Web Social Architecture

Wendy Chisholm on Universal Design for Social Applications

Wendy Chisholm presented on Universal Design last week at the social media event at ZAAZ. Wendy is an independent consultant wrapping up a forthcoming book for O'Reilly on accessibility, and she's been involved with accessibility issues, first with the W3C and later as a consultant, for many years.

I asked Wendy for a take on accessibility on the social web, and here's the result. There's a lot involved, but a good portion of it boils down to standardization and semantics in APIs and I/O interfaces.

For 15 minutes of wisdom and righteousness click here:

And here are the slides: 

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Because SlideShare's player lacks important accessibility features, Wendy also posted a tagged PDF version.

I must say, I'm chastened not to be posting a transcript in support of that video, but Wendy's post on eating her own dog food while struggling to make her slideshow accessible makes me feel better... a little better.

Nancy White on Slow Community

Nancy White spoke at ZAAZ last week at our social media event. Her talk, titled Slow Community, was wonderfully ironic coming from the most prolific online participant in THE ENTIRE WORLD. And as usual, Nancy has her finger on an important pulse. Her (she credits others as well) notion of slow community is an exploratory gesture toward solving an emeging crisis in our online lives: social overload, or if you like, information overload 2.0. Ha!

Who doesn't have trouble these days, tracking professional, avocational, personal, and informational relationships across sites, services, and devices? Social network fatigue is here today--and tomorrow promises a truly overwhelming inundation of social and relational input across many channels.

Here's Nancy's 15-minute talk:

Here are the slides:

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Nancy wrote a follow-up post here. There are some great comments on her post--check them out.

For more on Slow Community, start here, then go here.

 

Good or Bad Experience? Not Always Obvious

Have you seen this video yet? You gotta:

Pretty fun example of techno-speak, thanks Paul. Lee says it was created as a joke for a Rockwell sales meeting, presumably to make the point that too much babble won't sell baubles.

But on the other hand, what it brings to mind for me is that for the right audience, the video might well be perfectly calibrated--the real joke, in my mind, is that there might in fact be people out there to whom the sales guy makes perfect sense. Who on earth are those people, and what must they talk about at their dinner parties (if anything)?

And that's really the core activity of user experience: Understanding the audience, and delivering the message in a way that makes sense. Which is harder than it sounds: As easy as it is to fall back on usability rules of thumb, to invoke "audience-appropriateness," "user-friendliness," and so on, the truth is that many audiences are idiosyncratic, and our best guesses are no substitute for first-hand interaction with users--letting them get their hands on the design, and observing them with the methodological approach of a user experience professional, is often the only way to know what works or doesn't, and why--or most importantly, why not.

Tag Clouds Are Bad (Usually)

Tag clouds started showing up three or four years ago on sites that use folksonomies to organize and describe content. I've never liked them, but only recently have I been asked to justify that sensibility. So here's my rationale:

Here's one from Flickr, one of my most favoritest web sites:

 

Tag Clouds Are Unreadable (Usually)

I've heard more than one designer complain about how unreadable tag clouds are, and even better, how "ugly." 

I'd have to agree: Tag clouds are absolutely both unreadable and, yes, ugly. Seriously, I want to avert my eyes! And I have good vision--if I find tag clouds illegible, I can hardly be the only one. I haven't seen an actual study of the accessibility of tag clouds. Anyone?

 

Tag Clouds Convey Meaningless Information (Usually)

Legibility aside, let's take a closer look. The idea of the tag cloud is that it adds layers of information to the simple list of tags applied to the content objects in the system. The bigger the font size of an individual tag in the cloud, the greater the number of content objects with the tag attached. At a glance, you can get a sense of the topical landscape of the system, including where the most content is concentrated.

But is the relative volume of objects attached to individual tags helpful? Meaningful? I guess maybe, a little, in some cases. Is it worth the legibility trade-off? I have to think, at least most of the time, it's not.

Individual site visitors have an individual thing of most interest at a given time. In most cases, the task is to help them find that thing as easily as possible. The relative volume of tag use doesn't help, and the varying font sizes in a tag cloud make it harder to scan, decreasing ease of use.

 

Tag Clouds Obscure the Difference Between Noise and Signal (Usually)

One of the strengths of folksonomies is partially in redundancy of tags. Folksonomies accommodate many alternative ways of describing, as opposed to controlled vocabularies, which rely on universal understandability of "official" labels. Folksonomies even address issues related to common misspelling of tags, and they grow and change organically, responding to emerging vocabularies. These virtues are particularly valuable in the context of search.

But in a tag cloud format, that strength turns into a weakness. All that redundancy becomes visual noise, and the topical landscape turns out to be skewed toward the most ambiguous tags, which appear in many forms, and the least ambiguous, which appear largest. Not only do they not convey meaning about the system, they actually mislead.

