Silly Saturdays: Electronic News in 1981

Close to 3,000 personal computers in the Bay Area!

Facebook and The Metrics Of Friends

From Inside Facebook as summarized from The Economist:

The average male Facebook user with 120 friends:

• Leaves comments on 7 friends’ photos, status updates, or wall
• Messages or chats with 4 friends

The average female Facebook user with 120 friends:

• Leaves comments on 10 friends’ photos, status updates, or wall
• Messages or chats with 6 friends

The average male Facebook user with 500 friends:

• Leaves comments on 17 friends’ photos, status updates, or wall
• Messages or chats with 10 friends

The average female Facebook user with 500 friends:

• Leaves comments on 26 friends’ photos, status updates, or wall
• Messages or chats with 16 friends

In other words, Facebook users comment on stuff from only about 5-10% of their Facebook friends. And as has been shown by many other studies, women communicate with more people in all cases than men.

This is the takeaway, and it’s very true:

His findings: while many people have hundreds friends on Facebook, they still only communicate with a small few. Or to quote the author of the article, “Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.”

Podcast: About User Interface Patterns With J. Ambrose Little

Welcome to podcast number three with J. Ambrose Little, a User Interface Engineer with Infragistics, and one of the masterminds behind Quince, a UI Design Pattern community. Today, we talk about the importance of user interface design patterns, and how it can speed software development and requirements gathering.

Download the MP3.

[podcast]/_podcast/usabilitycounts.com-003.mp3[/podcast]

Consultant Thursdays: Six Signs Of A Trouble Client

The article is over at FreelanceSwitch, and it’s a very concise guide of what we’ve all run into. More importantly, they offer some kind of solution for each of the below signs.

1. “I tried doing it myself, but…”
2. There’s No Real Deadline
3. “Somebody Told Me I Should…”
4. Multiple Points Of Contact
5. “Trust Me, This Is Going To Be Huge!”
6. Repeated Meeting Cancellations

Marketing Wednesdays: Who’s Your Target?

Before you can create a successful ad, website, brochure, direct mail letter or other marketing piece, you must first ask an important question: Exactly who is the target audience? After all, your business most likely has a number of different target audiences, each of which has their own particular hot buttons, needs and wants. The most successful marketing campaigns are those that target the specific needs and wants of a particular market segment.

Identify All of Your Target Audiences

For example, say you manufacture a product that is sold both to retail stores and direct to consumers through a website. Your list of target audiences might include:

• Potential, current and past customers; people who inquired about your product in the past but did not make a purchase at the time
• Potential, current, past and inquiring retail stores and distributors
• Influencers (people in positions of authority who could recommend your product to consumers)
• Media (trade and consumer publications, newsletters, e-zines, radio, TV, etc.)
• And more

Tailor Your Message

Rank your list in order of importance, and then decide which group or groups you will focus on with this marketing piece. Think about the specific benefits that your product or service brings to these groups and tailor your message accordingly. For example, while retail stores might want to know about your product’s compact and attractive packaging, consumers are probably much more interested in your product’s durability.

Finally, make sure that everything about your marketing piece – words, colors, overall layout, photos used, etc. – speaks directly to your chosen audience.

Usability Counts Podcast Now On iTunes

Yeah, yeah, we’re only two episodes in, but…

You can now download the Usability Counts on iTunes. Click here to visit the site. The third episode is recorded, and should be up by Thursday.

QuickTip Sundays: Short Form Blog, And Why Headlines Are So Important

I come from the world of print, when we designed magazines with headlines in particular spots with particular word lengths, because they would sell. You walk into a store, see only the top half of a magazine, and there’s the headline: DEEP SEX, on a Cosmopolitan cover.

The form of media doesn’t matter: print, web, radio, people want a short summary of the story, even if it’s a hyperbole.

How important is it? The New York Post, Cosmopolitan, and other organizations have people that are responsible for creating engaging headlines. The Post, the best tabloid example, was host to the Headless Body in Topless Bar headline. Who could forget that?

Which brings us to Short Form Blog. It hasn’t been around for very long (two months), is taking a concept from another blog (Instapundit), and the design is so Roger Black, Roger Black might have to claim some licensing fees.

Who cares.

He does an excellent job taking existing content, and turning it into compelling headlines. Engaging. Fun. One word exclamations. It works.

He proves several points on why he’s getting traction with his blog, only two months in — he takes his time, because he realizes writing less actually takes more time, because he edits, edits, edits until he finds the perfect match.

Headlines should be tested. Headlines should be crafted. Headlines should be played with.

Why?

Because headlines are the only things that are visible at the top of the page, on most RSS readers, and on email subject headlines. Headlines translate to return on investment, more visitors, more page views, create more engaging content, shall I go on?

