Spreading the knowledge love I thought I’d highlight some of my Quora answers:

Why do most websites and mobile apps use sans-serif fonts?

It’s worth just discussing what Serifs are. Serifs are the details that sit at the ends of strokes on fonts. Their origins are in the print world where serifs aid readability of text (this is of course a much cut down history of the serif!).

There are a number of studies that look at readability of sans-serif fonts and they are easier to read at lower screen resolutions. As screen resolutions have increased we’ve seen not only more OS bundled serif fonts but increased usage.

The Alex Poole article that is linked in your question talks about low res grid based font design about 2/3s down. The fact we’ve come from low res screens means that sans-serif reliance is a hangover from that.
http://alexpoole.info/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces

All the HCI literature focuses on text size being the major issue with readability.

With my Neuroscience hat there’s a lot to understand from the way the eye works. 94% of eye movement is based on saccades which are quick involuntary eye movements. When reading the eye moves backwards and forwards over the text – known as regressions. With harder to read text there are more regressions. I also use an eyetracker with the UX research I undertake.

The Russel et al experiment used an eye tracker to study, amongst other things, serif vs non-serif font to do this. They showed a 7% increase in readability with serifs (not statistically significant however), they don’t share the data for regressions sadly.
http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/ewic_hc08_v2_paper4.pdf

It’s worth saying they chose Helvetica and Georgia in their test. As any good typographer will tell you Georgia was designed for screen use. I’d say for this experiment to be valid, a number of different font faces should have been used. I wouldn’t take this as being a definitive study.

Link: Why do most websites and mobile apps use sans-serif fonts?

What can interactive design learn from the recent advances is the study of the mind?

There is a great overview of the psychology theories a UX person should be aware of here:
http://uxmag.com/articles/the-psychologists-view-of-ux-design

You could also look to buy this book which helps frame design tricks with psychology:
Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1592530079?linkCode=shr&camp=3194&creative=21330&tag=joeleechnet-21

Link: Why do most websites and mobile apps use sans-serif fonts?

How can we design an international website whilst considering cultural context of a country?

The first thing to understand is that designing websites for a different countries is not just about language. I worked for a few years with eBay and one of the things that is very clear is that UK and US English language is not the only difference between the two (I’m English by the way).

I’ve worked with other large blue chips on their website for different markets and the thing that is often important is the overall feeling associated with the design. I’ve heard South American users describe an American site as being very “yanky”. There was no specific thing that triggered this, just an overall feel. I’ve seen exactly the same in China and Japan as well as the Middle East. A design can ‘feel’ western.

My advice would be to if possible hire a native of that country to work with you. Ideally someone with some design expertise. This will give you a good start, an internal voice to help understand the motivations of the users from that country.

If you can’t hire an individual then look for a good user experience company/consultant based in that country. They will bring the local expertise. I’d say spend the money more on a UX agency than a standard design agency as you’ll get much more insight into user’s needs and motivations.

Have the agency conduct a benchmark UX study on competitors in that market. You’ll see how they meet the cultural needs of that country and get a strong idea about what is important for that country by what the competition are doing well and not so well.

Things to look for:

• Attitudes towards tone of voice
• Attitudes towards imagery
• Specific functionality users need and expect
• Gaps not currently filled by the competition
• Attitudes towards the brand

Link: How can we design an international website whilst considering cultural context of a country?

What is the first step in defining your online strategy?

The first and most logical step is to understand your users’ needs and if you are meeting these needs.

Conducting user research based around user need (rather than say looking for usability issues) is a good first step.

The next step is then to map those needs to your current offering. This can be both rewarding and disheartening. You may find you are meeting a sub set of those needs and missing some very basic ones. Fix the basic ones first.

There are a variety of ways you can map and then prioritise the user needs you are not meeting.

Indi Young has written a great book on mapping user needs to your current web offering:
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/

There’s a nice article here describing the Kano Method which can help you to prioritise the user needs you are not meeting:
http://www.uie.com/articles/kano_model

Also check out Lance Bettencourts book on service innovation for a process to ensure you are constantly meeting your customer needs:
Service Innovation: How to Go from Customer Needs to Breakthrough Services
http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/007171300X.html

Link: What is the first step in defining your online strategy?

You can see my full list of answers on Quora. If you’ve not already discovered Quora you should check it out.

