“before this service, around 70 brands have been created every week. but now, anyone can set up this kind of pages and others can Follow these pages.” Said Noah Weiss,a Product Manager of Foursquare，up to now, there are 2500 brands here.

The business model of LBS has been a headache for entrpreneurs for a long time，now how does Foursquare’s this move provide provide us new ideas？

First let’s start with the brand page categorization, after careful observation, we can find that there are two types of brand pages in Foursquare:

One type is tradtional business such as Starbucks, McDonald, RedBull. They encourage users to sign in by vouchers or badges.
Another type is media or products, such as MTV, NewYork Times, WallStreet Daily,Windows Live. They focus on exhibiting brand images and product news.

OK，for the first type of customers(many are chain stores)，business models are clear：the function of Foursquare is a voucher printer. For the second type of customers，Foursquare is trying to be CRM (Customer Relationship Management) based Ad platform.

How will this bring any inspirations?

For example, a HollyWood movie is going to release and want to use Foursquare for ads. What things can be done?

Set up a movie specific page to abstract eyeballs.
Describe the backgrounds for specific locations in the movie and encourage fans to sign in.
Tell the background story and use Foursquare’s Relationship network to distribute.
Add Foursquare button on the official movie website and add to To-Do list after user clicks.

This way shapes the high level “interactive ad”, it’s more funny than Twitter and Facebook style embedded ads and can turn ads to sales more directly (or downloads), which is the results what ad owners want. Because of the brand specific pages, Foursquare surpasses general LBS service by extending it for other domains and usages.

“at right time and right locations for fine-grained targeted promotation”, Will Foursquare’s attempt be successful?

（From：http://www.alibuybuy.com/posts/63382.html, Translated by PeoPeo）

 唐先生讲到，易用性的最终目的就是要实现健全人和残障人士都能对任何产品方便的使用、学习。但是，所有人都会有面临因为本身的残疾或是生命阶段的特殊性而产生“残疾”的情况。导致我们“残疾” 的因素来自于我们的感觉、听觉、知识储备，这其中又包含格式塔效应、稳定性、相似性、异常、封闭性、延续性等因素对我们的影响。

结合自身的设计实践，唐先生认为，设计就要从人们的阅读习惯、使用习惯上多加斟酌，并充分利用各种效应的所能产生的作用，实现针对障碍的易用性。

唐先生指出，目前很多设计与这种易用性相背离。例如，有的网站会给用户过多的选择，导致用户的迷惑。

飘飘人数字科技有限公司一直关注公益事业的发展，并努力贡献自己的力量。上目前，飘飘人正在义务为NGN组织—1+1声音工作室的声波网进行改版设计，该设计要满足盲人和低视力人群的上网需求。设计伊始，飘飘人就安排了相关人员进行了文献调查、实地调查、个体访谈、小组访谈、同类产品对比等多种方式的调研，目前该设计已经进入收尾阶段，很快就可以上线使用，该网站在字体、颜色、亮度、盲人使用习惯等方面都做了细致的考究，一定会盲人和低视力人群带来完美的上网体验，真实实现无障碍、易用性。

http://www.peopeo.de

Ben Tang did a presation named “the Factors of the User Exeperice” .Shuo Fu ,the usablity consulting of Peopeo did a speech about the research.During the trainding ,we aslo prepared some interesing interactive games which not only help the students relax but aslo impressed them about the training topic.

The training was a success.

This article explores the ways in which designers use graphical elements and screen interactions to create iPhone-applications that are easy on the eyes and mind. The aim of this article is to display common trends and design approaches in iPhone app design – please notice that they are not necessarily optimal ones from the design or usability point of view.

1. Mirroring Native iPhone UI Elements

“Tell them what you’re gonna tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.” Creating a whole new OS within your app can be fun, but when you’re dealing with the mobile medium, people just want to get stuff done. Getting stuff done means that the designer has to get into the flow of the OS and create an app that requires zero explanation for the end user to operate. Mirroring the layout and UI elements that the user is already familiar with saves time and energy. So it seems quite convenient to use this approach when designing iPhone-applications.

Facebook (iTunes Link)
In the new Facebook 3.0, you’ll find a grid layout that users can swipe left and right to access more categories. Because it mirrors Apple’s native UI, users do not have to “learn” how to use it all over again. A similar approach exists in Web design: users expect to see a logo in the top left, navigation along the top, etc. Facebook has taken this concept mobile, using large buttons that are easily distinguishable and tap-able.

Where (iTunes link)
Where has a similar concept, allowing users to swipe left and right to access more data.

