Does anyone know of any research about this:

Theory: people sometimes (often?) choose web activities by medium, rather than by content type.

So as well as saying “I want news” people sometimes say “I want photos” or “I want video” or ” I want blogs”. So aggregating lots of examples of the same medium can be more effective that addressing one genre of content with several media mixed together.

Consider:

• Mail and Guardian “news in photos” site
• Flickr, Youtube etc

Vs. a site like BBC news which mixes video in with copy. (Except they’ve also got a video and audio section, I note).

Is this obvious? Does anyone have any additional evidence?

I went to 27dinner last night in Cape Town, set up by Dave Duarte. They had cakes with amusing, web-related icing on top. Just like Stormhoek, the idea is that if you give a blogger a freebie to blog about, you’ll go far.

Works for me!

Well done Charly’s Bakery and well done 27 Dinner.

If you are in South Africa, check out the next 27 dinner. You’ll see quite a cross section of Web folk there, talking everything from complete sense to utter nonsense. Take business cards and whiten your teeth before you go.

These days when you see someone wondering down the street looking lost, chances are they don’t have a shop-bought map in their hands – it’s much more likely they have a scrappy looking print-out from a web-based route planner service. And chances are they are looking very lost.

Take Google Maps for example - the directions they give you are completely linear. If you mess up on one step, you are completely lost as none of the steps are relevant to you anymore. And the maps it gives you are equally hopeless, only showing you the happy route, with little detail of the areas you so desperately need if you get lost.

What I want when I ask for directions on Google Maps is a series of high quality A4 maps that show me the route AND the surrounding area.

It’s like that film American Werewolf in London - “Don’t stray from the path, lads. Whatever you do, don’t stray from the path!

This post by Christopher Fahey of graphpaper.com got me thinking about the longitudinal nature of usability issues, and what it means for user experience research & design.

Now: the teething problem
This is a usability issue that you experience at first, but eases off as you get used to the product. For example, the first time you used an ipod you probably had at least 30 mins of familiarization and teething problems (”hey, this isn’t like my minidisc player, but it is kind of cool…”).

Later: the ill fitting shoe
This is a usability issue that you don’t notice at first, but it becomes increasingly bothersome as time wears on. For example, some voicemail systems that plays you the same long introductory message every time - educational at first, but after a while you start to notice every second it is stealing from your life.

So, what does this means for evaluation?

User tests often evaluate the first 60-90 minutes of use. This is a defining period but how much time the average person will use the product in total? If they are clocking up many hours of use every week, then the first hour of use is, in a sense, just a edge case.

To evaluate this product’s user experience, you’d have to employ longitudinal techniques - diary studies, repeat testing, telescoping, betas, and of course maintain an open dialogue with your customers.

If you don’t take a longitudinal view, then you are at risk of angling your product too specifically at beginners, and in doing so alienate the experienced users - or vice versa. Research methods are like a narrow beamed flashlight in a dark cave. To get a good view of things you have to expend a fair amount of effort looking at things from different angles.

And what does it mean for innovation?
Sometimes, when you try to avoid teething problems, you conform to the status quo, and you don’t help users in the long run. Imagine if the iPod ended up looking like the Creative Rio Mp3 player, because people in the user test sessions couldn’t quite get their heads around the concept of click-wheel navigation.

But sometimes arrogance can get the better of you. So some teething problems go away - how do you know if your design will do this? And, even if it does, can you justify the pain?

This from my friend Nick Bowmast at Flow…

The British have a reputation for patience, politely queuing for hours for the latest Playstation or the Kate Moss collection at Top Shop. But this patience does not extend to online activities, according to the results of a new survey.

According to results published by GBC on behalf of client PacketExchange, 70 per cent of British surfers would give a site less than 10 seconds to load before starting to search for an alternative, behaviour that is not mirrored offline.

In contrast to the virtual world, the nation of queuers were more than happy to wait up to 15 minutes in a nightclub or post office queue. Slow web pages weren’t the only pet peeve of the internet shopper, with poor web design (50.4 per cent) and crashing websites (52 per cent) [cited] as other annoying traits of their online experience.

