Breadcrumbs Affect User's Mental Model of Web Sites

Wichita State University's Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) has released findings of a study of web breadcrumbs. The results, published in Breadcrumb Navigation: Further Investigation of Usage are pretty interesting. Here are a few key points:

"Breadcrumb users were found to use the Back button less often than users who did not use the breadcrumb; however, no differences were found in the efficiency measures of total pages visited, navigation bar clicks, embedded link clicks, or time to complete the search tasks. It is not known if all participants understood the function of the breadcrumb as a navigational tool. Future studies should investigate whether a simple understanding of the purpose of the breadcrumb trail or minimal training impacts usage and/or efficiency.

"Location of the breadcrumb trail did have an effect on usage. Breadcrumb trails positioned under the page title (at eye level and closer to other links on the page) were used more than breadcrumb trails positioned at the top of the page. It is recommended, therefore, that breadcrumb trails be positioned in this location rather than at the top of the page. The results also suggest that exposure to a breadcrumb trail in a site may contribute to the type of site model formed by the user. Participants that used a site with a breadcrumb trail were more likely to choose a hierarchical model than those that used the non-breadcrumb site. This assessment of the user’s mental model requires further study."


I've always thought the value of breadcrumbs was in exposing site structure and helping form a mental model of the site. It'll be interesting to see what additional research the team at SURL conduct in the future.


Related:
- Breadcrumbs > Breadcrumbs > Breadcrumbs
- Research Project: Methods and Models of Navigation in Hypertextual Space
- SURL: Breadcrumb Navigation: An Exploratory Study of Usage

Outlook 2003 More Usable?

I use Outlook for most of my email needs. It generally sucks, but is still the best email alternative I've found. According to James Governor of RedMonk, both Outlook and Exchange are supposed to get better from a usability and performance standpoint.

"People question whether software upgrades are really necessary. In this case the usability and performance tweaks alone could justify an upgrade."

"Focus on usability and real customer working patterns and the rest can fall into place. Microsoft and the industry at large should take note."

Related posts:
- Outlook, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
- Rising Costs of Free Web E-Mail
- User centered design sells products

Monkey See, Monkey Do Development

"Humans and higher primates share approximately 97% of their DNA in common. Recent research in primate programming suggests computing is a task that most higher primates can easily perform.

"Great apes (hominids) do not have tails, while monkeys do. Research indicates that great apes are very productive in the areas of software maintenance and report writing, while most monkeys will struggle. Monkeys however are great at software testing. So the rule of thumb is, if you don’t have a tail, you can probably program."

"Baboons handle software testing at PPI. Baboons work in colonies and can get very rowdy at work when things are going well."

Get a load of Cathleen. What beauty, and value priced too!

Related:
- Jakob Nielsen: Are developers people?
(How could Jakob be so wrong?)

New UPA Site Launched

New, updated site for the Usability Professionals Association.

Some notable sections:
- Projects (including certification and a "body of knowledge")
- Job Bank
- User Experience Magazine (great publication!)
- Consultants and Members Directories

Hero Joy Nightingale
Matt May (of bestkungfu blog) brought an amazing story to my attention: the story of Hero Joy Nightingale, a 16-year-old girl with locked-in syndrome. She has been accepted to study fine art at Oxford. She is "the most severely handicapped student ever to be granted a place at Oxford. She suffers from 'locked-in syndrome', a profound apraxia caused by brain damage that renders her body useless and her voice mute."

She's obviously a tremendously brilliant and beautiful young lady who in a profound way wants people to understand her. On her personal web site's photo page, she says:

"I fear imagination conjuring my features into a fictitious freakish shape, readers manipulating words such as "locked-in" and "profound disability" and "neuro-developmental disorder" with ignorance & naivity until I am not a normal being of flesh and feeling but a pitiable alien thing. The photos depict a fragment of a busy life."

She has also edited her own online magazine, which is fascinating. At the end of the first issue (of nine), she wrote the following:

"This is the pain of Frustration as I at least experience it, and it relates more to hands than voice - I'll explain about being mute in a mo. My hands are the object of my hatred and scorn because they fretfully and reflexboundly fiddle and in so doing agitate my aspirations. I long to sculpt. I long to chip marble into poetic form hue imagination into a sturdy outer reality that bellows of the music fed to me by the wind. I long to forge hot iron to twisted forms that lurk huge and somatically within plastered brain eggs of my mind. I long to weave yarns into rugs that enthrall and warm with their homespun tones and I long to reap from travel the elements of my yarns."

Looks like she'll get an opportunity to sculpt and create art at Oxford. Amazing!

She has a great story on her site about her struggles to communicate with people called "How I communicate."

"Hero" is a very appropriate name. She is definitely someone many young girls should look up to. You go girl!

Related:
- bestkungfu: The myth of Accessible
- bestkungfu: Accessibility

Sez U

Linux nears Windows XP usability (???!!!)

Also:
Linux closes on Windows in usability tests


I don't read German, but I'm a bit skeptical (as are others) of this report. Would be great if Linux was catching up, but the jury's still out on the test methodology used to assert such big claims.

"The Linux testers were in fact able to complete some tasks more quickly than the Windows testers, including playing and burning a CD and using email. Relevantive found that in the case of CD burning, this was probably due to the fact that the function has been integrated into Windows Explorer, which went against the expectations of the Windows testers."

...waiting for the English translation of the report...

Related Posts:
- Lyle: Usability and Open Source Software
- Open Letter to a Power User / Developer

Mark Hurst's Take on "The Role"

In a somewhat veiled response to the aftermath of Tog's bomb, Mark makes some awesome points I whole-heartedly agree with in Usability Professionals Must Disappear:

"Here's the thing about user experience work: its success depends primarily on the buy-in from everybody else in the larger organization. The primary issue isn't what you're named, but what results you're generating, and what buy-in you're getting from the company."

"In short, a good user experience practitioner is a facilitator - someone who quietly (having disappeared) guides the process, allowing knowledge to emerge, from users and the company alike. Instead of coming in with the answers, or the framework, or (my personal favorite) "the 200 rules of user experience design," they should come in with their auditory organs turned up to eleven. Listening."


Amen, Amen, Amen!
(Extra points for the Spinal Tap reference, too!)


My New Title
I'm having a hard time choosing my new title:
A. Professional Whale Tackler
B. User Boy
C. Customer-Centered Weenie

Related Spinal Tap Quotes:
"In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, an ancient race of people... the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing..." - Nigel

"It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever. " - David

Ian: "Nigel gave me a drawing that said 18 inches. Now, whether or not he knows the difference between feet and inches is not my problem. I do what I'm told."
David: "But you're not as confused as him are you. I mean, it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel."


Related:
- Lyle: An Open Letter to Tog
- Tog: It's Time We Got Respect
- Challis Hodge: UX Roles & Titles: Trend or Profession?

Inspiration Soup and Mackerelly

You have to read the text on this site and especially for each recipe card (there's about 25 of them) - some are pretty hilarious. Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974

My favorite cards:

- Fluffy Mackerel Pudding
"Once upon a time the world was young and the words "mackerel" and "pudding" existed far, far away from one another. One day, that all changed. And then, whoever was responsible somehow thought the word fluffy would help."

- Frankfurter Spectacular
- Caucasian Shashlik
- Inspiration Soup

Coders or Cannibals

Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

I always knew the folks that invented things like C++ and Java were sadistic, sick individuals!

:-)

An Open Letter to Tog

Tog (aka Bruce Tognazzini) of NNG has a new article called "It's Time We Got Respect." Tog issues a rally-cry for "software designers, or interaction engineers, or human interface folks, or whatever we who create the interaction model for our products are calling ourselves this week." He thinks we need a "new beginning" - that we need to name ourselves something new (Interaction Architects) that we need to create a collective brand, and that we need a new professional organization to go with it all.

