As the title suggests, they discussed some of the newer ways forms are handling user input and the newer ways users are able to input data. The main topics in the interview (in order):
- Google Instant Search
- Yahoo's experience with a similar product "Live Search"
- Other sites using different versions of this search
- Input from anywhere
- Ping for iTunes
It's a good interview where many good points are made but there were three that stood out for me.
A feature added to your site should solve your specific problem
Google's Instant Search may be cool and useful but that does not mean that every web site should change their search to do the exact same thing in the exact same way. An instantaneous* response can backfire. The example given in the interview was a form immediately throwing an error when the first character for a user name was entered because 'L is not a user name'.
As a counter-example some registration forms, like the one for Twitter, put indicators next to the password field indicating their strength. As you type in the password and add in characters that meet the requirements (numbers, symbols, mixed case) the indicator goes from red and 'weak' to green and 'strong'. You know that your password is good enough as you're typing it: not after you've attempted to submit but you're not being interrupted by an error message either.
New features should help the user do what they need to easier and faster without frustrating them. This means doing some research and user-testing even when it's not something you're building from scratch.
Keep It Simple, Silly
Not a new lesson but sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are helping other sites let their users skip the registration process entirely. Services like Facebook Connect lets you log into an entirely different site using your existing account. The third party site avoids losing the user in the registration process, Facebook increases the value of their service to the user, and the user doesn't have to do anything other than log in to use the third party site.
Manage and Meet User Expectations
If Luke Wroblewski's opinion of Ping is typical of the people who used it then it seems that most of the problem was that people got something other than what they expected. Wroblewski was expecting his Ping account to pull information from his iTunes account but it didn't. He was also expecting it to work the way most other social sites do where there is very little limitations on what name or photo you use and no limit to what you can say that you like.
Part of this could have been avoided if people had known that their Ping accounts wouldn't be pre-populated with any data. User expectations can be managed by explaining what a new service will have, do, and be used for when it's announced. Demos are a good idea: they can make it clear what a service can't or won't do. I don't know what Apple did or didn't do with Ping before it was launched so this isn't to say that they didn't do any of this.
But another thing to do is to meet user expectations. I've honestly never heard of a social site or service that required you to not just use your real name but use it exactly how it appears on your credit card. I've also never heard of one that requires you to submit your user image for approval first. That's just odd. If they really didn't want to bother with having moderators check for anything inappropriate they could have just done what AdultSwim did and have a set of images for users to choose from.
This is all just my opinion and certainly not a substitute for listening or reading the interview so check it out if you haven't yet.
*I know people use the term "real time" but it sounds odd to me for anything that doesn't use some kind of alternative timing. We're not talking about an awards show on a 30 second delay or a video game where 3 minutes in real life is an hour in the game. We're talking about web sites. It'd be like getting on a slow elevator and saying, "I wish this elevator could get me to my floor in real time!".
See how that doesn't make sense? Clearly it wouldn't even be an elevator at that point but a teleporter.
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