Web Usability Video

Here is the video of the Web Usability Event on June 25 featuring Tom Chi, Senior Director - User Experience, Yahoo!, Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, Applications User Experience, Oracle, and David Nelson, Sr. Experience Designer, Adobe Systems.

Web Usability Event Wrap-Up

The Web Usability Event on June 25 was highly informative covering many issues of the day on building the usable web. Speakers Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, Applications User Experience, Oracle; Tom Chi, Senior Director of User Experience, Yahoo; and David Nelson, Sr. Experience Designer, Adobe Systems were all very knowledgeable, on the cutting-edge, and offered many unique perspectives. Thank you to everyone who attended and see you at the next event which is a great follow-on to this event on Web Analytics: Measuring The Attention Economy.
Photos of the event.

Bill Gates: Windows Usability Going Backwards

The Seattle Post reprinted an email by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates that he sent to his lieutenants in 2003 on the usability of Microsoft products. The article describes him as "chief rabble-rouser", and even the Microsoft co-founder -- who champions the "magic of software" -- isn't immune to the frustrations of everyday computer users.

---- Original Message ----

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.


Response

.... Original Message ....

From: Will Poole
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 1:27 PM
To; Amir Majidimehr; Chris Jones (WINDOWS)
Co-" Dave Fester; Rick Thompson
Subject: FW: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

Guess we should start working on a list of things that need to be fixed withe web sites. W1J, and with windows, and identify owners. Bill’s frustration is not unreasonable.

Yahoo's Luke Wroblewski On Web Form Design

Forms are a staple of the online experience. We use them daily for a host of activities from signing in/up, purchasing something, asking a question, to downloading a document. They come in all sizes, layouts, and configurations. Some are better executed than others and ultimately, impact our businesses adversely if their designs and usability are impaired. So, how do we ensure that in creating web forms, we get them right? I am speaking with Luke Wroblewski, Senior Principal at Yahoo! and author of a new book "Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks".

Q: First off, congratulations on the book. Help us understand, why does the design of web forms matter?
A: As you mentioned, forms are a core element of the online experience. Anywhere organizations are asking their customers to input information, Web forms are there: at the point of checkout in e-commerce; at the point of conversation in social applications; and at the point of data entry in productivity applications. Because actions like transactions in ecommerce, discussions in social sites, and data entry everywhere matter - forms matter. In these crucial flows, even small improvements in Web forms can make a big impact.

In my book, Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering shares a story where redesigning a two-field form resulted in an increase of $300 million in annual revenue for an online retailer. With returns like that possible, it’s no wonder form design matters.



Q: Users generally dislike completing forms. How can designers improve the user experience of the form completion process? What are some of the elements that should be taken into consideration in designing them?
A: The long answer is a lot of elements need to be considered: input field affordances, label layout, required indicators, inline validation, paths to completion, error and success messaging, start pages, content groupings, primary actions, additional inputs, smart defaults, personalized defaults, and the list goes on. So let me instead answer this by highlighting some of the broader areas to address in form design: form structure, form elements, and form interactions.

Form structure is the organization of the questions a form is going to ask people. Getting to the right set of questions requires designers to think of their forms as conversations instead of as interrogations. What is going to make people feel comfortable enough to respond to every question being asked? Are we asking questions in a logical order? Are there any questions we can remove or defer?

Too often, forms are simply laid out without a lot of thought given to the actual questions being asked. While form layout can aid comprehension and completion, the structure of a form can have a much bigger impact and is often not given enough consideration.

Form elements are the user interface components we use to ask and allow people to answer questions. This includes labels, inputs like radio buttons, text fields, checkboxes, and drop-down menus, actions, and messaging like help text and errors. Selecting the right combination of form elements requires an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of each. Luckily, there’s a bevy of research that can help designers go from the quintessential answer of “it depends” to actionable solutions.

Form interactions are the behaviors that support and expedite form completion. Considerations like inline validation -that helps confirm correct answers, suggest options for correct answers, or help people stay within necessary limits for their answers- and additional inputs -that give people the opportunity to answer more detailed questions when they need to- are just a few examples of behaviors that can be taken into consideration.

Q: What is the biggest mistake you see designers making with the design of forms?
A: As I mentioned when discussing form organization earlier, one of the biggest mistakes Web designers and developers make is thinking about Web form design as a layout problem: "how will I arrange these labels & input fields on the screen?" You need to go deeper than that when designing forms and consider when, where, and how people encounter forms and design accordingly.

Another common problem I see a lot is designers forgetting that people want what is on the other side of a form. They want to buy something, they want to vote, or they want to make their voice heard. The form is just standing in their way. As a result, forms need to be designed in a way that makes it explicitly clear how to get through them quickly and easily. That means no distractions, concise questions, clear ways to respond, and a laser-like focus on completion. Let people get to the good stuff! They’ll love you for it.

Q: In your book, you mention the concept of 'gradual engagement'. Would you explain what this is?
A: Gradual engagement is an alternative to the all too common sign-up form. I’m sure you’ve encountered your fair share. You come across a new Web service and the first thing you need to do is fill out a registration form. As a new customer experience, that sucks.

Through gradual engagement, we can communicate what Web services do and why people should care by allowing them to actually interact with the application in gradual ways. Have a Web application? Let me start using it before I need to fill in a registration form. Allow me to learn why it’s great before I commit to being a customer.

As an example, we can look at Genia Web service that allows anyone to set up a family tree and share it with family and friends. What’s the first thing potential customers need to do when they arrive at Geni? Fill out a registration form? Nope, they make a family tree. After all, that’s what’s Geni is for. Their approach to gradual engagement has given the service five million profiles in five months!

Q: One of the outcomes of Web 2.0 technologies on the form creation process is the ability to create dynamic forms with fancy features and options. What has been the impact of Web 2.0 technology on form design?
A: Ajax development allows us to get information back from a Web server without executing a full Web page refresh. As a result, we can do things like validate an answer someone has entered in real time or make suggestions for valid answers directly on the form.

We can also surface information and inputs in a dynamic manner – revealing only what people need when they need it. In some of the eye-tracking and usability testing we did for the book, we saw that hiding irrelevant form controls from people until they need them results in forms that are easy on the eyes and completed quite quickly. Ajax can certainly help with that!

Q: There is no formal standardization for the design of web forms. Some argue that there should be to ensure consistency across the Web and improve the user experience. What are your thoughts on this? Should forms be standardized and should they even be made cookie cutter?
A: Well I guess it depends on whether or not you believe there is a perfect Web form layout that works in all contexts. Frankly, I’m not so sure. For starters this comes back to the point I made earlier that many people assume form design is just finding a good layout for a set of questions people have to answer. Hence the belief a cookie cutter solution could work. But let’s even take the simple question of how to align labels in a form.

Testing has shown top-aligned labels cut down completion times and can boost completion rates. But other options still have their place. For example, left-aligned labels - though they required more than twice the amount of time to complete in testing- allow people to easily scan a list of labels and find the one they need when only one or two fields have to be updated. In this use case, left-aligned works best. In many other cases, speed is of the essence and top-aligned hits the mark. So which alignment should be the standard?

In just about every aspect of form design the right answer depends on the problem you are trying to solve. This is why I gravitate toward best practices that give people a way to think through a situation and find an appropriate solution instead of enforcing standards.

Now could some user interface standards help by creating consistency? Sure, but we’d have to really think through what made sense across many different contexts.

Q: How do you see the future of web form creation evolving and manifesting itself?
A: Personally, I hope to see Web forms subsumed into the natural flow of goals people are trying to achieve online instead of being stand alone Web pages that act as roadblocks to these goals. In some cases, this will mean solutions that manage information sharing for people. In other cases, it will mean questions tightly integrated within natural ways of getting things done. So it doesn’t feel like there’s a form there at all! Gradual engagement, which we talked about before, is a great approach to moving in this direction.

Q: Are the practices in your book being implemented at Yahoo :)?
A: Of course! I'm advocating more every day as well. In all seriousness, we’ll be releasing a set of Web form solutions on our public design patterns site soon that incorporates a lot of what's in the book and what we have learned running hundreds of usability tests over the years.

Q: Any other books on the way?
A: Two is enough for now but you never know!

Thanks, Luke! The book also covers a host of great topics such as the path to completion, form labeling, input fields, actions, help text, errors and success, inline validation, and more. As a special offer for WebGuild readers, you can get a 10% discount off the purchase price of a digital (or print) copy of the book at http://rosenfeldmedia.com using promo code "WEBGUILD".

Why Design Is Increasingly Critical To Web Site Success

Design has always played a critical role in the success of web sites but has only of late been really gaining its due recognition. The design of a site truly makes or breaks it. And clearly, people are starting to get that and understand that web usability has nothing to do with the users' abilities; it has everything to do with the ability of the site to be usable by its intended users.

Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 recently wrote that "on the web, in the age of Google, design has no margin of error, and there are no stupid users, only inadequate designs" and that "the user experience is EVERYTHING"and that "users don’t care about the site’s goals. They care about THEIR OWN goals. ...all that matters is whether the user succeeds". It is truly the user revolution.

There have also been a lot of recent affirmations and validation of the fact that design is emerging as a key component to the success of any web site. Joshua Porter wrote a recent piece on The Growing Importance of Design in which he observes that design is becoming big news - whether it's the design of social apps like Facebook's Profile pages or MySpace redesign, Google's new favicon, to Microsoft's new OS Vista, or Apple's latest OS, it's being covered by the likes of NY Times, LA Times, ABC News, Washington Post, and others. Clearly, design has gone mainstream.

As a result, I think the timing of our upcoming event on June 25 on Web Usability is perfect and will allow us to examine this subject with a renewed and heightened focus. See you there!

