and designing content. Every user who visits your site or the site of your client has the ability to participate establishing its position. Every potential customer or reader has the ability to make a difference and help define where you will appear Google’s result page. Personalized search is a smart approach for Google and Google’s users. You will likely see this feature appearing in Yahoo’s and Bing’s search offerings shortly.

Looking for an SEO primer? Go to the source: Google has released an excellent resource in the form of a free pdf. The best practices document goes over META data, site navigation, robots.txt and a lot more. A very good find for anyone looking for quick reference or trying to get started with natural search and optimizing a website.

Google Chrome OS for the everday citizen

Google released a developer version of their new operating system this week: Chrome OS. The operating system is a derivative of Linux and is designed as a no-cost alternative to windows and mac OS X. The developer preview is spare and is designed to give developers a chance to create applications and extensions for the new operating system as much as to give the public a preview. When originally announced in July, industry speculation was that this new OS would be a game changer: That Windows should be worried, that Apple should be worried. This speculation was based not on the availability of a new, free operating system (there are several excellent free OSs available, Ubuntu the most popular), but on the Google cache alone.

Based on the initial release, I’m not sure that Chrome OS is the holy grail that was initially anticipated. Although it has many benefits,; no-cost, easy of use, an ecosystem of well designed, free, web-based applications, I don’t see this as a substitute laptop or desktop solution for most users.

I do believe that the Chrome OS will be a competitor for Windows in a fractured market, the “second computer”. Unlike several years ago, there are many people who use a computer for many different things, work, personal organization, communication, socializing, entertainment. This space between ‘working’ and ‘playing’ is well defined and although mobile platforms like the iPhone and Android fill the space very well, not everyone has a phone capable of a good web experience. Enter the Netbook category (and Chrome OS by proxy). The low-cost, low-power computers are ideal for the casual user who wants to update FaceBook, shop online, watch a few youtube clips and exchange e-mails with friends. Google is in a prime position to own the destination and the vehicle to get their.

Google does not have a very good track record for marketing. There have been only a hand full of commercials or ads to promote their applications or services. The few ads have promoted their mobile initiatives. Most recently the Verizon Droid release. If Google is able to partner with hardware manufacturers and enter the retail space, they can easily take a market-share comparable to the Apple’s in the home computer space.

The final piece of the Chrome OS puzzle is how Google is planning to incorporate their advertising based business model into a computer platform. Android is a similar model and they have taken a very conservative, user-experience focused approach with little or no advertising besides what is already in their web-based apps. A full-operating system does present opportunity to capture user data (even if aggregate) to better target and model advertising.

You can read more about Google Chrome on Google’s Blog or a comprehensive third-party perspective at CNET.