Or why is usability and user experience so important for softwere developers and engineers, and how do you convince them it's so bloody important?

The inmates are running the asylum, by Alan Cooper

This reads like a business-book, which is what it aims at. It does give a good feeling for what’s important when you develop software for people that aren't you, especially when it comes to working through specifications (no matter who the specs are given by). Features of your software are not what is important, rather that users are able to reach their goal. So one should work goal-oriented and put in features that help users reach their goal, not put in features just because somebody thinks it’s interesting (think pointy-haired boss).

Engineering methods don’t work to solve engineering problems, because you’re blind to your own problems. A different method will probably work better. Also, it’s difficult to do both back-end and front-end design so separate both but they still have to work together. There is a conflict of interest between what the programmer wants, and what the user wants. So you don’t let a programmer referee whether a program is doing what the user wants (unless it’s something she designed for herself to use, obviously).

Bribery can work to find out what programmers are doing, but you shouldn’t have to resolve to it. On the other hand, maybe you can train some sense into them that way. Or present it together with a rational, defensible reason. In terms an engineer can understand.

Bottom line: you can listen to your users, but it's even better to observe them. If you only listen, you'll end up trying to sell them a 12-headed dragon.

And once they do, the pressure to integrate acquired product assets with the core offering becomes of paramount importance (after all, synergy was why the acquisition was made, right?). There are two approaches to integration that I have seen corporation take. First option - integrate the front ends of the two system. That is, figure out the common platform and slap screens (all or select) of the other into it. The back-end infrastructure and databases that feed the two systems can stay different or perhaps just loosely coupled. Second option - create a cleaner integration of the back-end systems and infrastructure that ensures cleaner plumbing. The front-ends can stay separate and will come together when their feeding systems have gotten sorted out.

Both these options are acceptable but if someone stuck a gun to my head I'll choose the first option. Here's why

1. Customers want to see benefit from the acquisition, and they should see it in the front end of the product. Customers want to experience the acquisition, touch it, feel it. They deserve it too.
2. Back-end plumbing is a relatively easier problem to solve. One can throw people at the problem - perhaps at low-cost-centers or outsource to maintenance vendors. And once the front ends have been integrated, the pressure from business to clean up the rear (no puns, please) will ensure quicker compliance (especially if data center problems are breaking the front ends)
3. The front ends coming together opens up possibilities for users to leverage the combined offering and in doing that they will figure out interesting ways of extracting synergies that the Bankers who came to make the acquisition pitch never figured out. That's what every product manager lives for.

There is one large, hairy matter that can definitely break this choice. Usability. At no cost should user experience be compromised when screens are mashed together at the front end. It is undeniable that there will be changes in navigation, but that should never compromise on ease of use or continuity of functionality. Gopal Shenoy, who writes a popular blog on Product Management, has an interesting example to cite.

Technorati Tags: Product Integration, Front end components, back end databases, Usability, Product Acquisition

Ikea Malaysia doesn't have one of the most organized websites on the Internet, but they do have a pretty entertaining online contest, at the moment.

It's called Love My Home and it features an interactive survey that's simple, straight-to-the-point and most of important of all, fun.

Take the contest and stand to win RM1000. And can you buy me one of those robotic designer lamps, if you do?

Web users scan text when looking at a web page. They take in the first couple of keywords of each phrase and make assumptions on whether it's interesting or not before continuing. This happens in a split second. So think about that user that hits your site, briefly scans through the content to see if it's useful to her, misses the scrollbar and all the wonderful content which goes with it and bye bye, you've lost your potential customer.

A lot of users completely miss the scrollbar. So if you're an e-commerce site and a user has to scroll to view your product, chances are that some users are going to assume that you have a very thin offering of products! This is particularly true if you don't use the standard scrollbars that most users are familiar with - default windows or mac scrollbars. If it's flash based or is unusual in any way, you have less chance of the user identifying that they need to scroll.

Then there's the frustration effect: If a user has to keep scrolling to view content they'll get frustrated and go elsewhere. Web users are fickle, most of them come to a site to find specific information - this is the nature of the web.

Sometimes it's unavoidable to use scrollbars, but I'd recommend, where possible, to remove them. If you have to use them, make sure that they're a standard look and feel.

Start the UI design before you build the product.

Understand your software from a user’s standpoint.

Get feedback through task-oriented use.

Segment the process into logical chunks.

Never shut the product down.

Let user demand defend against code creep.

More is nearly always less.

Use your UI to give the user a sense of context.

Don’t offer direction, and never assume.

Resist the urge to make a quick fix.

Treat UI as an ongoing program, not a one-off.

Get a manageable but representative group.

Choose active, willing, and unbiased users.

Reward your early adopters by acknowledging their role.

Get your developers (and yourself) into the right mindset.

Do-it-yourself design is nearly always a bad idea.

Make the designers a part of the development team.

Don’t let technology overpower usability.

Bring the engineers into the UI calls.

Find an internal UI champion.

Contain costs by including the designers early.