(Image source: Sekar Saha)

MySpace Undergoing Redesign

MySpace plans to redesign its homepage, navigation, profile editing, search utility, and TV player. Starting this Wednesday, June 18, it will start launching the first of the redesigns. The social networking behemoth said the redesign will be global and is an attempt to widen its demographics and boost user engagement on the site. "This is more than a face-lift; we're changing the way people interact with the site and with brands," said a MySpace spokesman, adding that a major advertiser was signed for the U.S. MySpace home page on the first day of the relaunch.

MySpace has about 110 million users worldwide and claims to be the most trafficked website in the U.S. and has about 300,000 people sign up every day.

Current MySpace Homepage:
Busy, loud, and downright tacky!



Proposed New Homepage:
A little more streamlined, a little easier on the eye, softer color palette, less cluttered, use of tab sets. (Interesting point of comparison - the competition, Facebook)

Microsoft Email Leaked: Focus Search, Social Media, Display Ads & User Experience

From: Kevin Johnson
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 1:30 PM
To: Platforms & Services Division; APSP FTE - Adv & Pub Solutions Platform; Employees.all.corp.adf@main.corp; Employees.all.adf@main.corp
Subject: Online Services Strategy Update

We have been executing against the core strategy I first presented at our Financial Analyst Meeting in July 2007 to go after the growing opportunity in online services and advertising. Four pillars have formed the basis of our strategy:

1. Consolidate ad platform and win in display
2. Innovate and disrupt in search
3. Deliver end-to-end user experiences across PC, phone, and web
4. Reinvent portal and social media experiences

We have many options that support acceleration of our strategy. As announced earlier today, we are also considering new alternatives for a transaction with Yahoo! which do not involve a full acquisition. At this time, we have not made a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo!, but we reserve the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo!, shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft, or with other third parties.

Regardless of the outcome of any new discussions, it is important that we continue to move forward to strengthen our online services business. The fact is that we are not where we want to be in this business yet and we've been in this position longer than we'd all like. To that end, we will be accelerating elements of our core strategy, and breaking ground in new areas.

On Tuesday, Brian McAndrews is hosting advance08, our annual advertising conference here in Redmond. Over 400 leaders from across the media, technology and advertising landscape will be here for two days to engage in dialogue on industry trends and opportunities. These leaders are some of our closest partners in the digital transformation of the advertising industry, and they recognize the increasingly important role Microsoft plays in this transformation.

We are very excited to have these customers and partners on campus.

Brian's keynote will highlight our unique position in the advertising industry. It's amazing to see how far we've come with the aQuantive acquisition in differentiating our advertising platform. This foundation is paying off, with Q3 advertising revenue growth of nearly 40%, a rate that has accelerated over the past two quarters while growth rates at Google, Yahoo and AOL have slowed.

On Wednesday, we will be announcing a major new initiative that our search teams have been driving. We are getting better and better with our core algorithmic search, and at the same time, we are investing to differentiate in vertical experiences and to disrupt the current model. You'll hear more about our plans Wednesday.

advance08 will underscore our commitment to search and online advertising, and you'll continue to see announcements demonstrating our progress in this space. Earlier this week, I spoke to leaders across our online services business about our core strategy, the importance of acceleration and a set of actions we are taking, including:

1. Innovate and disrupt in search - We will disclose some elements of our plans with this week's release of search and sharpen our focus on user experience and business model innovation. The work we have done over the last 4 years on search has established a solid foundation to build upon.
2. Win targeted distribution - With this release of search, we are now ready to throttle up broader distribution initiatives.
3. Reinvent portal and deliver new experiences across PC, phone and web - We are building our new releases of Windows 7, Windows Live wave 3, Windows Mobile 7, Internet Explorer 8, Search and MSN with an eye towards optimizing and unifying experiences and scenarios.
4. Fix our online branding - Our brands are fragmented and confusing today, and we recognize a need to clarify and align our online branding. We are now driving forward to address this opportunity.
5. Win in display advertising - We have an advantage in tools, agency assets/relationships and a team laser-focused on capturing the display ad platform opportunity. As we build from a position of strength, we will increase engineering resources to drive even more innovation.
6. Build on our strengths in Europe - As measured by comScore in March, our online business in Europe is doing well. We have over 3 times the page view volume and nearly 7 times the minutes of usage compared to Yahoo!, and 68% reach to internet users throughout Europe. We will double down on our investments in Europe and expand on this strong position.
7. Expand strategic partnerships - In addition to our organic innovation agenda, we will expand strategic partnerships that increase inventory on our display ad platform, enable new paradigms in search and accelerate growth in key geographies.
8. Pursue small, targeted acquisitions - Looking forward, we will focus on small, targeted acquisitions that support our work in search, complement our value in the ad platform and help us grow scale in key geographies. Recent acquisitions including Rapt and YaData are examples of these types of acquisitions.

The PSD leadership team is actively working on the FY09 budget, including resources and investments to support the actions above. Additional elements of our work will be revealed in the coming weeks, leading to our Financial Analyst Meeting in July where I will share more details on our strategy and business/financial outlook.

As we move forward, I want to remind everyone that we are well positioned to compete. We have some of the industry's best assets on our side: technical and business talent, global scale, a culture of self-criticism and tenaciousness, a healthy balance sheet and an unparalleled product portfolio. It's time for us to seize the opportunity.

Thanks again for your continued leadership and focus on our business. If you have any feedback or thoughts, please feel free to send me mail.

Regards,

Kevin Johnson

HP Redesigns Homepage And Misses Mark

HP recently redesigned its homepage www.hp.com. The previous iteration was predominantly blue with a navigation panel positioned in the middle of the page and which auto-rotated and changed colors - but, it still maintained the integrity of a conventional website.

The redesign is markedly different:

• It is mostly black. Interesting choice as black is usually considered edgier versus corporate. Plus, there is no sign of the previous blue so there is no continuity and this is okay if the brand is being transformed - which may be the case.


• The nav panel has moved to the bottom of the page but above the fold.


• The promotional area is much larger and dominates the entire page. It also has a control panel that appears small and is not immediately intuitive.


• The target market navigation panels popup after a delayed mouseover.


• The page falls below the fold. I've seen time and again in usability tests where users are peeved when forced to scroll beneath the fold on homepages.


• There are a lonesome 'Resources' flyout and 'News' scroller relegated to the footer of the page beneath the fold.


• There is a country site selector flyout that categorizes sites from "A through B", "C through D", etc. This breakdown is quite unconventional yet innovative but I think they might have out-innovated themselves here.


• There is an old-school 'home' icon. Today's standard is that the logo is the link to home which most semi-experienced users understand. Their logo is also linked but the introduction of the 'home' icon is passe.


• There are three links at the top left of the page that have no mouseover effect and onmouseover automatically takes you to pages - without you clicking. Same behavior on the 'home' icon.

This redesign screams boutique microsite reminiscent of the early to mid 90's when sites went off the deep-end trying to be different before reverting back to basics. What was interesting were the ads that appeared in the nav flyouts. I am sure HP's usability testing and the like validated their design and user experience but I think they have missed the mark here by over-designing and foregoing usability.

BEFORE:



AFTER:

Eye-Tracking Proves Ad Placement Matters

The placement of an ad on a web page determines the propensity of it being viewed by users. This, according to a study conducted by Marketing Sherpa using eye-tracking software to track users' viewership of ads above and below the fold. The study found that 75% of users saw ads above the fold. However, only 60% of the ads above the fold were seen by users.

This is not surprising as most users' initial view of a page is above the fold and anything below it requires the user to take the action i.e scroll. And unless there is some visual indicator like unfinished text to indicate that there is more below the fold or the content is compelling enough for them to want to scroll down for more, they are unlikely to scroll. Even if an ad is above the fold, the study showed that it can be missed altogether. This can be attributed to banner blindness where users recognize an ad for what it is and ignore it altogether, or the treatment or amount of negative spacing around an ad can affect the noise level of an ad, or the positioning of an ad even above the fold can affect its viewership. For instance, users have been trained that anything in the right column is usually marketing fluff so they ignore it altogether.

75% of users saw ads above the fold. However, only 60% of the ads above the fold were seen by users.

But what about ads that start above the fold and continue below it like skyscrapers?! My guess is that if the meat of the ad content is contained in the top part of the ad which is above the fold, that might be okay even if the call to action falls below the fold as most display ads are images which are completely linked so the user could click anywhere. However, I think the idea is really to keep it all above the fold.

The opportunity cost of pushing ads below the fold can be high. Already premuim placement such as skyscrapers and leaderboards have a higher CPM and recent reports indicate that display ads are losing out to search advertising. So, it seems that if you wish to maximize your ROI on ads, be sure to place them strategically above the fold.

Adobe Photoshop Express Free and Online

Adobe launched today the public beta of it long anticipated Adobe® Photoshop® Express. The free, online version of the popular photo editing software is now available on the web. Express will allow users to store up to 2 gigs of images online for free, make edits online, share photos, and up- and download photos from social networking sites.

Photoshop is a desktop software. What this SaaS-y move signals is a realization on the part of Adobe of the power of the Web's penchant for free, anytime/anywhere access versus the portability limitations of pricey software tied to a single computer. Another driver might be that many photo sharing sites already offer similar image editing capabilites. The online version of Photoshop will not have the full feature set of the traditional offline version. Will this cannibalize their desktop version? Not likely as they are targeted to different audiences - Express is to more the casual, connected end-user and Photoshop to the more serious professional. The web-based version is necessary for the company to keep up and evolve the software as well as another marketing opportunity and medium to exploit.

