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.)

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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:

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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:

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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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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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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:

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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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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:

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“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?
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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.

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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:

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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:

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“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.”

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

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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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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:

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=480; initial-scale=0.63; maximum-scale=1; user-scalable=0;” />

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:

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=480; initial-scale=0.63; maximum-scale=0.63; user-scalable=0;” />

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.

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

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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:

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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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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:

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You’ll get your answer soon enough.

Meet Dustin Curtis. He’s a designer that took it upon himself to redesign the American Airlines site and post it on the web.

And he got a response. Here are some selected quotes from an anonymous UX Designer at American Airlines:

First, an introduction. I’m Mr X, and I work here at AA.com. I’ve been doing UX design and development for about 10 years with a variety of companies in a variety of industries, and I work with a team of other UX specialists on AA.com. I like to think I’m decent at what I do, and I know the others I work with here are all pretty good. The problem with the design of AA.com, however, lies less in our competency (or lack thereof, as you pointed out in your post) and more with the culture and processes employed here at American Airlines. … AA.com is a huge corporate undertaking with a lot of tentacles that reach into a lot of interests. It’s not small, by any means.

…

But—and I guess here’s the thing I most wanted to get across—simply doing a home page redesign is a piece of cake. … But doing the design isn’t the hard part, and I think that’s what a lot of outsiders don’t really get, probably because many of them actually do belong to small, just-get-it-done organizations. But those of us who work in enterprise-level situations realize the momentum even a simple redesign must overcome, and not many, I’ll bet, are jumping on this same bandwagon. They know what it’s like.

…

So, since it won’t all get done overnight, don’t give us a bad grade if you don’t see it happening fast enough for your taste. Even a large organization can effect change; it just takes a different approach than the methods found in smaller shops. But it’ll happen because it has to, and we know that. And we’ll keep on keepin’ on, even if most of us really and truly would prefer to throw it all away and start over.

For large companies, redesigning something as simple as the home page is like moving the Titanic on a dime, and redesigning a complete site could take a year, because at some large companies,the number of stakeholders could reach over 100. Not kidding.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Big companies are sometimes slow to move because they make changes that could kill the revenue stream (eBay is a great example), and sometimes it’s because not just User Experience has a voice: add in Product Management, Quality Assurance, Customer Service, the guy from Accounting, some gal in Shipping, and the three people who are relatives of the CEO, and pretty soon, you have a site that’s nowhere close the original design.

That’s what all User Experience folks go through working with multiple stakeholders, right?Similar Posts:

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• Integrating the user interface as designs into a variety of web-based templates that are functional in the development and quality testing environments
• Code development of HTML, xHTML, JavaScript, CSS, VTL, AJAX, XML, XSLT
• Managing quality assurance testing feedback and corrections and deployments
• Documentation and design using Adobe Photoshop as becomes necessary to address interface experience gaps
• Code using web standards and best practices, unobtrusive JavaScript, graceful degradation and progressive enhancement
• Use JavaScript frameworks and libraries such as YUI, EXT JS, and jQuery to create interactive interfaces

Requirements

• 5 years experience defining web based user interfaces
• 5 years hands on writing of HTML, Javascript, CSS, XML and XSLT
• 2 years using an existing UI library such as jQuery
• Excellent knowledge of browser compatibility issues

Send me a message if interested at jobs@usabilitycounts.com.Similar Posts:

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For those of you that don’t know, you can follow this blog on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/usabilitycounts (@usabilitycounts). I also have a couple more twitter feeds at http://www.twitter.com/cooltechjobs (@cooltechjobs) for job listings and http://www.twitter.com/uxlosangeles (@uxlosangeles) for events happening in Los Angeles.

LinkedIn Updates

I have started a LinkedIn group called User Experience Los Angeles. If you live in Los Angeles, and want to join, go ahead — it’s an open group. You can also find me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/usabilitycounts.Similar Posts:

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The grill details:

Sporting a sleek, contemporary design in durable housing, this electric grill features 120 square inches of cooking surface and a floating hinge to accommodate thick sandwiches, steaks, and more. For added convenience, the thermostat-controlled ready light indicates when the appliance has reached an ideal grilling temperature. The appliance’s appeal lies in its simplicity and countertop convenience–not to mention its fat-fighting ability. Its design channels fat away from food and into its large grease tray. Even more, an exclusive George Tough nonstick coating protects the grill plates, providing the option for low-fat cooking and ensuring easy food release. With its extended cool-touch handle, the grill measures approximately 17 by 18 by 8 inches and carries a one-year limited warranty.Similar Posts:

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I was tempted to publish this for Silly Saturdays, but this so accurately describes the Vendor Client relationship I moved it to this category.Similar Posts:

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The Product Analyst is involved primarily in the pre-development phase of the product development lifecycle. Product vision, work initiation, prioritization, product scope, requirements management, product sponsor management, business value and approvals are among the areas of action for this position. During the development phase, they are primarily concerned with making sure the product under development matches the vision requirements by working with all areas of software development including artists, designers, engineers, managers and quality assurance teams. This position requires business knowledge, organization, independence and good communication.

Duties and responsibilities may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Receives requests for new development and enhancements from initiating stakeholders and insures that work requests are complete, accurate, and reflect the intent of the initiator
• Participates in evaluation of the request queue, including elaboration on requests, supporting evaluation of business value, and balancing of capacity with demand
• Participates in the request approval process, which includes screening and approval of requests based on identified business, financial, and technical criteria, as well as prioritizing approved requests based on importance to the business, external deadlines, and resource availability
• Defines and controls the scope of an application release, including integration of all approved and applicable work requests into a single project
• Works with both business and technical stakeholders to create, gather, document, and manage the lifecycle of the business and functional requirements related to work requests, which may include creating use cases and creating documentation for requests; manages the organization and changes to requirements and changes to deliverables
• Leads, tracks and executes the requirements definition phase of the product development cycle, ensuring that all key stakeholders have participated in the process
• Continuously identify and implement process/tool improvements for requirements definition/elicitation process
• Responsible for the creation, implementation and maintenance of standardized requirements documentation
• Is knowledgeable of competing products and can evaluate product and business performance and feature sets against the competition
• Participates in the review of product and technical solutions to project requirements; makes sure designs meet requirements
• May be assigned issues and risks to be resolved during development or quality assurance
• Creates and maintains products guides which provides a central location for documentation related to products and services

This position requires a minimum of four years product management and requirements analysis experience in an information technology environment, as well as proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and Visio. Additional software tools, if required, need to be learned quickly.

Additional requirements include:

• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with stakeholders and project team members to further the business objectives of our products and services
• Excellent written, verbal and social skills – You will be interacting with all types of people
• Ability to work in a fast paced, multiple project environment on an independent basis and with minimal supervision
• Knowledge of video games, video game business models, the gaming market and competing services is helpful

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BuddyPress is an uber-set of Wordpress Plugins that add a lot of structure and functionality to WordPress, but even with that, the installation isn’t as tough as you would think.