I disagree.

Below is my response that I posted on the Yahoo! Group Tog has setup to discuss the article. I've added some emphasis here to facilitate better scanning for those of you that don't hang on my every word. :)

----------
Are you in the game or sitting on the sidelines?
Okay, so I'm already a SIG-CHI member, I'm on the board of a local UPA chapter, and I consider myself an active member of the "SIG-IA" community. I'm already over-committed. Aifia is new, AIGA-ED is new, DUX is new...we've seen plenty of new organizations and events recently.

I don't call myself a "Usability Professional", although I would say I belong to that field, my title is "User Experience Architect." I came to the conclusion a long time ago that most titles need some explaining, and in the course of explaining mine I get to tell people the *value* of what I do. (For what it's worth, I also picked "architect" for many of the same reasons Tog did.) If you say you're a "lawyer," people will want to know what kind of shark, er lawyer you are, especially if they are considering using your services.

To put it bluntly, I don't need yet another organization to belong to, and I think there is enough latitude within existing organizations to accomplish Tog's stated goals. In fact, I can't see how Tog's goals are any different from UPA's.

(From the UPA web site:)
The Usability Professionals' Association was formed to:

- Provide a network and opportunities through which usability professionals can communicate and share information about skills and skill development, methodology used and/or proposed in the profession, tools, technology, and organizational issues.
- Present the viewpoints of the profession to the public and other interested parties.
- Educate the general public and others on the usefulness of the profession.
- Represent the profession before governmental bodies and agencies.
- Provide the methods and means to increase the members' knowledge of the profession through seminars, newsletters, magazines, and other communication tools, and through meetings and conventions.
- Serve the best interests of the usability profession.

They also list some Usability and User-Centered Design Activities including design.
http://www.upassoc.org/outreach/common.activities.html

I'm mainly a designer, and while I do some testing in the course of my work I've never said I was a "tester." I've never seen UPA as an organization for "testers" -- UPA promotes every aspect of User-Centered Design (or Human-Centered Design if you like) and all the requisite roles therein. They are, as Tog points out, very practitioner focused. Lots of interaction design and information architecture folks regularly attend our local UPA-MN meetings and international UPA events.


So what should we do?
My suggestion would be for people to get active in UPA or SIG-CHI or AIGA-ED or aifa or whatever and make an impact in the direction of those organizations. Help them better acheive their stated goals.

Start a local chapter, volunteer for a board position, start a SIG, plan an event around ID/IA that's sponsored by an existing organization. It's a hell of a lot less work than creating a whole new organization, and you won't be competing with related organizations either. Want to promote ID or Usability? Join (or chair) a communications committee and send out some press releases, recognize companies with awards, generate some interest. The number of folks really active in these fields isn't great enough to support lots of organizations. (Tog, think about how much more you and others in NNG could do for UPA or SIG-CHI...)

Critics of existing organizations may think that those organizations are doing exactly what they want to do, but the fact is that most organizations aren't doing anything close to what they'd like to do. Their efforts are severly limited by a lack of resources - financial, physical, and emotional. They can use your help, your fresh ideas, and your enthusiasm.

We are definitely "two sides of the same coin," so let's work together. Want to do something? Realize you can change what exists today, get off of the sidelines, and get in the game so we can win. Don't go start a new game - we need you on our team!

I'd be happy to discuss this further. As Tog indicated in his article's introduction, this is a very important issue.


Lyle Kantrovich
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com/

--------------
Related:
- Blog post: "Why I’m not calling myself an Information Architect anymore"
- B&A Comments on "Why I’m not calling myself an Information Architect anymore"
- The Making of a Discipline: The Making of a Title
- Challis Hodge - UX Roles & Titles: Trend or Profession?
- Argus-ACIA Salaries and Benefits for Information Architects - Most Common Titles
- Bloug: IAs: Better at Marketing than they Thought?

One-Eyed Zombies Are Becoming More Real

An article entitled Reality bytes discusses force-feedback and haptics for input and output devices.

"Improvements in graphics and sound have already raised the bar. Now, the physically immersive technology known as "haptics" is beginning to deliver on the science-fiction dream of interactive alternative realities, making gamers feel a part of their games as never before. ... Haptics technology explores how peripheral computing devices can impart force and vibrations in response to what is taking place on the screen. The military began research in the field in the 1960s. Later the focus shifted to bringing a more tactile computing experience to users of medical and automotive technologies."

"One result is technology that aims to convince the brain that it is feeling, say, a seven-gram change in pressure from a haptic device. Haptic research has also drawn on the work of scientists who have inserted probes into the arm nerves of patients to determine the effects of various tactile experiences. "Ultimately, though, you can only ask consumers if they thought it was realistic or not," Chang says. "You can't put probes in their brain and measure."

Are you a change agent?
In Prototype the Experience, Ian White makes a few points that ring true with my experience selling services to my clients:

"The context within which a product exists strongly influences the user experience and provides meaning. Illustrating this context by constructing a scenario around the artifact allows a business audience to understand a solution, rather than see a component which any design firm could provide."

"You owe it to your clients to help them think differently about design. Make them the champion of new products, services and opportunities. You can gloat in their success and be regarded as a powerful change agent."

My take:
Many designers and usability professionals ARE change agents -- but they may not see themselves that way. Change agents have to provide a vision that resonates with their clients. Clients really don't just want to know what you DO, they want to envision what you'll facilitate for their customers, their businesses and their own careers.

Provide inspiration from the start and they'll understand the solutions you provide, otherwise they'll just see the deliverables and the invoice.

"Those who have changed the universe have never done it by changing officials, but always by inspiring the people."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Usability: A Requirement for Security
This article has a number of good points to consider when designing "secure" systems.

"For security to be effective, it has to be convenient. That means designing to relieve the burdens of everyday users and system administrators instead of adding new ones. Companies that ignore this will fail to increase security."

"Strong security is more than just technology. The lack of usability of today's technology means that only the most sensitive data handled by the most paranoid employees stands a chance of being protected properly."

Do Some Research on Being a Client
Jason at Signal vs. Noise points out a great learning tactic: hire someone in your line of work and try being on the client end of the job for once. He notes that it's a great way to learn how hard it is to be the client. I'd like to refine and add a few points to his:

- You'll learn how hard it is to be the client.
- You'll see how another consultant/designer explains things.
- You might see new deliverables, methods or techniques you can learn or adapt.
- You'll refine (or at least validate) your current approach.
- You'll be more empathetic with your own clients in the future.
- You'll learn about critical steps of the client experience you may take for granted like finding and interviewing a consultant, deliverable turnover, expectation setting, communication needs (e.g. status updates), and billing processes.

Why Things Don't Work
Don Norman talks about things usability and user experience folks need to do better to be more successful.

The way for usability professionals to get the attention of senior management is to talk about dollars and cents. ... "Executives know that service costs are enormous, the sort of costs companies try to cut. It's extremely easy to make the case that subjecting a product to usability testing up front eliminates service costs and makes customers happier."

One of the best examples of a top technology executive who thinks about usability, Norman says, is Michael Dell. "Someone once asked him why Dell keeps doing so well on market share and margins. Dell responded that his company doesn't go after market share or margins. Instead, he and his team think about whether they are satisfying customers, both in terms of usability and across the board in every aspect of the customer's experience. If you focus on that, the rest takes care of itself."

