• The Economist Tends Its Sophisticate Garden
  by Jeremy W. Peters (suggested by Melissa)
• Google Moderator
  (suggested by Angus)
• f4 transcription software
  by Dr. Dresing & Pehl GmbH (suggested by Pat)

• GEL (Global Experience Language
  by BBC (suggested by Sophie)
• Museum 2.0: Teenagers and Social Participation
  by Nina Simon (suggested by Pat)

• iPad and Kindle Reading Speeds
  by Jakob Nielsen (suggested by Pat)
• How to get your story heard at work
  by Shawn Callahan (suggested by Pat)
• Social Media Monitoring for Market Research – 6 Warnings
  by Randy Hamilton (suggested by Pat)
• Losing To The Social Web: Visualized
  by Aden Hepburn (suggested by Melissa)
• The Real Life Social Network
  by Paul Adams (suggested by Melissa)

2010/05 Jay Parkinson from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

• [MSNBC.com] A tour of our new and improved pages
  by Ashley Wells (suggested by Angus)
• The Super Technical Guide to GoToMeeting for Remote Usability on a Mac
  by Bolt|Peters (suggested by Manuel)
• Research Lifestreaming
  by Harris Interactive (suggested by Pat)

• Does Your Corporate Reputation Have New Owners?
  by Craig Pearce (suggested by Pat)
• Profiling Australian shoppers in 2050
  by Josette Dunn (suggested by Pat)
• 50 Sketching Resources for User Experience Designers
  by Catriona Cornett (suggested by Manuel)

(contributed by Pat)

The folks at Innovation Media Consulting have recently released the results of their 2009 global survey on newspaper readership, subtitled readers want “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. It looks like a comprehensive piece of research, with many interesting findings, but there are 7 key themes they highlight in this report:

1. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth
2. Deeper investigative reporting
3. Improve the quality of your writing, reporting and storytelling
4. In a crisis of confidence, good news matter
5. Put some boundaries around sensationalism
6. Differentiate and engage me
7. Find out what’s relevant to me and my community

Each one of these points has been echoed loud and clear in our own recent user research, so these are by no means issues restricted to print.

History of the Australian Web

(contributed by Manuel)

The History of the Australian Web is a visualisation of Internet usage in Australia between 2001 and 2008, based on Nielsen figures for the top 100 websites. The animation tracks their fortunes over time and allowing for an exploration of different aspects of the data.

History of the Australian Web

iPad vs. iPhone: A User Experience Study

(contributed by Manuel)

Nate Bolt, Brynn Evans and Cyd Harrell share their research that compares iPad and iPhone User Experience…

Several companies have shown interest in mobile payment systems from startups like Square to mega-corporations like Visa. But what is the iPad’s user experience in a real-world, business environment? … So we conducted an observation of 14 customers over three months at our neighborhood coffee shop, Sightglass, that just happened to be an early user of Square on both the iPhone and the iPad. We observed and recorded those customers’ mobile payment interactions with the Square app, and interviewed select customers. Our first study was in December 2009 (with the iPhone) with a follow-up in April 2010 (with the iPad).

Two important business considerations came from our studies: (1) speed kills (in a good way), and (2) shared is the new private.

Crowd-reading on the iPad

(contributed by Scott)

In his post entitled Code Sprint Yields Important Lessons for iPad News Apps, Matt Baume reveals how new iPad interfaces being developed, seemed to try to make the most of the device’s potential for non-traditional interaction with news content…

One of the most creative interfaces was developed by Joey Baker, Chris Peters, Jonathan Wong, Stefan Gorzkiewicz, Cody Brown and Kate Ray. Their Smartbook app (now called Open Margins) was designed to detect news-reading habits and use that data to improve the reading experience for other users. They called it “crowd-reading.”

For example, when a user finds content difficult to understand, he is encouraged to shake the iPad in frustration. As a pattern of frustration emerges, other readers are warned when approaching a difficult passage. In future versions, users might pet the screen to indicate enjoyment.

Another innovation from the Smartbook team: Pinching a page (as though zooming out) would condense a passage down to a summary; spreading fingers like you would to zoom in would offer more detailed content. Although they didn’t have time to build that functionality during the weekend event, it’s an example of the kind of gestural innovation that might one day become second nature to iPad users.