The pluses

• Social networking: You can add friends, create groups, create blogs — all the actions you would expect in any social network, including emails that will be sent out during particular actions. It’s all open source too, so you have complete access to the code base to customize it, and believe me, you can customize WordPress a lot.
  
• Customizable profiles: While there’s some wonkyness to adding fields to profiles (you can’t order them), adding them is a snap. I have no idea how you would actually search the fields in an advanced search sort of way — looking at the database, it didn’t appear to be very easy — but the amount of customization you can do and the easy of use to do it is ridculous.
• WordPress Plug Ins: You get full access to the thousands of plug ins that have been developed for WordPress, including the BBPress discussion forum, which plugs right in the to the groups.
• Your server, you own it: While Ning is a great solution (I’ve seen some awesome implementations) at the end of the day if you’re a business, it’s best to have it on your box so you are less suspectible to the platform. BuddyPress is that.

The minuses

• Installation: It’s on WordPress MU, so moving it over from your standard WordPress installation isn’t as easy as you would hope (well, it’s not for the normal WordPress user). There was some database installation funkiness that a few extra minutes in PHP would have solved in handling errors better. Outside of having to delete the WordPress configuation file a few times, the installation was fairly run of the mill.
• Designing The UI: With the extra funcitonality comes the extra overhead of designing a look and feel for the application. While the first theme is great — I used some of the examples to solve design issues with a marketing directory I’m working on — there is a significant amount of work that has to be done that’s well outside of the “well, it’s Wordpress, I can pay only $500 to design in” comments by clients. It is Facebook in a box, and should be treated as such for complexity, and I can imagine spending a month at least designing a decent social netowkr.
• WordPress Plug Ins: Not all of them will work well with WordPress MU, so the predictability of what works and what doesn’t is trial and error. You’re going to have to live with the caution of “well, this may work, but it will be an adventure” on some of the plug ins.
• Performance: It seemed a bit sluggish, and if you are running a social network of any size, I recommend having it on a dedicated server. Some of the plug ins haven’t been tuned yet, so there is a lag. Remember, it’s version 1.0.

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1. Networking – many areas have a variety of options
2. Your Website – your “silent salesperson”
3. Press Releases – try to garner free publicity with a newsworthy message
4. Email Newsletters – a great way to stay “top of mind” with customers & prospects
5. Events – attend or sponsor events targeted to your prospects
6. Public Speaking – become known as an expert
7. Free Trial – give away free samples or no-obligation consultations
8. Signage On Your Car – turn your vehicle into a mobile billboard
9. Banner Ads – on other company’s websites
10. Pay Per Click Online Advertising – with Google Adwords, Yahoo, or others
11. Online Classified Ads – try Craig’s List or industry-specific sites
12. Telemarketing – good old-fashioned “cold calling”
13. Blogs – write your own or try to get mentioned on those written by others
14. Ads On Prospect’s Doors – blanket the neighborhood with door hangers or fliers
15. Referral Programs – reward your customers for bringing in more customers
16. VIP Customer Programs – identify your best customers & encourage them to buy more
17. Post Videos on YouTube – especially to reach a younger audience
18. Direct Mail – can be anything from simple postcards to elaborate packages
19. In Store Advertising – including signage, fliers, and your front window display
20. Promotional Items – give-aways emblazoned with your company logo, website, etc.
21. Co-Op Advertising – join forces with non-competing businesses
22. Print Ads – in magazines, newspapers, and trade journals
23. Radio or TV Ads – with cable TV stations you can narrow in on a specific area
24. Free Standing Inserts – in newspapers and mail
25. Trade Shows – depending on your business this can be key

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It’s one of those tools that I wish did more, and while it’s simple, it’s too simple. By the time you figure that out, you’re kind of stuck, because migrating files is a pain in the neck.

It focuses way too much on Web 2.0

Look, you can drag and drop!

Look at the nifty hover-overs!

Look, wiki’s, but not really!

It’s cool for us web types that love that kind of stuff, but have you ever tried watching a corporate user use BaseCamp? It’s painful. They don’t get most of those little features and touches because 1) they aren’t Web 2.0 experts, and 2) the features aren’t documented in a way that any user would really know how to use them. It would be nicer if they spent some of that time on the next point…

It’s missing features — lots of features

This is a discussion that a friend of mine and I have about the product. We’re using it, and it’s a nice little file sharing tool, but there’s a lot of features we wish it had. Like…

• True prioritization that could be editable
• A better navigation structure
• A more sophisticated governance structure
• More consistent formatting tools (instead of me having to insert HTML)

…and the list goes on.

Seriously, a few of these features would be really, really easy to implement, and wouldn’t take a full feature release.

Simplicity is one thing. Limiting your feature set and telling the users it’s good for them is another.

The pricing isn’t really that competitive

I’m using Basecamp on a few projects, and am paying the $24.95 a month. That might not seem like much, but hosted, that’s roughly $300 a year. I can write that off (and I do) as part of running a business as a consultant, but still, that seems like a lot, and I’m using it on really small projects.

For example, here are some prices for SharePoint (which is the same pricing plans with more features as BaseCamp). Outside of some configuration issues, is a much superior product, and is gaining more acceptance in the corporate community. There’s some great templates to get you started, and quite frankly, I could set up a template in a week that replicates much of the functionality of BaseCamp. I’m lazy because I have more important things to do (like bill clients), and MOSS doesn’t have very good Apple support.

That said, if I were working in an environment that was mostly Microsoft, and had time to setup a SharePoint instance, I’d be all over it in a heartbeat.

They seem to be more about marketing

Sometimes marketing and a cult takes over. Good examples of this are Apple and eBay. Apple products are wonderful (I own enough of them), but they aren’t the most usable in the world. Same with eBay. eBay’s gotten much better over the years about user experience, but the reason it’s big is that they provided a marketplace, had that cult factor and marketed effectively, not because it ws the best product on the market.

The same goes here. If you tell the right people how good you are, and you have the right public relations professionals, you’ll get sales. It’s about the cult, sometimes, especially in the Web space.

They say they listen to their users, but do they?

This post is kind of old, but still, why did they publish this?

I’ve been a product manager, and laughing at your customer base was something that you did over a couple of beers with your customer service representives, not in a blog post. We all agree users in the end are stupid, but you aren’t supposed to make them feel that way.

I remember the days of the users doing something stupid, and then correcting the issue through a better feature development or more help text. This is like airing your dirty laundry, and what’s a bit more troubling about this is that it’s not like this is a free service — users are paying for this product.

