I’d have loved for this post to be the introduction of our latest iPhone application. An application that introduces a new default optional home screen. A screen that doesn’t require you to scan for red dots with numbers inside of them. Instead it would display information and notifications of things that are new and relevant to you. We’ll all have to keep dreaming for the time being. Unless you’re willing to jailbreak your phone it simply isn’t possible to develop and implement this type of hostile UI takeover using the iPhone SDK.

Until then (we’re doubtful that sort of freedom will ever be available) Here’s how we might design a new home screen.

You can see from the screens it’s essentially just a scrollable list of applications and notifications. We envision it behaving in much the same way that the list view does in the Calendar application. By default it may track things like missed calls, unread emails and calendar events. But what if users could allow other apps to feed into this screen as well? If I’m a Facebook junkie I’d be able to tell the Facebook app to include certain feeds on my home screen. If I was a frequent traveler I may include the Tripit app to show me my upcoming trips. The options would only be limited by what apps you have installed.

Update: The demand for this has been too great to ignore. We’re building a working version of this. More details and screens to follow. You can follow us at twitter.com/teehanlax

A scrollable screen of the stuff that matters to me.

Application preferences would allow users to include certain feeds on their home screens.

Jon had mentioned (as did Drew in the comments) he’d like this info without having to unlock the phone. I agree. If only development were this easy.

It was 1995 when Alaska Airlines first introduced online ticket sales. Throughout the past decade all the major players have come to offer similar functionality, including Continental. The airlines have developed this utility to the point where “best practices” have been established and user drop-off should be limited to seat availability or price.

However, It seems that nearly every time I see a new version of a booking engine it has more options up-front? Is research showing us that users have become savvy enough to weed through options that don’t pertain to their trip? Are all these options necessary up front? Or, perhaps it is just a simply a case of feature creep. In any case, these systems seem to put the burden on the users by presenting them with irrelevant options. what I’m referring to isn’t a usability issue, it’s an experience design issue.

What if the system had a logical default – something simplified like the example to the right. Then, when a user interacts with “more options” those options could be added to the default view on the next visit i.e. anticipate my needs. For example, when I buy tickets from work I buy single return tickets, so my view may stay relatively the same. My wife on the other hand, is constantly looking for family vacations and needs to account for 2 adults and 2 children – her view would have “number of adults” and “children” defaulted.

Continental is not alone here. American, Delta, Southwest, British Airways and others all have similar issues.

JetBlue, who neglected to put a booking engine on their homepage seems to have redesigned – thankfully this new design includes one worth checking out.

It’s been 8 months since the Globe and Mail redesign. With it came a layout formatted for 1024×768, a commenting engine, multiple RSS feeds, a news ticker and more. It is in my opinion a huge improvement over the old site. I especially love the article pages. The type is incredibly easy to read and, while there are ads, they don’t take prominence over the content. However, I do find it difficult to scan the headlines on the home page.

The home page tweak is simple: Create headline styles that stand out more than the rest of the page content. They do an excellent job of this in their printed paper. If you look at the front page of their print version you can easily scan the page for the day’s top news. Large type set with an appropriate amount of space surrounding it makes for easy scanability.

While making some of these changes to the mock-up there were a few other things that were modified to increase the prominence of headlines. The most obvious of these changes were to the ads. Both the quantity, and more importantly, their placement.

Of course, the website is “free” for the majority of users (The exception is the “insider” pay content). I also understand that ads drive revenue and help cover costs/profits margins but the home page needn’t look like a classifieds section to do so. Look at the front page of their newspaper, you’ll find one large ad at the bottom of the page. Now look at their home page, its littered with ads – above the main navigation, sandwiched in between the left rail navigation, in between content. Some are text based, others are standard IAB sizes, you get the idea.

By limiting the number and changing the placement of ads on the home page it becomes more scanable. The site still has plenty of opportunities for advertisers to speak to the readers, and others could be conceived.

The last thing of note is the news ticker. The design above envisioned it as more of a CNN style ticker that stays anchored to the bottom of the page. Large type, smooth animation – more of a broadcast feel.

I have to give the design team credit. It’s easy for us to sit on the periphery and blue sky “better” ways to design the home page, free of business requirements. They of course had those requirements and hence designed ways to work the ads into the home page.

Here are large examples: before and after

To say Google’s search engine is pretty good is an understatement. I often find myself using it even if I’m 90% sure of the actual URL. However, the results I’m looking for aren’t always on the first page. And, while the results page does a decent job with pagination I think it could be better. Providing the user with a large hit area for the next results page would be a welcome improvement for those times when what your looking for resides a few pages deeper. It’s not that I miss the current target, it’s that I want to spend little to no time worrying about my mouse accuracy.

This solution isn’t just right for Google. Most search engines could benefit from an element like this. The first and only example I’ve come across that uses something like this is Veer.

Lastly on search UI, if you haven’t had a chance to check out Snap.com you should. Unlike Google it shows screen captures of the pages your searching. Plus, it allows you to traverse results using your keyboard.