Stanford Website Redesign Coming June'08

Stanford University is working on the redesign of their website. The project which started last Nov 15 will take 7 months with an expected launch date of June 15 '08. Codenamed "Project 8180" which refers to the total acreage of the Stanford campus, the redesign will be the third of the site since its inception. The site has not undergone a redesign in about 5 years.

The goals of the redesign are to create a more consistent and updated look and feel across Stanford sites, focus the global navigation by decreasing the number of menu items from 8 to 5, to surface and provide a more holistic view of what the university has to offer, and to better market it. What is interesting to note are the following:
-the page has a lot more content
-it is now more of a portal or gateway page
-front and foremost use of rich media i.e. videos (very web 2.0-esque)
-use of lots of imagery
-timely and current news section
-multiple rss feed subscriptions (very web 2.0-esque)
-jump links to the most popular content areas
-what looks like in-page quick links versus a link to another page (very web 2.0-esque)
-events calendars
-scrollable in-page view of other stanford sites (very web 2.0-esque)
-international program section surfaced

MOCKUP OF REDESIGN:

Yahoo Homepage Redesign

Yahoo has made a change to its homepage which can be considered fairly significant. The internet portal has moved their logo from the left to the center of the page. The logo now sits atop the search utility defying convention. This is kinda like the Google.com classic homepage, however, that's all Google has on that page - the logo and search box. The personalized Google homepage, however, has the logo to the left of the search text field as the page can potentially have a lot of content depending on which gadgets the user adds.

Yahoo's header height appears roughly about the same height as when the logo was to the left, the search text field is longer, and there is a clear "Search" label to the left of the text field in addition to their "Web Search" button label. Not sure I personally care for the new positioning of the logo as I feel it tends to clutter the search utility rather than draw attention to it which is what I am guessing Yahoo was aiming for. Yahoo has previously waffled on this issue and flip flopped the logo from the middle and then to the left and now back to the middle. The previous redesign from Yahoo was circa mid '06.

BEFORE:


AFTER:

Blue Links In A Web 2.0 World

Should all things blue on the web be links and all links on the web be blue? While in the offline world green means go, in the online world it is a well recognized convention that blue is our cue to click. But with the ever-evolving web, how is this standard faring?

• Corporate Sites. The vast majority of enterprise sites I looked at adhered to the law of blue links - Microsoft, HP, Cisco, IBM, and Intel. The anomaly was Oracle.
  

• News Sites. CNN.com, CNET, NYTimes.com, and WSJ.com all sported blue links.
  

• Consumer Sites. Amazon, Apple, eBay, MSN.com, Yahoo, Google, Walmart, and Petsmart are all bullish on blue. An exception I found was Target.com.

• Social Media Sites. YouTube, Flickr, My Space, Facebook all maintain blue links. But popular blogs HuffingtonPost, TMZ.com, and tech rag ValleyWag.com don't have blue links.

• Politicking Sites. HillaryClinton.com, BarackObama.com, and even JohnMcCain.com have blue links. So, clearly this rule transcends political persuasions too.

Of course, it also depends on the type of links, positioning, context, etc.. I am, of course, referring to the standard body copy links. Some sites even omit the border="0" on images thereby rendering the blue border on images to illustrate their clickability. Many sites use multi-formatting on their links to visually communicate their click states. And these links can come in all shades of blue. There is the Intel blue, big blue IBM's blue, and the Microsoft blue. Blue links are in fact the defacto fail-safe color of choice for links. Even usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, follows this model.

Does this mean that sites with non-blue links are doomed? Not at all. While it is the color of choice for links, links are popularly manifested in a myriad of colors. Many well-known sites have successfully accomplished this. It is the implementation of those links to appear as links - either by way of underlining or some other visual cue such as a symbol - that become important but such links can and do work. A lot may depend on the target audience and genre of site. There are many examples of Web 2.0 sites and teen sites that do different things that work as well. But tread carefully with this before deviating from the norm.

How Some Users Really Navigate Your Website

How do most users navigate your site? They Google a site, click the site link from the search engine results to go to the site, and from the site they use the site search to deep dive to their desired content, and from the content page Ctrl-F to find exactly the content on the page. Does this sound familiar? Maybe a tiny bit extreme but it does happen. They may not be using your well crafted navigation system. These power users are bypassing it and powering through to cut to the chase.

I have seen this behavior in usability testing with more experienced high tech users on B2B sites. And my guess is that some version of this is the likely scenario for most high experience users. And, they will use the Back button in lieu of your navigation or right click and select 'Back' with greater confidence than the navigation that they won't get lost. The navigation is there as more of a supporting element for them - a backup of sorts or a prop. It is a fall-back should they lose their way. They would prefer to look to the content area for links to the content - resorting to the navigation as an afterthought.

The likelihood of some of this behavior depends on a number of factors.

• Familiarity with the site. If users have previously visited a site and feel relatively comfortable with it, they are more unlikely to spend time browsing and discovering. They just want what they want.

• Site content can also play a factor in this. The type of content, complexity of content, and the amount of content can determine if users prefer to deep dive versus browsing. A site with too much content on a page or poorly organized content might appear overwhelming and induce searching.

• Non-intuitive navigation labels can throw users off even if they wanted to use it forcing them to search instead.

• Quality of site search may affect the likelihood of a user using the search utility on your site. If they've learned from experience that it is not so good, they will avoid it and rely on your navigation system instead.
  

• People are busy. They have limited time and deadlines and tight windows in which to get things done. They are constantly multi-tasking and multi-site surfing simultaneously. And in the era of search, its just easier and quicker.

Of course, this does not mean that we do away with our navigation systems or spend less time designing the taxonomies for them, it just means that for some users it is just not the preferred mode of navigating sites.

Giving Users What They Want In 3 Clicks

I recently had a sales clerk say the following to me when he learned I was in the internet field:

I have a message for the people in your field. Can you tell them to make websites so that people can find things in three clicks or less!

Where have we all heard that before :)?! So this got me checking some popular sites to see how we are doing.

eBay.com - From the homepage, I clicked on "Books" under "Shop your Favorite Categories" and on the Books landing page, clicked "Science & Tech" and got a multi-page listing of books which was essentially as far it went. Because of the sheer number of results pages, I entered "usability" in the section search and found what I was looking for. That was 4 clicks but really 3 to get directly to all the books in that category. I can't imaging anyone wouldn't search at that point versus going through the 2.3K items retrieved.



Amazon.com - From the homepage, I clicked on "Books" in the left nav and from the Books landing page, clicked "Computers & Internet" then "Graphic Design" and then "Interface Design" and got a multi-page listing of books and found the closest match for usability books on page 2 of the search results. That was 4 clicks to get to the search results and 5 clicks to the actual book.



Barnesandnoble.com - From the homepage, I clicked on "Books" in the nav. From the landing page, I clicked "Computing & Internet", then "Programming", then "User Interfaces" and on page 3 of the search results, found what I was looking for. But I did get lost several times first going to "Graphics & Design" and "Internet & World Wide Web". That was 4 clicks to the search results and 6 clicks to the actual book - not including pain and suffering.



Of course, I could have searched from the home pages initially to get to results faster versus going through the prescribed nav paths on these sites. Overall, I would have to say that although eBay was deceptively faster in getting me to the results in the desired 3 clicks, the number of results was overwhelming and required clicking through too many results pages until I gave up and searched for the subject to arrive at the book. Although it didn't initially feel like it, Amazon was actually the best although the categories required a little thought in filtering through them. Not quite 3 clicks but also not too bad.

Easy To Use

Rolling With Online Video

The majority of online video content viewed in the US is news/current events followed by jokes/bloopers/funny clips and movie trailers (previews, clips). Such videos are generally up to five minutes in length. But as David Hallerman, eMarketer Senior Analyst states, "as technology problems are solved, however, making the computer-television connection more viable and pleasurable for the average consumer, online video content will expand in both length and breadth, and professionally-produced material will account for a large part of the menu.” But until then, don't extend the length of your online videos because as a lean-forward technology, the web is second to TV for now "when it comes to elements such as convenience, control and the ability to easily find enjoyable content, TV video content wins out for relaxation, sharing the experience with friends and family and less annoying advertising than online."

When A Website Redesign Takes Flight

In the market for a helicopter?! Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp., announced the redesign of their website yesterday. When I came across this, what stood out for me is that the company seems to get what sometimes gets forgotten - that a company's website is a business tool and increasingly its "front door" to a global audience and the first experience many visitors have with your brand. As a result, they wanted to make the site a positive and memorable experience for visitors.

Given the product, it is kind of cool that they tried to mirror the offline experience online which can sometimes be tricky to do and given the medium, not always recommended. The company used a combination of video and Flash animation to bring the aircrafts to life by creating an interactive aircraft tour complete with a hangar and airfield, helicopters landing and taking off with all the sound effects, and a pilot describing them. You can get different views of the aircrafts and click on specific parts to get more info...simplified like buying a pair of jeans. They messaged their progress bars creatively; the labels were things like countdown, requesting landing clearance, and cleared for landing/takeoff. It's overall a very creative and unique way to sell such a complex product online effectively using rich media to create an interactive tv-like experience and taking design to greater heights.

Martha Stewart Expands Online Empire

Today's good thing (actually Thursday's) at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia was the acquisition of a 40% stake in online wedding planning company, Wedding Wire. The union provides MSLO the opportunity to increase their digital footprint in the lucrative wedding business both on- and offline. Wedding Wire boasts a localized online wedding marketplace, planning tools, and a social community. "By investing in WeddingWire, we are assembling a robust online offering with a proven toolset to enhance our digital Weddings content and complement what is already the category's premier print magazine," said Wenda Harris Millard, President, Media, MSLO. "We are impressed by WeddingWire's superior online platform and see great opportunities to leverage its expertise across our Internet sites and bring similar tools and features to our other lifestyle content verticals. This is also a tremendous opportunity for our advertisers to reach couples engaged in the process of planning their wedding."