They don’t hesitate to take shots at other sites — and yet seems reticient to deal with listening to their users. Let’s face it, the only person that can get away with that is Steve Jobs, and I don’t see him working anytime soon at 37signals.Similar Posts:

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Their manifesto:

We are Caroline and Micah, the founders of The League. As designers on the web, we have a calling to raise the standards of the web-design world. We’re not the only ones who value good design, and it’s time for the web world to catch up with it. We understand the challenges that comes with the internet, but with our recent discovery of @font-face, we started getting excited. For those who aren’t up to speed, @font-face is a fairly new addition to web styling, letting a designer specify the location of their own font files. Instead of having to design with just a handful of web-friendly fonts, we’ll be able to use any typeface we desire. Well, that’s our vision, anyway.

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Helvetica: “Arial, I haven’t seen you since you cloned me and stole my identity!” Classic.Similar Posts:

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This came across, and I just had to laugh. Joz is a friend of mine, and is an Information Architect based out of Los Angeles. She bought this camera for her mom, and there’s something humorous and offensive at the same time about this. I mean, geez, I squint when I have a camera pointed at me!

It’s great they’re putting predictive technology to help usability, but there are unintended consequences. I still can’t use voice recognition myself because a) I have a deep voice that sometimes disappears, and b) I have a slight lisp from a speech impediment. What’s ironic is the camera is made by an Asian company (Nikon), and you get the picture.

Sort of.Similar Posts:

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Download the MP3.

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…after one of those sessions, I had dinner with friends, and they started talking about was an online shopping experience. The exact feature set the developer wanted to add, my friends basically said it over complicated the process, and made it hard to complete the purchase (I’m going to hide the name to protect the innocent, but it spelled close to Mike, and they sell, uh, shoes).

Note that my friends use technology all the time, but aren’t experts. They are, however, are consumers and are am important part of the new economy. They are typical users that make user experience experts a need. The one site example is cited a lot (well, Amazon does it), but in very few instances does one site make a competitive analysis across sites in the target audience.

So what do users really want?

User experience and development professionals aren’t the ones that should be suggesting all the bells and whistles, so here’s a list I’ve compiled in my head of what I thought users wanted.

Users want the message to be clear

So many websites try to be clever and cute with the tagline, mission statement and other information that they are never clear why the website is up. The best approach is to have a name that is clear and concise, or to create your own brand (Amazon, Google) so you’re name can show up in a dictionary.

For the rest of us struggling to find a website URL that fits our business model, the other approach is to make it clear on the home page what the website is about. Put plenty of hints (like better copy that the outsource website designer can write) so your users have no question about your service or site goals.

Is it an ecommerce site?

Do you provide services?

Are you trying to get people to sign up for something, so you can contact them?

Then state it! Make no bones about what the site is about.

Users want context to see if they fit

Once the user gets to the site and reads the message, they’ll get a better idea if the site or service is for them. Do you patronize a doctor when you have an eye problem? No. So those customers lost are a good thing, because that means that your resources won’t be tied up answering their questions.

How users evaluate a website after making sense of it:

• Is this a service I need?
• Do I see enough value in it (time, money) to use it?

That’s it. If you provide them with enough context to make those two decisions, you’re golden. In the end, users are a pretty simple bunch.

Users want consistency

One of the general rules about user interface design is that a consistently bad interface is better than an inconsistently good interface, because at least users know what to expect. That’s the theory of user interface patterns: use generally accepted methods of navigation (except when you know when to break them), and users will implicly recognize what you’re doing without knowing the science behind it.

That said, users don’t care about user interface patterns. They aren’t going to scream about your use of radio buttons versus tabs, they’re aren’t going to leave the site because you used a checkbox wrong. They will leave the site if the navigation moves around and appears in different places on the page, or get frustrated because they can’t find something.

Users want to be heard without having to shout

The 2 or so million Facebook users that complained about the new user interface were a vocal bunch, but they probably aren’t the most important group. When most people are unhappy about a service, they don’t join groups and send messages like that, because most people have don’t have that much free time. Sometimes the squeaky wheel is the wrong wheel.

They do the obvious thing — they leave the site. (Note MySpace’s leveling off of traffic — that’s the best example I’ve seen in a long time of a site not working for its users).

Happy users return. Sad users leave. Get it?

Users don’t want the shiny (unless it’s in context)

That e-commerce website I was talking about used a heavy amount of Javascript, Flash and other Web 2.0 technologies that translate into a richer experience. However, even on my megafast download of a pipe (I think I’m geting 20 down on a regular, sustained basis), the site is slow. Very slow.

Slow translates into lost sales.

Shiny is great, especially if it’s in context — YouTube and some of the music sites are great examples — but they are also barriers for users. They might not have the right plug in installed. They might be on a slow connection. They might have a computer that belongs in the Smithsonian Institution. More often than not, there’s a reason not to use heavy Javascript, Flash and SilverLight than to use it. The shiny is cool, but only when it makes sense.

Users want to be guided (without being guided)

One of the general rules about website usability tests is that you almost never listen to what users say, it’s always what they do. That said, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been through a test where the user absolutely felt stupid using the service or product, mainly because the site wasn’t intuitive enough

Help text generally doesn’t work. Big long Flash introductions don’t work. Dancing flash people don’t work.

What does work are sites are are intuitive enough and forward thinking enough to provide a path for the user to go. The elements of user experience should be defined enough so the site acts the way the user thinks it should act i.e. the user shouldn’t have to learn it, especially for consumer facing sites. It’s about predictive user experience.Similar Posts:

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I’m honestly sick of wireframes (No offense, Omnigraffle and Visio, but Web 2.0 doesn’t work with with wireframes), so I’ve been looking for other avenues to get my ideas across. Some I’m working with are using HTML Mockups, but the next smaller client I get, I’m thinking of using FlairBuilder, a nifty new prototyping tool by Cristian Pascu.

It’s always wonderful when you can call out the author by name.

The price point is good ($99 for the first release, $199 later on), it has a free viewer, it’s cross platform (Adobe Air), and it’s really easy to use. I’d like to see a 5 pixel grid for it, but beggars can’t be choosers. Expect a longer review sooner than later.Similar Posts:

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Here’s an article that I spotted over at Freelance Switch about landing more gigs. The concise list is:

1. Keep a Polished Resume & Portfolio
2. Write Effective Emails
3. Use Gmail’s “Canned Responses” Feature
4. Personalize and Tailor Your Message for Each Job
5. The Importance of Email Subject Lines
6. Maximize Your Job Search With RSS
7. Extend Your Reach Beyond Local Jobs
8. Persistent, but Respectful Follow-up Emails
9. Don’t Stop Hunting For Your Next Gig
10. Professionalism, Honesty, and Confidence

I can personally vouch for 4 — I had a chance at an interview for a good agency, and the indication I got was I hadn’t included a formal cover letter (a previous email to them had come up with blank content, and I didn’t resend with that note). In times of more applicants with greater experience, clients and companies look for reasons not to look at candidates who aren’t the best fits, and good communication skills are required of any employee or contractor.

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What is a “call to action”?