 

Alphabetization Is Not Helpful (Usually)

That's not all. The alphabetical ordering of tags in the tag cloud is effectively meaningless. Alphabetized lists only make sense when users know the name of the thing they're looking for. And in a folksonomic system, agreement about descriptive terms isn't the goal. So in most cases, alphabetizing tag clouds is the same as randomizing them. No meaning is added.

I looked around for a tag cloud ordered by currency of use, but I couldn't find one. That kind of approach would at least add meaning--and I still think that particular piece of meaning wouldn't, most of the time, be relevant.

 

There Are Exceptions (Theoretically)

Having said all that, I also think it's perfectly reasonable to think there could be cases where a tag cloud might be rendered legibly, conveying meaningful and relevant information to a highly-acclimated audience. And given rocket propulsion, pigs could fly.

But maybe that's not fair. There really could be outlying cases of tag clouds making sense, perhaps with some kind of filter reducing noise, sufficient white space aiding legibility, a display of relative popularity of individual tags adding value, and in a context where either labels are familiar or currency is the higher-priority piece of information. Or maybe someone's done tag clouds differently, with different rules governing how tags are displayed.

Anyone have a great example of a tag cloud working perfectly? I'd really love to know about it!

A New Blog on Accessibility from a Wisened Expert

Wendy Chisholm is an accessibility expert based in Seattle whom I've known for about a year. She co-edited the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, among other projects.

At long last, she's launched her blog, and I think it will be become a great resource for everyone interested in accessibility, human factors, web standards, and standards-based web services. And everyone who works in the interactive space should be interested in that stuff.

Here's a bit about Wendy's history prior to her work with the W3C:

[Wendy] got her start in accessibility during her undergraduate work in Computer Science and Psychology at Elmhurst College. As a statistics tutor for a student who was blind, she used a variety of media to create tactile teaching tools: legos, pins and paper, sand, and other materials. She also worked at an after school respite program for people with autism and coached them to 3 silver medals in their regional Special Olympics.

You can read her full bio on the W3C site.

Wendy is on a mission. Grab her RSS feed and pay attention. Not only is she a true expert in her area, but she's also a great writer. Enjoy:

http://wendychisholm.blogspot.com/

Measuring Community Success: Two Contrarian KPIs for Web 2.0

We've seen a shift recently in how some of the major players in Web measurement are evaluating success. Nielsen/Netratings switched from counting page views to counting time spent--to the derision of some in the analytics community.

Time spent has problems, it's true. But I haven't heard a lot of great suggestions about how you do measure success on participatory web sites, social media sites, or online communities. The truth is, the devil's in the details, there is no silver bullet, and most of all, it depends what you're trying to accomplish.

Yes, everything in web analysis should track back to your goals. Repeat that ten times.

Nonetheless, I will offer up a couple ideas about how measurement in online community is different than on brochure sites, and how standard measures, to the extent there are any, fall short in typical online communities.

My suggestion is basically that we need to think differently about success, and abandon some of the old-school, quantity-focused measures, like number of posts, number of comments, and number of registered users, for an approach that emphasizes quality. Here are two examples of what I mean:

 

Return Visitor Sign-In, Not New User Registrations

Sign-in is more important than return visit--it's even more important than registration. Participants in online communities typically register to access content they can't access otherwise, to take an action they can't take without registering, or to streamline a future process (e.g. saving credit card information).

So, participants typically register for the promise of a reward. Sign-in is different. When a registered user returns to the site and authenticates, you are a little closer to knowing you gave that person something valuable. In other words, when the cousins get up for more, you can be pretty sure they like your mashed potatoes. If you want to gauge the success of your meal, measure the number of second helpings, not the number of people at the table.

 

Qualified Content Consumption, Not Number of Posts

I've written in some detail about the value of so-called "passive" participation (I personally wouldn't call information-seeking online a "passive" activity). In short, content consumption tends to be greatly undervalued relative to content creation. While content creation introduces the potential for value, content consumption represents the realization of that value. Tracking content consumption, then, helps you learn not just how much stuff you have, but, more importantly, how good is your stuff.

Part of the problem with quantity measures in social media is that all content is not created equal. The best content, while it's created only once, creates value many times over, while the worst content can actually be detrimental to the participant experience. So the number of content objects on your site tells you much less than does the number of times those objects are consumed--in total, on average, and individually.

But how do you know content consumption when you see it? Content detail page views can be misleading, but I differ from those who'll tell you it's all about time on site in Web 2.0. Instead, count page views qualified by either a time-based or action-based threshold. 15 seconds on a detail page is a decent place to start, but it doesn't account for the effect of tabbed browsing, which can skew time-based measures upward.

Here are some examples of action-based measures for qualified content consumption:

• file downloads
• play embedded media
• copy embed code
• forward via email
• scroll to bottom of page
• print
• favorite

There are many more, and there's a lot more to say on this topic. Drop me a note in the comments with your thoughts, ideas, and questions.

UX and User Research / Usability Job Openings at ZAAZ

I posted the job description for our User Experience Architect opening last month. We're still looking for the right person, and we now also have an opening for a junior person in that role.