The media mogul's growing online empire is quite impressive. Her own site, MarthaStewart.com, is of course elegantly designed but also has a lot of Web 2.0 and new media features and capabilities that a lot of traditional tech companies lack. It is clearly designed for users and usage and around community building. It's a good thing!

Web 2.0 Sites - Who Is Really Commenting

I recently did an interview at our Web 2.0 Conference & Expo of members of the Web 2.0 user generation and uncovered an interesting finding. I asked five twenty-somethings if they commented on articles, blogs, and videos. Surprisingly, contrary to the belief that these young Web 2.0'ers are actively posting comments to blog posts they read and videos they watch, is apparently NOT the case. These young people apparently prefer to take a more passive approach as voyeurs rather than active participants. They might read blog posts and watch web videos and even read the comments but not necessarily add to them. One person said he might comment if there were a lot of comments and he really liked the story or video. Another said she would read her friend's blog to keep in touch and might post comments there. But they were not commenting on mainstream blogs or Youtube videos. As it turns out, they weren't commenting because they didn't like what they read or saw just that they didn't feel inclined to engage beyond that. They were happy to consume the content but nothing more.

This begs the question - who is really commenting on these sites?! If the so-called Web 2.0 user generation is not commenting, then who is? Commenting on most sites can be anonymous so if users wish to remain unknown they can. Other sites like Youtube, for instance, requires users to login before posting a comment but the commenters can use screen name aliases. What's also interesting is that most of the comments on these fun consumer sites are generally meaningless one worders or one-liners but the members of the user generation interviewed still did not comment.

These interviewees were not shy; they were outgoing and adventurous, some were Stanford students, and they all worked - most in high tech and a couple in the service industry. Their behavior seems to suggest that unless there is an element of familiarity/community or they felt engaged enough or felt strongly enough about something, these Web 2.0-ites simply do not comment.

Right Column Aversion

Most users suffer from right column avoidance syndrome. They simply have an aversion to the right rail content on websites. They avoid it like the plague. They deny its very existence. Their peripheral vision ends where the right column begins. How often have we all glazed over the right most content on a website? Why is this you might ask?! In fact, we all know the reason. It's right column fatigue. We have trained users to expect nothing short of gimmicky marketing and sales pitches in that area of web pages. Even if your site hasn't fallen victim to this, it has become standard convention for this real estate to be relegated to this purpose. It has become a mostly noisy and free-for-all area especially on B2C sites. This rule transgresses all sites including B2B ones as well. A site is a site is a site - all weaved from the same web. So, as long as we accept this - much like users avoid the right channel - as site creators we, too, should equally avoid the right channel when it comes to placing anything there other than non-critical content. For content your users will be seeking and will need to be successful with their task at hand, avoid placing it in the right channel as it is likely to be overlooked.

The other side of this is that the propensity of the right channel content to be overlooked is also related to how ads-y it appears. So, if your right channel content appears more like real content versus marketing, chances are it might get noticed.

What's Your RIA Strategy - Ajax or Flex

When it comes to Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies, application development professionals must choose between two paths: AJAX or Adobe Flex.

AJAX is the best bet for experienced web development shops looking to incrementally evolve existing web applications. AJAX is considered the fast lane to a better user experience. Selecting AJAX also raises the question of whether to go with a homegrown, open source, or commercial AJAX framework.

In contrast, Adobe is best for shops looking to completely transform their Web experiences. But to do so, firms must acquire the skills necessary to use Flex, which is the development framework for the Flash runtime environment. Early adopters with time-to-market concerns and comfort with either smaller vendors or open source can select AJAX with confidence. But firms that require support from a larger vendor and full-featured development tools will do better with Adobe.App dev professionals should make the selection based on their time-to-market requirements, whether they're looking to evolve or revolutionize their user experience, and whether they prefer tools from large established vendors. More>>

Adobe Stock Photos Service To Be Discontinued

As of April 1, the Adobe® Stock Photos royalty-free image service will be discontinued. I received an email yesterday from Adobe announcing this. The service was introduced in May 2005 as part of CS2 and allow CS users to search image libraries to purchase royalty-free images. The reason being cited for the discontinuation of the service is that "Adobe has decided to concentrate its efforts in other areas".

The photos which are part of this service are from the stock collections of the following providers: Amana, BananaStock, Blend Images, Brand X Pictures, Comstock, Creatas, Digital Archive Japan, Digital Vision, Glow Images, Goodshoot, Image Source, Ingram Publishing, IPN Relay, IT Stock International, Masterfile, Photodisc, PhotoObjects.net, Photosindia, Purestock, Redchopsticks, Stockbyte, Tetra Images, and Thinkstock. Here is a listing of the types of images you can find on these site.

93% of Websites To Add Web 2.0 Functionality In 2008

More than half of online businesses plan to add Web 2.0 capabilities to their sites in the next six months to enhance their sites' user experiences. And, over 93% plan to do the same within the next 12 months. This, according to a survey conducted by Scene 7 of 335 retailers, manufacturers, agencies, and high-tech companies that sell products or services online.



The most popular Web 2.0 features sites plan to deploy this year include:
-Alternate views
-User ratings, rankings, and comments
-Videos - merchandising, advertising, and demonstration
-Blogs
-360-degree spin
-Interactive catalogs & circulars
-Product tours & integrated views
-Personalized messaging throughout the site
-Quick looks & rollover views
-Personalized stores (with My Account, profile, favorites)
-Zoom
-user-generated visual content
-RSS

And of these Web 2.0 features, the ones deemed most effective are:
-Alternate Views
-Zoom
-Personalized Stores (My Account, Profile, Favorites)
-Microsites
-360 spin

The RITE Method of Usability Testing

RITE or Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation is a method of usability testing that has been getting a fair bit of airtime. Attributed to Michael Medlock from Microsoft, it was first used by the company in gaming tests but has since been more broadly adopted. It is described in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Handbook (published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) as a method where "fewer participants are used before implementing changes, but more cycles of iteration are performed. With RITE, it is possible to run almost 2 to 3 times the total sample size of a standard usability test. However, only 1 to 3 participants are used per iteration with changes to the prototype immediately implemented before the next iteration (or group of one to three participants)".

The goal of this method is to address as many issues as quickly as possible. For this to work, it is important to have a functioning high fidelity prototype, the ability to make changes quickly, and to identify three types of behaviors - critical success behaviors, important but not vital behaviors, and less important behaviors. And, categorizing potential usability issues into four categories will help to determine the time it will take to fix the issues. A clear solution, quick implementation issue should be fixed immediately before the next round of testing; a clear solution, slow implementation issue should start to be fixed but be ready for testing in later rounds of testing, and; an issue with no clear solution or a minor issue requires more data gathering.

The advantage of the RITE method is that it is extremely rapid and highly iterative allowing for immediate feedback of the UI being tested as well as for feedback on the implemented fixes to the issues first identified.

10 Best Intranets of 2008

Jakob Nielsen just came out with his annual 10 Best Intranets of 2008. The winners are based in six different countries and five of the winners were US companies but surprisingly, there was only one high-tech company, SAP. The winners in alpha order are: Bank of America (US); Bankinter S.A. (Spain); Barnes & Noble (US); British Airways (UK); Campbell Soup Company (US); Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation (US); IKEA North America Service, LLC, (US); Ministry of Transport (New Zealand); New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (Australia); SAP AG (Germany).

The winning elements were design consistency in navigation and UX, integrated IA, focus on productivity tools, employee self-service, access to knowledgeable people versus knowledge management, and better presented company news.

Some of the key findings were:
-News was a key homepage focus on most intranets
-Multimedia use growing in popularity
-Improved user experiences yielded productivity gains for tools such as employee directories to facilitate access to people with knowledge and single sign-on capability as employee self-service was key on most intranets
-The most used technologies used were SharePoint and Google Search Appliance
-Some intranets had unique names as opposed to just "Intranet" such as Discover, InSite, and Flagscape, Employee Self Service, my Campbell, Coldwell Banker Works, and US Retail Inside

Other trends which they discovered were:
-Increased personalization
-Integration of information sources, often resulting in a single "one-stop shopping" page
-Emphasis on mission-critical applications and information (such as sales targets)
-Improved event and project calendars
-Special sections to help orient new employees
-Prominent display of stock quotes and other financial information
-Integration of external and company news, often in the form of customizable feeds
-Alerts integration
-Redesigned and improved search features

Account Sign-In: 8 Design Mistakes to Avoid

Jared Spool over at UIE has a great article on common design mistakes in designing an account sign-in process.

Mistake #1: Having a Sign-in In The First Place
Mistake #2: Requiring Sign-in Too Soon
Mistake #3: Not Stating the Benefits to Registering
Mistake #4: Hiding the Sign-In Button
Mistake #5: Not Making "Create New Account" or "Forgot Your Password" a Button or Link
Mistake #6: Not Providing Sign-in Opportunities at Key Locations
Mistake #7: Asking for Too Much Information When Registering
Mistake #8: Not Telling Users How You'll Use Their Information

Introducing Mozilla Weave

Mozilla is doing its part to weave a good experience for users online. Mozilla Labs introduced "Weave" a couple of days ago. Weave will "focus on finding ways to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences". The basic organizing principles around this idea are to provide a set of Mozilla-hosted online services, use freely available open standards-based tools, allow users to control and customize whether and how their data should be shared with their family, their friends, and third-parties, and provide privacy mechanisms like client-side encryption and access rights.

