I was talking with someone at work about a design or information architecture they were being shown for demo purposes, and while they were on the phone with the presenter, one of the first questions they had about the design was, “So, how do I get in?”

Of course, that fell on deaf ears, the response being a silent version of, “What do you mean, how do I get in? Can’t you see it, it’s right there.”

This is a very important point: if someone has to be told how to get in on a public facing website, or there needs to be pages and pages of help text to explain the concept, it’s not going to work. That’s obvious feedback that something is wrong, that it needs to be re-worked to make it usable.

People don’t like to search, they don’t want to have to figure it out, they just want to use it.

Case in point — the iPod Touch.

I bought one. I have a manual for it somewhere, but I don’t know where it is. I just started using the applications and listened to music from the minute I loaded up the iPod. I’m sure there were functions that weren’t so obvious to the initial users, but through trial and error, Apple crafted a kick-ass interface.

Specialized applications or websites, like Photoshop or SharePoint should have a learning curve i.e. people shouldn’t be able to use the applications right out of the box because those are very targeted audiences that demand sophisitication and power. Anyone can open Photoshop, but you have to have design talent to use it well.

However, many of the applications that are along those same lines should follow some of the same design tenets of a Photoshop or SharePoint because it makes it easier to use the program. I started using InDesign minutes after I opened the program because it much of the same functionality as QuarkXpress, for example.  Adobe probably got there by placing the application in front of a lot of users and getting a lot of feedback. Never was it suggested to the user that “it’s right there” or “I can’t believe you’re such an idiot for missing that,” but the designers were probably screaming at them behind the two-way mirror that it was, then realized the flaws in the design.

Users in their inexperience are actually very smart at pointing out the flaws in our designs and the difference between a User Experience consultant just getting by and one that’s an expert is recognizing the user is actually the expert, not you.

Do you listen?

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If you have links to messaging, there should be an indicator how many messages are unread

I love MySpace.com because there’s a raw feel to it, and I think it hits it’s target audience with it’s usuability better than most people give it credit for. They’ve been going through a rolling refresh of a redesign for the past few months (some of which I know the people involved with it).

However, one of the changes where I think they missed some key usuability is the messaging links, and here’s a couple of improvements that might really help users.

Outlook has this great feature that shows you how many unread items you have paranthetically. That would be a great feature to add to this menu for the items that are active.

If there’s a vague item on your menu, explain it, especially if it’s a change to the user interface

Another change was adding notifications, which previously had filled the inbox. I had no idea what that was until I realized I should click on it. In the notifications box, there were over 200 comment approvals I had to read and either approve or deny, which took me a fair bit to go through.

What they could do as a quick fix is use the TITLE tag for the hyperlinks for more explanation of what each option is, so when the user hovers over it, you’d get a clear indication of what to do.

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Cloud Avenue has a great article that explains the thinking how SharePoint really could be next “operating system” for Microsoft. It makes sense, because SharePoint integrates with everything (ask me how I love the Groove / SharePoint integration), and once they get some of the issueworked out with the Office integration, there’s almost no reason to store your documents locally when you are sharing a Word file with someone four time zones away.

SharePoint’s emphasis on governance positions as a product positions it well in corporate (read: revenue generating) environments.

But will it be the next desktop OS? No.

Will it be the next cloud OS? I think so.

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There’s are article about Gawker laying off 20 people, and bragging about it. I’m honestly too comfortable in the long run to see how content creation is going the way of the Model T (Or just redefining the Model T), but it doesn’t really affect why I’m writing this blog. It’s not to get rich off the banner advertising, that’s for sure.

Remember what the purpose is.  And if you remember why you’re writing your blog (it’s to make money doing other things, like consulting), you’re better off.

Problogger, who actually makes a decent living off of blogging, has a great (archived) post about making money off of blogging through indirect methods. It’s really about having a purpose, yo.

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Most of us internet people are so immersed in the culture we forget there’s a world outside of it, and that most of the rest of that world hasn’t heard of Twitter, doesn’t care what Michael Arrington thinks, they don’t have enough room for MySpace, or when they hear about Mashable, they think potatoes.

Chris Brogan has a great post covering  People in the Real World.

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I’ll be honest.

I’m not an early adopter.

I don’t buy any Mac product on the first revision.  It takes me a while to get excited about anything, and so I generally wait, and wait, and wait until jumping on any kind of bandwagon. I know Social Media’s been around for a while, but I’m not too hip on it being the encompassing need for any company’s customer service program. I don’t have to live on MacRumors and talk about all the latest cool stuff — I’d rather be in Vancouver eating and drinking.

Customers are generally divided into three groups:

• Those that like your product (active users)
• Those that have some kind of complaint (active, angry users)
• Those that are ambivalent because they see your product as a tool to achieve a certain goal and not much else (passive users).

Certain customers move from one group to another, but the vast majority are are in those later two groups. Part of the reason they may complain about your product is that they don’t understand how to use it, or there’s something wrong with it, but that still makes them passive because once their issue has been resolved, they’ll stop complaining. They’re much different than the active users, who use the product even if it cuts off their hand or causes ear damage (read:  iPod).