For the best UI examples, look to consumer software.

Know how to tell if your UI might need work.

Make sure you check out the complete article for much more detail.

Users know the tasks they want to do, and the problems they have.

We learn more by watching the user work than by asking the user.

The job of the UI designer is to provide what the users need, not what the users say they need.

It is to make tasks easier, not to provide features."

From this excellent article.

I was one of the "lucky" people to get my hands on an iPhone 3G last week (lucky = standing in a never-ending line for 7 hours).

Of course, I LOVE the phone. It really is an amazing piece of technology. I love a lot of the apps, too. Especially Google Maps – the GPS is awesome.

What I don't love is AIM. Don't get me wrong, the interface is extremely usable and well designed, like most things designed for the iPhone/iTouch. However, the serious flaw is that it is not practical at all. Why?

Because you have to be inside the application to receive instant messages.

That means that I cannot exit AIM to, say, check my email or use my phone, and still receive messages. Other mobile OS's you can. Worked great on my Palm. I could leave my phone on standby, and I'd get notification when someone sent me an IM. Not the case on the iPhone.

For me, and most people, that totally defeats the purpose of an instant messaging program.

Thanks to my buddy, gregnnn, for reminding me how crappy AIM is :)

The problem is, finding the right tools to manage your system is tough. Especially if you are a relentless long-term planner with a lot of wacky, grand ideas. For a couple of years I've used a simple, physical notecard system to collect all my actions. It seemed to work the best for me for a long time, but as projects increased in size and I got more into applying context to my day, the physical system became cumbersome and inefficient. I needed something digital, searchable, and clean.

Applications like that weren't really available until quite recently. Now there seems to be a glut of GTD focused applications out there. And a lot of them are pretty good. I've been using a free one called ThinkingRock, and they get a lot of things right.

First, let me define the various modes of a good system as I see it:

Collection - essentially brainstorming and getting any thought you have out of your head and into the system. You should never expect yourself to remember something any more than a couple of minutes in my opinion. Think of it, dump it out.

Processing - This is where you look at the pile of thoughts and ideas and decide where they go, if they are indeed actionable, steps you might have forgotten, the overall sequence of actions (we'll get to that in a bit), the context of an action, time it will take to do, priority, etc. Really, you are just making sense out of the mess and the result is a huge amount of data amounting in your next several days, weeks, months and even years of activity and pipe-dreams.

Planning - This is where reality sets in. You know you have a finite amount of time in your day. You pick from the huge library of actions in your system resulting in a short list of things you can focus on for the day (in my opnion, this should be a daily thing at least).

Doing - Well, just that. Knocking out the actions one at a time. And while your system may not actually do this for you, it should help to focus you on those tasks.

The collection aspects of ThinkingRock are quite good. Maybe a little more cumbersome than necessary, but still, their approach is good. And frankly, several applications seem to get this more or less right. And for the most part, processing is good as well.

But, like every other GTD app I've tried, ThinkingRock gets two major things flat out wrong. There is an important oversight in processing and there is no assistance in planning and doing.

What my dream system would have, and I've yet to see, is self-aware sequencing of action and daily planning mode.

Self-Aware Sequencing - What I mean by this, simply, is that typically there is a sequence of actions that must happen for a project to be complete. Doing x allows you to do y which allows you to do z. Now, most systems will let you position the order of actions in a list to approximate sequence, but this is problematic. The whole point to me of the "processing" mode is to figure out which individual actions need to be done and in what order they fall to complete the project. So, why be forced to take that sequencing into consideration (part of the "processing" mode) when you are in the "doing" mode? I just want to know what the "next action" is for completing that project. And when I complete that, I should be shown the next action after that. I care not to know what is five steps down the line. If anything, that just stresses me out. Especially when looking across 10 different projects. That means, consciously or subconsciously, you are being forced to acknowledge potentially 50-100 actions that are in your view! Which brings me to...

Daily Planning Mode - As I said, just show me what's next for each project. If I have 10 projects (or even 2 main projects each with 2 sub-projects), that means I'll be looking at only 10 potential actions. If I only have time for 5, I should be able to hide the others for that day. Because, other than when you are in the processing mode (or perhaps a periodic review of your entire system) you shouldn't have to see things that you can do yet. Some people may consider those actions "deferred", but I'll get into why I think deferred actions are a bad idea in a future post.

And both these features play heavily into the "doing" mode. Only showing you a short list of easily accomplished things can really help motivate you to knock them out quickly. Showing you more than that, and especially a LOT more than that can make you feel like Sisyphus eternally rolling a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back to its original position. You never feel a sense of completion.

And one last item for the tool wishlist. Do all this in a web app, not a only local app. I want to access my system from any computer anywhere I go. Or even from my phone. Extra points certainly if you can have a local client for when you are off-line, but having this all on the web so you can keep synced is essential.

All that said, ThinkingRock is worth your attention, and I only use them as an example because that's the system I'm currently using. And like I said, everyone else gets those points wrong as well. Let me know if you've found a tool that does them.