Why Apple Is An "A" Player

I was at an Apple store yesterday - this one was newly refurbished - and was struck by how kool and high tech it is. The store is kinda easy on the eye, open, and new-age design much like Apple products (iPhone, Mac, iPod, etc.). Hit the closest available Mac to surf online - the graphical picture quality is next to none. And, if you have some, get your kids started early by dropping them off at the kiddie Mac play area complete with miniature sized everything. There are built-in plasmas on the wall telling you who is the next customer being served and offering up tips on how to use your Apple products along with definitions of terms like Wi-Fi and bandwidth, etc. There are store clerks everywhere. I made the mistake of pausing a few times and was instantly approached each time by a clerk offering their assistance. No need to checkout your purchases at the cashier, clerks on the floor come out-fitted with electronic POS devices. Got a Mac because it looks cool but have no idea how to use it, a friend of mine mentioned he was getting his friend a one- to two-hour lesson for Christmas with an in-store Apple "genius". Ok, I wouldn't consider myself a die-hard Apple fan - I have a Mac collecting dust - but I do like Apple products and their product and UI designs and experience (on- and offline) are good. Not perfect but good. Where else can you get this?!

The Apple Online Store is equally cutting-edge. The UI is clean, clear, streamlined, and seemingly simple. It is Web 2.0-esque with the use of gradients and radial-edged corners. It is wide-screen, utilizes a lot of white, displays a lot of content which is well organized and clearly labeled. The scale of images is not overly large or small. The online store site is clearly identified at the top left with a store-specific search (separate from the general site search), contact tel, and online chat.

The company has had a stellar year and with their recent release of Mac OS X Leopard, they sold 2 million copies in the first weekend. Fresh on the rumor circuit is that Apple has sold nearly 5 million iPhones since its debut in June, half of their '07 and '08 goal. Apple is also currently embroiled in a controversial case against Harvard student, Nicholas M. Ciarelli's web site, Think Secret, which reports on leaked insider info about Apple's product plans. They have reportedly come to an undisclosed settlement which, in essence, means the site will be shut down. Nonetheless, they keep pushing the edge on product and UI designs and I look forward to what's to come from them in the new year.

Using Eye Tracking To Focus A Webpage

Eyetracking studies where you look at users' reading and gaze patterns are a staple of web usability research. We hear all about users going for the jugular - the golden triangle - or casting F- and E-shaped patterns on a site. While this is generally the case in parts of the world where we read from left to right, what is interesting is that what people look at is totally dependent on what you show them or rather what they see. What tends to happen is users will look at what catches their eye initially, then depending on what's on the page or not, move onto the rest of it to create these shapes. So, whatever you as a site owner makes more attention grabbing is what will likely grab users' attention first and foremost. It could be something over to the far right or smack dab in the middle of a page, if it sufficiently stands out from other elements on the page. However, if you have an overly busy page, users may not know where to focus either.

On an e-commerce site like, Target.com, the focal area is the big red ad area in the middle of the page then the eye moves to the bullseye logo at the top left. Of course, it also depends on how the page loads. If the top left portion of the page loads first, like on BestBuy.com, and the content area is slow in painting on the screen, then the top left is what users will be forced to look at. Usually, though, that's just the logo so I am not sure how much value that is to the site or the user. On cnn.com, clearly, CNN wants you to see the top headline story first so they make the featured story image very large and incorporated the findings of eye tracking research in keeping the image to the top left so it is unlikely for users to miss it. Similar situation on yahoo.com. Google.com's homepage is a bit of an anamoly. The focus on the homepage is the logo and search text field but the search results pages follow the regular F-shape pattern. There are other cases where flashy ads can be a scene stealer away from your core page message. The prescription for this would be to tone down the visual impact and scale possibly of such ads. And, there are other cases where there are a lot of competing items vying for the user's attention. This requires prioritizing and balancing these various elements and determining and focusing on what is the core message of the page. This is easier said than done on homepages versus a landing page, for instance, given that on homepages, you are trying to communicate as such as you can as homepages tend to be gateway or directory-like pages.

Finding The Right Mix Using A/B Testing

How does A/B and multivariate testing apply to the design and execution of calls-to-action with respect to how we leverage the social graph. Malcolm Gladwell reveals the keys to success in a presentation that he made at a conference in 2004 entitled "Learning from Spaghetti Sauce". He concludes that "by embracing the diversity of human beings you will find a sure way to true happiness".

We have learned that "one size fits all" is a failed strategy because no single message appeals significantly to a diverse mass audience. Why send out a call to action for which the conversion rate is predictably too small to be considered successful? Instead, you should apply Gladwell’s lesson to how you determine your strategy. I recommend that you do so through multivariate and A/B testing. Campaigns for causes, for example, are like branding/imaging campaigns for powers of association. Their pitch and presentation must be re-designed (in wording, composition, content, imagery, layout, audio, voice, video, typeface, user-interface, interactivity elements, recipient psychographics) to fit different target audience clusters in the social graph (based upon interests, activities, gender, income, age, political affiliation, ethnicity, media platform/network/channel preferences, etc.).

Given a sufficiently large testing sample, variations on the test message can be allocated for testing upon different audience clusters. Doing so helps you to figure out the right match of message<->target cluster. When we perfect a portfolio of clustered solutions, a better overall conversion and ROI is assured than when we pursue the single most “perfect” productive solution.

Written and submitted by Rich Reader, General Partner & Marketing Director, PlanetCheck

Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications

Usability guru, Jared Spool, recently published an article on Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications. He cited Facebook's Beacon debacle where users are able to find out what their friends are up to.

Usability Challenge #1: Scalability
The number of users affected and the amount of information thrown at users are issues. "Designers need to take both the scale of the user base and the scale of the data into account when thinking about how to design their web-based applications effectively. A contributor to Facebook’s mini-feed debacle was the scale of their design. Facebook, making any change to their site, instantly affects eight million people. If even one percent has issues with the change, that’s 80,000 affected users. Being a social networking site compounded Facebook’s issue. Users connect to other users, some users having dozens or even hundreds of connections. Those users with many connections instantly saw a very populated mini feed and realized their previously subtle interactions on their page were now broadcast to each connection."

Usability Challenge #2: Visual Design
"Sometimes, in web application design, it feels like every pixel matters. This isn’t just a question about the application’s aesthetics. Visual design can have a huge impact on how the application communicates its use. Yet, if the visual design isn’t clear and concise, the design takes the user’s focus away from what they wish to think about and forces them to try to guess what the designers were trying to tell them. Visual design problems affect an application’s success in a variety of ways. In the mildest form, they slow users down and distract them from their task. In the worst cases, they confuse users to the point of giving up or needing assistance. If the application is in the organization’s revenue stream or helps reduce costs, we’ve seen visual design issues can dramatically affect the bottom line."

Usability Challenge #3: Comprehension
"Potential investors use the MSN Money Stock Research Wizard to help determine if a stock or mutual fund is the right investment for them. Because MSN Money tailored the wizard to new investors, the application contains detailed explanations, not only about the stock the investor inquired about, but about the questions the investor should be asking. Even if the application functions properly, it will fail the user if they don’t understand the information it’s trying to tell them. The investor needs to both use and comprehend the wizard for it to succeed. Web-based applications often help people by doing things outside their expertise. They turn to the application to help guide them through a decision making process they couldn’t do on their own. Yet, if they make the wrong decision, it negatively affects their experience and their relationship with the organization."

Usability Challenge #4: Interactivity
"One of the big differences between a web application and other types of web pages is the user is far more interactive. On a content-rich site, users mostly click links and occasionally search. Yet, in a web application, they enter data, sort it, rearrange it, and move back and forth through the screens. Understanding how the user will manage their time becomes critical. Does the team put all the data entry on one long screen? Do they break it up across multiple screens? What is the logical order to enter the data? Users don’t always follow the “happy path.” They enter data incorrectly. They decide they need to go back and change something they’ve already entered. They discover they need to learn more about what the application is asking of them and, thereby, need more detailed assistance. Something as simple as always providing a mechanism to “undo” what’s already been done can create interesting usability dynamics. Handling how the application deals with browser controls, such as the back button, can make the designer’s life more challenging."

Usability Challenge #5: Change Management
"The designers at Facebook learned the hard way that quick changes to the application, even if the team thinks it’s an improvement, can have serious negative results if done incorrectly. We all know that users are resistant to change, yet designing how the change will happen is often overlooked, to serious detriment of the user experience. While users are resistant to change, they are willing to do it when given enough support and structure. The problem with quick changes often happens when users frequently use an application and the old design conditioned them to things being a certain way. Even when the change is to their advantage, they often need warning and support to go from the old to the new. We’re now seeing teams start to design the change process along with designing the changes themselves. Paying attention to how users make the transition can increase a change’s adoption and build long-term user loyalty."

New Blogger Feature: OpenID Commenting

The latest feature coming out from Blogger is OpenID commenting. Blogger in draft, the experimental version of the popular blogging platform, Blogger, has just announced that they are now enabling OpenID-based commenting for blogs. OpenID provides users with a single digital identity across mutliple sites eliminating the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying the user experience. Users of OpenID-enabled services such as LiveJournal and WordPress can comment on a blog using their accounts from those sites rather than with a Blogger/Google account. Once released to the larger public, this can be enabled through the "Settings > Comments" in Blogger.

Next Generation Social Networking

Last Wednesday, the WebGuild held its monthly event on the "Next Generation of Social Networking" featuring Jonathan Abrams, Founder & CEO of Socializr & Freindster fame, Jia Shen, CTO of Rock You, and Sundeep Ahuja, Founder of Appfuels. It was a highly social event - well attended and high energy.

