Usability Counts | User Experience, Social Media

If You Want To Send Out Viruses, Hire A Graphic Designer For Your Spam

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:25:26 +0000

So funny. So funny.Similar Posts:

Cool Website Tuesdays: Every Person In New York

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:00:29 +0000

This guy is sketching everyone in New York City. All 8 million of them.

Very cool.Similar Posts:

Why I Dislike Flash

Patrick Neeman — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:00:18 +0000

There’s been some hubbub going around about how Flash won’t be included on the iPad, mainly because Steve Jobs considers it a memory hog and unneeded once there are other ways to play online video.

While he did claim that Flash would drain the battery of an iPad from 10 hours to 1.5 hours with Flash on, here’s an interesting stat:

Battery life on newer MacBook Pros has been as shrinking by over an hour with Flash active, although the faster processors and added memory help absorb some of the performance concerns.

Outside of playing video, run of the mill HTML with Javascript libraries is more than enough for most websites, and if you have a technology that’s draining systems that much, is it really worth supporting?

Flash is buggy and a memory hog and consequently, a poor user experience

This seems to be the biggest complaint. Microsoft tries to make Flash play well with Windows, even though they have their own product Silverlight. Most online video requires a Flash player, so they have to support it. The bottom line: operating system developers are maintaining changes for a plug in because the developer isn’t doing their job.

Or, someone else other than the author is supporting technology needs.

It’s a hard job making it work with all of the browsers and platforms, but in all honesty, Adobe decided to pick that battle when they bought Macromedia. I’ve experienced browser freezes on Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 across Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. For it to not work and crash on so many systems (and mind you, I have a MacBook Pro and a Sony loaded with tons of RAM), that’s just sloppy development and an embarrassment to Adobe.

I recently tried to do some remote usability testing using DimDim, a free service. They have a Flash-based conferencing product that allows you to do screen sharing. Not a trivial task from a programming point of view, but Adobe supports it.

After 30 minutes, we could not get it to work, so now I’m using GoToMeeting.

Honestly, it was a buggy issue. Every time the browser tried to launch, it crashed.

That said, the number one rule of User Experience should be: “If it crashes, the user has a poor experience.” Adobe, with their wonderful graphics applications, should understand it. I have no idea how many quality assurance people are on Flash, but they need more.

Flash confuses users

During the DimDim installation, there’s this security dialog that is run of the mill for us internet types, but most users, they freak out and want to go home. (The person I was testing kept cancelling at that point). Just recently, I was talking to a video publisher, and he was saying that at that point, 50 percent of the users that attempt to share video cancel the action at the security dialog.

Recently, I’ve been seeing confusing error messages on several sites (Mashable being one of them) about “security issues” regarding Flash. I selected the Settings button on the dialog, and was redirected to the Adobe site.

This is what I got. I consider myself a Web Expert, and I found this dialog confusing.

Can you imagine most of the Web trying to figure this out?

Outside of online video and some Flex apps, Flash isn’t needed

It is very easy to encode video with Flash. But outside of online video and a few Flex apps like TweetDeck, I personally have no use for Flash. HTML with jQuery achieves most if not all of the user interface needs I need to do elegant UX work.

The Virgin America decision to not use Flash on their site is a great example. They have a clean, easy to use site and a user base that is highly connected to mobile, and more importantly, the iPhone. To book a flight, does someone really need a full video with spinning cursors and animating tabs to pick the best time to fly from LAX to JFK?

No.

It becomes a simple business decision for a company like Virgin America.

There are 70 million iPhone users. They represent over 60 percent of the mobile web traffic. Apple won’t support Flash — guess what?

No Flash for Virgin America.

If I were a Product Manager on a site that had a highly mobile component and I made a decision to ignore those 70 million or so iPhone users (most of whom, seriously, make good money and like to spend it on toys like the iPhone), I should be fired if I ignored them.

The upside — Flash is on the way out

HTML 5 apparently has support for video without Flash (YouTube is running a beta now if you use Chrome, Firefox and the Chrome plug-in on Internet Explorer). If you take away some of the ads, and do most of the normal animations using jQuery, what do you really need Flash for?Similar Posts:

Mobile Social Networking Up For Everyone Except for MySpace

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:41:15 +0000

From comScore:

The study found that 30.8 percent of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up 8.3 points from 22.5 percent one year ago. Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112 percent in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347-percent jump.

“Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser.”

All channels, all devices, baby.

30% of smartphone users accessed social networks via mobile browsers — this was up from 22.5% in 2009.
Total social networking access via mobile browsers on all mobile phones rose to 11.1% — this was up from 6.5% in 2009. Most of this growth was in the uptick in smartphone usage.

How does MySpace survive if their mobile-centric audience uses their mobile site less?Similar Posts:

How To Increase Conversion: Red Buttons

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:00:28 +0000

This became an inside joke I at the Online Marketing Summit, one of my clients. I was doing the drinking thang (networking, talking with attendees), and I always have one gimmick that I go with at an event as an icebreaker.

The joke was, “so how do you increase conversion?”

“Red Buttons.”

I’m sure Red Buttons the comedian didn’t know he was going to be the punchline for a user experience jokes. “I’m here on Tuesdays, tip your waitress, next up They Might Be Giants…”

But…

That’s not always the case, as stated in this great tool that’s been around for a year, Which Test Won.

Which Test Won is a great little site that does what we all want: publish the results of A/B tests for ideas of better site conversion.

In the red button/grey button test, Verizon tried two versions of a home page, one with red buttons everywhere, and one with a single red button. The main call to action was a gray button.

Can you guess which one won? Go to the site to see.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturday: Owen Van Natta as Hitler Finds Out He Was Fired From MySpace

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:00:02 +0000

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Facebook Patents The Newsfeed: What’s Next, Instant Messaging?

Patrick Neeman — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:50:26 +0000

All of the opinions below are mine, and only mine.

On top of everything else happening in the social space (Google Buzz, everyone leaving MySpace, Facebook changes), this happens: Facebook Patents The Newsfeed. You can read the full copy of the patent here.

Now before we all have a “What the hell moment,” here’s a few things to remember:

Some patents are virtually unenforceable

Various companies have patented the shopping cart, the GIF image, the one-click purchase, and the affiliate program. The one-click purchase made Jeff Bezos look like a fool for a while, especially after they went after Barnes and Noble.

If you’ve noticed, none are really enforced, except for the GIF image patent, which there’s “sometimes” a $5,000 licensing fee. Unisys at one point threatened to go after every website that had a GIF image somewhere on the site.

That was popular.

A few patents, like the one-click purchase and the affiliate program, have given rise to protests and eventual defeat of a lot of the claims Amazon had over the business process. Most of those patents are violated every second of the day because they are ubiquitous and so mainstream there’s no way to enforce them.

Some patents are more for defense against large competitors

While it doesn’t make sense for Facebook to sue everyone, I’m sure they’re thinking about what they can bring up against Google, MySpace and a few other large properties with a newsfeed.

Other places are probably thinking about how to rearchitect their solutions now to avoid any patent infringement.

That said, if you’re running a site that isn’t one of the top 1,000, I don’t think Facebook is going to be sending a lawyer your way anytime soon.

Some patents are for getting money out of people and for increasing market value

One of the few points people forget about Google is that the concept of AdWords wasn’t invented by them — it was patented by GoTo.com. I’ll admit that Google does it much better than GoTo/Overture ever did, but it was enough of a threat that Google eventually settled with Yahoo!, who had purchased Overture.

The lawsuit against Google related to its AdWords service. In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections – a tactic that had some similarities to Overture’s search-listing auctions.

Following Yahoo!’s acquisition of Overture, the lawsuit was settled with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license.

That patent was probably one of the reasons why Yahoo purchased Overture.

There are holding companies whose purpose is to hold patents. However, they are selective about who they sue because lawyers are expensive. It’s an ROI equation, and there’s no point going after someone without money, right?

GigaOM says:

Friendster, which was recently bought by a Malaysian company, made much of the fact that had obtained five U.S. social networking patents, at times using the patents to scare off the competition, at least in the press.

Scary.

Some patents are declared invalid

The U.S. Patent Office grants a lot of patents — it doesn’t necessarily mean they will stand up in court. Gibson Guitars has been on a tear, suing anyone that produces music simulation software like Guitar Hero. Read more here.

They have yet to win.

What would happen if Facebook went after MySpace in court, and the patent was declared invalid?

What if a single social network invented before Facebook had the same implementation, and Facebook were in violation of the intellectual property of that website? Would that company win $500 million like when Microsoft was sued over the browser plug-in?

GigaOM points out:

The patent is particularly valuable because news-feed style communication has become pervasive since it was launched on Facebook. However, it’s not clear that there aren’t precedents for the technology; for instance, the social network Multiply.com had a similar interface for keeping track of friends’ actions before Facebook launched its own.

Mutliply.com suing Facebook? That would be fun.

What next?

As big as a deal as this may seem, it isn’t until they do something with it. For now, it’s just another asset they have in the universe of Social Media.Similar Posts:

Daily Bunch: ‘Mad Libs’ Style Forms Increased Conversion Rates By 25 To 40 Percent

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:12:45 +0000

I would have never thought of this.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Hitler responds to the iPad

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:00:57 +0000

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Silly Saturdays: The Right Way To Wireframe

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:00:17 +0000

No. Way.Similar Posts:

Google Buzz: Ex-Girlfriends From College Can Be A Bad Thing

Patrick Neeman — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:02:23 +0000

Google guesses who your friends are, including your mistress that your wife doesn’t know about (and then shows everyone this).

This is such an inexact science, because anyone can figure out your email address. We receive so much spam and other garbage through email account (is a shopping site really my friend?) and there are conversations you want private. Those connections are now public by default, as Gizmodo points out:

A girl you slept with in college sends you a message on Gchat, to tell you she has five beautiful children now, and that she doesn’t ever think about you, ever. Ok!
You exchange some messages and a couple emails to be polite. You defuse the situation. You don’t mention it to your current girlfriend, because that would be weird.
Coincidentally, you enable Google Buzz, which adds both your current girlfriend and this lady who you politely deflected.
Your girlfriend checks out your Google profile, sees your friends list, and asks you who that lady is.
You clumsily try to explain, “Oh, it just adds people you talk to automatically,” which only makes things worse.
Fight!
You break up, which was probably a good thing anyway, because your relationship sounded really unhealthy. But you get the point, right?

The situation is so bad, some sites (like Lifehacker) are showing ways to turn off the contact list. Think about it — do you want every telemarketer to be your friend? Facebook has one important filter: you can deny friend requests.

It’s never, ever a good idea to create a social graph the way Google did. That’s why most of the IM clients do the double opt-in approach (and the follower model is killing Twutter).

Google Buzz reinforces the power law online, which means you’ll get to see 100 photos of Jason Calacanis’ dog, or promoting how he pays more than some services, but less than About.com for content

The people you want to talk to automatically become long tail, yet the people who are endlessly self promoting always bubble to the top because they have 11,000 followers, and someone’s always going to make a comment.

Social Customer points out buzz does two things that will simply make it unusable.

It shows threaded conversations and strongly highlights the initiator of those conversations, and makes the comments subservient to the initial post.
It takes posts that have “new” comments and immediately bumps those posts to the topmost position of the viewing window.

This interface will greatly reinforce the existing power law relationships online, and have the effect of greatly reducing the serendipity and interestingness in things like the current Twitter and Facebook interfaces.

Not that many people use Gmail, and most who do are the digirati.

From twittercism:

This is also the first time I’ve noticed how few of my friends actually use Gmail. I loveGmail, and recommend it to everybody, but people are often quite set in their ways, and prefer to stay with Hotmail or Yahoo, irrespective of the lack of features. Looking at my address book, I’m guessing probably less than 20% of my friends have a Gmail address, or even a Google account, for that matter.

Yeah, it’s mad, but it also means Buzz is already limiting my network.

Social networking is an all or nothing game, and if you only have 20 percent of your friends, do you really think the other 50 percent or so are going to create a Gmail account to see Google Buzz?

I think not.

What’s the take away? Not ready for primetime.

I agree with twittercism:

My gut feeling? Unless they make some major changes and improvements to Buzz, and soon, and that includes addressing those privacy issues, it’s never going to be a threat to Twitter or Facebook. It’s just another aggregator. And a bad one, at that.

Everyone sees Facebook as the center of their social graph. They also see Google as the place that wants your information, which is why people won’t trust them with their social graph.

What do you think?Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: User Experience Intern — Costa Mesa, CA

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:00:46 +0000

I know the guy posting this (Brian Salzman), and this is a great position. If you are looking to break in the field, this is a good place to start.

IBM in Costa Mesa, CA has an opening for a paid user experience intern. We are looking for students to start early in 2010 and to work for at least six months. We do not offer summer internships.

IBM interns join multidisciplinary product development teams to design, prototype, and evaluate graphical user interfaces for IBM’s industry-leading database, business intelligence, and content management products. Interns collaborate with user experience colleagues in Silicon Valley and around the world.

