Ann Smarty  offered some Fun Tools to Check Your Website Usability today and I was somewhat delighted to notice that one of these was the five second test.   The irony is that this was mentioned on the day when Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink, was to launch another book, Outliers: the Story of Success. Blink introduced the notion that our impression of a webpage may be fixed within a matter of seconds.  The five second test can check this out.

The test comes in a number of versions.  The classic five second test is that devised by Jared Spool, the very well-known usability expert.  This asks people to list the things they can recall after viewing your interface for five seconds.

If you would like to test it out here are five second tests for the four SMM online properties:

• SMM website
• BPWrap
• The Other Bloke’s Blog
• StayGoLinks

For something a little easier, the sentiment five second test asks people to choose their most and least favorite elements after viewing your interface for five seconds.  This test is suitable for identifying strengths and weaknesses in the design of your interfaces.

• SMM website
• BPWrap
• The Other Bloke’s Blog
• StayGoLinks

I encourage you to try out a few of these to see how this goes.  Then think of your own website and consider how others may see your website in that first few seconds.  That blink of an eye test may determine just how many visitors are inspired to explore your website.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Five Seconds In The Blink Of An Eye

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It is somewhat ironic that a Google search for pension parity in the UK turns up an exchange of letters in the Times Online. Rosemary Bennett had written an article entitled We’ll have to work until we’re 70, just as it was in Lloyd George’s day. She was commenting on the 100th anniversary of the creation of the state pension on August 1, 1908. Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the architect of radical reforms in which the retirement age will rise to 68 by 2046, suggested that it will be at 70 by the end of the century. The final paragraph of the article stood in sharp contrast to this.

Anyone working for central or local government, the NHS, the police, the fire service and the associated regulators is still entitled to a generous final salary pension and most can retire at 60. Taxpayers are paying £21billion a year to fund these pensions.

A few days later, Bernard Keeffe then commented that Lloyd George’s pension would be a luxury to the modern OAP if you compare it to the general level of salaries. Stephen O’Loughlin responded that Compared to those in the 1900s, our pensions seem rather handsome. He cited the various items such as the single person pension credit, the housing and council tax benefit and the winter fuel allowance and is additionally entitled to free bus travel, prescriptions etc.

Pension Parity UK

.. and why is this exchange on pension parity in the UK so ironic? Well that happens to be the title of a new website which has just gone online. The International Consortium Of British Pensioners (ICBP) is taking the case for pension parity to the European Court of Human Rights. It is supported internationally by a number of British State Age Pensioner Groups.

The pensioners it represents have two strikes against them. Firstly they do not benefit from all those extra credits that Stephen O’Loughlin mentioned. Secondly and much more importantly, they have non-indexed pensions which are frozen at the levels set at retirement. If these pensioners had emigrated to Europe or to the USA, they would be receiving fully indexed pensions just as if they were resident in the UK. However the pensioners represented by this website chose to emigrate to countries in the Commonwealth. There is no logic nor equity in what is happening.

These pensioners seem to be the forgotten people in the discussion on pension parity. Even recent petitions to 10 Downing Street go unanswered. A petition from Canada drew 1,518 signatures but no response. A petition from New Zealand drew 1,631 signatures but no response.

Apparently the government has no time to redress this profound inequity against basic human rights. The Pension Parity website details how you can help British Pensioners who have had their pensions frozen at rates ruling 20 years ago or more and are now in their 80′s or even 90′s, and living on a pittance. The only recourse seems to be to go outside the UK to bring international pressure. It’s certainly not one of the UK’s finest hours.

Follow-up Frozen UK Pensions – Should Legality, Equity or Morality Apply?

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Pension Parity For UK Pensioners

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Decisions. Decisions. How to stay in touch with the exponential growth of the technical information being developed by our exponentially growing network of contacts. The Internet is a fertile field for all this growth but how do we poor humans stay on top of it.