What you see above is an Attention Map (radius: 120, sigma: 40, alpha blend: 30) of the openSUSE 11.0 installer. I used an eyetracker to generate the data. Normally, we use Eprime and SPSS to analyse the data, but I think using Nyan to generate some nice pictures helps "ordinary" people to understand what we see when we take a look at the data in SPSS.
This is data that was not taken from a scientific probe. It is scientifically not possible to extract any reliable conclusion from this series of pictures. It is a simple illustration of what is possible in the field of usability research and (maybe) gives a hint of where there is room for improvement in the openSUSE installer.First let me show you what kind of information we can extract. In order to to so, I will just let you have a look at the different pictures. They are pretty much self explicable (that is the beauty about it):

Scanpath:

So we can actually follow the path of where the subject was looking, how long he was looking at a certain point (ROI = Region of interest) and we also know the pupil diameter. We can do so in still pictures and interactive environments. The two following pictures and the very first picture are then calculated using this data.

Iso-Attention (Filter: Black, Radius: 120, Sigma: 40, Darkening: 90, Attention Level: 50):

Sinnbuilder (Filter: Black, Radius: 120, Sigma: 40, Darkening: 95):

These are the basic pictures we can work with. Feel free to ask me questions if there are any. Now, let us have a look at the installer using it step by step. I will just post the pictures I feel to be of most relevance.

Booting the installation medium:

It is interesting to see, that a subject having the task to perform an installation will look at the very first option at first, kind of skipping the second reading further down what has to do with installation and going back up again. So maybe it would be good to put the most important task up first (Installation). However, there could be effects with having the first entry highlighted and I understand the implications for the situation of rebooting. You do not want your installation media boot twice into installation mode. However, there is potential room for improvement and there should be further research in that area. The Sinnbuilder view makes clear there is not really much the subject pays attention to in the first 4 seconds:

Booting the installation system:

This is pretty clear. Attention clearly is where it should be :-)

First screen of the installation program:

The main attention is on the left side. This can be expected as it appears to be an orientation reaction. This level will be lower in the process. However, maybe it is worth a try to put the sidebar on the right side (thanks for the input from Christian Hautmann). Even though this breaks the monotony rule it still might be a good idea as there are no interactive components in this sidebar. This might give the user the chance to focus more on the more important tasks on this screen.

System-Check:

The design of the system check seems to be very good. The subject is able to quickly find the state of the process.

Installation Mode:

This screen also is very optimal. The user almost scans all the important parts of the screen within 4 seconds.

Setting the time zone:

IMO this screen has got a disastrous design. The subject looks at everything except for one of the most important things - the UTC setting. In normal use cases the hardware clock is _not_ set to UTC. So this should be a button and not a checkbox and UTC should not be default. The map also distracts the user a great deal without having any significance at all.

Choosing the Desktop Environment:

Watching this picture almost causes me personal pain. The subject does literally not even see the KDE3.5 option. This screen probably has to be completely revamped.

Partitioning:

This looks good. However, the subject completely misses the option to choose between LVM-based and partition-based. This is due to the options being way to small in comparison to the buttons below and there is no explication between the differences of those two. This should be changed.

Partitioning - expert mode:

Well, this screen is pretty solid. I have no clue what drew the attention to the crypto button though.

User-creation:

This one looks good again, but do you see how the subject does not see the autologin being checked? Too many little checkbox....

Installation-settings:

Well, I don't know what to say. I guess I need more subjects for this one. This one is just pure chaos in the scanpath.

Confirm installation:

I call this one (almost) perfect.

Installation:

The Gecko seems to be a perfect eyecatcher.

End of installation:

There is nothing to add to this picture really. The subject only complained about the screen. The subject said it was ugly, distracting and simply bothersome.

This concludes the little slideshow. These pictures are from a 25 year old subject who uses openSUSE daily but never did a single install himself. I think it points out there (might be) are some very specific problems to the installer which can be tackled. However, this has to be done in a scientific way, meaning, using clear measures like eyetracker and EEG and with enough subjects. The pictures above therefore do not fulfill these requirements.
Just talking about how to do something in IRC or mailinglists does not help any more. The usability has become too good for using such methods to make it better. We now need hard data to work with.

26 very important words.

• Findability
• Accessibility
• Usability
• Convertability
• Measurability

Making your site Findable

There's no point in the effort to design a beautiful, engaging web site if no one knows about it or can find it. You must create awareness and place links (both online & offline) into your site and its content to have people start coming to your site.

Suggestions:

Making your site Accessible

If people can't access your site, your site has a strong chance of failing. This is true especially for individuals with disabilities. Disabilities impacted by accessibility issues number far more than just blindness; anyone with any type of dexterity issue may find your site difficult to use. Also, make sure your hosting service has good uptime percentage (99% or above). Anything less than that may mean people and search engine spiders cannot access your site.