A call to action is a phrase or paragraph that asks for the sale or requests that the reader do something. It’s the part of the marketing piece that tells the reader what to do next – call now to place an order, click here to get a free report, email for more information, enter a survey to win a prize, subscribe to an online newsletter, etc.

Never assume that your potential customers will know why they should act, what they should do, or when they should do it!

Tell them exactly what to do

Each of your marketing pieces should include a call to action (which may be mentioned multiple times, not just at the end) that ties in with the piece’s overall goals. If your goal is to sell, don’t ask readers to call for more information – ask them to purchase your product today. And always keep your instructions simple and clear to make it easy for the reader to respond. Should they call, fax, or email? Do they need to click through to something, fill out a short form, or take some other action? What exactly should the reader do?

Of course, it’s not enough to tell the reader what they should do – you also need to tell them why they should do it, and why they should do it now. But the bottom line is, if you’re not asking for the sale, don’t expect to get it!Similar Posts:

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For more humor, view the HTML source.Similar Posts:

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Here are some tips for effective proofreading:

1. Check Your Spelling. At a minimum, be sure to use your word processor’s spell check function! Although this won’t catch all errors, it will catch many (for example, spell check won’t notice the mistake if your typo is an actual word, such as “mop” instead of “map”).
2. Read It Out Loud. This is probably the most important step for successful proofreading. Hearing your document being read out loud makes it easier to notice awkward sentences, repetitive phrases, grammatical errors, typos that weren’t caught by your word processing program and other mistakes.
3. Take a Break. If time permits, set your writing aside and revisit it later. You’ll come back to the piece with fresh eyes and a new point of view.
4. Print It Out. Next, print out a hard copy of your writing and read it again. Sometimes you’ll notice errors “in print” that you didn’t see on screen.
5. Ask for Help. Once you are happy with your editing, ask someone who has a good understanding of spelling, grammar and punctuation to review the document for you. Even after checking and double checking, it’s easy to miss an error in your own work that may be obvious to someone who is reading it for the first time.

Whenever you write something that’s not just “for your eyes only,” be sure that thorough proofreading and editing are integral parts of your writing process.Similar Posts:

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As presented by Internet Explorer 8.Similar Posts:

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Features vs. benefits

Many business people make the mistake of focusing on their product’s features instead of its benefits. What’s the difference? A feature is a fact about the product, while a benefit explains or demonstrates how the product will benefit the customer. For example, “made of heavy-duty plastic” is a feature; “guaranteed unbreakable” is a benefit.

Put your benefits front and center

Every time I visit a website or pick up a flier whose headline reads “Welcome to XYZ Company” I cringe (well, actually, being a marketing copywriter, I see a sales opportunity). Why? Because “Welcome to XYZ Company” doesn’t tell me anything about the company, what they’re offering or why I might want to buy. Your company’s benefits (or implied benefits) should be blaring from the headlines and subheads of all your marketing materials.

So take a good look at your marketing materials. If you’re focusing on features instead of benefits, it might be time for an overhaul!Similar Posts:

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I have to admit. For awhile now, I secretly thought that Twitter was just a tool for a lot of self-indulgent people. I’m not the type to follow Ashton Kutcher’s daily rants. I wouldn’t even follow my BFF’s twitters for that matter. It seems as if we spend every second of our day pushing buttons on devices and adding to the noise of virtual reality rather  than living in the physical here-and-now. To what extent do we build and use technology for technology sake rather than enhance the quality of our lives?

Then, along came Kogi, the twittering food truck that has revolutionized fast food. Apparently, the hottest place to eat in L.A. right now is on the sidewalk, next to a food truck that serves Korean BBQ tacos. People follow Kogi on Twitter to track the truck’s location and to find out the specials for the day. All of a sudden, people are hanging out on the street, eating and socializing. Don’t get me started on the whole Korean Taco thing. It’s so multicultural, so “Melting Pot,” so ”We are the World,” so “United Colors of Benneton.”

Technology that actually gets people to go outside and interact with one another rather than hide behind their online personas? Who would’ve thunk?Similar Posts:

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Download the MP3.

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This was originally published in the IA-55 Meetup list by Ha Phan, an author here at Usability Counts. This seemed good to share:

I would ask questions that probe the person’s ability to think strategically about design. Also important is understanding their process and their role in specific projects.

Here are some sample questions I’d ask a senior UX candidate:

• What is your process for gathering requirements?
• How do you determine or prioritize features and requirements that are to incorporated in the design?
• If there are no user analysis data or personas available, what methods (if any) do you use to get a better understanding of your end user and to assure that your design meets strategic goals?
• How do you measure the success and failure of your design?
• Please show us a project where you’ve executed the User Centered Process
• In the past, how have you worked with visual designers? Where does UX end and skin design begin?
• How do you address scope creep?

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Wufoo is a very effective and easy to use form building tool that allows normal people (i.e. marketing managers and other non-techies) to build web forms quickly and easily without knowing programming. The form entries are collected in a database, and can be exported out to Microsoft Excel.

Or, isn’t Excel the marketing manager’s best friend?

You can have your designers make design changes with a CSS editing area, but the forms are designed to be very usable (I was impressed), and for short term form management, this is a great tool. For a longer term project, it’s better to go with custom programming.Similar Posts:

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My first experience with Agile was April 2001, and I’ve run several projects with it. That original project was as Product Manager for Escrow.com, and we ran iterations for almost a solid year (close to 20 iterations or sprints).

The result? A profitable company with a profitable product.

Three of the projects I worked on went by the wayside (there’s no accounting for issues with company culture), but five others, including Escrow.com, launched successfully and have had varying degrees of business success. Agile doesn’t guarantee a breakthrough product, the hope is that it removes development process as a risk.

This first thing I’m going to do is define Agile development so we’re all on the same page.

Agile methodologies (or cultures), generally have the following:

• Short development cycles of two to four weeks, and are usually called iterations or sprints depending if you’re using Scrum or Extreme Programming.
• Almost daily communication through short meetings (called standup meetings). They report what you are working on yesterday, today, and tomorrow so any issues can be discovered early. The purpose of the meetings is to encourage further communication (these meeting are short: if you’re going over 15 minutes, it’s too long) offline.
• Development progress is measured through what’s called burndown and the product backlog.
• The client or product owner is intimately aware of progress, and prioritizes based on product needs. Everyone has a voice in what the product is.
• The process is adapted to the team, and they own the process so they get to use elements that work for them.
• This is key: everyone is upfront about their responsibilities, and doesn’t hide their roadblocks.

It’s key to note that I used the word “generally” because the process is defined by the teams that use it, so some may only use elements of Agile and Scrum.

I’ve seen Agile work well for products that require constant improvements, but it’s hard to adapt it to a new development unless you have some time to adjust the process while people are learning. Short projects of less than a month make it hard to do a scrum-like process. I can’t imagine using Agile for a hardware-based product.

But for the web where everything is changing, it’s great.

