(Comments added for week ending Sun 17 Nov 2002) | View Other Weeks
| Mon 04 Nov
| last updated:18 Nov 2002 14: 10 Webword time, or 18 Nov 2002 19:10 UK time |
|
| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 17 Nov 2002) | View Other Weeks |
| Who Needs a Pretty Website Anyway? | Sat 16 Nov |
| (Business 2.0) Galling as it may be to Internet aesthetes, KRD is proving that Web design thats unfriendly to users may be just fine, as long as its friendly to advertisers and cheap to operate. (Comments: This is not an attack on usability. Instead, it is simply a statement that usability isnt as important as the whole of business. It is piece of the puzzle. Thanks Anthropocentric!) |
| Sat 16 Nov 09:44 | John S. Rhodes | As I said, this article isn't about rejecting usability: 'All sites will still run on a central platform to keep costs down, and the company will still offer advertisers uniform ad placement across the network. If there is one thing Schneider has learned during her short stint at Knight Ridder, it's this: Complex and beautiful may win awards, but ugly and simple might just win the marathon.' Ugly <> Usable Simple = Usable (Roughly speaking, of course) |
| Sun 17 Nov 11:41 | Barry Parr | This article made my blood boil a little, and I answered it on MediaSavvy. Excerpt: 'Business 2.0 fails to answer the most important question. How much better would KR Digital be performing if its content management system worked better, its sites were easier to navigate and less ugly, and local editors and publishers had some control?' |
| Sun 17 Nov 12:46 | Matt Round | I also found the article extremely irritating. The fact that they happen to be getting away with it for now is all the more reason for them to improve things before the flaws catch up with them. |
| Useless Usability? | Sat 16 Nov |
| Supposedly it makes computers easy to use - no, were not kidding. Chris Long has been finding out how they do apply it at that software behemoth Microsoft. & If youre going to talk usability, theres really only one man to approach - Jakob Nielsen, widely regarded as THE authority in the field. We first caught up with him two years ago but a lot has changed since then - or has it? (Comments: Listen to Brad Weed of Microsoft justify Clippy. Oh boy! Also, listen to Nielsen talk and talk about usability. He loves Google. He states that a large fraction of people cant use Windows at all, or they suffer a lot. He bashes Apple. He bashes Linux.) |
| Sun 17 Nov 03:16 | Adam Greenfield | Was this transcribed to HTML anywhere? Some of us do not have and will not use WMP. |
| Patterns for Personal Web Sites | Sun 10 Nov |
| My method is to distill the qualities of the best personal Web sites (and my own) into a set of patterns. These patterns can be used as guidelines for creating a personal Web site. (Comments: Thanks Martin.) |
| Mon 11 Nov 10:51 | Andrew | There's also a new book called The Design of Sites (http://designofsites.com/) which is a pattern-oriented approach to web design. It's a lot more comprehensive than the personal-site patterns library linked here. |
| Tue 12 Nov 15:11 | Mark | While there's overlap between the patterns in The Design of Sites and Patterns for Personal Web Sites, particularly in the area of site structure, their goals differ. The Design of Sites focuses on commerce and business sites. Patterns for Personal Web Sites attempts to distill qualities present in some of best personal sites I've encountered. Some of these patterns don't apply to businesses -- e.g, Your Own Voice, or Diverse Content. Likewise, Shopping Cart doesn't make much sense on a personal Web site. |
| Sat 16 Nov 12:35 | tom lyczko | the personal sites patterns link doesn't work as of 1 pm 11/16/02 :( tom |
| How to Build Lame Web Sites | Fri 15 Nov |
| There are books on building succesful (sic) Web sites, Web sites that work, and even killer Web sites (are these sites for murderers, or perhaps places you can find hit men for hire?). So far, however, I have not seen a book that explains how to build crummy, dysfunctional Web sites that chase away customers and produce no useful results. (MadMan comments: I especially like the Baffle em with Cyberbull bit. How I wish companies would ditch the happy people photos and start talking plain English instead of something out of the bullshit generator.) |
| Fri 15 Nov 10:59 | Frank Lynch | This guy never heard of Web Pages That Suck? (What gives!) |
| Fri 15 Nov 12:04 | Anonymous | Lame: lacking needful or desirable substance. Suck: to be objectionable or inadequate. |
| Fri 15 Nov 12:48 | MadMan | I'm sorry, Mr. Humboldt University dude, I didn't get what you're saying. Is this article lame, sucky, or both? :) |
| Fri 15 Nov 16:19 | Anonymous | a) I'm not a mister. b) Why allow anonymous posting if you're just going to resolve my IP address and post information about me? |
| Fri 15 Nov 16:47 | Vincent Flanders | Well, he should have heard of WebPagesThatSuck since it's been around since August 1996, but he said there were no books out -- and the article is a very old one written way back in January 1998. My WPTS book came out in April 1998, so he's technically correct -- there were no books. Not sure about the usefullness of the link. Which brings up an interesting question, how many articles written in 1998 are still worth reading? 1999? 2000? Where's the cut-off? Kind regards, Vincent Flanders |
| Fri 15 Nov 17:47 | Lydia | I like reading older articles for a historical perspective, if nothing else. Satire is a good read anytime, which is why we keep reading Mad Magazines that we have boxed away from 20 years ago, even when we don't get the Dustin Hoffman joke. I'd say the purely technical articles aren't worth a read just because technology has moved on, but opinions stand the test of time a little better. |
| Sat 16 Nov 04:02 | Matt Round | 'b) Why allow anonymous posting if you're just going to resolve my IP address and post information about me?' Yeah that is a little bit naughty, MadMan (fair enough if the site displayed IP, but it doesn't) |
| Sat 16 Nov 05:16 | daniel szuc | Agree with Matt. Lets be careful about this. |
| Sat 16 Nov 11:02 | MadMan | I apologise for my naughtiness. It wasn't appropriate. Of course, we still don't know who the anonymous poster is. Won't do it again, I promise. |