Making your site Usable

It is one of the most painful things to watch — a complete stranger unable to go from point A to point B on your site. Yet, usability testing is probably the most valuable thing you can do to ensure success. Usability tests don't have to be performed by external experts. If money or budget are an issue, perform basic tests on just 5-6 people, which will cover 70-80% off any issues.

Testing involves scheduling individuals to come to a controlled, quite environment to perform predetermined tasks on a website. It's a good practice to compensate the testers in some meaningful way. If you have little money or time, try what I call the poor man's usability test. Simply grab someone heading from the restroom for a simple 3-5 mins test. Remember, usability tests are not beauty or popularity contests, they're established to obtain information on what users actual do when on a site. For more information on usability and testing, you must read Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think."

Making your site Convertible

If the purpose of your site is to sell something, get people to contact you, or to do something, then the only thing you care about is conversions. A conversion is when anyone completes a task. Typically, these tasks contribute to your bottom line in some way, either directly or indirectly. Examples of conversions would include making a purchase online, downloading a PDF, or simply contacting you for more information.

When you design the site, you must ensure that the desired steps to conversion are explicit and without distraction. Purchasing buttons, download & contact links must be blatant, or else people will simply move on without converting. If you have a purchase button, along with another offer of interest, the are competing with the users attention, and are likely to see up to 50% less conversions.

Making your site Measurable

How successful is your site? How do you base your answer? On what statistic? Or maybe the question is do you track anything, or simply go through live assuming. Just remember what is said about assuming.

You must track the activity on your site to know whether you are successful. Hits, page views, even visitors provide only a little value. More important are Visits (Repeat & New), paths, conversion goals (including conversion funnels and where you lose folks in the conversion process). Track and monitor these metrics on a regualr basis; weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually.

Are metric limited to your web site? Heck no. If email marketing, specifically HTML emails are part of the Internet Marketing plan, make sure that you track opens, clicks, etc. And tracking of email activity is not limited to the email itself. Links from emails to your website can be tracked to determine conversions from emails also.

In the time I have worked with SEO, most of the sales pitches I have heard regarding SEO and SEM, from our own sales staff, partners and competitors, has concluded that "If you wan't your online business to succeed, all you need is SEO/SEM, and your ROI will skyrocket!". I know and accept that salesmen tend to glorify the product, and will do almost anything to sell it. I know they will make it look like you doen't need anything but SEO/SEM and you will be fine. But I disagree.

While I'm not a business genius, my understanding is that keeping a client happy means keeping a client, and it takes less effort to keep a client, than to gain a new client. Assuming that my simple business understanding is correct, I have fougth for a more holistic approach, where SEO is an important part of the foundation for online success, but not the one true answer.

My view on things is that SEO/SEM should go hand in hand with usability, design and market analysis. Having the best, most userfriendly website in the world won't do anything good, if nobody can find it. Having lots of search engine top rankings won't do anything good if people exit your website as soon as they get there, because it is ugly or userhostile. Even the best website with great rankings won't do anything good for your business, if users can't relate the website to the search they just did, so this is where market analysis comes in.

The market analyst in cooperation with the SEO/SEM can help tailor content and searchphrases to match your products and services, so that rankings on the rigth words will lead to qualified traffic. The market analyst together with the usablity and design teams will be able to apply a model like AIDA to make sure the relevant traffic has easy access to your conversion points, so you can earn your profits.

Summed up, when done rigth, visibility will lead to traffic which leads to conversions.

I was speaking with David Pickering, CEO of Charteris at a breakfast briefing recently when the subject of Jessops came up. We both agreed that we didn't want Jessops to go out of business as we found their stores a really useful source of advice and information but were equally worried about how they would survive given the financial performance they had been experiencing [when we spoke]. So yesterday when I read that Bloomberg reported Jessops losses had widened my concern increased and I decided to carry out some desk research of my own.

Sales in store have fallen 11% in the past three weeks. That is not that surprising when you consider the prevailing market conditions and gross profit percentage is up. A year ago the company announced that it would close 81 stores, 31 of which were loss making and with these changes in place the company still expects to report improved EBITDA figures on last year. A big problem however is the level of debt they need to service. Borrowings are at £52.26m and although they managed to restructure the debt with HSBC they will have to make a payment against the £49m of senior by spring next year according to FT.com. Even a year ago Jessops was being referred to as a 'Private Equity Disaster' although despite the results Chief Executive David Adams is optimistic about the future.

So they have a lot of big problems and have taken extreme measures to cut costs and do the normal things companies do when they are going slowly down the toilet. But in my view, they are still worth saving. Why? Because they are one of the few high street retailers that are truly specialist. If you visit Jessops and you are interested in photography you will be met by employees who on the whole are passionate about photography and happy to spend time with you helping you. The problem is this doesn't make you any money when the product has become commoditised and online competition is fierce. And it is this, the multi-channel elements of their retail strategy that in my view they get most wrong.