Applicants should have some combination of the following skills, experience, and personal characteristics:

Technical and Professional Skills

Ability to learn new technologies quickly
Familiar with graphical user interfaces and style guidelines
Knowledge of User Centered Design methodologies
User interface design experience
Prototyping experience
Usability evaluation experience
Strong interest in Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Software Experience

Software applications for Windows, UNIX or LINUX
User Interface prototyping tools (Visio, Axure, Visual Basic, Photoshop, etc.)
HTML, XML or Javascript
BASIC, C++, Java or other programming languages

Essential Characteristics

Adaptable and dependable
Highly motivated and a self-starter
A good communicator
Works well in teams
An innovative attitude

Education

Internship candidates must be enrolled in a degree program – Preferred candidates will be pursuing a graduate degree with an emphasis on human-computer interaction (HCI). To be competitive, candidates should have HCI coursework and user interface design experience (class projects OK).

Send a resume and cover letter listing HF/HCI courses, programming/prototyping experience, and user interface design experience to:

Brian Salzman
Email: jsalzma@us.ibm.comSimilar Posts:

iPad? iDisapointed.

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:00:31 +0000

Stephanie Bergman is a Social Media and Product Management consultant friend of mine. She’s very sharp, a good compass of where to go. Here’s her opinion of the iPad, and you can find her blog here. And yes, I’ll have my own opinion.

Earlier today, Apple announced the tablet computer the world has been waiting for. And it isn’t quite a tablet or a computer. It’s more of an entertainment device – a “third category” as Steve Jobs put it – and one I don’t really think the world needs.

I’ve never been really excited about the idea of a tablet, so I was biased from the start. A keyboard is pretty essential to me for anything, I type very fast and have no patience for anything that slows me down. That said, I was still curious to see what Apple was going to do beyond making a really big iPod Touch. I mean, this is Steve Jobs, I expect to see a paradigm shift, a massive step forward, a change in the way we do things. That’s where I’m disappointed.

The iPad is a big, expensive ($499 for the cheapest version without 3G), iPod touch.

The positive – there are going to be people who will love this thing (other than the usual Apple fan boys/girls). It’s gorgeous, and if beautiful design is your thing, you’re going to love using this. It’s a nice entertainment device, a decent size to watch television on, iPod, and a good ebook reader. If someone doesn’t have access to a television or other computer, this could fill that gap. Maybe someone with roommates or college students. Business folks will also love whipping this out in a meeting to do a presentation. Assuming, of course, that they don’t mind presenting in Keynote. It’s also going to open up an entirely new world of computer gaming as people innovate with the touch screen interface. Someone who travels a lot would like this as well (battery life is reportedly around 10 hours) – so long as they don’t mind using the screen to type, or carrying another laptop/netbook.

There definitely IS a use for this. I simply don’t think that now is the time for it. It won’t replace a computer – you can’t run Word or PowerPoint on it, you can’t even do something as simple as keep AIM open while surfing the web – and it isn’t a phone either. No camera, no GPS, no keyboard, no Flash. How many programs are you running on the machine you’re reading this post on? You couldn’t do that, it’s clearly not intended for work. This would have to be complimentary, an entertainment-focused device in addition to a computer and phone and a television…and that’s where it loses me. The costs don’t work out.

I’m not the average user, I know that. I have an iPhone, iPod, Netbook, Kindle, and Macbook Pro, and they all have different uses for me. I rarely watch videos online, that’s what the Roku and TiVo are for, and I like being able to curl up in bed with a kindle without having to worry about touching the screen or it rotating. I have absolutely no use for the iPad, it doesn’t offer me anything at all beyond what I already have.

Then there’s a name. Immediately after the presentation was over, the word iTampon was trending on Twitter. The name iPad was not. The jokes are never going to end (in fact, they started years ago), and it gives me crazy giggles to think that there’s an iPeriod app for the iPad.

The bottom line is – there is nothing revolutionary about this. It’s pretty, it’s cool, I’ll absolutely drool over it when I see it, but that’s about it. If any other company had announced this, I would have shrugged. But it’s Apple – I expect innovation, and there’s very little.

Oh well. But hey, it’s first gen. I’ll wait until next year for the brain implant.

Congrats, this is the 500th post on Usability Counts.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Bud Light Clothing Drive

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:00:07 +0000

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Silly Saturdays: Historic ‘Blockbuster’ Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:00:58 +0000

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Silly Saturdays: Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:00:54 +0000

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QuickTip Sundays: The Tag Cloud And Letting The Data Speak For Itself

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:00:00 +0000

If you didn’t notice, I made a few changes on the site, and it was easy — I let the data do the changes based on site traffic.

This was based on a year of site traffic data through Google Analytics.

Removing the tag cloud

This is a conversation that I’ve had a few places.

I feel tag clouds are useless pieces of Web 2.0. Most executives think they make great demos. Users could care less.

Now I have the data behind the argument.

The highest tag from a page view perspective was requirements gathering, at 160 pages (39th highest request). After that it was usability (at 76). Silly Saturdays clocked in at 122.

Almost no traffic.

Promoting content higher

A few posts, specifically Seven Reasons Why Agile And Scrum Works For Web User Experience which got thousands of views, I promoted to a new area for Top Posts. I’ll rotate posts through that region, but going through the data a few posts got a significant amount of traffic.

If users want to read certain content, they can have it!

Removing links

The links on the right generated almost no traffic, so I removed a lot of them. I do think it’s good to have some resources for users, but they’re more often than not clicking on them within the body of an article, not in a sidebar.

Links, gone!Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of ‘Friendster’ Civilization

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:00:08 +0000

How appropriate.Similar Posts:

Consultant Thursdays: The Dark Side Of Freelancing

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:00:08 +0000

This paragraph says it all (From Freelance Review):

Let’s face it: freelancing is pretty great. No more dealing with annoying coworkers or shoveling your car out of a snow drift to get to work. What could be better than being your own boss? Well, at times, not being your own boss! As with every job, there are pros and cons that make up your daily list of responsibilities and obligations. Here is a list of the most common problems freelancers face and how to deal with them.

Read on…Similar Posts:

Marketing Wednesdays: Social Media, It’s Time To Get Boring

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:00:26 +0000

The running joke is that you know something has jumped the shark once Corporate America has grabbed a hold of it.

Church of the Customer predicts that this is the year Social Media really starts becoming part of Corporate America. Boring isn’t necessarily bad, because it means it’s profitable.

My prediction for 2010: social gets integrated into business functions. That means: social media policies, aligning social media strategies and tactics with overall business objectives and revenue goals, and realigning functional teams. Yeah, not as exciting as another viral video but those are as reliable as a Vegas roulette table. Social media process is hard work, so it’s time for social media to get boring! For process geeks like me, that’s pretty exciting.

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Always Be Testing: 8 Services For Usability Feedback

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:00:49 +0000

I’ve met Dana Oshiro, and she’s a great writer. I’m glad to see she’s written something about UX, especially in an area we give so little attention to.

Over the weekend we had a chance to highlight Graphic.ly – a company that opted to release early (and imperfectly) in exchange for valuable user feedback. As companies look to their peers and audiences to help define product features, there’s a greater need for scalable testing platforms. Here’s a summary of 8 useful services that will help put you on the path to product greatness.

Read on…Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: Director of Interaction Design — Irvine, CA

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:52:31 +0000

Information abut this position, from the recruiter:

The position:

As their Director of Interaction Design you will be integral in reshaping their strategy to focus on the future of consumer needs in the automotive marketplace and aligning their brand and products to capitalize on the strength of their current position.
Product Focused: They are now implementing a product driven culture with strong leads in key decision-making roles.
Customer Focused: User centered design methodologies are a key part of their product development process and investing in a comprehensive look at user needs is a central focus.
Technology focused: They are a scrum/agile shop that utilizes the latest in Microsoft technologies.
Investing in the Future: They are making substantial financial investments in the development of brand strategy, product strategy and product development. This role will be key to that process!

This role with have dynamic ability to influence change:

This right candidate will play a heavy role in the future strategy of my client as well as be a key part of bringing these changes to fruition.
Opportunities to be able to make this level of contribution at a company with this level of brand recognition are rare – this is a great challenge with tremendous resume building potential.

If you have 8-10 years of UX experience, the experience and ability to lead/manage a team of highly skilled IA’s and sell UX concepts through the organization, we should talk.

If you have previously applied for this position and would like to be considered again, reach out. If we spoke but the salary was too low, reach out, that too had changed! If you heard the buzz and side stepped the position based in old information, it’s a new year, a new role and a new process!

You might recognize this position — they are making some changes to it, and it includes better pay and a better interview process.

Send your resume to me at jobs@usabilitycounts.com. I’ll send it along.Similar Posts:

QuickTip Sundays: Being A UX Team Of One

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:00:11 +0000

From 25 User Experience Videos That Are Worth Your Time:

In this half-hour session held at the IA Summit 2008, Leah Buley of Adaptive Path shows what it means to be a UX team of one by telling her own story and recounting a real-life example. Leah explains the concept of generative design, which is the process of creating and sketching a lot of different ideas and then refining them. The slides are amazing because Leah drew them by hand.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Abandoned

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:00:08 +0000

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CMS Fridays: Why Should You Use A Content Management System?

Patrick Neeman — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:00:43 +0000

Whenever I hear about the, “we really should be on a Content Management System,” there’s always the discussion of “why?” A lot of clients have no concept editing their own website (that’s why they hire you, right, to build it for them? Why should they get their hands dirty?). However, for some organizations, managing your own website makes sense.

If you need some ammunition, NetSuccess has a great article about the benefits of CMSes.

A content management system can be very helpful and save time especially when you have a website with many web pages and content that needs to be updated constantly. When trying to decide whether to add a content management system, or CMS, to your website you should consider the benefits that a CMS can offer.

Read on…Similar Posts:

Consultant Thursdays: Should User Experience Designers Know Design Or Programming?

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:00:21 +0000

That was a question that came across one of the mailing lists — “do I have to learn how to program to be a good user experience designer?” A job posting was listed where the requirements could have been along the lines of smoking crack, and for new designers, they wouldn’t know any better because they are just trying to make a buck.

But should they?

That’s a hard question to answer, especially with the ever changing landscape of the industry.

The answer: it really depends on where you live and what you are looking to do. Many employers are looking for jack of all trades, while others are looking for specialists. Some are willing to give up deep skill sets in one area versus knowledge in all areas, or are looking for people of unique skill sets to build teams around.

A UX Designer in San Francisco is going to have a much different working experience than one in Columbus, Ohio because they will be much different companies.

I’m lucky to have worked in both generalist and specialist environments, and to be honest, I like getting my hands dirty sometimes. That includes building prototypes, doing my own guerrilla usability testing, and even throwing in some design to make it high fidelity. Other user experience designers like to focus on specific areas, like user research. It just depends.

If you know something about code, you’re less likely to design something that can’t be built.

The plus — there’s nothing worse than designing a solution that you think makes it really easy for the user, and then the programmers come back to you and say, “Well, that’s nice, but it’s going to take two months and we have only a month.” It’s like designing a car: if you design an engine that’s too big for the frame, the engine design has to be reworked.

The minus — that said, if you get too heads down in the code, you are going to be less effective as a user experience designer. Or, worse, you could limit your imagination and design a solution that would be more effective if you knew less about what was under the hood.

Specialists get paid more, but have fewer opportunities.

The plus — Everyone loves a big paycheck, and specialists are always going to have deeper knowledge of a particular topic. If you’re good, being a specialist means that you’re sought after. I have a lot of experience in e-commerce systems, for example, and somehow manage to improve those user experiences that lead to improved revenue. That’s a skill worth having that will make you valuable just about anytime of the day.

The minus — If they think you are too much of a specialist, it becomes really hard to get a job (“I didn’t know you could do that”), and in a bad economy, the last thing you want to do is fence yourself in. Those that were working in the field during the early 2000’s remember the day when being a project manager or a psuedo-programmer was a good thing. There’s nothing worse than being “just” a user researcher when they are looking for an Interaction Designer with research experience.

Sometimes it’s just about setting expectations.

Pros — Even if you don’t call yourself a specialist, putting a wider net out there for jobs is better because there may be a position that requires several different skills (Knowledge of JQuery, CSS, XHTML and some light design on top of doing the usual User Experience tasks like wireframes). This could translate into where you build functioning prototypes that the developers can use to build the finished product, but during the interview process. That said, I just recently started learning SketchFlow, a wonderful product that’s part of the Microsoft Expression Suite. There’s no way I could have picked it up as fast as I did without some knowledge of other prototyping tools like Flash, Axure and Visio.

Cons — Some skills required for the roles are so divergent that what they are looking for is a unicorn i.e. that one person that knows all of the above, plus ActionScript 3.0, plus .NET. The people that know all of those technologies either are a) getting paid much more than just being a User Experience Designers, b) do all of them poorly or c) are full of shit. You can only be good at so much.

The real answer? Look at the market and act accordingly.

