Selecting computers on their merrits ...

"It is clear to me, and the Apple move really got me thinking along these lines, that people are starting to make decisions based on other criteria than pure performance and that the overall user experience is becoming a bigger differentiator. There are reasons for what is suddenly driving Apple into big companies and it is affecting the battle between AMD, Intel and Nvidia as well.


Apple's enterprise move

Last week, I was visiting one of the most powerful companies in technology - one that is typically thought of as a Microsoft partner. I noticed a lot of Apple computers and even the guy briefing me had a MacBook Air. Since this was a traditional Windows shop, I paid a bit more attention on what was going on at that site.

Apparently, the buying authority for employee devices and supplies has become decentralized and has been moved to the managers who own the related profit and loss. The idea behind this is that these managers are closer to the problems and can better assess how to most effectively spend their limited budgets.

This is a heavy laptop shop and, like most, is still on a 2-year rotation and buys laptops with full services at a cost of about $3600, excluding the software or central services from the company's IT organization. Because a few people wanted to use Apple machines, an internal peer-to-peer support organization was set up and, initially, anyone who wanted an Apple had to get special permission and generally buy it themselves.

Upon review, the costs associated with these Apple users turned out to be vastly less than those associated with Windows machines for obvious reasons, including the fact that the employee, not the company, bought them. But, when managers looked at the departmental cost, a $1800 MacBook Air saved $1800 over a $3600 Windows machine, because the annual service cost can be avoided.

As a result, employees at this company can now select, once their Windows box is up for replacement, an Apple machine and speculation is that most will elect to do that. That means they save the company tons of money and those employees are usually very happy with their computer. Many apparently elect to use their own money to buy an even better laptop from Apple."    (Continued via UsabilityNews, TG Daily, Rob Enderle)    [Usability Resources]

Monthly BayCHI program on Google Chrome ...

"Tuesday, December 9, 2008:

Designing Google Chrome
Pursuing a philosophy of "content, not chrome," the Google Chrome team sought to design a window manager for the web, a browser that would recede into the background and elevate web pages, applications, and entertainment to first-class citizens on the modern desktop.

Glen will describe the process and reasoning behind this approach, the challenges and user research involved, where Chrome is going, and how you can get involved.

Glen Murphy is Google Chrome's designer and an engineer on its front-end team. Prior to moving to California to work at Google, Glen bounced around Australia as a CS dropout, a dotcom-boom designer, a programmer of interactive installation artwork, an engineering lead, a Master of Design student, and a suit-wearing enterprise software consultant."    (Continued via BayCHI)    [Usability Resources]

The usability of technology ...

"Modern information and communication technologies open doors to a wealth of information. But many users find it difficult to set up these devices and frustrating when they break. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, nearly half (48%) of adults who use the internet or have a cell phone say they usually need someone else to set up a new device up for them or show them how to use it. And many users of various devices and services encounter breakdowns from time to time.

Specifically:
- 44% of those with home internet access say their connection failed to work properly for them at some time in the previous 12 months.
- 39% of those with desktop or laptop computers have had their machines not work properly at some time in the previous 12 months.
- 29% of cell phone users say their device failed to work properly at some time in the previous year.
- 26% of those with Blackberries, Palm Pilots or other personal digital assistants say they have encountered a problem with their device at some time in the previous 12 months.
- 15% of those with an iPod or MP3 player say their devices have not worked properly at some time in the prior year."    (Continued via Usability News, Nico McDonald, Pew Internet)    [Usability Resources]

Applying this concept to design ...

"An interesting bit came across my twitterstream the other day:

Gall’s Law

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”

Yup, seems to hold for the complex systems we know and love: organic life, government, law, medicine…and of course Twitter.

Let’s imagine for a moment that it does hold. This would change lots of things, including much of the software world, which is laden with complex behemoths who frustrate us daily.