| Sat 16 Nov 12:08 | Frank Lynch | Ooops! I skimmed right past the 'January 1998' date! Hopefully we know more now about where to put the date of an article... |
| Spanking Jakob Nielsen | Mon 11 Nov |
| (WebWord) The purpose of this article is to critically review Jakob Nielsens article, Intranet Usability: The Trillion-Dollar Question. In summary, Jakob Nielsen makes some fantastic claims about intranet usability that must be weighed against other business needs and constraints. For example, there might be better ways to spend money than on usability, not all usability improvements are created equal, and it can be hard to apply the changes dictated by a usability study. The criticisms can be applied to many other usability articles. |
| Mon 11 Nov 04:39 | Mac | Thanks for the article John. I can honestly say that I could not belive what I was reading in this Alertbox. I was in shock for a few hours and wondered if it was just me who thought that the figures in this article were insane. In April 1999 Nielsen said 'The cost of poor navigation and lack of design standards is even higher: at least ten million dollars per year in lost employee productivity for a company with 10,000 employees. World-wide the cost of bad intranet usability will grow to about $100 billion by the year 2001 unless better navigation systems are built and much stricter internal design standards enforced.' - Alertbox April 1999 So by 2001 the cost of bad usability should have been $100 bilion. But we can now see (arccording to Nielsen) that in one year that cost has risen to $1.3 trillion. In the same alertbox article Nielsen talks about this: 'For example, Bay Networks invested $3 million in intranet usability and improved the design enough to save an estimated $10 million per year for its 7,000 users. It is very common to achieve this 10-to-3 payoff ratio (or better) in intranet usability projects.' Bay Networks were bought by Nortel Networks who then realised a lot more savings that had nothing to do with intranet usability: 'When he started the CIO job, Ricks told the trade publication, 'the philosophy was (that) we needed flexibility to adjust business units up or down'. Since then, it's been down.A lot. Nortel's work force has been slashed from 94,500 at the end of 2000 to a target of 35,000 by the end of this year. When Nielsen comes out with these kind of ridiculous figures, he is guilty of adding to the myth that computers will kick-start the world economy into a new sustained growth spurt. Unfortunately, these developments are better explained by a very different interpretation: The failure of huge investments in information technology (about five trillion invested, about zero net return) has driven US businesses into a desperate gamble to avert ruin. They are trying to keep profits up by delivering poorer service (voice-menu receptionists, delayed installations) and lower quality (airline food and seat-room) using fewer underpaid and overworked people. Thomas K Landauer - Author of 'The Trouble With Computers' I have been working on a large scale (10,000+ employees) for the past five years and can honestly say that this Nielsen article will do a lot of damage to the usability cause in my organisation. If all the promises about cost savings and benefits for Content Management Systems, Customer Relationship Management, E-Training, Business to Business Commerce etc. had been realised to any degree then our costs per employee should be negative. The Top Three Reasons Why Companies Have Intranets: 1) Because everyone else has got one. 2) Reduction in printed material (phone directories etc.) 3) Quicker communication with employees Another study on Intranet Usability appears to concur with my list. Measuring the ROIs of Intranets: Mission Possible? With this article Nielsen is destroying his credibility with the Intranet people, who have to live in the real world and balance their promotion of Intranet Usability with the day to day difficulties of staying in business. I will be attending the NNGroup Intranet Usability tutorial in London on Wednesday, and will see if I can raise some of these issues. |
| Mon 11 Nov 09:09 | James Tuddenham | The figures that Jakob Neilson provides always sound like business plans for e-tailers on a financing round circa 1999 |
| Mon 11 Nov 11:43 | JB | You know I am sure there is some truth in what he is saying…actually I know there is some truth in what he is saying, but coming from the other side of the web (the side where we pay you guys to do stuff and hope for an ROI) I just see JN grand standing for headlines. He or NNg are either selling something or have a conference on… it gets good publicity for whatever it is they are spruiking. The only people that seem to suffer or cringe are those that work in the usability/HF industry or those that have enough gray matter to both walk and speak at the same time. He can back up all his assertions and we can refute them. At the end of the day, those that have pumped millions into building intra, extra and internets need to hear this kind of stuff to somehow see a light at the end of the ROI sinkhole they bought into years ago. |
| Mon 11 Nov 13:13 | Ron Zeno | Bravo to John on a great article! I hope we can look forward to many more like this. Referring to sections of the article: Opportunity Costs Yes, there are costs (and associated risks) that Nielsen chooses to ignore. Had he taken them into account, what would the numbers come out to be? Perhaps a net loss of $1 trillion? Cost Savings Versus Revenue Generation This is the bottom line. Savings don't mean anything if there's no income. Diminishing Marginal Returns This is a reocurring flaw in Nielsen's research and writing - he erroneously assumes the value of fixing each usability problem is the same. Perhaps because he does not know how to prioritize them? Misapplication of Improvements Much more could be written on this subject. This is where all the risks of implementing a solution come into play. Nielsen ignores the risks, or doesn't understand them. Interaction Effects Yes, Nielsen ignores the complexity of the processes that intranets affect... Implementation Costs and Culture Shock Go John! Are you saying that identifying problems does not solve them and the costs of identifying problems are often minimal compared to the costs of a solution? ;) Again, Nielsen has never demonstrated he understands this. |
