I’m at Device Design Day in San Francisco, California today.

You can follow what I have to say on Twitter at @UsabilityCounts  (the feed will be heaver than usual because I’ll be commenting a bit).They’re also using the hashtag of #d3.

Cheers.

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I think this article is important because many times, user experience professionals have to work to change culture. They also have design web applications that have to spread virally.

If this is really true, this holds all kinds of implications. Do you design applications to appeal to 10 percent of the audience? Do you target smaller groups? Fascinating.

“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”

…

An important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion holders are working. In other words, the percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society.

…

The scientists developed computer models of various types of social networks. One of the networks had each person connect to every other person in the network. The second model included certain individuals who were connected to a large number of people, making them opinion hubs or leaders. The final model gave every person in the model roughly the same number of connections. The initial state of each of the models was a sea of traditional-view holders. Each of these individuals held a view, but were also, importantly, open minded to other views.

Once the networks were built, the scientists then "sprinkled" in some true believers throughout each of the networks. These people were completely set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs. As those true believers began to converse with those who held the traditional belief system, the tides gradually and then very abruptly began to shift.

This is huge. Read on…

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As a trade for that great series, I wrote a post over at Nomad Chique about travel applications for the iPhone. Enjoy.

I want mobile applications to fill a very specific need. I might have several applications on my phone like that. When you consider how much traveling costs, I think spending $25 for a few applications is worth the investment for a better trip.

The best applications are designed with the user experience in mind, by filling needs within the context of your trip. For example:

• Is my flight delayed?
• How much does it cost for a taxi to my hotel from the airport?
• Where do I get something to eat that's inexpensive, but recommended by locals?
• How do I get to a neighborhood?
• How do I call a taxi?
• Where's free WiFi if I'm out of the country?

Read on…

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Great ideas come from collaborative teams working as one:

The reason the studios were so important for Hitchcock is that they allowed him to cultivate the right kind of creative team. While the director relied on many longstanding partners, such as his decade-long relationship with the editor George Tomasini and cinematographer Robert Burks, he also routinely brought in new talent, including John Steinbeck, Raymond Chandler and Salvador Dali.

For instance, on  North by Northwest, a classic Cary Grant thriller, Hitchcock insisted on working with Ernest Lehman, a screenwriter best known for  Sabrina. It was, at first glance, a peculiar choice:  Sabrina  was a romantic comedy, and Hitchcock had been hired to create a dark suspense movie. But Hitchcock knew what he was doing. In fact, he gave Lehman a tremendous amount of creative freedom. (Hitchcock's only requirement was that the plot contain three elements: a case of mistaken identity, the United Nations building and a chase scene across the face of Mt. Rushmore.) Although it took Lehman more than a year to write the script, the wait was worth it. "I wanted to write the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures," Lehman said.

And that's exactly what he did.

Great read…

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With Tom Anderson from MySpace. Really.

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It’s here.

The iPhone app is coming soon.

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Classic:

“One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o’clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they’re looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an asshole. This was the latter case.”

I wish I had something that was worth $100 million.

Even $30 million.

I wouldn’t be suing, I’d be enjoying my life.

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Luke Wroblewski disclosed a couple of numbers in Design Solutions for Log In Problems that were interesting (and close to what I had long suspected):

User Interface Engineering’s  analysis of a major online retailer  found that 45% of all customers had multiple registrations in the system, 160,000 people requested passwords per day, and 75% of these people never completed the purchase they started once they requested their password. Ouch.

And…

When someone connects their Facebook or Twitter account to a Web site, they simply need to click the Sign In with Facebook or Twitter button to log in. Of course, they need to be signed in with the account provider to have things work with one click. But since 50% of Facebook’s 500 million active users  log on to Facebook in any given day  -odds are good one click is all it will take.

Over 50 percent of the internet users in the U.S. have a Facebook account. That’s a pretty good hit rate. What does that mean?

In one click, they’re in like Flynn? That’s great usability, yo!