The simplicity of Twitter has been very seductive. With only a maximum of 140 characters and spaces, you can only deliver the meat. To an extent its overwhelming attraction has been its undoing. So often in recent days quite frequently all the Twitter site is showing is the following:

Twitter has now come clean on its technical problems. Roland Hachmann is surprised that we complain about Twitter’s failures when it’s free. However it might appear that powerful competitors offering free services will benefit from Twitter’s problems. FriendFeed seems to be picking up momentum as it offers the ability via RSS news feeds to be aware of what your friends find interesting. You can also comment and converse easily about these in an almost Twitter-like way. I can understand why some say they are migrating from Twitter to FriendFeed given the current problems. Another elegant solution with some similarities is SecondBrain. Here you can store all the online properties that are important to you and your contacts can check them out too. That name SecondBrain suggests all sorts of possibilities in terms of improved thinking.

However when it comes to brainstorming, I think Twitter in all its simplicity beats the complexities of SecondBrain. A little reflection on this will show why.

Why does Twitter work?

JD Rucker has an interesting post on all the things you can do with Twitter, based on a survey he did on Twitter.

In a recent inquiry to dozens of online friends, I discovered one truth about Twitter. People either love it and use it daily (even hourly) or they absolutely hate it. Few people fit into the ‘moderate feelings’…

Mark Evans has also come to the defense of Twitter in suggesting that Lorne Feldman Is Wrong About Twitter. In a video included in the post, the only point that Feldman seems to make is that if you appreciate the instant feedback from Twitter, it probably means you’re a loser. Without realizing it, I believe that Feldman has focused on the one most important strength of Twitter – instant feedback.

Your TwitterSphere Can Be Your Extended Brain

Perhaps Twitter can act as your central nervous system on the Internet. If you have a few hundred people following you on Twitter, then it can act almost like your subconscious. You may only check it a few times a day. Perhaps those few hundred people also check it only a few times a day. But at any moment you may be able to contact randomly a handful of people from your network. So if you’re trying to think of new solutions, check with your subconscious. If it’s important, you could ask the same question half a dozen times at fifteen minute intervals.

A Small Example Of Twitter Brainstorming

A small example yesterday confirmed the efficacy of this approach. I was doing research for a blog post on Free Website Reviews and wanted to be sure I was covering all the angles on this. The item was at the same time announcing a new SMM service for Website Mini-Reviews. My question on Twitter produced a most useful response from David Mihm in Portland, Oregon, who is someone you may find it useful to follow on Twitter. He suggested a new line of thought that I had completely overlooked. This new thought triggered in my TwitterSphere seems so analogous to the way a new thought may be fired in your brain’s synaptic circuits. That is why the notion of Twitter as an extended (and subconscious) brain seems a very useful concept.

Whither Twitter?

Presumably Twitter will put behind it this horrendous period of inferior service and emerge strengthened. Its competitors have been given a real opportunity for a period. We also now have Jaiku, recently acquired by Google, slowly building up its membership on an invitation-only basis. It has some similarities with Twitter but will inevitably edge out and add on other gadgets.

Twitter is the supreme example of a KISS-based tool. It really is just Instant Messaging to the nth degree. I for one hope that it continues to keep that focus.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Twitter Beats Second Brain For Brainstorming

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Something only a man could write – at least that’s what many women might say. However I speak it from the heart. It’s the highest praise I could give to any product or service. That’s how I feel about the latest upgrade for WordPress: that’s Version 2.5. If you are blogging with WordPress and haven’t upgraded, then stop what you’re doing and go immediately to the upgrade.

Although I tend to be enthusiastic, my normal British reserve means that I do not often give such glowing recommendations. However in this case I think the product itself is worth talking about and it provides a striking example on this subject of instructions. As Nick Usborne has written Site Visitors Don’t Read Instructions. It’s true that most websites do not have instructions provided. Nor should they need them. A product is well designed when you can use it to the full without reading the instructions.

In writing about this, I am only repeating what others have often mentioned. Garrett Dimon has suggested that Instructions not needed should be the watchword. Indeed he feels that If It Needs Instructions, It Doesn’t Work.

