Archive for the 'Usability' Category

From GigaOm:

No, I’m not blown away by the 160 million number. What I’m impressed by is the thinking behind Ping.

Ping may function like a cross between Facebook and Twitter for iTunes by allowing you to follow celebrities, create social cliques and get artist updates via an activity stream. I think it could have tremendous impact on social sharing and commerce.

…

Ping, from what little I saw during Steve Jobs’ demo, allows a similar level of social interaction. It can tell me who my friends think are cool and the top 10 favorites of people in my social graph. Some of my friends are famous deejays. Others just have eclectic musical tastes. They can collectively sift through over 10 million songs and help with the discovery of music. This social-powered discovery is part of the biggest theme of our times: serendipity.

…

What if they too could share their likes and dislikes via a social layer inside Amazon.com? Or what if I could follow my favorite authors and get updates on their books? Much like Apple, Amazon owns book-based social service, Shelfari, and should find ways to embed the social layer inside of all Amazon products and connect its tens of millions of users.

In this model, if there is absolutely no friction to purchase (and let’s admit it, there is no friction to purchase, because iTunes is one of the easiest purchasing models in the world, artists are going to flock here.

If Apple opens the site up to a self service model, could you imagine what happens to the labels, not just MySpace?

From TechDirt:

Both Microsoft and Yahoo failed to jump into keyword search in any serious way until long after Google established it as a giant business. At that point, both tried to play catch-up, with Yahoo buying Overture and Microsoft rebuilding its product — and as we’ve also seen over and over again, by waiting that long, it was too late. The two companies still haven’t come anywhere close to catching up in market share, even if the technology is considered to be about equal at this point.

So the fear of some big company coming out and just “copying” you is generally overblown. If your idea is really disruptive, they probably won’t recognize it, and by the time they do, you’ll have a big head start, and their attempts to copy what you did will prove a lot more difficult than they expected.

How many newspapers are going to close because of the creative destruction of Craigslist?

From AppleInsider:

The next version of iTunes, available today, includes Ping, a social music discovery tool that allows users to follow friends and artists, helping customers to discover and share new music.

“It’s sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said of the entirely new Ping service. He described it as a social network all about music, built in to iTunes.

The product is based on discovery, allowing users to see what their friends are listening to and what concerts they’re going to.

Users can choose to “follow” artists, as well as their friends, and iTunes will populate a customized top 10 list that represents what their friends are downloading. Users can also see concerts that are coming near them, and inform their friends that they will be attending.

If artists can connect with fans on iTunes, is there really a need for MySpace, a place for music?

That’s about right.

What if some of the most famous online services were launched in 1959? That’s what Sao Paulo ad agency Moma imagined when the released this 3 part series of fake vintage ads for Facebook, YouTube and Skype. The “Everything Ages Fast” ad campaign is Mad Menera imagery that would look perfect in vintage copies of Esquire…more below!

Very cool.

From OKCupid:

The chart pretty much speaks for itself; I’ll just say that the numbers for all three brands are for 30 year-olds, so it’s not a matter of older, more experienced people preferring one phone to another. We found this data as part of our general camera-efficacy analysis: we crossed all kinds of user behaviors with the camera models and found we had data on the number of sexual partners for 9,785 people with smart phones. We dropped what we found into Excel, and voila.

This is part of a larger article where OKCupid did a statistical analysis of photo ratings they captured through their site. The best part — 11.4 million opinions on what makes a great photo.

Very cool.

Google agrees. Ha.

From UX Magazine:

In some cultures complex products are more appealing than products that appear simple. In South Korea, for example, products like refrigerators are designed to appear more complex than non-Korean ones, even when the prices and specifications are very similar, because that complexity is equated with sophistication and value, and is thus a symbol of prosperity.

Don Norman’s justification…

Why are Yahoo! and MSN such complex-looking places? Because their systems are easier to use. Not because they are complex, but because they simplify the life of their users by letting them see their choices on the home page: news, alternative searches, other items of interest.

It’s really in context. On-Star hides it’s complexity behind a single button or automated systems, but it’s still complex. Some products (think that The Onion Video about Sony) should be complex because of the context of their user base. It’s all about who you’re targeting.

From InsideRIA:

As with any successful, new, and vaguely-defined industry, the User Experience field has brought with it a lot of confusion, and created a lot of confused people. Confused clients, who know they need User Experience expertise but are unsure of how to get it, and a confused work-force, who has started labeling themselves as User Experience experts without really understanding it. This group is very well-intentioned, and either doesn’t know the difference between what they do and real User Experience work or are just as eager to learn as anyone else. Yet they know that talking about User Experience sells projects and so continue to talk it up.

What Makes A User Experience Expert?

• They run discovery sessions.
• They focus on user stories.
• They do user research.
• They’re often not visual designers.
• Finally, they know that good User Experience is really the same thing as Customer Service.

Read on…