| Mon 11 Nov 17:25 | Eric Scheid | There's an old maxim: Work expands to fill the time available. This means that if you free up time for your workers by improving usability, that freed time will get frittered away on busy-work, slacking off, gossip, etc. The only way you will realise the actual savings that JN proposes (or more accurately the corrected savings as pointed out above) would be if you either increase the workload or reduce the workforce. Unless the increased workload is coming from increased revenue activities (ie. more sales), you can expect a degree of worker rebellion. |
| Tue 12 Nov 04:16 | Alan Fisher | Neilsen understands usability very well, but even someone with my undergraduate level of learning in statistics and economics can see that there are huge holes in this statement. John has summed things up very well, JN needs to stick to talking about what he knows about or he'll become a laughing stock. Which would be a shame, given that much of what he says makes sense. |
| Tue 12 Nov 13:20 | Frank Lynch | IMO, the opportunity costs issue is a red herring. It's worth mentioning as a consideration for any company, but there's no way Nielsen could build that into an analysis, as it's bound to vary widely for companies, based on their industry's growth rates, unique opportunities for the company, cost of capital etc. There is much to complain about in the Alert Box, but asking Nielsen to incorporate opportunity costs into the analysis beyond a lip-service mention is unfair. |
| Tue 12 Nov 15:06 | Lydia | Alan, that was a nicely balanced statement. I sometimes forget that JN does sometimes hit the nail on the head. |
| Fri 15 Nov 07:30 | Mac | I asked a question about these figures at the NNGroup Usability Week on Wednesday. What I actually said was something like this: When I first saw these ROI figures I was hoping they were a joke, but I realise you are taking them seriously. If I tried to justify spending on usability in my organisation using these figures I would be laughed out of the room. The response from Jakob was something like this: 'Well yes, of course the figures aren't exact but does it matter if the ROI on usability is 700%, 1000% or 1200%' He then moved onto the next question. |
| Fri 15 Nov 09:58 | Ryan | Wow, am I the only one who read this and thought it was a commercial? JN has given his great insight to us all freely for years but, does this NNg advertisement belong as an alertbox column? I can see using useit as a resource, he has invested plenty of time and money into it, but usually this kind of information is pushed over to the right hand side of the home page. I don't think anyone complained when he used useit to push NNg in that way, well all good things... |
| Fri 15 Nov 10:22 | Ron Zeno | 'Well yes, of course the figures aren't exact but does it matter if the ROI on usability is 700%, 1000% or 1200%' Or -1000%? At what point does acting irresponsibly become unethical? |
| Fri 15 Nov 10:50 | Annoying Puff Cat | Austin Powers...Dr. Evil...'One Trillion Dollars!' |
| Fri 15 Nov 23:08 | daniel szuc | Interesting article John. I think this needs to be promoted and discussed further - 'Usability is wonderful, but it can actually get in the way of other business needs. Too often we are told that usability is great, yet even more often, usability specialists, and usability gurus, completely disregard the reality of business. Usability cannot happen in a vacuum.' EMPATHY of other disciplines and seeing what the constraints are will assist usability folks make more headway in projects. Think we need more of this. |
| Sat 16 Nov 09:28 | John S. Rhodes | 'EMPATHY of other disciplines and seeing what the constraints are will assist usability folks make more headway in projects.' I agree. I think it is funny, almost to the point of laughing, that the usability community does such a poor job with empathy. Isn't a big chunk of usability about empathy? Understanding other people, what they want, what they need? |
| Sat 16 Nov 09:49 | daniel szuc | You bet John!! You bet!! In fact I think thats what a lot of consulting is about ... in all forms. Understanding, listening and then addressing the issues. |
| Dell's Revenue, Profit Increase | Thu 14 Nov |
| Dell continues to build success by taking market share from rivals. The company reported a 28 percent year-over-year rise in overall product shipments, compared with a 2 percent increase for the rest of the industry. (Comments: Is Dell the new monopolist?) |
| Fri 15 Nov 13:40 | boysen | Dell is far from a monopoly. I can easily buy computers or related equipment from several dozen companies. And that's just on the Web. Throw in physical outlets and the number grows. This post strikes me as a jab at capitalism. I say, 'Bully. Good for Dell.' |
| Sat 16 Nov 09:25 | John S. Rhodes | (For what it is worth, I'm not taking a jab at Dell. I don't think Dell is a monopoly, at least not yet.) |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 14 Nov |
| ROI = One Trillion! (Disclaimer: This is a link to an auction for advertising space in the upcoming WebWord Usability Newsletter.) |
| Sat 16 Nov 05:27 | daniel szuc | Bid on!! Nothing like a bit of webword, *Superman* on HBO and a nice cup of coffee on a Saturday eve. I am such a major nerd ... |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 13 Nov |
| What is the most complex web page you have ever seen? |
| Thu 14 Nov 09:49 | Joshua Kaufman | There is more than one dimension to complexity. Could you be a little more specific? |
| Thu 14 Nov 11:26 | John S. Rhodes | 'There is more than one dimension to complexity. Could you be a little more specific?' For the sake of discussion, I'll say number of links on a page. What is the most number of links you have seen on a page? |
| Thu 14 Nov 13:42 | boysen | http://www.k10k.net/ is complex in both the number of options available to the visitor and the backend code laying it all out. But the information is well grouped and pleasantly displayed. This was the first site that came to mind after reading your question. I guess if you loaded up all availabe content choices on MyYahoo! it would have more links though. |