Simply put, the length of your instructional text is almost always inversely proportionate to the usability of your product. .. Whether it’s a VCR, iPod, code, web site, or web application, if the product’s interface needs extensive explanation, there’s probably something wrong.

Paul Markillie more recently has pushed the same idea in looking at the iPhone – again he encourages the theme, Instructions not needed. I think it’s a slogan that every designer of whatever stripe, industrial, graphic or Web, should always have clearly before them.

The latest WordPress upgrade certainly benefits from that thinking. You can now use the automatic upgrade process and it takes only minutes. You just follow the instructions on the screen. I did it three times in a row without incident. The real beauty comes in using this new version of WordPress. It’s all very intuitive. Things work as you guess they will work. It’s a supreme example of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Simon) principle.

Perhaps in the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that all the above is 99.9% true. One commenter on one of the blogs had two small typos. Where on earth is the Edit Comment link? I could not see it anywhere. So I checked through the instructions. I had missed one guiding principle in this upgrade. Basically if you want to change anything, you click on the thing to be changed. It then opens in Edit Mode. Is that intuitive? Well not to this writer until it was explained to me, and then it was blindingly obvious. So in case you might be like me, that’s the only instruction you will need.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

You Don’t Need To Read The Instructions

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Rather surprisingly in a Google search that should have pointed to the Bell Canada website, the following page was at the top of the listings.

Who knows why this should rank so well in the Google rankings? It seems somewhat ineffective to allow such a web page to be the top marker. What is more of a worry is the attitude that such a message signals. For up to 1 in 20 of the visitors to the website, it’s the visitor who will have to make the extra effort to enjoy their experience in visiting the Bell Canada website. It seems that the shopping section of the website will work fine, but after logging in you may have problems. Does that signal as usual that customer service may not match the attention you’ll get as they try to sell you something?

Whether by switching browsers such visitors will enjoy their experience more is open to question. Kate Trgovac seems to have had some issues with the usability of the Bell Canada website in trying to solve her telephone problems. Of course big websites do require extra efforts to make them work well. Usability doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. It requires a customer-centric attitude and unfortunately the Canadian telecom companies have somewhat shaky customer-service records.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Bell Canada Website Problems

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Your call is important to us. We hear it so often and many times question the sincerity with which a company spouts this line. Customer service in many cases seems to be done at minimum cost. That sometimes means that the customer service function is outsourced, perhaps to India.

That shouldn’t necessarily be a problem. After all, telecommunications and the Internet are shrinking the world. Aren’t we all one global village now? Our similarities are often much stronger than our differences. It shouldn’t be rocket science to make it all work well.

Although it can sometimes work well, in other cases it becomes a nightmare. For just one example, consider the case of Web.com that eventually decided Outsourcing Customer Service Doesn’t Make Business Sense. The case study is worth reading and there are a number of reasons why it did not work out:

The greatest problem we faced with outsourcing our customer service, however, was the cultural clash. More times than not in our business, there’s a communication gap between the support staff and customers; but take that misunderstanding and add to it a cultural gap, and you’ll start to see some serious problems – like we did. In addition to customer frustration, reduced sales and increased cancellations, we witnessed on-going technological gaffes.

If outsourcing a relatively simple function like customer service is risky, why would one think of outsourcing anything more complex. You might think that legal services would be a real challenge for outsourcing. However Legalwise, headquartered in Toronto, is now providing offshore legal services from Mumbai, India. (Note that their website has sound, which you may find objectionable and which can only be avoided by skipping their Flash introduction.) They claim that their experienced lawyers in India can become an extension of your North American legal team for a more efficient legal resource.

Since 1995, numerous law firms of varying sizes in the United States and the United Kingdom have been outsourcing some of their work to lawyers in India. For example in 2001, GE Plastics and GE Consumer Finance began outsourcing some of its legal compliance and research work to India. GE is reported to have saved about $2 million in one year by outsourcing legal work to India. DuPont has been an outspoken advocate of outsourcing a portion of its legal work to India. DuPont is reported to have saved about $8.8 million in legal fees in 2002 alone. Other companies such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems are all said to be outsourcing legal work to India with very significant savings.

