Welcome to podcast number two with Hilary Bienstock. Today, we talk about the importance of user research, how it can impact the development of a project, and ways to do it on the cheap. Hilary’s been doing it for several years, and counts Move.com and the Los Angeles Times as two of the organizations she has worked with.

Download the MP3.

[podcast]/_podcast/usabilitycounts.com-002.mp3[/podcast]

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This was written by a Dana Oshiro, who writes the blog Villagers with Pitchforks, and is a frequent contributor to Mashable.

At a time when traders are losing their shirts, Midwesterners are losing their homes, and most investors are tightening their purse strings, Silicon Valley remains its ever-chipper self. Well…sort of.

My company, unlike many, has a sustainable revenue model. We're doing fine.

Call me a doomsayer, but when you look at the number of non-marketing or business development employees attending networking events, you know something is amiss. Have coders learned to cope with their social anxieties or are they purposely making themselves available to salivating recruiters?

The exit strategy

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark regularly makes the statement, "death is my exit strategy". Few entrepreneurs and founding team members share the same sentiment. I for instance would like to quit working pre-death in order to obtain the Guinness World Record for peeled grape spitting. My grandfather had an amazing talent for grape spitting in his last days of senility and I'd like to continue on in his footsteps.

In any case, yesterday, after speaking at length with a fairly high ranking CTO about infrastructure, I asked the inevitable question:

Who are you taking with you on your next project?

He replied diplomatically, but he knew exactly what I was talking about. The end is (possibly) nigh. When the engineers start networking in Silicon Valley meat life, you know something is afoot. When planning for a major market crash and layoffs, employees tend to make one of four decisions:

1. Ride out the Storm: Now is as good a time as any to enjoy a steady income and a veritable rent freeze.

2. Abandon Ship for Business School: Now is as good a time as any to get that MBA and quadruple earning power for the next boom.

3. Take Flight to S.E.Asia or Africa: Now is as good a time as any to plunge down the rabbit hole of a developing country after more than 5 years of typing in a homogenous environment.

4. Bootstrap a New Idea: Now is as good a time as any to lock yourself in your home office, collect employment insurance, and launch something you couldn't work on during your day job.

So you’re Canadian — ah shit…

You know how your company was the one that sponsored you into this wonderful land of typing and unlimited soda? Yeah, that could be an issue. Grad school will get you a student visa, but Uncle Sam is definitely taking care of his own before he gives a handout to us illegals. That being said, you no longer have to be in the Valley to get funding, incubate a company, or gain exposure.

I've already featured Boulder-based TechStars, but feast your eyes on our very own homegrown incubator – Bootup Labs.

Based out of Vancouver, land of the country's first safe injection site, first failed NBA franchise team and where I had my first car accident, Bootup Labs spends 9 months making companies presentable for first round funding. The lovely Rebecca Reeve and I will be planning a party at the end of this month with Bootup Labs cofounders Boris Mann and Danny Robinson. Bring your startup ideas, your beer cozies and your healthy hatred for Nickelback.

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This is from Nathan Smith, a User Experience Developer in Dallas, Texas.

Asking for information that a user might not have on-hand kills site conversion. I was consulting for a large e-commerce site, and one of the questions they asked potential international travelers was the social security number of those in their traveling party.

When it came to the spouse’s SSN question, we saw a steep drop-off between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., outside of which completion was in the high 90 percent range.

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Disclosure: I’m a Mac user. I’ve been one for over 18 years. But I don’t drink the koolaid.

Every time I change jobs, I usually start doing wireframes in a different application. One place I worked at, their language of choice was .NET; another place, it was Java.

On a message list I subscribe to, someone put across the usual, “We want to make the case to get everyone Macs and convert from Visio to Omnigraffle.” Now, I’m all for feeding the Apple obsession as much as everyone, but the religious wars are over.

Tools, schomools. If it looks like a hammer, use it.

Here’s a few reasons why I think the whole tool argument is pointless:

You say tomato, I say tomato

Most of the applications are close enough to each other in feature sets that it really shouldn’t matter much. Other than a few random features here and there, Visio and Omnigraffle are so close that Visio files import cleanly, and some of the templates each use are identical across platforms down to the annotations.

My clients can’t tell which wireframe or site map came from which program, and I seriously get very few requests for “Ya know, this looks like a Visio file.” They do say, “Nice detail.”

