User Centred Design Limited

By James Temple


Shortly after Carol Bartz took over as chief executive of Yahoo Inc. early last year, she met with Prabhakar Raghavan for an overview of the Sunnyvale Web giant's research division. As the head of Yahoo Labs ran through the catalog of computer scientists on staff, Bartz turned to him and asked: "Where are your psychologists?"

Raghavan was stunned the newly installed CEO had so quickly gotten to a question he'd been asking for years. His answer was they didn't have enough.

That's changing. In the last year, Yahoo Labs has bolstered its ranks of social scientists, adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world. At approximately 25 people, it's still the smallest group within the research division, but one of the fastest growing.

The recruitment effort reflects a growing realization at Yahoo, the second most popular U.S. online site and search engine, that computer science alone can't answer all the questions of the modern Web business. As the novelty of the Internet gives way, Yahoo and other 21st century media businesses are discovering they must understand what motivates humans to click and stick on certain features, ads and applications - and dismiss others out of hand.

Yahoo Labs is taking a scientific approach to these questions, leveraging its massive window onto user behavior to set up a series of controlled experiments (identifying information is always masked) and employing classic ethnography techniques like participant observation and interviews.

The insights have been published in academic journals and have already changed how the company organizes search results, sets reserve prices in ad auctions and leverages human politeness to keep people glued to Yahoo.

Hyphenation and justification: It’s not just for print any more. Armed with good taste, a special unicode font character called the soft hyphen, and a bit o’ JavaScript jiggery, you can justify and hyphenate web pages with the best of them. Master the zero width space. Use the Hyphenator.js library to bottle fame, brew glory, and put a stopper in death. Create web pages that hyphenate and justify on the fly, even when the layout reflows in response to changes in viewport size.

Any web project more complex than a blog requires custom CMS design work. It’s tempting to use familiar tools and try to shoehorn content in—but we can’t select the appropriate tool until we’ve figured out the project’s specific needs. So what should a CMS give us, apart from a bunch of features? How can we choose and customize a CMS to fit a project’s needs? How can content strategy help us understand what those needs really are? And what happens a day, a week, or a year after we’ve installed and customized the CMS?

By Joe McKendrick


A new study released by Sybase found that businesses can save significant amounts of money simply by increasing the usability and accessibility of enterprise data.

How?

The study, underwritten by Sybase and conducted by researchers from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas and Indian School of Business, connected the dots between what they called “data usability” and corporate financial performance. This takes into consideration the additional processing time required to make data valuable for the business. Improve data usability, and the subsequent processing time can be reduced by as much as 10 percent, the researchers say. And this translates into potentially billions saved.

Researchers say data usability can be improved by focusing on the following factors:

- Intelligence of data “can be improved through the accuracy of the prediction, trends analysis, recommendations and profile matching /associations made by the associated applications. For example, what percentage of recommendations made by a business intelligence application results in cross-selling?”
- Remote access to data and applications is essential in an increasingly mobile workforce.
- Sales mobility “involves the ability of salespersons to use portable devices and applications to exchange information related to all aspects of a deal or transaction with a customer.”
- Improvements in data quality will result in improvements that “may come through better and timely decisions (which may increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and hence revenues), as well as fewer errors and rework, lower working capital requirements, faster receivables, etc. (which will lower costs).”

A 10 percent improvement in any one or two of these attributes affects common business metrics, the study says. A 10 percent improvement can add up to big dollars. Researchers determined that if a median Fortune 1000 business (36,000 employees and $388,000 in sales per employee) increased the usability of its data by just 10 percent, it would translate to an increase in $2.01 billion in total revenue every year, or $55,900 in additional sales per employee annually.

By George Saines


I first read Steve Krug’s book “Don’t Make Me Think” about a year ago. I have never finished it. The reason is that I got to the chapter about how to do one-on-one usability testing and was so fired up about it, I couldn’t stand the thought of continuing to read until I’d at least tried to put his ideas into practice.