If you missed it, the video of this event will be available in about a week. View photos.

Marissa Mayer on the Pulse of Google Health

Attending the Web 2.0 Summit where Marissa Mayer was one of the speakers. Marissa, VP Search Products & UX, talked about Google Health which she recently assumed the helm of as well, at least temporarily.

She talked about what Google (GOOG) is trying to do with its much anticipated Google Health Platform which is slated to go live in early '08. She explained that the healthcare industry generates a petabyte (one quadrillion bytes) of data annually and Google is attempting to digitize, store, organize, and make this data portable and available to people. The service would also allow people to find doctors and integrate with Google Maps for directions. She went on to say that people are already using Google more than any other tool on the Web to find health information.

She stopped short of sharing the interface of the new Google Health platform, screenshots of which were leaked a while back.

On the lighter side, she did a "Top 10 List of Things You Might See From Google Health" such as a paternity search, Viagra spam for Gmail users, and I’m feeling yucky button.

Social Networks Going Corporate

For companies with the foresight, Web 2.0 is enabling the transformation of corporate web sites from stodgy old static brochure-ware sites to more dynamic and multi-dimensional sites. Corporate 2.0 sites are integrating social networks, social networking components, or creating separate social networking companion sites.

Old world companies like Cisco are trying to make a foray into this brave new world of social networking via their purchases of Tribe and Five Across. eBay has created its own social networking site called "Neighborhoods" to build a sense of community with users. Even Bank Of America jumped into the game with a social network for small business owners.

This can be a scary new world for old world companies relinquishing control of their carefully crafted images and opening themselves up to criticism from customers actually providing live feedback for the world to see. However, leveraging the social networking platform is a huge opportunity and if done well can yield trememdous benefits such as:
-realtime feedback from your customers. You definitely know what people think and feel, what works and what doesn't and can use it as an opportunity to improve your products and/or services and to correct any public relations issues.
-opportunity to build brand loyalty as customers will see that you value them, and to respond to their issues or concerns.
-opportunity to enable commerce. If customers are recommending your products/services then that can only serve to drive up sales.
-more content and more fluid, timely, user-generated content. Less expensive content for you to create.

HP Unlocks the Printable Web for Millions of Internet Users

HP has just announced that it will be making it easy for you to print your customized content from the web. This is part of HP's Print 2.0 Strategy to offer internet users new and enhanced printing options to control what they print and how they print it. HP has partnered with high traffic sites like Facebook, Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, and Disney.com to offer this improved print capability. HP plans to deliver this via Web 2.0 technologies such as those developed through an acquisition of web-based app, Tabblo, and others.

"People are frustrated with printing from the web – it’s often wasteful and rarely do the pages print with the information laid out on the page the way you want," said Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president, Imaging and Printing Group, HP.

On Facebook, users can use a Graffiti widget to draw on or decorate their own and friend's profiles and print their real-world artwork. With Flickr, it's a similar feature. The HP technology will power a blog printing feature on Microsoft Live Spaces.

Web Accessibility Could Be California Law

Target is being targetted for allegedly forcing users to navigate the web blindly. A lawsuit filed in '06 claims that Target has violated the California Disabilities Persons Act in that its website, Target.com, does not provide full and equal access to blind users.

The Target suit claims that alternate text and accessible image maps are missing which screen readers depend on to read through the page content and vocalize it to the user; and, the website requires the use of a mouse to complete certain functions. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) who, in part, filed this suit has also filed and won similar cases against America Online, Priceline.com, and Ramada.com.

The judge has now granted class-action status to the Target lawsuit which means that all blind people in the U.S. who have tried to access Target.com can join in the lawsuit. The judge also went a step further stating that under California state's Disabled Rights Law, websites are required to be accessible. There are apparently about 10,000 people in California who use reading software to access the internet.

This is a precedent setting case with far reaching implications for all websites. This has the potential to create new requirements for companies, new jobs, added development needs, new QA needs, retro-fitting of sites, new costs, etc. For companies with rich internet Web 2.0 apps using Ajax, this will be a bit of a speed bump for them as they will need to web accessify their apps which could slow them down. Ajax has, in the past, gotten a bit of a bad wrap for accessibility. Already, companies with government contracts are required to make their sites accessible. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has some information on this stuff and other requirements around S.508 compliance. I believe Yahoo is one company which actually has a disabled person on their UI/dev team whom they check the accessibility of their sites against. Perhaps, content management systems (CMS's) will be required to make alt text required for images inputted by content contributors.

Here are some tips for making your site accessible:
1. For flash objects, adding a 'noembed' tag with a text version of the content of the flash movie is one way around this. Macromedia has some guidelines for making flash accessible.
2. Adding text transcripts of videos are also a good practice.
3. Testing your site using a text based browser such as Lynx or turning off the graphics in your browser's advanced internet options to see if you can still read and navigate a site without graphics is another good test. People that are visually impaired will sometimes upload their own stylesheets which override the site stylesheet to help them read your site better. Many sites use fixed font sizes versus percentages which broswers such as IE do not allow you to adjust but Firefox does. Other sites have a text size adjuster for pages.

The web has predominantly been cowboy country governed by few laws. This is an example of an offline world law being enforced onto the online world. More and more internet specific laws are being created but hopefully, they won't quell innovation.

30 Usability Issues To Be Aware Of

Here is an overly exhaustive but nonetheless useful list of 30 usability issues to be aware of as described in Smashing Mag.

-7±2 Principle
-2-Second-Rule
-3-Click-Rule
-80/20 Rule (The Pareto principle)
-Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design
-Fitts’ Law
-Inverted Pyramid
-Satisficing
-Baby-Duck-Syndrome
-Banner-Blindness
-Cliffhanger-Effect (Zeigarnik-Effect)
-Gestalt principles of form perception
-The Self-Reference Effect
-Eye-Tracking
-Fold
-Foveal viewport (Foveal area)
-Gloss
-Graceful Degradation (Fault-tolerance)
-Granularity
-Hotspot
-Legibility
-Minesweeping
-Mystery-Meat Navigation (MMN)
-Physical consistency
-Progressive Enhancement (PE)
-Readability
-User-centered design (UCD)
-Vigilance (sustained attention)
-Walk-Up-And-Use Design
-Wireframe

Read article.

Adsense for Online Video Content

Users are spending more and more time than a year ago watching video online and expect to watch even more going forward as long as the content remains free and ad-supported. "This study confirms that consumers accept video advertising in exchange for a free viewing experience, which is good news for advertisers," said David Klein, vice president of TNS, in a statement. "As with advertising across all media, if the video advertising is relevant it can contribute to and enhance an engaging media experience, not impair it." The study was sponsored by Google and AOL. (Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005431&src=article1_newsltr)

And this may be a good thing given that Google has just launched YouTube Adsense video units that allows website publishers to monetize their YouTube video content on their sites with text or image ads. Experientially, users are already trained to expect the pre-roll and post-roll ad displays on their online videos. Hopefully, they won't start popping up mid-video or go on for longer than the IAB recommended 30 second length. Like traditional Adsense, the ads will be contextually relevant to the video content and from an advertiser point of view, likely, more effective given its rich media format.

Google AdSense for Your Mobile Sites

You can now place ads on your mobile websites using Google AdSense. It's an internet marketer's dream. AdSense has traditionally been used on the desktop platform only allowing site owners to display related advertising on their site using a PPC model. The mobile edition is a limited availability beta release. It's no secret that the mobile market is hot with increasingly more people owning cell phones and an ever growing number of mobile websites being created to support this sales opportunity. AdSense is paving the way for the monetization of this new marketing channel by covering the bases on another of the much touted three screen views.

On the user experience side, this can equally be a designer and user's worst nightmare. Although screen sizes are increasing in size, there is still a very limited amount of screen real estate to work within and now with more content, albeit ads-y content, which may or may not be welcome by users. It's an interesting challenge both in the decision to serve ads and the usability implications. The placement of the ads are unlikely to fall in the right column as is traditionally the case on the desktop platform; they are more likely to fall towards the bottom of the page above the site footer with some differentiation between the main site content and what are essentially ads. There are apparently character and line limitations.

In terms of development, website requirements are that "webpages must be written in a mobile markup language and developed with a server-side scripting language such as PHP; AdSense for mobile ad code will only display ads on mobile-compliant webpages. Mobile Webpage Markup Languages: wml (WAP 1.x.), xhtml (WAP 2.0), chtml (imode, etc.)". (Source: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=71600&ctx=sibling)

Interview with Jon Wiley, User Experience Designer, Google Apps

I am an avid user and fan of Google Apps and judging by its growing popularity, I am certainly not alone on this. I recently had an opportunity to interview Jon Wiley, User Experience Designer, for Google Apps to gain some insight into this suite of apps. Jon was also recently a panelist at the Usability 2.0 Event at the WebGuild on April 11, 2007.

Q: You work on Google Apps. Can you tell the readers a little about it and what you do on Google Apps?

A: Google Apps is a collection of Google services such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Spreadsheets, and Talk, all bundled up as a white label product for businesses, schools, small groups, and ISPs. The Premier Edition is $50/user/year and the Standard and Education editions are free. I work on the sign up and payment interfaces, and parts of the administrator control panel interface. I also work with other designers and researchers to represent the needs of enterprise, SMB, ISP, and educational organizations when thinking about the experience of Google's diverse products and services.

Q: I think most people would point to Google Apps as an example of web, usability, and design 2.0 epitomized. Do you agree with this characterization and why or why not?

