off to gamble--er--study user experience

OPENING THANG

Gleanings will be on hiatus for the rest of the week, as my partners and I are going on a retreat to Vegas. I promise to tell tales of highly designed user experiences when I return! (it's my first trip. suggestions of must-sees welcome: write vegas@eleganthack.com but do it right now! I leave at noon)

In other news, I'm about ready to just resubscribe y'all to xblog. Lots of good stuff from them lately. And I've had many a fun email exchanged with Jeff Lash about their DNS woes, and my inability to get their URL right. Anyhow, if you start to jones for gleanings-style news while I'm away, definitely visit http://www.xplane.com/xblog

And in regards to yesterday's opening diatribe-- I mean, thang-- peterme shot me a note asking I look at the first 99% bad post that restarted the flash holy war, and he was right. It's a well thought out bit of reasoning.
I also want to point to Don Norman great post on "Nielsen Norman Group's Compelling Reasons to Use Flash"

don't blame the tool, baby.

IA MATTERS

hey, a nice little "how to IA"
Implementing Information Across Your Site
http://www.webreview.com/2001/01_19/strategists/index04.shtml
"Having trouble organizing your site information effectively? Well, first you need to know how to match your site's goals with the user. "

USABILITY MATTERS

Web Site Identity: The logo tells where you are
--> http://www.humanfactors.com/library/aug99.asp
"What should Web site designers do to help users know when they are still in the same Web site or have moved to a different site after clicking on a link? This question was studied by Omanson, et.al., 1998. Their research attempted to determine which dimensions were most important when establishing a Web site identity. They had observed that many Web users are often unaware when they have moved to a different site." [To Web
design]

Measuring User Experience
--> http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/02/ellis/
"We've all seen the stats. Almost half of a site's visitors go elsewhere due to poor navigability, slow download times, or confusing content. If users have problems on your site, they jump to competitors en masse.
Fortunately, there are several useful ways to evaluate user experience."
from xplane.com/xblog

Internet World: The Seven Sins of Copy Protection Tools.
Jakob Nielsen and Susan Farrell. Anything that makes computers harder to use should be rejected on the drawing board, because if it ever goes to market, it will be rejected by the users, who already have more complexity than they can deal with on their desktops now.
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/01232001d.jsp
from tomalak.org

STORYTELLING MATTERS

The Problem With Presentations
--> http://www.searls.com/present.html
"Nothing is more interesting than a story. In fact, just about everything interesting is a story of some kind. Stories are what make news. They are also what make war, sports, love and money. You have a story to tell. If you don't tell it, you'll lose your audience. Fortunately, all stories come with exactly three parts: character, problem and movement toward a resolution. Characters are identities the audience can care about..." also found on xplane.com/xblog

APROPOS OF NOTHING

Atom films is merging with shockwave, and they are selling all their logo gear, film compilations and other stuff cheap.


posted by Christina Wodtke 1/27/2001 12:22:06 PM

From: Gleanings
To: Unskilled labor
Subject: Gleanings: the bad revolution

OPENING THANG

Put your mouse where your mouth is. Competition to redesign useit.com.
http://anomy.net/useit.competition/

Also after reading this excellent article on v-2 http://www.v-2.org/bad.html I've been thinking about "bad" design again. I have been watching and listening to the debate rage on within the usability community about how Flash is "99% bad" and it reminds me of nothing as much as the arguments I heard when desktop publishing came out. people were up in arms over how much bad design was showing up-- these people don't kern! They use matisse for body text! or something like that.... and of course desktop publishing was blamed for putting the power to design into unskilled hands. Eventually the revolution evolved, and bad designs continued to show up on lost dog posters, and good designs (or at least a typical level of mediocrity) on most professionally produced materials.

Flash is an accessible tool, and a lot of people are messing with it that have no clue what they are doing, and they are producing junk. So what. HTML is an accessible tool, and lots of people are producing junk (take a stroll through any geocities "neighborhood".) So what. The revolution will produce failures and successes, but in the end we'll have a better, livelier medium for it.

IA & DESIGN MATTERS

Long Live Analog
http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id=1514
"The increasingly digital world is obsessed with retro-tech sound and
design. Steven Johnson goes behind the music."

A Few Tips on Designing URLs
http://mar.anomy.net/entry/20010112190505/
"URLs should be viewed as an abstract interface to an information resource engine residing on a web-server ... URLs have to be designed just like anything else in a website. They are an integral part of the user interface of a website. They play an indirect role in the overall user-experience. They can also affect the long-term value of a website."
from http://xplane.com/xblog/

NEWS & COMMENTARY

I never tire of napster stories.