Since that time my two cofounders and I (we run Skritter) have run quite a few usability tests. My closest guess at this point is that I’ve run usability sessions with more than 50 people. We have benefited enormously from having one of us sit down face-to-face with someone who isn’t an internet addict and have them use our creation.

Over the last year we have become much better at usability testing, and I thought I would share 3 of the lessons we learned that Krug doesn’t mention in his book. The following tips were gleaned from several group and many one-on-one sessions, and I hope that prove useful as you start your own usability testing:

1) Never present a page as “redesigned” or “new.”

2) Pointedly ignore social cues for help.

3) People are often willing to do a usability test for a lot less than $50.

MouseTrace is a new usability tool that will let bloggers and webmasters determine precisely how to enhance the experience of their visitors. At it most basic level, what MouseTrace does is to record the activity of visitors and create a video that the webmaster or blogger can reproduce as many times as he or she wants.

This service is easy to implement: all you have to do is add one line of HTML for MouseTrace to become fully operative and functional. There is no software to install, nothing to set up or configure, and certainly nothing to update later on.

A system like this one is so flexible that it almost feels like sitting right beside the visitor as he is finding his way through the site or blog. You will be able to see every click and scroll, and figure out in which ways you could make things more intuitive for future visitors. And the fact that you can also record the ability of mobile users turn MouseTrace into something even more practical than it already is.

By Khidr Suleman


Google has made some changes to Gmail designed to make it easier to store and search for contacts. Features added to the Contacts tab include a larger notes field to record information, automatic saving, structured name fields, the ability to undo changes and keyboard shortcuts.

"We're constantly reviewing user feedback about Gmail, and for a while now the number one request has been for a better contacts experience," said Benjamin Grol, a product manager at Google, in a blog post. "So, by popular request, we're happy to announce that an overhauled version of Gmail Contacts will be rolling out today."

The Gmail layout has been slightly tweaked with the Mail, Contacts and Tasks buttons now bumped up to a more prominent spot in the top left hand corner. The Compose option has been given a button of its own so that it cannot be missed. Eagled-eyed users may also notice a smaller header area that puts the first message in the inbox approximately 16 pixels higher on the screen than before, according to Grol.

The improvements look to be well executed, and people who use Gmail for business are likely to find the additions useful as more contact information can be stored and made easily accessible.

By Issa Sikiti da Silva


The 2010 Tech4Africa conference 'Web and Emerging Technology' kicked off in Bryanston, Johannesburg, yesterday, 12 August 2010 and will run till today, drawing many delegates from various walks of technology business in South Africa and Africa.

The conference, as Tech4Africa founder Gareth Knight put it, is hoping to play a "small role" in igniting the talent and skill of a generation of Africans who understand the reach of a mobile phone, who realise that the global market is accessible to those who build great products, and who challenge the status quo.

Speaking at the conference about 'Circumventing monopolies with Voip and wireless', Justin Pratt, of Internet Solutions, said an organisation needs passionate people armed with technical excellence to change the world.

Usability, customisation and love
"Usability, adapt and love will help you get around in business," Pratt said. "Usability is critically important in business and is at the centre of decisions. "Customisation of technology is the trend that dominates today's technology business," he explained, adding that it is a powerful tool that is driving a lot of decisions.

Human species that will survive are the ones that will be able to adapt to changes, he said, quoting from Charles Darwin. And lastly, he said, you cannot do special stuff without love. "This is a journey to show your customers that you really care."

By Marisa Peacock


In 2005, Jakob Nielsen shared what he considered to be the top 10 design mistakes of what was once called the ‘weblog.’ Strikingly, five years later, most (if not all) of them still remain true in the world of the engaged web.