Here’s how to convince most User Experience teams Agile can work:

You get direct access to the developers

One of the major complaints I have about most waterfall environments is that once you write the functional requirements and wireframes, you’re pretty much done. Developers push back, you miss 25 to 30 percent of the requirements because you just didn’t know or no one read your requirements, and there’s always the, “Well, that’s not what I meant” misunderstandings because there was a different interpretation of the wireframes.

I’ve run a Scrum-like process over the phone (doing so for a current project), and the main purpose of the methodologies is to encourage more communication; with daily meetings and constant touching, you usually can walk over to the developer and ask to see the work.

If there’s an issue of the design not working the way you want to, you can negotiate with the developer to build it in a way that achieves everyone’s goals.

While you don’t get to do as much research, you do get is to see your work in action sooner

Since of waiting three months until you see your work turned into real software or website development? This is the process for you. The rub is that most of the time, you’ll get to do two weeks to a month of research at the very most before development wireframes or user stories, and that’s okay, because unless you’re inventing the new iPhone, why would you want to do that?

Usually you develop a lot of areas with stubs (i.e. we’ll do that later, but just put a page there), and concentrate on the big functionality. Your initial stab at what to build is called sprint or iteration zero, and in most environments you’ll stay one iteration ahead of the developers. This gives you a little time to move and adapt, and in some ways, it doesn’t allow you to over think a feature.

From Agile Product Design:

User experience people working on Agile teams become masters of development time travel nimbly moving back and forth through past, present, and future development work.

You’ll see your work as they build it, and you’ll also spot issues in days instead of weeks.

Agile doesn’t mean no requirements, it means requirements that work for the team

Since the team gets to decide how to build the process, that means the requirements can take whatever form you want them to take. If you can’t do wireframes or HTML mockups that fast (I can), then this process will be a tough learning curve. However, one of the panelists had a great idea: go to another website that has approximate functionality and copy it (seriously, how many times do we need to redesign a lost password process?).

I’m a big proponent of the whiteboard or throwing the wireframes up on the wall in printed format– talking through a feature instead of looking at it in a PDF is a much more effective way of communication.

To mitigate direction issues, I did was develop a really high level style guide to make sure we had a holistic view of the system, and then did not annotate wireframes. The developers knew just the form or text elements, and if they had a question about functionality, either they asked about it in the stand up meeting or contacted me separately. Occasionally, I was diving into the code myself to write error messaging, which was okay.

Sometimes, it’s not what you communicate but what you don’t have to communicate that makes all the difference in the world.

If there was particular communication that we felt wasn’t needed, we would cut it out of the process. (Who  reads all the requirements, anyways? Usually just the User Experience folks while arguing with the developers.) That’s an important distinction, because if management is forcing something down on the team, Agile isn’t going to work. It’s not about the tools, it’s about the people using them.

If your initial pass doesn’t work, it’s not stuck in the final product

While there’s not a lot of time for formal testing, there’s plenty of time for guerrilla usability testing: that means you have to bring in or find some test subjects to throw against your ideas. This doesn’t mean writing formal reports — there’s not enough time for that — but it does mean doing enough testing to make sure your product is going the right direction. You won’t spot every issue, but it’s about rocks and sand: you’ll catch the rocks, and have to worry about the sand later.

It allows you to fail quicker: if there’s something you spot that’s really, really off-base, you can propose to fix it in the next iteration.

The other members of the team may agree. I’ve pulled features in previous environments without serious implications, and all we lost was a week’s (or less) worth of work.

Smart agile teams also pair user experience designers with quality assurance analysts to write test plans for test-driven development: developers would recieve test cases even before they started development so they knew what they were aiming it. This is great, because QA is one of the best groups of people to do usability testing on: they spot potential issues even before the developers do.

On a few projects I’ve been on, we’ve seen a 50 percent drop in defects reported, and had fewer reworked features.

That’s huge.

You can see progress almost immediately

One of the biggest frustrations of working in software development is the period of waiting for something to be built. Agile takes away some of that frustration because instead of developers waiting until the last three weeks of a three month project to show the results, delivered features are agreed upon after the first iteration.

This creates this sort of washing machine effect to requirements gathering and software development. You keep on moving to a common goal of building the final product; instead of seeing huge leaps of functionality (with possible huge leaps in missing the target), tasks are built in bite-sized chunks so you have a better idea of meeting your goal. Because of this, you also get idea of if your estimates for building the product are on base, and what you have to adjust before

It’s about making it to the finish line, one inch at a time.

The 80-hour workweeks are gone, sort of

One of the rules we had at Escrow.com is that no one worked over 45 hours a week, and if they did, I kicked them out of the office. Two similar projects I worked on, we had the same approach.

This was very important from a few standpoints:

• Developers and User Experience designers without a life are angry people
• Tired developers are ineffective developers
• Estimates only are effective if there’s a decent control mechanism

The main benefit was getting a true gauge of process. How many have been on projects where the developers worked slowly until the last month, then crammed a bunch of hours in to the get to the finish line? And how good was that product, really?

Doing good estimates is essential to Scrum and Agile, because then you can accurately decide what’s important and what’s not.

At BidRx, only after we attached Scrum did we get an accurate assessment of what was possible from a User Experience and Development standpoint in a sprint.

That means that developers and user experience designers have to have a good idea of what they can produce within the framework of a normal workweek. Being wrong the first couple of sprints is fine, as long as you can get closer each time. Remember, it’s about attaching iterations to the process as well as the product.

Your voice is heard, period

One of the greatest things about agile development is that everyone has a voice; that means that if there’s something you don’t like in the process or the application you are building, you can express your opinion instead of being on the other side of the wall from the developers.

There’s always a user advocate in the process of building the product.

The conculsion

Agile isn’t for everyone, but when it does work, it works well. But it does require a different mindset, and there are flaws to overcome.

Random Thoughts mentions the following downfalls:

• Lose the holistic view of the system
• No time to prototype everything before development starts
• Lack of extensive requirements
• More development teams working simultaneously, same UX resources
• Fast delivery means less time for testing and iteration
• Loss of time for user research projects and general research and development
• A need to track UX worth and work before a project is completed

I only agree with the two that are in bold. That said, we have to try something different, because waterfall isn’t working.

Some other links:

• Scrum Club
  
• Agile UX

Blog posts:

• 10 key principles of Agile Software Development
• Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to Agile development
• Jacob Nielsen Speaks (Because he’s selling something)
• The missing piece: how interaction design can add to Agile

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• What’s Your Visual, Kenneth: The Value Of Wireframes
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Online Marketing Summit is one of my clients, and I’ve been working with them on doing some slight changes to redesign their site. The base design was very attractive and functional; we’re going through the process of making improvements to make the site more usable and effective. The Online Marketing Summit has a very strong core audience, but they need to reach out to new attendees in regional markets that could benefit from these networking and educational events.

How did we attempt to make it extremely clear?