The same arguments go on in software development regarding Java and .NET, yet semantically, they’re almost the same. Most Mac and PC Programs are identical.

Why start a religious war when you don’t have to?

We should be familiar with all the tools

I know, some of us had a career before the web, and mine was print. I used to work in a service bureau, and had to output print files to film (remember printer’s film?). Occasionally, we had to fix something, so that meant I had to have enough familiarity with the programs to use them at a competent level.

Because of this, I’ve probably used over 30 graphic programs to open files, fix files, and design work. Remember Aldus PhotoStyler? CorelDraw? Macromedia Freehand? CricketGraph? I do. and I’ve used everything from Quark Xpress to Adobe InDesign to get concepts across.

Our job is to know software and how to communicate; consequently, we should be able to figure out how to use the programs despite their usability issues.

It’s about getting the idea across, not about the tool

I’ve never had a client say, “You know, Omnigraffle is the best way to do this.” They always were, “We just want the results.” While we all have our favorite tools, it’s not about the tool, it’s the process. If that means jumping between Microsoft Word to write a report to Visio to build a wireframe, that’s what it takes. One of the other IAs I know uses PowerPoint. I would never use it, but she has made it work with tons of clients.

The ideas behind the wireframes are what’s most important: I’ve seen information architects that generated the worst looking wireframes be some of the most effective because they took the time with the client or the developers to talk through the issues.

If it works on butcher paper, and the client is happy, butcher paper it is!

The takeaway — it’s what the team prefers

If you are that much in favor of one platform or program over another, fight for it. If you’re the only person there, you’re going to pick your tools usually.

But if you work on a team, consider how everyone works together before you advocate something. Just because you have a personal preference, someone else might not feel the same.

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Writing less. Saying more.

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I’m going to pick a fight.

Consumerist’s user agreement:

Except as otherwise set forth in this User Agreement, by transmitting any public Communication to the Site, you grant Consumer Media an irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, unrestricted, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, reproduce, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, modify, edit, create derivative works from, incorporate into one or more compilations and reproduce and distribute such compilations, and otherwise exploit such Communications, in all media now known or later developed. You warrant that you have the right to grant these rights to Consumer Media and that you will not post any content that infringes or violates any proprietary, privacy or publicity, or other rights of any party or that violates any law. You hereby waive all rights generally known as “moral rights” in your Communications to the extent they can be waived, under any existing or future law of any jurisdiction.

Facebook’s user agreement:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

They look awfully similar. Or, famous white trash proverb:

If you live in a glass house, don’t throw stones.

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One of the reasons I love the web is because it repeats the same story lines, over and over again. For example, here’s a story that came out, and I’m removing references to the social network in question for your own humor:

Today, [insert your favorite social media network here] changed the terms of service, much to the protests of the users who use the service for free. The revision grants [insert your favorite social media network here] complete, perpetual ownership of content uploaded or added to [insert your favorite social media network here] – including the rights to sublicense said content.

[insert your favorite social media network here] Terms of Use previously stated that material uploaded onto the site falls under the license of the company. Prior to the update, however, users that removed their content from [insert your favorite social media network here] legally forfeited its license to their material, though the socnet reserved the right to maintain archives.

The users invaded the blogosphere, stating their disagreement to the new policy.

[insert mad blogger here who uses said social network] said, “Yo, this sucks. I’m not paying for the service, but they shouldn’t be able to do that with my content stored on their servers. I’m going to cancel my account and blog about it. They suck.”

Blah blah blah, blah blah, blah.

Back to the real world, folks.

A lot of this terms of service is realistically about as enforceable as a non-compete agreement in California (and for those of you that don’t know, non-competes in California are so limited, you’re better off setting it on fire than trying to enforce it). Lawyers are supposed to overreach, it’s in their blood. That’s how they compromise. Until this document is challenged, it doesn’t mean much, anyways.

I would have loved to be in the office of those lawyers:

“Hey, I think we missed a few things in that terms of service,” said Facebook lawyer one. “Should we add a couple of lines?”

“How about we own them forever? What do you think? How much will page views go up?” Said Facebook lawyer two.

It’s kind of like driving down the highway: there are tons of laws that could be invoked if you are even doing the speed limit, but common sense says the cops can’t pull over everyone, and even if they do pull you over, there’s a good chance the case will get thrown out of court because most courts operate on some level of common sense.