| Sat 16 Nov 05:25 | daniel szuc | Tried to think of some complex site examples. Then I thought maybe I consciously make and effort to stay away from complex sites (like when you walk away from trash that piles up on the side of the road if there no-one has been collecting it) OR is it that I just revisit the same web sites over and over again without seeing any new web sites on a regular basis? |
| Tablet PC: First Impressions | Fri 15 Nov |
| Whats exciting to me, though, is that the way Microsoft is doing this will hopefully encourage tablet-centric innovation to start again throughout the hardware and software industry, so well continue these advances, and the rate of improvement will return to what it was in the early 1990s. (Comments: Why didnt the open source community come up with a simple tablet-based operating system to beat Microsoft to the punch?) |
| Sat 16 Nov 03:59 | Matt Round | Answer: much of the open source community still prefers the command line, and good GUI ideas are often sneered at. The best the open source community usually manages is a pale imitation of another product's interface (but with more clutter and inconsistency). Unfortunately collaboration between coders tends not to produce products aimed at non-coders which involve an element of creativity and consideration of aesthetics, usability, etc., and there's an unwillingness to cooperate with those with skills in those areas. I don't think there's even much recognition of the problem. |
| Sat 16 Nov 05:23 | Anthropocentric | 'The best the open source community usually manages is a pale imitation of another product's interface (but with more clutter and inconsistency).' HERE HERE! Programmers, by trade, *must* LOVE complexity. In order to be good programmers, they must: - adapt to an ever-changing profession. - manage extremely complicated, non-physical (and barely tangible) entities (software) - learn to find bugs that are usually created by vaguely-associated logical dependencies. These open-source programmers are the most fanatical of the bunch. Most volunteer their time because of the raw pleasure the work brings them. How can a person so intrigued by complexity create a product with the sole purpose of SIMPLICITY? Programmers & Simple Products just don't *naturally* go hand in hand. Don't jump at me! NATURALLY is the key word here! In my opinion, it is very unreasonable to think that a person with such a tremendous ability to manage complexity can leave their perspective behind, and design their product so that its operation is SIMPLE from the perspective of just a normal person. |
| Customer Service vs. Customers | Thu 14 Nov |
| Come on, lets be honest - many of us are equally as guilty of giving poor service as we are receiving it. Why people - both customers and businesses alike - cant follow the Golden Rule is beyond me. |
| Fri 15 Nov 06:52 | Mac | I love complaints, whether they are from internal customers (fellow employees) or the cash cows (customers with money). I always treat people as I would want to be treated and usually simply talking to the complainant and listening to them will resolve the problem. Sometimes I put too much effort into resolving complaints and am told to 'not try so hard' by my employer. They do this because they put a monetary cost on each complaint and there are a certain number or type of complaint that they are willing to live with because they just don't want to spend the time and money to put it right. On the other hand, I am also criticised for not dealing with complainants fairly. This usually happens when someone is rude or arrogant when making their complaint. If someone fails to show me the same respect I am showing them, then I will refuse to deal with their complaint and they will go onto my 'speical list'. Dealing with complaints is very difficult and I can understand why someone being paid minimum wage will not have much interest in 'going the extra mile' to keep customers happy. |
| Fri 15 Nov 18:04 | Lydia | The Santa story was unnerving, and I can't believe the 'I Can't Hold It' story! Having been on the customer service side myself, I know that arrogant, pushy jerks don't get anywhere. Customer Service reps consider it their holy duty to mess with people like that - they'll delay, obfuscate, whatever it takes. On the other hand, people who call up obviously harried and upset, but respectful and even kind usually inspire reps to bend over backwards and break every rule to get them what they want. I had one guy who called up and was put on hold a long time, making him angrier. When he started talking, he started stuttering and making sounds of impatience, then stopped and said 'Sorry, I'm very angry right now, but I know it isn't your fault. Let me just begin again.' Even though his tone was very firm after that, I still wanted to do whatever I could, just because he didn't chew me out for having to hold like that. It's the people who'd call up DEMANDING things and insulting me that made me wonder. How has this ever gotten them anything in life? Would they want to be treated the same way? I would always tell myself, 'Remember, this isn't their area of expertise and they are frustrated.' That only goes so far! |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 13 Nov |
| - Resist or love the AIfIA? The Menace? Seems like the information architecture community is on fire about the AIfIA. Im puzzled. On the one hand, what do they really want to accomplish? (Im not implying anything. Im just not clear.) On the other hand, it seems like the AIfIA is a bunch of smart folks and they just want to share the love, and move IA forward. |
| Fri 15 Nov 01:32 | Cheese Witherspoon | Derek stands by himself making some valid points, even if they are covered in acid. An organisation that doesn't consult its members before forming itself, and then says it stands for those members and the 'IA community' IS a clique. |
| Fri 15 Nov 08:19 | Mac | It will fail mainly because of the name. Why, oh why, did they choose a name that no-one knows how to pronounce or spell properly. I keep on reading it as ALFIA or AFIA and now for some reason I cannot get mafIA out of my head. Maybe they should have done some usability with the name before launching, for all they know it might mean 'sweaty' in Lithuanian. And now I can't stop singing 'What's it all about..... Alfie ......' |