Do what you have to do, and where you want to drive your career to, to succeed. Talk to other designers in the area to get an idea what they are doing. And remember, it’s a changing landscape — that requires some flexibility.Similar Posts:

Marketing Wednesdays: The Top Six Indications Your Social Media Expert Is Full Of Crap

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:00:46 +0000

One of the friends runs an online marketing education conference. Social Media is the new hot thing (I think a couple of years ago, it was search engine optimization, and please don’t ask about my opinion on that), so their blog network is teeming with posts about Social Media, and the top request for education is that new fangled “Twitter thing” and tips about “Facebook”.

I met one of the characters at one of their events (which I thought was the coolest thing), but the mass market in indifferent, and still doesn’t get the whole CNN call for tweets.

Whatever.

Nobody cares.

Right?

I like posting on Facebook as much as the next social media geek (I think last Monday, I talked about my new haircut), but I recognize that posting about what I’m going to eat on Twitter doesn’t make me some kind of expert.

It just means I use it. I don’t charge an arm and a leg for my advice, and I’m still amazed at the impact of Social Media on sites even though some of my friends consider me ahead of the curve. Myself and some of my friends have been lucky to work in some Social Media environments (MySpace, for example), and even we don’t consider ourselves experts.

Social Media (and even User Experience) experts shouldn’t be able to call themselves that if they’ve been on one or two panels and read a book. They should have some successes (and failures) behind them, and grown to tell the story. But the truly great experts not only know how to leverage their personal brand, but point out the obvious while doing it, for free.

Here are some ways to tell if your Social Media Expert is full of crap:

Your Social Media Expert spends more time blogging than working

Self promotion can be high art on the web (Tila Tequila? Dane Cook? I mean, who really laughs at Dane Cook’s jokes?). My friends talk about all the Ringo Starrs out there — you know them, they were with one company as someone inconsequential. The company made it big, and found a way to parlay it into selling several books and evangelizing ideas. They are their own personal brand.

That said, there’s a really bad sign if your Social Media Expert spends more time blogging than working.

Think about this — one post of this length takes about an hour of write. It’s like the cook with the great cookies: the last thing they are going to do is tell everyone the recipe right?

If they are spending all their time writing blog posts about how much they know about Social Media, they aren’t helping your company do Social Media.

Your Social Media Expert thinks social media started with Facebook and Twitter

The reality is that the core foundation of social media has been around since two people talked around the campfire about inventing the wheel. It’s just moved to a different medium, and that medium as we know it, the internet, started on October 29, 1969. A lot of us older people (you know, the one’s that had jobs before an email address) remember bulletin board systems, and technically my first social media message that I sent to a friend of mine on Usenet was in 1987. Seriously, that’s longer ago than the age some of the experts I’ve seen.

It took four days to get there.

The distance traveled was from Irvine, California to Claremont, California.

Real Social Media Experts understand conversations, and how those conversations interact on whatever medium they are on. That could mean a letter to the editor sent via a mail carrier in the 1950’s, or a page established on Facebook in 2009. It’s the conversation that’s important.

Your Social Media Expert thinks that Twitter is the start of your brand

One of the great aspects of Social Media is that if you do it right, your customers have the conversation for you, promote your business, and make you lots of money, all for the cost of good service. One of the biggest mistakes we all make is where brand starts.

What is brand? Is your your name, and the experiences tied to your name. It’s not a twitter post, or a blog entry, or the color you have, or the logo you are designing. It’s the name of your company, and how every representative of your company is associated with it.

That said, if a stupid Twitter post goes out about how Memphis sucks, or 15,000 people complain on Facebook that your company uses slave labor, that hurts your brand. Social Media conversations shouldn’t be measured in just metrics, but also in quality of the conversation because that relates back to your brand. That article is a good example, because it talks about the success of Comcast — ask any of their customers.

Your Social Media Expert always has a clown in the pocket

This a famous phrase I’m going to attribute to a friend of mine. Whenever a company was going down the drain, especially during the late 1990’s, there was always a skunkworks project that was shown off in front of the venture capitalists. This was to distract them from the fact that the company was burning $15 million a month, they were surrounded by $1,000 Herman Miller Aeron chairs, and the core product still hadn’t launched, and the CEO was doing coke.

Look, online video! We can put that on our Geocities pages!

Real consultants offer some kind of roadmap of these are what the deliverables are, this is what they are going to do, and this should be the result. Hopefully. It doesn’t always have to succeed, and sometimes you can’t always measure it (even the biggest agencies have a hard time generating good numbers around social media). At the end of the day, if sales go up, it’s a good campaign.

It’s about the strategy kids. Plan. Plan. Plan, again. It’s not rocket science, and it doesn’t take a 25-year-old to tell you otherwise.

Your Social Media Expert speaks in 140 character sentences

If the only way they promote themselves is through Twitter, fire them.

Yesterday.

Why?

Twitter is the Apple of the Internet, without the cool products. Their market reach is under two percent, which is interesting, because MySpace is still in the 30’s and Facebook is way, way over that in the 50’s. I look at it as the mom test — if my mom has heard about it, it’s gone mainstream. We had dinner a few weeks ago, and the conversation started something like, “They wanted me to get on Facebook, but I don’t see time for it. I wish they would have called me up.”

Twitter never entered the conversation.

The truth is that Twitter has some great uses, most of it around it being the new RSS feed, and a great way to watch conversations around specific topics or events.

Your Social Media Expert recommends Delicious and Stumble Upon for an audience of seniors

It’s all about the audience, right? If your consultant doesn’t know who to talk to, then how can they have a conversation.

That’s what blow my mind about some of the people that recommend Twitter for everyone. The first question asked should be, “Where can I have a conversation with this audience?” For example, Email is still relevant (46 percent of all embedded links are still through email), yet the Social Media Expert wants you to use hashtags.

Figure out where your audience is, and talk to it. For some, it’s Foursquare. For others, it’s Facebook. For even other people, it’s Etsy.

For every audience there’s a proper venue, and your Social Media Expert should know to look there.

What to do? What to do?

If you really need a Social Media Expert that is one, email me. Even if they don’t call themselves one.Similar Posts:

Cool Website Tuesdays: ClickTale

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:00:35 +0000

Need to track where your users are pointing at, but don’t want to pay an arm and a leg? Want to record movies of what your users are doing? Looking for something that’s a bit more than Google Analytics, but not Omniture?

Then try out ClickTale, a new analytics tool that I test drove a month ago.

ClickTale gives you a good idea of what your users are doing so you can correct site issues fast. It records complete sessions, allows you to throttle usage so you don’t record every session, and gives you those nifty heat maps that wow and amaze executives.

The price is about right — $99 a month gets you started — but the only complaint I have is that their freemium levels don’t give you enough of a taste of what the tool can do (really, I need a better idea if the heat maps are worth it.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Social Media Blues

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:00:15 +0000

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Consultant Thursdays: Hiring A User Experience Team

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:00:47 +0000

After talking to a bunch of recruiters and other managers, it looks like User Experience is going to making a comeback in hiring. We’re the leading indicator for a lot of things (you can’t start a website application project with proper user experience, right?), so this is a good thing for all technology workers.

However, if you have questions on what to look for, or how certain factors play into people’s interest level in your organization, here’s a few answers that I can think of.

What should I look for in hiring a user experience designer?

It’s a combination of deliverables and people skills.

Not only do they have to have the skills to design a solution, they have the skills to sell that solution to multiple stakeholders. Due to the salary levels available to skilled user experience professionals, it also has become a breeding ground to project managers, bad designers and other people with good sales skills and not much else. That not only creates the “well, I don’t have much money because the last guy screwed it up” situations, it creates a sense of mistrust of the next candidates, but when you meet a real user experience designer, you’ll know.

Look at their wireframes — are they clear? Do they make sense? Can you walk through them?
Ask to see personas — is there data backing it up?
Have them give a presentation — is their thinking structured? Can they speak well.

They should be able to explain the reasoning behind their thinking i.e. we tested the solution, it’s best practices, statistics backed it up.

What should I look for in hiring a user experience manager?

Hiring a manager is a much different task than hiring an individual contributor, and the roles require much different skill sets. I’ve seen situations where companies had manager positions open for months (or years), and this happens because there are a few internal team members that shoot down any decent candidates that come in.

Remember, you are hiring for a leader (read President William J. Clinton) versus someone that just maintains status quo or screws it worse (read President George W. Bush). Managing a set of wireframes is a much different tasks than managing a group of user experience professionals, all of whom are used to having their own way because that’s the way it’s been. Corporate culture affects how people manage (Joel On Software has a wonderful post about this), so factor this into the type of manager you hire.

I recommend having other managers in the organization interview versus the people that are going to be managed. A senior user experience architect may not realize that the skills to manage people are much different than the skills to build a wireframe, and usually don’t judge the candidate accordingly.

The level of candidate may differ depending on the size of the team. You’ll want more of a working manager if the team is four who’s more tactical versus managing a division of 25 because strategy is more important.

Why can’t I find good candidates?

As much as user experience professionals are motivated by pay, they aren’t necessarily motivated by pay. It could be a combination of several factors, like the type of work your organization does (one place I worked at, we did intranets — try attracting talent for that, and we were still able to grow the team to 25), the size of your company, or the project lacks integrity.

Outside of pay, most important is the environment because that’s where people are going to be spending 40 hours a week, at least. User experience professionals are in the industry of categorizing and judging people’s skill level, so they quickly detect whether or not they are to do well in an environment.

A few questions to ask yourself before moving forward:

Do the interviewees get a sense the hiring manager is qualified? There’s nothing worse than interviewing with someone who isn’t qualified for the job you are interviewing with, much less being a manager. The hiring manager should be forced to go through questions that are not on a prepared list, because interviewees pick up on lack of experience. There’s nothing worse than the “we’ve had this business problem for six months, solve it in 15 minutes
Are the company politics evident during the interview? In some agencies, the politics are so deep, it’s like having two jobs — dealing with the client, and dealing with the internal personalities. Some people like that. Or, if it’s a slow moving company with micro-managers galore, will it turn them off?
Is your company a comfortable place to work at? If you are placed in the back corner, or have a cubicle that is the middle of everything, that’s not a place you probably want to work. Why expect a candidate to do the same?
Are the projects interesting enough? Certain people are suited to certain environments, and while you might want to attract the best talent, you may not be able to keep them because the work isn’t fast-paced enough.

How much should I pay them?

That also depends on what you have to offer and which market you are in. At the end of the day, it’s what the market can bear, and as the economy recovers that will change.

If the job can be performed mostly offsite, they might be willing to trade some flexibility for pay. Same if the project is interesting and has a lot of upside. Boring, less glamorous projects may actually cost your organization more to attract talent because while it’s boring, it’s also very profitable.

The real answer:

Look at the market. What costs you $100 per hour in the Bay Area might cost $40 per hour in Omaha. Talent that is also too cheap is a bad sign. Whomever you hire should have the track record to go with the pay.
Talk to candidates that might be willing to do the onsite, offsite thing. It might not seem like a lot, but in certain metropolitan areas, that 2 hours of commute each day translates into 10 hours a week — which could be used doing other things.
Most importantly, construct the job so it fits real world people. If you are trying to hire senior level people, and the pay doesn’t match, good luck. Also, if you have to overpay to get anyone in the door because decent candidates are avoiding you, read some of the tips in previous questions.

Constructing the right team is hard — take your time with it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your team shouldn’t be either.Similar Posts:

The Science Of White Space In Design

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:17:46 +0000

Sometimes we forget about this, but white space is a very important component in design and user experience. Inspired Magazine has a great post about the usage of white space in design, even if it is print.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Social Media Christmas

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:00:27 +0000

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Career Mondays: UI Designer — San Diego, California

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:23:28 +0000

Certona Corporation is the creator of ResonanceR, a real-time personalization and revenue optimization platform for multi-channel retailers. Resonance automates a company’s ability to provide relevant, individualized experience and product recommendations in real-time, increasing average order value and revenue per visit. With seven patents pending, the “self-optimizing” system is powered by sophisticated neural networks and a portfolio of algorithms to deliver real-time product, content, and promotional offers through multiple channels – web, email, call center, point-of-sale, and mobile. Clients are typically up and running in less than a month, and include some of the most recognized online and multi-channel retail brands across all popular verticals. For more information, visit www.certona.com.

Position Description

Certona Corporation is looking for an experienced UI Designer to create the next generation of analytics and merchandising tools for Certona’s ResonanceR personalization platform. The successful candidate will have experience with the full software development lifecycle, starting with gathering requirements from internal and external customers, graphical design, GUI development, and testing. Understanding of software usability, SaaS applications, e-commerce, enterprise dashboards, business intelligence, predictive analytics, and e-mail automation is a plus.