1. Building simpler software from the start
Obviously, if Gall’s Law is true then more teams would start out building really simple software instead of overly complex stuff. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to think that way. Instead, the thinking seems to be, if we’re going to be as successful as (X), then our system needs to do more than (X). But in complex, social software, that may actually be impossible, since (X) didn’t spring fully-formed into life, either. Most of the software people try to emulate quickly took years and years to evolve to where it currently is. (as an aside, my recent argument is to focus on designing to support a specific activity and nevermind emulating success for its own sake)

2. Meeting solid metrics before adding features
This is an interesting idea: make sure that your software works at some basic thing before you add features to it. I’ve seen on a couple projects in which there was a tension between the current under-performing software and the ambitious engineering plan that adds a lot more features. Which do you do? Stop and get people using the simple software first or push on and hope that people will come flocking after you’ve added a few more features? Well, according to Gall’s Law you get the simple software working first. My question is…are there teams who actually do this? Are there any that have actually said: “we have not reached our initial goals, let’s stop adding features and work on the ones we already have”?"    (Continued via Bokardo, Joshua Porter)    [Usability Resources]

"Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts. We define concept as a perceived regularity in events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label. The label for most concepts is a word, although sometimes we use symbols such as + or %, and sometimes more than one word is used. Propositions are statements about some object or event in the universe, either naturally occurring or constructed. Propositions contain two or more concepts connected using linking words or phrases to form a meaningful statement. Sometimes these are called semantic units, or units of meaning. Figure 1 shows an example of a concept map that describes the structure of concept maps and illustrates the above characteristics." (Cmap Tools - Publications)

"Information architecture (IA) means so much to our projects, from setting requirements to establishing the baseline layout for our design and development teams. But what does it mean to your clients? Do they see the value in IA? What happens when they change their minds? Can IA help manage the change control process? More than ever, we must ensure that our clients find value in and embrace IA—and it’s is our job to educate them. If we want our customers to embrace IA, we must help them understand why we need it. IA is about selling ideas effectively, designing with accuracy, and working with complex interactivity to guide different personas (potential customers) through website experiences." (Keith LaFerriere - A List Apart)

Jakob Nielsen on American vs. British English for website content ...

"Users pay attention to details in a site's writing style, and they'll notice if you use the wrong variant of the English language.

There are many differences between American and British English, including:

* Spelling: color vs. colour, behavior vs. behaviour, theater vs. theatre.
* Terminology: truck vs. lorry, cart vs. trolley, two weeks vs. a fortnight.
* Concepts: what is football anyway — American football, soccer, or (for the truly brave) Aussie rules?
* Slang: do you call this sport "footie"?
* Abbreviations: do readers know that PA=Pennsylvania? Not if they're outside the U.S.

So, which version of English should you use on your website? There's no simple answer, but usability studies do provide two firm insights:

* Language matters. Users notice when a website uses a different version of English than the one they're used to.
o Some users will simply assume that the site is littered with typos, poor spelling, and weird words, all of which reduce credibility a good chunk.
o Other users will recognize that the site is using a different variant of English. These users won't think the site is poorly produced; they'll simply assume it's foreign and doesn't apply to them.
* Be consistent. Pick one language variant and stick to it. Varying the style confuses everyone and signals poor attention to detail.

Aside from this, I can offer only one firm recommendation: If your site is based in a single, English-speaking country and you don't mind being viewed as a local site from that country, use its language variant. So, a U.S. site should use American English, whereas a U.K. site should use British English. Similarly, sites based in Australia or other Commonwealth countries that predominantly use British English should use that variant.
International Sites
Problems arise in two cases:

* When your site is based in an English-speaking country, but you want to be seen as an international site.
o The goal here is to go beyond borders, rather than to simply serve foreign customers. For example, a Las Vegas hotel site won't offend British tourists if it's written in American English. Nor will a site selling genuine Scottish tartans lose American customers because it uses British English. Indeed, when you represent local products, using the local language adds verisimilitude to your claims.
o Canadian sites that mainly target the U.S. should use American English, unless they want to emphasize the fact that they're foreign. (This can be a selling point, but most American users view it negatively.)
* Your local language isn't English, but you need an internationalized version of your site for foreign customers. (Ideally, you should produce a localized version for each country where you have customers, but this isn't usually feasible; typically, organizations have a single English-language site to serve users from many countries. See my earlier article for internationalization guidelines beyond language.)

