The new Whitehouse.gov redesign is testament to how design truly mimics reality: change in its raw form. Change in a tangible form.

Smashing Magazine has a great article analyzing the recent redesign of the Whitehouse.gov website. They touch on a few great things that the lead designer has done a great job putting together.

There has been great attention and detail put into preserving the classic and traditional elements of government in the form of various design elements like classic serif fonts and glyphs: more modern elements, like large message-oriented buttons and billboard like sub-headers still appear mature and respectable throughout this change.

Attention Paid is Attention Earned: Implications

The Obama administration has crafted their online brand with a phenomenal amount of care. I can only guarantee that future political campaigns around the world will follow suit in leveraging the web to gain support. As much as that former statement has been repeated throughout the media in respecting Obama’s initiatives, there is still a missing point that this article proves: design matters. Your audiences online are vast and diverse, but also vocal and educated (hence the need for media that accompany public conversation online, especially in political issues). Campaigning online is about marketing online in a fashion that convinces your audience that you have put enough care into the design and infrastructure to earn their attention. It’s time to pay attention to earn your much deserved attention.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/01/whitehousegov-redesign-the-change-has-come/

Steve Barsh outlines a few surprisingly simple and effective ways to test your online market before planning and launching a final advertising campaign on Google AdWords. Beyond just helping you plan your campaign, testing your market with Google’s vast reach can help you effectively position your product or service.

Steve suggests orchestrating test campaigns with text that outline your product in various ways. Using your click-through rates, you can generate a basic level of insight into a potential market without spending valuable time and money on more advanced market research techniques.

Read it here: 5 Surprising Ways To De-Risk Your New Idea Using Google Adwords – Part 1 of 2

Smashing Magazine, as always, has an excellent post about a few web application elements that are not only trendy but extremely useful. Always good things to keep in mind if getting ahead is part of your game plan. (Click the image to view the article)

We would add something to this list: quiet tools; information and navigation elements that are crucial but unobtrusively present, giving you the feeling of polish:

Share, edit, delete, resize, timestamp functions are all there, but quietly there.

Netvibes does this really well with their highly customizable homepages. Their latest theme, Lumi, was just recently released. It’s a lot less flashy than their other themes, but mainly because of this new ‘quiet’ approach. Good on them.

At Aer, we have a few web applications in the pipeline. We’re excited to be in a time where tools and technologies are available to us to integrate these pinnacle-of-usability tools into enhancing the experience of our audiences and users.

-Aer