Silly Saturdays: Onion News Network Does Usability

Turn the volume down — not safe for work. But very, very funny, and matches a conversation I had with someone that knows about Sony’s products.

Why User Experience Matters In Tough Economic Times

Designing Better Libraries has a great article about the value of User Experience in tough economic times.

The takeaways:

• First, while it may be necessary to scale back on an ambitious UX plan during a recession, there’s no reason not to expand efforts to enhance the personalization of services; this may be the best time to connect with customers.
• Bad customer experiences actually end up costing the organization more because they waste time and require extra work to make up for foul-ups and problems.
• User experiences and the design of them is a low-tech proposition.

Heads up to Putting People First for finding the article.

CMS Fridays: At The Very Least, Buy An Associated Press Style Guide

Is it 9 or nine? What’s the proper abbreviation for California? When should I use a semi-colon?

These are all questions that might be asked during the migration of a content management system, or writing text for a new site.

How do you establish style? Consistency is another key to effective writing, and readers do notice typos and style inconsistencies (I know, I get the emails from friends when I have them here). There’s nothing that is more glaring than when certain items are used incorrectly. It’s even more frustrating when the defaults (i.e. “am” for instance, for time) doesn’t match a consistent style.

At the very least, run out and buy a few copies of the Associated Press Style Guide. For $10 at your local bookstore, or about the same at Amazon, the book is the bible for style and capitalization (please don’t compare this site to the Style Guide, I’m not getting paid to do this). This style guide is used by thousands of journalists to answer such questions as the proper spelling and usage of punctuation for such terms as Dr Pepper, ball point pen, and Popsicle.

Throw a few copies of this book around, and the authors will at least get close to what it should be. Consistency is the key.

Here’s the top 10 Associated Press tips as stolen from Cubreporters.org:

1. Use a person’s full name and title the first time you mention him or her in an article. For example, write Don Swanson, professor of communication, not Prof. Swanson. Once people have been fully identified, refer to them by last name only. There are exceptions, so always check the AP stylebook.
2. Spell out abbreviations or acronyms on first reference. For example, use Passaic County Community College the first time you refer to the college in a story. You may use PCCC on any references made after that. Another example would be to use DAR only after you have spelled out Daughters of the American Revolution on first reference.
3. Abbreviate months when used with days, and use numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) not ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, etc.). Exceptions are March, April, May, June and July — write them out, don’t abbreviate. For example, write Sept. 2, 2008, not September 2nd, 2008. But, when using only the month and year, spell out the month.
4. Generally, spell out the numbers zero through nine and use numerals for 10 and higher. Note, however, that numbers used at the beginning of a sentence are spelled out. Example: Five hundred twenty-four students attended. It is better, however, to rewrite the sentence so that it doesn’t begin with a number. Example: Attending the event were 524 students from local colleges. Years are one of the exceptions. For example: 2008 was a bad year for investors.
5. But use numerals even for ages younger than 10. This is another exception to the aforementioned number rule. When used like an adjective, say X-year-old, including the hyphens. Otherwise, don’t use the hyphens. For example: the 5-year-old girl kicked her brother, who is 8 years old.
6. Spell out the word “percent” but use numerals for the actual number. Examples: Participation increased 5 percent. Nearly 28 percent of all students don’t like algebra. Exception: use may use the % sign in headlines.
7. To indicate time, use figures and lowercase letters (9 a.m., 6 p.m.). Put a space between the figure and the letters. Exceptions are noon and midnight. Do not say 12 noon or 12 midnight — it’s redundant.
8. Capitalize formal titles used before a name. For example, write Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Very long titles may be shortened or summarized unless they are essential to the story, but the shortened form should not be capitalized (for example, you may use spokesperson instead of Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications). Use lowercase when formal titles follow a name (e.g., Hillary Clinton, secretary of state). General titles, such as astronaut Neil Armstrong and actor Matt Damon, are lowercase.
9. Capitalize formal titles and names of people, places or things to set them apart from a general group. These include proper nouns such as Mike, Canada, Hudson River, and St. John’s Church. But use lowercase for common nouns (i.e. nouns not coupled with a proper name), such as the river or the church. Also, put a word in lowercase when you have more than one proper noun sharing the word. Example: Ocean and Monmouth counties. Capitalize the first word in a sentence. Refer to the dictionary or AP Stylebook, if needed. When in doubt, use lowercase.
10. Do not use courtesy titles such as Mr., Miss, Mrs., or Ms., except in direct quotes or where needed to distinguish between people of the same name. Using courtesy titles may be polite. And the New York Times uses them in its articles. But it is not AP style.