Entries Tagged 'Site Reviews' ↓

Lately I have been hooked on twitter- a service for micro blogging, and there is a lot of buzz about it nowadays.
The twitter personal page looks like a good example for simplicity, and the main content section is just that.

A Twitter profile has a very simple (first impression) interface:
There is the noticeable Logo, a big question "what are you doing?" and a big text box.
Below you see "twitts" of people I am following. Delicate tabs show the user the ways of interaction.

However, The rest of the page is not understandable at first - what are device updates? what are followers? what are following? what is the difference between them (facebook and such social networks require interaction to be two way).

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A Name is an identity one can relate to, respond to, feel empathy to, and have a dialog with.
Web sites have been using their users names in numerous ways to increase their activity’s and emotional relation to their service.
Some of those ways:

• create an emotional connection and empathy.
• Increase user activity and involvement in activities.
• Ownership of information by a specific user within the service.
• Dialog between users.
• CRM - Get the user back to the service using email messages.

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Experience is getting clustered.
Facebook, a little while ago added a little feature with a very sexy name: “News Feed Feedback”, it’s that little ‘thumbs up’ and ‘x’ icons next to every item in the news feed.

This is, from what the facebook blog say: “News Feed will use this feedback to further tailor stories for you and to identify the types of stories and applications you might like to see in the future”.

Just this morning I got a glimpse on a new feature by Google, doing kind of the same thing -

The wisdom of the crowds is getting more popular?

Now let’s compare this to Digg.com

Digg is a very good example of a good experience.

What are the user goals:

In Google- search and find - I am looking for something, I go in to Google search and I find it.

In facebook - follow - I am wondering what my friends are up to, I go in and follow the news feed.

In Digg - see what’s new - I am browsing digg, with no real goal, except getting a wide view of information, others users have liked or found important.

Who participate?

Google - everyone that is searching for something.

Facebook - Me and my friends.

Digg - a community that has some mutual interest.

Experience?

The first thing in experience design is to understand and design for the user goals and needs.

Digg tells me how many people in the community think the item I am looking at is important, and in a very easy step - one click, I can say I like it too.

Google and facebook don’t give me any feedback, I like an item, I click on it, but what does this action mean? Where does it lead to? Who else think this is good? In digg I know immediately.

So facebook and Google just made their screen a bit more crowded with actions a user don’t really need for his goals and needs.

Are more features always good?

Tags: Google, Digg, Facebook, experience, experience design, usability

A talk by Adaptivepaths Peter Merholtz.
It is something to show your boss to get him on the experience team side (A little bit long but have some take aways).

| View | Upload your own

There is a browser out there named flock, it has very interesting features, including social tools, blogging tools, social bookmarks tools and over fun feel.
The most interesting thing about it is the overwhelming amount of data on each page and how my eyes got used to it so quick.
You would think this is a very crowded view, but once you make good of some tools on the left and figure out those are just tools (like the blog editor I am using right now) you focus all your attention on the main part of it, and just have a very quick access to what ever you need.

I have been playing with it for several hours now, after I got a recommendation from a friend and I pass on this recommendation - Flock, give it a try http://www.flock.com/RC3/

But are we blind to tools? once we learn tools, we place them, one of the first things users do (according to eye tracking systems) is map all the action Items in a page.
We look for those action buttons again only if we need them and then we look in the places we mapped them before.

Flock sure makes a good use of this trait.

D.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flock, new, Interface

For all of you there, doing god’s good work:

The IPhone human interface Guide!!!

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/iPhone/
Conceptual/iPhoneHIG/

Enjoy.

A tale of two bad experiences, one of UI and one of UX
Not long ago I got a message from a friend:
Join me on Plaxo – standard experience for community services.
Immediately I searched news for this new service, looked at the service youtube movie, it looked like a cool service so I got back to that email and clicked the link to started the process of signing in.
After entering all my personal details for several steps, Plaxo informed me that I can get the full service (premium) for a fee or get a limited service (basic)-
that was a show stopper for me.
That’s when I quit the registration process and forgot about plaxo.
Users like to be informed, If I am told the service is free and then I am told that I get a limited service if I don’t pay, well, that’s kind of wrong.
Now for the ways they did it so wrong (look at the attached image):
If I get to registration from the email notification, I do not see the website and then start with limited information.
No middle bundle – black or white – limited choice range. Continue reading →