With the latter issue, much depends on a site's context. For example, I came across the following case during my recent seminars in Europe: A Scandinavian university wants to attract foreign students and thus has an English-language version of its website. So, should it use American or British English? The answer depends on both the main target audience and the main competition. If prospective students hail primarily from Europe and the school's main competition is U.K. universities, the site should be written in British English. If the primary target is American and Asian students, the site should be written in American English. Similarly, if the main competition is American universities, the Scandinavian site should use American English. Why? Because prospective students will search the site using the same terms they've seen on other sites, and using the same language variant will enhance SEO (search engine optimization).
Spoken English
The guidelines are clearer for spoken English, as used in video voiceovers, podcasts, and the like:

* The Queen's English is posh and universally admired. Use "Received Pronunciation" like the BBC used to do, and people will understand you around the world. But don't speak upper-class English if you claim to under-sell Wal-Mart.
* Midwestern or Northeastern American accents are also easily understood by international users and carry less of an upper-crust connotation.
* U.K. regional dialects, such as Scots, Irish, Welsh, and Northern English are hard for foreigners to understand (and Cockney is impossible). So don't speak like the BBC does these days :-)
* Most other accents — such as Texan or Australian — carry strong regional connotations, which can be positive or negative, depending on your brand. Unless they are very strong, these accents are usually not as hard for foreigners to understand as the U.K. regional accents.

Language = Voice
Using American or British English definitely impacts your site's style. Thus, the decision ultimately comes down to identifying the content style that's most appropriate for you and your customers. The answer isn't easy, but the decision must be made; users will notice if your tone is off."    (Continued via Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)    [Usability Resources]

"I had several conversations about what service design is and how it might be different from other forms of design. This is a question I and others have had before. As a trained interaction designer, it was not difficult to transition to service design. In fact, there were only subtle differences that might be identified as different from interaction design. No one I talked to offered a clear definition, or a true distinction." (Jamin Hegeman)

"Nightingale's best-known graphic has come to be known as a 'coxcomb'. It is a variation on the familiar modern pie graph, showing the number of deaths each month and their causes." (Science News)

"Users pay attention to details in a site's writing style, and they'll notice if you use the wrong variant of the English language." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

The role of the designer ...

"I’m sitting in a conference room with a coworker and two clients. It’s chaotic, hot, and a challenge just to walk around without tripping on the mess surrounding us. We are in the midst of designing and are buried in paper and sharpies and flipcharts. The walls around us are covered with consolidated data from requirements gathering and flipchart pages we’ve filled with our thought processes. Every few minutes, we need to retape some piece of paper that’s in danger of falling into a crumpled heap on the floor. Then, suddenly, I’m gripped with the feeling of déjà vu. It seems like I’m working on the same design I’ve worked on a thousand times before—and I’m getting bogged down in the details to boot! It’s at once disheartening and terrifying. But I’m the lead on this project, so I need to drive the team forward—which presents a challenge at this particular moment.

In that moment, I realized I had to step back and take a new perspective on both my role and the goal of our design.

Inspiration from an Unexpected Source

When I found myself trapped in déjà vu and needing a new perspective, I turned to theory I had learned in a directing class for inspiration—and ironically, direction. I realized I might gain insight on the lead role I was playing if I thought about how my role correlated to that of a theatrical director.

You may ask, What does directing have to do with creating a user interface design? Well, we know a director is responsible for the strategic vision of creative work. That’s a given. But, did you know he is also responsible for ensuring a successful outcome that both meets his vision and is in line with the producer’s desires and budget? To make that happen, a director works with the cast, crew, costume and set designers, and everyone else who contributes to a successful theatrical production to pull together a cohesive product, without losing site of his vision. It’s a complicated job. In this scenario, change director to UX lead, producer to business owner, and the rest to designers, developers, and technical writers. Is this starting to sound familiar? Though I’d found myself feeling lost, fortunately, I did find inspiration in the unlikely source of a directing class.

In my directing class, we had studied five different theorists—all with their own unique perspectives and ideas. While I absorbed all of this information in preparation for my own first directing experience—a scary story in itself, but one for another time—I found myself intrigued by how many of the concepts could translate to any creative process, not just theater.

Peter Brooks’s The Empty Space, in particular, stood out as an approach that could help define direction and purpose when doing any kind of creative work. His groundbreaking book describes the landscape of theater as he saw it in one moment in time. His categorization of the four types of productions he typically encountered—Deadly, Holy, Rough, and Immediate—slightly esoteric though it was—reinforced the need, first and foremost

* to understand the ultimate aim for the experience or design you are creating
* to continually go back to that goal if you start feeling like you are getting lost

Brooks also gives us a way to measure the success of our ultimate aim and think about a long-term strategy—if we take these things into consideration from the beginning. For me, these concepts were the lifeline I needed to pull myself out of the weeds and recenter my focus."    (Continued via UXmatters, Traci Lepore)    [Usability Resources]

Writing effective content ...