Harvard Business School - The Mayo Clinic Experience
HBS has a neat story on the Mayo Clinic called "Why Docs Don’t Wear White Coats Or Polo Shirts at the Mayo Clinic." It clearly outlines a thoughtful approach to the customer experience in a medical setting. It provides a glimpse into the Mayo brand and their focus on patients' well-being, both physical and emotional.

"The potential of design to promote healing through stress reduction has been documented in dozens of studies. For these reasons, more medical institutions are making an effort to create open, welcoming spaces with soft, natural light. Mayo Clinic goes further with its design philosophy, which is perhaps as well honed and articulated as that of any major service provider in America, and pays strict attention to how every detail affects the patient’s experience."

"A well-designed physical environment has a positive impact on employees as well, reducing physical and emotional stress—which is of value not only to employees but also to patients because visible employee stress sends negative signals. In our interviews, patients commented on the lack of apparent stress; one said, “It did not seem like a doctor’s office when we went to Mayo. There was no tension.”

Here's a photo of a waiting room at the Mayo Clinic from the American Institute of Architects - Academy of Architecture for Health.

A quick check of the Mayo site highlights more of their customer-focus in their unique patient amenities like an education center, 'quiet rooms', a communications center, pagers, and a movie auditorium.

There you have it: more proof that good design can positively impact both employees and customers.

Related:
A Cancer Patient's Perspectives on Facilities Design - facility design considerations for clinics serving cancer patients (e.g. lighting, privacy, door design)
- Mayo Clinic.Org - about the clinic
- Mayo Clinic.com - a health information site, elegantly designed

Move it baby!
I think this violates some heuristic about users feeling in control, but it's kinda fun...

The Benefits of Applying Interface Guidelines

There's a good explanation of the benefits of following the most basic conventions for the UI platform you're designing for from the Apple (OS X) Aqua Human Interface Guidelines.

"The implementation of Apple’s human interface principles make the Macintosh what it is: intuitive, friendly, elegant, and powerful."

Segmenting Users with Navigation Games
The Rayovac corporate site has one of the worst navigation bars I've seen on a company web site in a long time. Talk about bad interaction design. Try selecting "About Rayovac", then mouse into the body of the page, then try to click on one of the second level navigation options like "Supplier Diversity." Depending on the path your mouse travels, your target is likely to disappear before your mouse gets there. Yet another gratuitous use of Flash. Maybe one of their design goals was to make navigating something of a puzzle - a challenging game of manual dexterity. Then again, maybe their target customers are people who could win at the classic kids' game "Operation."

[Via Andrew's HeyBlog]

Usability will win the war
Googlefight, the number one research source I never hesitate to miss, says usability will beat Saddam Hussein...Now the whole world will know that usability kicks butt!

Googlefight research also proves that developers defeat usability. That 'research' quantifies just how much developers defeat usability, although it offers no real explanations for the findings or how to turn the tide. Maybe Jared Spool offers a solution to this confused problem with those blankety-blank developers when he recommends usability folks "search for seducible moments." Of course, you can get fired or sued or even better for doing stuff like that, so be careful when implementing that recommendation with developers. Keep in mind that even if they say they want do some 'unit testing' with you later, that doesn't mean you should treat them like 'objects.'

Jakob Nielsen doesn't disagree with Googlefight when he says "numbers are powerful." He adds that "such metrics are great for assessing long-term progress" and suggests that we look at our success rate. Maybe Jakob will grant me "partial credit" for this blog post...

James Lileks on the Saddam Interview
Okay, so I went on a rant about Dan Rather's interview with Saddam. I blasted CBS pretty hard, but I think they deserve it. James Lileks (who has a great blog) is a little softer, but makes basically the same key points - maybe lack of subtlety is why I don't get paid to write for a major newspaper like he does.

Some excerpts from Lileks' Bleat today:
"The tyrants of the 20th century have become iconic, and as such they seem to exist divorced from human nature. Men that evil are so rare it's almost comforting to watch them - oh, we'd know their kind if they came again. But we don't. The lesson is lost. Hitlers and Stalins and Maos and Kim Il Jungs aren't the anomalies, really; there are millions of people like them. They're just the ones who had what it took."

"What made Rather's trip such a waste was the water-kneed obsequiousness of it all. He was more interested in three full hours of bland conversation than 20 minutes of sharp discussion that ended with Saddam leaving the room. What was there to fear? Anyone think Saddam would have him shot? Stand up in the middle of the interview, put a round through Rather's skull and yell at his dead body for five minutes? Since the Iraqis controlled the production facilities, CBS apparently feared they wouldn't get the tape if Rather didn't gargle with Meek Juice before each question. Fine. As long as you realize that Rather would have been tougher on the Pope."

"Not so with the Saddam interview. The deference was pathetic, the questions toothless, the answers predictable. Sometimes history is farce the first time."

Lileks points out that CBS gave Saddam an opportunity to appear like just a normal, nice guy, and that Hitler would have appeared no different given the chance. How many psychopathic murderers have we seen on trial in our own country - people that neighbors and friends would never have suspected of mass murder or gruesome atrocities? Yet, I truly believe there were many people who fell for the 'nice guy' Saddam image CBS presented in all its prime-time glory. Proof: check out news sites and count the number of editorials discounting the interview versus the number of stories reporting Saddam's desire for a debate with Bush or his refusal to disarm. Most media outlets took this interview straight on, hook, line and sinker.

Aw, c'mon, that Butcher in Baghdad, he's really a nice guy
Let me get this straight - CBS' "unbiased and balanced" media whores (including Dan Rather) will bend over backwards for an exclusive 'interview' with a known mass-murdering dictator. They'll then pitch a bunch of softball questions at said murderer - who dons a nice suit and tie (as opposed to his usual military fatigues). This monster, responsible for nearly two million deaths, is then given more than an hour of prime-time network airtime to spout lies and retoric. Yet, a White House spokesman (not a known killer or rapist) isn't good enough (in the judgement of the 'fair news editors' at CBS) to represent the U.S. administration's rebuttal to this circus of an 'interview' aimed at snagging big numbers during ratings sweeps week. CBS would accept no less than a Secretary of State's mug on their network - evidently Ari Fleischer's face is too commonplace these days to draw the requisite viewers and ratings. Talk about selling your soul to the devil.

"White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told Reuters the White House had offered a representative to counter what he said would be propaganda, lies and "irresponsible statements" by Saddam in the rare interview. He said CBS replied it was interested only if President Bush made the response himself -- which he said the White House rejected on the grounds that it could imply a "moral equivalence" between the two leaders. CBS made a new offer on Wednesday. "If the president, the vice president or Secretary of State (Colin) Powell would like to appear on the program tonight we would be happy to have them appear on the program," Genelius said."

A Butcher? In who's opinion?
"According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2001, Iraqis have become the second largest group of refugees in the world. Iraqis also top the table of foreign nationals seeking asylum in the UK. Saddam Hussein has been ruthless in his treatment of any opposition to him since his rise to power in 1979. A cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering remains the hallmark of his regime.

Torture is systematic in Iraq. The most senior figures in the regime are personally involved. Saddam Hussein runs Iraq with close members of his own family and a few associates, most of whom come from his hometown of Tikrit. These are the only people he feels he can trust. He directly controls the security services and, through them and a huge party network, his influence reaches deep into Iraqi society. All real authority rests with Saddam and his immediate circle. Saddam is head of state, head of government, leader of Iraq’s only political party and head of the armed forces.

Saddam has, through the RCC, issued a series of decrees establishing severe penalties (amputation, branding, cutting off of ears, or other forms of mutilation) for criminal offences. In mid-2000, the RCC approved amputation of the tongue as a new penalty for slander or abusive remarks about the President or his family. These punishments are practised mainly on political dissenters. Iraqi TV has broadcast pictures of these punishments as a warning to others.