A: All of the services bundled with Google Apps certainly typify Web 2.0 applications. Google has long been an innovator in delivering powerful web applications via the browser. But we have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible. Everyone who works on these applications has a hundred ideas to make them better. Our work is never done.

Q: One of the things I've noticed with Google Apps is that there is a little more attention placed on form in the design, notwithstanding function, compared to the uber simplicity of the google.com homepage. It still has the Google moniker but there is color, icons, and visual interest. Why this divergence, if you will? And what, if any, has been the impact on usability?

A: While the classic Google home page maintains a very simple appearance, we've recently given users more choices and the ability to customize their experience with iGoogle. It's true that our search interface is highly functional and that we've explored visual design more in our applications.

This divergence can be traced to where users spend time. Search connects users to the best results for their query as quickly as possible, and users do not spend a lot of time in search. Much more time is spent in applications like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Talk. The usability of these applications is enhanced through visual design. We want users to feel comfortable in our applications and it is there that investing in the visuals really pays off.

Q: Components of Google Apps such as Gmail, Talk, and Calendar are available for mobile access. Do you foresee Docs and Spreadsheets migrating to WAP as well? And if so, what would have to be different from the desktop version to ensure the usability of these apps on a WAP platform?

A: We want to make information universally accessible and useful. Providing access via mobile platforms goes towards fulfilling that first goal. Fulfilling the second, making it useful, is more complicated. Do people want to edit spreadsheets on their mobile phone or collaborate on documents? Perhaps they would rather just manage their documents, sharing them for instance. Or maybe the mobile context creates new possibilities for collaboration.

Q: Google Apps is localized for a number of countries and languages. How do you design for and test the usability for the various geographies and what are some of the differences encountered?

At a very tactical level, we strive to design interfaces which can work well in a variety of languages. Interfaces that scale and that make extensive use of CSS are easier to translate without breaking. If, from our research, we think a particular interface or workflow may be impacted by language or locale, we will organize user testing to help us understand and address those variances. At a more strategic level, Google has offices throughout the world. It is a lot easier to listen to your users if you are close to them.

Q: Tell us a little about your usability testing process.

For usability testing, which is a small part of our overall research program, we typically utilize labs on site to host users and present them with high fidelity prototypes of applications. We'll walk our users through a number of scenarios in order to gauge the usability of the interface. Occasionally, if the prototype is sufficiently deep, we will allow users to explore without any particular scenario in mind. Our process is an iterative one and we'll perform testing several times to improve the usability of the application.

Q: The target audiences for Google Apps are Small Business, Enterprise, Academia, and Families or Group. That's a pretty broad spectrum of users with varying needs and skill/experience levels. How do you create a suite of apps for multiple demographics and experience levels and still make it usable and stimulating for the everyone?

A: In terms of administrating these services for the organization, we work to identify the information and actions common to all of our customers and make those items readily visible and easily accessible. While the types of organizations served by Google Apps are quite diverse, their needs are often quite similar. Often, it is simply a matter of scale.

For the applications themselves, the spectrum of needs and diversity of users is greater. Nearly all Google applications begin their lives aimed squarely at the consumer market. Google excels at supporting large scale initiatives and we want to solve problems for the largest possible audience. This focus on solving problems for lots of people translates into highly useful applications. The world is full of software and devices with a wealth of solutions, maybe a tenth of which people actually use. We aim to include the features that most people will use a lot.

The rapid innovation of web applications in the consumer space has opened up a gap between the usability and usefulness of products in people's personal lives vs. the products and services offered by their employers and schools. Rather than look for feature-heavy products at home, they are seeking products that are easier to use and more useful in the workplace and the classroom. We're bridging that gap with Google Apps.

We also just launched a Partner Edition of Google Apps for ISPs.

Q: How are Web 2.0 technoligies such as AJAX being used in Google Apps?

A: I've been building web pages since 1995, and I find it hard to see the Web in such quantized units as 1.0 or 2.0. To me, there are a number of technologies and best practices that have been developed over the years, the adoption of which has come in stops, starts, stutters, gradual transitions, and everything in between. Google tends to take a very utilitarian view of technologies: we want the best tool for the job. Whatever enables us to offer fast, efficient, usable, accessible, and powerful services to our users.

JavaScript is used extensively in Gmail and Calendar. Our new Talk gadget for iGoogle uses Flash. The control panel for Google Apps uses CSS throughout. I'm continually amazed by the innovation Google engineers manage to achieve with technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, which are many years old and were never really designed to handle the powerful applications we've created.

Q: Is Google Apps built with web accessibility in mind with respect to disabled users? And if so, how?

A: Accessibility of web applications for people with disabilities is a very challenging problem, one that we are working to solve. I am a member of a team of people at Google working to develop better processes and educate Googlers about the challenges we face in this area, as well as best practices for creating accessible products.

Q: Google Apps was created last year. How has this suite of online software applications and web publishing tools changed from then to now from a user experience perspective?

A: Initially the product was called Gmail for Your Domain and the scope was very limited. We have continued to add services to the product, enabling a number of communication and collaboration activities to be hosted in the Google computing cloud. This is in line with our mission to make information, in this case the information created and shared by our users, universally accessible and useful. I think Google Apps has also resulted in a greater need to integrate across our services and this work has direct benefits for individual consumers as well.

Q: Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was recently quoted as saying that Apps and online software applications is a new focus for Google, in addition to search and ads, in what he calls a "shift to an online lifestyle" and Google is creating web-based applications that support that lifestyle with Google Apps. What are some of the user experience advantages and challenges that are unique to online apps versus the traditional desktop software like Microsoft Office?

A: Our customers can access their data from any device with a web connection. Gmail leverages Google's massive supercomputer to store vast amounts of information and our customers derive piece of mind from the knowledge that they won't lose their data, even if their computer breaks or is stolen. Hosting data in Google's cloud makes sharing and collaborating super easy, since information isn't chained to a single device. And users only have to worry about one program to run - the browser - no need to install and maintain a bunch of applications.

Designing web applications is a difficult problem for a number of reasons. As I mentioned before, the foundation technologies were never really designed for the complex tasks we're asking them to do. Also, the Web as a medium is highly variable and customizable. Web applications must function on a variety of browsers running on a variety of operating systems and displayed within a variety of browser window sizes. There is also the matter of bandwidth and connectivity.

Q: What can you share with us on the future enhancements planned for Google Apps? What's next on the roadmap?

A: We'll soon be adding presentation software to our suite of services and email migration for our Premier and Education Edition customers will be available soon. As always, we are continually innovating and improving our applications.

Thanks, Jon! This has been great. We look forward to more cool stuff from Google Apps.

Interview with Luke Wroblewski, Senior Principal Designer,Yahoo! Inc.

Thanks, Luke for doing this follow-up interview to the Usability 2.0 Event at the WebGuild on April 11, 2007. This is such a huge subject area that I thought it warranted a follow-up one-on-one session.

Q: Although there are established design and usability best practices and standards, there are also varying standards within companies' definitions of good design and usability and the role design should play in the product development process. Some companies value form as well as function whereas others appear to value function only. Is form still a valuable element in usability?:

A: There are two strongly interconnected ways to utilize form: personality & visual organization.

Personality–or visceral design if you prefer-is defined by the subjective reaction people have when viewing a product. It’s the combination of fonts, colors, images, shapes, and patterns that tells you which laundry detergent is tough on stains and which one provides a delicate touch. Though this aspect of form predominantly enforces a brand message for products it can also have an influence on usability. To substantiate that point, Don Norman has recently exposed research that indicates “attractive things work better”. To quote "When you wash and wax a car, it drives better, doesn't it? Or at least feels like it does." So there’s a corollary between aesthetics and ease of use.

For many people, the role of visual design ends there as they only consider form for "making things pretty". As a result, they overlook the crucial role of visual organization.

Visual organization. (www.lukew.com/resources/articles/visible_narratives.html) is the deliberate prioritization of meaning within a visual design. It’s the process of applying the principles behind perception–how we make sense of what we see- to illuminate relationships between content and actions. Through applications of visual contrast, designers can communicate the steps required to complete a task, the relationships between information, or the hierarchy between interface elements. Since the majority of people are only able to interact with a Web application through its presentation layer, visual organization is a key component for successful interface designs. It essentially tells people how to use things. Personality, on the other hand, tends to focus on why.

Q: In the US, we have a lot of users online and as a result, a key initiative is to drive usage versus users. How does usability play a part in driving usage?

A: Usability is part of a fairly broad set of considerations that determine usage. So we need to think of it’s role in the context of making products and services that are not only usable but accessible, findable, desirable, credible, useful, and more.

Obviously making it clear how to engage with experiences that people consider desirable, credible, or useful is likely to increase usage. So applying usability principles to reduce barriers to engagement is a worthwhile endeavor.

Q: Most companies, including Yahoo, are proliferating their web prescience onto a wap platform in addition to the traditional desktop platform. What are your best practices for Wap usability?

A: I’m going to broaden this to cover designing for mobile devices as I think the discussion goes beyond WAP technology. The basic principles in the mobile space are the same as any medium just very strongly influenced by context. In most cases today that means smaller screens, slow connectivity, challenging input devices (keypad typing for instance), location awareness, and device integration.

Small screens and slow connections require you to rigorously prioritize the content and actions available to mobile users. Large pages with superfluous content are a sure fire way to turn mobile users away from your site. Clear labels and information architectures that don’t go too deep are also good ways to avoid costing users clicks and unnecessary downloads.

Challenging input devices require designers to consider how content and actions can be browsed using keypads–via numerical lists-or simple up/down and left/right actions. Location awareness opens up enormous possibilities for experiences relevant to where you are or who is near you. But this information tends to be regarded as quite personal, so there are privacy issues around how relevant location-aware content gets surfaced to people.