On Saturday I tried to do my bit to save Jessops. I had 3 digital photos to print: two 10" x 12" and one 7" x 5". Online, including delivery in 24 hours (which is real as I have used photobox before) the price £4.09. At Jessops each of the large photos was over £4 (the 3 day services £3.49 and 1 hour £6.99). These prices are available on the website as the link in the last sentence indicates.

On the same website I can link to Snapfish, Jessops online photo business and be offerd an 8" x 10" print for £1.25. Snapfish is in fact an HP business and the arrangement with Jessops has existed since 2006. Jessops have actually done something quite innovative by connecting the web with stores and providing a 'reserve and collect' services. The problem is the pricing and also the lack of specialism. Why would you pay a premium to order one day and pick up in store when it is cheaper to order and have a home delivery where they have no differentiation?

The website is completely "off" brand experience. There is no content beyond products for sale. If you type 'advice' in the site search you get a message that "nothing was found matching your search criteria". The only link with the store are the prices of products or so it would seem. In fact when I navigated to the photos tab and then once in selected 'photos home' I was presented with a range of specialist in-store services. The usability of the website surrounding this content is so poor however that I can't believe many find it. Interestingly there is listed here a further service that I have experience of.

I wanted my wedding video transferred from VHS to DVD. I went to Jessops (another opportunity to save them) and was told by the incredibly helpful and knowledgeable assistant that a store round the corner did it and Jessops didn't. Thanks I said and took my £40 round the corner. According to the website this is a specialist service provided in store and a further demonstration of multi-channel strategy being poorly implemented.

Nor is the website well marketed and I wonder if this is an indication that where online is concerned, Jessops are not expansive in their thinking about what business they are in. If you search for "photography" in Google.co.uk, Jessops don't appear on the first page at all. Changing the search phrase to "camera" and they come second in natural search, but have no paid for advertising. It is no coincidence that there is no photography content on the site.

In 2007, when commenting about the cuts Jessops were making David Adams, said: "The strategy allows us to re-position Jessops as a true multi-channel retailer, building on our core strengths in the digital imaging market place."

It appears to me they have precious little strength in the digital imaging space and are not a multi-channel retailer. For sure they have multiple channels but they may as well be two separate businesses. I want to save Jessops but as a consumer I am struggling to work out what I can do to keep them alive.

The geek world has been getting excited for a fair while about OpenID. You're probably all familiar with it and I'll leave it up to Wikipedia to describe the service in detail, but in short the notion is that managing multiple identities online is increasingly problematic, and that some kind of way of managing these identities in one trusted, decentralised place is what is needed to make life better.

OpenID is based around the use of a uri as the unique identifier for an individual, not an email address, as is so common today with most sites.

All well and good, you'd have thought. The only thing is there's an enormous, hulking great elephant in the room: OpenID doesn't work.

I should clarify. In a technical sense, OpenID works. But from a usability perspective, it's absolutely horrible.

Let's examine the user flow for someone signing up to a.n.other site using the "traditional" method: they arrive, they click "register". They put in their details, including email address. They go to their email account and click on the "validate" link. Done. The purists all shift uncomfortably in their seats - the users' identity has been propogated to yet another site (eek, duplication) and there is also a reliance on the email provider (eek, single point of failure / "evil" company fear, etc).

Now let's have a look with OpenID. And let's consider it in the best possible case scenario - user has not only already created an OpenID but knows the address AND is signed in (i.e has a currently active session/cookie) to that providers' service.

So..user arrives at site and is asked for their OpenID. They put in the address and push go. The site then redirects them to their OpenID provider. User clicks to allow access to data, and selects a persona. Provider site then redirects back to the original site. Original site then (inevitably, in my experience) asks user to fill in additional "persona" data for their service as well as what they already entered. User enters site.

That's at least a couple more steps, and remember that's if they're signed in or even have an OpenID account. If they're not signed in (but have an account) then they still have to sign in on the OpenID providers' site. Using a username and password...If they don't have an OpenID, just add at least 3 more steps. If they forget their OpenID then the process to get it back has to be done on the provider site and not on the site they're wanting to access.

There are several thing that are really badly wrong with the OpenID / user landscape. Here's how I see them:

1. Users don't understand the use of a URI as identifier
This is about education, but it's an important point. People see URI's as "web addresses", not as personal identifiers. They don't get it, and aren't being encouraged to get it, either.

2. Users don't like redirects
Actually, users don't care about redirects - what they do care about is maintenance of trust and brand. A user mid-basket on Amazon is not going to be happy about a jump away to another site unless they're very clear that there is brand association between the sites.

3. Users won't remember OpenID's
Not only are OpenID's longer and more complex, they're also a dog to get back once forgotten. With email/pwd, you just click the "forgotten pwd" link. Email, click, done. With OpenID you have to go back to your provider site and do it from there, not on the site you're trying to access.

4. There is no paradigm
Apart from password remembering within the browser, there isn't a "central persona management" paradigm. This doesn't mean there shouldn't be one, but it makes the job of invisibile tech that much harder.