Responsibilities

Work with Product Management to ensure understanding of business requirement and use cases
Establish design patterns working with common interface components
to promote consistency and reuse across applications
May need to assist in the development of UML diagrams and wireframes
May need to provide UI prototypes for usability evaluations
Develop presentation layer for web-based applications in XHTML/CSS/JS/.Net
Ensure that presentation layer code is semantically correct, liquid, well-formed, and valid
Ensure that the presentation layer architecture supports localization and internationalization Create UI specification for Development and QA

Qualifications

BS in Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science or related field
Five years UI design and UCD experience with web-based applications
Expertise with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript is mandatory
Familiar with semantic, liquid layout design is a must
Familiar with localization and internationalization standards for web-based applications
Familiar with chart and other data presentation controls for the web
Proven communication skills and ability to excel in a team-oriented environment
Self-motivated and attentive to detail

Please send your resume and cover letter to careers@certona.com.Similar Posts:

Social Media Measurement: A 10-Step Guide

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:00:23 +0000

How to measure social media can be a tricky thing. Chris Lake at eConsultancy has a good article about measuring it with this step by step guide.

Take a snapshot

Before you start the clock it is a good idea to benchmark where you’re at…

Make a note of the obvious numbers (number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Digg links, Delicious bookmarks, and referrals from social media sites, plus existing website traffic).

Make a note of the less obvious benchmarks (such as SEO rankings and referrals, customer satisfaction scores and other business data).

Make a note of ROI benchmarks. How much are you paying to acquire customers via other marketing channels? How vast is that advertising budget, and how is it being split up? And what proportion is being directed into channels that you cannot accurately measure?

Enjoy.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Bananarama…rama…rama…rama

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:00:46 +0000

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Silly Saturdays: Price Checked

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:00:31 +0000

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Graphics Gone Bad: The Winners Of Bad Infographic Design

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:05:39 +0000

What were they trying to say again?Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Zero Results Found

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:00:50 +0000

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Silly Saturdays: Premature Redirection

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:00:50 +0000

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Consultant Thursdays: Designer Vs. Client, The Sequel (NSFW)

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:00:47 +0000

I love the overuse of the word “fuck”.Similar Posts:

Cool Website Tuesdays: Clients From Hell

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:00:36 +0000

Enough said.Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: Associate Producers — Burbank, CA

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:00:47 +0000

The Associate Producer will work closely with the production team in scheduling, resource management, budgeting, and planning. They manage the site production process for assigned projects from pre-production through development, QA, launch, and post-launch updates. The Associate producer is also be responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of existing sites helping produce content updates and troubleshooting efforts.

Qualifications

2-3 years project management experience in the Internet field, preferably in the entertainment industry
Experience and knowledge of web site technology, design and production
Ability to use online traffic tracking tools to report and help interpret data for editorial decision making.
Ability to use online publishing and content management systems for programming and reviewing web pages.
Must be able to multi-task in a fast-paced environment
Must be proactive and able to prioritize projects based on business and promotional goals
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Ability to work closely with other producers artists, content developers, engineers, QA testers, and webmasters on day-to-day production; established people skills
Ability to create and maintain accurate schedules

Skills Required

2 to 4 years experience in website production required; working with children‚s or branded content preferred
A college degree or equivalent work experience with website, digital or entertainment production and development
Superior organizational skills
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Understanding of Brand development very helpful, understanding of (and passion for) the brand extremely helpful
Self starter with high level of initiative
Ability to manage multiple projects, set priorities and meet deadlines
Proficiency with managing external developers and contractors
Familiarity with project management tools, e.g. Microsoft Project and Visio
Established presentation skills and familiarity with Microsoft PowerPoint
Ability to analyze and provide solutions to complex technical problems

Email your resume to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.Similar Posts:

QuickTip Sundays: Untangling Brand And User Experience In 10 Minutes Or Less

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:00:53 +0000

From Adaptive Path. Good presentation, yo.

Untangling brand and customer experience, in 10 minutes or less from Brandon Schauer on Vimeo.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:00:17 +0000

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Consultant Thursdays: Designer Vs. Client (NSFW)

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:00:49 +0000

That’s about right.Similar Posts:

Consultant Thursdays: 72 Questions to Ask New Web Design Clients

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:00:17 +0000

Building a website is easy, right?

Uh, no. Most clients are prepared to really handle a website, and don’t limit themselves to what they are capable of within a budget.

Here’s the first 10 of 72 questions to ask web clients from bonfx.

How does your company handle email?
Do you need any password protected areas?
Do you have the Pantone numbers for your current company colors?
Did you take a look at our portfolio?
What is your time frame?
Is this a brochure site, or a blog?
Who is your audience?
Do you have any specifications?
What are the website addresses of your competitors?
How many other companies have you talked to?

Read the complete list here.Similar Posts:

Form Design And The Fallacy Of The Required Field

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:05:39 +0000

I was on a mailing list today, and this came across:

“Use red asterisks — they’re the standard for showing required fields.”

Standards are wonderful, but if I asked my mom with is the international symbol for a required field, she would look at me like I was on drugs (not much different than today, but still).

This was something even the great Jared Spool mentioned at an event as gospel, and showed an example in his PowerPoint (which I still haven’t received, but that’s another blog post). He was explaining how another client had used asterisks to show optional fields.

Here’s a few truths about form design that I’ve discovered in my time by testing actual users.

Most forms are hard to read.

Does anyone find it interesting the note for required fields is after the fields?

There have been a few books and web posts, but for the most part, web form design hasn’t changed that much since 1996. Form fields are left on a white background with a grey line around them (some sites, like this WordPress blog software I’m using, has a lighter grey line around the form fields for design purposes).

On some sites, form fields are in columns so they’re next to each other so the user really has to work at it.

Given eight form fields, users will fill out all eight.

I’ve run countless tests, and the result in most of them is users will try to fill out every single form field. This includes the second address field we all know so well even if they don’t have a second address.

Form fields are one of those things that users expect to fill out every single field, because they don’t want to have to figure out error messages when they are wrong. Because they have been trained that most web forms are ineffective, they do as much work as possible (bad solution number 1) or walk away (worse solution number 2), leaving either a frustrated user, a lost sale, or both.

The red asterisk, and even the explanation text that reads “Required fields are marked as (*)? No one’s going to read it.

It’s usually at the top of the form, in line, and all users skip it right to dig in. Users rarely read instruction text, and because most form design is so poorly thought out, users rush through it to make it as painless as possible. Users need visual cues next to the field or at the field they are working on, not 300 pixels (at least) away.

Additionally, the Required Field line is usually small and hard to read (read: Designers License), so in the grand scheme of watching users browse the site, they skip right over it.

A solutions to the required field paradox

Disney Shopping

This was a solution we used at Disney Shopping: the word Optional was placed to the right of the field, and required fields were colored yellow so users could spot them.

I’m using this particular design pattern on other sites because at Disney Shopping and a few other sites I’ve worked on, this is the design pattern I’ve enforced. It’s simple, doesn’t interfere with the form because error messages are usually below the form field, and it’s easy to scan for it.

Why am I enforcing it?

Because changing it from the asterisk to this example, form completions are up, across the board. We’ve tested it, and it works.

Any questions?Similar Posts:

Cool Website Tuesdays: Attention Wizard

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:00:31 +0000

One of the way cool, nifty things that you get by working for an online marketing education company is access to great tools that are just a bit beta. That’s just the sort of thing we needed over at Online Marketing Summit as we do usability testing and other analysis work.

Enter Attention Wizard. Attention Wizard is a tool that shows possible eye tracking without the human part. The smart folks over at Site Tuners (Thanks Tim, for the invite) have written an algorithm that produces an “attention heatmap”, a way of saying here’s some possible areas that the users are paying attention to based on color and Gestalt theory. All you have to do is upload a screen shot, and in five minutes, it gives you results of what it could look like.

I did it with Online Marketing Summit (click on the thumbnail) to show you what one of their results are.

Their sales points

Can be used with actual screenshots or page design mock-ups
Instant results – no eye-movement or mouse-tracking data collection needed
Tells you what people are paying attention to, and what they ignore
Easily identify landing page problems & increase your conversion rates

Our take aways

People’s eyes go right to the schedule tab, which is a good thing.
We have this photo image in the first paragraph of text that does nothing. It’s providing no value to the user while attracting a lot of attention.
The testimonials are getting a lot of attention.
I think Attention Wizard is giving too much weight to the photo.
Overall, the eye is scanning the page well.

We’re going to make more changes, but the goal is to get results quickly and increase conversion rate on the site, and that’s what we got with Attention Wizard.

My honest opinion about Attention Wizard?

I wouldn’t take this as gospel science (is eye tracking that now, anyways?), but it’s a good first cut at “well, let’s see what we have.” They claim a 75 percent rate of matching eye and mouse tracking, and that’s good enough for me. It’s much better to do several tests with this tool (which would be great as a subscription model site) than spending $5,000 for an eye tracking system that no one’s going use because, well, it’s hard to use.

It’s a great tool that’s only going to get better once they work out the kinks.Similar Posts:

8 Activities Of Human Centered Design

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:07:56 +0000

From Di8it:

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QuickTip Sundays: The Fastest Way To Improve Your Site? Focus On Copy-Writing.

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:00:14 +0000

From Bokardo:

Ironically, the smallest bits of copy, microcopy, can have the biggest impact.

Microcopy is small yet powerful copy. It’s fast, light, and deadly. It’s a short sentence, a phrase, a few words. A single word. It’s the small copy that has the biggest impact. Don’t judge it on its size…judge it on its effectiveness.

One of the biggest misconceptions about the web is you just design it, and don’t worry about copy.

Copy has such a big impact, more so than design in some cases.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: If Only Search Engines Could Understand What We Want

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:00:52 +0000

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Social Media Today: A Blog is a Better Social Media Hub Than Twitter

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:41:38 +0000

From Social Media Today:

The most influential people on Twitter are either already celebrities, create their own content, or both. Who do you see most often retweeted? Major news outlets like CNN, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Mashable. Guy Kawasaki. Robert Scoble. Of course there are many reasons these people are influential, but a very basic reason is that they are creating original content somewhere other than Twitter. They are most often using Twitter as a super-news-feed, and as a way to drive people back to their blog, web site, etc. (Scoble is an exception. He converses everywhere.)

There are a lot of wonderful reasons to have a Twitter account (mostly to promote your blog), but I think the main relevant point is that I can’t think of anyone that is taken seriously only because they have a Twitter account. Twitter is used to promote something else, and it can’t really stand on it’s own.Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: Information Architect — Los Angeles, CA

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:00:06 +0000

I have a client that wants the transition the role to full time. I’m starting another gig, so I can’t do it. I’m recruiting for the role, so…

The company

A well-funded startup with founders that have multiple successes behind them (good, as opposed to lucky). They seem like really good people, and the track record of the leadership is solid. Like huge startup solid, five times over, with cash in the bank.

The position

Information Architect with some design experience so when the contract designer is done, the IA can carry through creating of buttons, some graphics, etc. Must know personas, wireframes, site maps, A/B testing, usability testing, but doesn’t have to be overly formal about it. It’s an agile environment, so the IA should have experience working in one. I would like to see people with at least 5 years experience, because the manager doesn’t have time to baby sit. The person must be a self starter. Consumer-facing site design experience required. Social Media (Facebook Connect) experience a huge plus. Willing to wash my car in exchange for the position, another plus.

Send resume, portfolio, some indication of design experience and salary expectations to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Social Media Guru

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:00:50 +0000

So true, so true.Similar Posts:

You Mean Not Everyone’s On Facebook?

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:54:02 +0000

From the Washington Post:

Tomek Kott is so stubborn about not joining his friends — in truth, nearly his entire generation — on any social networking site that his wife launched a mini-crusade against him. Exploiting a tactic surely befitting our times, she whipped up a Facebook group last year called “Tomek Kott Must Join Facebook.”

…

“I am old-school in the personal touch way,” said Tomek Kott, who lives in Silver Spring and has outsourced many of his digital communication duties to his wife, Anne. “All my friends from high school have also met my wife, and they’re friends with her; my wife ‘friended’ them or whatever it’s called.”

Kott and others like him are social networking refuseniks: people in their 20s or early 30s who have gone off the grid, eschewing the ecology of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the like. In Washington, refuseniks are not exactly operating in isolated, Luddite worlds: One is in a dance company, another is a rapper/hip-hop singer, another is a Georgetown undergraduate. Kott grew up in Redmond, Wash., where his father is a software engineer for Microsoft.

…

The vast majority of their peers in the millennial generation are social networking pros: About 85 percent of all Internet users 18 to 34 visited Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in August, according to ComScore, a Reston-based Internet data research company. And about 84 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds check social networking sites at least once a week, according to a May study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

I find that 85 percent number to be extremely high. Whatever it is, I would think that there’s a few people out there that say they check the sites, but don’t really do because they want to be in the “in crowd.”Similar Posts:

Stupid, Er, Silly Saturdays: Dead Frogs

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:00:18 +0000

Didn’t PETA say anything?Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: World’s Loudest Alarm Clock

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:00:42 +0000

For insomniacs like me.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Cheese or Font?

Jocelyn Wang — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:57:20 +0000

As a follow up to my previous post about typography, I’d like to share a fun game called “Cheese or Font?”

