Just at this very moment, history is repeating itself once again. Now, everyone completely agrees that popups are sooo nineteen-ninety something and distracting, and bad UX altogether. Everyone wants tabs now.

The problem of tabs

What’s wrong with those tabs then? Well, actually nothing! Tabs are awesome, and I couldn’t imagine going back to a browser that doesn’t feature them. The problem really isn’t about tabs (Klaus should be relieved now!), the problem is how people intend to use them.

What are tabs good for?

To start with an easy concept, tabs basically allow you to distribute content into several containers that can individually be activated one at a time, thus saving screen real estate. Tabs can be static or dynamic, meaning they can be opened and closed, and work excellent in situations where you’re opening instances of the same content format. Take a browser, for instance: You’re essentially opening websites all the time – content containers with the format “Website”.

What are tabs not good for?

The obvious issue people don’t realize is that only one tab can be visible at a time because they’re sharing the same visual position. This is the big issue : Tab do not work when the content is..

1. ..of a completely different (visual) layout
2. ..meant to be visible all the time
3. ..needs to be easy comparable against other content
4. ..important content

Of those four, the third and forth are probably the most important to realize. If you are currently utilizing tabs on your site, think for a bit if not seeing the complete content currently distributed is a disadvantage, or in other words: Does the UX become better if all content is visible at once? If your content is vitally important, do not hide it within secondary tabs! All tabs require user activation, and makes your content less visible.

Conclusion: be reasonable!

If your screen is getting crowded next time and you’re thinking about utilizing tabs, take a minute and think about the above mentioned issues. It might very well be that tabs work perfectly in your situation – it’s when you realize the tabs do not restrict the user experience.

Cheers!

If you haven’t heard of chi.mp before it basically gives you a free personal domain to bring together, promote, and connect your digital life – all in one place. It includes Twitter and Facebook integration (in addition to other social services) allowing you to send friends or contacts to one place to get all the updates and necessary information on you. chi.mp is also an OpenID provider, which is nice.

I was fortunate enough to get to speak to Rob Farrow, VP of Marketing and Global Brand Development, to answer a few questions.

There seems to be a fair bit of interest in chi.mp at the moment, could you just explain very briefly what chi.mp is so that people who haven’t come across it before kind of know what its about?

Chi.mp is a platform that allows you to create your personal social hub on a domain that you own and control. It is about you being able to create, share, connect and collect all the elements that define who you are online. Think of it as your personal portal to “you” on the web.

So where abouts is the chi.mp team based?

Out team is split between Honolulu Hawaii (HQ) and Solana Beach California.

The growth in social networks is far from slowing down, what would you say is the USP that helps differentiate chi.mp from the likes of Tumblr for example?

The single most obvious differentiator with chi.mp over any other service is the domain. We not only provide our owners with a very robust platform we give them their own personal domain (for free) that they own and control. Unlike many of the other social sites out there that make you a subset of their domains and own all the content/contacts within your account, chi.mp has taken a different approach and put the ownership and control back in the hands of the site owners.

I mention Tumblr as it was the first service that came to mind that appears similar to chi.mp, do you class the likes of Tumblr and Friendfeed as competitors? If not who do you consider to be your main competition?

We really have no “direct” competitors for chi.mp since the vision and service offerings are larger than any one company currently out there. We are always in competition with a variety of services for the attention and loyalties of our owners, this is the driving force behind the desire to create a better product every day. One of the biggest potential “threats” that we see on the horizon is the introduction of new TLD’s into the market place by ICANN sometime late next year. That threat also makes the assumption that of the limited amount of domains released someone will enter the social space with one.

At the moment you’re in beta, how many people do you have using it?

Several thousand.

Whats the response been like so far to the beta release?

So far very positive, our philosophy towards owner rights has been extremely well received. We have had some great input on how we can improve our service offerings, our interface and our descriptions of services.

All the services you’re aggregating, whether its Facebook, Twitter or Flickr all have their own unique audience and more importantly characteristics. What has been the hardest aspect of bringing these together?

The technical challenges and resource demands to integrate them have been the most challenging to date. For specifics our tech team could better help you there.

What do you think have been the biggest UX challenges you’ve had to face?

The biggest challenges have come in the form of communication more specifically how do we communicate all the features to our owners in a clear and concise manner, engage them and at the same time not bog them down. Its a challenge to determine at what point something becomes intuitive or confusing.

Visually chi.mp is very distinctive. What was the thinking behind the design?

We were a different kind of company from the start. We had different values, services and opportunities for our owners. The design was the cumulative process of input from our initial alpha testers and our design team.

Looking at the chi.mp team there doesn’t appear to be one sole person responsible for the user experience, however you seem to have a strong community helping you. How big a part have UX processes played in the development so far, and what research methods do you employ to help affect change?

So far we have used lots of testing, aggressively engaged our community for their input and have worked with a design team as opposed to a designer. It was important to have a continuity in design extending from marketing and brand experience all the way through the UX.

Apart from the option to purchase your .mp domain are there other plans to monetise chi.mp?

Yes…we have several domain centric and service centric models queued up. NONE will affect the current ownership arrangement (free base service) and NONE involve scraping our owners’ content or contacts.

Thanks a lot for taking the time out to answer my questions, its really appreciated. Just one last question to finish, what are the long term plans for chi.mp?

Grow and become as socially relevant for our owners so that we can provide them with long lasting, relevant value.

Since the interview Rob has moved on from chi.mp and is now working as a Marketing Consultant. For more on Rob you can view his Linkedin profile.