"In many of my columns, I have touted the importance of persuasive, or influential, content and shared relevant theories and arguments, sprinkling in some practical tips and examples along the way. This column brings together a collection of practical tips, or recipes, for persuasive content. My goal for these recipes is to help anyone who touches content to bake in some influential goodness. Because of my background and experience, these recipes have an English-speaking American flavor, but I think they are a useful starting point for international content, as well.
1. Talk like a person.

Your content needs to sound like a human being crafted it, not like a system regurgitated it. Letting Go of the Words, by Ginny Redish, offers some great tips along these lines—such as using first person. [1] Additionally, I’d like to point out two things you can do to make your content appealing to readers:

* Be polite. Being polite does not usually mean adding a dash of please and thank you to all of your content. Rather, it means ensuring your content communicates respectfully. For instance, if your customers are older or tend to communicate formally, you may want to add the occasional please. If your customers are younger or more casual, they may enjoy sassy or friendly sayings that serve the same purpose. [2] Figure 1 shows an example from Bliss that employs both traditional courtesies and clever sayings.
* Be genuine. Most people find someone who seems genuine more persuasive than someone who seems like a hypocrite. I believe we can imbue content with a genuine quality by maintaining a consistent tone, sticking to a consistent message or focus, and ensuring our content is consistently accurate.

2. Establish credibility.

People tend to find a trustworthy person more influential than an untrustworthy one. B.J. Fogg has done some interesting work on credibility. [3] The following points draw on that work, as well as my own experience:

* Provide specific contact information. Showing a company’s phone number, email address, and physical address reassures customers that your business is legitimate and accountable.
* Show credible affiliations and certifications. If you’ve got them, flaunt them—especially if yours is a new brand or business. Figure 2 shows the scanR home page, which incorporates positive product reviews from well-known brands.
* Make related policies or guarantees easily available. While people often discuss doing this as a way of offering answers to customers’ questions about policies or guarantees, in my opinion, what’s just as important is customers’ seeing you have policies or guarantees. Making them available is a sign of your company’s credibility. Following this tip with the right timing is especially powerful."    (Continued via UXmatters, Colleen Jones)    [Usability Resources]

Karel van der Waarde: "This morning, I received a message from Piet Westendorp's partner that Piet passed away on November 19th. (...) Piet Westendorp has been a remarkable person. I'll miss his clarity of thinking and his direct aproach, but even more, I'll miss his inspirational enthusiasm and curiosity." (InfoDesign-Cafe) - RIP Piet Westendorp

"I'm sitting in a conference room with a coworker and two clients. It's chaotic, hot, and a challenge just to walk around without tripping on the mess surrounding us. We are in the midst of designing and are buried in paper and sharpies and flipcharts. The walls around us are covered with consolidated data from requirements gathering and flipchart pages we've filled with our thought processes. Every few minutes, we need to retape some piece of paper that's in danger of falling into a crumpled heap on the floor. Then, suddenly, I'm gripped with the feeling of déjà vu. It seems like I'm working on the same design I've worked on a thousand times before—and I'm getting bogged down in the details to boot! It's at once disheartening and terrifying. But I'm the lead on this project, so I need to drive the team forward—which presents a challenge at this particular moment." (Traci Lepore - UXmatters)

"In many of my columns, I have touted the importance of persuasive, or influential, content and shared relevant theories and arguments, sprinkling in some practical tips and examples along the way. This column brings together a collection of practical tips, or recipes, for persuasive content. My goal for these recipes is to help anyone who touches content to bake in some influential goodness. Because of my background and experience, these recipes have an English-speaking American flavor, but I think they are a useful starting point for international content, as well." (Colleen Jones - UXmatters)

Cluttered and complex interfaces ...

"Technology as a whole should enable us. It should ease our daily tasks, offloading some of the burden, whether that be mental processing or physical expenditure. This should be especially true of computers our daily interactions bring us in contact with and more still when the bulk of our time is spent working with them. Personal computing should allow us to focus on a given task in a way that encourages us to accomplish more than we otherwise could. Every means of interaction within the system should support the task at hand with as little interference as possible.

