Back to basics

There are a lot of year-end lists being posted and one thing that’s been on many of them is Web 2.0. This is an interesting meme that has now reached the mainstream. I’ve been drawn to many sites and services that fall into the broad category, and after almost a year of Web 2.0, AJAX and all the others I’m frankly a little tired of the ongoing Deep Thoughts on the subject. Maybe I’m being obtuse but I think that the signal to noise ratio is off on this; one of these days I’ll have to get a look at the Gartner Hype Cycle on it just to satisfy my curiosity. Here’s my simple manifesto: Web 2.0 is a very useful set of tools representing an intriguing approach to interaction design, so let’s get on with it.

The intranet prototype I’ve been doing these focus groups on uses Web 2.0 constructs and approaches at the transaction and interface layers. What I’ve observed in every country I’ve been to is that Just Plain Folks are completely comfortable with using Web 2.0 constructs and interfaces.I have 2 cities to go, and I don’t expect to find anything unusually different by the time I’m done. The revolution is over and we’re the better for it.

Speaking of the prototype, it struck me this morning that degrees of hype and the distractions of shiny new things can make us lose sight of fundamentals. Case in point, I drew the original design concepts for our Employee Portal in the summer of 1998.

Back then we were in the heat of Web 1.0 and the future was going to be amazing! But…couldn’t do it. Why? We were missing a most humble enabler