I always love the end of December when lists pop up for the best this or that of the year. The top ten albums, movies and books are fairly common. Even the more gift focused lists such as Gifts for User Experience Geeks and 10 Things UX Geeks Want for Christmas are pretty exciting. Over the last few years I’ve seen more and more lists popping up for web and mobile based favorites. I figured it would be fun to put a list together of my favorite interactive experiences for the year so here they are:

Pete Barry’s Top Ten Interactive Experiences of 2009.

10. Google Wave
I imagine that Google Wave will be the death of meetings. It allows a team to collaborate in ways that will definitely improve efficiency and clarity in communication.
9. Fly
It may seem selfish to claim Fly as a favorite but I actually keep it bookmarked on my phone and check it quite often. Fly works great in the browser and on the iPhone.
8. Logitech Harmony Remote
I have one button for each activity that I do. Each of these sets up all devices properly. I set it up by plugging it in to the computer and telling it what my devices were. Simple.
7. The Facebook Bar
Lots of people love Facebook. I have a more specific favorite. The bar at the bottom of the window that displays applications, chat and notifications. It hugs the browser. Beautiful.
6. Tweetdeck
There are a lot of Twitter clients out there. I keep coming back to Tweetdeck and they keep making it better.
5. Google Reader
Everything I learned this year I learned from Google Reader. Well, almost everything.
4. Lazyfeed
If you don’t have time for Google Reader then you should take a look at Lazyfeed. They’ve made some recent upgrade and I love it.
3. Amazon Universal Wish List
Amazon has made their wishlist even better by allowing me to add things from other places online. That’s right, they make it easy for people to but things from their competition.
2. Evernote for the iPhone
It has been said that my writing looks like that of a serial killer or a chicken prone to seizures. Evernote lets me to take a photo of my whiteboard and translates accurately.
1. The Ubiquitous Internet
It seems that everything is connecting. Logging in to one site with another site’s account, mashups and aggregators, microformats and plug-ins. It’s getting pretty cool.

I am so excited to hear that Mozilla is working on incorporating user identity into the Firefox browser. This has been a passion of mine for a couple years now and I feel like a huge weight is being lifted off of my shoulders. Designing experiences where registration and sign-in are necessary online has been a thorn in the side of user experience for years. Having to sign-in to every site that you visit is a royal pain in the you know what. Allowing users to sign-in to the browser will make for better experiences across the web. So, get out your pom poms and cheer with me. The death of the sign-in is just over the horizon. You can read more about this on Aza Raskin’s blog.

Flickr allows for users to view photos which were taken near their location.

Designing experiences for people sitting at their computer is no longer acceptable. As mobile has become a common method of accessing information it can no longer be assumed that people are accessing these experiences from their offices. The trend in the late 1990s of companies building websites as an alternate type of brochure is something to look back and laugh at. Especially when considering the capabilities of the interactive experiences available today. Even though many are laughing I see the resurrection of the trend today as mobile experiences become more prevalent. It seems that many web experiences are being duplicated for mobile devices. Should we assume that the expectations of the people visiting these mobile experiences are the same as when they are sitting at their desks? No. Of course not. Mobile experiences need to make a few educated assumptions about the reason someone would access the experience while away from their desk. These assumptions can allow for certain information to be pushed to the front whereas it might not be up front on a desktop based experience. Visiting the website for a chain of movie theaters can provide me with plenty of information. If I visit the site from my phone I think it would be fair to assume that I am likely most interested in locations and show times. It might also be valuable to display information based on my current location. Displaying the same marketing messages as are on the desktop site only frustrates me.
This brings to mind the complexities of designing for mobile. I think that designing for mobile is just the beginning. With the growth of the netbook market, the variety of mobile devices which can access the internet as well as the smart phones which offer mobile applications, the number of platforms available for interactive experiences are growing exponentially. The methods of interaction are only complicating the issue. Consider that touch interfaces, gestural navigation and motion detection are just the beginning. Creating experiences which are location aware, time aware and add in any type of social context and suddenly there is a lot to consider when creating these experiences. Designing for context is the real challenge. Meeting the needs of people where and when they are and meeting the needs of the device will become the new standard for interaction requirements.