Adobe’s holding a special product preview summit today called Engage, focused on Adobe’s new tools for creating engaging user experiences. I love Adobe’s framing of “engaging user experiences” as a touchstone for the web going forward. (And yes, the tools are amazing, especially Apollo, a tool for building offline web apps. (Note: Apollo’s chief software engineer Ed Rowe will be demoing Apollo at Etech. There will be an Apollo public labs release later this month, with full availability later in the year.)
I’m sure that there will be lots of news from other bloggers at the summit. I wanted to start with a reminder of what’s important when creating engaging user experiences: put the user first.
In his introduction, Adobe’s chief software architect Kevin Lynch was talking about how their new integrated tooling will allow companies to re-use media assets across many different types of devices and applications. This will doubtless be very compelling to ad agencies and publishers, but this kind of re-use is potentially a dangerous weapon in the hands of people who don’t understand the web 2.0 idea that John Musser calls pay the user first.
Is what’s easiest for the producer of content (asset reuse and the ability to create integrated experiences across platforms) really what’s best for the user? Only if content developers use that power wisely. Kathy Sierra reminds us that success in the social media era is about creating “I rule” moments for users. So when I hear a software vendor talking about creating “I rule” moments for content suppliers, I worry that they’re on the wrong track, unless they work to offset the natural tendency towards “efficiency” for the provider rather than great experiences for the user.
In this regard, if you’re thinking about building compelling Web 2.0 applications, the most important blog to read is not TechCrunch or Read/Write Web or even O’Reilly Radar, but Creating Passionate Users.