As a new visitor to the Engauge Digital Blog, I decided to start by reading the existing posts in an effort to avoid duplicate discussions. With numerous articles and limited time, my experience consisted of multiple visits where I would read a few articles before having to leave to focus my attention elsewhere. I began each return visit by asking, “Where did I leave off?” The answer would be found after scanning several posts and pages requiring a growing amount of time and effort. I don’t spend much time on blogs, but I have had similar frustrations and thought I would post to see if my experience is common.

THE QUESTION: Has anyone seen a blog that easily allows users to indicate what posts have been read, easily locate unread posts, and search within the posted content?

Indicating where the user is and where they have been in a web experience is a basic best practice, but in my experience it’s commonly void within blogs. The fact that users do not have to select every post prior to viewing does make the typical visited link identification difficult. However the presence of a “Read” check box with every post, an “Unread” filter or category option, and a search field could help answer “Where did I leave off?”

I happened across a seemingly ordinary slashdot.org article talking about a conceptual Mozilla browser, codenamed Aurora. While this browser is a long way from reality and does build on some older concepts, I am noticing a pattern in how we are building our applications. I find it intriguing, novel, and fun… but I’m unsure about the problems to be exposed in this new paradigm.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Visual Organization and an Embrace of the Scroll Wheel

The first interesting piece of this demo is the use of more visual techniques in grouping and/or relating information. We’ve seen this technique in everything from Tag Clouds to the graphical flipping between iPhone music and Vista applications. Instead of simple text based categorization/reference of objects, everything is moving to graphical thumbnails of objects that can be scanned pictorially instead lexically. Tag Clouds are still a primarily lexical representation but they did bring in the notion of using size, color and transparency to emphasize strength and relevance. Pictorial representations typically use the same notions of size and transparency to convey the same information. What I am most excited and forlorn about is the relatively new introduction of depth into these efforts to help us relate complicated and disparate information. Demonstrated in spectacular ways by Microsoft’s Photosynth or even Google Maps and Earth, applications are developing with the notion of relevance and frame of context by a depth characteristic. Our two dimensional world of yesterday is quickly becoming and antiquated notion in lieu of a new third dimension to store and relate even more data.

Will this new way of thinking leave me cluttered in another dimension?

Kinetic Gestures and Wrist Weights for Exercise

The second big shift is coming from the advent of Wii and iPhone among others. Everything is becoming so much more energetically interactive as we make our Human Computer Interaction (HCI) devices momentum and gyro aware. We can shake our devices, sling them, and elicit different behavior based on the speed and direction of our actions. HP has release it’s new line of “TouchSmart” PC’s that offers scrolling ability and speed based on the swipe of your hand and the speed of your swipe. The above video as well as the others on Mozilla Labs demonstrate this new capability in all facets of Browser design.

Are we moving towards forced exercise in all of our computer interactions as we speedily try to navigate and pull detail information to the forefront of our screens? Maybe they should start making our Wiimotes and Gyro-Mice in 2lb, 5lb, and 10lb sizes.

In a recent alert on Jakob Nielsen’s site, the “guru of usability” helps us understand the really important website analytics and how to interpret them better. He then helps us understand the ways in which to improve our analytics, particularly the dreaded Bounce Rate.

The bounce rate of a site is measured by calculating those who enter through any page and leave from the same page versus those who enter through any page and click-through to another page.

Recent research has shown that an increasing number of people are entering sites not though the home page, but through some deeper, interior page. This can be due to the increase of social bookmark sites like Digg and Del.icio.us, which points the web user to particular content. As a result, the bounce rate of most sites is going up.

To better understand one’s own bounce rate and how to reduce it, Nielsen recommends understanding the bounce rates of particular visitors. Alas, not all bounce rates are equal, just as not all visitors are equal.

There are basically 4 categories of visitors:

1. Those entering from the likes of Digg. These are the least important to you because they are a fickle bunch and will have unusually high bounce rates.

2. Those who enter from direct links from other websites. These visitors are in essence receiving a recommendation from some other site. People who follow these recommendations may not have been looking for your site or product directly. They have some degree of interest, but if the usability of the site is poor or does not match their expectation, the bounce rate will be high.

3. Those entering from search engine traffic (whether it be SEO or paid links) will have a specific interest in your brand and your product. They are actively searching and wanting to engage with your company. Nielsen state, “If they leave immediately, there is something wrong with your landing pages.” Check your usability, your copywriting, and don’t forget to modify keywords.