I tend to work on very technical interactions on sites that have a significant revenue (from millions to billions). Some of these designs have been the subject of speculative redesigns.

In particular one project I worked on 3 years ago and still live today still leads to at least 3 comments a week coming my way. I use this site 3 times a week as do most of my colleagues.

It’s a design I’m proud of. A design that solves a very difficult problem. A design that is successful (in business terms) but in terms of UX it could be better because of technical & business constraints. Constraints that are not always obvious to the speculative redesiner.

Blue sky, no limits, the best it can be

A few years ago I worked on a project for a multi-billion dollar finance company. The design brief was simple, no limits, no constraints. Make this complex system the best it can be – it scared me to death.

Design history is littered with big budget, blue sky projects. Boo.com famously developed a spectacular fashion website back in 2000 and spent millions. They had no limits; investors throwing money at them, the best technical people, the best infrastructure, buy in from suppliers, buckets of free publicity. They launched and the site all though looking great with good interactions failed. – Why? They were too innovative. The book that founder Ernst Malmsten wrote sums it up nicely:

We simply were too ahead of our time, our audience weren’t ready

The best design comes from constraint.

Backend computer system designed in the 80s? No problem. Has to work on a netbook screen? No problem. Only 4 data requests per page view? No problem. The bottom of the page is delivered from a CMS hosted in Paris, the top, that’s in the UK, the middle bit we need to redesign, oh and none of the parts of the page talk to each other. No problem – all examples of the design challenges I’ve worked on recently.

I have a confession, I love constraints. They make the project interesting. They give the project boundaries, limits and above all rules.

The blue sky project I mention never amounted to much. The final design was the best it could be from a UX point of view, a full UCD process led to something special. What went wrong? We didn’t appreciate the constraints.

The design, by it’s very nature meant a full re-architecting of some heavy weight financial systems, 3rd party data feeds had to be re-negotiated and re-written, a content team employed and trained. The project ground to halt before the team could get to grips with it. It never saw the light of day. It still makes me sad to think about it.

Innovation is a last resort

If the design cannot address the goal & be developed within the constraints of the problem then, and only then, think differently.

A project I was involved with recently took a multi-billion dollar website and radically changed the homepage. All non-essential content was thrown out. It was pared down to the bare essentials. A brave move.

It’s been a success. A lot of hard work was done to research the implications of the changes before it went live. The design is innovative but the business went into the project knowing that innovation is a risk. Nothing else was working. Innovation was the the last resort.

Embrace the constraints and know when to break the rules

Learn to embrace the challenges, live with the constraints. By all means break the rules but be aware that you are doing it. Be aware of the risks and the costs associated with a drastic innovation. For every successful innovation there have been many, many failures.

A speculative redesign can never be fully aware of the constraints, there can be innovation but without understanding the implications involved.

The very best design comes from a definition of the problem, embracing the constraints and, of course, breaking a rule or two.

I’ll be working on the structure with Leisa Reichelt (the organiser of UX Bootcamp) over the next few weeks. But briefly over the 2 days we’ll cover:

1. Perception (and how it relates to design)
2. Memory (how experience relate to the now)
3. Reasoning / problem solving / attention (getting user’s through and to do what you want them to do)
4. Emotion & communication (creating a meaningful experience)

Tickets are on sale from Thursday 5th January at 12.

The theme was design research with an international dimension. If you follow my tweets you’ll know that’s 3 things very close to me heart.

Session 1 – Breaking down organisational silos

Dan and Jo from Apogee gave a great introduction to the day. Talking about the current state of design research and how it can (and can’t) make change within an organisation.

Themes

• Lean UX
• Emotional and functional attributes of design [ac] look for article
• How we are increasingly becoming discontent with big
• Speak the same language as the organisation you work with
• Making places to work more fun
• Demystifying design – design language is complex

Very nicely summed up in the phrase “Be water my friend” from Bruce Lee

Session 2 Moving beyond the technical to embrace the emotional

From Nicolas Gaudron and Virginia Cruz of IDSL in France.

Empathy is where design & research meet.Get inside the people of the company. The people side of them.

Their focus is on designing empathetic tools. Translating technology in human.

They gave a great example of navigating the video of a football game. They visually mapped crowed noise onto the interface. This made it easy to navigate to the exciting bits as indicated by louder crowd noise.

They finally talked about turning insights into recipes that can be applied across the organisation. Recipes for design innovation. A nice idea.

Session 3 Community involvement in sustainable energy use

From Rikke Ulk an applied anthropologist at Antropologerne.com in Denmark.

They talked about community involvement in promoting sustainable energy use.

Understanding culture and putting people at the centre of change.

Dong flex project which is a longitudinal study looking at tools and approaches to reduce electricity usage. A common theme across the day.

The research participants and the client share the same shared project space. A great way of including clients in the research. Breaking down the barriers between researchers often can create and not getting in the way of customer client dialogue.

Podio was the online project space used. Looks really useful.

Research participants can comment on each others’ experiences as can the client. Participants can steer the research & the project through the time it’s running.

Also mentioned was working alongside qualitative researches to create business & financial models. Linking the stories and the numbers.

Session 4 – Design & research a love story

From Lekshmy Parameswaran & Laszlo Herczeg at Fuelfor who specialise in experience design in healthcare.

They used the analogy of a love story, the ups & downs & building a relationship.

They asked design and research practioners to talk about the relationship between design & research and they came up with the following key words:

Respect, acceptance, playfulness, passion, trust, seduction, time alone together.

Words all associated with a relationship.

They also looked at the terms that describe each discipline.

They suggest both disciplines work together from the start.

• Design your research for and with your designers
• Best research systematic & playful

A couple of great quotes:

Create frameworks that honour the research

Good research should seduce everyone in the room

Session 5 – Local insights affect shifts in global organisations

From Klebel Puchanski from Feel the Future.

Klebel talked specifically about the Brazilian market, an important one for growth (and somewhere I’ve researched twice already this year).

He talked about Brazil being a dynamic paradox. How there is no such thing as a typical Brazilian –
to be Brazilian is to be a mix of people. Brazil is a true multicultural nation.

Who is the new Brazilian consumer?

The middle class in Brazil, the C class, is different to the middle class in other areas of the world. There is less of an aspiration to become say upper class. A real feeling of being happy in the middle. The middle class don’t care about prestige. He talked about Brazilians being the happiest people in the world.

Klebel then went on to discuss the approach he came up with for his PhD and has put to the test on recent projects:

Process // branding = consistency
Don’t respect the global attributes too much
People // flexibility = new ways of thinking
Flexible country & people
Design // vernacular creativity = intuitive
Cultures have developed their own aesthetics, respect these in your design

Session 6 Thinking big by starting local

From Daniela Hammel, Jan Schröder, Martin Beyerle minds & makers, Germany.

They described a recent service design project a highly participatory approach to design services for street kids.

Session 7 The Power of Many & the power of one

From Indri Tulusan & Fumiko Ichikawa Spur, Singapore & Tokyo.

Fumiko talked about the recent earthquake in Japan. She told some interesting stories about life immediatly after the quake. The technology we rely on in modern life no longer worked & how the society coped.

• How there were large (and orderly, being Japan) queues at public phone
• No more heels (everyone had to walk)
• No more virtual cash as no ATMs
• Board games sales went up

Indri went on to to talk about Kenya and how people live off the electricity grid.

• TVs + generators sold together
• Charging up mobile phones from generators & solar panels

Fumiko then went on to talk about the electricity forecasting following the shutdown of the Fukishima reactor.

This screen from the Tokyo underground shows electricity usage. How much electricity the country is using:

They concluded by looking at how technology has changed in Japan following the quake. They talked about a rechargeable TV. The battery is charged overnight then used in the day when no electricity.

The parallels between the evolution of technology in Kenya and the recent changes in Japan were stark. For the world to cope with future energy shortages there are lessons to be learnt from both Kenya & Japan.

Session 8 – Defining the global by exploring the local

(I was getting hungry at this point so excuse me if I don’t do this session justice)

Bas Raijmakers STBY,  UK & Netherlands.

Bas talked about recent research projects across multiple countries.

He discussed how the regional teams need to be story tellers not data collectors How the teams need to be agile to adapt to findings coming out of their country.

He further discussed the importance of collaborating with clients.

The following quote from Bas outlined a key theme of the day:

You need as a researcher a strategic view of the organisations to make your findings useful.

Obvious but sadly not always done by many researchers.

Breakout sessions

After lunch we split into groups based on topic. I attended the ‘How can global perspectives encapsulate an increasingly complex world?’ stream.

Bas from STBY led the workshop. We started by looking at how technology is often used in unexpected ways to solve immediate problems.

We then discussed some of the major themes of the day.

• Sharing vs owning. Sharing is more sustainable but needs a strong trust network to succeed.
• When technology no longer works how can an individual and society prepare for this

We discussed a research approach to look into this second theme.

Bas suggested giving participants in each country a Japanese survival kit. Getting them to explain the usage of each part. eg plastic bags to hold water. Specifically looking at cultural items in the kits. The Japanese kits contain slipper for example – the slippers help reduce the dust carried around on the feet.

We then discussed what items would be specific to other cultures survival kits and what this tells us about that society.

Themes for the day

Wrapping up the day the following key themes emerged:

• Design can solve many of the problems organisations have however it often fails to speak the language of the organisation so has a lower impact
• Build on the local to develop the global. Strong local foundations mean projects can succeed globally
• Don’t be dogmatic in the research approach chosen. Be agile.
• Many of the solutions to modern problems are present in other cultures. Research can identify these and design can show how to adapt them.

Overall we as design professionals need to adapt to the organisation & the culture we are working – as Dan Szuc said while channeling Bruce Lee we need to “Be water my friend.”

Thanks to everyone I met and talked with. Please add a comment below if you feel I’ve missed anything.

Richard Caddick, my boss at cxpartners following the conversation mentioned how as as young UXer are you supposed to think about personas? Are personas a useful tool or not?

I thought it was time to share my thoughts. (by the way these really are my thoughts not those of the other happy people of cxpartners).

A few years ago we all agreed any form of user centred design (UCD) in a project meant better results.

Fast forward 5 years. UX is more widely understood, more widespread and as a discipline has more collective experience. The UCD toolbox is bigger meaning we can select the right tool for the problem at hand.

Personas: the good

Back in the dark days when I first started working in UX. Any kind of UCD approach yielded results. By results I mean, a measurably better final product, a smoother project role out and meeting timescales and budgets.

User research is and always has been, expensive and time consuming. Personas are a great tool for representing the user if timescales and budgets don’t allow for research.

In the design process when there is a choice the difficulties arise. Should this call to action say this or that? Should we focus the IA on services, or products or something else?

Without UCD we see personal subjective opinion rule. Decisions are justified based on personal preference and opinion. “I think we should do this…” rules; personal, subjective opinion often drives design.

Personas give the user a voice. “Anne, Persona A, would think this…” helps give design direction. The final project is more user centred. Equally if the project team have a shared view of what the user wants, constant changes are avoided thus reducing costs and time.

Personas: the bad

In my experience the above rarely happens, certainly on the projects I’ve worked on.

I’ve worked on projects with great personas. Well researched, robust, representative. It’s not the individual personas that are the problem. It’s people.

A representation of something is by it’s very nature is not the original. Personas are a level of abstraction removed from the real user. Personas are designed to foster a sense of empathy with the people they represent – but using them requires a sense of empathy. The ability to put oneself in the shoes of the persona. To be good at UX we need to have empathy, not everybody has the same level of empathy as us.

Personas: the ugly

I’ve seen some really badly designed personas over the years. Often they have solid demographic underpinnings. Audience segmentation, extensive attitudinal research, market sizing etc are used to form a persona.

Our audience is 20 – 30 years old women, married / co-habiting with no children, ABC1s, living in the South East, earning £25 – £50K a year. They shop online frequently and use facebook everyday. Reads the Sunday Times.

And a nice little touch from James Chudley, “has 2 kittens called salt and pepper”. Often this wrapped up with a great stock photo of someone with perfect teeth.

The problem here is how do we address design decisions with the above?

We need to add behaviour to the mix. Let’s take travel as an example. We can include research that shows the above audience books a yearly holiday 3 moths before they go away. They research the hotel for 3 hours, share it with the partner by email, they book it at lunch time. Typically they have a short list of 4 hotels and compare across 3 other websites. Here a persona can become more useful.

Arguably the above data might be enough to make decisions. Knowing that the target audience has a cat let alone it’s name doesn’t help make a decision – it helps with empathy but isn’t useful. User research will give you this information. Packaging it as a persona may reduce it’s impact. Techniques like mental modelling are far more effective as a tool to describe behaviour but that’s another blog post.

You’ve gotta have faith

I made the facetious comment on twitter that personas share a lot in common with astrology.

Astrology like personas has a scientific basis, the month of your birth has an impact on who you are. Astrology looks to get a deeper understanding of people, what makes them tick, what makes them behave in a certain way, a way of predicting what will happen in the future. Sound familiar? Astrology like personas relies on a sense of empathy to succeed.

The very problem that personas are trying to solve – a lack of empathy with a user group – relies itself on empathy to succeed. Personas it seems, by design have a fundamental flaw.

But then hey, I’m an Aries, I would say that.

It’d be great to hear other people’s experiences either below or on Twitter, @mrjoe

The recent versions of browsers from Firefox, IE and Opera have highlighted just how broken browser design is. I’ll list 3 reasons why browser design needs to be improved.

1. Using space wisely

Screen resolutions are ever increasing and one of the most important changes of late is in screen size ratios.

When the original browsers were designed back in the 90s screen ratios were effectively the same as a TV, Defined as 4:3, 4 wide by 3 high, close to, but not quite a square. WIth 4:3 screen ratio it made sense to place all interaction elements at the top of the screen where the menu was placed.

Modern screen resolution tends to be 16:9, that is 16 long by 9 high. Meaning screens are much wider than before. Placing all the tabs, bookmarks, menus and everything at the top no longer makes sense when we have much wider screens. You can see the trend in browser design to minimise the clutter at the top of the screen. Chrome started this trend and the other browsers have followed.

We can still go further yy moving all the controls to the left (or right in some cultures) we can make better use of the screen real estate.

2. Too many white boxes to type in

Yahoo! list the top 20 current popular searches. As of today, May 29th 2011, Facebook is first and YouTube is second. They lead the rest of the results by a factor of 10. These aren’t searches, they are mistakes. People typing an address into a search box.
Edit: Fri 20 May 22:49 (Sing). Justin Stach makes the point that this is less a mistake and more an alternate route to the same goal. A desire path.

Chrome have taken the lead and removed the search box and integrated it into the URL box. All browsers should be doing this. Especially mobile browsers on touch screen phones as it can be really easy to select the wrong white box. See the picture above. There is no need for 2 boxes. Let’s just have one combined URL/search bar.

3. Error messages

For the simplest error possible, no internet connection. Many browsers still present fairly incomprehensible, jargon heavy error messages.

Google Chrome states:

This webpage is not available. The server at whatever.com can’t be found, because the DNS lookup failed

What’s DNS? Is it the web page that’s not available? No.

Firefox isn’t much better:

Server not found, Firefox can’t find the server at www.google.com

What’s a server? Most internet users would have no idea.

Ok, Opera, otherwise Bruce & Pat will shout at me:

Network problem

Better but still not user friendly. Most users would have no real idea what a network is even though anybody reading this will of course, know.

IE again isn’t much help:

Network problem, why don’t you try [Diagnose connection problems]

Network, diagnose? All very technical, intimidating terms.

Well done Safari:

You are not connected to the Internet.

Not surprisingly Apple get it right. Safari isn’t perfect, it offers the button quite intimidatingly titled: “Network diagnostics”. Sounds technical and difficult.

Let’s fix the browser

Here’s how I’d recommend writing the ‘No internet connection’ error message. More often than not I find refreshing the page fixes this issue, so suggest that first. Next give lo-fi, non-technical fix. Next try connection helper and finally the advanced technical solution. Here’s what I suggest wrapped in an updated browser layout to include better use of the screen and no second white box.

Browsers are far better than they were 5 years ago thanks to competition in the market. But as I’ve shown, they still have a long way to go.

I’d love to help, if any browser developers are reading this, just get in touch.

There are few articles that had such a dramatic effect on me as Fabio Sergio’s 2001 connectedland. At the time I was studying human interaction and how technology mediated (and disrupted) communication.

Fabio’s article discussed the way culture adapts and changes through technology use & how technology changes to meet cultural need. How we were all being bought together by connected technology. Changes in behaviour thanks to life in connectedland.

Peter Morville was quoted in the article:

“We use people to find content, we use content to find people”

Fabio expanded on Peter’s ideas:

“To me all of the above simply means that the medium is finally starting to reveal the message. Or, I am tempted to say, the message is emerging from the medium”

To digital natives this is old hat. We’ve all seen the ways this is happening. Instant Messaging, Facebook, email, internet dating, SMS; the information artefacts are all having a profound effect on our lives. A simple example is the way it’s more socially acceptable to be late to meet friends. Send a text message to say you’ll be 10 minutes late that’s more acceptable than being late used to be.

Not everything is easy in connectedland. Information anxiety is real, internet addiction has the same biological basis as other addictions, cyber-bullying, suicide-pacts online, phising scams, RSI, all part of living in connectedland.

Life in connectedland on the whole is a good one. I have refound long forgotten friends, made new friends, got a job, been on dates, discovered music, saved money, all thanks to life in connectedland. I’ve been lucky, I have the skills to live and work in connectedland. I’ve taught myself to use the tools, to speak the language, to learn the social skills for connectedland. That is the next challenge, how do we as information professionals ensure connectedland is open to all.

connectedland as a gated community

The original connectedland article quotes IDEO’s Naoto Fukasawa:

Design dissolves in beahviour

Or to put it another way, nobody notices a usable design – design that works is and should be invisible. That may explain why there are very few awards for good usability. Recently, I watched my Grandfather, a veteran of the air force WWII, trace the route he flew in his Lancaster Bomber across Europe before he was shot down. He traced it to me on my iPhone using Google maps. I didn’t have to show him how to use Google maps, he just got it. The design disappeared.

My Granddad has never used a computer before for many reasons but in using an iPhone he overcame what to him was the biggest barrier – technology wasn’t for him. Last year the UK Government appointed its first Digital Inclusion Czar; Martha Lane Fox to “encourage take-up of technology, to reduce barriers.” One of the largest and by far and away, I believe the most significant barrier to entry to connectedland is ease of use.

Opening the gates to connectedland

Part of my job is research, I spend on average about 3 hours a week watching real users use technology, some time with eyetracking kit, sometimes in their homes, sometime in their work place. I must have interviewed and researched with over 600 people in the course of my career all with one aim. To make stuff easier to use.

Fabio talks about how information professionals (that’s you and me don’t forget) shape the way humans relate to available information. The examples he uses have moved on significantly in the 10 years since he wrote the article – social networking sites were not around then. Social networks have been the reasons many people have started to live in connectedland. If your friends are having a party you want to be there – the simplest and most human way to encourage technology uptake is to do what your friends and family are doing.

A staggering 9.2 million adults do not use the Internet in the UK. It seems things are still broken at a fundamental level if 24% of people aren’t online. I’ll follow up this post later this month with what I believe is one of the biggest challenges facing us in connectedland – joining the dots.

Ideas of March

I’ve published this article as part of Ideas of March Chris Shiflett’s encouraging idea to expand beyond Twitter and share. Write more online and joint people like Alan Colville, Elliot Jay Stocks, Rick Hurst & the mighty Jon Tan and share your thoughts.

High profile “I’m leaving Facebook and never coming back” statements from the likes of Jason Calacanis and Leo Laporte. It seems it’s very fashionable to be down on Facebook.

Why Facebook is a success

I spend a lot of time with users watching them struggle to complete tasks and achieve goals online. I’ve also seen those moments of delight where a site will goes a little further and gets it right.

Facebook has seen breakaway success and is now one of the most popular sites on the web. I’ll argue this success is down to the fact Facebook get people.

Facebook understand users on 2 different and important levels. They understand the interaction between user and computer and they understand the interaction between people and their friends.

Most internet companies understand one or other of these but rarely both. Google & Apple get interaction but don’t get people. Myspace & Microsoft get people but don’t get interaction.

Let’s take some specific examples.

Facebook photos

Facebook photos is the largest online photo sharing website. It’s overtaken both Flickr and Photobucket.

Uploading a photo to Facebook is easy. They’ve taken the time to get this right. Browsing photos is a dream. The use of cursor keys to move between photos that load in-page has made photo browsing easy. One the big issues with Flickr that they are only now begin to fix is to make it easy to move between photos.

The interaction stuff is pretty straightforward. What Facebook have done is understand what makes photos a draw online and where other photo sites have only just caught up to.

People like to see picture of other people. Specifically people want to see pictures of their friends and themselves.

Facebook got this pretty right much from day one and introduced tagging. Now you know when a friend has uploaded a photo of you. It’s very difficult to resist logging on to Facebook to see that photo.

The fact that Facebook understand people and has introduced functionally that taps into this understanding is the reason why many people have issues with Facebook. There’s a fine line between checking out what your friends have been up to and voyeurism.

Let’s look at a couple of recent Facebook changes that have stirred up some controversy.

Friend to friend interactions

Facebook recently launched a new feature that allows users to see the conversation between 2 mutual friends.

You can see wall posts and comments, photos, pretty much all the interactions the friends have had on Facebook. Facebook are not sharing anything new here, they are making all the interactions available in one place.

The major criticism is of course privacy. One can easily see the conversations between boyfriend and girlfriend and see how relationships have developed through Facebook.

Facebook understand people, they know people like to keep up with the gossip between to mutual friends. The keyword here is gossip and with that is the fine line between keeping up and voyeurism.

I’m not saying Facebook are justified in introducing this feature more that they understand what makes a feature popular and useful. I have no doubt this feature is proving to be really popular.

It’s the message not the medium

Facebook have just announced improvements to their messaging service. Third party emails and SMS will now integrate into a user’s Facebook messages.

There has been criticism of this (of course) online with a lot of the geek pundits getting rather snobby about Facebook emails being the new Hotmail.

What Facebook have cleverly done is again focus on both the interaction between user and computer and the interaction between people.

Google’s email offering Gmail has long been praised as one of the best email platforms around. As a UX professional I agree, interacting with Gmail is great. It’s very easy to use.

But what Google did was to take an existing system and made it better. It reminds me of the famous quote from Henry Ford.

What Gmail lacks is a real understanding of people. Google is an engineering company, Facebook is a people company.

With Gmail I get spam, newsletters and mostly crap. I might get 1 email a day from a friend. Because of all this crap I use Facebook, Twitter or SMS to message friends. Email is mostly junk.

Facebook’s main reason for introducing the new messaging service is based in the idea messaging should be platform agnostic. That is, if I want to message my friend Jon I should be able do it in a way that suits me and suits Jon. I write the message in Facebook and Jon decides if he gets the message via email, Facebook or SMS. I don’t have to remember which method suits Jon best. I can be sure he’ll get the message.

Importance is not about the what it’s about the who

Facebook have also gone a step further that Gmail in prioritising email. Gmail have introduced the concept of ‘Important’ messages to help my sieve through the mess that is email in the modern world. The idea being a message from Jon won’t get lost amongst the viagra and bank statements. And it sort of works. It does however still think my bank statements are important – sorry Gmail they really aren’t.

What makes Facebook different is it knows who my friends are. They know Jon is a friend. If I receive an email from Jon it knows that’s important.

What’s more Facebook will aggregate all messages between myself and Jon in one place. And not by SMS, email or Facebook message. It’s the message not the medium that’s important.

Facebook understand what people want from messaging and approach the problem from that angle. This can result in features that walk the fine privacy line but ultimately succeed because they address a a basic human need & desire.

Facebook moves forwards whilst the others just make faster horses.

Old computers not necessarily used by old people

Over the last few months I’ve conducted an awful lot of user tests with the over 60s. At last count it was over 50 users. So it was great to attend Bristol Usability Group last night where Andrew Arch from the W3C’s Ageing Education and Harmonisation project was talking about Designing for Older People.

Many of the recommendations we’d made to our clients in designing for the age group were backed up by the W3C guidelines.

Here are a few of the recommendations talked about:

• Browser accessibility functionality has a stigma attached as so is not often used by this age group.
• Including an in-page font-size control is perhaps the most useful and most common thing a designer can do
• This age group struggle with small hyperlinks and other small areas where they need to click – e.g. radio buttons with no direct html label tag.
• There is a danger of patronising this age group with ‘big’ and ‘blue’ text.  They still appreciate design.
• In designing for this age group there is an increase in usability for all user groups (Rather like the Usability Bonus the now defunct Disability Rights Commission discussed)
• Older people may not be familiar with using a mouse having only ever owned a laptop
• This age group is very wise so often have plenty to say in a user test meaning a typical hour’s test won’t cover as much as the same amount of time with a younger person

Thanks to Dave Ellender for organising and hosting the evening.  Great chatting all things accessibility afterward with Ann McMeekin and the BUG glitterati.

Update: Ann McMeekin has done a much more indepth write-up of Andrew’s talk

My internet World talk Social Networks: build your won or take advantage of an existing one was scarily full with standing room only.

One of main points was to listen to the chatter on twitter and facebook. I was doing the same through my talk and had some great feedback from people.

The audience did better than I did at summerising:

My slides are here:

I’ve written a whitepaper to accompany the talk:

• They’re talking about you online