When we initially launched the redesigned homepage, the hero banner area at the top of the page displayed only the first hero message by default. The banners didn’t rotate to the other messages and required users to manually mouseover the banner thumbnails to view the other three heros. As a result, we found that there was a missed opportunity to maximize the visibility of the other hero messages for users.
 
To address this issue, what we’ve done is transform the hero banners into an auto-rotating carousel which cycles through each of the four hero messages. With a subtle fade transition from one message to another, the hero now has the right amount of animation to draw users’ attention to these key messages without introducing visual noise. And, visitors now have a greater probability of viewing a banner message which was previously buried and likely increase the rate of user interaction.

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Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and Whitney Hess discuss the impact of design on the Web, and the transition from a desktop based medium to a mobile medium in recent years.

The way we communicate with each other is changing. I use social media like forums and Twitter to connect and learn from others. It seems that I am not alone. Over one billion people, that’s one out of every seven people in the world, are connecting via some form of social media.

As designers, we try to learn about people and their needs, design for them, and then refine the design. Along the way, we connect and engage with people through things like usability tests and focus groups. But people are describing their experiences in a much broader way including things like how they became aware of a product, purchased it, how they are configuring it and what they do when something goes wrong. We have the opportunity to engage people about every part of their experience.

One way we can engage is through social media. By listening and offering help, we can begin to build a relationship with the people who use our products. It helps to reach out to people where they...