(Comments added for week ending Sun 10 Nov 2002) | View Other Weeks
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 10 Nov 2002) | View Other Weeks |
| Intranet Usability: The Trillion-Dollar Question | Sun 10 Nov |
| (useit.com) The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more. |
| Sun 10 Nov 16:17 | Frank Lynch | Someone please shoot me now. Or please tell me that I didn't really just read a paper where Jakob Nielsen was doing a cost benefit projection (generalizing to the world!!) on the basis of differences observed in various groups of people carved from a subsets of employees from a total of fourteen companies! As someone with a serious background in statistics, to read Nielsen's estimates without any confidence intervals on these figures is revolting... And should we assume that the 14 companies are a random selection of the companies that have intranets? And that there was a high co-operation rate among the companies he asked to participate? I'm not from Missouri, but I still need to see more before I take this on faith. |
| Slow download speeds capture interest of Internet surfers | Wed 06 Nov |
| In each of the experimental designs, audience members exposed to slow-downloading pages and then given the opportunity to freely browse the Web were more active in their investigations. They tried more hyperlinks and visited more sites than audience members who viewed pages with faster initial download speeds. (Comments: Wow.) |
| Wed 06 Nov 21:35 | John S. Rhodes | The Tease Effect of Slow Downloading: Arousal and Excitation Transfer in Online Communication -- 'When a website image takes a long time to load onto our computer screens, the wait may be frustrating . But it can also be physiologically arousing. That is, the effect of a slowly-downloading image can be likened to the tantalizing effects of strategic concealment found in striptease. While traditional research has examined the effects of sexual and violent content on arousal, this study examined the effects of download speed on arousal.' |
| Wed 06 Nov 22:50 | Jimbo | This study is somewhat incomplete. How did they distiguish between arousal and irritation? What is the effect on second and subsequent visits? What if there is a readily accessable competitor? Given the option of a fast download or a slower one, which is to be preferred? What meaningful advice can this add to the profession (besides the hint that slow loading sex sites are OK?) Perhaps that images should be timed with a delay to load (perhaps via javascript) after the html page has been received? LOL! |
| Thu 07 Nov 10:45 | boysen | I don't find these results surprising. What is, however, is that this passes for meaningful to any audience outside the porn industry. What about their other examples? I believe this is a case where money was wasted on experiments where the value of the results were destined to be less than the cost of the trials. |
| Thu 07 Nov 13:35 | Frank Lynch | Anticipation. Anticipay-yay-tion is making me late, Keeping me way-ay-ating... That's all it is. And I could imagine that on a more normal page, if we see a similar effect, it's due to a browser being distracted from their original goals, while, to kill time waiting for the page to download they have to imagine what will finally be downloaded. |
| Thu 07 Nov 15:26 | mcw | So, when the test subjects got faster links, they browsed less? Not waiting for pages to load, what other activity filled the available time? This study is either badly reported or makes no sense. |
| Thu 07 Nov 17:35 | Mac | Someone who 'reads the book' rather than 'watching the film' will always learn more and be more involved in the subject matter. |
| Sun 10 Nov 16:17 | lorenzo | What to say? 1- the title is wrong. It is culturally biased. Usually we associate 'interest' with 'something with a value' we imply 'something good'. In this case it's simply attention or better: an amodal (generic) excitement of the nervous system. It happens every time we have to code a stimulus. It prepares the brain for the cognitive processing and an answer for that stimulus. If the amodal excitement is low, we could lose some elements while processing or we could take more time to give an answer to it (some stimuli are not so patient!). In interest, a processing has already been made. 2- It doesn't distinguish between the orientation reflex and other kinds of amodal excitement. Good and bad expectations raise the arousal too The case of nude photos underline this confusion. In this case the arousal is influenced by something we know is pleasing plus the frustration of the waiting (even Pavlov's dog understood it well). In web surfing (not in porn sites), slow download time has an effect on the orientation reflex: the screen is always changing in a discontinuous way so recognition is frustrated, the orientation reflex is stressed and the arousal is still up! With the raising of the arousal, the brain 'hopes' to have an answer faster. The aim? Come back to homeostasis. This is well known by TV directors. They use various ways to have your brain in 'stand by': stressing the orientation reflex (changing cameras every 10 seconds) or stressing the cognitive or emotional coding (letting some people talk at the same time, showing the audience reaction while you still have to give your emotional answer. This produces an hypnotic effect. It is common watching a TV program, finding it boring or awful but we persist in watching that program. At the end, will you say: 'oh, it was interesting!' ? (By the way: some commercial web sites use similar strategies to persuade). TV commercials work in the opposite way: they are pleasant, satisfying (for a while) your needs (personality and situational needs). It goes like this: the TV commercial 'gives an answer to a desire' as you identify yourself with the testimonial, who never ends frustrated ( Freud named it: hallucinatory satisfaction of a desire), this satisfaction is the answer to the arousal raised by the TV program too. So the TV program inoculates a stress and the TV commercial is the medicine! Reading it, our loveable researches could conclude: so let's put more TV commercials, because we care of people wellness! Lowering the stress, changing the program? No way, it could reduce involvement. 3- Come back to our web interests! Arousal is raised by ambiguity too. A bad navigation system and lots of links in a page raise up the arousal, introducing ambiguity. So fuck off IA, info design, info visualisation etc. because they could reduce the arousal! Fortunately it is not true. Those disciplines help you to design something that reduces a continuos orientation reflex and ambiguity (a distress) and raises motivation (an eustress). Motivation raises arousal too (oh my God!). 4- In the paper they say: 'test subjects spent more time on those websites and visited more links'. A noisy variable was not controlled: those sites were well or badly designed? If badly designed we have given various answers above. But what if they were well designed but with big jpegs? A possible answer is given by the 'cognitive dissonance' effect ( by Festinger and Carlsmith …those old bastard psychologists). The subconscious process is: my time has a value because I value, if I waste my time I have lost value and I am stupid if I lose value, but I'm not stupid and I've spent my time well, that web site is even interesting, let's see more links! Cognitive dissonance could answer to the other paper that dealt with good graphic design and credibility. If we do that research again dividing test subjects by personality, the amiable and the expressive ones could confirm the data, while the analytical not, I bet. In fact only 7.6 of the experts, who usually are more analytical, were influenced by design. 