According to an Amnesty International report published in August 2001, ‘torture is used systematically against political detainees. The scale and severity of torture in Iraq can only result from the acceptance of its use at the highest level.’ Over the years, Amnesty and other human rights organisations have received thousands of reports of torture and interviewed numerous torture victims.

This report, based on the testimony of Iraqi exiles, evidence gathered by UN rapporteurs and human rights organisations, and intelligence material, describes the human cost of Saddam Hussein’s control of Iraq. It examines in turn Iraq’s record on torture, the treatment of women, prison conditions, arbitrary and summary killings, the persecution of the Kurds and the Shia, the harassment of opposition figures outside Iraq and the occupation of Kuwait."

Saddam Hussein’s Regime’s Methods of Torture
- Eye gouging
- Piercing of hands with electric drill
- Suspension from the ceiling
- Electric shock
- Sexual abuse
- "Falaqa"
- Other physical torture
- Mock executions
- Acid baths
[I'm leaving out the gory details here...]
     - from SADDAM HUSSEIN: crimes and human rights abuses, UK gov't

So what?
No matter what your opinion is on the impending war with Iraq, I think it's very clear that giving a man like this so much airtime to spew his lies and deceit is irresponsible. There were no questions about mustard gas, Kurds or torture. No tough quesions about the facts related to weapons of mass destruction. And through it all, CBS smirking all the way to the bank as they throw away any last remaining shred of journalistic integrity they used to have.

The day a major American TV network sells out to a tyrant and then says a White House spokesman isn't important enough in the interests of editorial balance is the day I quit watching that network. Anyone else have a mind to boycott CBS?

References:
- A biography of Saddam Hussein
- SADDAM HUSSEIN: crimes and human rights abuses A report on the human cost of Saddam’s policies by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of the UK government
- Tales of the Tyrant - a fascinating account of Saddam's daily life, a glimpse at the man behind the tyranny.

A Call to Action:
"There must be a law governing humanity and governing relations in humanity, that there should not be an aggressor while others are silent about the aggression. There should not be a killer while those who watch and applaud the killing. There should not be an occupier of the land belonging to others while there are those who keep quiet and never move to remove the occupation"
     - Saddam Hussein in his interview with Dan Rather

Saddam, I agree - and I believe one way or another, whether at the hands of the U.S. and its allies, or at the hands of your own people, you, the agressor, killer, and occupier, will be removed from your occupation of terror in Iraq.

Is Microsoft deliberately sabotaging their user experience?
I believe Capitalism works, I don't think Microsoft is evil, and I don't use Opera, but after reading "Opera 'borks' MSN in standards spat" I can't say I'm impressed with the folks at Microsoft and MSN. It sounds like MSN is screwing with Opera users on purpose and it appears to be an attempt to get those users to switch back to IE. What value is there in deliberately "displaying [MSN] pages improperly" for Opera users? Does that help MSN's advertisers? I don't think so. Does it make their content more accessible? I don't think so. Does it make any sense? No.

Consider these points:

1. MSN can only make less money for Microsoft and advertisers by breaking pages for users.
2. Opera is pretty darn standards compliant and clearly supports enough standards that the MSN designers could easily send Opera users a page which displays correctly. Don't tell me they've never heard of "graceful degradation." (From the sound of it, nothing would need to "degrade" anyway - MSN just needs to code things correctly.)
3. Many of MSN's pages don't validate or have bugs, and IE isn't 100% standards compliant either.
4. Most web users don't give a thought to technical standards, nor should they. Do car drivers care about what "standards" their vehicles are engineered to?
5. Web users upgrade browsers infrequently and standards evolve. This means not all standards will be supported by all browsers used by MSN's users at any given point in time.

According to Opera:
"In October 2001, Opera users were blocked from the MSN site. The event caused an uproar among Web users and MSN was forced to change their policy. However, MSN continues a policy of singling out its Opera competitor by specifically instructing Opera to hide content from users .... MSN now allows access to users of Opera 7, but is still targeting and sending users of earlier versions a broken page. This treatment is completely unnecessary, as the page would look the same in Opera as in Microsoft's own Internet Explorer if it had been fed the same information."

When Microsoft reopened MSN to Opera users they said, "the experience may be slightly degraded, simply because (those browsers) don't support the standards we support closely, as far as the HTML standard in those browsers" are concerned.

Microsoft's hypocrisy:
They clearly took a swipe at Opera and other browsers as being less standards compliant. Yet earlier that same year, David Massy of Microsoft said that Microsoft's "position is very clear because a standard exists, that does not mean Microsoft will automatically implement it. Microsoft will implement appropriate standards that we believe are useful to our customers." This clearly shows Microsoft's hypocrisy when accusing Opera of not being 100% compliant. You also have to ask what they mean by "useful to our customers." Which customers are they talking about? Or did they mean shareholders? It seems pretty evident that the 'standard' that Microsoft designs for is Internet Explorer - the 'standard' web browser.

Microsoft is getting their just deserts:
Clearly, Microsoft is one of the companies most responsible for making it difficult for designers, coders, and QA people to deliver a simple cross-browser compatible HTML design. Now their MSN design problems (intentional or not) are being used by a small upstart competitor to make the folks at Microsoft look like heavy-handed, arrogant jerks who would rather screw up their user experience than let someone have a pleasant experience with at competing browser.

So where is the user is all this?
Users are left wondering why the web sucks. Wondering why they have to know so much about computers, web browsers, and upgrades; worrying if the next install of IE they try will go okay or if it'll bomb or mess anything up. Many computer users still see their desktop systems as fragile ecosystems that they'd rather not mess with. Because they didn't setup the technology to experience the technology. They hope to USE the technology to experience things: a more efficient business life, entertainment from new sources, critical information that somehow enriches their life. It's not about the damn technology! Technology should be about changing people's life experiences for the better.

I've been a happy IE user for a number of years (I was once a die-hard Netscape user, but they didn't keep up), but since reading about these shenanigans from MS, I've downloaded the latest versions of Opera, Netscape and Mozilla for personal use and have been taking another look at what browser I want to use in my day to day web use. Microsoft made me pause and wonder again why I was using their browser (which I'd been quite happy with). Attitudes matter.

Related Links:

• Opera's Press Release on The Bork edition of Opera 7.01 - explains their rationale.
• Opera FAQ: Why doesn't MSN work with Opera? - good explanation and detailed "evidence" as to what exactly MSN is doing differently for Opera users.
• Jakob Nielsen: Stuck With Old Browsers Until 2003 - Jakob's added an update in February 2003 with comments about how accurate he thinks his predictions were in this article from early 1999.
• Microsoft Developer Network: Internet Explorer 6 and Standards
• W3C members fail standards test - "browser makers like Microsoft, AOL Time Warner and Apple and authoring tool producers, including Adobe Systems, Macromedia and Microsoft," remain noncompliant with W3C standards.

Can you design with your gut?
I found the discussion/comments on this Elegant Hack post - Good Gut so thought provoking I had to post my own 25 cents worth. How much do you trust your 'gut' when it comes to usability evaluations or design? Post your comments on Christina's site.

Web users' navigation behaviors changing and findings from testing search query formulation
A new StatMarket survey shows a couple of interesting trends:

- 64% of users now go directly where they want to go by typing in URLs and using bookmarks, while only 35% get there via surfing (just following links)
- Similar surveys done in February 2002 and 2001 showed surfing much higher - at 47% and 52% respectively.
- 13% of users arrived at a site via a search engine, up from 8 percent in 2002. So, while search engine referrals are growing, it's link-to-link navigation that is decreasing

Here are a few excerpts from an IDG article covering the survey results:

"Meandering is decreasing. This is a sign that the market is maturing," said Geoff Johnston, vice president of product management for the StatMarket division of WebSideStory Inc. which released the report Thursday.