Lawyers do all kinds of things that bend the law as far as it will before it breaks, from working at a company to constructing terms of service. Their job is to always protect their client. Facebook’s lawyers are protecting theirs.

I’ve been doing this for too long to realize what they are doing, and I’m like a lot of other bloggers (Greg Bussmann, Wet Asphalt, Art Fag City, TechCrunch): not really that worried. This seems more to be a few blogs looking to get some traffic (and I’ll take all the traffic I can get).

In fact, I see this as more of an attempt for Consumerist to justify it’s Alexa Ranking than real news. How about looking into the data collection issues of retailers in the United States, yo.

Here’s a few truths about social networks and their terms of service:

Facebook would be crazy to license the materials

Hypothetical: let’s say Andy Warhol rises from the dead and posts one of his famous Campbell Soup prints to Facebook. Do you really think they would sell the print on eBay? Hell, no. That part is virtually unenforceable from both a legal and a realistic standpoint. There’s a story over at the New York Times where the artist that designed the Obama artwork is getting sued by Associated Press. No matter what companies think, there are laws protecting people’s copyrights.

Companies put all kinds of crazy statements in the terms of service — stuff up unto giving up rights to your first born — but it doesn’t mean it’s some kind of legal document that’s going to stand up in court. If there’s a lawsuit, judges and juries tend to side with the law or common sense, which ever comes first. What it really means is that all aggregate data Facebook puts together they can sell as market research, but they aren’t going to sell your photos.

Your supermarket and credit card companies probably collect more information on you when you use your card than Facebook can. And the reality is that Facebook and MySpace collect so much information, there’s physically no way to digest it all at the level that it would endanger your privacy (I’ve even been told as much by some of the network engineers that work at the companies).

And for public relations purposes, Facebook would go out of it’s way to contact and/or compensate you, to avoid backlash. Even if they did use your likeness in an advertisements, they would probably contact you first. There’s case law around this. Please, be informed.

Removing content damages the landscape of any social network

I used to run a message board ages ago (ages being early 2000, but consider internet dog years and the grey hair in my goatee), and the most difficult issue was dealing with users we had to ban (and we had to ban a few of them). They would stand upon their soapbox and say nasty stuff, and then I would get a phone call at 3 a.m. along the lines of, “This person said this, you have to take it off the board. Waaa!!!!”

No matter where you are at, stuff you put on the web is up there forever, as Chris Brogan points out.

Social networks are a functioning ecosystem akin to weather’s butterfly effect: what happens in one place on the system and it’s resulting effects tends to magnify across the entire network. There were particular people that, looking back, I wish we hadn’t banned. even if they were horrible people and killed cats, because the outrage wasn’t worth the trouble. The reality is that sometimes responding to the issue is worse than the issue itself. Seriously, in a message board, how do you delete replies to a nasty post? Some of those threads went on for over 100 replies.

What Facebook is really trying to do is this: let’s say they put part of the service behind a subscription wall. With this new agreement, they can charge subscriptions and not have to worry about paying customers for their content. Imagine if customers decided, “Yo, I don’t want my content anymore?” What an awful mess that would be, programatically. And again, one of the undecided issues of the digital era is, who does own that content?

You aren’t paying for the service, Facebook, or better yet, their advertisers are

Rule number one about online services: they aren’t charities. They’re there to make money, and if you forget that nothing is really for free, it’s all about the library, the candlestick, and the butler. Get a clue.

On a few of the social networks I’m on, when something happens that the users don’t like, the users stand upon the mountains with their ten commandments, shouting at how awful the service is, even though they aren’t footing the bill. “The moderators are Hilteresque,” they rant. “Something should be done,” they howl.

I’ve footed the bill for some awful users that bordered on needing psychiatric treatment. I’m going to challenge every single blogger to do this: if you don’t like it, start your own damn service.

Whomever the founders are, whether it be the MySpace gang or Mark Zuckerberg, or your mom, they’re the one’s that put in their own sweat to start something that has millions of users. Sometimes, they have to make unpopular decisions, knowing some blogger somewhere (like me, for example) is going to say something about it. If they make too many unpopular decisions, they lose customers (read, Friendster). But they are running a business, and sometimes forcing a new set of requirements, whether it be new user experience or a reworded terms of service.