Tweetdeck [iTunes link]
Tweetdeck is a good example of user interface design on many levels. Notice how the design highlights recent updates. The application could display the updates in a new window, with a categorized or tabbed list. But it doesn’t. Instead, a more familiar dialogue menu is displayed — it serves as a springboard to jump to a specific category or to clear the messages altogether.

2. Simplifying The Interface

Simplifying user interfaces may sound like a mechanical task, but what lies beneath the surface of user interface design? The answer is simple: users. And what do users want? What makes them all warm and fuzzy? How do you deliver what they want so that they don’t even notice how they are consuming information?

Facebook’s first release did a great job of fitting a lot of core functionality into a small space. The problem, of course, is in laying out all that data and creating an intuitive interface. Compare 3.0 with the first release, and you’ll see how they took a “springboard” approach to streamlining the interface, keeping it intuitive and maintaining functionality.

Flickr [iTunes link]
Flickr is another example of how to achieve a good balance between functionality, visual design and the small display area on mobile devices. Think about it: what is at the core of Flickr? Photos. Its users probably do not want to look at big clunky navigational elements; instead, they are looking for pictures. Flickr has managed to fit all of its core functionality without heading down the highway to navigational hell. In fact, most elements in the navigation are handled by interacting with the photos themselves. Simple and smart.

3. Hardware-ish Look

Many utilities are breaking out of the conventional iPhone UI to take advantage of the device’s unique ability to respond to finger gestures. Many of these have hardware-ish interfaces that users are familiar with but come with perpetually shiny exteriors and clicks and pops that maintain their newness from the first to one-thousandth click. Next up, though: an app that gets dirtier the more you play with it.

Convertbot (iTunes link)
Convertbot reminds us of the proportion wheel we all used in grade school, except it’s more distinctive, original and creative.

Little Snapper (iTunes Link)
Little Snapper mimics the wheel that you turn on a typical digital SLR

iHandy Level (iTunes Link)
iHandy Level simulates the look and functionality of a real, well-used leveler.

Where To? [iTunes Link]
This application looks like it belongs in a Mercedes. Plush leather, matte-finish tactile buttons: quality craftsmanship. We can just imagine how each button press feels solid, requiring the perfect amount of pressure.

4. Rich, Padded And Pretty List Views

You know that you are a geek designer when you get excited about the latest trends in list view design. And what do people do when they encounter a list view? Of course, they skim. And how do we make it easier for people to decide what interests them? That’s right: more visual cues!

Essentially, users are asking for a snapshot of what’s next, and then decide if they want more information. One way to do this is with big pretty buttons. Large and in charge, elegantly designed big buttons give the user a lot of information through their color, icons and typography.

Delivery Status Touch (iTunes Link)
Check out how Delivery Status uses appropriate colors on its big buttons to identify each brand. And it uses typography well to establish a hierarchy of information.

Be Happy Now (iTunes Link)
Be Happy Now’s big buttons convey the “be happy” mantra through a mellow color scheme and light, calm and clear typeface.

Next Read [iTunes link]
The Next Read application allows friends to share books. Here all books about a particular topic are presented, including the title, cover image, review rating and number of people who have recommended it. Notice the padding and a lot of white space for each navigation option; this makes the areas easily clickable and easier to navigate.

Nike [iTunes link]
Nike’s workout application for women includes a nice visual treatment and illustrations that match the brand. It breaks out of the traditional UI just enough to communicate the brand without making it difficult for users to understand the interface and how to use it.

Borange [iTunes link]
Borange is a “social availability” application that helps you coordinate meetings with friends. The list view presents a lot of information: friends you want to hang out with, the meeting location and a nice visualization of friends who are available.

5. Layered Interface

Several applications take advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities by layering the interface and making some elements stationary and others vertically or horizontally scrollable. This approach has several benefits:

1. It reduces the number of traditional navigation elements that are necessary (i.e. fewer buttons help to avoid a cluttered interface).
2. It gives users a faster route to the information they want.
3. More screen space is available for information.

Tweetie (iTunes Link)
Tweetie uses layers to organize information specific to each of your Twitter friends. Just look at all of the information packed into this one screen!

Barnes & Noble [iTunes link]
Barnes & Noble has a layered interface that allows you to quickly slide through new releases at the top or dive into more categories below.