Survey respondents didn’t just give up at the browsing stage. More than 70 per cent said that they had given up on a purchase at the checkout due to slow-loading pages. The results suggest that efficient service has more impact than brand or content when it comes to actually completing a sale online.

Full article here: http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2007/05/30/count-of-ten

Having worked at 3 different User-Centred Design (UCD) consultancies in the last few years (Flow Interactive, Amberlight, and Oyster Partners), I can confidently say that the type of project most commonly requested by clients looks like this:

1. Client delivers test materials (e.g. prototype of new website)
2. 8-12 user test sessions are carried out by the UCD consultant (the client may watch a small number)
3. UCD consultant locks him/herself in a room, analyzes data and writes a report
4. Report is delivered in a debrief presentation to the client
5. Project ends, UCD consultant leaves and doesn’t get spoken to again for weeks or months.

It suddenly stuck me today how un-user-centred this method actually is. Sure, you get a cheaper project with a good number of users, but ultimately the consultant just throws their findings over the wall and hopes that their client catches them.

The amount of times I’ve seen a UCD consultant looking at the finished implementation months later, saying something like “Oh man! Didn’t those guys listen to the presentation?”

The problem is, the client stakeholders simply aren’t very engaged in this kind of project. Watching a few sessions just doesn’t cut it. Have you ever tried watching a series of user testing sessions? From a darkened room behind a 2-way mirror? The passiveness and repetitiveness can really send you off to sleep.

So how do you get the client stakeholders involved? The solution I’ve been using recently at Flow Interactive is Rapid Iterative User Testing. Put simply, you run design workshops between the test sessions. You talk to the client, you analyze the findings together and then, most importantly, as a group you tweak the design of the thing you’re testing. (Often the prototypes we test are UI mock-ups, so tweaking is a cinch).

Not only does it involve everyone and keep them interested during the test sessions, but it means that you get to make sure your design recommendations actually work in practice.

The main problem with this method is that it can cost more. More client stakeholders need to turn up, and the sessions may need to be spread over more days. But it hugely improves the output of the project. Instead of a report detailing the prototype’s failures, the final prototype that emerges from the testing is a living, tested implementation of your design recommendations.

Try it!

Thanks to Leisa Reicheld for an onslaught of fascinating links this week.

I was complaining recently that I couldn’t cope with the sheer quantity of conversations that the network lifestyle was expecting me to have. Seems I’m not completely alone. This posting sums up some interesting information about the “stalling” growth of the blogosphere and the things that people really find the time and energy to do online.

The blogosphere is not growing much any more. A finite number of people really have time to run an active blog. Because it’s hard work having too many conversations. 20% of us are using social networking sites. 13% of us are actively posting stuff. And 52% of us are not participating at all in this hoo-ha!

I’ve just joined Amatomu. Their motto: “The South African blogosphere, sorted.”

Look down my sidebar and you’ll see the little link.

Localness is all the rage. Even though we revel in the huge, all-encompassingness of the Internet, there are still plenty of times when we want a smaller, closer space to play in.

Amatomu was received with joy and sighs of “about time” from the South African blogging community when it launched earlier this year. There are probably many other communities waiting for a smaller space to call their own.

Google/yahoo groups  are nice, but it’s even better to have something with an “official” feeling to really make you feel like you’re part of something important.

The guide I referred to in ysterday’s post is here in their archive.

It’s very short, funny and easy to read. Give it two minutes.

For example:

15. It might go terribly wrong, but that might actually be a good thing. So people read your blog, tried your wine and hated it. And now Google and Yahoo are awash with people laughing at you. Yeah, there’s always that risk. The upside is, they probably slammed you for a reason. Look on the bright side. At least now you know the truth, so you can move on to better things. Beats spending the next 5-10 years of your life flogging a dead horse.

If you have children and are on facebook, you will love/be terrified by this. A brilliant piece of writing from the New York Times…

“You won’t get away with this,” she typed. “everyone in the whole world thinks its super creepy when adults have facebooks.”

omg my mom joined facebook!!

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