I've left what I see as the single biggest issue until last:

5. There isn't a problem that needs solving
As I've indicated before, we (tech savvy geek types) are not the normality. I may have a sign-up obsession and belong to hundreds of sites, but normal people just don't. By some gentle "finger in the air" reckoning, I'd suggest that most people have - what - ten sites they sign in to? That's hardly shouting out for a distributed, decentralised, persona-based solution, is it? What's actually wrong with a "remind me of my password" link, anyway? And using email as identity is secure enough for pretty much any application. We geeks are making assumptions based on our experiences of the web. It's us, not Joe Normal who has 400 passwords in our heads, surely?

So on the one hand we've got an elegant, beautiful, technically "good" solution that is almost completely unusable. On the other is something ugly and flawed - but something that works well for most people: something that isn't actually broken, and - frankly - doesn't need fixing.

OpenID feels like it could and should be better, but the current scenario whereby hundreds and thousands of sites are becoming providers (AOL, Orange, Yahoo!, etc) and very little effort is being put into fixing the flawed user flow - or user education for that matter - is just a road to nowhere. Some sites (LiquidID, ClickPass, Vidoop as examples) are just starting in the usability direction, but it's nowhere near enough. And right now, I - like most people I know - are just fine sticking with the original email/pwd alternative.

I made an online payment recently. It was a farily simple, and straightforward process.  I filled out a typical form with the CC # and payment amount.  After I clicked submit, I received a confirmation page.  Two days later while online banking, I saw the total subtracted from my checking account.  All was right with the world.

Except, yesterday when I got home from work, I had a voicemail telling me that my payment was due last Friday and since I hadn't made the payment, I was now being assessed a fee.  What?!

I call the customer support line.  Once I get through the automated prompt and explain the issue, it was resolved quickly.  In fact, as soon as I finished telling my story, the CS Rep said, "Oh, I bet I know what happened..." Then, she proceeded to tell me that if you put a dollar sign in the field for the payment amount, their system doesn't process the transaction properly.  I asked her if that happens frequently, and she said, "All the time".  After resolving the problem, she ended the call by saying, "Remember, next time you make a payment, don't use a dollar sign."

Ummm.  Ok.  First, why was there no note by the field that said not to use dollar signs...or maybe even have a dollar sign right in front of the box?  Second, why no error checking when I submitted the form?  And, third, but the most obvious...if it happens all the time, why not fix your form??

</rant>

PS...If you're a fan of Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly), or Sci-Fi, or comics, or musicals, or just good comedy, you MUST check out Dr. Horrible!  http://www.drhorrible.com/

Nie będę kryć, że nowy ONET mi się podoba. Po pierwsze, ze względu na lżejszą kolorystykę. Po drugie, ze względu na możliwość personalizacji. Nie chce mi się na razie z niej korzystać ale pewnie w końcu to zrobię, szczególnie jak możliwość ta, w co wierzę, rozwinie się w stylu IGoogle. Po trzecie, ze względu na dodanie większej liczby kategorii tematycznych. W tym takiej o nowych technologiach. A jak Wam się podoba?

Tamara Adlin, over at Corporate Underpants, has decided to do something about it. Well, at least she's ranting about it. Who knows, maybe some of the marketing "geniuses" that came up with the bad ads will actually listen.

Well, we can wish, anyway ... ;)

If you put '<confirm>' in the header line of an email you send to a BlackBerry you will get a delivery confirmation when it has been delivered to the BlackBerry.

Of course you can send PIN message to a BlackBerry as well which is an 'instant' way to communicate with other BlackBerry users. They always get a delivery receipt - a second tick appears next to the message. The only downside it that the PIN is the handset ID which will change when you change handset. This means you have to update everyone. This is easy because there is a handy shortcut to generate the pin in a message. Type mypin and it gets replaced with a link that is another BlackBerry user can pin you with directly.

What other BlackBerry hacks do you know?

Photo credit BBCool_Wes - Thanks.

Questa tipologia di servizi è molto usata, anche io personalmente  ne sono un grande utilizzatore! Capita di usarla quando sono nel mio studio, oppure quando sono in giro con il mio portatile. Spesso molte persone che lavorano tutto il giorno con il PC, tendono ad usufruire di servizi di questo tipo.

Tuttavia il servizio di Yahoo, non permette di essere utilizzato, se si usa browser come Firefox.

A mio avviso questa in generale è una grande limitazione di accessibilità, che significa:

• discriminare un browser;
• perdere una fetta di mercato;
• e tante altre considerazione sulla fruibilità/accessibilità dell'informazione in Rete.

In particolare, questa limitazione appare una scelta strategica poco azzeccata, vista la grande diffusione di Firefox, ed il successo che ha riscosso nel "Firefox download Day".

Davvero inspiegabili alcune strategie di certi "Guru"... :(

"Good heavens, young fella!" as my mate Frandi would have said into his beer.