5- The research lacks a second session. Which sites will see those guys in a second session? Arousal is correlated with memory. We remember positive experiences, but we especially remember the negative ones! 6- Personal considerations. Are those researches idiots, are they kidding? No, research is their business. 'SCLs measure only the intensity…..could not differentiate between those emotions' so they have to do more research. Please give them more money, they have found something interesting. Is there a Pavlov foundation over there? Maybe they'll make a research with a more efficient variable. Maybe the substantia nigra's neural activity is the key answer! In the meantime let's cook some sinful lasagne with mozzarella everywere (…for the arousal of course)! Have a good dinner Lorenzo |
| My Eight Favorite Usability Books | Sun 03 Nov |
| (WebWord) Below is a list of my favorite usability, human factors, and web design books. If I did not own these books, I would buy them. I find myself going back to these books again and again. A couple of them have been replaced because Ive worn them out. These are the books that I recommend to other people all of the time. Simply put, if I did not have them available to reference and read, I would feel like my library was not complete. |
| Mon 04 Nov 01:12 | MadMan | 1) The Essential Guide to User Interface Design 2) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information 3) On Writing Well Not strictly usability books: 4) Influence: the psychology of persuasion 5) How to lie with statistics 6) Sources of power: How People Make Decisions 7) Rain Making: The Professional's Guide to Attracting New Clients 8) Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers 9) Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind 10) Marketing warfare 11) The Knowing-Doing Gap 12) Selling the Wheel 13) The Ten-Day MBA Click on one of the above links, buy a book, and give MadMan a few cents so he can continue rambling here. :) |
| Mon 04 Nov 01:14 | MadMan | Damn, the link to the first book is farked. Please click on this one instead: The Essential Guide to User Interface Design |
| Mon 04 Nov 10:01 | Freder | Yes, everyone shall post their affiliate links |
| Mon 04 Nov 10:13 | John S. Rhodes | Freder. Nice link. Of course, no one here is going to get rich from affiliate links. It is mostly pocket change. For me, it simply reduces hosting costs. End of story. I think it would be more interesting to take a look at wishlists. People might want to post them here. If nothing else, it would be interesting to see how many books overlap. Also, since many of us have similar interests, maybe there are some gems we have overlooked. |
| Mon 04 Nov 11:10 | MadMan | Here's my Amazon wishlist. Not that many user experience books on it, but it should give you an idea of the kind of stuff I read. |
| Mon 04 Nov 11:18 | MadMan | Freder, in the past two years, I've made about $45 from affiliate links. Not exactly making me a millionaire. I only posted these here because John explicitly asked us to list our favourite books with affiliate links. I'd like to add that apart from usability, my list of books helps to make one a more rounded professional. There's marketing, psychology, logic & reasoning, and how to succeed in business. |
| Mon 04 Nov 11:34 | Mac | MadMan, Bringing Design To Software (quite a few chapters) |
| Mon 04 Nov 12:57 | glasshaus Bruce | Christina Wodtke's IA book Blueprints for the web and the glasshaus Accessibility book - not cause I'm trying to sell it to y'all, but 'cause I'm just really proud of it. |
| Mon 04 Nov 13:02 | MadMan | I'm waiting for John Scott Rhodes to write a book. :p Thanks for that link, Mac. |
| Mon 04 Nov 15:38 | Lydia | Oh, I'm so frustrated! I just got a very good book called (I think) simply 'Design of Web Sites' (I was more excited about the content and the way it was arranged and didn't really memorize the title) - I can't find a link for it and the book itself is at home. I'll try to bring it tomorrow and look it up by ISBN. Joel Spolksy's book and Steve Krug's were must-haves for me. I also like both of Tog's books: 'Tog on Software Design' and 'Tog on Interface.' Hm... I sense a pattern emerging. I like to read books by down-to-earth types that weave humor and anecdotes into their stuff. Only this new book and a couple of really excellent O'Rielly books on my shelf move away from that. Even my JavaScript reference books are that way. |
| Mon 04 Nov 16:31 | John S. Rhodes | 1. '...glasshaus Accessibility book...' -- I agree. Great book. It almost made my list! 2. 'I'm waiting for John Scott Rhodes to write a book. :p' -- That is on my agenda (Right Bruce?). Really. I'll try to get to it next year. Right now I'm working on the secret project. It is eating up all my time. |
| Mon 04 Nov 18:07 | Kent | Lydia: Could this be the book you are thinking of? The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience By Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landy and Jason I. Hong Addison-Wesley, 2002 Chapter 1 of this book says five elements determine how users/customers perceive a Web site: ease of use, content, overall performance, brand value/trustworthiness. overall satisfaction. The authors’ solution to improve Web sites in these areas is to use customer-centered design. Chapter 2 of the book says one can simplify Web design by noting patterns that reoccur in Web sites. The use of relevant patterns, allows Web designers to design new sites quickly. Several more chapters in the book are used to further explain how the authors use customer centered design, but the bulk of the book is devoted to presenting common patterns found in Web sites. An example of the treatement of patterns in the book is pattern group H which covers patterns that help customers complete tasks discusses. These include creating a process funnel to guide customers through completing an order, user account creation and use, context sensitive help, and some other issues. |
| Tue 05 Nov 02:34 | Mac | Not directly about usability, but indirectly all about usability. I Sing the Body Electronic - A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier by Fred Moody : Amazon Links COM | UK A great story, telling the tale of the development of a multimedia project for kids that was supposed to be encarta for kids, but turned out to be a disaster (I think). If you read this book you will understand why Microsoft Bob and Clippy might have seemed like a good idea. Software Craftmanship - The New Imperative by Pete McBreen : Amazon Links COM | UK Free Chapter here Programming is a craft. This book examines the craft of programming, and how we need to learn lessons from the past, if we are not going to continue making the same old mistakes again and again and again.... 'If Software development is not fun, there is something wrong with the process'. |
| Tue 05 Nov 03:13 | fallguy | 'Taking your Talent to the Web - A Guide for the Transitioning Designer.' Great if you have background in commercial art/copy. |