Sadly this is not the state of computing for most users. The most popular metaphors in computing today - the desktop, the start menu, folders - and commonly learned ways of interacting with them - point and click with the mouse - actually discourage productivity and break concentration/focus from a task. The implementations of these ideas further this interruption. True most users now have been trained to reach for the mouse and their hand eye coordination is good enough to accomplish any given step within a reasonable time frame.

How though does the switch-tasking our brain does to accomplish these steps affect the flow of thought for the current project? Clearly the less divergent thoughts and less steps required for any single step, the less the thought process is diverted from the main task. Further while few people struggle to make the required movements with a mouse, what affect does the repetitive nature of the movement have on long term health and usage? No doubt anyone who uses a mouse on a daily basis for several hours has personally felt the strain on their wrist that naturally comes with such usage.

The modern computing user interface has become cluttered and distracting, albeit a composited, semi-transparent glossy distraction. The initial appeal of such common interface elements hides the distraction, disguises the intrusive elements. It’s as if the computer were telling you, “never mind this modal dialog that just interrupted your thought process, it’s so glossy it must be helpful”.

Consider the average means of launching a program. Is it really ideal to require the user to graphically navigate to some onscreen coordinate that receives instructions before thought is transferred to action? Doubtful. How much screen real estate is essentially wasted for interface elements that support this idea? And how much time is spent arranging or re-arranging the frequently less than ideal placement of windows within this paradigm? Most daily computer users quickly outgrow the nagging tedium of these interfaces, but have no option to adjust the defaults.

I personally prefer an interface that is minimal and stays out of the way. An interface that handles much of what we have come to think of as routine automatically. And one that is fully configurable and flexible enough to support interaction in the manner that works for best me. The tiling window managers available on Linux and specifically Xmonad support this beautifully.

With Xmonad window management is automatic. I do not have to think about window placement as every window is automatically arranged to take the best advantage of screen real estate based on simple rules that I have configured. I can call applications with a single keystroke and they appear exactly where and how I want them. I can send them away or bring them back to the current screen with little more than a gesture, not once having to remove my hands from their comfortable perch above the keyboard. Many applications do not play nicely with this idea though and try to force certain window behavior. For these few troublesome programs it a simple thing to always “float” them, so that they behave in much the same as with traditional window managers. All of it is easily configurable in Haskell, an advanced purely functional programming language that is truly a joy to work with. Because of it concise syntax and clarity, I have been able to easily configure Xmonad to behave as I like, and it’s completely stable.

What is more, the means in which information is communicated is extremely configurable. I chose a minimal status bar using dzen, based on example scripts on the dzen wiki. Information when, where, and how I want it."    (Continued via WebFramp)    [Usability Resources]

Asking the right questions ...

"When you built your first web site, didn’t you just want to promote it everywhere with big bold letters saying, “HEY EVERYONE! COME HERE AND LOOK AT MY WEBSITE! ISN’T IT GREAT?” Or, when you submit your web site to forums for web site reviews, what do you typically ask for? You may write, “Tell me what you think of my web site” or “Which color do you like better, blue or red?” or “Did I optimize for search engines properly?”

The worst mistake you will make as a web site owner is to ask someone to “look” at your web site. It’s like the dreaded, “Do I look fat?” question. There’s never a safe answer. For starters, someone may look slim standing up, but resemble the Buddha when sitting on a couch. You need to assign tasks to get honest answers to these tough questions.

To understand if your web site is meeting its usability requirements, ask people to take it for a spin and try it out—and more specifically, to see if they can answer the following questions:

What is the purpose of the site?

Ann Smarty wrote in Check Your Site Usability With These Fun Tools about the Five Second Test tool. It’s a fun way to explore immediate impressions and experiment by asking, “Tell me what the site is about”, to see if the site’s purpose is communicated clearly. It can’t warn if your shopping cart is broken. It doesn’t alert you if your sales lead form was invasive and turned away potential customers.

When car shopping, good sales people begin by explaining a car’s features and describe updates from previous models. They’ll walk around the car with you and demonstrate how to pack the back with groceries and squeeze in fishing poles. You won’t buy it at this point, however. For now, the sales person is spinning you a tale to help you imagine yourself inside that gorgeous expensive hunk of machine.