The concept is pretty simple: the site presents you with a word and you have to decide if it’s a cheese or a font. Pretty brilliant and hilarious, if you ask me.

See the less PC, but just as fun(ny): Steakhouse or Gay Bar?Similar Posts:

Typographic Design Patterns and Best Practices from the Best Blogs of Today

Jocelyn Wang — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:57:16 +0000

One of my favorite topics is typography and even though there’s a somewhat limited set of options in CSS, typography can still vary tremendously using pure CSS syntax.

Smashing Magazine conducted a detailed survey of 50 popular websites to see answer questions like Serif or sans-serif? Large or small font? Light or dark background? and more.

Though the findings aren’t scientific, the study shows a clear set of common practices and guidelines for setting type in Web design. Granted, these points should serve only as rough guidelines (not hard and fast rules):

1. Either serif or sans-serif fonts are fine for body copy and headings, but sans-serif fonts are still more popular for both.
2. Common choices for headlines are Georgia, Arial and Helvetica.
3. Common choices for body copy are Georgia, Arial, Verdana and Lucida Grande.
4. The most popular font size for headings is a range between 18 and 29 pixels.
5. The most popular font size for body copy is a range between 12 and 14 pixels.
6. Header font size ÷ Body copy font size = 1.96.
7. Line height (pixels) ÷ body copy font size (pixels) = 1.48.
8. Line length (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 27.8.
9. Space between paragraphs (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 0.754.
10. The optimal number of characters per line is between 55 and 75, but between 75 and 85 characters per line is more popular,
11. Body text is left-aligned, image replacement is rarely used and links are either underlined or highlighted with bold or color.

Of course, every website is unique, and few people want their sites to look like everyone else’s sites. But it’s always great to keep in mind that following these guidelines could make your website feel more familiar to your readers. (If you are a data and spreadsheet nerd like I am, check out the spreadsheet of the study and export its data for further analysis.)Similar Posts:

Positioning: Turning a Potential Liability into an Asset

Linda Coss — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:10:48 +0000

When is a liability not a liability? When you can turn it into an asset through clever positioning! Sometimes whether something is a positive or a negative is really just a matter of perspective. To illustrate this concept, let’s look at some examples…

Lack of Experience

Perhaps you just started a business. Some might consider your inexperience to be a liability. Maybe business is still a little slow. How can you put a positive spin on things? You’re not “inexperienced,” you’re…

Affordable
Flexible
Offering a fresh perspective
Ready to tackle the client’s project immediately

High Prices

Not everyone wants to be the low-price leader. But you also wouldn’t want to tout that you’ve got “the highest prices in town”! You’re not “expensive,” you’re…

A highly-skilled expert
In demand nationwide
Providing customized and unique solutions
Catering to those with discriminating tastes

“Me Too” Service

What if you’re in an industry where all of the players offer essentially the same thing – or it at least appears this way to the average consumer? How can you position yourself to stand out from the crowd? You’re not “just the same as your competitors,” you’re…

A specialist in a particular niche of the market
The organization with the most longevity
The go-to provider in a given geographic area
The one that provides the best value

Many businesses try to hide their potential negatives completely, hoping that no one will notice them. This approach tends to back-fire. It’s often far better to confront these potential negatives head-on, by spinning them around and turning them into positives.Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: User Experience Designer — Marina Del Rey, CA

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:00:09 +0000

I worked over here years ago, and the Marketing Department is top notch. If you want a place to learn with great people, send me a note at jobs@usabilitycounts.com. Also, if you aren’t interested in this job, but are looking, send me a note.

Stamps.com is seeking an experienced User Experience Designer to help design new products, features and upgrades for B2B and B2C web sites and client applications. Stamps.com has over 350,000 users of their flagship product and is expanding into web-based tools. You will be part of a small, creative team focused solely on product design to come up with our next generation of easy-to-use, powerful tools. You must have a passion for clean, intuitive UI, and be self-motivated and directed as we give a lot of lattitude to create. In addition, we engage in lively discussion on UI patterns, approaches, etc. so you must be willing to play well and be able to take direction where necessary.

Primary Responsibilities

Analyze high level requirements to develop sitemaps, user flows, wireframes and functional prototypes using Axure.
Present designs to team & management; iteratively refine designs based on feedback to arrive at final product prototype.
Analyze best UI patterns used in industry and apply to our products
Oversee adherence to internal web style guide and web standards, and refinement of it.

Qualifications

3-5 years of relevant experience as Information Architect, User Experience Designer, UI Designer, Web Designer, etc.
Bachelor’s degree in a related field is preferred.
Have both good visual design/layout skills as well as good analytical skills to be able to conceive, understand, define and effectively address user goals & needs.
A portfolio of User Interface showing designs, site maps, wireframes, or user interfaces.
Good knowledge of capabilities of HTML, DHTML, CSS, Javascript, and Web 2.0 in general.
Knowledge of design software such as Axure, Visio, ProtoShare, Adobe Photoshop and/or Fireworks, Dreamweaver, etc.
Must be detailed oriented and be able to drive projects to completion

Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Computer History With John Cleese

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:30:04 +0000

A 22 pound portable computer? It least it doesn’t smell like a fish.Similar Posts:

CMS Fridays: Content Management Isn’t Cheap

Patrick Neeman — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:00:10 +0000

There’s this great article over at CIO about the real cost of SharePoint, a content management system by Microsoft.

A few quotes:

If an IT department is using SharePoint as a development platform for business applications, costs will increase because developers and quality assurance testers will be needed.

Time and effort needs to be put toward developing and maintaining a SharePoint governance plan that outlines the type of content that should be loaded into the system, records policies, standard processes and metadata constructs, and guidelines for approaching and supporting SharePoint projects. (Read: solid information architecture — hire an IA, dammit).

Even if your users are familiar with SharePoint, using it to solve a specific business problem (such as automating a contract management or accounts payable process) typically requires some training.

After deploying SharePoint, users will need to change their approaches to creating and managing information. Given people’s reluctance to change, a proactive change management program is recommended.

Most of the organizations out there just launch CMS systems without any thought to a lot of issues. It’s like any other software product, and should be treated as such.Similar Posts:

The Tipping Point: Why Netbooks Are The Future Of How We Use Technology

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:00:20 +0000

As I mentioned in a previous post, I just recently purchased a Gateway netbook. It’s a Gateway LT 31, which is pricier than your average netbook, but has a 2 GB’s or RAM, and a slightly larger screen. It runs Microsoft Vista (that’s why it has the extra RAM), but that’s more of a luxury than anything else.

For what I use it for, I love it. I have a MacBook Pro, but that I use primarily for work, and it’s really too heavy and big to use on an airplane, which I find myself on about once a month going somewhere. Netbooks are the perfect size for typing up blog posts, surfing the web, and doing light photo editing when I’m on the move. They’re also great devices in that if I lose it, I’m not losing my life’s work because of the price.

We’re reaching a definate tipping point with devices that many manufacturers and software developers are ignoring: that bigger, faster, better is being replaced by devices that match our needs. Not everyone wants to drive an SUV. If you need one, it’s out there, but the needs of everyday computer usage (browsing the web, reading email, occasional word processing), do not match what most of today’s computing SUV’s can do.

With a projected 50 million units sold over last year and this year, these smaller devices are here to stay.

What does all this mean to User Experience designers in the future?

The days of pushing for websites that are 1600 pixels wide are over. We’re back to desigining for devices that are large and small. Most users don’t know this, but this blog serves a different user experience for mobile devices, and we might have to consider the same for the devices that are going to resemble nothing of the current netbooks today. Most user experience professionals will be designing for screens that are 1024 pixels wide for years to come, and maybe coming up with a second or third primary resolution for more mobile devices like the worst kept secret on the planet, the upcoming Apple Tablet, which will provide a new range of gestural interfaces we haven’t even thought of.

It’s less about features, and more about satisfying the exact user needs. Anyone that has used Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word admits that they only use 10 to 20 percent of the features contained in the program. Know what a smart object is? Can you insert a cross reference? Can you index a document? Very few of us use these features, and more often than not, many of these software packages have become bloated over the years from feature creep, with publishers giving us features that satisfy many audiences, but not all audiences. Consquently, smaller, faster, better software products that may even be network based will satisfy our needs with these devices. The limited screen footprint of Google Chrome provides such a wonderful experience using my Gateway, I can’t imagine using another browser.

The days of having to by expensive software are over. Microsoft’s approach of pricing doesn’t work at all for Netbooks, and that goes the same for Adobe and many of the other software developers out there. I’m not going to pay $200 for a software package I barely use on the device, like Microsoft Office. These are secondary devices, so I’ll be using Thunderbird, Picasa, Open Office and other packages that do exactly what I want them to do: simple email management, quick image editing, and some word processing. I don’t expect to use Photoshop on this system anytime soon, and that’s okay.

Network computing is here to stay. The cloud will have something to do with it, but sales figures have proven that the way I use my Netbook is the way many users are using the devices: it’s a secondary device that we use in front of the television, on an airplane, or places where bringing the larger laptop is impactical. Notebooks have already surpassed standard tower computers because notebooks have way more power than most of us need, and netbooks may do that as a device someday. If we have multiple devices, this requires files stored in one place, not all over the place. That means designing applications that support this.Similar Posts:

Cool Website Tuesdays: The Weather

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:00:50 +0000

Okay, it’s more than that, because I don’t want to write it in the headline. Not safe for work. Still low-tech. Still funny.Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: Director of User Experience — Irvine, CA

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:00:51 +0000

If you or someone you know might be a good candidate for this position, please send your resume to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

Kelley Blue Book is looking for a Director of User Experience to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of the interaction design of Kelley Blue Book’s website, kbb.com. This individual will work closely with other senior level executives to identify effective product strategies and lead a team of interaction designers and information architects to deliver innovative, customer centric design solutions. The ideal candidate has a passion for user centered design and a wide breadth of experience across multiple types of products and design methodologies.

This is a full-time position located in Orange County, CA. Formal training in human computer interaction, a minimum of 5 years experience working on a highly trafficked consumer facing web site and prior management experience required.Similar Posts:

Lack of Technology In Action: Why Are We Still Printing Textbooks?

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:05:11 +0000

I don’t talk about politics too much, because I’m kind of past that point in my life.

However, I found this story curious: Budget cuts put new textbooks on hold. Students are still using textbooks? Are you kidding me? Dead trees? Information and textbooks that are years old for the students?

I realize that the kids have to have learning material, but in the new education world where Wikipedia has turned into a wonderful reference free of local political pressure like teaching “intelligent design”, and we’re trying to save trees, the environment and tax dollars because of the recession, the idea of printing books just seems like an anchronistic idea.

There are a lot of jobs connected with this industry. However, print is heading the way of a quick, painful death in a lot of other places (read: newspapers), and creative destruction is going to change this industry, forever.

Last year alone the State of California spent $633 million buying textbooks. That escalates every year. That’s a lot of coin on outdated publications before the students put their hands on them.

Why we should stop printing textbooks

They’re out of date the minute their printed. History doesn’t change radically, but Science does. I’m guessing that most children and teachers use the web as a resource for information more than their textbooks today, and a textbook that doesn’t talk about the historical election of 2008 doesn’t have much use for the students that are studying history today. Reprinting a 500-page history book to include two pages about current events is impractical. Why not go to a format that can be changed as times change?

The carbon footprint is huge. Think about the energy process alone that goes into printing textbooks. Someone has to cut down the tree. Someone has mill the paper. Someone has to run the printing press. And most of that process has nothing to do with getting the information into the hands of children. There’s this whole industry built around charging as much as possible for textbooks, and the books themselves weigh more than a Netbook or Kindle. One of those Netbooks could hold a whole semester of information, without having to carry physical books to do it. This is an idea that has Al Gore written all over it: education and the environment. Why not pioneer it?

The profits go to people other than the authors. Most of the research I did showed that for a $100 textbook, the author will see typically $5 to $15 per book in royalties, where as the publisher will see the rest of the profits. What’s worse about this model from an economic standpoint is that the Wikipedia article points out that there’s no real competition because it is a closed market, and even the instructors themselves can’t get the prices for some of the products. Compare that to a service like CD Baby, which keeps less than 10 percent of gross profits. In that model, the textbook author would keep 60 to 70 percent of the revenue through some kind of national clearinghouse.

We need a tech-saavy group of children, and this is the best way to do it. Every child in California should have a laptop, considering we lead the nation (if not the world) in technology jobs, and a good portion of the workers here are from other countries speaks poorly to our state educational system. Why not work with companies that are based here to put a system in the hands of every child? It’s a wonderful opportunity, and the more they learn about the web, the better off I am as a technology professional (and we all are). And this would lead the way for other states to ween themselves off of providing dead tree books. if the largest market goes away, textbook publishers will rethink their business model, right?

Make technology the responsibility of the parents. Most school districts are so far behind with technology, there’s no way for them to catch up with significant outlays of funds. This would be a great way for the students to catch up without a district like the Los Angeles Unified having to spend billions of dollars to do it.