How User Friendly is Your Blog?
However, what has changed since then is the increased popularity of enterprise blogging and the various ways the information can be shared with others. The ‘weblog’ has transferred itself from an online journal into primary vehicle for establishing oneself as an authority and brand champion. Yet, chances are your company’s blog is not featured prominently on your site, or not optimally marketed to your constituents. Like the other pages on your website, a blog’s usability is just as important to helping convert visitors into customers, as well as establish brand loyalty in the marketplace. Let’s examine the simple, but effective ways blogs can be optimized to encourage engagement and fidelity. By focusing on three main areas, you can help refine a blog’s content, layout and shareability.

Pick a Topic
First things first: what are you writing about? Is it remotely related to what you sell, provide or evangelize? If not, stop writing about it. If your company produces and sell widgets, your blog should not just talk about your widgets, but the nature of widget technology and its impact on the marketplace. According to Jakob Nielsen, "The more focused your content, the more focused your readers. That, again, makes you more influential within your niche. Specialized sites rule the Web, so aim tightly. This is especially important if you're in the business-to-business (B2B) sector."

Refer to Other Sources
Yet, talk about your products can get old, especially to your readers. In an effort to show the relevancy of your product in the real world, link to news articles that either lend itself to your company’s vision, or debate its merits. Provide context for the article and succinctly write your rebuttal or counter-argument. Including valuable links increase readership and let others know you’re writing about them. You can also link to your past pieces in newer postings. Don't assume that readers have been with you from the beginning – providing links to previous articles can give them background and context in case they want to read more about your ideas.

Links also enable trackbacks and pingbacks, allowing your content to appear in the comments section of other posts. Be sure to show where your links are going – it not only shows transparency, but it alleviates users’ fears that they may be clicking unsafe links.

GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, Utah — Todd Braver emerges from a tent nestled against the canyon wall. He has a slight tan, except for a slim pale band around his wrist.

For the first time in three days in the wilderness, Mr. Braver is not wearing his watch. “I forgot,” he says. It is a small thing, the kind of change many vacationers notice in themselves as they unwind and lose track of time. But for Mr. Braver and his companions, these moments lead to a question: What is happening to our brains?

Mr. Braver, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was one of five neuroscientists on an unusual journey. They spent a week in late May in this remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping on the soft banks and hiking the tributary canyons. It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.

Cellphones do not work here, e-mail is inaccessible and laptops have been left behind. It is a trip into the heart of silence — increasingly rare now that people can get online even in far-flung vacation spots.

As they head down the tight curves the San Juan has carved from ancient sandstone, the travelers will, not surprisingly, unwind, sleep better and lose the nagging feeling to check for a phone in the pocket. But the significance of such changes is a matter of debate for them. Some of the scientists say a vacation like this hardly warrants much scrutiny. But the trip’s organizer, David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, says that studying what happens when we step away from our devices and rest our brains — in particular, how attention, memory and learning are affected — is important science.

In-home user research can provide richer, more illuminating information than lab-based studies, but presents challenges in organisation and data collection. These are magnified when users are in different countries with different cultures.

System Concepts recently conducted user research involving 40 home visits in Germany, France, Japan and China. With this experience, we have put together our top ten tips to help make your international in-home user research a success.

1. Use a good local recruiter with in-home experience
2. If you don’t speak the language use a local moderator rather than relying on an interpreter
3. Know the basic cultural norms, including welcome rituals and dress code
4. Use friendly small talk to help make participant feel at ease
5. Take it slower than in typical lab studies
6. Respect the participant’s privacy and ask for permission to anything not in the original brief, e.g. take photos of specific things, look into other rooms, etc
7. Cherish distractions - these are amongst the reasons why you opted for an in-home study, e.g. phone keeps ringing, baby cries, computer crashes, user can’t find a bookmark they added last week
8. Consider gender issues and try to keep the visitor group as small as possible
9. Consider recording issues especially if using a simultaneous translator
10. Enjoy the experience!