| Fri 15 Nov 13:26 | Coffee cube | Ideas are always in plentiful supply. It's how to implement ideas that separates the men from the boys. The AIFIA crowd openly admit that they only have a goal - but no plans on how to achieve that goal. And these aren't average people you're talking about. These are supposedly the best brains in the business. What good is their big meeting in Asilomar if they can't even come up with a basic plan of action? I think there's too much hero worship in the IA/usability business and not enough critical thinking. What exactly do I get for my $30, Wodtke et al? My own IA pocket protector? |
| Fri 15 Nov 15:54 | Peter Morville | As I mentioned in a recent article... http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000010.php ...we will be working on a business plan (with the participation of our new members) in the coming months. And I agree that ideas are plentiful and implementation is the hard part. The odds of any new organization surviving more than a few years are not very good. In AIfIA's case, only time will tell. |
| Web Manager's Weblog | Tue 12 Nov |
| Comments on web work for the Pierce College community. |
| Fri 15 Nov 14:42 | Elaine Nelson | wow - thanks! I just discovered that you'd linked to me when another community college's web person emailed me...and we had a great discussion about work we have in common. :) |
| Introducing Interaction Design | Thu 14 Nov |
| (Boxes and Arrows) The focus of this series is on the challenges inherent in the task of translating established product requirements into a browser-based interface. Along the way, well discuss the activity of interaction design as it relates to the Web and the relative advantages and disadvantages of the Web as an interactive medium. In addition, well examine a variety of solutions to common interaction design problems. (Comments: This is part one of a twelve (!) part series.) |
| Fri 15 Nov 09:09 | Anonymous | We needed a twelve-part series? From someone I've never heard of? |
| Fri 15 Nov 10:01 | MadMan | If it takes twelve parts to explain, someone needs a copy editor. Unless it's part of a big book, of course. [sarcasm] Quick, someone email those publishers. We need a few more books on interaction design. [/sarcasm] |
| Shoddy search prevents worker success | Thu 14 Nov |
| (News.com) Ineffectual corporate search tools can be the biggest drag on employee productivity, costing companies as much as $15 million annually, according to new research. (Comments: It is amazing that Nielsen gets so much free advertising. Also, I find it interesting that the article title is focused on searching. Strange.) |
| Fri 15 Nov 07:06 | Mac | John, this extract from the report may explain their focus on search: 'Poor search was the greatest single cause of reduced availability across intranets we have seen, aside from the general lack of executive support and budget. Search usability accounted for an estimated 43% of the difference in employee productivity between the best and worst intranets.' Designing Usable Intranets - NNGroup - November 2002 |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 13 Nov |
| Top 100 web sites according to Google? |
| Thu 14 Nov 16:41 | Anonymous | Certainly interesting results... but apache.org is ahead of slashdot and ebay |
| Leave the laptop home | Tue 12 Nov |
| (David Strom) On my last flight, I saw three oversized passengers try to squeeze into the bulkhead seats in front of me. They physically couldnt do it, and I and my traveling companion graciously switched with two of them so they could expand into the row of three seats behind them. If you are sitting next to, or behind, such plus-sized people, you cannot possibly work on your laptop. (Many friends of mine have had their laptops ruined when the person in front reclines the seat quickly and crunches their screen.) Which is why people are resorting to carrying Blackberries and Palms and using them on in-flight. |
| Wed 13 Nov 11:52 | JB | Sort of related to this is how paralyzed we have become when email is down. It happened at work and it was amazing how productivity just ground to a halt. People were asking...'what do we do'.... my response pick p the phone, use the fax... it is amazing how we have become so dependent on it for business today. Regarding the non-horizontally challenged (pick which state I live in) I thought South West and others were taking care of this with the pay for two seats policy? And I am not one of these people hat takes my laptop with me everywhere....I have a life outside of work and never the two shall mix :) |
| Wed 13 Nov 19:58 | Lydia | Airline travel is one industry that could definitely use some usability perspectives. Or maybe it's just me. I intensely hate plane travel not because of being high up in the air, but because of the proximity of other humans. It doesn't matter if you put up the arm rest - the person next to you is practically sitting in your lap. You have to reach over people for a drink, etc. Of course, you could pay for first class, but the day I have cash like that I'll probably no longer have a need to fly. They should have a special section for people who have a 'privacy bubble' that cannot be violated. (ha ha) |
| Thu 14 Nov 05:27 | MadMan | Ah, see, Lydia, there usability conflicts with business goals - to squeeze as many seats into a plane as humanly possible. ;) If they gave you extra legroom and all those nice things you want, how would they make money? Whatcha gonna do - take a ship instead? No, they know you *need* to fly, so you will, and if every airline is as cramped as the other, you'll have no choice. So why on earth would they offer you more space when they know you'll fly with them anyway? |
| Thu 14 Nov 13:29 | Lydia | Therein lies the rub. :( |
| Courtesy Titles - their proper use and website design guidelines | Wed 13 Nov |
| Do you need a courtesy title? Do you want one? If so, do you get the title you want? Do you think they should be confined to the dustbin of history? Did you know you could be breaking the law by making them mandatory on your website? (Comments: I enjoyed this article because it made me think about some design details that I tend to neglect and ignore.) |
| Thu 14 Nov 00:55 | Adam Greenfield | I don't believe in courtesy titles, and refuse to use them except in mockery. Furthermore, I *loathe* when forms mandate a choice between Mr, Mrs., Miss, and Dr. |