Here’s a way to fix this

Issue a $300 tax credit every year for each child if a family buys their children a computer. Require a receipt, and they get the tax credit. I bought one of those new Netbooks (A Gateway, and it’s a wonderful machine), and for $400, I got a machine that’s prefect for doing word processing, some presentation work, and most of the software I would need for most school needs is open source or free (Picasa, Open Office, and web browsing software, for example). There’s roughly 8 million school age children in the state of California, and that would be up to a $3.2 billion hit on the state revenues. However, half those children today (at least) have access to a computer at home, so it might take a while for some families, but think about an environment where every child had a computer?

Tax printed textbooks. Heavily. If the companies are interested in correcting this, give them incentives to go all digital, and disincentives to deliver a printed product. Release a PDF with Digital Rights Management, or issue a blanket license for a school district where they issue the books and double the royalty for the author? Give them a tax credit. Release a printed product? Add a 25 percent tax that can’t be recovered through increasing prices.

Take away funding from local districts if they don’t go digital. There are many, many reasons why digital is the way to go, but in a place where technology moves slowly, educators have to be given a shove. As the older teachers retire (and they are doing so at a fast clip), this would be a perfect time to introduce a Brave New World into their environment, don’t you think?

What are your thoughts? Would you vote for something like this?Similar Posts:

Formatting for Maximum Readability

Linda Coss — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:15:05 +0000

Are your written materials easy to read? Sometimes people get so caught up in creating a certain image – or squeezing a lot of words into a limited space – that they completely lose sight of readability. Unless yours is a completely visual message, it’s important that people be able to read your words. Make sure your finished piece is formatted for maximum readability.

Make it Easy to Scan

People don’t want to wade through what appears to be a short novel. If the mere site of your written piece overwhelms the reader, you can bet he or she will quickly move on to something else.

Recommendation: Put your headings and subheads in bold type, use bullet points, left justify your text (don’t center everything) and break things down into short, easy-to-manage paragraphs.

Avoid Giving Readers a Headache

Have you noticed that an increasing number of websites are composed of tiny little white letters set against a black background? Ugh! Instant eyestrain.

Recommendation: For maximum readability of any written piece (not just websites) stick with dark type on a light background, and don’t use anything smaller than a 10-point font.

Think about Your Font Formats

Sometimes it works to use special formatting to call attention to particular words, but if you’re not careful you’ll end up making those important words difficult to read.

Recommendation: Go easy on your use of ALL CAPS, italics, underlines, Initial Caps, and other special formats. These all work well on headlines and brief items, but should generally be avoided on longer passages.

Remember, if your letter, website, brochure, or other written piece isn’t formatted for maximum readability, there’s a good chance it won’t get read at all.Similar Posts:

What Sets You Apart From Your Competition?

Linda Coss — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:38:33 +0000

When people are deciding whether or not they should do business with you, there’s a good chance they’re also evaluating your competitors’ offerings. Have you given them a good reason to pick you?

The All-Important Unique Selling Proposition

Your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, is what clearly answers the question, “Why should I do business with you instead of your competitors?” Often translated into a tagline, the USP should be the basis for all of your company’s marketing efforts. You’ve got to let people know why your products or services are the best choice.

Developing Your USP

How do you determine your USP? Start by finding important benefits that are unique to your product or service. Try looking at. . .

A Product Feature – This can be anything about your product, service, or service delivery. For example, Folgers coffee is Mountain Grown. I think most coffee is mountain grown, but they make it sound unique and special.
An Emotional Appeal – Perhaps your USP can be based on an appeal to the prospect’s emotions, such as love, humor, or fear.
A Possible Association – This is the celebrity endorsement approach. Your product is wonderful because so-and-so says it’s wonderful.

Once you have a good list of possibilities, pick one that is unique (i.e. not being touted by your competitors), believable, and a big advantage. Remember, this should be something that can be used to motivate people to make a purchase!

Using Your USP

The final step is to boil it all down to one clear and concise sentence and then integrate it into all of your marketing materials. Remember, if you can’t figure out what sets you apart from your competition, your prospective clients aren’t likely to see any reason to do business with you either.Similar Posts:

The Truth About Social Media: Followers Are Not Your Friends

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:58:27 +0000

While I’m fighting writer’s block, this is a post from a friend of mine, Stephanie Bergman. She runs a blog that gets the occasional post. Stephanie has a few people in her twitter feed, and we have occasional conversations about social media. Something about meeting her at MySpace, and she’s working at an intriguing startup in SOMA.

Great post.

A couple of weeks ago, I started ranting a little over Twitter about followers and how people see them as friends. The rant began because someone I followed had posted a few messages about only wanting “quality followers” and asking everyone else to please stop following her. So I stopped following her.

To me, that’s a crazy obnoxious egotistical statement. I mean, come on, who do you think you are? Do you really think Matt Lauer tells the Today Show audience that he only wants “quality viewers?”

Either this person didn’t understand what followers really were, or was being a snot. Either way, I didn’t care to see a whole slew of messages about it. I follow enough people that I have a fairly low tolerance before I unfollow people. It doesn’t keep my follow count down like I wish it would, since I keep finding new people to follow, but I do try.

Anyway! Back to followers.

If someone has a public Twitter page, their data is available – to anyone – a number of ways. You can visit the website, you can subscribe to their RSS feed, or you can follow them. Their tweets also appear in the public feed (although there’s a setting to turn that off), and are available through search.

What all of this means, is that you really don’t know who’s reading what you say. The only way to control this is by making your twitter feed private. Once you’re private, you have approval over every person who can read.

I think most of the whining about “don’t follow me” is over spammers more than real people, but that really makes no sense to me. Spammers rarely talk to you. I’ve gotten a number of @ messages from spammers, but they’re not from people following me. In fact, I think the spammers unsubscribe once I don’t follow back. It also seems like the same people who complain about spammers are those who try to get tons of followers. Spammers artificially inflate follower numbers – shouldn’t they like that? If some person hawking viagra really wants to subscribe to my feed…have at it, I’m not interested anyway.

Most of the follow/unfollow behavior is automated. Mention one thing and suddenly a flood of people are following you. It’s not like an actual dude who sells viagra is sitting at his computer staring at your tweets. But really, if you’re uncomfortable with that idea, you should not have a public twitter feed.

I used the TV comparison above, but Twitter – to me – is best comparable to a blog. Some people read a blog by going to the webpage, others subscribe through RSS readers. Some blogs even end up syndicated to other places, on other blogs, to Facebook, all across the Internet. I don’t know everyone who reads what I write, and there’s no way I ever could. And that’s ok.

I’ve talked before about how the tone of my blog changed when I went public, there’s no denying that it did, significantly. It had to, for exactly the reasons stated here. I don’t know who’s reading what I’m writing. I’m the same with Twitter. No question that there are things I will not say on there.

But even I’ve said some things on there I shouldn’t have. For example, I discovered a guy I follow (and who follows me) on twitter lives above me in my building. He seems to be cool and I’m not concerned, but it is spooky. I should never have said enough so he could figure out where I lived.

Facebook, on the other hand, grew as large as it did specifically because it was locked down to your friends. You did only have “quality” readers (if you’re really going to be as obnoxious as to describe people as “quality”), since nobody could see what you wrote unless they were your friend. That, of course, is changing now, with Facebook making status messages more open. More and more people will now see what you say on Facebook, and you’re going to have less control over that.

So the Internet’s trending…again. We were all open, then we went all private, now we’re all opening up again. It’s easier to go from open to closed than from closed to open. People will be much more likely to make mistakes. Hell, I did, and I thought I was smarter than that.

I’m not sure how this is going to play out, but it will be fun to watch.

You can follow her here on Twitter.Similar Posts:

Congratulations to Ryan Hyde, The Winner Of The George Foreman Grill

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:55:39 +0000

He was the 1,500th Twitter follower. His blog is cool too.

Who will be the 2,000?Similar Posts:

Agile and UX Presentation from July 8, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:09:00 +0000

View more presentations from Patrick Neeman.

I’m taking a break from doing events for a while, however here’s the Powerpoint from the event. We recorded a video of the presentation, and you’ll be seeing the presentation soon online either on YouTube or some other site.

If you run a company, and want project management consulting on how to integrate UX and Agile, send me a line at pat@usabilitycounts.com.Similar Posts:

Imagine If D-Link Had Designed A Router With Good User Experience

Patrick Neeman — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:16:59 +0000

How important is usability? Even the New York Times talks about it, reviewing a new router, network storage device and digital picture frame (yes, you read that right, digital picture frame):

D-Link’s PR person suggested that the elusive instructions might be on the company’s Web site. (They weren’t.) In the end, it took a D-Link product manager a day to figure out how to work these features himself and supply me with the instructions. He says that he’ll have them posted on D-Link’s Web site by the time the 685 goes on sale. (Caution: They entail mucking around in the router’s advanced HTML-based configuration pages. Technophobes need not apply.)

Seriously — if the product manager can’t figure it out, you have a problem.Similar Posts:

Consultant Thursdays: What If Your Client Asks You To Implement A “Crazy” Enhancement?

Jocelyn Wang — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:00:21 +0000

Over at IXDA, I came upon the following post:

Hello,

Someone I work for has a strange enhancement request which I do not agree with, but this person is the boss. I think in my gut, this is wrong.

Website: a user management system for secure student data. Clients are a little paranoid about passwords and user names getting out.

Behavior: when you select a user and want to reset his or her password, the resulting screen shows the user name, but then blanks out the password which you can only see by printing the page.

Blanking out the password seems silly since you can still see it if you print it out. Do people agree this is poor functionality? If so, is there any evidence to support my feeling that this is a bad idea?

I think the writer is smart to be asking for ways to back up his gut feelings about this particular client request. I would agree that the printing of passwords is not best practice, but I’m curious as to why this specific approach is being requested.

I’ve worked with clients who have made suggestions for solutions which didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but upon a deeper dive of their company culture and/or process, I was able to understand why that particular approach made sense to the client. As a consultant, I’m often brought in to solve or address a problem that the client can’t address completely on their own.

So while an outsider’s point of view can be valuable, it’s also important for consultants to listen carefully to requests and understand the underlying reasons for some of those requests. It’s pretty easy to walk into a situation and cite “best practices are xyz,” but sometimes best practices do not make sense for a particular organization. In fact, sometimes the “crazy” approach is the right one, for the right situation and the right company.

But then again, sometimes “crazy” really is just “crazy!”Similar Posts:

Commonly Confused Words

Linda Coss — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:41:07 +0000

It happens to all of us. We’re busily writing a letter or email and suddenly we doubt if a word we just typed is the right one for the situation. Personally, I always have a hard time keeping “it’s” and “its” straight. Maybe you struggle with “your” and “you’re” or “advice” and “advise.”

In fact, there are a number of words that commonly confuse lots of people. To help you out, here’s a guide to some of the ones that I see most frequently in the editing work that I do.

Its & It’s

Its means of or belonging to it.

It’s is the contraction of “it is.”

It’s just amazing the way the dog can sense when its owner is about to come home.

Their & They’re

Their means of or relating to them.

They’re is the contraction of “they are.”

They’re flying to Chicago to visit their cousins.

Whose & Who’s

Whose means of or relating to whom.

Who’s is the contraction of “who is” or “who has.”

Whose turn is it to pick up the guest who’s arriving on the 2:00 train?

Your & You’re

Your means of or relating to you or yourself.

You’re is the contraction of “you are.”

You’re doing a fabulous job sticking to your diet.

Advice & Advise

Advice is a noun that means guidance or counsel.

Advise is a verb that means to counsel or give advice to.

My advice to you is that you advise your staff to answer the telephone promptly.

Complement & Compliment

Complement (as a noun) means something that completes; complement (as a verb) means to complete.

Compliment (as a noun) means praise or a favorable remark; compliment (as a verb) means to praise.

“I would like to compliment the chef,” said Ralph, “for the way the flavors of this dish complement each other so perfectly.”

Insure, Ensure & Assure

While all 3 of these words relate to guaranteeing that something is true or that something will happen, there are subtle differences in their usages:

Assure means to say, write or confirm the guarantee.

Ensure means to do something to make certain that something happens.

Insure means to guarantee something with insurance or other financial instruments.

“Let me assure you that there’s no need to worry,” he said. “While your firewall will ensure that hackers don’t get into your system, this new policy will insure you against loss in case your system goes down.”Similar Posts:

Agile and UX: July 8, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:31:01 +0000

This is an event I’ll be speaking where we’ll talk about integrating User Experience with Agile methodologies. This is a reschedule of the canceled event.

Here’s some of the information:

Scrum provides us with a great framework for building our Scrum team, implementing the core agile practices and getting the inspect and adapt process started. But Scrum doesn’t provide much for the specific disciplines like programming, testing and User Experience. That’s where our coaches Patrick Neeman and Michael Vincent come in.

Join us as we explore how User Experience Design integrates with the Scrum process. We’ll see first hand how each type of activity fits into the Scrum cycles, and how our User Experience researchers, designers and artists integrate into a Scrum team.

The address is:

Blankspaces
5405 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

The event will start at 7:00 p.m.