Millions of people might gripe a bit, but move on with their lives.

Some people start groups. Others blog about it. Very few actually do anything about it of any note.

It’s good business to lose a particular set of customers

The realities of business is that some policies (like bandwidth throttling by Comcast, for example) may not be popular with a particular set of users, but a) those users are not only a pain in the ass but are also unprofitable, and b) those users compromise less than one percent of the user base, yet probably eat up about 10 to 20 percent of the resources.

The same is true of marketers that use MySpace and Facebook, considering that most of the people that make money off the services aren’t employed by the services: they eat a considerable amount of resources, and of course Facebook would want to limit them.

Businesses do this all the time: they make changes to their business model or the groups they employ so they feel they can be more profitable. This includes from changing of policies to laying off workers. It doesn’t mean it’s right, but it’s just part of business.

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

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I love lists. I especially love “Top 10″ lists because anything with more items than that are too hard for me to remember. I think anyone who has worked on a website project can relate to some part of this: 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites from Smashing Magazine.

Here’s the list, but check the article itself for detailed descriptions of these:

1. You Need A Separate Web Division
2. Managing Your Website Is A Full-Time Job
3. Periodic Redesign Is Not Enough
4. Your Website Cannot Appeal To Everyone
5. You Are Wasting Money On Social Networking
6. Your Website Is Not All About You
7. You're Not Getting Value From Your Web Team
8. Design By Committee Brings Death
9. A CMS Is Not A Silver Bullet
10. You Have Too Much Content

I’ve worked with several clients who have implemented content management systems without realizing the implications of the technology — my role included assisting them with “content scrubbing” before their public go live date.

Consequently, You Have Too Much Content is always on my mind.

Part of the problem with content maintenance on large corporate websites is that there is too much content in the first place. Just because there’s no limit to the amount of text you can put on the web means you should put everything, but most companies do. Most of these websites have "evolved" over years, with more and more content having been added.

Some projects I have worked with have over 10 years of content that’s grown like the Winchester Mystery House; with larger website implementations, few review the content and asked what could be taken away, because content migration and governance is never planned for at any stage of the evolution.

Many website managers fill their website with copy that nobody will read; this happens because of:

• A fear of missing something: by putting everything online, they believe users will be able to find whatever they want. Unfortunately, with so much information available, it is hard to find anything.
• A fear users will not understand: whether from a lack of confidence in their website or in their audience, they feel the need to provide endless instruction to users. Unfortunately, users never read this copy.
• A desperate desire to convince: they are desperate to sell their product or communicate their message, and so they bloat the text with sales copy that actually conveys little valuable information.

Steve Krug, in his book Don't Make Me Think, encourages website managers to "Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left." This will reduce the noise level on each page and make the useful content more prominent.

In a few cases, the clients have done the right thing: they have taken the opportunity to”clean” their content along with presenting a new look and feel of a new public website. More often, corporate website projects are under such tight deadlines to complete a project from a technical point of view, the very content that needs to be managed is not considered until the last moment.

Many organizations, particularly ones where there might be many content owners, struggle with knowing how much is too much and when it’s appropriate for something to be removed or archived.   Furthermore, some organizations only address these issues when they are doing large revamps  or overhauls of their sites and “content freshness” is rarely a high priority item.

There are no hard and fast rules about managing content, but I think what a lot of organizations fail to do is even consider these issues, nor do they lay down any rough guidelines for content owners to work within.

The takeaways:

• The reality is most corporate websites could get away with 20 pages, tops. Just because the page is up there doesn’t mean anyone’s going to visit it.
• When putting up content in the first place, think about how that content will grow in the next five years. Then plan for it.
• When migrating content to a new site, build in time to pare the content — don’t think it’s a straight migration, because the new site will have a completely different information architecture.
• At the very least, establish content standards before the project begins. Remember, it’s a content management system, not a technical management system.

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This is our first test of podcasting, so bear with me. It’s with Greg Phillips of Clariscope, who’s offering a great class teaching new Information Architects how to either be one, or improving existing IA’s skillset to better understand the User Experience process. I spent about 20 minutes talking with him today.

Download the MP3.

[podcast]/_podcast/usabilitycounts.com-001.mp3[/podcast]

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