| Thu 14 Nov 03:55 | Alan Fisher | The author says that the term 'Esquire' has now fallen into disuse. Well, my bank refer to me as 'Alan Fisher, Esq' on my cheques and statements. I didn't ask them to, but they did it anyway. This whole area is something of a mine-field in Europe, where the expectations vary widely from country to country. I know this from experience (the Germans, in particular, expect a very precise title to be applied to their name). On one project I worked on, we had to include 'Sir' as an option because one of our client's most prestigious accounts was a leading 'knight of the realm', and refused to answer any correspondence which wasn't addressed with his proper title. The only sensible option is to simply not ask for them, or make them optional and free-text. |
| Thu 14 Nov 04:47 | Craig Cockburn | Thanks for the feedback so far, I'm glad you enjoyed the article. Craig |
| Thu 14 Nov 09:11 | Adam Greenfield | Craig - More than enjoyed it. I found it addressed one of those minor but nagging irritants in life that I had never quite found the time to sort out, let alone write about. Well done. |
| Thu 14 Nov 09:24 | Alan Fisher | Craig, kindly address me as 'Esquire' from now on, young man. Seriously, I'll agree with Adam - a good article on a subject which is important, if not obvious. |
| Thu 14 Nov 09:30 | Kent Sievers | offering what customers want rather than what companies think customers must have Amazon offers me what I want? Every time I visit Amazon it pitches me an array of products I already own. It needs a 'No thanks, I already got one' button. Half the time, Amazon shows me products I shopped for at Amazon, but bought from a competitor. It needs a second button, 'Sorry, your product is too expensive. I'm not interested' button. |
| Thu 14 Nov 13:26 | Lydia | I personally prefer more formality. In America (I'm not sure if this happens elsewhere), retail store employees have the extremely annoying habit of calling me by my first name after they see my credit card. I did not give them permission to do this, it is just 'accepted' that it's OK to do. I am German, and though I was raised in America I guess the cultural bias for formality did rub off a bit. I was always told that you are to address elders and strangers with a title until told to do otherwise, and this has always worked well for me. I get on quite well with our Japanese clients, too. I do see the point of this article, though - in an attempt not to offend, you exclude preferred titles. I would always wince at being called 'Fraulein' when I was married just because I looked young, for example. My company has dispensed with titles altogether, and our correspondence is addressed with the first and last name, or sometimes 'Hello Angela Smith' if it is more 'intimate.' So far, no complaints. I wish we could use the one-box-for-name idea, but they want to separate them for whatever reason. I also really like the idea of asking people how they want to be addressed when titles need to be used. Great article. |
| Why it's getting easier to talk to your PC | Wed 13 Nov |
| (ZDNet) But a top Microsoft researcher I spoke with last week says that human-quality speech recognitiongood enough to let your computer reliably transcribe a newspaper read out loudis now about a decade away. (Comments: Thanks Daniel Szuc.) |
| Thu 14 Nov 05:44 | Alan Fisher | My son has just broken his index finger playing hockey, which means he can't write for the next 4 weeks. This is a bit of a problem, since he's got some key exams coming up in December. Anyway, to help him continue with his studying and homework, I've just installed IBM's ViaVoice on our home PC. To my surprise, it works pretty well. You have to spend a couple of hours up-front 'training' it to your speech patterns, but after that it's reasonably accurate. There's still some tidying up to do when you've finished, which my son can manage one-handed, but it does a large part of the job for you. As the article says, bridging that remaining 'small' gap in comprehension will probably be a monumental task. Are there any other Webworders who use software of this kind regularly? |
| Press 1 for a Human - Best Phone System Practices for Connecting with Customers | Sun 10 Nov |
| Having the best customer representatives in the world isnt enough if the customers cant reach them or get frustrated and angry along the way. If customers cant get the help and attention they need they will eventually take their business elsewhere. Optimizing your phone system to best support your customers needs is a quick and extremely cost-effective way to raise overall customer service. (Comments: Good article with good advice. However, like it or not, the cost of directly interacting with a human is substantially higher than delivering an automatic message. What this article or a follow up needs, is an ROI calculation showing that the usability is worth the expense. Doing the best thing for customers is not always the right thing to do.) |
| Wed 13 Nov 16:54 | Shelly | Let's face it: there are very few fans of IVR. This article describes some best practices for IVR systems. However, it leaves out many I would consider critical. Most importantly, the best phone systems are based on customer data--they offer the options and information people are most likely to want. Of course, the only way to know what people want is to do customer research. The best IVR call trees are iterated upon based on customer feedback. The wording of the prompts is carefully crafted to reflect the caller's vocabulary--while professional sounding recording is important, what those recordings say and how they flow is far more important. Good IVR systems can address many customer needs. There is no question that addressing such needs in an automated fashion is less expensive than addressing them with humans. Let's focus on improving the quality of IVR, since it's the hand we've been dealt. |
| Thu 14 Nov 04:04 | Alan Fisher | My mobile phone provider in the UK encourages you to use their website for ALL interaction with them. They make it very difficult to find a telephone support line for them, and the website goes out of the way to provide you with answers to FAQs rather than allowing you to simply email a query to them. When you do manage to email them, you always get an automated response which is usually useless and doesn't include the text of your original query (which you don't have either, because you email them via a form). This, I believe, is an extreme example of the approach discussed in this article. But it's an illustration of a company which has lost sight of the objective of customer support. Their system should support customers, not aim to minimise their support costs above all else. |