It’s called Online Marketing Summit for a reason

Just the title alone is a great draw.

It’s a long company title (and even longer URL), but there’s no question the people that get to the site are potential attendees, which in other words guarantees targeted users. It’s not clever, it’s not cute, it just states exactly what the event is about: online marketing. The partnership with ClickZ adds extra credibility because they are a website that’s very popular with online marketing professionals.

Som websites use a motto or a headline that’s way too vague — most of the time, it’s just better to say exactly what the product or event is, and how it will benefit them.

The navigation at the top of the site clearly states this is an event. “Cities and Agendas”, “Register Now” and “Speakers” doesn’t make it seem like an e-commerce site, that’s for sure.

Use headlines that clearly state why an attendee would want to go

The headlines and each action item we used were:

• What: Join The OMS Regional Whistle Stop Tour
• Why: Learn from the Marketing Experts
• How: “Next Steps”
• When and where: Event cities and dates

Additionally, we emphasized particular words in the main call to action graphic (”best practices”, “expert online practitioners”, “share ideas”, “marketing peers in 13 cities”) that may attract attention. Sometimes content gets lost in the mix, so emphasis of certain words helps the user scan content. Don’t over do it though.

Call to actions are very clear and allow for active or passive participation

All of the call to actions were labeled with active words (”Register Now”, “Get Updates”, “Get Certified”, “Win A Free Entry”) that allowed the user either to be active about signing up (”Register Now”) or passive that they can sign up later (”Get Updates”,  “Win A Free Entry”).

According to some of the event companies, almost 75 percent of their entries for events come in the two weeks prior to the event, especially for regional conferences. Capturing the passive audience is very, very important; they will need to be reminded to be attend.

This target audience is a marketing group, so they don’t mind the site being junked up with a few extra call to actions as long as it’s effective and designed well. That’s important, knowing your audience.Similar Posts:

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Download the MP3.

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However, even happy customers can use reminders that they ought to “tell a friend.” How can you encourage customers to do so? Here are some ideas:

• Create a formal “tell a friend” program whereby you reward your customers for spreading the word.
  Include a flier about your business and the products and services you offer with each purchase; encourage customers to pass this flier on to a friend.
• If you have a “bricks and mortar” office or store, place an attractive sign in a visible place encouraging clients to tell their friends about your business.
• If you send out regular emails to your customers, add a P.S. suggesting that they forward the email on to others who may be interested.
• Order a roll of pre-printed “We love referrals” or “I’m never too busy for your referrals” stickers, and place these on your letters, envelopes, brochures, invoices and other printed materials.
• Ask! A great time to bring up the subject is just after your customer has expressed their satisfaction with your product or service. “I’m so glad you’re happy,” you could say. “Do you know of anyone else that could benefit from our service? I would certainly appreciate the referral!”

A positive testimonial about your company – delivered directly from your satisfied customer to a potential customer – is one of the most powerful forms of advertising there is. It pays to encourage your customers to tell their friends about your business.Similar Posts:

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Yeah, that’s about right. Stolen from Dilbert.Similar Posts:

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I like the tips even better.

Here are some ways you too can avoid bad clients:

• Thoroughly research your prospective clients before working with them
• Discuss and outline all project details before accepting a client
• Be honest with yourself, and don’t take on new clients out of desperation
• Follow your instincts, and don’t take on clients that give you a bad feeling
• Watch out for catch-phrases, under or over communication, and other potential clues of a bad client

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Download the MP3.

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The tools are much easier to use to build websites, and there’s a lot of talent that’s on the market to help you do it. Of course, money will be an issue, but it’s even less of an issue than during boom times. I’m working with a few startups, and there’s a certain exhilaration of creating something  new.

This is something I forgot then remembered going through Startup Weekend LA, and it was interesting seeing the mix of people interact in a creative environment. All six teams got a project out the door, but each with varying levels of quality and efficiency.

There are a few caveats. I’ve been there many times before, and they aren’t all rosy dreams and promises. Startups depend heavily on having the right mix of talent; ideas of cheap, but execution usually isn’t, and it takes more high value people than truckloads of cash.

(Or, ask Microsoft about Sidewalk. Ouch.)

Some of this is written with a company in mind, but many startups now may be just one or two guys in a garage. Really, there is no better time. Read on.

There’s no such thing as first to market

Remember Excite? Web Crawler? Altavista? Shopping.com? Sidewalk?

They were first to market, but they didn’t have a product that was effective as Google. Google was very, very late in the search game. Facebook was late in the Social Media game. Who’s standing now?

Building and growing businesses is also about creative destruction. Products die and rise again. If you have a compelling story and feature set, people will flock to your site like bees on honey. It means you are serving a market that’s under served, and that you’re first to the market with something.

One person that has an idea can be a startup

All you need for a startup is the people with skills that can get it out the door. That means you need can do people that have the right attitude about being hands-on and getting things done, because at the beginning, there isn’t going to be enough money to hire a branding company, or even less to hire writers for the website.

You don’t even need a company structure: you can get it going just enough to start generating revenue, show it off to venture capitalists, and voila, you’re the next Jason Calcanis!

For example, to get a project out the door, the customers (or even better venture capitalists) aren’t going to be looking under the hood of the programming, or much less caring about the perfect user experience; what they will be looking for is a product they can use. Having the right mix of people (for example, a designer, developer, sales person and product person, with a 25 percent emphasis on each) is a great place to start. But it can be just you and a friend — or just you.

How do I know? A new client I just met with. Two people. Internet business, profitable, five years running. And now they’re looking to improve the user interface to increase revenues more.

Don’t hire your friends, it’s bad for business

As the company grows, so does the team. Founders go by the wayside (read: you’ve just been promoted to Director of Special Projects after working 80 hours a week?). Sometimes, the person that really helped out in the beginning can’t help out  later because they don’t have the particular skill set to adequately drive the product or help the company.

Sometimes, founders shouldn’t run the company after the company reaches about 100 people. This is happening with one company right now that I know of, where one of the founders is actually hurting the company.

The end goal in any startup is to get to the right size of the business, and if that means you have to fire friends or let the adults take over, do it. It’s about money, and most founders have a sizable piece of the business where they shouldn’t have to worry about cashing out if the right people are brought in.

Most founders also wouldn’t get hired at their own company, because frankly the people hired after that were brought in for the purpose of building something, while the founders had the idea.

Hire people you trust that can get the job done, but you are disconnected enough to if the time comes, you have to let them go. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t ever work with your friends, but what I’m saying when the time comes, and money’s on the table, there’s a good chance they won’t be your friend.

Do hire people you know and trust

In a startup, someone that isn’t pulling their weight is so obvious, you’ll see complaints for months. If you bring people into the startup, investigate their background throughly, including whether they can handle a startup environment. That means if their last four jobs were with large Fortune 500 corporations with education reimbursement and 40-hour work weeks, they won’t like a startup.