| Tue 05 Nov 05:32 | MadMan | >You forgot to close your tag :P I'm putting in this comment just to prevent an outbreak of links on the page. John can edit both comments later. |
| Tue 05 Nov 05:50 | Timo | I maintain a large cross-discipline reading list at elasticspace including usability, IA, visual design, and interaction design. |
| Tue 05 Nov 15:32 | Lydia | Kent, you rock! That is exactly the book. Very good, and engrossing. I just love his layout, and the way he refers to other sections seamlessly and without getting in your face or making it difficult. That is what made me read deeper, and I was very pleased with what I found. |
| Tue 05 Nov 16:54 | Joe Clark | Nice one, Glasshaus. I suggest that everyone interested in Web accessibility buy all the books on the topic, including mine. Mine first, preferably. Note the absence of a self-promoting link. |
| Tue 05 Nov 17:39 | Lydia | I do a lot of reading/grazing/research at bookstores, but I don't buy all the books. Hell, I can't afford it - most of those books are $50 or more (especially the Jakobian kind). So, I like to see what others read. If I respect what they have to say, I'll give those books a closer look. |
| Sat 09 Nov 19:59 | daniel szuc | 'Love is the Killer App' - Tim Sanders. Great reading. Anyone else read it? - http://www.timsanders.com/ |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 07 Nov |
| This is all warm and fuzzy. Do you see this with usability? Nope. Basically all of the top players have sold out. Do they have passion? Sure, passion for money. I hope that the information architecture folks dont follow in the footsteps of the usability folks. You know, sometimes I wish that usability would go down in a ball of flames, only to rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. |
| Thu 07 Nov 23:11 | Dave Bauer | I was thinking that Steve Krug's book 'Don't Make Me Think' was an example or 'warm and fuzzy usability. |
| Fri 08 Nov 03:04 | Mac | Don't follow leaders, watch your parkin' meters - Bob Dylan |
| Fri 08 Nov 07:10 | James Tuddenham | Always bite the hand that feeds you - Shaun Ryder |
| Fri 08 Nov 10:17 | David LIney | Just like the Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/) 'Biting the hand that feeds IT'. |
| Sat 09 Nov 01:49 | Cheese Witherspoon | They're young; they're inexperienced; they're jobless; they need something to do. Give them time, the novelty will wear off. 'Home to all IAs', my ass. Just one big clique, I tell you. Reminds me of the 'blogger elite'. |
| Sat 09 Nov 12:27 | Ron Zeno | Warning: Harsh opinions follow: This is all warm and fuzzy But meaningless. It's just propaganda designed to make people feel good about ignoring some very harsh realities... Do you see this with usability? Unfortunately, yes, everywhere. Basically all of the top players have sold out. Speaking of propaganda... Mind sharing why you feel this way? Sure, passion for money. More propaganda... If you hadn't noticed, the economy is at a low of a lifetime for most... sometimes I wish that usability would go down in a ball of flames It already has. Too bad there is so little interest in building it up into something based upon more than self-interest and self-delusion. |
| Sat 09 Nov 13:25 | Kung Pao | It's just propaganda designed to make people feel good about ignoring some very harsh realities... What harsh realities are those, Ron? Isn't IA an important profession? (I agree that it's feel-good propaganda.) Why don't you post this to sigia-l too? It would make a great thread. |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 07 Nov |
| Warm your hands with this hot air! Im just kidding, of course. Im sure it will be an interesting an informative session. Talk with a guru! |
| Sat 09 Nov 09:44 | Mac | Here are some extracts from the talk: Another analogy is between editor and writer. Usability edits the design to make it better. By the way, I am presenting all the results from the Flash study in LOndon on MOnday - hint, hint... www.nngroup.com/events In a study we just did of Flash designs, we came across one that said 'rollover the thumbnails to do X'. Many users didn't understand this jargon. We recently completed a big studyu of a bunch of corporate intranets (info inside companies) and one of the biggest usability problems came from cases where big documents like the employee manual were available purely as PDF files. Ultimately we need an integrated user experience, which I am calling the 'Internet Desktop' that handles both applications (whether PC-based or Internet-based like the Flash apps we studied recently) as well as email, Web browsing, and potential new apps. As I just mentioned above, we just concluded a big study of 46 different Flash applications and there are a lot of new and different usability guidelines to direct the development of these applications. Sorry. Wild hair is my trademark. Also, as long as I have it, I will grow it... In our recent study of intranet usability, we estimate that the cost of wasted employee productivity is on the order of £10M per year for a company with ten thousand employees if they have poor usability of the intranet. By the way, the question of platform diversity is much worse in the email medium, as we discovered in a recent study of newsletters. Now that you say so, I do have an entire report on how to do sitemaps (www.nngroup.com/reports/sitemaps ). Sorry to keep harping on our recent research project, but I have about 200 pages on this topic (www.nngroup.com/reports/flash). |
| The Syntax of Links | Thu 07 Nov |
| Anyway, it gets me to asking questions like: what is the proper grammatical usage of a link? What are the functions of a link? It links, first and foremost: it can cite or it can trigger. But before the reader follows where it leads, it sits there on the screen, highlighted, set apart. What does the eye make of that? (Comments: Thanks Timo.) |
| Fri 08 Nov 03:25 | Mac | Links tell me a lot about a site even when I don't follow them. More and more often I see sites where all of the links are pulled out into menus and navigation buttons instead of being incorporated into the main text. This can be a side effect of using templates and CMS to publish content where only plain text can be put into a place-holder, but it is also done so that peoples words aren't cluttered by links. Then there are the 'dreamweaver donnas' who can't have a link without a hover effect. Sometimes the colour changes, sometimes the underline is hidden or made visible. If a piece of writing contains a few links (I'm not sure what the optimum ration should be) then I will assume that the author has spent some time with the words and I will probably take it more seriously than some text with no links. I nearly always look at the URL for links in the status bar before I commit to following it. If I know the domain then I may follow it, but if i don't recognise it then I will either leave it, or I may launch it in a new window to give it a 10 second reconnisance. Webword is a 'linky' site, which gives it a different feel from Joel On Software, which only has a few links and is much more insular because of it. Useit.com has very few outward links and feels less connected because of it. I will note, though, that in sites by designers the new window is de rigeur and in the sites by more technical geeks it's nowhere to be seen. Likewise, designers' pages tend not to differentiate visually between links that have been visited and those that haven't, where code-geeks' pages stick with the default of rendering them differently. Naive coding rules! |
