Archive for September 10th, 2008

Punk Rock HR received this as an email. I’m in the wrong business, I need to write white papers.

Managing IT in a downturn: Beyond cost cutting:

• As the economic slowdown intensifies, companies are looking for ways to cut costs, and IT budgets are a prime target.
• Rather than implement across-the-board cuts, managers should take a more integrated view of how IT is used throughout the business.
• Targeted IT investments can make operations more efficient and increase revenues, delivering returns larger than simple cost-cutting measures typically do.

This article contains the following exhibits:

• Exhibit 1: Investments in technology-enabled business processes can deliver up to ten times the impact of traditional IT cost reduction efforts.
• Exhibit 2: Across industries, technology investments can have a substantial impact in select areas.

I read this post at PinPoint Performance about usability issues that happen when good software goes buggy, and chuckled. Workarounds bad? Bugs bad? No kidding, Sherlock.

Releasing bug free software?

Uh, yeah, sure.

But I like to live in the real world too.

Today, we’re living in a “beta is acceptable” world. Requirements change. Wireframes aren’t updated. Changes aren’t communicated. Emails aren’t sent. Bugs are issued.

As much as I want to release products that are bug free, user friendly, and have every feature in the world working exactly as planned, I also like working realistic hours and shipping product on a timeline short of developing the space shuttle.

The point: most web applications aren’t life and death situations.

For this, there is an acceptable tolerance level. Users are willing to put up with a little discomfort if it means a fairly stable, better product; managing a realistic process means the difference between a good application with a few warts, and one that is completely broken with users that are leaving in droves.

As long as it doesn’t format their hard drive, they should be okay will a few application crashes.

Here’s a few things I’ve done to help mitigate issues in design and development:

• Do hallway usability testing early on. Get some of your wireframes, show them to people, and ask them, “What do you expect this to do?” instead of telling them.
• Site down with the developers and ask them to show you the system. It takes 30 minutes, and it means the world, because then you can clarify what you really meant with the spirit of the wireframes, and not the letter.
• Do usability testing late in the process. Two weeks before you release, grab more people, walk them through several scenarios, and test for pass/fail. Figure out what can be fixed before the release with minor application changes or added help text, figure out what’s broken beyond fubar so you pull those features, and figure out what to have customer support tell the end users. If there’s a message there, the users will love you for it.
• Schedule a second release after the first one. That’s why it’s called soft launch. For a second round of bug fixing, your users will appeciate going through a preview. If you do a search of all the marketing pushes occuring on hard release dates, it would be a good bet most of them failed because the applications failed to live up to expectations.
• Talk to your users. Say you’re sorry. Say you’ll make it better. Listen and learn.

One of the things I find entertaining in the land of web design where houses can be of any size, there’s this constant need to redesign, redesign, and redesign again (read the always popular “If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers” for a perspective). I tell clients that a lot of small changes have a more positive impact on usability than a single massive redesign that can take months, because users are used to it and have learned how to use the current system within its constraints.

The reason there’s usually a redesign is the CEO usually comes down from the hallowed halls, and says, “we have to make it grey instead of yellow!” And grey it is (read: cnet.com).

Facebook is launching their new design this week to upteen million users (100 million or so, not counting my friend’s cat), and there’s going to be an uproar, and some grumbling, and then people will get used to the new site and stop complaining. Last time I checked, no one is actually paying for Facebook, so they can’t ask for their money back.

Looking at the numbers as reported by Mashable, it looks like adoption is not too bad — I’d be worried if there was a massive change back to the old platform, and that’s just not happening. In fact, I’d even go so far to suggest that Mashable might be spinning it a bit their way in a negative light because they don’t like the redesign. The petitions are at about 800,000 users, which means that there are probably about eight million very unhappy users, but that’s what, five percent of the audience?

Every site redesign I’ve participated in, I’ve seen the same trend. Sites almost never lose users because of a redesign, but it does slow site growth because when you do a redesign, there’s always a lot of bug fixing. MySpace has been going through a rolling redesign of their site, and other than some grumbling I heard from the teenset, there’s no petition there. In fact, that and the adoption of the platform has been very, very positive.

Or maybe the users there just don’t care.

I actually like the new site and some of the features (like uploading a profile photo) require tribal knowledge of driving through Boston’s streets to find the right screen, but overall I think it’s a move in a positive direction, especially since many of the newest features are occupying a space that both LinkedIn and eVite missed.

Facebook is becoming the defacto networking platform for professional groups. You can personalize your page quite a bit more, but still keep the Facebook look. And seriously, running two designs like they’ve been doing is a serious pain in the ass; last time I checked, one of the advantages of the web was one code base, yo.

Facebook has grown immensely over the years, and the application platform has created whole new opportunities for developers to abuse it, so gaining a bit more flexibility with the new design I think is a good thing.

Just try it, you’ll like it.