Gender as an audience sensitive criteria (differentiation) is barely present in North American technology product design (where it is much easier to do) let alone Web experiences. In Asia there is more design innovation in this area, for example see: Toshiba's Femininity series. Implications of this phenomenon are discussed below. First a summary of the findings:

Comscore report 'Women on the Web' Key Findings:
1. Women have surpassed men as online buyers (and they spend more) and their influence is growing rapidly. Social retail is an emerging area for women, due to their tendency to share and discuss with other others.
2. Women spend more time online (8% globally) than men and 30% more time on social networking sites than men.
3. Women are motivated differently in their use of social networking sites like Twitter. Twitter adoption is equal or higher than men. Twitter is used by women more for conversation, to follow celebrities or to find deals and promotions. Men are more likely to post their own tweets.
4. Social networking is emerging as a driver for women in the mobile sphere.
5. Women are using online entertainment (eg puzzle, board and card games) and functional sites (money management) as much as men (change in past behavior from health, apparel, baby goods).
6. Cultural differences in emerging markets (Asia, Latin America) will always influence online behavior by gender- an important localization issue.
7. Older women more than men, are rapidly adopting social networking sites - and at the same intensity as younger women.
8. Women are still attracted to health content, community and lifestyle sites. However women are outpacing men in some areas of finance and are actively engaging in male-dominated areas such as adult content and gambling.
9. Compared to men, women Bing users spend more time on Bing for search, than Google - and YouTube for video. Facebook, while visited more than men is unable to compete with regional social networking sites (such as CyWorld in South Korea, Vkontakte.ru in Russia, Mixi.jp in Japan or StudiVZ in Germany), especially among older women.
10. Women spend more time on Social Networking, Instant Messaging (IM) and Email than men globally.
11. The embrace of social networking and its importance to women has significant implications for content and user experience.
12. Women spend more time on photo sites and adopt photo sharing faster. Email usage is higher in the 45+ age group. Latin American women do more IM'ing than other women globally, with their use of email topping North American females.

Significance of the Data
The findings from the Comscore global study provide a fresh starting point to understand the opportunities for designing user experiences, both Web and product, that resonate with women. Women's presence on the Web is changing, and as Comscore found, restricted access to technology (computers and Internet) is a major hindrance to more women getting online. As more of the world's women get online, the opportunity to design for women will be the default (not the exception, as it has been viewed in the past).

A 2002 study by Van Slyke et al. entitled 'Gender Differences in perceptions of Web-based shopping' found that women were visiting shopping sites more than men, but that men were buying more than women. They also recommended: "Web merchants may find it useful to use technology to increase a sense of community and create a social forum for their customers". Given the Comscore findings above, women's usage of the Web has clearly changed! But has web design and user experience strategy kept up?

There's an app for that, and you're the folks who are creating it. But should you design a web-based application, or an iPhone app? Each approach has pluses and minuses—not to mention legions of religiously rabid supporters. Apple promotes both approaches (they even gave the web a year-long head start before beginning to sell apps in the store), and the iPhone's Safari browser supports HTML5 and CSS3 and brags a fast JavaScript engine. Yet many companies and individuals with deep web expertise choose to create iPhone apps instead of web apps that can do the same thing. Explore both approaches and learn just about everything you'll need to know if you choose to create an iPhone app—from the lingo, to the development process, to the tricks that can smooth the path of doing business with Apple.

Help content gets no respect. For one thing, it is content, and our horse-before-cart industry is only now beginning to seriously tackle content strategy. For another, we assume that our site is so usable, nobody will ever need the help content anyway. Typically, no one is in charge of the help content and no strategy exists to keep it up to date. On most sites, help content is hard to find, poorly written, blames the user, and turns a mildly frustrating experience into a lousy one. It's time to rethink how we approach this part of our site. Done well, help content offers tremendous potential to earn customer loyalty. By learning to plan for and create useful help content, we can turn frustrated users into our company's biggest fans.