4. Loyal users are those that return repeatedly to your site. This is your core consumer audience. If they return repeatedly, they may only be checking for new content on the site. Upon finding it, they will engage longer with your site than many other visitors. As long as they keep coming back, it’s okay if this user has a low page count.

All in all, Nielsen recommends shifting your attention from the “unique visitor” as the gold standard for a site’s success. Because the majority of unique visitors will be of the #1 and #2 variety above. Instead, count loyal customers and convert them with new content, new products, new special offers just for them. And try your best to convert the unique visitor into a repeat visitor.

Make sure the site doesn’t have confusing navaigation and is light on the copywriting. Insure that there is a clear path for the visitor to follow and provide them with next steps. Don’t force them to guess where the special product or offer is, expose it.

I was checking out Geek Sugar last night and came across an interesting video posting about the iPhone. The point of the post was that the iPhone interface is so simple that anyone can easily figure out how to use it — even a two year old toddler.

In searching YouTube, I came across quite a few videos (see a couple below). The interesting part is that there are no videos of any baby boomers using it. Hmm … I guess that it’s not that interesting to see a 44-year-old using their iPhone. Heheh.

I’m not sure a usability researcher could imagine a world where there was no heavy (and expensive) testing equipment that had to be lugged around from different testing locations. Well the folks over at Clearleft may have up come with some new software that will make all that a far and distant memory. Researchers may soon enjoy a world where they can just grab their Mac and run to a testing location with no extra equipment. With the Silverback Application, faulty equipment and canceled or postponed testing sessions may be eliminated, which could be a huge savings of time…and we all know that time is money.

What is the Silverback Application?

The Silverback Application is a usability testing application for web designers, developed by the UK-based design team. It has the capability of turning any location into a user testing site by utilizing the hardware on a Mac. The application is in semi-private beta testing as of yet, but is expected to revolutionize the world of usability testing.

What does the Silverback Application do?

The Silverback application eliminates the need for researchers to have multiple set up steps when conducting usability testing. It utilizes the Mac’s built in camera and microphone during testing. The application simply records while a user is testing your interface. When finished testing, the Siverback application produces a handy picture-in-picture Quicktime video, allowing the researcher to see the entire interface being tested, the reactions of the user being tested, as well as audio recorded on the microphone. The Silverback application also records every click the user makes with little circles overlaid on the Quicktime video.

Who wants to use the Silverback Application?

The Silverback Application is great for anyone who wants to know the habits of users on their website. It’s is also excellent for on-the-go testing, since testing locations will now be available wherever your Mac can go.

The question now turns to who will be on the leading edge of this new technology. Maybe someday in the near future, the days of lugging around bags full of easy-to-malfunction test equipment could be a thing of the past. If that’s the case, user experience testing should become even more efficient, making clients, researchers and participants very happy.

I find it fascinating that there’s so little information available out there on the value of taxonomy as a founding principle in Web design strategy.

Taxonomy - the study of the general principles of scientific classification - has been around for hundreds of years. In Web work, it’s generally the organization of contexts into logical groupings and hierarchies.

It’s those groupings that, in turn, help IAs determine navigation structures, metadata, even the very nomenclatures that are the foundation of Web usability best practices.

If you’ve ever been approached to help a client correct a truly horrific Web site, you’ve no doubt found that some (possibly much) of their pain points can be traced back to a poorly designed – or altogether missing – taxonomy.

Maybe it’s that those of us who build Web strategies have just come to see taxonomy as a “given” within the Information Architect’s toolset — something IAs employ but needn’t share with the rest of the creative team or [forbid!] the client.

Maybe people think taxonomy is just an issue for larger, content rich KM sites.

Maybe I’m not finding a lot out there because whoever is writing tomes on taxonomy best practices just isn’t remembering to add metadata to their articles.

Ok. That was a cheap shot. But where IS the supporting data in Taxonomy’s defense? I’m disappointed by just how little taxonomy information is out there on the Web. Do a search on your own and you’ll see examples for “Taxonomy best-practices” and rationales are few and far between.

As a creative body, IAs all too often struggle with clients who “just want to see the comps.” Client’s don’t realize how much of their bottom line rides on the contextual storylines inherent in the usability of the site.