Read their LinkedIn profile, talk to their friends, reach out to the community to see if anyone else knows about them. Remember that you’ll be seeing more of this person for a while than your signifcant other, so if you have to work with them that much, you better be able to work with them that much.

Who has the money makes the rules

If you have reached out to angel funding or venture capital, or one of the founders is funding the project out of their pockets or their parents’ pockets, they’re driving the bus.

In fact, I’m going to make a crazy recommendation: at least one person on your team should be the sales or business development driving force, and they should have a track record to driving deals to completion.

I’ve seen many of company that was driven by the technology team or another team that wasn’t sales related, and that’s just a bad mix: developers aren’t trained in business, and it’s really all about the focus on the customer.

Why?

That person in the startup will be the driving force to getting customers because 1) they will know what the customers want, and 2) their primary, first, only and last concern is figuring out how to build product that actually makes money. That said, the sales person or money person should be reigned in once in a while, especially when proposing features that will help one small client instead of scaling the greater client base.

In any case, you’ll get the occasional stupid feature because the venture capitalist wanted it, or dad with the trust fund it was a good idea. That’s okay, just limit the damage.

Think Harry S Truman: the buck has to stop somewhere.

There’s never enough money, so plan for it

Jason Calcanis sent out a great note earlier this week about money relating to startups (and few know better than him). His key points were, “what ever you have, stretch it.” That means cutting deeply, cutting swiftly, and showing the investors, one of them you, that you’re serious.

There’s this thought process that everyone internet company should be be big, and that, frankly, shouldn’t be the case. He stated in his email that some companies seems to get more done with 25 people than 40. I remember working for Stamps.com when we were at 550 people, and I kept thinking, “There’s too many people here.”

Lo and behold. They cut.

If I had one piece of truth for every entrepreneur out there, this is it: don’t over hire. Focus your energies on hiring people can run as fast as possible, and focus only on the most important features. If you don’t have enough people, don’t build it, because if you hire too many people, you’ll be cutting those people later.

If you really, really need people, hire contractors that you know are going to leave sooner or later. How do you know there’s too many people? You’ll know. When you have four or five non-performers, you’ll really know.

Every startup has a ramp up phase and a ramp down phase to the real business. Startups should be structured and planned accordingly.

Your carpenter shouldn’t be designing the house

While everyone has an opinion about web design, user experience, product management, and other marketing points, that doesn’t make them uniquely qualified to manage a project through 38 iterations of a logo design (except, of course, if I’m the consultant). There’s a reason you’ve brought together the people on your team, and they should be allowed to do their jobs.

That doesn’t mean their shouldn’t be opinion; if you’ve hired some good people, though, ideas that aren’t as effective will be shown as so through discourse and disagreement, and well thought out answers will lead to the path of the righteous product.

It’s about everyone realizing their role in the company and not interfering to a negative aspect other people’s roles. Someone has to be the drummer or the base player, and it just might be you.

There are a few drummers that come to mind (Guy Kawasaki, Ringo Starr, Adam Clayton), and they seem to be doing okay, right?

Don’t build on some exotic platform

Every once in a while, I hear of a startup of that builds on some exotic software platform like OpenLazlo. That platform might have some advantages, especially in a rich media environment, but here’s a couple points to remember:

• If it were so good, everyone would be converting to it. Software likes a good stampede, and while there may be caveats to using .NET and Java, there’s a reason it’s everywhere: there are a lot of developers using it or with experience in it.
• It’s going to be really hard to find developers if the site’s built in Python and Ruby on Rails. Developers love a new technology, and startups are the green field of using it. That means all those maintenance projects using other languages go by the wayside, there are no tools, but there’s this promise of building it really fast. Until, of course, you have to hire more people outside of your circle of friends. It’s a really bad idea to set your sights on a technology that you’re going to be paying developers a premium later.

There’s no harm on developing on PHP if it gets you out the door and beyond, and there’s no harm also developing a site as throwaway code if you know and plan for it.

Focus on features people will use, instead of silly administration tools used by five people once a month

The best thing about a recession and a lack of money is that companies do more research on figuring out exactly what their customers need or the product features that are required to get the project out the door, instead of just throwing stuff against the wall (read: Google). This is because money is tight, and every dollar counts.

If you are building features, focus on the ones that help the greatest number of people — for example, a feature that helps 100,000 people is better than one that’s going to help 100 people once over a year, and it has a lot higher return on investment — because that’s where the value is.

Make a big long list of features, write them up on a whiteboard, and guess (really, guess) how many people will be using a feature, what percentage of the time, and if it can be done by hand.

This could mean going into the database directly to enter information, or relying on less than automated tools. If it’s more of serving a small group of people some manual work that can easily be done, don’t do the feature.

Don’t let perfect stand in the way of good

Thinking that you’re going to have every feature perfect on the first version is an unrealistic expectation; that’s why it’s the first version, and the early versions of most software usually suck (read: Microsoft Windows). That said, that gives you a lot of room to get better, and that should be your goal — do just good enough today to improve upon later. Your users will excuse a few issues at the beginning if you’re upfront with them.

The first rule: work in iterations.

Agile development is an awesome culture for startup development, because the team knows there are going to be areas to refactor, and parts of the software that just aren’t going to be working. Knowing that is a huge release of stress, and allows the team to move forward.

The most important goal should be getting something out there that accomplishes to goal 80 percent of the time, and keep working on it.

Lastly, remember, 90 percent of startups fail, learn from it

There’s a reason only three startup ideas have survived Startup Weekend around the country: most startups don’t see the light of day for all kinds of reasons, mostly because there wasn’t enough thought put into developing the product. That goes the same in the real world, sometimes for not having enough cash, sometimes for having a poor product strategy.

It all depends on your attitude — if you remember that it’s the ride of the lifetime, you can live it and enjoy it. Forget about the money, and remember the joy of creating.Similar Posts:

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• Give Talks. Speak at meetings of community groups, trade associations and any other organization whose members would be interested in your area of expertise.
• Publish Articles. Write a regular column or series of articles for your local newspaper or for magazines or websites that are read by your target audience.
• Join Online Discussion Groups. Become a regular participant on the most popular discussion boards for your target audience. Be sure your signature line identifies who you are and includes a link to your firm’s website.
• Write a Newsletter. An informative newsletter can help establish you as a knowledgeable expert.
• Write a Book or E-Book. If you’ve been writing articles, turn a collection of them into a book. Even if you publish it yourself, this will make you a “published author” in your field.

Although becoming known as an expert requires an on-going effort, the benefits – increased exposure, leads and sales for your business – can make it all worthwhile.Similar Posts:

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Jakob Nielsen probably thought it was 99 percent bad.Similar Posts:

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I’ve actually held a position called Program Manager in the Microsoft model, and it was great: I got to work with great developers, and I gained a lot of knowledge about the technology I was working in. Personally, I would love to do that job again.