News.Com: Big Blue touts new Napster-proof music locks.
The advent of Napster and its peers has changed the rules and risks in the online music business. Now IBM and other companies are trying to keep just enough of the Napster model alive to satisfy consumers, while giving copyright holders near-absolute control over the way songs and other media are distributed.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4551774.html

Business Week: There's No Fizz in Pepsi's E-Promotion.
Maybe I missed a key point in the evolution of mass consumer society. Perhaps our consumerism is so over-the-top that people would find it amusing to take an active role in choosing the marketing messages designed to get them to buy sugar water. So, Pepsi is either very cleverly aware or stunningly naive.
http://www.businessweek.com/ebiz/0101/ep0122.htm
from tomalak.org

Humbled Dot-Coms Still Major Presence at Sundance Festival
http://www.latimes.com/business/20010122/t000006203.html
French Sue Yahoo, Again (Reuters)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/yahoo010122.html
Doctors Forced to Use Hotmail for Confidential Medical Records
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/16235.html
from media grok, on http://www.thestandard.com

INTERNATIONAL MATTERS

our European correspondent writes:

"Now in Spain a friend has opened a distribution list to comment things about IA, usability and more, he is www.terremoto.net, maybe you know him."
(thanks, Juan-- I didn't)

APROPOS OF NOTHING

http://www.usscatastrophe.com/

posted by Christina Wodtke 1/23/2001 08:47:55 AM

From: Gleanings
To: survivors
Subject: Gleanings: hide and seek without the hide part

OPENING THANG

Let's play "spot the christina" at some point I'll be on Jeff @ The House, http://www.jath.com
I can let you know when I'm on it when I know, or you can develop a daily habit like I have. Also, I'll be joining Jesse James Garrett in an unscheduled moderation of a session at the conference http://www.asis.org/Conferences/Summit2001/index.html Come see me and say "Hi". I'm pretty dang approachable.

And a bunch of folks asked where my mysterious and catty design correspondent found his Hugh Dubberly quote. here ya go
"you don't mention it directly, but it's linked to in that ALAP article you
mentioned in your last 'issue'. you can also get it directly at
http://gain.aiga.org/"

IA MATTERS

Architecture, Butterflies and Common sense - the ABCs of a profession on the rise.
Andrew Dillon
http://memex.lib.indiana.edu/adillon/IA2.html

"Creating an Online Press Room" by B.L. Ochman -
http://www.webreview.com/2000/08_25/webauthors/08_25_00_2.shtml.
thanks vincent!

USABILITY MATTERS

Very smart rebuttal to Jakob's more unfortunate tendencies
http://www.v-2.org/jakob.html
(thanks Vincent! http://www.mersault.com/thinking/ )

good post on how to reduce bandwidth for testing
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A2=ind0101d&L=chi-web&F=&S=&P=65

Useit.Com: Usability Metrics.
Although measuring usability can cost four times as much as conducting
qualitative studies (which often generate better insight), metrics are
sometimes worth the expense. Among other things, metrics can help managers track design progress and support decisions about when to release a
product.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010121.html

Internet World: Deconstructing Fodors.com.
John Shiple and Louis Rosenfeld. My only gripe is that some of these
syndicated areas could be better customized. BedandBreakfast.com will
automatically give you listings for B&Bs in Quebec City. But Expedia doesn't know that you're heading there, and you'll have to fumble around their
site for the airport code.
http://www.internetworld.com/011501/01.15.01decon.jsp

thanks tomalak.org

NEWS & COMMENT

NY Times: The New York Times: Five Years on the Web.
With that in mind, Bernard Gwertzman, editor of The New York Times on the Web,
and Martin Nisenholtz, chief executive officer of New York Times Digital, sat down to discuss their five years on the Web, the state of Internet journalism today, and what we can expect in years to come.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/20/technology/20ANNIVERSARY.html

Survivor! How your peers are coping with the web design crisis
--> http://www.alistapart.com/stories/decline/
"Decline and Fall? -- a special issue on the industry-wide crisis. It's ugly out there, but how bad is it, really? We asked 40 of our peers to share how they were coping (or not) with the layoffs and business failures currently plaguing our industry. After reading their stories, you can add your own in the new ALA discussion forum." from http://xplane.com/xblog

posted by Christina Wodtke 1/22/2001 08:29:00 AM

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