| Stereotypography | Tue 12 Nov |
| all your favorite news |
| Wed 13 Nov 05:35 | Timo | tis the only design-news site I visit, apart from the k10k newsfeed and computer.love. |
| 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.) |
| Tue 12 Nov 16:54 | Francis Wu | Actually, this makes some kinda sense, at least to me. For instance, if a user with a slow connection clicks on link A and waits for the page to load, he/she will probably notice another interesting link (link B). Slow-loading pages -- or pages loaded within the length of our attention span -- probably do allow users to see (as opposed to merely looking) more of the site. Users with ultra high speed will simply whiz through a site simply 'cause they know what they're looking for and the connection speed allows them to ignore the riff raff, no matter how interesting it could be. Does this make any sense to anybody else here? |
| sued | Thu 31 Oct |
| for hacking a URL, which is a fundamental navigation technique that many users employ every day. Lets go a little further into the grey area: a reporter for Wired guessed the password for Saddam Husseins e-mail account, and published a story about what he found there. Is this ethical? (Comments: Tough, but interesting question.) |
| Tue 12 Nov 12:37 | Philip Chalmers | Everyone seems to have answered the easy question about the Reuters and the Swedish company and avoided the difficult one about Saddam Hussein's email account. In the case of Saddam Hussein it's easy enough - until he admits weapons programme inspectors without restrictions he's obviously up to no good and his privacy should therefore not be respected. You might want to add 'and human rights inspectors'. But then it gets greyer. Would it have been ethical to hack Enron for evidence of their now-notorious malpractices? At what stage, i.e. how much prima facie evidence would you need in order to justify the hacking? In fact the whole concept of privacy is very grey. David Brin, a former research scientist turned science fiction writer, has argued rather convincingly that privacy laws exist mainly to protect the powerful (the powerful can always get round privacy laws if they want information about you and me) and are therefore ethically dubious in their own right. I don't think Mr. Brin considered the thought that he lives in a libertarian society and that privacy protection may be more desirable in less tolerant societies - or perhaps he assumed less tolerant societies would not enact prvacy laws. Anyone up for a real debate? |
| 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. |
| Tue 12 Nov 12:02 | Philip Chalmers | Dont' bet against MS. They're famous for their persistence (remember the proverb 'MS gets it right 3rd time'). They're planning for the long haul - keeping the engineering team small signalled that they wanted mainly to generate ideas and wait for the right combination of ideas and technologies (e.g. low-consumption chips) before moving to production. And there appear already to be at a few ready-made niche market - those lawyers who all want one, plus all senior executives who'll want to see why Bill Gates is already using the technology. As for pens vs keyboards and mice, I don't see that there's a problem. Keyboards have 1 big disadvantage, their size, while pens can operate in a much smaller area - all you need is automated scrolling of the input area. And to get round the difficulty of double clicking, put mouse buttons on the side of the pen and make the software assume the clicks are received by whatever object the pen point touched last. It will be a case of horses for courses. If you want to write a report while travelling in a plane / train, use a lap-top. If you want compactness and real portability (e.g. for stock checks) use a portable computer with a small numeric-only keypad and a pen for very brief notes. |
| 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 12 Nov 11:40 | Philip Chalmers | I don't think the writer is encouraging advertisers to be complacent. He links to the article advocating restraint (3 to 4 per hour) and points out that Ad-Aware is very popular, i.e. if people get upset by a web marketing tactic they will quicky latch on to a fix for it. My only criticism would be that he doesn't also refer to any research on how often users solve the problem manually, by killing pop-ups on sight - I often do this and I remember reading something at www.use-it.com (Jakob Nielsen) which suggested it is a very common reaction. |
| 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.) |
| Tue 12 Nov 11:03 | Philip Chalmers | What creates a monopoly is barriers to entry, not a market share over 50% (or whatever). Dell's size does not create barriers to entry and the article does not give evidence that Dell is trying to manufacture barriers (as Microsoft is alleged to have done). The behaviour of Dell and Microsoft suggests they don't believe a secure monopoly position is possible in to-day's global market - neither company shows any signs of the complacency which nearly brought IBM down in the 1980s. Dell's rapid innovation in products and sales methods is made possible by the fact that it never sold in any other way and therefore is free from the turf wars and channel conflicts which bedevil the efforts of many established companies to market on-line. |
| Accountability of Accessibility and Usability | Thu 07 Nov |
| (Digital Web Magazine) If the people who build Web sites dont hold themselves accountable to a set of basic standards, then someone else, probably the government, will create standards. |
| Tue 12 Nov 10:25 | Philip Chalmers | Usability is a commercial consideration, as webword.com often and rightly points out - and webword.com also points out the diminishing utility of usability measures. So usability should be left to the commercial sense of web sites' owners. Accessibility regulation is a scam. Accessibility is a social programme and should be financed by taxes like other social programmes, e.g. mobility for the disabled. Politicans, bureacrats and accessibility lobyists prefer regulation because it allows them to claim credit for doing good without accepting responsibility for the costs. This is an evasion of democratic accountability and is also bad economic management. |