While the Internet's cornucopia of information may have left Net users starry-eyed in the early days, users are now determined to get down to business rather than browse."

Not only is search engine use growing, people are getting better at using them, said Matthew Berk, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research.

Johnston ... comparing the Internet to TV. "After a while you get tired of flipping through the channels and just turn to the programs you like," he said."

Are users really better at searching?
I don't agree that with the statement that "people are getting better at using" search engines. My take is Google has improved the effectiveness of web search engines -- making even their competitors serve web searchers better by focusing on improving search algorithms and ranking methods. Maybe a very small percentage of web searchers have become more savvy about search query formulation or which engine to use, but I think it's more likely that the usability improvements made in search engines have accounted for users trusting them to meet their needs more often.

My experience shows that most users aren't very sophisticated in their approach to using search. For example, when usability testing an intranet site recently, we wanted to test how people would try to find the site on an internal search engine. We asked people to search for the site, knowing that it wasn't in the search engine's index. Our goals were two-fold:
1) see what query terms users would enter so they we could make sure those terms worked later, and
2) see how many different terms users would try before giving up.

The results amazed me. Many users totally gave up after just one or two search attempts, and no one made more than four search attempts. It was a very useful exercise - we ended up with a huge list of key query terms that we could focus on -- making sure those queries would find the site in the future. We also learned just how important first and second search result sets are, and that users will NOT be patient or successful with a poor search engine.

You might give that exercise a try on your next effort. You just have to reassure the test participant so they don't feel bad about not completing the task. We actually admitted to our participants right after that task that there was no way they wouldv'e found the site that day. We then explained why we set the test up that way, and how their struggle with different queries helped us. We also reassured them that there were no more 'trick' tasks like that in the study. This seemed to help them regain any lost confidence.

Related:
- StatMarket page covering the survey results (Note StatMarket links haven't been reliable in the past.)
- Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox - Search: Visible and Simple - note Jakob talks about observing how effective users are at query formulation.
- 37signals E-Commerce Search Report - a review of 25 online retailers' search engines that identifies 22 best practices.

Mad as hell
"It's as if the user interface folks have had their clocks flashing 12:00 for two full decades."
- TechWeb: Putting A Bad Interface On Things

Forrester: ERP Usability Sucks
Forrester analysts tried their hands at performing basic tasks in 11 different ERP software systems - you know, the systems that cost millions and millions of dollars. If you want to check out their findings, you can currently read a two-page brief on the Forrester site called "App User Interfaces Still Need Work" (if you register for guest access), and ZDNet has a short article on it as well which incorporates some additional quotes. Here are some excerpts and my take:

From the ZDNet article:
"Forrester analysts received no user training before testing the software. Companies typically invest in extensive training for their workers, spending between 10 percent and 15 percent of their project budgets on average, according to Forrester. However, the analysts tested what they thought of as "straightforward" tasks that shouldn't require training"

"Forrester receives many complaints from businesses about the poor design of ERP software, Orlov said. While such complaints aren't necessarily on the rise, Orlov said, in a depressed market for corporate applications, now is the time to improve the situation. "In a buyer's market, customers should be demanding better usability," Orlov said. The costs to businesses that use poorly designed software are huge, according to Orlov."

From the Forrester brief:
"While users invest trillions of dollars in enterprise software to supercharge productivity, boost customer satisfaction, and increase revenues, hard-to-use apps mean that users suffer decreased productivity and increased costs."

"Would anyone buy a Porsche if shifting gears required weeks of model-specific training and a lot of muscle? Just as shifting is basic in a sports car, so are these application-management tasks.

"Poor usability creates angry customers -- by driving up costs and squandering user productivity. To avoid this, vendors must perform scenario reviews on their apps and support Web sites. The next steps?
- Get outside help. Vendors should choose an accredited reviewer. The reviewer should follow a methodology focused on detailed design personas and perform lab and real-world testing.
- Prioritize fixes. Once problems are identified, vendors should prioritize based on importance to the user and the ease of fixing the issue."

My Prediction:
Until corporations learn to incorporate real usability measurements in their software evaluation processes, they will continue to buy expensive software that becomes shelfware, requires lots of additional training, and sucks productivity out of their businesses. Companies need to make usability a priority when talking to vendors: they need to ask when, how and if usability tests are conducted, they need to ask for test results (ideally reported by third parties), and they need to suggest that vendors add usability professionals to their staff. Until they do that, vendors will keep cranking out bloated featureware with horrible user experiences and steep learning curves.

How what we do compares to art and porn
I laughed out loud today reading this bit from Boxes and Arrows:

"Boxes and Arrows was born in 2002. We came into the world in March like a lion, and swore to write about “what we do” even though we couldn't agree what that was or what to call it. Like art or porn, we agreed we knew it when we saw it, and that was good enough. As the year unfolded, we discovered “it” was strategy and practice, design and evaluation, and most of all understanding and empathy for users and business. We definitely design, but we design more than just an interface or just a sitemap. We discovered we need a vast variety of skills to do our jobs well. And we need to do our jobs well to survive."

Christina has a great writing style and often makes me laugh while making an excellent point.

Do Not Reply to This Message Directly
Susan Weinschenk tells a good story of bad online banking customer service.

The Smart Money Behind Computer Aesthetics

A NewFactor Special Report talks about aesthetics and design -- I half expected Don Norman to be quoted in the article. Even though they didn't talk to Don, they did an excellent job of covering the topic. Don's trying to raise awareness of this fact within the HCI community with his upcoming book and recent talks.

Repeat after me, non-believing usability gurus, "beauty and style do matter to consumers and users." Can you say it? I knew you could.

"Dennis Boyle, a studio leader and principal of the IDEO industrial design firm, told NewsFactor that aesthetics becomes more important for many products as they mature. The first computers, like the first cars and airplanes, were functional and plain. "They start out with people just trying to make them work," said Boyle, who recently designed the Handspring Treo PDA and has worked on Palm, Apple, Dell, HP and other computers. "But eventually people don't care what's inside. They just want it to work well."

"Industrial designers are walking a fine line. As Boyle pointed out, "Aesthetics is just one of the plates spinning on the stick." Too little attention to aesthetics will alienate buyers. Too much attention can slow down the product cycle, delay introduction of performance improvements and add to products' cost."

Usability engineers are walking a parallel fine line. Yes, usability is just another spinning plate -- and yes, you can have 'too much usability.' As the saying goes, 'all things in moderation.'

Design blooper: Car park barrier

David Travis from System Concepts nicely illustrates a parking garage barrier design that gets "iterated" a number of times. He then aptly asks "how many participants would have been needed in a usability test to spot this blooper?" It's a great illustration of where usability testing would have been FAR cheaper than the resulting hacks to fix a bad design. In this example, the company who created the design is probably not the same company who bought it and was trying to fix it. Travis has also authored a new book called E-commerce Usability. Some sample chapters are available online.

since1968: Interview with Steve Krug

Marc Garrett has posted a nice, fresh interview with Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think. Marc avoids the boring, trite questions and asks some that I find more interesting like "Are you aware of any other Web books that have "Hatch, Sen. Orrin" as an index entry?" and "Are you a farmer or a cowman?" Reading this interview, I also learned that Croc O' Lyle is one of Steve's favorite sites. Needless to say, I'm flattered. Thanks Steve, you're too kind.

Here's my favorite quote:
"...it reminds me of a line from an underground comic called The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers from back in the 1970's: "Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope." Having a small budget and someone on the project with clout who really cares about whether users have a good experience--which is often the case with an amateur site--will often get you much farther than a big budget and no one guiding the whole thing."