And Michael Vincent’s bio:

Mike Vincent is a solutions architect based in Orange County, California. He supports clients with application lifecycle management as a senior consultant with Accentient, and provides software architecture and development services focusing on Microsoft .NET technology as principle architect withMVA Software. He has been in the software business for over 20 years in addition to engineering and marketing management positions. Actively involved in the user group community since the early 90’s, Mike is Vice President of INETA Noram. He founded both the SoCal .Net Architecture group which is now also IASA’s SoCal Chapter and the Orange County C# Developers group, now OC .NET. Mike is a frequent presenter at user groups, regional events, and code camps. He is a Visual Studio Team System MVP. Currently, he is working with the Scrum Alliance on a forthcoming program. mvasoftware.com

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Silly Satudays: Stop Motion Animation

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:00:12 +0000

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UX By Design: 20 User Experience Books You Should Own

Patrick Neeman — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:06:24 +0000

Sure, it’s a top x list, but it’s a great list of user experience books, a few of which overlap what I have here. Take a look.Similar Posts:

The Evolution Of Online Journalism, Via Media Bistro

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:11:54 +0000

From Media Bistro. Yeah, that’s about right.Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Whack-O-Kitty

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:00:57 +0000

No cats were harmed in the production of this YouTube video.Similar Posts:

Agile and UX: June 24, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:05:03 +0000

This is an event I’ll be speaking where we’ll talk about integrating User Experience with Agile methodologies.

Here’s some of the information:

Scrum provides us with a great framework for building our Scrum team, implementing the core agile practices and getting the inspect and adapt process started. But Scrum doesn’t provide much for the specific disciplines like programming, testing and User Experience. That’s where our coaches Patrick Neeman and Michael Vincent come in.

Join us as we explore how User Experience Design integrates with the Scrum process. We’ll see first hand how each type of activity fits into the Scrum cycles, and how our User Experience researchers, designers and artists integrate into a Scrum team.

The address is:

Gorilla Nation/Atomic Online, 1st Floor (just follow the maps to the room)
5140 W Goldleaf Cir
Los Angeles, CA 90056

The event will start at 7:00 p.m.

And Michael Vincent’s bio:

Mike Vincent is a solutions architect based in Orange County, California. He supports clients with application lifecycle management as a senior consultant with Accentient, and provides software architecture and development services focusing on Microsoft .NET technology as principle architect withMVA Software. He has been in the software business for over 20 years in addition to engineering and marketing management positions. Actively involved in the user group community since the early 90’s, Mike is Vice President of INETA Noram. He founded both the SoCal .Net Architecture group which is now also IASA’s SoCal Chapter and the Orange County C# Developers group, now OC .NET. Mike is a frequent presenter at user groups, regional events, and code camps. He is a Visual Studio Team System MVP. Currently, he is working with the Scrum Alliance on a forthcoming program. mvasoftware.com

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Hitting The Target: A Simple But Successful Approach To Market A Small Business On The Web

Patrick Neeman — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:14:07 +0000

This was a presentation I did at the Online Marketing Summit in Long Beach, California. Thank you to the people that showed up!

Online Marketing Summit: June 16, 2009

View more OpenOffice presentations from Patrick Neeman.

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Marketing Wednesdays: Stay Top of Mind with Customers and Prospects

Linda Coss — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:40:45 +0000

When was the last time you contacted your top customers? How about the 2^nd & 3^rd tier of your customer list, your database of potential customers and all of your other contacts? If you don’t have a formal program for keeping in touch, you should. The key is to stay top-of-mind so that when someone has a need for your products or services, you’ll be the one they call.

What are your options?

There are many different ways to stay in touch. Depending on your circumstances, your program may include telephone calls, direct mail, email, newsletters, blogs, personalized greeting cards, and other vehicles.

What’s the perfect frequency?

Unfortunately, there’s no “one size fits all” answer here, but at a minimum most companies should keep in contact with their customers on a quarterly basis. I receive emails once or twice a week from one of the major national bookstore chains, and I find this a little excessive. I also receive a handful of e-zines that arrive weekly, and I eagerly open each one. The difference? The bookstore is just trying to sell me something, while the e-zines provide information to help make my business more profitable.

In marketing, the old adage “out of sight, out of mind” is often true. Create a system that ensures you’ll keep in contact with your customers on a regular basis, and watch your sales increase.Similar Posts:

Cool Website Tuesdays: Global Language Monitor

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:00:18 +0000

Did you even know there were a million words in the English language? I vote for bangster. Whatever that means.Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: Web Product Manager – Los Angeles, California

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:00:55 +0000

If you are interested, send me an email at jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

Position Overview

Lead the design of our new web site
Create an amazing user experience for our members
Optimize Conversion from Visitors to Consumers
Team work within the company to strategize and implement an ever improving experience.
Lead the creation of our Product Requirement Documents
Team with the Engineers in the web team to create a productive and friendly work environment
Team work with the entire company and our community to identify new needs and get feedback on existing features

Required Experience

4+ Years as a Web Product Manager focused on Conversion to paying customers in B2C websites
4+ Years of experience building dynamic, customizable and personalizable web sites
4+ Years of practical experience of web optimization of conversion based on metrics, AB testing and other such techniques
Excellent understanding of Web Engineering
Excellent understanding of Web Marketing
Successful track record of driving the successful completion multiple cycles of optimization of conversion of traffic from non-paying to paying in a B2C environment
BS/MS in Marketing or MBA
BS/MS in Computer Science or Engineering

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Career Mondays: Interactive Producer — Pasadena, CA

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:00:54 +0000

This is a full-time position based in Pasadena, CA. We are in need of a mid to senior-level interactive producer. This person should be able to lead projects from conception to completion, self-manage and work in a fast-paced environment. If you enjoy working in small teams, helping to build process and working for clients that make a difference in the world, this job is for you.

The Online Producer will work on projects including large-scale websites, small sites, banner + email programs and large-scale, integrated direct marketing campaigns.

Responsibilities

Helps scope and manage all client (proposals, statements of work, deliverables, timelines, status, budgets, etc)
Act as primary internal contact to client services teams
Coordinate integration and hand-off between creative team, offline project managers and client services
Schedule and manage project development, overseeing full development cycle and site launch, overseeing information architecture, creative personnel, tech and QA stages; and managing status and resourcing reports
Managing schedules and route approvals and requests to internal agency groups as well as assist in implementing calendars and light QA/Online testing.
In this role you will be working closely with Supervisor, Account Directors, Creative Teams, Project Managers, Developers, Vendors, and IT Staff.

Experience

The ideal candidate must have strong commons sense and prior experience (2 to 5 years) working with the Internet, new media production, or related experience.
Must have the ability to delegate tasks and lead a team, along with providing quick solutions to both team and client.
An in depth understanding of project financials – estimated budgets, costs, actual hours, etc. – and the ability to track and reconcile.
Thorough understanding of managing web capabilities/technologies and production processes.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, along with effective meeting facilitation skills.
Ability to work within deadlines, ensuring timely, cost-effective delivery and client satisfaction.
Self starter who works as well independently as they do as part of a team.
Strong analytical abilities.
Proficiency in MS Office, a solid knowledge of Microsoft Project Scheduling, Browsers, Visio and Operating Systems are a must.
Must be able to work overtime when required.
Must understand how HTML, CSS, (.Net or PHP) works in order to effectively project manage.
Knowledge of localization, experience with e-commerce sites and working with external developers and HTML is a plus!

Salary is in the 65 to 80K range DOE and freelance rate is commiserate with fulltime salary.Similar Posts:

Congratulations To The George Foreman Grill Winner: He’s Cookin’ Now

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:27:32 +0000

Bradezone said:

“Just grubbed my first steak off the Foreman Grill I won from @usabilitycounts — it was extremely yumtastic.”

Twitterific. Ah, that’s taken.

The prize for the 1,500th twitter is a Governor Jesse Ventura bobblehead. Who’s going to win?
Similar Posts:

The Concept Of Frames: An Interesting Post About Social Interaction Design

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:33:16 +0000

From Gravity 7:

If the user experience escapes us, if it is not possible to anticipate uses, to design and forward use cases, to define and order user interests, goals, and use benefits — what can we know of how social media will be used? Not knowing how they will be used, how can we anticipate consequences well enough to design for them?

This is where I am at the moment on this. Frames are still, I think, offer a strong conceptual “framework” for social interaction design. But it is possible that, as personas do more for the designer than they do incapturing truths aboutthe user, frames will offer more to the designer than they will capture truths of social interactions.

Interesting…Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Designing The Stop Sign

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:00:42 +0000

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Want To See A Microsoft Surface? Live In Los Angeles? Go To This Event June 22 In Irvine, CA

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:31:00 +0000

The Los Angeles Chapter of the Usability Professionals Association (I think I’m still a Vice President or something) is hosting an event with Microsoft showing of Microsoft Surface, Windows 7, and other nifty multi-touch devices.

Our hosts are going to be the wonderful Lynn Langit and Woody Pewitt, both Microsoft evangelists.

The event is June 22 at 6:30 p.m. Register for the event at Event Brite. It’s free.

The address is:

Irvine Microsoft Center
3 Park Plaza, Suite 1600
Irvine, CA, 92614
(949) 263-3000

Map it!

Please join User Experience Los Angeles at LinkedIn and add yourself to the reservation list.Similar Posts:

Consultant Thursdays: Four Things To Ask For When Hiring An User Experience Firm Or Consultant

Patrick Neeman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:00:55 +0000

I live in Los Angeles, and we have a very vibrant and active User Experience community. The meetup group numbers over 800, and professionals of all levels show up to events.

Just like any profession that’s out there where the people that are being sold to don’t know exactly what they are buying (other than their website or web application is screwed up and they don’t why), there are always rouges selling snake oil, talking about mental models, dancing about personas who know nothing about them, or wouldn’t know how to do one to save their life.

Sometimes it’s hard distinguishing someone who know what an annotation is, and one who knows how to do it right. Rebranding yourself as a User Experience professional after three meetup meetings and an project management talk is a dangerous thing, and I’m sure we all think we are better at what we do than we actually are.

What’s a client to do when vetting firms and consultants?

Since there is no certification process, it just all depends.

Remember this: Selling User Experience is not the same as doing User Experience, and as the field matures, the pretenders will be sorted out.

Ask for the process

If they don’t have example deliverables or some kind of document that shows all the elements they could use in the User Experience process during working with their clients. Remember that not all processes are created equal, but there should be some similarity to the processes of other companies. If there’s no research portion, worry out loud.

If they can’t come back with some kind of list or adequately explain it, especially if you ask some questions like, “So what is the benefit of personas?” or “Should we do wireframes or prototypes?” Either or should provoke some kind of answer that shows they stand for something. If they waffle or give an answer that doesn’t make sense, if might be time to check out.

Ask for case studies

In the end, most User Experience projects should lend themselves well to some kind of case study where the consultant or the agency can show definate results of a product, and how their skills improved the User Experience, either stastically or from better customer satisfaction.

The case studies don’t have to be overly formal, but there should be some kind of walkthrough of cause and effect i.e. agency or consultant did this, and the results increased X percent. Most User Experience firms have several of these with clients, large and small.

Ask for reference clients

Any good User Experience consultant should be a few reference projects that they can show off as something they are very proud of. The pitfalls of software development means that a lof of projects they may have done aren’t as polished, professional or complete was they were set out to be, because either there are development issues, or the client makes a bunch of changes because other business needs, or the site has changed eight times since the User Experience consultant or agency has worked on it.

There should be at least one or two projects that they can point and say, “this is really, really close to what we did, and the client played along,” and that their involvement is more than just selecting a certain color. A lot of consulting firms I know of list all kinds of clients they did work, even if they did work in a completely different field than User Experience. They should be able to list URLs of projects that included significant effort.

Ask for results

The only deliverable that counts is the final product, in most cases or personals are great, but you can’t use them on a website. In the very end there should be some kind of guarantee that what they are going to deliver is going to be a high quality product, but that means giving over a fair amount of control over to them. But remember that they should be paid for their time and services, because there’s a value to their skills.

Seriously, though, that’s what you are hiring them for, right, to use their skills? Specify exactly what you’re going to get as a final deliverable, and what the results should be. That firm should be able to stand behind it. Period.Similar Posts:

Cool Website Tuesdays: Twitpocalypse.com

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:00:38 +0000

From Twitpocalypse:

“The Twitpocalypse is similar to the Y2K bug. Very soon the unique identifier associated to each tweet will exceed 2,147,483,6471

For some of your favorite third-party Twitter services not designed to handle such a case, the sequence will suddenly turn into negative numbers. At this point, they are very likely to malfunction or crash.

When will this happen? Check here often, and we will tell you how close we are to the Twitpocalypse.”