Sales people don’t approach you with “Do you think this car would look better in orange?”

What need does it fulfill for me?

Another area of concern that web site owners have is conversions. They’ll ask for feedback by writing, “My sales are down! Can you look at my homepage and tell me what I’m doing wrong?” Sometimes they’ll write, “We just redesigned our entire web site and our data tells us people are still leaving from the homepage. Help!”

If you’ve ever sold a home, you know that real estate agents will tell you to clean up the yard, paint the walls, empty it out so it looks roomy and place flowers around. If all we had to do was to make a house look pretty to sell it, we wouldn’t need real estate agents to show our homes. They’d sell themselves. Web sites with fresh paint on the homepage but no repairs to the information architecture, persuasive content, functionality and user experience can’t be expected to perform miracles.

A good real estate agent will bring potential buyers to a house and encourage them to turn on the water faucets, open closets, and help them visualize 50 people in the family room at Uncle Frank’s birthday party. What if you move in, get arthritis and can’t manage stairs anymore? The value proposition is not just about features and price. It’s about what benefit someone will get by purchasing your service, buying your products or experiencing your online tools. In addition, try to help visitors plan ahead and make logical choices rather than purposely pushing them into a revenue stream that will only benefit you in the long run. Why? Word of mouth marketing, the “long tail”, customer satisfaction and brand management.

Is it responsive to my emotions?

When you wrote up requirements for your online business, did you remember to include emotion? Most likely, it never crossed your mind. Do you watch how people use web sites when they’re in a hurry? Upset? Worried? Stressed? Tired? Hungry?

Google recently launched SearchWiki. Regardless of what you may think about it, what motivated them are their users. Their data shows that searchers want better ways to search, organize, save their research and quickly find favorite web sites. With user feedback, Google can create user personas to help developers understand how searchers use Google when they’ve just been informed of bad news. How do stress and exhaustion affect search behavior?

Consideration for your web site visitors’ emotional state may be vital for your web site. While testing a web site recently for a young adult rehabilitation center, I was pleased to find their content was written in a warm, caring way. The colors were soothing pastels. The pictures showed happy clients. Unfortunately, their content was all about the center and types of therapy. It was long winded, requiring time to read and digest. What wasn’t addressed with bullet point details on the homepage was proof of their claims to calm fears and concerns over ethics. Were there case studies or testimonials? Could a parent talk to other parents who sent a child there?"    (Continued via SearchEngineLand, Kim Krause Berg)    [Usability Resources]

It does not take a large investment to do usability testing ...

"Usability testing is a good idea for any new web site. Increasing the usability of your web site is a good idea because it will increase visitor satisfaction, which in turn increases sales and user loyalty. On the business savings side, usability testing can also save you money in development, maintenance, and support costs. Unfortunately, traditional usability tests is pricey — it can cost up to tens of thousands of dollars to run a usability test.

But it doesn’t necessarily have to. Here are five ideas to get usability testing done on the cheap. The results might not be quite as good, but they won’t hurt your pocketbook nearly as much.

As always, if you have any other ideas or have experience with any of the ones we’ve listed, please let us know in the comments.

1. UserTesting.com

UserTesting.com is a low cost way to get a look at what goes through the minds of average web users as they interact with your web page. For $19 per user, you get a 10 minute video of a user talking their way through your page, as well as answers to a short, written questionnaire. There is a sample video available here.

We reviewed UserTesting.com in an August issue of the SitePoint Tribune.

2. Feedback Army and Mechanical Turk

Feedback Army is a new low-cost usability testing service that for $7 will provide answers from up to 10 people to a text-based survey about your web site. It isn’t quite as visual as UserTesting.com, and the quality of feedback might be suspect, but nonetheless could provide valuable information about how people view your web site. And it’s cheap enough that if the results are a waste of time, $7 shouldn’t put you out of business.

A similar result could likely be had via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service."    (Continued via SitePoint, Josh Catone)    [Usability Resources]

Deciding what features to put in the iPod Touch ...