All I did was click on a link and expect it to work, dopey me. It didn't - I just got a blank stare. So I tried again. And again, and again. Nothing happening. Naturally I became suspicious and dived into the source code to see what was going on. And there it was, one of my all-time faves: target="_blank".

What that means is that the link is going to open in a new browser window. Which it did (and again, and again and again) without me noticing. The reason I didn't notice is that I use Firefox (heavily) because it's so efficient at tabbed browsing and when I'm researching I tend to keep 10, 12, 20 browser windows open and just hop between the tabs. It's so much easier than remembering where I found stuff, or going through the process of bookmarking it and then having to serially retrieve it - which I also do (del.icio.us is brilliant for it) but not for information that's transient for me on the way from A to B.

But when you have a bunch of windows open like that the tabs won't all fit on the screen - they scroll off to the right. If a link opens in a new window Firefox has a bad habit of opening up the tab way off to the right of the list (off the screen) and not saying anything. It should really take your focus straight across to the new tab, but it doesn't. Oh well, it's pretty good at everything else.

In hammering on the link until I got suspicious, I'd managed to open a bunch of new (identical) windows without noticing, getting more pissed off with each one that "didn't work", until I figured out my folly.

Mortified, I was, to be so badly outsmarted by a simple bit of everyday software.

Hang on! Did I say my folly? I should have said someone else's folly - or lack of consideration, more like. They could have told me they were going to spring a surprise window on me.

I didn't notice because I tend to hammer browsers to within an inch of their lives. What if I was blind and using an old screen-reader and couldn't see that a new window had opened? Or if I just plain didn't notice? My wife does this and then wonders why the Back button's all greyed out and doesn't work, and she can't get back to where she came from. She can see, but she just doesn't notice and I have to send the cavalry in.

That's precisely why the WAI Guidelines on web accessibility say this about spawning new windows without telling people: Don't!

To the purist, the fundamental model of the web is about linking between locations, not buying a new car every time I traverse the link over the hill into Wellington.

Why, why, why did they do that? I guess they did it because they didn't want me to leave their site. Well actually, that's what I wanted to do, wasn't it? They even gave me a link to do it with! Mighty fine of them, but...

I guess the next time I go to the dealer to buy that new car to drive into Wellington, I better make sure they don't lock the door behind me until I've bought one. There might not be one I like.

In jeder Kampagne und in jedem Affiliateprogramm soll selbstverständlich ein möglichst breites Publikum erreicht werden. Damit dies gelingt sollte man auf Grund von Einschränkungen in der Optik oder der Bedienung einer Landingpage keine User ausschliessen. Es wäre der (unnötige) Verlust von  Potential.

Browser

Das browserneutrale Erstellen und ausgiebige Testen von Websites und Grafiken gehört schon seit Jahren zur Routine jedes Webpublishers und Designers. Eine leichte Trendwende hat sich in den letzten Jahren dahingehend abgezeichnet, dass mit dem Erfolg von Mozilla Firefox erstmals seit dem Browserkrieg Netscape vs Internet Explorer wieder zwei Browser die Mehrheit der Marktanteile unter sich ausmachen. Manche feinen Unterschiede in der Optik und Funktionalität kommen zum Vorschein - deshalb muss heute wieder vermehrt ein Augenmerk auf das browserübergreifende Testen gelegt werden.

Betriebssysteme

Bezüglich Betriebssysteme spricht die Verteilung eine deutliche Sprache: Windows-Versionen repräsentieren rund 90% aller Online-User. Zu beachten gilt es da praktisch nichts mehr, seit die unterschiedlichen System alle gängigen Schriftarten vorinstalliert haben.

Bildschirmauflösungen

Schon immer waren die meist verbreitesten Bildschirmauflösungen eine Orientierung für alle Webdesigner. Das gilt heute nach wie vor. Zwar laden hohe Kapazitäten bei den Breitband-Internetzugängen dazu ein immer mehr Inhalte auf eine Website zu packen. Aber darunter leidet meistens die Ladezeit und auch die Übersicht der Website.

Zwar haben die günstigen LCD-Monitore zu einer Vergrösserung des durchschnittlichen User-Screens geführt, aber es gibt gute Gründe einen Shop oder eine Landingpage nicht zu ausufernd zu bauen. Pocket PCs, iPhone und vergleichbare mobile Geräte animieren die User vermehrt mobil zu surfen. Auch auf diesen Geräten sollte die Übersicht gewährleistet sein und idealerweise sollen bestimmt auch diese User die Werbung sehen können. Da zahlt es sich aus den kleineren Bildschirmen der Mobile Devices Beachtung zu schenken. Und wenn die Tarife für die Mobileverbindungen in bezahlbare Gefilde sinken, dann wird dieser Trend weiter zunehmen.

Werbemittel

Für Affiliates/Website-Betreiber gilt: Displaywerbung jeglicher Art sollte unbedingt bereits im Designprozess angedacht und integriert werden. Das gewährleistet später eine optimale Ausbeute der vorhandenen Werbeplätze und führt zu einem ausgeglichenen optischen Gesamteindruck.