Back to the UX folks and their comments about the article.

Their opinion was slightly irritable (them being a bunch of cantankerous UX people like me, and I can be even more cantankerous at times). The way I look at it, Joel handed us a gift horse in the mouth. Here’s a well respected member of the software community saying emphatically that user experience matters.

He established:

• The most important function of a program manager is to design the user interface. Sure, we should know a bit about programming, but our job is to show through out experience and knowledge what an effective user interface is, and to help developers implement it.
• He established the value of functional requirements in some form as a deliverable that’s important to the process. That is more than, as he so rightly pointed out, 37signals has done over the years. 37signals is some kind of darling of the web community, and while they do some good stuff when if comes user testing, functional requirements is something they say not to do.
• He set the ratio of program managers to developers at about one program manager to four developers, exactly or close to what I preach. That, my folks, is job security. When I worked as  a product manager, that was a well oiled team. We produced a lot of good code, and I felt I could handle enough of the workload without working too many more hours.
• He also set that discourse and communication is important to great user interfaces. This includes conflict, iterations, data, testing and all the other fun methods that we do to get where we need to go. He basically established that there was value to that last mile.

Frankly, that was one of the better posts I’ve read for a while on any blog.

Great, you say. He didn’t say kind enough words about us UX folks, saying that anyone out of college could do it. Well, not completely true, but we do have to listen to him.

Why?

• He’s very well respected in the software development community.
• He has a company that’s very profitable based around a subscription model product that might not be the best looking product in the world, but developers love using it because of it’s ease of use and simplicity (try saying that about Bugzilla).
• He has a blog that gets a lot of traffic.

That said, there’s points in his blog post that could generate some disagreement; it’s up to user experience professionals to build bridges of understanding because, frankly, we’ve done a piss-poor job of explaining who we are, and what our value is.

On to the disagreements.

He did say that someone right out of college could do the job; I disagree with that.

Being an advocate for the user and the business takes training and/or experience, and isn’t something you can just learn from the programmers you are working with — they know less about user experience than you might — in the same way that a web or print designer needs seasoning even when right out of school.

They can’t learn typography to an adequate level unless they use it, motion design doesn’t just come to you, and more importantly, some of this field is something you can’t teach. You just have to have the skills and mindset for not only understanding the user but also understanding the business. That takes experience in design, domain knowledge, an understanding of what you don’t know, and where to go find it. They have to learn to fail, and learn from their failings so they can succeed.

To get to where I’m at, I’ve been working the web for almost 15 years (something that few can say), and I draw from all my unique experiences to develop user interfaces for my clients. That experience includes a background in writing, design, business and software development. As we all know, sometimes the greatest failings of people without the knowledge they need think they know more than they do; only as we get older do we realize how much we don’t know.

Great software architects architects are made, not born.

Joel, because of the peers he worked with Microsoft, learned wisdom far beyond what most program managers and user experience professionals would ever hope to, and he has used to it to advance software development. But this does color his view of the world, and it’s up to us to talk about where we have come from, so we can advance from all fronts, not just by being lucky enough to work at a company that at least was trying a process.

As the user experience field grows, it’s great to have other respected voices establish benchmarks that there is a need for user experience. Now we just have to work with them for everyone’s benefit.Similar Posts:

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I came across this post on SitePoint, and noticed the page navigation. Eight pages. I have a few articles that should have been broken up into a few pages, and this article could have been condensed (how much can you say about successful freelancing?).

The main reason it was eight pages, it seems, is that there’s a poster ad on every page.

Users.

Hate.

This.

There’s a good chance very few people actually made it the eighth page.

This could have been a several part series — keep bringing the users back — or there could have been some editing. Users don’t mind scrolling if there’s some payoff, or the content in engaging. Gauge the content first, to see if people actually want to read it, and see if there’s ways you can break it up other than paging it like this.Similar Posts:

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We live in a world where it’s great we’re concerned with the user, but more importantly, there’s a business there that has real needs for customer conversion. This puts user experience at odds with business goals: how do you guarantee that people will checkout?

When you walk into a supermarket, you pick up what you need, walk over to the counter, and pay. More often than not, there’s someone behind you, and — you can’t leave. You have to buy that milk and cookies, and if you don’t, you have to return them, interrupting the flow of the purchase process with the person behind you.

In the virtual world, there is no-one behind you, but because of the anonymity of using the web, it’s okay to leave the milk and cookies right there. You never ever see that in the real world.

Buttons during the checkout process give users exits, some of which allow you to leave the milk and cookies right there.

It’s great that they can return to their bag, but by the time they get to the checkout process, they know either what they want to buy, or they’re looking for a shipping price (which is an indication of a user experience that needs review).

I usually remove buttons, and limit their interaction with other parts of the checkout process. Most users will select the back button if they are looking to return to other parts of the checkout process, and that is usually evident in the reports the web analysis tools display. More importantly, you’re reinforcing that they’re in a checkout line, and they should move along. I think we coddle users too much, trying to give them every opportunity to move around, especially if the site we have is based on a business.

That’s one way I resolve business goals that are more important the profitability of a site. What do you do?Similar Posts:

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Download the MP3.

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It’s been a wind down mode from Startup Weekend LA. It was a very successful event: six projects got pretty close to out the door. I don’t know how many other projects are continuing their work, but the team I joined is exploring continuing our work. There will be more on that later.

One of the concepts that came out of the weekend is having literally only two and a half days of product development time makes you focus on two things:

• Being innovative in ways in using the other team members to get work done
• Focusing on features that are absolutely essential to getting the product out the door, and everything else was gravy

We were lucky — I had the framework from another site that I could use to build the idea, but most importantly we split up the tasks of what we had to do early on, and for a few of the features, we were able to delegate the work so no one person was absolutely getting killed. I had a small content editing tool and a primitive but effective framework so the other team members could add data to the site.

Additionally, we focused on what was going to get us out the door but using a form of Scrum development and listing all the features on yellow post-its on the wall. This allowed us the to prioritize — not formally, but you get the point — based on need of the feature for a proof of concept demo. This is different than product development for a real product, because you can fake some things in a demo (like administration screens are totally unnecessary if you have PHP MySql Admin, and can access the database directly).

The result? By 2 p.m. Sunday, we were tired, but we had enough of a site that we could demo, and even more importantly, a site that we could eventually turn into a production product for a short amount of time until we migrated it to a real platform. That was actually one of the discussions that we had: preparing to launch a site that we all knew was completely throw away code, but something that could be migrated to a better architected platform.

What are your startup stories? How did you effectively get sites out the door while focusing on just the essentials?Similar Posts:

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

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The average male Facebook user with 120 friends:

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

The average female Facebook user with 120 friends:

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

The average male Facebook user with 500 friends:

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

The average female Facebook user with 500 friends:

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

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

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

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

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

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Identify All of Your Target Audiences

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

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

Tailor Your Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who cares.

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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The takeaways:

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

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