| Fri 08 Nov 14:42 | Darin | I will note, though, that in sites by designers the new window is de rigeur and in the sites by more technical geeks it's nowhere to be seen. Likewise, designers' pages tend not to differentiate visually between links that have been visited and those that haven't, where code-geeks' pages stick with the default of rendering them differently. Choice of link colors may not be the fault of the designer per se, especially if the client (aka the source of income) cannot fathom the purpose of link colors. I've had clients who wanted six links in two paragraphs in SIX DIFFERENT COLORS WITH NO UNDERLINES! I tried to explain that links are traditionally blue/underlined when on a light background because people see them and know they are links, and that multiple colored links with no underline doesn't convey 'Hey, this is a link!' Didn't matter. Wanted the multiple link colors. Just like a mobile to baby in a crib...oooohhh! aaaaah!!! |
| Fri 08 Nov 17:00 | dix | the baby crib analogy is a hoot. gotta remember that one. one of my clients asked me to fix the links in his site. seems i was inconsistent. some links were blue and some were purple... ha! |
| Sat 09 Nov 07:15 | Matt Round | Many clients, and most designers, strongly oppose different colours/styles for visited links, they think it looks scruffy. And I've genuinely had clients who wanted their links to not look too 'linky' or 'Webish' as they didn't want to encourage people to use them. The new window thing is really hard to fight against, virtually every client insists on it, they're gripped by irrational fears of people leaving their site and not returning. What they never consider is how much more frustrating the Web would be to use if every site worked that way. |
| Measuring the value of your content | Thu 07 Nov |
| (Gerry McGovern) Measuring content involves an understanding of knowledge and information. It involves seeing content as an asset. It involves clearly articulating the objectives you have for your content. It involves comparing how content performs against other forms of communication. |
| Fri 08 Nov 13:38 | Ryan | If he is so great at information/content design, then why didn’t he write: Measuring content involves: - an understanding of knowledge and information - seeing content as an asset - clearly articulating the objectives you have for your content - comparing how content performs against other forms of communication Such dramatic use of repetitiveness doesn't really have a place on the web. |
| The Social Life of Paper | Wed 06 Nov |
| Gabriel writes: This is one of the great puzzles of the modern workplace. Computer technology was supposed to replace paper. But that hasnt happened. Every country in the Western world uses more paper today, on a per-capita basis, than it did ten years ago. The consumption of uncoated free-sheet paper, for instance-the most common kind of office paper-rose almost fifteen per cent in the United States between 1995 and 2000. This is generally taken as evidence of how hard it is to eradicate old, wasteful habits and of how stubbornly resistant we are to the efficiencies offered by computerization. A number of cognitive psychologists and ergonomics experts, however, dont agree. Paper has persisted, they argue, for very good reasons: when it comes to performing certain kinds of cognitive tasks, paper has many advantages over computers. The dismay people feel at the sight of a messy desk-or the spectacle of air-traffic controllers tracking flights through notes scribbled on paper strips-arises from a fundamental confusion about the role that paper plays in our lives. |
| Thu 07 Nov 13:38 | Frank Lynch | Well, I can see the value of paper, having read 'The Social Life of Information.' But is it possible that part of the reason for the increase is changing demographics? (Don't know here, but if more people are working due to age shifts...) Also, could it relate to shifts towards service economies? |
| Thu 07 Nov 15:26 | Lydia | Paper is tactile, and the computer is not - you touch the keys, but not the information. I used to work in a bank and was amazed at the people who refused to get on direct deposit, even though their employers made it dead easy for them and getting a paper check meant they had to bring themselves down to the bank, stand in line, and deposit it, sometimes days later if they were busy. 'I want to have the check in my hand,' they'd always say. These were not survivalists squirrling their cash away in a mattress - they came into the branch and did the same thing the direct deposit would have done: put it in their account. They just wanted the paper. |
| Thu 07 Nov 15:54 | Richard Lehoux | Computer became important not because it could replace paper in an office but because it could make it more efficient. But when it was introduced, it was easier to sell the first point then the second. |
| Fri 08 Nov 09:34 | Ryan | Lydia - Our department makes it easy to direct deposit as well, but I prefer to pick it up myself. There's something about being able to physically handle it makes it seem more 'real' somehow. Plus, on some days, the only thing that can get me to drag myself to work is knowing that paycheck is available. Also, I've noticed that the only people around our department who don't use direct deposit are males, and there are a very high number of us who don't. I wonder if there's anything there... |
| Fri 08 Nov 10:35 | Jeff Albro | I used to feel the same way about direct deposit. That was until I was under severe time pressure. Then, I was not depositing checks, not sending out bills, loosing track of things. I've started direct deposit, and, more importantly, starting automating my bills online. (I use Fleet Homelink) It is unqestionably the best financial descision I've ever made. Going the other way, I've given up on palm pilots. I use index cards now. I have a palm pilot case on my belt with index cards containing calendars (I custom printed them), todo lists, and phone numbers. One issue I run into in the paper/computer debate is repetitive strain injury. I have to be very careful using the computer too much. I find by splitting activities between computer and paper I use different sets of muscles and have a better chance of remaining healthy. Voice recognition, which I am using to type this paragraph is also a godsend. It has allowed me to use the computer more when I feel the computer is the right tool to use. -Jeff |
| Fri 08 Nov 13:31 | Lydia | Hey, Ryan, good point - now that I think back, the people who wanted to get their paper check were almost exclusively male! In fact, I can't remember a single female telling me this, although I'm certain there must have been one or two? Jeff, I have to admit, that I, too, now use my PAD device exclusively. My PAD has many advantages over the Palm - flexible input, recognizes my handwriting flawlessly, never needs recharging, recyclable. All kidding aside, I know a lot of people who have done this. I've also gone back to the 'analog' day planner for similar reasons. However, I do have my paycheck and all of my bills directly deposited/debited from my account. I love not having to think about it, and since I use my check card for purchases (no credit), it's fairly simple to do. |
| Is Dell the new monopolist? | Wed 06 Nov |