Für Advertiser: Voraussetzung ist sowohl bei Affiliate-Programmen als auch bei Kampagnen das Erstellen der gängigsten Formate (728x90 / 300x250 / 160x600). Optimalerweise sollte für jedes Flash-Werbemittel auch ein Ersatz im GIF/JPG-Format zur Verfügung gestellt werden, da sonst User ohne installiertes Flash Player-Plugin keine Werbung zu sehen bekommen.

Quelle: Webhits Web-Barometer

While card sorting is described in a few texts and a number of sites, most descriptions are brief. There is not a definitive article that describes the technique and its variants and explains the issues to watch out for. Given the number of questions posted to discussion groups, and discussions we have had at conferences, we thought it was time to get all of the issues in one place.

This article provides a detailed description of the basic technique, with some focus on using the technique for more complex sites. This article does not cover some issues such as the use of online tools, which will be covered in a future article.

Why

Card sorting is a quick, inexpensive, and reliable method, which serves as input into your information design process. Card sorting generates an overall structure for your information, as well as suggestions for navigation, menus, and possible taxonomies.

While card sorting might not provide you with final structure, it can help you answer many questions you will need to tackle throughout the information design phase. For example, more than likely there will be some areas that users disagree on regarding groupings or labels. In these cases, card sorting can help identify trends, such as:

• Do the users want to see the information grouped by subject, process, business group, or information type?
• How similar are the needs of the different user groups? >
• How different are their needs?
• How many potential main categories are there? (typically relates to navigation)
• What should those groups be called?

Card sorting can help answer these types of questions, making you better equipped to tackle the information design phase.

Definition

Card sorting is a user-centered design method for increasing a system’s findability. The process involves sorting a series of cards, each labeled with a piece of content or functionality, into groups that make sense to users or participants.

According to Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, card sorting “can provide insight into users’ mental models, illuminating the way that they often tacitly group, sort and label tasks and content within their own heads.”

Card sorting is a great, reliable, inexpensive method for finding patterns in how users would expect to find content or functionality. Those patterns are often referred to as the users’ mental model. By understanding the users’ mental model, we can increase findability, which in turn makes the product easier to use.

Method

There are two primary methods for performing card sorts.

• Open Card Sorting: Participants are given cards showing site content with no pre-established groupings. They are asked to sort cards into groups that they feel are appropriate and then describe each group. Open card sorting is useful as input to information structures in new or existing sites and products.
• Closed Card Sorting: Participants are given cards showing site content with an established initial set of primary groups. Participants are asked to place cards into these pre-established primary groups. Closed card sorting is useful when adding new content to an existing structure, or for gaining additional feedback after an open card sort.

Closed card sorting will be detailed in a future article.

Advantages and disadvantages

As with any other method, card sorting has both advantages and disadvantages. Keeping these in mind will help you determine whether the technique is appropriate for your situation and make decisions about how you run the activity.
Advantages

• Simple – Card sorts are easy for the organizer and the participants.
• Cheap – Typically the cost is a stack of 3×5 index cards, sticky notes, a pen or printing labels, and your time.
• Quick to execute – You can perform several sorts in a short period of time, which provides you with a significant amount of data.
• Established – The technique has been used for over 10 years, by many designers.
• Involves users – Because the information structure suggested by a card sort is based on real user input, not the gut feeling or strong opinions of a designer, information architect, or key stakeholder, it should be easier to use.
• Provides a good foundation – It’s not a silver bullet, but it does provide a good foundation for the structure of a site or product.

Disadvantages

• Does not consider users’ tasks – Card sorting is an inherently content-centric technique. If used without considering users’ tasks, it may lead to an information structure that is not usable when users are attempting real tasks. An information needs analysis or task analysis is necessary to ensure that the content being sorted meets user needs and that the resulting information structure allows users to achieve tasks.
• Results may vary –The card sort may provide fairly consistent results between participants, or may vary widely.
• Analysis can be time consuming – The sorting is quick, but the analysis of the data can be difficult and time consuming, particularly if there is little consistency between participants.
• May capture “surface” characteristics only – Participants may not consider what the content is about or how they would use it to complete a task and may just sort it by surface characteristics such as document types.

When should card sorting be used?

Card sorting is a user-centered, formative technique. It should be used as an input to:

• designing a new site
• designing a new area of a site
• redesigning a site

Card sorting is not an evaluation technique and will not tell you what is wrong with your current site.

Card sorting is not a silver bullet to create an information structure. It is one input in a user-centered design process and should complement other activities such as information needs analysis, task analysis, and continual usability evaluation. It is most effective once you have completed:

• research into what users need out of the site
• a content (functionality) audit/inventory (for an existing site) or detailed content list (for a new site). For an existing site, it is crucial that the content inventory is examined carefully to include only content that is needed by users.

Card sorting will provide benefit to most sites, but can be challenging to use against some sets of information. The table below summarizes when card sorting works well and provides good results, and when it is challenging both to run and to analyze.