"The new 2.2 update for the iPhone brings a lot of great new features. Google Street View, direct viewing, listening and download of podcasts and a few small but neat tweaks. The iPod Touch also got a 2.2 upgrade, but it lacks one headline feature: Street View. Why? To answer that, we should take a look at the different goals Apple seems to have in mind for the two products, and also at arbitrary, software-based product differentiation in general.

On launch, the iPod Touch was immediately labeled the "phoneless iPhone". There were some other hardware differences (camera, volume buttons) but the description was essentially correct. If didn't want a contract, or if you lived outside the US, you bought the Touch.

As the two lines matured, they grew apart. The 2.0 iPod Touch gained built-in support for the Nike+ system, a dongle which sits in your sneaker and tells the iPod how far you have run. The iPhone 3G got GPS. These were hardware differences and made sense: The way Apple uses GPS pretty much mandates an always-on Internet connection to be useful, and the iPod Touch, lacking 3G, needed another way to track a runner's distance.

But the lack of Street View is a software diference. Why wouldn't Apple include it in the Touch? You might say that, without an Internet connection in the street, it would be useless, but my computer can access Street View and I never take it outside. In fact, out in the street is arguably the least useful place for Street View -- you can just open your eyes and see the real street in front of you.

This seemingly `arbitrary crippling of devices isn't unique to Apple. Camera makers do the same thing. Take Canon as an example. All Canon cameras use a version of the company's DIGIC chip to process images. But while the high-end (more expensive) cameras have RAW support, auto-bracketing and higher shutter speeds, the cheaper cameras don't. Because it's a lot cheaper to make a lot of the same chip, Canon simply switches the extra features off in firmware. Otherwise, all the products in the range would start to look very similar.

In fact, most camera manufacturers do this, and Canon is one of the more open ones. Because it makes public the inner working of parts of its software, hackers can re-enable many of the disabled features. Take a look at the Wired How-To Wiki to find out how easy it is."    (Continued via Wired.com, Charlie Sorrel)    [Usability Resources]

iPhone 2.2

A critical review of the BlackBerry Storm ...

"Research in Motion (R.I.M.), the company that brought us the BlackBerry, has been on a roll lately. For a couple of years now, it’s delivered a series of gorgeous, functional, supremely reliable smartphones that, to this day, outselleven the much-adored iPhone.

Here’s a great example of the intelligence that drives R.I.M.: The phones all have simple, memorable, logical names instead of incomprehensible model numbers. There’s the BlackBerry Pearl (with a translucent trackball). The BlackBerry Flip (with a folding design). The BlackBerry Bold (with a stunning design and faux-leather back).

Well, there’s a new one, just out ($200 after rebate, with two-year Verizon contract), officially called the BlackBerry Storm.

But I’ve got a better name for it: the BlackBerry Dud.

The first sign of trouble was the concept: a touch-screen BlackBerry. That’s right — in its zeal to cash in on some of that iPhone touch-screen mania, R.I.M. has created a BlackBerry without a physical keyboard.

Hello? Isn’t the thumb keyboard the defining feature of a BlackBerry? A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel. A Prius with terrible mileage. Cracker Jack without a prize inside.

R.I.M. hoped to soften the blow by endowing its touch screen with something extra: clickiness. The entire screen acts like a mouse button. Press hard enough, and it actually responds with a little plastic click.

As a result, the Storm offers two degrees of touchiness. You can tap the screen lightly, or you can press firmly to register the palpable click.

It’s not a bad idea. In fact, it ought to make the on-screen keyboard feel more like actual keys. In principle, you could design a brilliant operating system where the two kinds of taps do two different things. Tap lightly to type a letter — click fully to get a pop-up menu of accented characters (é, è, ë and so on). Tap lightly to open something, click fully to open a shortcut menu of options. And so on.

Unfortunately, R.I.M.’s execution is inconsistent and confusing.

Where to begin? Maybe with e-mail, the most important function of a BlackBerry. On the Storm, a light touch highlights the key but doesn’t type anything. It accomplishes nothing — a wasted software-design opportunity. Only by clicking fully do you produce a typed letter.

It’s too much work, like using a manual typewriter. (“I couldn’t send two e-mails on this thing,” said one disappointed veteran.)

It’s no help that the Storm shows you two different keyboards, depending on how you’re holding it (it has a tilt sensor like the iPhone’s)."    (Continued via NYTimes.com)    [Usability Resources]

No Keyboard