| (David Strom) I think Dell has set the tone for 2002, and will continue to do so in the coming years. And they are like a Predator guided aircraft, homing in on excess profits all over the computer industry landscape. (Comments: Do monopolists neglect usability? The reason I ask is that it is common knowledge that monopolists tend not to innovate. By extension, this might imply that they tend not to care about usability.) |
| Wed 06 Nov 22:41 | Jimbo | It depends on what the Monopolists invest its superprofits into... Apple used to be something of a monopolist long ago, but it put its money back into R&D geared towards usability and aesthetics. I think the ease for new entrants to get stuck in and compete is the main thing encouraging Monopolists to spend more on being user friendly (or at least to apply more profits towards spin doctors, FUD and BS experts to appear more usable etc). |
| Thu 07 Nov 10:27 | boysen | I wouldn't classify Dell as a monopolist; not by a long shot. Currently I see them as an agile company looking for a means to leverage their position to garner revenue outside their core business. From a positioning standpoint, I don't see them profiting greatly from this strategy but then again, GE has been profitable outside their core business for years. Just goes to show that for every rule there are exceptions. It is generally accepted that true monopolies do not innovate. |
| Thu 07 Nov 12:24 | JB | aggressive, successful business model = monopolistic lazy, complaining, inefficient, slow business model = free enterprise system. Please instead of cutting down tall poppies, try running the business properly. |
| Fri 08 Nov 09:14 | mcw | Customers are not stupid. They buy from Dell for a reason. Competitors should focus on why people buy from Dell and seek to provide products & services that are better, or different and meet other needs that Dell does not. Customers don't care about Dell's profits, or HP's or Gateway's. No single customer can act in a way that materially affects the supplier's profitability. Industry pundits should stop focusing on the suppliers and start focusing on the customer. Stock price is not an indicator of customer satisfaction. |
| Tackling Maintenance Projects | Thu 07 Nov |
| (Boxes and Arrows) Most of what one reads about information architecture and interaction design work assumes several things: that you are creating the project from scratch, that you have the ability to alter anything on the screen, and that the project is free of technical or political constraints. None of these assumptions are true when you are dealing with maintenance projects. |
| Thu 07 Nov 23:58 | Adam Greenfield | ...or, generally, on so-called blank slate projects either. Would that it were so. |
| uDrive Me Crazy | Thu 07 Nov |
| (Popular Science) Overcomplication is, of course, the bane of user-friendliness, and no friend to driver safety. |
| Thu 07 Nov 22:46 | MadMan | Hey John, I posted this a few days ago. :p |
| Thu 07 Nov 23:18 | John S. Rhodes | Oh damn. Right. Missed that. I guess I need to read WebWord more often. ;-) |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 06 Nov |
| Would you ever hire Earthpigz? |
| Thu 07 Nov 08:59 | Joel Goldstick | Nice walking Pig. |
| Thu 07 Nov 09:25 | MadMan | Is that the creature on the home page supposed to be a pig? Looks more like a... fat rat. OK, that's two reasons not to hire them: a) poor imagination and b) inability to do any meaningful graphics design. How did you come across this site, John? |
| Thu 07 Nov 10:55 | James Tuddenham | I think maybe it's meant to be an aardvark. |
| Thu 07 Nov 11:26 | Wolf | from encyclopedia.com... The aardvark resembles the New World anteaters but is not closely related to them. It is also called ant bear or earth pig. Good work, James. |
| Thu 07 Nov 11:29 | Alan Fisher | I thought it looked like an aardvark too, so that's another fact I've learnt via Webword. Would I hire them? Depends on what they'd charge. Their work doesn't look too bad, but not outstandingly brilliant either. Good, run-of-the-mill stuff. |
| Thu 07 Nov 11:33 | Wolf | >Run-of-the-mill... Naturally, when this is what the Earthpig means in Chinese astrology... (http://www.geomancy.net/love/epig.htm) Has no ambitions, lack sophistication and leads a simple but comfortable life. Is also honest, trusthworthy with money and hardworking. Is equally very tolerant with others but can get too personal and is sensitive and do not crack jokes at him or else he will feel it directly. Earth pigs are popular and love good food and wine. So now I'll stop poking a stick at it. |
| Thu 07 Nov 12:20 | Timo | Are you searching for someone to makeover webword.com John? |
| Thu 07 Nov 13:55 | Alex | Do you suppose there is a market for designs like this? When you don't know some high-school kid down the street who can design a website for you, you can hire earthpigz and be assured that you'll get the same results. |
| Thu 07 Nov 14:15 | Boyink | Since when did WebWord become a design review site? Is the site usable? Does she make a living? Is *she* happy with the site? |
| Thu 07 Nov 15:21 | Lydia | Actually, Wolf, you make some good points. It looks like that is the philosophy of the Earthpigz site - dependable, works for you, but not flashy or overburdened. I think her design could really benefit by some usability. She may not score with cutting-edge, super-fabuloso design, but the graphics are clean and arranged nicely so I wouldn't call it crap - her color choices are very pleasing. I think where her designs could use a boost is in the site arrangement and navigation, which is not very distinct nor very intuitive. I think anyone willing to put their work out there for the general public (and potential clients) to see deserves kudos - I see too many designers that want only their current site design to say everything about them. I really like the animated aardvark! |
| Thu 07 Nov 17:31 | Mac | Anne is primarily selling her skills as a graphics designer and 3D artist. I would definitely hire her to do that. I think her site is human, warm and personal. |
| Thu 07 Nov 17:59 | John S. Rhodes | Timo writes: Are you searching for someone to makeover webword.com John? Nope. Not right now. I'm curious, that's all. That's why I pointed to your site site a while back. I like to get an idea about what WebWord folks think about web designer web sites and the way they present themselves to the world. Pure curiosity. |
| Study: For Site Cred, Looks Matter | Mon 04 Nov |
| Although consumers taking part in the research were aware of important factors such as quality of information when they were judging a sites credibility, the bells and whistles of its design also held sway, the Stanford study showed. (Comments: When it comes to credibility, does this mean that designers and programmers are more important than usability specialists?) |
| Tue 05 Nov 11:13 | JB | Credibility is a component of perception and is also individualistic – what you may use as your criteria for credibility may not be mine for example. A first viewing of a site may convey a level of credibility but research has been done to show that user very quickly make up the difference when reality sets in. In summary the results showed that users perceive something to be a certain way, but very quickly reality sets in and thus the users perception changes. I guess what this really means is that designers and programmers are important, but they are part of the equation as usability play an important par tin setting reality - thus repeat visits etc. |