Additionally, we're looking for a User Experience Researcher. Find out more, including how to apply, at zaaz.com.

 

User Experience Researcher

We are currently seeking a User Experience Researcher to uncover and communicate user interface issues and end-user preferences by applying a wide range of user-centered design methodologies. The ideal candidate will have previous consulting experience with a track record of delivering compelling research findings and recommendations on-time and on-budget.

Responsibilities

• Meet with clients and potential clients to propose usability studies, surveys, field research and other user research methods.
• Lead usability studies, including their design, planning execution.
• Analyze usability findings which include the creation of video highlights.
• Prepare and present usability reports to clients. Deliver findings that ensure the usability and effectiveness of interfaces for their intended users.
• Lead survey projects, including designing the appropriate survey, analyzing the results and presenting findings.
• Advocate for users while understanding the business goals of clients.
• Deliver research on time and within budget constraints.

Qualifications

• Formal education in usability engineering or equivalent hands-on experience to demonstrate an understanding of usability theory, methods, and practice.
• Several years of experience designing and conducting usability studies, preferably as a consultant.
• Several years experience designing surveys and analyzing results, with a solid understanding of statistical methods.
• Experience in user interface design for websites, software, and/or web-based applications.
• A strong business sense and the ability to work on multiple projects at one time.
• Proven ability to design and communicate potential solutions to user interface problems.
• Working knowledge of video editing techniques.
• Excellent presentation, oral communication, and writing skills.

A New Usability Blog

Ryan Clukey is a colleague of mine at ZAAZ. He's got deep expertise in usability engineering, human factors, experimental psychology, and user-centered design. He's a huge knowledge resource and user advocate for us internally, and now you too can dip your cup in his well of wisdom.

Check him out. He's at Usability @ ZAAZ.

And, here he is in our lab, moderating a test on a new community site.

Link Affordance via Snap Shots: What Do You Think?

I added Snap Shots to my blog this past week. It's a free tool that produces a preview of linked web pages, like so:

When you hover over an external link, you get a popup like the one above that shows a picture of the web page the link points to. Click and you go to the linked page.

I like the idea that Snap Shots strengthens the affordance of links, giving you a visual sense of whats there before you have to commit to loading a new page. Conceptually, I think it's brilliant, and especially useful in the link-driven blog experience.

In a way, it reduces the importance of the "best practice" of using descriptive links.

But I can also imagine being annoyed by little pop-ups flickering around everywhere as you move your mouse.

What do you think?

UPDATE: I'm convinced. I killed SnapShots--see the comment thread for my explanation. Any SnapShots apologists want to re-open the discussion, or do the Nays have it?

Competing for Attention

I returned from vacation and was greeted by the BSOD on my home desktop. My two-month-old, K-buck HP desktop! Fortunately I also have a beater laptop at home and was able to retrieve email.

I had to spend an hour on email prior to returning to the office this morning because so much information is distributed through that channel, and returning from vacation is a prime time to miss something important or to be ambushed with the dreaded "What do you mean you don't have an opinion? I forwarded you the email...."

Email is broken! Hardly news. The channel is saturated by trivial data, among which are hidden the few pieces of mission-critical information I had to have before arriving this morning. An hour of my life, vacation time no less, consumed by the information-superabundance of the modern work environment--not reading, consuming, or digesting, let alone thinking, but sifting, sorting, and above all filtering!

Among all that trivial data I found the following quotation:

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.  Herb Simon, Nobel Prize Winner

Apropos. And a very interesting way to think about one of the challenges of community design, where not only is there typically a lot of content, but where organization and presentation of content is especially tricky.

Content added by participants (my Web 2.0 replacement word for "users") is all over the map, in terms of quality but also in terms of the way the content is shaped by the author's assumptions about structure and presentation.

A simple way of restating Simon's quotation is: Every bit of data competes with every other bit of data for the attention of the reader. In a community context, it's easy for the volume and variety of data to get overwhelming, lose context, and generally drown out the interesting stuff. There are a number of ways to manage that, some of which are standard for all kinds of web sites:

• Limit the number of kinds of information that can appear in one place.
• Present information in context.
• Offer options for sorting and filtering.

And some of which are especially valuable on community sites:

• Separate the wheat from the chaff. Use smart algorithms to identify the best content, and provide ways for it to show up. User ratings are one way to do this, but participation is always limited and polarized. There are better ways--see Flickr's Explore page, where photos deemed interesting are featured. They are, in fact, always interesting.
• Use transparent personalization. Combinations of explicit choices and behavioral metadata can effectively filter out the noise for frequent users--but be careful to be explicit about what information is being hidden and why.
• Support "self-organization" of community content via tagging and other kinds of folksonomy.

I'm pretty excited to see a successor to email emerge, not only because I hate email, but because I think combinations of collaborative web spaces and syndication are going to offer much more powerful ways of communicating, and of managing communications, than we have today. As far as I can tell, there's nothing missing technologically--we just need the right design.