Lastly, device integration is the need to account for a broader product ecosystem. Mobile devices are part of a content relationship between desktop computers, music players, televisions, and more. Getting these devices to interact seamlessly has been a considerable challenge for both engineers and designers.

Q: What are some of your: best practices for usability testing, biggest bangs for your usability dollar, or usability sins?

A: For any type of usability testing, I’d say a crucial best practice is objectivity. Being able to observe what you are seeing people do without a subjective viewpoint is one of the traits I’ve come to admire most in usability professionals. Part of that is being open to new insights. If you have a predetermined point of view, you’re likely to mostly see what you assume you will beforehand.

I’ve always been a fan of RITE (rapid iterative testing) and triangulation (or perhaps a better term is cross-fertilization) of multiple data sources. RITE testing gives you the ability to quickly adapt to issues and opportunities being seen as testing goes on. Data cross-fertilization gives you both qualitative and quantitative information, which paints a fuller picture of what’s working. For example, live site testing may tell you what people are doing on your site but it won’t tell you why. Lab testing, on the other hand may tell you why people may do things but it may not be an accurate predictor of large-scale behavior. When combined, however, these and other techniques can paint a fuller picture.

As far as usability sins, there are a couple scenarios that come up frequently in testing: discoverability and complete cognition. I bring up discoverability because usability testing is often used to evaluate the effectives of specific Web application features and a common finding is that the feature being tested is not discoverable. Most times, I believe that is to be expected. People do not experience features in isolation, they experience them in the context of tasks and goals. As such testing the discoverability of a feature for feature’s sake may lead to make decisions that don’t take the full context of product experience into account.

Complete cognition on the other hand, is the expectation that people need to understand exactly how they accomplished a task. A more relevant measure is how they did or did not accomplish the task they set out to do. Often, it’s unreasonable to assume people will completely understand how and why something works. So considering that a failing of the design doesn’t help address actual usability (usage) issues.

Q: There are a lot of elements that go into a successful site design that are not only about what we see but also more qualitative factors such as how we think and feel as we navigate a site. How do you test such elements?

A: When it comes time to evaluate the more "subjective" aspects of an application, qualitative analysis tends to take over. For example, in a CHI2004 paper, the Microsoft User Experience Team outlined the methods they used to gather "structured user input on the visual design" of a product. These included design mark-up, a semantic design-description task, a statement rating task, a semantic desirability group card sort task, and a modified focus group discussion. Each of these methods relied on qualitative data from participants.

But I’ve always been of the mind that quantitative data may be a more meaningful metric for visual design than qualitative analysis. Judging the effectiveness of visual designs based on what participants accomplish (and how they accomplish it) could potentially allow us to evaluate the subconscious processing of visual information that shapes user behavior. Asking users "do you like option a or option b?" rarely provides any insightful data.

Q: There was recently a Harvard Report titled "Defeating Feature Fatigue", that talked about consumer sites that load up on features and what they called feature bloat or featuritis. They found that even though consumers know that products with more features are harder to use, they initially choose high-feature models which is good for business initially. But once consumers have actually worked with a product, usability starts to matter more to them than capability. There’re lots of consumer internet plays that are guilty of this. How do you balance the need to be feature rich with usability?

A: There’s certainly an interesting balance between customers and product offerings. As you mentioned, people tend to make their purchasing decisions based on feature quantity but their retention decisions based on actual usage, which of course can be negatively impacted by feature overload.

A similar paradox occurs when the people that love using your product ask for it to do more. After all, there’s an endless pool of user needs to meet. “Wouldn’t it be cool if it also did…?” Companies that pride themselves on listening to their customers are often quick to respond to these requests because they have pressure to continue growing their businesses. But before long the same customers who were asking for new features are the ones complaining about too much complexity resulting from feature overload.

That said, I do think there are ways to balance the need for “feature currency” at the point of sale and product usability. Apple –who is renowned for simple product design- does use feature counts to market their products. OS X Tiger, for example boasted "200+ new features" (www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/). But Apple’s products don’t surface all of these features at once. In fact, some argue that many of their product features are too hidden for average consumers to discover. In many instances, I think that’s ok.

As I mentioned when talking about usability sins earlier, fixating on feature-level discoverability is a recipe for complexity. In many cases, requiring people to exert some effort to access a feature they need is preferable to exposing it to lots of people who don’t need it. The key is to not let individual features overwhelm the larger system. Companies that divide the management of their products by features run the risk of losing sight of the big picture that holds all their features together.

Q: Have we gotten any better at improving the usability of our sites for international users? And, is web 2.0 aiding or impeding site usability for international audiences?

A: From the international studies I’ve seen, good usability tends to function across borders. The same underlying principles of perception govern how we make sense of what we see across cultures and Web conventions are pretty quickly adopted globally. In fact, many times I’ve seen general principles proven to be more successful than specifically localized layouts or interaction designs. That’s said there are a few things to consider when designing global products.

First – and perhaps most obviously - is language. Right to left vs. left to right reading, word lengths –French and Dutch tends to be almost twice as long as English-, labels, specific marketing messages applicable to different cultures and geographic locations, and so on. To give you a sense of how much of an impact language can have on Web design, I had a series on Functioning Form about Japanese Typography online that included letter spacing, presentation, character selection and more (www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?111).

Local context also plays an important role. What types of infrastructure exists in a particular geography? Are people primarily accessing the Web from shared Internet Cafes, on mobile phones, or through super fast broadband connections? How do people describe or reference their surroundings and relationships? Do they use train stations to describe locations, street names, or landmarks? Are there cultural metaphors that can be leveraged to

Of these two considerations, most Web companies spend the minimum amount of effort required for language localization and almost no effort on local contextualization when launching global products. I don’t think that’s changed much with the advent of social software and pure online services. So I’d say we have mostly the same issues now.

Q: One shameless self-promotion.

A: I’m currently authoring a book for Rosenfeld Media titled Web Form Design Best Practices that covers Web form usability, visual design, and interaction design culled from live to site analytics, usability testing, eye-tracking studies, and best practice surveys. In e-commerce, social software, and Web applications forms play a pivotal role by completing sales, signing up new customers, and enabling content manipulation. Web Form Design Best Practices outlines ways to optimize these key interactions.

You can stay up date on the book's progress and idea development by subscribing to the RSS feed from the book-in-progress site (www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/webforms/).

Accessibility Trend

We're all used to verifying our human identity by entering a combination of alphanumeric soup-like characters displayed on the screen into a text field when registering for an account on many high-trafficked, B2C web sites. Its a common and acceptable practice that on web forms requiring users to input their personal information, that there is a visual verification system in place geared at determining whether the user is human or a computer program. Unwanted spamming and other programs can affect the user experience both in terms of service quality and information security.

But there's a new trend upping the ante on that feature and making it more accessible to users with disabilities - particularly, those with low-vision or blindness. Google, including Blogger, and Hotmail have added an auditory capability to the verification process so that users can opt to listen to the verification code being read to them versus being required to see and read it only. This feature is usually identified by a loudspeaker or wheelchair icon. I found Hotmail's implementation of this feature to be the most elaborate allowing users to toggle between the picture and audio version, request a new CAPTCHA picture, instructionally intensive, and multi-stepped as once the user clicks on the audio icon, they don't get audio as expected until they click another button to play the audio. At one point, an error message was painted on the screen that the audio was temporarily unavailable. In the case of Google and Blogger, I received an error message when I clicked on the wheelchair icon that there was no software update available from Real to support the content.

On a somewhat tangential note, only some sites explain why this verification step is important to the predominantly account creation or transaction process. Although most users have probably encountered this step in their web-past, it is still one of those things that can still warrant some explanation for first-time users. This is possibly a good example of where your web system needs to be able to cater to everyone, at their level, i.e. the more experienced as well as new users (either to the web or your site) and as well as to less able-bodied users.

It's somewhat surprising that it has taken as long as it has for many of these sites but I commend their efforts in this direction and hope others follow suit. It may not yet be perfection; but, it's an example of innovation and growth in our industry towards universal design and greater overall user experience for all.

Mobi-licious

So, I tried out mobile blogging (see my previous post) and liked it quite a bit — once I semi- got it to work! It took a few tries unfortunately; the process was fraught with seeming roadblocks. I started to find the experience a little frustrating. It was, granted, a combination of human and application error. I got a couple of delivery status failure notifications; I sent my one post using sms versus mms initially...just used to texting I guess. This was not clearly stated on the Blogger instructions page. Blogger also mentions go.blogger.com and go@blogger.com. I think I inadvertently sent one post to the former; clearly that didn't work. I tried several times posting a photo but never recieved any messaging that it failed as it certainly didn't work for some unknown reason. Also, when my below post was delivered successfully, the text message I received stated that my post would be posted shortly but gave no indication of what shortly meant; it wasn't 5 minutes!

For many of us, our mobile devices are an extension of our arms. We feel incomplete without it. So, for us mobile addicts and would-be addicts, being able to blog about some great tidbit from a conference, while on-the-go, simply for the geeky fun of it, or just because we can, is a super handy capability to have at our finger tips — so to speak. The klunkiness of the experience needs to be improved upon lest users should get worn down by its shortcomings. Maybe, common system errors and known issues should be made available; I didn't see any.

I haven't ventured to the audio blogging feature but I am sure I will fall victim at some point. It apparently allows you to call Blogger from your phone and leave a message that is posted to your blog as an MP3 audio file.

BTW...I am still trying to get my blog post cum pic actually posted! Give it a try yourself and let me know what you think! Happy mo-blogging!