If it can work for legal services, then what other functions might be outsourced successfully? Obvious choices would be anything involving mathematics or programming since these follow universal standards that apply around the world. Web designing would seem to be a prime candidate. There are many success stories but not everyone is happy with the result. For example, Aaron Wall, a well-known SEO consultant in looking for Drupal developers made the following statement: We recently had another project outsourced to India and are not likely to go that route again soon, if ever.

That is of real concern to someone else well known in SEO circles by the name of Bob Massa, who opened his own outsourcing company in India in July of last year. Although Aaron Wall’s view is a concern to him, he knows the outsourcing experience can be different and he is intent on changing that perception. He is making the following offer:

We can develop php, .asp and are proficient in drupal, mambo, video applications and we can install and/or modify just about any open source scripts. There is no development job too big or too small. I can have my design people create a new, updated site including logos, banner ads and templates. We are fast and affordable and we will prove it BEFORE you have to pay a dime.

If you know outsourcing would be better but didn’t want to take the chance of being ripped off, then just send me an email or call my people on live chat. Let us show you what we can do for you and only AFTER we prove you can trust us to do what we say we will do, will we expect you to pay us.

That would seem to be quite an offer. Provided the Techndu design team have the necessary skills, it would seem to be an offer that is difficult to refuse. Even in working with North American web designers, it is important to develop a strong team relationship and be assured that the web design will be done with flair, competency and according to applicable standards. Web designing is very complex and often requires a number of repetitions to get it right. I know many in North America who have not been happy with their onshore web designer experience. I suggest it is worth approaching this whole subject with an open mind. If you decide outsourcing is for you, you could be one of the real success stories.

Related: Choosing The Right Business Website Designer – The Bottom Line

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Your Lawyer Is In India, So Why Not Your Web Designer?

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The title is the answer to a question posed by Sophie Wegat of ThinkProspect. Thinking about websites, she asked “If I build it, will they come?” Unfortunately the answer is most probably not. As she said:

These days having a website is no guarantee of success. It takes blood, sweat and? yep you guess it marketing to make your online venture a success. Unfortunately too many people still think if they put a site online the masses will flock to them. And then wonder why they don?t. It?s also a myth that people like to perpetuate. Put a site online and you?ll be making millions within days.

So many bright-eyed hopefuls feel like that. Six months later it’s a very different tale. As I commented on her blog:

I think that’s the mental attitude we’ve got to spread. The website budget in terms of dollars should be 50/50 website creation versus making it perform. The owner and his/her team should probably split their efforts 10/90 in terms of website creation versus making it perform.

Related: Power Webmastery

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

If I Build It, They Probably Won’t Come

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Excuse this Rant, but Users should count more since products and services are created for their users. If more users ranted about their dissatisfactions, perhaps the message would begin to get through.

Three examples of poor user experience came up this week. The first was a reader exchange in the Gazette about the difficulties encountered at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport at Dorval. For years, meeting visitors arriving on domestic flights has been a most unsatisfactory experience. However despite redesigns it never seems to get better. If only ADM would do user tests or user surveys to get inputs on how improvements could be made.

The second example is the Gazette itself. There are many small items that complicate the user’s ability to navigate the paper. For the second time this week, we again have a 1 1/2 page “pop-off” around the outside of the paper that makes reading the paper more difficult. It’s even more irritating than the pop-up ads that clutter up some websites. Again user tests would perhaps show the publishers the error of their ways.

The third example is perhaps the most extreme in terms of poor user experience. It’s the site celebrating Canada Day, to be found at celafete.ca produced by C?l?brations Canada. As Kate McDonnell points out, the website’s coy design and programming make it nearly impossible to find a simple listing of events. More critically in terms of user experience, it really is a disaster in so many ways.

How such examples can continue to appear is a mystery. Those companies and agencies that push for excellence know that the only true measure of performance is User Experience. For instance, just check out how IBM is involved in what might be called the User Experience Race. It cites a definition of user experience by the Nielsen Norman Group, a Fremont, California, company that is one of the world leaders in helping companies design human-centered products.