USA Today [iTunes link]
USA Today takes a slightly different approach to layering the interface in its “Pictures” section: it uses sliding panels to display blocks of information. While the interface may look cluttered at the first glance, one can easily get around it. The interesting part is that within each panel you can slide thumbnails left and right to view more images.

myPantone [iTunes link]
Would we expect any less from Pantone? The color picker shown above is a layered interface that lets you pick from a range of colors, sort and scroll as well as open and close detail screens, all without too driving you crazy.

6. Icons For The List View

Icons aren’t just for springboard-loving folks. On small screens, icons can give a huge boost to an application’s usability and navigation. Let’s now take a look at some examples of applications that use icons to their advantage.

iStudiez (iTunes Link)
This application uses various educational metaphors as icons to clearly communicate the purpose of the application. Excellent visual cues tell the student what’s happening today at a glance.

Top Floor (iTunes Link)
Top Floor uses simple and easily recognizable icons to quickly guide users to their category of choice.

New York Times
Isn’t it great when applications just let you do whatever you want to do? For an app with as much information as the New York Times’, users are bound to have their favorite sections. Well, guess what? The New York Times cares: it lets you customize the tab bar’s navigation to include only your favorite sections of the paper. Drag an icon down the tab bar and you are set. The downside of the design is, of course, its lack of visual appeal.

Filemaker [iTunes link]
Here is another example of beautiful icons that aren’t obscure or confusing. Designers should never use icons just for the sake of having icons. As designers, we want icons that illustrate what users are actually going to get when they choose a particular path. Nicely done, Filemaker.

7. Illustrations in use

Applications that rely on graphics not found in the standard user interfaces are increasing in popularity, as developers try to set their apps apart from the crowd. Sometimes it works, but often it doesn’t. The more unconventional a design is, the more likely it is to have usability problems. Please always conduct usability testing before releasing a product with a “creative” user interface.

Magnetic Personalities (iTunes link)
An excellent example of how buttons don’t have to look like standard buttons.

SugarSync [iTunes link]
This interface could have easily followed the traditional list-view route. Instead, the designers played with the concept of “connectivity” to create a visual treatment that communicates the purpose of the app. It is unusual and requires some time to get used to.

Mom Maps [iTunes link]
Another example of how illustrations do a great job of pulling together the whole concept of an application.

8. Using Gestures

Classic linear navigation may look boring: a button that links to other buttons, which leads you to a list of something, which leads you to such-and-such an interaction. Not really spectacular. The possibilities for creative interaction in utility apps are huge and largely untapped (no pun intended).

Mover (iTunes link)
Mover exemplifies how to use gestures for sharing contacts, photos and bookmarks. Open two devices, and flick the shared files from one handset to the other.

ABC Animals [iTunes link]
This application teaches while it entertains. Being able to trace a letter with your finger is another example of how the iPhone responds to touch and movement.

All Recipes [iTunes link]
This applications allows you to mix in various elements to create your next meal using gestures.

(http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/09/iphone-app-design-trends/)

Talking about good or bad web design in this way only makes sense if it is in the context of what the user expects. The most important part of the quality concept in web design is thus the user’s evaluation of the web design’s success and not the designer’s. Quality in web design is the degree of fulfillment of the user’s expectations.

When developing the website that makes your business run, we need to evaluate web design from a business perspective. However, relying solely on a business perspective of quality is dangerous.

Many websites are build on a concept of quality that relies on what the market demands and what currently works, but to prevent the foundation of our businesses from being pulverized by new competing products, we should rid ourselves from preconceived and esoteric opinions about what quality is. Instead we should evaluate the quality of our work with basis in the users’ mind and with an ignorance of what the market demands.

The key is to evaluate quality with basis in the user’s expectations to how a web design solves his or her needs and then pull down a business perspective, which in turn most likely will make us deviate our design from blindly living up to the users’ expectations.

The following websites deal with interface design, user experience, user-centered design, usability, and everything in between – all with the goal of enhancing the user’s interface.

1. Boxes and Arrows

Boxes and Arrows is a peer-written journal and a premier source for information on interaction design, usability, and information design. You’ll find articles ondesigning a usable online email application to storyboarding rich internet applications.

2. UX Magazine

UX Magazine deals in the topic of user experience. You can expect to read articles on topics such as designing in layers and design tips for programmers.

3. UXmatters

UXmatters is a non-profit web magazine devoted to sharing information on effective user experience techniques and becoming a leading resource for User Interface (UX) professionals. Some of the topics in UXmatters include usability, user-centered design, web 2.0 applications, and more. You can read articles that talk abouthow rich internet applications help users and the usability of search forms.