The process of taxonomy creation is really much easier and effective than the name might imply. Yet, I’m amazed at how few IAs are given [or is it take?] the time to apply it. And I’ve [almost] never seen nor heard of a client demand a content outline as a deliverable.

I recall a previous colleague who was asked to design wireframes as the initial deliverable for a large eCommerce client. He produced very innovative wires complete with auxiliary navigations, functional buttons, web 2.0 components… the whole nine yards. The client was delighted with the results. After all, they were the pre-cursors to some beautiful graphics.

The site, however, was completely useless. By not first establishing a contextual format for the linear plots and subplots of the user experience, the navigation “buckets” we’re little more than a sloppy hodgepodge of disparate functions and features. The site’s organization lacked cohesion and the end users simply couldn’t build a mental storyline around its intended purpose.

That’s why, whether creating a new site or performing an audit on an existing one, I find reviewing the site’s taxonomics an invaluable starting point.

I begin with a literary outline based on the site’s overarching goals. Sound too old school for today’s hyper-connected world? You’d be amazed at how much mileage you can get by FIRST establishing the value of those straight pathways. It helps the client visualize those important “subplots” that will eventually become the site’s use cases. It also points out where there are potential holes or disparages in the client’s existing content sets and expectations. It also grounds them in reality that these areas of the site will need to be created AND maintained by someone in order to be successful.

More important, we’re helping rationalize and strengthen their business requirements – an important pre-visual practice before going to the expense of designing (and redesigning) wireframes or comps.

After all, isn’t the role of a good taxonomy advisor to SAVE the client some money?

Going mobile? Smart decision. Analysts keep saying that companies expect a huge increase in mobile interactions with their customers over the next few years.  But designing for mobile isn’t like designing for today’s website.  Here are just a few tips to save your on-the-go users endless downloads, needless frustration–and to keep them coming back for more.

Think Simple Yet Engaging
I mean, really simple.  Remember your users are dealing with those confounded mobile device interfaces on top of your mobile website interface.  Most devices can’t handle large downloads, either.  So use simple layouts with very concise yet very clear navigation, optimized images and video, brief text, and limited options.  

Choose & Prioritize Your Content Wisely
You can’t gear all of your content for mobile, so select your mobile content strategically. Google categorizes mobile users into three behavior types: 

• Repetitive now (e.g. checking stock quotes, sports scores, etc. regularly)
• Urgent now (e.g. looking up directions to an airport)
• Bored now (e.g. playing games or reading entertainment headlines to kill time). 

Identifying content that supports those three behaviors is a good start toward a mobile communication and content strategy.

Keep Consistency with Your Regular Website 
Even tiny mobile screens have room for look and feel.  Tie in the look and feel of your main website with your mobile site so users know they’re in the right place and attribute their positive mobile experience to your brand.

Redirect Mobile Traffic to Your Mobile Site & Promote Your Mobile Site
Unfortunately, you probably won’t work out a deal with wireless carriers such as Verizon and AT&T to include your link as a default destination in their mobile web browsers.  So your users will use their mobile device to visit your main website (the one they see on their PC). Fortunately, you can save them the pain of downloading your huge home page to their tiny screen.  Technology can detect whether users are visiting your main website through a mobile device and automatically send them to your mobile site.

To draw in users who are unaware you have a mobile presence, promote your mobile site vigorously, especially on your regular website.  Some nice examples include CNN.com and Delta.com.   

I recently attended a special CHI Atlanta event regarding a relaunch of a major news website. It was very interesting to hear how they engaged users throughout the entire redesign process; they utilized surveys, qualitative interviews, and iterative usability testing.

They mentioned that they engaged an agency to help them with the overall redesign direction and user personas. Why did they choose this particular agency? According to the company’s Director of User Experience and Site Integration, they chose the agency whose “powerpoints sucked.” Many agencies presented them with snazzy powerpoints and lots of “swag.” She joked that she had drawers full of this swag, such as an entire booklet full of words that represented their brand. The agency they chose simply presented them with a non-flashy presentation and then sat down with them for what ended up being a “good conversation”.

Whats the moral of this story? “Know your audience”, a phrase commonly tossed around by user experience architects, holds just as true for sales professionals. Some clients are interested in the sizzle and others are interested in the steak. So, it’s always good to engage your client in a dialogue and get a good idea of their expectations before offering them unique services or solutions.

As more and more companies adopt a user-focused approach, those who are new to the field often interchange terms that sound alike, but are really different. One might argue that it’s just a matter of semantics, but when talking with a user-experience professional, semantics can mean a great deal.