User experience encompasses all aspects of the end user’s interaction with the company, its services and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers merely what they say they want, or providing checklist features.

The way to ensure excellent user experience is to do user tests early and often. Here is how Usability Sciences describes the benefits:

Benefits of Evaluating User Experience and Conducting Usability Tests

• User experience obstacles are revealed. Many times designers and developers are so familiar with the product or site functions that they are not aware of potential problems that can cause the user experience to be unpleasant or difficult.
• Internal debates are more easily settled. When insights and recommendations are supported through user testing or research, there is no more debate. Positive user experience and success based on intent are the goals, after all.
• It saves you time and money. Testing during the design and development stage can catch critical user experience improvements that will later save considerable amounts of time and money once the website or product is launched. It just makes sense to build in a positive user experience from the start.
• Bottom line – it gives you a competitive advantage. At the end of the day, the company who offers their users the best experience wins the race.

One can only hope that more and more companies and agencies will realize there is a user experience race and they should be trying to be winners.

Related:
ADM (A?roports De Montr?al) Needs ‘User Experience’ Help
Website Usability and the Montreal Gazette

Tags: usability, user experience

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

User Experience In Montreal

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As Michelle Lalonde tells us in the Gazette this morning, the Montreal Island Citizens Union (MICU), has been rebranded. If you are not sure what that group represents, then think of it as Mayor G?rald Tremblay?s party. In French that party was in even greater need of rebranding. The Union des citoyens et citoyennes de l??le de Montr?al (UCIM) is hardly a catchy title.

If you want to know more of what Union Montr?al can do for you then you should visit the slick new website. It relies heavily on video clips to communicate party messages to users. You don’t even get the opportunity to switch off the sound. G?rald Tremblay wants to make sure you get his message.

For the enthusiastic visitor to the website it certainly is most impressive. There’s a great deal of information and we are told it is worth a daily visit. Unfortunately on a number of technical issues, the website could have been better constructed. A high performance website will be visible to search engines and very usable for its visitors. The website also suggests that there is an RSS news feed. Regrettably at this time it does not seem to exist.

Nevertheless top marks should go to Union Montr?al for their initiative in launching this improved way of communicating with the citizens of Montr?al.

Tags: Union Montreal, brand

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Union Montr?al – Brand New

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Usability measures how satisfactory the user will find the experience of using a product or service. It’s as appropriate for newspapers as it is for coffee makers.

Part of that satisfactory user experience is created by the visual design of the product. The Montreal Gazette is obviously pleased that it has almost tripled the number of awards it gained in the annual Society For News Design (SND) international competition. The competition covers newspaper design, graphics and photography and the Gazette took 22 awards of excellence and one silver medal. Among Canadian newspapers, The Gazette placed third in the number of awards. La Presse won 43, including two silver medals, while the National Post won 38, including one silver. The Toronto Star won 21, and the Globe and Mail won 20. Congratulations are certainly in order.

It’s unfortunate that the SND does not include awards for user experience. The total user experience involves not only enjoying single well-designed pages but also moving around within the newspaper to find what you want. Unless a print newspaper does user studies, it many never know exactly how users rate their experience. Only if a reader is particularly irritated by the experience will they give feedback. Once someone has bought the newspaper, they’re on the hook. Having invested in the newspaper, they will soldier on and do the best they can.

The Montreal Gazette does have some fine individual pages. Often the front page is very attractive and may well encourage potential readers to buy the newspaper. Once having bought the newspaper, they may well find they are struggling with the navigation, particularly for the Saturday and Sunday editions.

Even though print newspapers may overlook usability (creating good user experiences), they cannot do so as they move to online versions. For online newspapers, the reader is not ‘locked in’ in the same way. If the user experience is not satisfactory, then competitive news sources are only a click away. Perhaps if the Society For News Design wishes to be relevant in future for online newspapers, then it may make eminent sense for it to add usability to its criteria for defining excellence.

Related: Website Usability and the Montreal Gazette

Tags: newspapers, usability

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Newspaper Design Awards And Usability

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