In that same article, he talks about their approach of requiring people to type in their name so they can figure out which social account they used to sign in with Facebook. It’s a few less clicks, but there might be something here.

“Whenever I have to sign into Bagcheck, I’m filled with anxiety. Not because I don’t love the service, but because of the log in screen. I cannot remember whether I signed up through Facebook, Twitter or if I should know some special entry credentials.”

While I’m not in total agreement with their design approach, Bagcheck’s designers partnered with engineering to spend some time on this approach to see if this eases the friction for signing in. This partnership is important, because developers didn’t see it as “wasting time” but “gaining valuable insight into user  behavior.” You need to try ideas and measure results to learn from your users.

Once you enter your name, they know exactly which service you used, and hide the other service (here, Facebook is hidden).

Quora’s been trying a few different login ideas too to ease that friction. Many of them have some kind of auto-suggest or cookied identification as part of the process.

I would think once they login once with the social account, you could easily grab their profile photo and name and identify this is the account they signed in with, right?

Read the complete article…

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Note: I’m moving it because I have a conflict with a cocktail party. Cocktail parties are always first!

As an experiment, I’ve decided to start Google Plus Hangout Thursday, July 21 at 6pm PST. It’ll go until I run out of whiskey.

We’ll talk about anything and everything User Experience, San Francisco, and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, not necessarily in that order. I know the room is limited to 10 people, but I wanted to see how many people showed up. It should be a hoot. I’m not the smartest User Experience professional out there (that’s for Jakob Nielsen, and he’ll tell ya :) ), but my opinions are my own.

The guest list is…

• Myself,  Patrick Neeman  — Director of User Experience at Jobvite
• Kristen Johansen  — Senior Director of Product at Lynda.com

I promise it will be a Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan free zone.

I’m going to broadcast it to people that are part of my User Experience circle. To add me, visit  my Google Plus profile. Drop me a note, I’ll send you a calendar reminder.

If you want a Google Plus invite, ping me on my  Twitter feed.

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Great article:

Exhibit 1 for this argument: Apple. In the better, faster, cheaper era of the engineer, Apple version 1.0 fell to the brink of irrelevance. …  Steve Jobs  (full disclosure: his picture is on my wall of heroes) decided to compete using a different rule set. He pulled Apple out of the era of the engineer and into the era of marketing. Today the iPhone has set the standard for what a cell phone should be. But by the standards of better, faster cheaper, the iPhone is pretty terrible. It doesn't have the fastest processor or the most memory or the highest display resolution. Yet it's the phone I want. Why? Because Apple has developed a core competency of customer understanding.

In the coming decades, success will be defined by the ability to understand the complex problems that customers face, and the ability to solve these problems elegantly.

Someday a kid will say, “When I grow up, I want to be a user experience expert.” When that happens, we all should be proud.

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This is wonderful. I don’t know how I missed this. You all should buy the album.

The song list is here. The lyrics are here.

Props to Kevin and Bean for putting them on the show.

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Think it’s original enough?

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They’re going to use other social networks to drive traffic back to their Google Plus.

That’s evil. And brilliant. And obvious.

Facebook, welcome to the open web.

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As an experiment, I’ve decided to start Google Plus Hangout Tuesday, July 19 at 6pm PST. It’ll go until I run out of whiskey.

We’ll talk about anything and everything User Experience, San Francisco, and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, not necessarily in that order. I know the room is limited to 10 people, but I wanted to see how many people showed up. It should be a hoot. I’m not the smartest User Experience professional out there (that’s for Jakob Nielsen, and he’ll tell ya :) ), but my opinions are my own.

The guest list is…

• Myself, Patrick Neeman — Director of User Experience at Jobvite
• Kristen Johansen — Senior Director of Product at Lynda.com

I promise it will be a Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan free zone.

I’m going to broadcast it to people that are part of my User Experience circle. To add me, visit my Google Plus profile.

If you want a Google Plus invite, ping me on my Twitter feed.