Props out to ShortFormBlog for finding this one.Similar Posts:

Happy Days: Usability Counts Featured At Freelance Switch

Patrick Neeman — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:21:14 +0000

The article:

How to Make the Web Work for Your Business in 5 Steps

Little victories. Hope they copy edited it.Similar Posts:

Career Mondays: Producer, eCommerce Execution – Glendale, California

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:00:30 +0000

I was on a contract here, so I could get your resume directly into the person in charge. If interested, send your resume to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

Job Description

Disney Shopping, Inc. (DSI) is the online destination for innovative Disney products featuring beloved Disney characters from the latest box office hits to vintage classics. DisneyStore.com (the new destination for all DSI sites) has the largest selection of merchandise for kids and adults, including media, toys, apparel, home, collectibles, electronics and exclusive products that can be personalized. With thousands of items to choose from, DisneyStore.com offers the best of Disney for the young and young-at-heart.

The Producer is a versatile executor of the day-to-day operational tasks necessary to run DisneyStore.com. This role will own the execution of product launches, pricing and shipping updates, promotion set-up, SQL scripts, CYO xml, A/B and segmentation testing, and HTML markup and e-Spot creation and maintenance. The ideal candidate should be able to work under pressure well and manage multiple projects at once.

Subject Matter Expert: CMC (WCS Commerce Tooling), TOAD, CYO, eSpots, DOTT process

Responsibilities

Follow best practice guidelines and protocols for day to day operations and future changes in the e-Commerce systems
Responsible for product’s online life cycle starting from merchandising turnover through product upload into Commerce system, including establishing and updating pricing and product content, gifting options, associating product multi-view imagery, setting appropriate availability codes and product gating, flagging products for specific site functions. Understand how these levers affect the site. Assist Visual Merchandising in continually tuning these levers for maximum gross margin sales and conversion
Responsible for Create-Your-Own XML creation along with associated database work necessary to launch the product. Also make updates to XML throughout the life cycle of product (price change, personalization charge changes). Test enhancements to flash configurator
Responsible for set up of “quick picks” and testing of new concepts to achieve the business goals surrounding this
Create and maintain “how to” guides and processes
Responsible for electronic transfer of product from DisneyStore.com to DisneyOutlet.com
Responsible for HTML coding for eSpots and associated database configuration using e-Commerce tooling
Set up A/B testing/Experiments/Segmentation and link associated content to each condition
Set up merchandising-related promotions via Commerce content management tooling and responsible for accuracy
Ensure products are correctly placed in appropriate promotional groups
Ensure online execution accuracy (products, pricing, deals, promotions, etc.)
Thoroughly QA work prior to launch and on an ongoing basis post-launch
Enter in defects into Clear Quest
Provide insight into specific expertise for the operational areas handled
Think ahead and identify potential issues
Prepare reports on an as-needed basis
Field Guest Services requests, including updates to GS pop up, shipping info, holiday cut offs
Implement shipping rate changes
Liaison with Web Development team on day to day work
Acquire knowledge of web analytics, web usability and information architecture
Review content error reports daily and make appropriate fixes
Run buyable/published reports and distribute to Planning teams. Make appropriate site updates as needed.
Write and document SQL scripts using Oracle tooling
Assist Production counterparts (ABCNewsstore.com, DisneyStore.co.uk) in a role as a subject matter expert and collaborate with them to find efficiencies in process
Suggest automated solutions for current manual processes
Develop effective working relationships with other departments and groups with whom work must be coordinated or interfaced
Provide second tier after-hours on call support of DisneyStore.com

Experience

3+ years previous e-Commerce-related production experience
BA/BS or equivalent is required
Thorough understanding of HTML and doctype specific syntax is a must
Thorough knowledge of all content management tools (both internal and external tooling) in relation to the e-Commerce systems used for DisneyStore.com
Ability to troubleshoot syntax errors in HTML markup
Working knowledge of basic SQL, Access databases.Oracle familiarity preferred.

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9 Ways People Respond To Online Content

Patrick Neeman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:49:41 +0000

From Lateral Action:

What a wonderful little diagram.Similar Posts:

QuickTip Sundays: The Mobile Version Of UsabilityCounts.com

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:00:03 +0000

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while (because I’m sick of trying to view the blog on my iPhone), and it took a while to plan what I wanted to do with it.

Launched this weekend was the mobile version of UsabilityCounts.com. The home page viewable at mobile.usabilitycounts.com, and i’m working on enabling the whole site at that URL. Most mobile devices should automatically detected and show the right version.

Twitter users that view the site on the iPhone, cheers, and enjoy.

Here’s what I did:

A unique design depending on the device

You can use CSS to handle a different display, but you should do it using server-side technologies, because the whole point of a mobile device is to deliver an experience that has less graphics but is still functional. Delivering a site that is 200k on a limited device with lower than DSL bandwidth doesn’t make sense. To do this, I’ve been slowing ripping apart the TypoXP theme of Wordpress for purposes of simplication (most Wordpress blogs are overcomplicated in their usage of CSS).

When the site loads, it does an initial detection of the User Agent: Blackberry, Android, iPhone and iPod are the currently supported devices, and you can see a list at Wikipedia. The pages load different content for mobile devices — the web version is heavier, where as the mobile version contains just HTML and a couple of backgrounds and icons for navigation only. Wordpress has a set of function calls that makes it easy to show different content depending on how you want it triggered.

I also added the following HTML tag:

The iPhone assumes the screen is 960 pixels wide, so there is the new META tag specified called viewport for mobile devices. The iPhone technically is 320 wide by 280 tall in portrait mode, but I set it to 480 pixels wide and adjusted the initial scale to preserve current content. More on that later in the post.

I used CSS style sheet but did not declare it as a mobile style sheet. I would I like to think device manufacturers properly identify their devices, but I know better because I’ve been doing this for too long (and don’t even get me started on Netscape 4.72).

Keep It Simple, Stupid

I did research using other content sites, like the NYTimes application for the iPhone, which I think is one of the best applications on the market. I selected a very similar design approach: allowed for the display of 30 articles at a time, and enabled paging of those articles, and designed around a single column of content.

I figured people were getting very used to scrolling on the iPhone, and designed with that in mind. Common use cases I could see someone reading the site would be while using mass transit or eating lunch.

Once a user was within an article, I kept the same format without the Twitter feed links. Below the article the user could see other recent articles, encouraging browsing of the site. In the future, I’m going to be adding pages where users can view lists of articles by tag.

For the CSS, I avoided a lot of the tricks like hover because they seem pointless in a mobile environment. I figured users would be most appreciative of a simple interface without all the bells and whistles that are reserved for web displays.

Adjust appropriately to use existing content

I planned for a 480 pixel wide maximum width of the content originally for the blog (by no mistake). To make it look good on the mobile device, I had to add 10 pixels of padding around the content. This required adjustment of the viewport values to handle the YouTube and other video content I post in the site.

The values I picked are listed below:

Initial scale was set below two-thirds because I wanted the videos and image content to scale within the window. YouTube supports the iPhone well. When you select one of the videos, the site is automatically launched. The CSS type is set bigger to account for the initial scale, thus I can use all of the existing content without changing it for those using web browsers.

Make targets big

Dan Saffer writes about this in the book Designing Gestural Interfaces, but I’ll explain it in English: Most people have fat fingers, so it’s a good idea to have fat targets.

Dan advocates the target area be at least one centimeter square, so I adjusted the UI appropriately, including larger than normal search boxes, comment boxes, and the links to the articles are quite a big larger than most websites.

Test on the official manufacturer simulators

The good news is that Apple and Blackberry have applications to test the emulators on. The bad news is that you have to sign up for their programs (which you can do for free) to download the simulators. The Apple iPhone Simulator comes part of the xCode package, so it’s quite a download. Once you have installed it, it’s great at simulating the experience of a website on an iPhone.

Most of the “free” simulators aren’t very effective and don’t give a true experience, so I limited it to using the official iPhone application. I also tested the site on my iPhone, and there was no difference.

Once I get the Blackberry simulator installed, I’ll give you the results. I’m still having difficulties.Similar Posts:

13 Quotes That Show The Customer Isn’t Ready For A Good Website

Patrick Neeman — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:00:17 +0000

Stolen from The Web Usability Blog.

“Why we want a new website? We don’t like the old one anymore.”
“Interactivity is very important to us.”
“We know what we want. Our web team has had a brainstorm session about it.”
“We’d like a big visual at the top of every page.”
“We’ve already chosen the technical system. Now all we have to do is get the content in there.”
“Our advertising agency has already made the lay-out. All you have to do is make the tree structure.”
“Where in the menu is the procurement division?”
“That’s a very sensitive issue in our company.”
“Prices on our website? No way.”
“We really think we need a news section.”
“We’ve positioned the product like that for 10 years. We’re not going to change it.”
“That word doesn’t really fit our corporate image. We don’t want to use it on our website.”
“Our web builder/ IT department says that isn’t possible.”

Similar Posts:

Silly Saturdays: Amy Winehouse Cover In Yiddish

Patrick Neeman — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:00:33 +0000

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Four Reasons Why I Hate Top Lists

Patrick Neeman — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:00:41 +0000

I had this conversation with an acquaintance about why I sometimes rewrite headlines to include the word “Top”, I some I explained to her that posts with those headlines tend to do better for SEO.

Even if the headline reads, “The Top Ten Reasons I Would Design My Site In Baker, California.” Users see “Top”, assumes David Letterman had some part in it, and click.

Voila, instant traffic!

Top lists are lazy writing

Whenever writers are low on ideas, the always lean on Top Ten lists — they are easy, and readers loved them. They’re also lazy, because they require very little real work requiring research, just opinion.

All you have to do is come up with some ideas of what the top items are, and write them. Unfortunately, most of the top lists have no attribution to studies nor have data to support them. Just one author pointing out what they think should be a top item on a list.

Top lists have no context

Smashing Magazine, which has nearly 120,000 readers of their RSS feed, publishes articles like 30 Free High Quality Wordpress Themes. That’s wonderful, but for what?

Everyone does this. Jacob Nielsen does this (Top 10 IA Mistakes). Mashable does it. Jared Spool does it (Ten Ways To Kill Good Design). We do it, alot.

There’s no context what the lists are for. Can those Wordpress themes be used for a personal site? A corporate site? A sports site? IA of what? All IA? Does some of it really cover interaction design?

For a field that uses “it depends” a lot when talking to clients, we sure have some absolutes, especially without context.

Top lists are usually a bunch of screen shots

Many of the top lists are great to do because they are a bunch of screen shots, but frequently we get no analysis of why they are great. It’s more of, “Here they are, they look cool, go get them.”

That’s wonderful, but for the multitudes of designers out there that are a designer only because they read Smashing Magazine, opened up Photoshop and started charging $50 an hour, the top lists may be the only articles they read.

There should be some kind of explanation why it belongs on the list. It might even be better to show poor design, and explain why it’s poor other than “it just is!”

Top lists only encapsulate what they have seen

There’s no way some of the people listed above have seen every website, talked to every IA, visited through every social media application, and documented every design mistake to make up the list. For example, it really should be Ten Out Of A Thousand Ways To Kill Good Design.

Our view of the world is very narrow, and it’s because we can’t process every piece of information of what we’ve seen, much less what we haven’t seen. (And in many cases, it’s up to us to provide filters for our readers, but with an explanation that we aren’t Moses coming down the hill with the Ten Commandments.) There’s just too much data out there, and that’s why we make generalizations based on our experiences and knowledge. Thus, we make judgment calls.

And publish top lists.Similar Posts:

The Four Most Important Elements Of Your Brand’s Image

Linda Coss — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:47:11 +0000

Get out all of your company’s printed materials – your business cards, letterhead, brochures, fliers, ads, newsletters, etc., as well as a printout of your website’s home page – and spread them out on your desk. Take a good look at what you see and ask yourself: Is it visually obvious that all of these items are from the same company?

If not, why not?

A big part of branding is recognition. Having a “look” that you use across all of your marketing materials makes it easy for your customers and potential customers to recognize that a message is from your company. So what are the elements of this “look”?

The Four Important Elements of Your Brand’s Visual Image

Your logo symbolizes your company. Make sure it is easily recognizable and works well in a wide range of advertising media. Overly creative logos can sometimes harm you rather than help you — make sure you pick something that can be remembered for it’s elegance and simplicity, not forgotten because it’s too complex.
Your color scheme should be uniform throughout all of your materials, and appropriate for your goals. Some color combinations are relaxing and soothing, others suggest excitement and enthusiasm, while others project a very “corporate” image.
Your overall “look” (including colors, fonts, pictures, layout, etc.) needs to visually reinforce the feeling that you want your product or service to convey. For example, a company marketing “mom’s apple pie” to senior citizens will have a much different look than one selling the latest electronic gadgets to teenage boys.
Your printed materials need to reflect important elements of the “look and feel” of your website (or vice versa). There’s nothing worse than having printed materials that don’t look like the website — your prospective clients will usually refer to printed materials first on their desk.

Remember, it often takes multiple exposures to an advertising/marketing message before a consumer will decide to make a purchase or inquiry. If your materials are a mismatched hodge-podge of colors, designs and messages, it will be very difficult for you to build a recognizable presence in the market place.Similar Posts: