This is the kind of mess you get when you create an account at Eskup and first log in:
For those of you who don’t know, Eskup is a kind of social network, twitter-like, microblogging plattform which merges Elpais.com content with user generated microposts. Kind of like the dull answer to “how do we, newspaper, take advantage of social media?”
El Pais seems pretty excited about this. Their excitement is directly proportional to my skepticism. They’ve done a great deal of programming for this and they’ve taken risks, which is good. But they URGENTLY need to rework the design and functionality so the product is more understandable and easy to use. Otherwise it will be another missed atempt at redefining online journalism in Spain.
We recently noticed that some people miss filling a gift card when sending flowers through floresfrescas.com. We know they miss them because some users later complain about not having that option. This is the solution Mark Mackay came up with:
These are some of the principles we’ve applied here:
Place the alert as close as possible to the spot where the decision has to be made.
Add visual feedback that something important is going on (the message flashes) so it is noticeable.
Change the form (size, color and text) of the confirmation element to make sure the user notices the alert
Here’s the full scene:
If we knew that not noticing the cards was too frequent we’d consider haing another step in the process just for filling the cards. But we are unsure about that and there is no easy way for knowing this (no, usability tests don’t work for that because users pay extra attention when observed). So instead of redesigning the process making it more effective and painful we went with this “user interface hack”.
We invited Aitor García and Roberto Salicio for a chat a couple of days ago. These guys have lately been up to some serious business with AbreDatos: a 48-hour contest they launched to gather new and interesting ideas to digest raw government data. The winners will soon be announced. Here’s an excerpt of that conversation:
The idea behind open data is that of accountability, enabling a system to work for it’s people and not the other way around. In the U.S. the wheel has already began to turn, initiatives such as the Obama’s administration Data.gov or a society that finds concepts such as democratizing data and e-government more and more familiar, are all important steps towards the right direction.
In Spain the wheel is turning a bit more slowly, but turning nevertheless. The people behind AbreDatos and all of those who’ve participated are leading the way.
It took me a while to understand why I didn’t like it and then I realised it’s quite a simple reason. Google Buzz, like Twitter or Facebook are for entertainment while Gmail is mostly work.
When I want to concentrate I usually shut down anything distracting and focus on what I may be doing whereas it’s sketching, designing, writing emails, proposals, etc. I usually have a break every 10-15 minutes. Something short, just to check my planetaki, twitter and perhaps facebook (that happens less often). Everything is on separate tabs so work and distractions don’t get messed.
And then came Buzz with this bold number of “buzzs” right next to the number of messages in my inbox so every time I checked if there was eny new email I’d see that there was some fun going on at the Buzz Cantina and I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t have my Continuous Partial Attention the way it was supposed to be, in moderate intervals.
And friends, that is why I am shutting down buzz. Not because I don’t like it (in fact I really hate facebook for what it has and Buzz lacks) but because it’s too invasive, just like my friends throwing a party at our studio at office hours.
Minube, a Spanish and French online website where travellers share info about travel destinations, just released their printable traveller guides, which are basically travel guides with user comments, pictures and maps from the place you chose based on your selected categories, tags, etc.
We, Vostok, helped minube designing the creation and personalisation process which you can see on this post at the Minube blog (Spanish).
This presentation supports my idea about the typical usability tests: they usually suck, they are worthless and almost always done by people who know nothing about design (and try to make a virtue of it).
Now, this is what I call design. Or at least is the kind of design that I do on a regular basis.
Many of my clients come with their own “remote controls” crammed with dozens of buttons. My job is to decide which ones get hidden, which of them remain and how to sort them out. I’ll eventually add something, but that is not usually the case. That’s why I like o say that I am not good at inventing stuff but at improving it.
I saw the picture at Makememinimal, I think I am going to save it for an ocasional presentation. It’s a good way of explaining my job ;)
Youtube’s ActiveSharing seems to me like a failed attempt (another one!) to kick the social and sharing side of their website. This is how they explain it:
Are you a video trendsetter, an expert at finding the cool stuff on YouTube? Now you can share what you find immediately by Active Sharing with other YouTube users.
Click the “Start Active Sharing” button, then go watch some videos. Your username will show up on the page of the videos as you watch them, and a list of the latest ones you’ve seen will appear in your profile.
I don’t think that such a small feature deserves so much explanation, activation and even a name (ActiveSharing). It could be because Youtube guys want to feature something that will be surrounded by a bunch of other confusing features. I think that removing some functionality would be a better strategy than adding more stuff to the mess.
My suggestion if you want to share videos with your friends is to use Unvlog, especially now that it has an English version. Way clearer, simpler, smarter, nicer and to the point.
This makes me very proud since I lead the team who made that possible. I guess I cannot disclose much of the information regarding the project, but I want to congratulate and thank the team who worked really hard to make it possible. We weren’t expecting such success.
This is the paragraph where Madrid’s website is mentioned as one of the best practices all over the world:
Working for the public administration is always dificult. There are many interests and stakeholders which sometimes conflict among themselves and you feel in the middle having to come up with something that compromises all parts and is also what you think it’s best for users. I don’t recall it as an easy project.
Besides, as a professional you have to deliver a plus when working in such projects. Why? For two main reasons:
1. You are being paid with everybody’s money
2. Your users are the Citizens. You work for the public good.
I remember recalling these principles when things used to get tough. It was our big motivation. Now I see it was worth the sacrifice.
My favorite definition/description/whatever goes like this:
Information Architecture: how it’s structured
Interaction Design: how it behaves
Information Design/Visual Design: how it looks
These definitions are not mine and I cannot recall who wrote them first. I’d appreciate any feedback on it. I am also aware that the boudaries between concepts are not clear at all, especially between the last two. They tend to overlap a lot.
Silverback is already out. What is special about it? Well, it’s basically a software to merge the captured interaction of a user on the screen with the recording of his face, all in one screen for easier test usability documentation.
On the typical usability test set-up you have the usual screen pointing to users’ face and also some camtasia-like software for recording what goes on the screen. Then you dream of merging it together to create a killer DVD for your client but actually never do so because of the time it would take to review both tapes, digitalise and do the necessary video edition.
I am a big fan of contextualised user testing: doing the testing as close to the real user environment as possible. This really makes it easier. Taking advantage of the Mac computer which usually has an embeded webcam, makes the test way less intimidating for the user.
The solution is so clever I wonder why nobody did it before. Congrats to the guys at Clearleft. I may use it soon.
Yahoo totally screwed it up when it requested people to have a Yahoo ID account to be a Flickr user. It’s like you need 3 different identities to be able to post some pictures: your previous one, the yahoo one, and then the flickr one, all of them with its email accounts, user passwords and all that.
Totally wrong.
But today I found something unbelievable:
In order to complete registration, you must provide a valid credit card and billing adress to indicate you are over 18.
