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Web2Usability

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 11 months ago

Web 2.0 Usability

Presentation by HelenMaskery of Maskery Consulting

 

  • The world started with mainframes and the high priests
    • Central intelligence, dumb terminals
  • Then PCs came and freaked the high priests out because they couldn't control the desktop
    • Central and local awareness/intelligence
  • Then we go Web1.0
    • Anywhere, anytime information and limited local awareness
  • And now... Web2.0
    • Communities, participation, rich internet applications
    • The best of the desktop and Web 1.0 combined

 

Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

  • Cross between web apps and desktop
  • More interactivity at the UI level, less "submit-wait-see"
    • Inline editing
    • Drag-and-drop
    • Panning a map
    • Etc.
  • Examples: Google Earth, Windows Live Mail
  • Users no longer have to travel around a site - the information comes to them on the page
    • Including feedback and error messages
  • Personal, social networks
  • Trusted communities
  • Shared knowledge
  • Web 2.0 tech still needs the same answers
    • Who are the users?
    • What are their goals?
    • What's the context of their use?
  • New user interface model emerging
    • Is it back or undo?
    • We're so used to this from the desktop model - ctrl/cmd-z gets you out of trouble. Is the back button the same?
    • The challenge is to figure out which of the paradigms wins out in the user's mind. If they bring their desktop expectations to the web, you are bound by them.
      • If it's not mission critical then go play with paradigms - some of the best innovation comes out of doing that.
  • What are their expectations and experiences they are bringing to the interaction?
  • Interaction spans multiple devices
    • The experience doesn't stop with one device/one session
      • The needs of a UI from a mobile device (simple yes/no) are vastly different than a desktop (rich multimedia, etc.)
  • Discussion: there's such a thing as too much AJAX
    • JenNolan: Sometimes it's really hard to figure out what to do.
    • BryceJ: How many photos on Flickr have the default file name?
    • SomeoneElse: How do we provide affordances about what can be clicked on and how important is it?
    • HelenMaskery: It's a question of context: if it's an ecommerce site, don't go for cool.

 

Bypassing the Information Architecture (IA)

  • In Web1.0, IA was 70-80% of the usability of a site
  • In Web2.0, very few people actually land on the homepage of the site (60-70% last in the middle of the site from web search engine, RSS feeds, blogs, etc.), so we no longer have the same inverted tree model
    • Stickiness has to happen on all pages to keep their attention

 

Example: Future Shop

  • Customer reviews of products is really powerful (Helen speaking personality, not necessarily as a usability expert)
  • What's the experience of adding a review?
    • There's a link on the product page to enter a review
      • A short note about the editorial policy
      • Good for fields to add info, very confusing for the actual "Rate the Product" section
        • What do the radio buttons mean?
        • Will SEND give me the opportunity to review the review before posting it? Not listed.
  • Principle: The user needs to feel in control of the interaction.
    • Shopping carts allow users to slowly add things and feel in control without actually committing to the purchase until the end.

 

Example: Amazon

  • Also does user reviews
  • Break point very early in the process: have to register to add a review to a product
  • Similar fields to Future Shop on the review
  • Can be anonymous if you want to
  • Crucial: there's no send button - only a "Preview Review" - so you're in control.

 

Example: Web Outlook

  • Helen went through a period of accidentally adding people to her blocked senders list who should have been fine.
  • The Desktop Outlook app has "Add Sender to Safe Senders List" as the top item in the contextual menu
  • The Web Outlook app has "Add Sender to Blocked Senders List" as the top item, so muscle memory fails repeat users of both apps.

 

BryceJohnson: Will Web2.0 ever reach critical mass based on the tech that has brought it to this point today?

  • I can go to Flickr and add photos of my trip to Bermuda and tag them with my name and my wife's name and then two weeks later she'll flip out when she finds out that she's been documented on the web. When will sharing become a valid user behaviour?
  • Peter: I think it's a new behaviour and we're in the process of learning it. Young people do it more than older people do. It's similar to corporate blogging - if I open up, there's benefits to me.
  • BryceJohnson: Can you imagine a backlash?
  • Peter: It's about what you choose to say about yourself, but talking about other people is trickier. They have to be involved in that and give you permission.
  • BryceJohnson: I saw the guy's from Myspace talk at MIX and they said that when their users want something in their product, they build it. That's it. Then I saw something on a news show about a cop in a midwestern town who created a Myspace profile saying that he was a 19 year old guy and he got all these 15 year old girls adding him to their Friends list and telling him everything they were doing in life.
  • Someone: If you put your address online, people think that they will get stalked right away. But why would they pick you?
  • Peter: Maybe something more sophisticated that looks at different types of behaviours with different access levels.
  • Helen: When any tech gets introduced in society, it takes society a while to figure out how to do. Telephones started with a central operator in each village who listened in on all the conversations, so the tech shifted to eliminate that. The social norms take a while to form around them. Look at cellphones and spam email.
  • Peter: That's where you get things like Wikis to get the conversations out of email and into more trusted means.
  • Helen: In Britain, for example, phone tarrifs push people into using SMS messages more than calls.
  • Noah: It's about giving users control. We don't quite have that yet. You have to pay Bell to not put you in the phonebook - we don't own our own identities yet.
  • Vlad: If someone who's 60 years old adds me on MSN, I would say "who is this guy?" You can't blame the creators of Myspace - it all comes back to you.
  • BryceJohnson: I agree. it all comes back to critical mass. You talk about control over data - what about the idea that people don't want control? What if they want service and safety. Let's explore the idea that there is no anonymous access online.
  • JayGoldman: It's going to come down to someone getting sued in order to force developers, who would rather build sexy tech like AJAX than access controls, to build these things.
  • JamesCogan: Users want to share.
  • BryceJohnson: Can you really say that?
  • JamesCogan: I think we've reached a point where users are suppliers. I don't think that's going to change. Look at something like citizen journalism. In the London bombings, they had 250 people on the ground publishing photos immediately on Now Public.
  • Someone: do sites have to protect users from themselves? To protect husbands from posting photos of their wives or kids from saying my parents going out of town?
  • JamesCogan: People want to make credibility descisions for themselves. They don't want an editor sifting news for them.
  • Peter: You click OK with maybe a legal agreement that a lawyer will never even understand, let alone a 14 year old kid.
  • Helen: We've gone from usability to how Web2.0 is pushing into the social norms
  • BryceJohnson: Culture affects behaviour.

 

 

(Notes taken by JayGoldman: apologies if I missed anything - please add your notes and thoughts!)