Usability and Open Source Software

A paper from the University of Waikato, New Zealand does a great job of discussing at length some of the causes of poor usability of Open Source Software (OSS). I got this link from a developer-type cohort. He keeps trying to convince me to help bring usability to the OSS community. The paper does a good job of explaining why that just doesn't sound like fun to me.

One of the core problems:
"The OSS approach fails for end user usability because there are 'the wrong kind of eyeballs' looking at, but failing to see, usability issues. In some ways the relatively new problem with OSS usability reflects the earlier problem with commercial systems development: initially the bulk of applications were designed by computing experts for other computing experts, but over time an increasing proportion of systems development was aimed at non-experts and usability problems became more prominent. The transition to non-expert applications in OSS products is following a similar trajectory, just a few years later."

I question whether OSS will eventually follow the same trajectory - after all, the market drove commercial software to take that trajectory. The "market" for OSS is rather different. The author talks about OSS developers being incented to "scratch a personal itch" -- that and recognition are how they get "paid" to a large extent.

"The 'personal itch' motivation creates a significant difference between open source and commercial software development. Commercial systems development is usually about solving the needs of another group of users. The incentive is to make money by selling software to customers, often customers who are prepared to pay precisely because they do not have the development skills themselves."

Finally, how many usability folks would want to dive into this for the "public good"?
"Open source draws its origins and strength from a hacker culture (O'Reilly, 1999). This culture can be extremely welcoming to other hackers, comfortably spanning nations, organisations and time zones via the Internet. However it may be less welcoming to non-hackers. Good usability design draws from a variety of different intellectual cultures including but not limited to psychology, sociology, graphic design and even theatre studies. Multidisciplinary design teams can be very effective, but require particular skills to initiate and sustain. As a result, existing OSS teams may just lack the skills to solve usability problems and even the skills to bring in 'outsiders' to help. The stereotypes of low hacker social skills are not to be taken as gospel, but the sustaining of distributed multidisciplinary design teams is not trivial."

Working on a project with no clear leadership, ill-defined roles, consensus-based decision making, and a bunch of developers who have no desire to listen to a "usability expert" -- yikes, I'd rather swim with a bunch of lawyers...er I mean sharks...Okay, same thing.

Related posts:
- Confessions of a Mozillian
- Linux needs focus not whiners
- Open Letter to a Power User / Developer

New Data Leaves No Doubt about Why CRM Results Disappoint

A good article on CRM Guru talks about customer-centricity and how it's key to success in the marketplace. The author's "curmudgeon" tone also makes for a good read. Note too the case study at the end of the article.

"But the excruciating pain, the generator of post-traumatic planning disorder, is that developing customer-centric strategies requires us to trade in our "inspirational" and "creative" planning methods (read "short, sweet and dry") for time-consuming, boring, sweaty, stinky trudging through data looking for win-win opportunities with customers. Opportunities that don't sit up on the surface waiting to be seen but only appear to those willing to muck around in customer input and information long enough to find what competitors have not found—profitable strategies hidden beyond the reach of inspiration and strategic "brainstorms" and first obvious conclusions. Hell, just take me behind the barn and shoot me."

Users Begin to Demand Software Usability Tests
Computerworld talks about the Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports as well as a how some customers are viewing usability as a requirement when purchasing products.

"Boeing played a lead role in the development of CIF after its experience and internal studies showed that usability played a significant role in total cost of ownership. In one pilot of the CIF standard on a widely deployed productivity application, the Chicago-based company said improved product usability had a cost benefit of about $45 million."

Ugh
Sorry for the lack of posting this month - lots going on...

Personal Writing Goal for the Day

Avoid TextSmell. Methinks this sometimes is a smelly blog. I promise I'll work on changing that. Thoughts?

JavaScript Misunderstood?
After reading Why Is JavaScript So Misunderstood?, all I can say is "big deal."

JavaScript (aka ECMAscript, JScript, etc.) is a cool 'programming language' for sure. The author leaves out a few key limitations of JavaScript like:

1. JavaScript is only really supported in browsers. Not all browsers (and versions) support JavaScrpt well or to the same extent. Many implementations are quite buggy.
2. This means you can't just simply 'run' your 'programs' easily, reliably or in stand-alone mode.
3. It also means that your user interfaces must be created with the limited UI capabilities available to web browsers and HTML.
4. Your 'programs' are restricted by the browser's Document Object Model (DOM). This greatly limits what you can use and access for input and output.
5. JavaScript development tools are very immature compared to other 'languages' like Java or Visual Basic.
6. You can't 'install' JavaScript 'applications' on a user's desktop. You typically access JS apps via a web page - this makes it more difficult for users to access and run. For example, you can't just click an icon on the desktop or Start menu (on Windows) -- you have to locate a URL or bookmark first.
7. JavaScript is really just client side. Sure, I know Netscape had some scheme for running JavaScript on a server, but no one in their right mind ever really used it. PERL, Java, and Microsoft technologies are much more respectable on the server side.
8. Need to read or write to an external database or file? How about create or delete files? From the client side you can't.
9. You can't manipulate or access other programs.
10. You can't modify a web page. Sure you can update values in form fields, but you can't change links, text or anything else that the DOM says is off limits.

So, while JavaScript is a great 'programming language', it really only fits a small niche of applications - those web sites and apps that need a lightweight scripting language.

Apologies to regularly 'usability topic' readers - we will now resume our irregular programming (or lack thereof).

Common Sense and Usability

Usability is more than common sense. Isn't that common sense? I guess not. :-)

Join the discussion of this article at Webword...

Short Term Memory & Bad Design

Chad Lundgren shares a story about his online odyssey to buy some memory for his camera. He includes a few good examples of bad design.

More bad design articles:
- 37signals should know better - links should be obvious
- Pop-up ads are viruses
- Excuse me, your Johnson & Johnson is showing - home page suckiness
- Penguin Code - bad forms design
- Eating your own dog food doesn't work if you're a cow
- The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business2.0 - good story, bad design
- Our search is broken and we're broke

37signals should know better

37signals generally does awesome stuff, but I just noticed that their home page has a nasty little behavior: if you click anywhere inside one of the three columns on their home page, it is a link to another page. What's bad is there's nothing to indicate the body text is clickable, and my mouse cursor doesn't indicate it's a link. Anyone clicking from one browser window to another might click on that text, only to be suprised that it's a link. That's how I happened to notice it in the first place. Come on, guys. Links should be obviously different from body text -- I have to believe anyone that creates something as good as Design Not Found knows this...so why the goof?

Just realized this is my second critique of the 37signals home page...

Wireless as marketing gimmick

[W]e built a WAP add-on for our MLS product to allow Realtors to search for properties over their phone. Not one of our customers ever bought the WAP module, but it was still something we needed to have available. Most RFPs we would get from potential clients requested that wireless access be available. So we built the module, not because we thought that anyone would ever buy it, but because it helped us win sales. Why wouldn’t people buy it? WAP sounds cool when you describe it, but in practice, it’s more difficult to use than it’s worth.

Giving the Human Touch to Software

Making too many assumptions about users’ expectations and levels of competence can get software developers into a lot of trouble. Yogita Sahoo tells her own story about designing an application for an industry she was deeply familiar with—but that industry knowledge didn’t keep her from making some big usability blunders.

All the terms used in the above message looked very obvious and simple to my team and me. We took for granted that the rest of the world also knows what a file menu is and that clicking on the top “X” button will close a dialog box. But unfortunately, the hotel employees didn’t know about these conventions. Had we understood that a steward would not be familiar with computer terminology, the product could have been designed to suit a layman’s needs.