I’m not going to quote any study because I don’t have any to refer to, and I also believe sometimes there are lies, lies, and damn statistics. I would reckon the number of users that actually care to interact with a company using social media is much lower than the numbers quoted from Cone at Church of the Customer Blog are much lower than some marketing wonk getting on the phone calling up people and asking, “So, wouldn’t it be cool if?”

And let me point this out: if you truly believe every survey out there, I’m going to point to the 2000 election exit polls — they had Gore winning by 10 percentage points.

(For disclosure purposes,  Cone is a strategy and communications agency with over 25 years experience building and maintaining trusted relationships between clients and stakeholders.)

Seriously, 25 percent of internet users interact with companies through social networks at least once a week? I can’t even keep up with my Facebook email, and I use the internet everyday.

Most of us just don’t have time to interact on 20 product sites because we have an iPod, a Sony Plasma TV, a Volkswagen Jetta, and use Titleist  golf clubs. Very few are so enthusiastic about a product that we search out places to talk about it, and more often than not, when we do that search, it’s because we’re angry, really angry.  

Sure, it makes for a great story if you’re consulting for a Fortune 500 firm, especially when spinning damn statistics, but it’s not necessarily the real picture.

I’ll do my own survey, and you can comment here:

1. How many of you have an iPod?
2. How many of you have found a message board or a comment area where you can talk about all these neat features the iPod should have, giving Apple feedback?

When I was a product manager, I researched these sites thoroughly, and found that the users were either: a) so excited about the service and suggested a bunch of useless features, or b) had a complaint. For every 10 ideas, there was a gem in there worth further explanation, but it’s not to be all end all of user research. And some of the best ideas came from users I had to reach out to.

Sometimes it’s what the users aren’t telling you that gives you the real picture.

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I really don’t like driving. Really. That’s why I live in Los Angeles (actually, Long Beach). I try to take public transportation when possible, which is almost impossible where I live, save the occasional trip to Belmont Shore.

If you don’t like driving and want to get moving without a car, use Google Transit. They aren’t supporting every city yet, but they have Los Angeles and Orange County, which alone shocks me.

All I did was enter in the address I started at, where I wanted to go, and Google did the rest: suggest several locations of “Did you mean?”, showed my alternate routes, and which bus routes I would have to take.  

What is amazing about the tie in to their massive search database is that you don’t even have to enter in addresses; you can enter in a business name, it will show you a number of options (say, a restaurant, or your workplace). It also supports multimodal transportation, like going from subway to bus to train in New York City, elegantly.

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Search should be intuitive

I watch baseball. A lot of baseball. And I’m in a fantasy league, so I read a lot alot about baseball. Because of this Baseball Prospectus is a site I subscribe to because the content is top-notch analysis. If though it doesn’t help me much, there’s a lot of information about teams and players that’s very insightful.

That’s what I like.

What I don’t like is their search interface — it’s hard to figure out how to get to certain articles, and everything is separated. Click on the search link above, and it sends you to a complex advanced search page. Finding a player is pretty self explanitory, but the Audit Team doesn’t mean anything to me.

Remember, users are looking for one search box, and it should be designed to intuitively go to results based on what they expect. In this case, I would expect a search box that would show me all results (“Google-style”), and then I could filter on players based on direct and indirect matches. What is here now doesn’t work for me.

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It’s too bad that a bank in so much trouble had this as a success story, but here it is: Pete Fields, an eBusiness Director, explains how Wachovia used MOSS to build a social network called Pulse so employees could collaborate, and more importantly, the information was stored so future employees (if there is a future for them) could access the system to view that collective knowledge.

The irony is that I saw the system, and what I like most about their approach was how they attached a return on investment to the project, and the project received its funding through reduction of travel budgets. The establishes a very real value and the users know they have to use the system to replace other methods of communication.

And it worked, as their statistics showed. It’s too bad they couldn’t have had a few years to let the experiment grow.

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Kotego, a blog in the same category as mine on Alltop, has a great article that reminds us that work shouldn’t be our lives (even though it seems like it’s all encompasing, even in these times). Number 8 on the list, “More work hours does not equal more productivity,” so true.

The article is entitled  12 Tips On Improving Work, Life And The Work-Life Balance.

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One of the clients I work with is in Alaska (which prompts all kinds of comments like, “do you run into moose on the way to work”). Where I’m at here, it’s just like any other town in America. They have a Wal-Mart, a Best Buy, an Applebees, and a TGI Fridays, which means you can get chain food just about anywhere in the world.

For the most part, though, the broadband connections aren’t.

Using my Verizon Wireless card on the computer sends me back into dial-up time, and worknig with this client, we’ve estimated that we have to act like the site’s designed in 1998 from a page weight perspective to make it acceptable for end users, because most of them are on ISDN-level DSL.

So why does this conversation matter?

Even if they are using 3G for their iPhone, consider the end device or end connection speed. Of course if you are in a business environment, you’ll get more leilency over that issue, but for public websites, you don’t know where the users will be coming from. There’s a certain group of the user base that will never move off of dial-up (I’ve heard the quote, “you know what, it’s fast enough for me”), and you should design your pages as such.

Major League Baseball’s site does just that — they have a narrowband and broadband version. I had never seen the narrowband version because my connection at home is smokin’ fast, but here, it was a great substitute to downloading HD Video.

You don’t have to design your site like Craigs List, but do consider how much weight is on the page.

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