| Tue 05 Nov 11:22 | Anonymous | But it shouldn't. |
| Tue 05 Nov 11:22 | Mac | Yes |
| Tue 05 Nov 17:36 | Lydia | To answer, I will assume that the design is generally agreed on to be a clean, pleasing design ('good' design to one is 'fresh-outta-college-design-nighmare' to another). Of the three, I think design is the most important. Bottom line: people are visual creatures. If I go to a website that doesn't look good to me, I'll leave - I don't care how well it works. That company didn't take the time or invest the money to put together a good site, so how can I trust them? Design is backed up by solid programming and good usability. You can't have a site without programming, but you can get away with poor usability; it's just that you may not get away with it twice. Usability retains customers. It's like customer service design. It's essential to a well-rounded website, but when I come in I don't think, 'Wow, what a clever way to handle this problem!' I think, 'Nice design. Someone obviously thought this through and put some effort into it. These colors are soothing/exciting/attractive.' |
| Wed 06 Nov 16:23 | Ari Bancale | Zactly my sentiments, Lydia. |
| Wed 06 Nov 20:55 | Anonymous | Speaking personally (and as a web professional) I often assume a site with obviously amatuer design comes from a less credible organisation. I know this often wrong!! but I can't help making the association between credibility and the amount of money/time people spend on their website. Often a site that has had a lot of work put into the functionality and content, will also have a professional looking design. For example - I will not buy products from website with repeating background images - crazy but true. |
| Thu 07 Nov 15:29 | Lydia | I am so with you on that one, Mr. Anon. I try to convince my employers of this every day. I'd bring them here, only I don't want them to see how I spend my extra time! (grin) |
| Porter's Workshop | Wed 06 Nov |
| Yeah, its a pretty bland-looking page, but it scores really high on the Doesnt-feel-like-sucking-a-pot-roast-through-a-garden-hose Bandwidth Scale. |
| Thu 07 Nov 10:30 | boysen | Porter has been a long-standing contributor to the Internet knowledge base. I applaud his many efforts. |
| Thu 07 Nov 10:30 | boysen | Porter has been a long-standing contributor to the Internet Knowledge Base. I applaud his many efforts. |
| WebWord Comment | Fri 01 Nov |
| If Google should be regulated because it is the dominant search engine, then should eBay be regulated because it is the dominant auction web site? Should we also regulate Microsoft Windows? Lets regulate everything! |
| Thu 07 Nov 03:38 | LKM | Personally, I think the comparison between Microsoft and Google is quite faulty. Yes, we should regulate Microsoft. They own the market, there's no way around them and the society (hence the government) should make sure that the playing field for all competitors is levelled out. The problem with Microsoft is that it is competing with other software manufacturers *and* owns the platform that these manufacturer's software runs on. Google doesn't compete with other websites other than search engines, and it doesn't promote its own services (like news.google.com) unfairly (e.g. superficially ranking them higher in search results than other sites). The problem is that different people perceive their ranking at Google to be unfair, not that Google uses its power to fight against some sites while helping others. Also, nobody relies on Google. There's no way around Windows, but you don't need to have a high ranking at Google to become successfull with your website. If Google were the only search engine or the only way to promote your site, then Google would have to be regulated. It's not. |
| Testing the BMW iDrive system | Sat 02 Nov |
| BMWs iDrive cockpit-of-the-future concept has taken some heat since the 745i debuted. We rode shotgun with an interface design expert to see what works, what doesnt. (MadMan comments: Jef Raskin gives the iDrive system a good whipping. I can only imagine the number accidents that may be caused by people looking away from the road to a menu screen. It is in systems like these that interface design can actually mean the difference between life and death. You may find the printable version of this article easier to read. Also read: When Interfaces Kill) |
| Tue 05 Nov 12:18 | Eszter | Yup, I posted about my personal iDrive experiences back in August. http://campuscgi.princeton.edu/~eszter/weblog/archives/00000062.html It's a nightmare and I agree that accidents are very likely to happen! |
| Wed 06 Nov 16:36 | Lydia | MadMan says 'Sure, marketing comes up with ideas, but shouldn't the design department advise them of the impact that feature creep will have?' MM, I laughed out loud at reading that, and had to make a dumb excuse to the people sitting around me. Where have you worked where what the dev team said ever had an impact on marketing? I'd like to see that. Just today I had to say through gritted teeth that if they put that thing there, it could completely ruin the consistent nagivation that was set up for the site. 'But it looks good and brands us better,' was the response (it does neither, actually). Argh. |
| World Wide Web packed full of trash – official | Mon 04 Nov |
| The general conclusion is that people are attracted to a Web site more by its appearance than its content, and should check the background of a site before making business decisions. |
| Tue 05 Nov 10:44 | Darin | The site that was mentioned in the article was described sarcastically as 'The Consumers International web site. My! Isn't it pretty!', as if it was going to be a maelstrom of useless Flash and bloated graphics. I didn't find it terribly overdone and pretty clean looking. If they think that's 'eye candy' they haven't looked around much. |
| Tue 05 Nov 11:05 | JB | I guess my first thought is...450 web site from around the world and the heading is a. packed full of trash - I didn't get this form the article but more that web sites tend to fall down in some key fundamental areas b. Official - and CI has been the global authority on this for how long? c. 450 web site from around the world - there are more than 450 high profile web site in the city of San Francisco. My point...very small sample size to be making such sweeping statements. Unless this entire article is being sarcastic and I have simply missed it? |
| Wed 06 Nov 12:34 | Mac | Question: If 450 web sites is not a big enough sample to make these kinds of statements, then how many users do you need to 'test' a system before you can talk about usability problems with any authority? |
| Wed 06 Nov 12:40 | Anonymous | By the way, search around the site a bit...all of the articles are of the tongue-in-cheek variety. |
| Wed 06 Nov 12:42 | Mac | And does this have any relevanve to how usability works? Differences Between Experts and Consumers |
| Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture | Sun 03 Nov |
| The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (“AIfIA”) serves to advance the design of shared information environments. We support a global community infrastructure that connects people, ideas, content, and tools. Through research, education, advocacy and community service, we promote excellence within our field and build bridges to related disciplines and organizations. (Comments: Cool.) |