You should never try to design for a wholly indeterminate set of users. Your marketing team may add some insight, and a human-factors specialist will also help. You should work with a representative user group that varies in terms of profession, age, and qualifications.

Site Refactoring

Kalsey Consulting tells us how they implemented the concept of refactoring to improve their site. They cover card sorting as a way to recategorize and restructure, how to move files without breaking things for users, and generally making improvements in an evolutionary manner.

Refactoring is the process of making small changes to a program that improve the overall execution without introducing new features (and hopefully no new bugs). The basic idea is to leave things better than you found them.

[N]ow I had a solid reason for moving my files around. Placing everything into the new structure would make it easier to manage in the future. I made the decision to move everything into the new structure, but also decided to minimize the problems created by doing so.

Book Excerpt - eSupport
E-Support : How Cisco Systems' Saves Millions While Improving Customer Support

The most important finding was that we were letting "feature-creep" get in the way of usability. We added in lots of bells and whistles, like sorting and document rating, but these were either not noticed or criticized for getting in the way of the task at hand. Our next iteration will have a simpler interface. Because we had not invested any time developing the systems to support these bells and whistles, we could easily discard those ideas without wasting precious development time. (from page 2)

More posts related to features and usability tradeoffs
- User centered design sells products
- Bloatware: Good or Evil?
- The Pursuit of Simplicity

Open Letter to a Power User / Developer

I just read this Letter to a Non-believer, and have to respond. As I see it:

1) Someone commented in a mailing list that Linux has "poor usability."
2) You point out that *you* can successfully use Linux to read email, write professionally (about Linux and technology it appears), compose music, watch movies, plan Linux events, create your own Linux distribution, publish Linux CDs, and browse the web, etc.
3) You claim that "millions" of other people who "work like you do - productively and happily" also use Linux.
4) Since you can do all these things, you then assert that Linux *must* be usable. You say "you have the gall to tell me and millions of others that it can't be done"?

Well, I DO have the gall to tell you your logic is horribly flawed.
1) Usability is relative - something that is usable for one type of user doing one type of task is very often not be usable for all user doing any kind of task. Linux is obviously at least somewhat usable for some folks, but that doesn't meant that it's usable for most people.
2) Usability is not black and white - it's not "usable and unusable" it's shades of gray. At some point individuals determine that things aren't "usable" enough for them - this is the point where people either buy into or pass on something.
3) Usability is only one small factor in the adoption of products.
4) You are obviously a power user of technology and Linux. When you say you maintain your own distribution you reveal that you are a power user among power users. Few "average Joes" use Linux for average tasks, and my guess is that few actually could. (Notice I said few, not none.) I know many Linux users, but noone that maintains their own distro.
5) Let's talk realistic stats - where are the millions of folks in regular offices or homes doing average mundane things on Linux? How many non-programmers run Linux? Sure, millions of servers run Linux, but that's not what we're talking about. I'm sure there are millions of Linux distributions sold every year - that doesn't mean millions are actively running or anywhere within reach of a "typical" consumer.
6) Okay, even if Linux with KDE or whatever were super easy to learn and use. Where would a soccer mom buy a preschooler edutainment for Linux? Could she install it and read the docs (don't get me started on man pages)? How about a tax package for my small business? Can I get it at Best Buy? Power users have different needs and understand how to locate Open Source needles in the haystack of the Internet - average folks want quick, easy and mainstream. It's not just the OS that has to be usable and suitable- OS's are just the start. It's the whole offering from the platform and all the related software vendors. Why do you think Apple still has any market share? It's because they have enough of the right stuff (usability, software, marketing, documentation, service, etc.) that people want when making a decision on what to adopt.

Just because YOU use it, doesn't mean it's USABLE for many people. Show me research - maybe an independent usability test. Lots of universities use Linux -- ask them to research Linux's usability. As far as adoption statistics are concerned, back up your cited numbers, show me real numbers from reputable analysts, All I could find are gross estimates from biased partisans.

Linux rocks as a server platform, and it's a great development platform for many developers (depending on what they develop in and for). Linux on the average consumer's desktop? Not in the foreseeable future - it's built by geeks for geeks. And geeks love it, so it's successful in its own way.

Shopping carts aren't just for purchasing

Shopping Cart Abandonment: Why You Need More of It points out that online cart abandonment rates will always be higher than the 2-3% in physical retail stores.

According to a white paper by Fry Multimedia, "Most (online shoppers) appear to use the cart to mark products of interest, like turning down or marking a page in a catalog. Items in shopping carts on Web sites represent shoppers' desire to purchase, not necessarily their intent."

Because of this, it's unlikely that online abandonment rates will ever be comparable to traditional ones. Users have a hard time finding what they want on the Internet; shopping carts provide an easy way to bookmark things that they are interested in.

Abandoned shopping carts aren't just shopping carts. They also are important sources of customer information. How important? Imagine what it would cost to put together a list of what each of your online customers was interested in buying!

You did what you could
Rebecca Blood's story about a card her niece made for firefighters after September 11 is very touching. She should be proud of her niece.

"I watched as she drew it. First to go up were the buildings, then the airplane, then the two people jumping, holding hands. It is an overwhelming image, so I am not surprised that it is a fundamental part of all of this for her, but it is disturbing to see it reflected in an 8-year old's art."

Unfinished Work - Freedom Itself is Under Attack

The Gettysburg Address
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
- Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

How will you help fight terrorism and defend freedom?

"On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars -- but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war -- but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known surprise attacks -- but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day -- and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack. ...

"After all that has just passed -- all the lives taken, and all the possibilities and hopes that died with them -- it is natural to wonder if America's future is one of fear. Some speak of an age of terror. I know there are struggles ahead, and dangers to face. But this country will define our times, not be defined by them. As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror; this will be an age of liberty, here and across the world."
- George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, September 20, 2001

God Bless America

Should corporate logos be home links?
Recently on the SIGIA-L list, a discussion broke out on whether or not logos on web sites should be linked to the site's home page. Here's my analysis:

There are a few underlying questions:

1. Do users expect logos to be linked to the home page rather than just being a graphical logo?
2. Can a linked logo replace another link labeled "home"?
3. Does placement of the logo matter (e.g. is top-left better)?
4. If a logo is a link, where would users expect it to go?

Here are my assumptions when designing or reviewing sites:

• A purely graphical logo is great, but a linked logo provides some additional functionality at little cost.
• *I think* most users, *when seeing that a logo is a link*, will expect it to go to the site's home page - there are few other logical places for it to go. (related to question 4)
• I've seen some users click on logos, but most will choose a "home" link first when looking to go "home." (related to questions 1 & 2) Therefore...
• You need to have an explicit "home" link - a logo isn't explicit enough. (related to question 2)
• Placement always matters - but if you think of the logo-link as a supplementary link to the "home" link, then it's not that critical from a navigation point of view - it's likely more important from a branding and context point of view. (related to question 3)

Research into this would be great, but frankly I don't *need* research on this issue. In my opinion, there's almost no risk in making a logo a link - risk enters the equation when people try to eliminate a "home" link (in main navigation) which I think is patently a Bad Idea. Logos don't look like main/global navigation -- they look like branding. Use them for navigation too as a "bonus" -- Good Idea. It was also mentioned that logos are generally nice, large targets to click on -- Fitt's Law tells us this is a Good Thing.

Some related research:
Examining User Expectations for the Location of Common E-Commerce Web Objects
(If you agree that most site's put their logo top-left, then you can draw the conclusion that most users expect logos to be links home.)