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I’ll keep this short — the one feature Google Plus Circles is missing is weighting.

Here’s why:

Their current algorithm contributes to the Scoble Effect — Someone “big in Europe Half Moon Bay” posts something on there, and people keep commenting…and commenting…and commenting. That post stays to the very top, and my friends (who are not exactly few on Google Plus because some of them are among the digirati) are being pushed down. Even Scoble’s calling it a virus.

The most important people in my life are not Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan.

Because everyone wants tons of followers on Google Plus because of their follower model (like Twitter, not Facebook), and the low signal to noise ratio compared to Twitter, they’re going out of their way to comment on posts by people like Robert Scoble. Google Buzz had the same problem, which is why Facebook follows a different notification model.

Well, now that I can group friends, I should be able to weight how important some of the friends’ news is. For example, if I weighted my personal friends at 25 percent higher than everyone else, I should see their posts first above a Scoble or Solis.

What if you could control your own algorithm? Now, that would be cool. That would be Googlesque. More importantly, it would not be Facebook.

All it would take is a one slider — this group is more important versus less important to my feed. That’s all.

The filtering to the left is good, but it’s not enough — we should be able to create our own alogrithms. We filter in our mind, why can’t we see better streams here?  

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Apply Here..

The Job Description

Have you read Linked? Do you get excited whenever Twitter releases a new feature? Do you use Facebook and LinkedIn for professional purposes? Do you enjoy creating social products? Do you enjoy working in an iterative, collaborative environment?

If the answers are yes and you want to change the world for jobseekers, you need to join the Jobvite Product Team.

Jobvite is looking for a Contract Interaction Designer who can improve our already groundbreaking products within the recruitment market.   You must be excited about the user experience process, and love collaborating with Product Managers to build bleeding edge products in the social recruiting space. You must also understand Facebook, Twitter and the social ecosystem, and can bring that vision for next generation social product to Jobvite. You must love talking to recruiters, collaborating on product ideas, working with   developers to create great user experiences.

You get extra credit points if you like designing the product in wireframes and can complete visual designs in production level comps!

The Role

Candidates should have at least 5 years of successful interaction design experience developing consumer web applications, with experience integrating with social platforms. The ideal candidate will have the ability to   work with Product Managers to create well-designed solutions. Experience working with Agile; we are constantly iterating and work fast to stay one step ahead of the development team.

Responsibilities

• Translate requirements into concepts and elegant user experience design
• Create interaction models, user task flows, screen designs, and UI details that promote ease of use, improving and optimizing the user experience
• Develop and maintain high-level wireframes and navigation maps that communicate your design ideas
• Build prototypes to demonstrate and test your recommendations
• Gauge the usability of new and existing product features and make constructive critiques and, if needed, suggestions for change

Requirements

• Outstanding portfolio of proven, innovative, solid work
• Extensive experience developing complex web application interfaces and a passion for designing compelling, user experiences
• 2 to 5 years of experience designing for applications/systems
• Demonstrated experience in creating various prototype methods and knowledge of best practices
• Clear communication, organization, and writing abilities
• Ability to multi-task, prioritize projects, and communicate timelines
• Experience designing for social sites and applications
• Experience designing for B2B web applications
• Experience with Omnigraffle, PowerPoint and Photoshop
• Ability to mockup ideas in HTML/CSS

Pluses

• Visual Design Skills in the consumer space

Apply Here..

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Great Post. So true.

Technically, the only difference between an installed app and a website is that the app has access to more of your device’s hardware. Platonically, from a human-need perspective, they’re the exact same thing: A collection of tools and information that lets you do something.

• It’s a particular garden or destination.
• You have to learn that it exists.
• You have to understand what functionality it offers or what tasks it lets you accomplish.
• You have to know how to navigate to it.
• You have to learn how to use it.
• You have to establish a relationship with it: by downloading, creating an account; paying for it.
• You have to remember it the next time you want to use it.

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Glad iMovie Pro works so well for them.

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