Many organizations still believe usability testing is a luxury that requires an expensively equipped lab and takes weeks to conduct.

In fact, usability tests can be both fast and relatively cheap. You don’t need expensive prototypes; low-tech paper prototype tests can also bring valuable results. You don’t need a lot of participants either, even 5 users can be enough to test for specific tasks, and the recruiting can also be done guerilla-style. For many projects, you can even use remote and unmoderated tests.

Frudoo connects mobile users with their favourite brands to get the latest offers, services and product news sent direct to their mobile phone in real time. Mobile users simply register for free and list the kinds of products and services they are interested in on the site. This information enables Frudoo to build the person’s profile focussing on the things he or she is interested in. Advertisers are then able to send the registered user relevant ads and information on a range of offers via SMS texts. This includes links, vouchers, tickets, rewards and all kinds of useful content. For each message received the mobile user also earns a 5p reward which they can keep in their account or donate to charity.

Frudoo is working in partnership with Xcite Digital to develop the service. Xcite Digital ran a series of usability studies and focus groups to create the website at www.frudoo.com . It will now be marketing Frudoo to brand advertisers and mobile users through SEO and PPC integrated with an email marketing campaign. Xcite Digital will also incorporate social media and develop an affiliate marketing programme.

Chris Brown, CEO of Frudoo, said: “Since we launched the new website the response has been amazing. Frudoo sends personalised adverts to consumers via mobile SMS and users get paid for every text message they receive. Advertisers are achieving a 25% response rate from the Frudoo platform compared to email marketing which is normally around 0.5-2%, which shows the power of personalised advertising across mobile.”

Rob Walker, Managing Director of Xcite Digital, said: “The key to the success of this service is its simplicity. We created the website by using a great deal of usability testing and combing the results with a design that would engage the user. We are developing a digital marketing campaign to raise awareness of the Frudoo brand and the service, targeting mobile users and brand advertisers who now have an exciting platform to engage with each other.”

SPECIAL ISSUE: Modelling user experience - An agenda for research and practice
Edited by Effie Lai-Chong Law and Paul van Schaik

The Special Issue is introduced with an overview article by the two editors presenting an agenda for Research and Practice. The remaining five papers address different concerns pertaining to UX, including measuring usability as a component of UX, impacts of sonic interactions on gameplay experience, experience narratives for measuring the dynamics of user experience, relationships between psychological needs and positive experience, and analysis of user-engagement in online shopping.

Although 'user experience' (UX) has become a fashionable term in human-computer interaction over the past 15 years, practical applications of this (multidimensional) concept still need to be further developed.Measurement models are essential to allow the UX concept to be measured accurately and to aid in activities such as the evaluation of interactive computer systems. Structural models of UX are needed to establish the structural relations both between components and the characteristics of users and computer systems in order to better inform the design of interactive computer systems. Some of the questions addressed in theSpecial Issue include the following. What is the relationship between usability and UX? To what extent and how can attributes of UX be measured? What is the role of and relationship between subjective and objective measures? What are the levels of analysis involved in studying UX? What is the role of time in UX modelling? What is the psychological basis of UX, in terms of motivation and fulfilling psychological needs? What are the practical implications of UX modelling?

Special Issue Papers
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Modelling user experience – An agenda for research and practice
Effie L.-C. Law, Paul van Schaik

The Usability Metric for User Experience
Kraig Finstad

Measuring the dynamics of remembered experience over time
Evangelos Karapanos, John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, Jean-Bernard Martens

More than a feeling: Measurement of sonic user experience and psychophysiology in a first-person shooter game
Lennart E. Nacke, Mark N. Grimshaw, Craig A. Lindley

The influence of hedonic and utilitarian motivations on user engagement: The case of online shopping experiences
Heather Lynn O’Brien

Needs, affect, and interactive products – Facets of user experience
Marc Hassenzahl, Sarah Diefenbach, Anja Göritz

By Valters Bergspics


Getting feedback is very important in each work project, because it really can improve our work, let us see whether others react and understand a design the same way we do, and of course let us understand how readers and visitors think. There are many websites by now already helping each other to critique artworks, get suggestions, create demo websites and check how people react on them ( a/b testing) including places where you can get feedback and responses from real people

Here we’ve have collected various feedback, collaboration tools /websites as well as several sites offering ways to create polls really easily.