| Mon 04 Nov 09:57 | Freder | Why is it cool? |
| Mon 04 Nov 23:19 | John S. Rhodes | Why is it cool? It is cool because I like to see so many smart people working together on a topic I care about. By the way, in my opinion, the information architecture crowd does a much better job at this kind of thing than the usability crowd. What do you think? |
| Tue 05 Nov 02:56 | Cheese Witherspoon | Amazing what unemployment (and hence free time) can do, isn't it? I wonder what I'll get if I become a member by paying $30. Not clear at all. |
| Tue 05 Nov 03:09 | Timo | I find it quite strange how IA constantly attempts to define itself, perhaps for fear of being sidelined by other, established disciplines catching up with it... But this is a good effort. |
| Tue 05 Nov 04:19 | Adam Greenfield | Cheese Witherspoon, are you the artist formerly known as Jack Schonchin? |
| Tue 05 Nov 11:25 | Mac | No, I'm Jack Schonchin. |
| Tue 05 Nov 12:46 | MadMan | No, I'm Jack Schonchin. |
| Wed 06 Nov 05:39 | Adam Greenfield | I'm not. |
| Gates's Pen vs. the Keyboard | Mon 04 Nov |
| (businessweek.com) The findings were horrifying. The clever technology that wowed the Comdex audience drove users into fits. Workers routinely took notes that had no relation to the lines on the tablet page. They would scrawl diagonally, right next to notes that were horizontal. Sentence fragments merged crazily. |
| Mon 04 Nov 09:28 | Mike Boyink | 'For years, William H. Gates III and Warren E. Buffett have routinely mailed each other magazine articles that have caught their eye. They rip pieces out of the magazines, jot notes in the margins, and pop them in the mail. ' For some reason, I was absolutely astounded to find that Gates was still reading printed magazines. This from a guy who supposedly mounted a bunch of flat-screen monitors on his walls to display art electronically? |
| Mon 04 Nov 09:55 | John S. Rhodes | 'For some reason, I was absolutely astounded to find that Gates was still reading printed magazines.' I'm not surprised at all. I do not know any person who has totally given up on paper. If nothing else, even if you give up print magazines, others still might pass them along to you. And, you are still exposed, from the supermarket to the doctor's office. Also, in the case you reference above, I'd bet that Buffet is really stuck on paper. He is probably doing most of the feeding to Bill, not the other way around. My guess is that Gates keeps pushing technology on Buffet. For what it is worth, it put a big smile on my fact to think that these two billionaires are acting like little old ladies cutting out coupons for each other, or sharing recipes. 'Betty, you'll just love this almond butter cake!' or 'Oh Gertrude, you are so wonderful, you simply must give this new pear sauce a try with your sister's dumplings.' |
| Mon 04 Nov 10:52 | JB | So if any MS company information slips out, does that count as insider trading? |
| Mon 04 Nov 11:51 | Michael E. Rubin | I have yet to see the tablet in person, but after reading the Business Week article, I'm thinking about saving up to buy one. I have to admit, the fact that it's Windows-based and will run my apps right out of the box (so to speak) is very appealing. There's one thing that's missing, however, that would make this a true killer device. More than the Word doc file format, PDF is becoming the universal medium for transferring documents back and forth. If they were smart and weren't enmeshed in their 'not invented here' syndrome, Microsoft would include a modified version of Adobe Distiller that would create PDFs easily and simply. Build in some kind of functionality that lets you create 'live' PDF forms for people to fill out and you've got a real winner. PDF. Not doc. |
| Tue 05 Nov 16:49 | Joe Clark | Well, I tried one of those Acer tablet computers and was astounded to find that the thing still does not use a word-predicting onscreen keyboard, a technology I was using on the Grid Convertible ten full years ago. User-hostile as ever, also clueless, cruel, and inaccessible. (Even a quadriplegic can write quite rapidly with a word-predicting onscreen keyboard; using nothing but a stylus effectively renders you a quadriplegic. This is the best Microsoft can do?) |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 31 Oct |
| I need to move all of my files from one server to another in the next few days. I expect that this will causes major problems. Hopefully you wont experience any problems, but if you do, Im sorry. Wish me luck on the move. |
| Tue 05 Nov 15:20 | Mac | Cheese, and are we there yet? |
| Scrutiny of High-Tech Voting System | Mon 04 Nov |
| But voter unfamiliarity with the machines also dogged the Broward balloting and could again. County officials are bracing for long lines and the likelihood polls will have to stay open hours late.(Comments: Do other countries use computerized voting machines? Do they suck?) |
| Tue 05 Nov 00:15 | Eric Scheid | Brazil recently did. They too had long lines and late hours, however in their case they had an awfully complex bunch of elections all at the one time. It wasn't simply voting for one position. |
| Tue 05 Nov 11:07 | Michael E. Rubin | A report from the analog world: I live in a suburb of Chicago called Vernon Hills. Today, when I went to the local community center to vote, I was surprised to be handed a pen along with the ballot. Instead of the old 'pins' that were used to punch the ballot (and thus produce the famous chads), our municipality switched to Scantron! As I was given instructions on how to fill in the oval completely (and to make your mark dark), I couldn't help but feel like I was back in high school again. This is how we took tests! *laughs* The only electronic part about the process came at the end. After I had finished voting, I was instructed to put the ballot into a big gray electronic box. It whirred for about ten seconds and then some LEDs lit up green. I was told that the machine had just instantly read and tabulated my votes. If I had not filled the ballot correctly, it would have produced red lights and I would have had the chance to vote again. The most telling statement came from a young man who accompanied his mother. As she was puzzling over the ballot, the little boy said, 'Mommy, wouldn't it be easier if this was on the Web?' He couldn't have been more than eight years old and he couldn't have been more right. |
| Tue 05 Nov 12:38 | Jackson Fox | I think web voting would be a disaster. Can you imagine the security, privacy, auditing, and accountability issues? For a good article on problems with electronic voting check out Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/05/voting_machines/index.html |
| Tue 05 Nov 13:09 | Nevermind | Just wondering. Did any HF types get contracted to work on the design or test any voting machines? |
| Tue 05 Nov 13:34 | boysen | I am as pro-Internet as anyone I know, yet I do believe that moving our voting process to the Web would be a huge mistake. We already have immoral folks trying to tamper with the results and I believe we'd be making it far easier for them. A portion of each party's funds would be allocated to Internet Strategy (or something) while hackers and security experts were hired to tilt the balance. |
| Ad Killers: A Threat? | Mon 04 Nov |
