Bill Berger.org

The fog...has lifted.

Ok, had some great feedback on all the social media stuff. Thank you for being interested and giving me some insight. I think all 6 of you were very helpful! (Haha). So, TweetDeck is the platform that covers all 3 and I like it. So, I am on twitter, FB and working the blog. Look for me!

Check this out!

I got the links...

http://www.topchretien.com/ is the French Portal

http://www.godrev.com/ is the English Portal

http://www.godrev.com/joy-in-heaven/ is the Decision Map in real time

Let me know what you think.

Google's design Guidelines

As we are designing a new website, I read that these are the top ten principles Google uses for designing interfaces. I put an astericks by my top 5.

   1. Useful: focus on people - their lives, their work, their dreams.*
   2. Fast: every millisecond counts.
   3. Simple: simplicity is powerful.
   4. Engaging: engage beginners and attract experts.*
   5. Innovative: dare to be innovative.*
   6. Universal: design for the world.
   7. Profitable: plan for today's and tomorrow's business.
   8. Beautiful: delight the eye without distracting the mind.
   9. Trustworthy: be worthy of people's trust.*
  10. Personable: add a human touch.*

Let's see if Google's homepage respects these guidelines. It loads fast and it's pretty useful for those go to google.com The design is very simple and has little distractions, so it's not intimidating. You don't need a manual to use Google search, but you can learn some tricks that may help you get better results. I'm not sure if Google's homepage is innovative, but many other sites copied its simplicity. Google's homepage is instantly recognizable, so it crossed the cultural barriers, even if Google had to adapt it in Korea and Japan. The profitability is a consequence of Google's focus on delivering useful ads that are contextually adequate: placing ads on the homepage would probably alienate the users. Google's homepage is spacious, elegant and has some sense of humor: "I'm feeling lucky" and the doodles add a human touch. As for trustworthiness, the straightforward design should reinforce users' perception that Google doesn't have a hidden agenda and tries to offer the best answers.

We have a stellar team working on our site, it should be right along these guidelines.  It is due out in the next couple months. I will keep you posted as to when we launch the site.