By Kate Solomon


There’s no question that apps have changed the nature of mobile phone use. From a simple communications tool, the humble handset has morphed into a device capable of navigating us through unknown cities, entertaining us for hours and even supplementing reality. We just can't get enough of apps - but they're more than just entertainment. Apps have had a far-reaching effect on the mobile phone from handset design to customer retention.

WHAT THE iPHONE DID
We used to lust after the smallest handsets with the tiniest number-pads that you could barely text on and the minute back-lit screens that were no good for anything really. In 2007, the iPhone shook everything up with its brazenly large 3.5-inch touchscreen. A glut of identikit handsets continue to follow suit; as well as larger screens, bigger phones can house bigger processors and bigger memory stores. And what would really be the point of all these impressive specs if it weren’t for apps?

The iPhone has influenced far more than just looks; the prominence and success of Apple’s App Store sent every other OS into a scramble to catch up, shifting hardware specification focus, causing major software re-thinks and all but killing off buttons. In fact, the majority of the hardware updates for the iPhone itself relate to increasing the functionality of apps; from the increase in screen quality to the improved cameras, the gradual implementation of the compass and gyroscope and increased memory for bigger and more intense apps.

APPS SHOW WHAT'S HOT
Apps now play an important role in influencing hardware innovation – they make for a very handy barometer for manufacturers. Trends in app popularity on any platform show what features consumers are getting excited about in a way that can be easily quantified.

Touchnote CEO Raam Thakrar uses camera hardware and screen resolution as an example: “The increased popularity of image-based apps has certainly been a key driver behind the rapid improvement in camera and screen technologies thus far.

“Currently, everyone’s trying to guess what hardware will drive sales; faster, more powerful CPUs, improved screen resolution, improved touch interfaces. And here’s where consumer demand comes in. For example, Skype video call usage on PCs has shown that people like to take video-calls. iPhone 4 responded to this with FaceTime – in many ways, this was not a significant leap in hardware technology, but was a significant change in the hardware user experience.”

A project, which brought together senior executives from the creative and technology industries, has identified that privacy could be traded in the future for content, to generate new revenue streams for creative industries.

John Cass, Director of the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network (CIKTN), the organisation behind the project, said: “Even when we access content for free, we leave a digital trail of metadata behind us. By aggregating this information, organisations can generate a picture of a person’s behaviours and deliver relevant content to them.”

The biggest issue with using metadata more effectively in this way are public fears over privacy. However, Cass believes that, in the future, people will increasingly be prepared to trade privacy for content or even financial reward. At present some companies such as Google and Facebook collect this sort of data without the users fully understanding its value.

“The big challenge will be to make the whole process more transparent so people understand the value of the data they have, how it will be used and what they are getting in return for that data,” said Cass. “This model already exists with store loyalty cards where we share information about our shopping habits in return for personalised offers and benefits, or cash back. The same model could be developed in the online world with companies delivering highly personalised content or offers to people.

“The traditional view is that content is free or paid for. The recent introduction of the Times paywall shows how content creators are looking for ways to monetise what was a free commodity. The other option is supporting the generation of content by intelligently monetising metadata to deliver relevant and personalised information to users. Effectively people choose to trade some of their privacy for either free content or financial reward. More than 40% of the creatives we surveyed felt this could have a groundbreaking effect in their business.

“Content companies that recognise the need to make this process transparent and give consumers the power to make meaningful choices are the ones that will be able to drive new revenue streams and delight customers,” added Cass.