| Wireless game console from Nokia | Sun 10 Nov |
| Through creating an entirely new product category in the companys matrix of mobile phones - which covers just about every inch of the market - Nokia is now going after a market thats expected to grow by leaps and bounds over the course of the coming months and years, namely wireless gaming. (Comments: First, I wonder how much usability testing they have done on this advice. Does anyone know? Second, I like to hear new product category because it usually indicates something new and cool to think about. It also means that there are opportunities to test and improve the usability of a new type of product. Thats always fun. Third, what are the advantages of wireless gaming versus non-wireless gaming? Fresh games in real-time? Read head-to-head competition? What else? Thanks Daniel Szuc.) |
| Mon 11 Nov 06:02 | Timo | How much usability testing does a Gameboy receive? Do game consoles need much more than simple playtesting when the standard for controllers only usually allow up/down/left/right select/fire/walk/jump? Even for advanced multi-user wireless games the interaction will most probably be navigating a game-space, and chatting, sms-style with other players... |
| Mon 11 Nov 07:47 | Morris Cox | Blast. I meant Doom. |
| Mon 11 Nov 07:47 | Morris Cox | I hear they now have Quake for the Nokia. http://www.wildpalm.co.uk/Doom7650.html |
| Mon 11 Nov 09:07 | Ryan | Actually, some of the controllers for consoles actually DO go through some usability testing. The Wavebird wireless controller comes to mind. Considering most controllers now include at least two multi-directional control sticks, a 4-way directional pad, 6-8 buttons, and often additional side and top buttons, it's a surprise more people DON'T seem to have problems using them. |
| Mon 11 Nov 18:28 | Morris Cox | I remember when I first tried a Nintendo 64. Trying to use that button under the controller was annoying, especially while trying to make full use of the rest of the controller. |
| Tue 12 Nov 04:21 | Alan Fisher | But we only control our PCs through a little 'controller' with 2 (or 3) buttons on it and a big 'controller' with a few alphanumeric keys on it. The usability is influenced by these, but is also heavily influenced by the second level of 'controls' on the screen, which we activate using the physical devices. I don't see much difference here between games consoles and PCs. The controls on a games console may be simple, but if what we see on screen is confusing, it doesn't count for much. |
| 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 11 Nov 17:38 | Alan Taylor | Well, I've followed this conversation off and on in different forums for a bit, and have held back responding, just to avoid the impression of 'me - me, look at me' - But here I am anyhow. I'm a web developer at amazon.com, one of many (honestly unsure of the number, somewhere around 100+ in the US). The design/IA input we get to wield varies, just like any other large site I imagine - anything from total ownership (concept/images/UI/Copy/HTML/Code) to executing someone else's design (HTML Monkey). The designs, layout, UI, practically everything are large group efforts, with lots of input from design, web devs, PMs, user groups, VPs, and yes, the CEO. Rarely is any one piece truly owned by one person. The idea may originate from one source, but by the time it's live, it's gone through quite a process. Why don't you see more involvement from folks at big sites in online discussion groups? Honestly, that seems a whole series of individual decisions. Lately I've been personally involved with developing projects based on Amazon's webservices, so I'm somewhat involved with a couple of discussion groups there, but informally so. We're not discouraged from participating. We're here, we're human, and yes, quite a number of us even do things outside of Amazon.com, and no, there isn't some draconian NDA that prohibits us from talking about work - but at the same time, we want to be careful, this is a very competitive space. Plus, I do think there is a genuine sense of modesty (for various valid reasons, both personal and professional). So now some of you know the name of at least one person involved with Amazon - does it really make a difference? |
| 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! |
| Mon 11 Nov 15:53 | Lydia | This was a frustrating read. He ignores questions such as whether the clunky, unattractive (and often hard to navigate) design of his website has ever been put to the test, and gibbers on about his own work (going so far as to say 'hint hint' conspiratorially), and saying things like: We collect a big set of current designs (representative of what companies are currently doing on the net) and observe average users as they interact with these designs. This results in a *long* list of problems where people have difficulties. We then classify the individual observations and generate the list of usability guidelines that can be used as design recommendations in new projects. This is scary. 'average users' - what does that mean? 'representative of what companies are currently doing on the net' - how does he know? It went on in this fashion... most comments dealt with either seminars, studies that could be purchased from the group, or reinforcement of principles and methods that went out with the dinosaurs. Ugh. |
| 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. |
| Mon 11 Nov 00:52 | John S. Rhodes | Spanking Jakob Nielsen (WebWord) -- 'The purpose of this article is to critically review Jakob Nielsen's article, Intranet Usability: The Trillion-Dollar Question. In summary, Jakob Nielsen makes some fantastic claims about intranet usability that must be weighed against other business needs and constraints. For example, there might be better ways to spend money than on usability, not all usability improvements are created equal, and it can be hard to apply the changes dictated by a usability study. The criticisms can be applied to many other usability articles.' This is a start. I wish I was a better writer so I could make more of an impact. |