4. A List Apart: User Science

A List Apart – the leading resource on standards-based design and development articles – has a User Science topic that covers various parts of designing the user’s interface. The User Science topic is further sub-divided into three categories: Accessibility, Information Architecture, and  Usability.

5. Usability Post

Usability Post is a blog about design usability. A couple of blog posts you’ll find share tips on using white space to improve User Interface and using Photoshop color profiles for web images.

6. Usability Counts

Usability Counts is a blog by Patrick Neeman and Ha Phan, consultants on User Experience. You can expect posts that talk about the form design of airline sites and musings on why usability counts.

7. Usable Web

Usable Web is a collection of links about User Interface design topics as it pertains to the web. Although it’s no longer updated and many of the articles are outdated, you’ll still find timeless resources and articles on the site.

8. User Interface Engineering

User Interface Engineering is the research, training and consulting firm that holds the annual User Interface Conference. The Articles section of their website hosts plenty of articles on the topic of User Interface design. Some topics covered are usability challenges of designing web apps and design mistakes with account sign-in that designers should avoid.

9. Functioning Form

Functioning Form is an interaction design blog by internationally-recognized web professional and author Luke Wroblewski. Some posts you’ll find in Functioning Form include “Web Form Design: British Airways” and “Sign-Up Form Patterns“.

10. useit.com

useit.com is the website of Jakob Nielsen, a leading expert on usability. Check out the Alertbox section, a bi-weekly column about current issues on usability.

11. InfoDesign

InfoDesign is a website that covers the topic of information design. Some categories on InfoDesign include Accessibility, Usability, and User Experience.

12. Designing Interfaces

Designing Interfaces is an online book constructed using excerpts from O’Reilly’s 
Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design.

13. Usability.gov

Usability.gov is the primary government source for usability and user-centered design by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. You can read about the basics of usability and usability methods on the site.

14. Usability First

Usability First seeks to provide valuable information on usability as it pertains to websites and applications. Usability First has several sections including Website Design, Usability ROI (Return of Investment), and Accessibility.

15. Design with Intent

Design with Intent is a blog by Dan Lockton that talks about the topic of understanding user interaction and influencing it.

16. Pattern Tap

There’s no better way to learn how to design effective user interfaces than to see how other designers do it. Pattern Tap is a showcase of popular interface design for inspiration. You’ll find collections of Forms, Login, Subnavigation, Buttons, among other design patterns.

17. Welie.com

Welie.com’s Interaction Design Pattern Library shares design patterns in interaction design. You can find design patterns such as Breadcrumbs, Tabs, andComment Box as part of the library.

18. UI-patterns

UI-patterns is another top-notch User Interface library that collects and showcases reoccurring design patterns such as Captchas, Account Registrations, andNavigation Tabs.

19. UI Pattern Factory

UI Pattern Factory is both a UI pattern library and a UI gallery. It showcases and discusses patterns such as Stacked Tabs, Carousels, and Edit-In-Place.

20. Yahoo! Design Pattern Library

(http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/20-websites-to-help-you-m…)

1. Multi-channel interface: multi-channel user interface applications, the results of adhering to the ‘Science and Technology crosses over the barrier’ concept, and making full use of network and information accessibility. This has provided not only the disabled but also abled bodied man a more user-friendly interface.
2. One screen operating concept: Simple interface that makes use of the one screen operating concept, menu navigation and the main function buttons placed on a fixed position on the page. User-friendly and convenient to switch pages and view information. In line with trends in ICT development, multimedia touch-screen interfaces and applied to the analog signal access development.
3. Unique presentation of content, the page that need frequent changing of features and content in the fixed framed area, reducing the user’s visual focus to not have long attention other areas of the page. Simplified list of titles allows users to conveniently determine their location and quickly find information
4. Enhanced visual information elements: for low vision users, using clear fonts and large icons and high contrast. Simple icon and text navigation for easy identifying and understanding
5. Barrier-free Sidebar: For low vision users to display their content requests. We implemented a barrier-free design aid toolbars at fixed positions at all of our webpages, for the users to easily switch the skins, adjust the font size, color scheme or choose the zoom level of the magnifying glass

 In 2011,Shengbo Website won the award of “Xin word Commonweal Innovation ”

The process of designing the Shengbo Website makes us more professional in researching about the blinds’ habits and requirements, and makes us aware of our social innovation responsibility . We believe that innovation can help make our life better and responsibility can promote change.

The following is a video of Shengbo Website designed by Peopeo. We need your support in the Shengbo Website and we welcome you to join us in the service for the disabled.