| (ClickZ) Based on these facts, it is extremely doubtful that more than 1 percent of the U.S. Web audience currently blocks pop-up ads. The real number is probably far less. For most advertisers, especially those who dont rely exclusively on pop-ups, this type of software is not currently a big problem. |
| Tue 05 Nov 09:50 | jcg | Pop-ups are disgusting. I use AdSubtract which gets rid of lots of them. I notice that several of my 'normal people' clients are too confused to even know that they can get rid of pop-ups. I'm not sure what this writer wants to say. I think he is telling the advertisers that pop-ups are ok since a small number of people know how to disable them. He further destroys his credibility by his flip comment that p2p music sharing is ruining the music industry. There are many who feel that music sharing actually promotes interest in music industry products. This is silly |
| Ubiquitously yours | Sun 03 Nov |
| (v-2) My hope is that, with care and attention to the needs of human beings in all the texture and mystery of their real, everyday lives, we can design systems that will support us when we need support, operate imperceptibly on our behalf when required, and just as imperceptibly fade from the picture during those valuable moments when we choose to go it alone. |
| Mon 04 Nov 08:05 | Adam Greenfield | a. v-2 does not now and has never claimed to have a usability focus. Usability is one area of interest, among many. b. Chad: There is no them. There's only me. c. It sure is validating, on both counts, otherwise we wouldn't display the icons. What may have happened, as explained exhaustively in the Design Notes, is that articles may occasionally need to link to a URL which is not itself well-formed, which will obviously disrupt validation. The page itself, however, is still good to go. Try validating the index page to confirm this, and if it still doesn't validate, then go ahead and write me because I'll know we have a problem. d. You guys have anything to say about the content itself? Really, db, your comments are a splendid example of why people outside this community are increasingly inclined to disregard it. By not seeing the forest for the trees, you deprive those reading your words of the opportunity to form an opinion as to whether it's worth clicking through or not. What's more important, icons or ideas? You just can't please anyone these days. The designers all whine about the colors and the fonts. The usability folks wish the large print went larger still. I'm beginning to be sorry I ever went to the effort I did to balance all these conflicting prerogatives, you know? Glad you liked it, Mac. |
| Mon 04 Nov 09:07 | Mac | Adam, I not only like it, I think it's a very important article. For me it puts the Human back into HCI instead of promoting the technological cart. It shows that the responsibility for awful technological systems lie with us and not the users. They internalize the blame for not being able to find their way around poorly-imagined sites, and they thereafter approach new technological challenges with anxiety and disdain. Earlier this year I built a mock-up of an 'Internet Fridge'. The managers wanted a fridge with a in built TV, browser and bar-code reader that allowed the users to extend their office into their kitchen. I balked at the idea and said I would only build the system, if they let me do something a bit different. Foolishly they agreed... We now have an 'Internet Fridge' called Gentoo, that allows the family members to communicate with each other, listen to e-books, catch up on their missed radio programs, find out what time the husband will get home, check the latest lottery numbers, listen to their own music, and view grandads latest project about the depression. We have replaced the bar-codes with radio tags, so the fridge always knows what food you've got in your cupboards as well as the fridge. It will suggest meals based on your cooking abaility and time constraints. The management wanted a 'computer in every device', but I wanted 'some humanity in every device'. RE: The comments (or lack of). It's very disheartening to put a lot of effort into producing something, only for people to dismiss it (apparently) out of hand. I just wanted to say, you keep on writing, and I'll keep on printing it off and reading it. PS. have you posted the paper you were going to present at the conference? |
| Mon 04 Nov 19:49 | Adam Greenfield | I haven't, and I probably won't, but Alan Dix has it in PDF at (urgh) www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/dixa/conf/ubicomp2002-models/ pdf/greenfield-ubicomp_pos_AG.pdf |
| Tue 05 Nov 03:28 | Timo | Adam: I want to give you a public congratulation on the redesign; a beautiful, balanced experience. On the article, I am still re-reading it to get a full sense of your ideas, and to explore the links. The distinction between assistant and superintendent is effective. I am already suffering the 'All-Seeing Eye' with a simple GPRS phone and access to 802.11 here in Oslo, the key design failures in these systems being the lack of personal reputation and privacy tools. |
| Tue 05 Nov 04:01 | Adam Greenfield | Why, thank you, sir. What do the YH kids think? ; . ) |
| Tue 05 Nov 05:22 | Timo | the YH'ers have many opinions of course, some of them even want you to GIF the text rather than doing it in HTML. hahaha. |
| Tue 05 Nov 08:33 | daniel szuc | Like the idea of your environment learning your behaviours (everyday tasks), responding accordingly and technology assisting. Examples: Travel - Smart card replenishing itself without having to go back to the machine to do it. Shopping - automatic check out etc Would fun to think of these 'everyday experiences' where technology could really help or automate our interactions. |
| Talking with Jesse James Garrett | Thu 31 Oct |
| (Boxes and Arrows) Everybody says Amazon’s interaction design is a big factor in the company’s success—why don’t I know the names of any of the people responsible for it? Why do most consultancies hide their talented staff, whose expertise makes their success possible, behind a faceless corporate identity? (Comments: Interesting observation. Why dont we know more about the folks behind Amazon? I never thought much about that. Do you know any people working on usability and/or information architecture at Amazon?) |
| Mon 04 Nov 12:45 | Andrew | I'm not sure I care about the human element OR the education, skills, and history of Amazon's designers or usability folks. I've actually wondered a LOT about this particular question: --why don't the people involved with the biggest, most sucessful, and most often-cited-as-good sites (eBay, Amazon, maybe Google) partipate in the online groups that could benefit from them the most? Where are the Amazon IAs on SIG-IA? Has a usability person from eBay _ever_ posted to CHI-WEB? Are they really working so hard that they have no chance to join in? --conversely, why is it so hard to find good examples of the work of the people who *do* participate often, and well, in those places? There are vocal, professional, helpful, and insightful people there, but it's rare to be able to link them with particular peices of work. It's really only once one gets to know people off-list that one can find out. Is this really just a case of public modesty, or some bizarre NDA that forbids people from even mentioning that they worked on a project? |