Here’s a quick guide to make sure you are using the right terminology:

Usability
Often times people will say we are working on a “usability project”. This could mean a wide variety of things. Is it a usability test? Is it a website re-design focusing on improved usability? Is it a review of an existing site to identify usability issues? “Usability” has become a catch-all phrase, but it simply refers to how “usable” a function, feature, or entire website is.

User Experience
Now the user “experience” of a website or product is a much more holistic view of things. It’s much more than how easy something is to operate. When you “experience” something you are taking in multiple stimuli, all of which impact the initial and final impression of a user.

This honeycomb diagram probably explains it best. Originally developed by Peter Morville of Semantic Studios, it provides an overview of the different facets of a user-experience.

Useful - Ensuring the solutions and features help users achieve their objectives.

Usable - How intuitive the interaction is based on proven theories and design principles (and validated through testing).

Desirable - The website’s balance between efficiency and aesthetics - how well the site utilizes the power of perception, image, identity, branding, and other elements.

Findable - Designing navigation, content, and page layouts so users can easily find what they need and be confident that they’re on the right path.

Accessible - Ensuring that everyone (including those with disabilities) can access the features without problems.

Credible - Designing elements that will influence whether users trust and believe what the site tells them.

Valuable - Ensuring that what we are creating delivers value to the user.

When you examine the many facets involved in creating a good user-experience, you can easily see that it’s not just about usability. So, if you decide to launch into a re-design because you are trying to fix “usability problems”, take a step back for a holistic view of things. There may be other areas that, if you focus on them, can result in not just improved usability, but a dramatically better user-experience.

How often have you gone to the store for a quick purchase that ends up taking hours due to so many options? Finally a book which speaks to something that seems to be so true: More options – an excess of choice – is not always a good thing! Everything was easier back when we had fewer things to choose from. The author, Barry Schwartz, speaks about the over-abundance of choice in Schwartz’s talk at Google or in this shorter TED Talk.

The gist of the message is this: We have always been under the impression that it is better to have more choice since it gives us more freedom, which in turn gives us more happiness. In reality, choices tend to inundate us with so much information that it can be overwhelming and detrimental.

“There’s no question that some choice is better than none. But it doesn’t follow from that that more choice is better than some choice.” Some of the examples he gives are:

1. Shopping: There are at least 75 bottles of salad dressing in the supermarket at a given moment. Do we really need so many?

2. Healthcare: Every ailment now has multiple numbers of treatments. Drugs are now being marketed directly to us because we are now consumers of our own healthcare.

3. To Work or Not to Work: Modern technologies (laptops, PDA’s, blackberries) allow us to work at anytime, anywhere. This causes us to always have to choose whether or not to work.

Obviously, choice is a wonderful thing. But at a certain point choice can actually be a hindrance. People agree that there are too many choices in every category of consumer good – from clothes to washing machines. According to Schwartz, “People have more decisions to make than it is worth their time and trouble to be making.”

Too much choice can have detrimental effects:

• Choice can lead to paralysis – too many choices cause you to actually choose NONE!
• Overabundance of choice can cause you to make the wrong decisions since you end up selecting based upon one parameter (i.e. looks) over a more meaningful parameter (i.e., quality). How many of us have selected a sub-par bottle of wine due to its snazzy label?
• Choice can lead to regret. If something isn’t perfect, it is easy to imagine that an alternative would have been better. Regret reduces the satisfaction you get from good choices. Anticipated regret prevents you from making choices at all – you are so sure you are going to make the wrong choice that you don’t make any choice.
• We evaluate our experiences based upon what we expect them to be. More options raises our expectations – causing us to expect perfection. These high expectations ultimately lead us to less satisfaction with results, even if they are good results.
• The longer we mull over a decision, the more we comprehend the pros and cons to every option. This knowledge makes us more likely to suffer from our choice after it has been made.

So what does this mean for creators of interactive products? We should always be mindful of the perils of abundance. Interaction designers are essentially “choice architects” since we provide users options to navigate to different places and execute various actions. Therefore, we should always keep in mind that choices can have a negative effect on our users. Within reason, we should try to anticipate what is best for the user rather than inundate them with options. Since choice can cause paralysis leading users to actually choose nothing, we should organize options so that if users do nothing, they actually get what is in their best interest.