The trouble with usability guidelines
Jared Spool has a new article that questions the value of guidelines called "Evolution Trumps Usability Guidelines."

Jared is controversial (as ever), but as usual there is some truth to what he's saying. I'm not willing to chuck all guidelines out the window, but I'll add my opinions to what Jared has already stated. Let me state up front that I maintain and promote use of a set of guidelines in my day to day work, so I have some experience with guidelines. I've also used guidelines and "style guides" as coaches at times when looking for advice on how to tackle certain design issues.

Problems with guidelines:

1. Many guidelines aren't based on research. The National Cancer Institute's Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines are an attempt to bring more credibility to guidelines.
2. Compliance with guidelines can be hard to measure if they are vague or poorly written
   E.g., "Ensure descriptive terms or pictures are used: Use clear and informative labels to describe products on-line" (from Serco's Ecommerce Guidelines)
3. Many guidelines don't really provide much value
   E.g., "Every Web page should contain at least one link." (from the Yale Web Style Guide) How many people read this guideline and said "Duh!"? Do you think it matters what that one link is?
4. Guidelines can get outdated.
   E.g., Sun's Writing for the Web Style Guide was authored by Jakob Nielsen who hasn't been at Sun for a number of years. The style guide doesn't look like it's been updated since at least 1998.
5. Guidelines by definition generalize about design - without regard to differences in audiences, tasks, work environments or other specifics that should play a major factor in designing usable applications. Guidelines make lots of assumptions and don't necessarily tell you what assumptions were made.
   E.g., "International users: Remember that you are designing for the World Wide Web. Your readers could be the people down the street, or people in Australia or Poland." (from the Yale Web Style Guide) clearly not considering intranets, extranets, or other web applications where you may really know the limits of your audience's reach.
6. Guidelines aren't a recipe for success -- even if you can comply with every guideline, your application might not be very usable. They aren't a replacement for a good User-Centered Design (UCD) process.
7. Guidelines are not comprehensive -- they don't cover all or even most design scenarios.
8. Different sets of guidelines may contradict each other.
   E.g., Spool and Nielsen regulary go toe-to-toe on the topic of web search.
9. Guidelines can be hard to use. A good set of web guidelines generally is pretty large and can't be easily absorbed by designers -- especially novice designers.
   E.g. Nielsen Norman Group has published 592 different web usability guidelines in five separate reports.
10. It seems some people think guidelines are a replacement for the methods in UCD and try to short-cut the design process by using them instead of usability testing, prototyping, etc. This makes guidelines dangerous -- people who don't know how or when to use them will mis-use them. By following guidelines blindly, you can shoot your design in the foot. (Yes, of course designs have feet - how else do you explain "walk-throughs?")

There are also some things that are good about guidelines -- but I'll cover that topic in another post.

Let me know what you think -- email: Lyle_Kantrovich at Bigfoot dot com

The Pursuit of Simplicity
Luke Wroblewski of NCSA has some good insights on what makes designing for simplicity difficult.

"Ultimately it’s the pursuit of simplicity that’s your best teacher. When you consistently work toward a simpler solution, you pick up a lot of valuable lessons along the way: what works and what doesn’t, what is necessary and what is interference."

Related posts:
- Bloatware: Good or Evil?
- User centered design sells products

Note: article linked fixed April, 2008

See back side of this web page for more info...
Just ran across a site that is blatantly using the same text on their web site that they use on their product packaging or "tear sheets" (those pads of product info pages you might see in a retail store). Symbol is a company that makes handheld devices based on Palm and Pocket PC platforms -- the product page for their 2800 Series device tells the user:

"To find out how your business can benefit from Symbol's innovative products, contact any of the convenient locations listed on the back panel or visit us at www.symbol.com/mobile."

Note that the user is already on the web site listed, but a few pages further into the site. Unless they want the user to look at the back of their monitor, I have no idea where the "back panel" of a web page is. Of course the "convenient locations" aren't provided on the web page either -- and the mobile products page that is linked shows nothing about "business benefits." Maybe they should think about how to change their web site into a truly "convenient location" -- then maybe potential customers will know why Symbol devices are worth the much higher price tag when compared to standard Palm or Compaq devices.

The Age of Information Architecture
Jeff Lash starts a new regular column on IA at Digital Web called IAnything Goes with a retrospective on how many Information Architects got their start.

"Information architecture helps make sure that business needs and user needs are met, leaving everyone happy, and isn't that really what it's all about? ... It's no wonder, then, that there is increased interest in information architecture. Individuals who can supplement their technical skills with solid understanding of business strategy, information organization experience, user-centric techniques and critical thinking make much better candidates for prospective employers, and much more effective employees. Businesses who realize the importance of information architecture can realize cost savings, improved organizational efficiency, improved communication, and increases in revenue."

Builder goes beyond barrier-free to create accessible homes
The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a nice article about a builder who builds accessible houses for people. His attention to detail is pretty obvious from reading the article. Check it out.

"It took a lot of looking to find some of these things," Regel said. Finding a side-open oven supplier took seven months, and it took years to find a window that can be opened with one lever. One research method was basic: "I rolled around in a wheelchair to get an idea of what's needed," Regel said. ... Some of these efforts might become commonplace as more builders follow a movement called universal design, "which is concerned with making many areas of life . . . better fit the needs of a wider range of the population," Sprague said. Three main features of universal design are stepless entries, wide doorways and open floor plans, with "all important living features on the main level." Sprague said the additional cost for such features is small.

[thanks Caryn!]

The Wireless Lexicon
The Wireless Lexicon (PDF) is an attempt to codify the terms involved in the wireless user experience. It contains 228 terms. If you're not sure what some of these terms mean, you might want to check it out.

- Soft key
- 3G
- 2.5G
- baseband
- cHTML
- express key
- multi-tap
- T9

The document is intended for use by people working with the wireless platform, including: application designers, engineers, technical writers, and journalists. It is assumed that the reader has some familiarity with cellular phones and a basic understanding of web technology.

Why XP and UX have Something in Common
George Olsen shares his experience and opinions on how to get Extreme Programming (XP) and user experience design (UX) to play well together. As usual, George's thoughts are great -- I can see this being useful to anyone trying to instill UCD practices in an XP or Rational development shop.

"Refactoring - a key principle of XP - may work behind-the-scenes, but it doesn't work for what's visible. In fact a key tenet of refactoring is that doesn't change the observable behaviour of the software, it improves its internal structure. Which needless to say requires that the programming object be well-designed, even if it's first implementations are kludgy."..."While XP programmers understand this in terms of programming objects, we need to get them to understand this is true of the user interface. In essence the entire user interface is just a big collections of "objects" (screens), each with required inputs and outputs. These need to be well-designed before you start coding."

I got a chance to meet George briefly at CHI 2002, and had the pleasure of working with him (as editor) on a Boxes and Arrows article i wrote about that conference. You may also have seen some of George's other work previously:
- Interaction by Design - George's company
- UX Thoughts - George's articles and blog called Thumbnails
- Web Standards Project - George co-founded the WaSP in 1998
- An un-dated interview with George about the WaSP
- He's editor for Boxes and Arrows

As you can see, George needs to get out of the house more. :-)

Why are usability and interaction designers difficult to work with?
Someone in the Joel on Software discussion area asked about the value of working with usability or 'interaction design' professionals and wondered about difficulties of working with us.

Looks like so far I'm the only HCI person who is willing to respond in the JOS Discussion Forum. I didn't really think the questions were fair, as you'll see in my response. (Scroll down a ways or do a "Find" for 'Lyle'. there's no way to link directly to my comments.)

Joel on Software rocks.
I particularly liked a post he wrote on bloatware and usability.

[link via John at Webword]