It’s also interesting how Matt draws attention to the fact that “end users” were not well represented in the proceedings.

The Quick List

No waffle, just links.

• Pat suggests How and when to conduct mobile research appropriately (you need to register on Quirks.com to read this) by Emily Goon
• Angus suggests The End of :hover? by Andy Croll
• Manuel suggests World Cup 2010 Twitter replay
• Manuel suggests Ethnography in Industry: Objectives? by Victoria Bellotti and PARC

(contributed by Lexi)

Renai LeMay tells us of the plan by Jetstar to rent iPads to passengers for $10…

Based on demand for the iPads as part of the trial, we’ll be looking to roll out the devices across our entire domestic and international network later in the year.

Sounds good in theory, but have you ever held an iPad up where you can read it, for two hours? You could always put it down on your tray table and try to avoid the vicious screen reflections :)

Lean-forward vs. lean-back media

(contributed by Scott)

Jeremy Rue tells discusses what the iPad might mean for ‘lean forward’ vs ‘lean back’:

The iPad is a particularly interesting device, because it aims to bring the Web into the living room where it could become a lean-back media device. I think this is why so many magazines are excited about delivering their content to the iPad. With tablets, people might actually spend time consuming media rather than frantically searching.

The Quick List

No waffle, just links.

• Pat suggests What Do Consumers Think? Don’t Even Bother Asking by Greenbook
• Lexi suggests Manual Deskterity: An Exploration of Simultaneous Pen + Touch Direct Input [video] by KenHinckley
• Manuel suggests Trendsmap

(contributed by Pat)

The folks from Chadwick Martin Bailey, Inc. share with us the findings of their new research which shows consumers engaged through social media such as Facebook and Twitter are over 50% more likely to buy and recommend than before they were engaged…

In a recent study of social media usage it is clear that consumers who are Facebook fans and Twitter followers of a brand are more likely to not only recommend, but they are also more likely to buy from those brands than they were before becoming fans/followers.

Study: Twitter Is Not a Very Social Network

(contributed by Manuel)

Over on ReadWriteWeb Frederic Lardinois tell us how Twitter users don’t like to return the favour…

According to a group of researchers at Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Twitter is not a very social network. After analysing over 41 million user profiles and 1.47 billion follower/following relationships, the researchers concluded that only 22% of all connections on Twitter are reciprocal.

What’s even more interesting than the small number of user pairs is that 68% of all Twitter users aren’t followed by a single person they are following. As the researchers rightly note, this makes Twitter more like a broadcast medium than a social network.

The Quick List

No waffle, just links.

• Pat suggests Are YOU ready for the biggest Sports Event on Earth? by Andreas von der Heydt
• Angus suggests The Psychologist’s View of UX Design by Susan Weinschenk

Video diaries help improve customer service

(contributed by Pat)

On Quirks.com, Joseph Rydholm describes how Insights from video diaries help Midas in its drive for better customer service…

Securing buy-in from influential franchisees was just one of the benefits that Midas researcher Garry Rosenfeldt reaped when he turned to qualitative research to develop a new service model.

It’s a great tale of how using video ethnography can avoid some of the issues with running traditional qualitative research activities such as focus groups. Unfortunately, you need to register (for free) on Quirks to read the article. It is worth it, but just in case you want more of an incentive…

Kitchen ethnography

(contributed by Pat)

Also on Quirks.com, Maren Elwood talks about Ethnography tracks the migration of technology into the American kitchen …

For many Americans, a kitchen is no longer just a place for making meals. The author’s ongoing study has seen it morph into a HIVE, a highly interactive virtual environment that incorporates food preparation along with checking e-mail, surfing the Web and a host of other tech-related activities.

I can’t imagine anything better than jumping in an RV and hitting the road to do research with real people!

Evolution of the BBC Homepage

(contributed by Sophie)

It’s a bit old now, but Jo Wickremasinghe‘s post on the evolution of the BBC homepage is quite interesting:

Last week we launched a new version of the BBC homepage at http://beta.bbc.co.uk. At first you might think the beta homepage seems pretty familiar, with its modular customisable layout. But take a closer look and you’ll notice we’ve made a number of significant improvements.

The main changes are:

• The introduction of a new navigation bar across the top of the page which will eventually be rolled out across the whole site
• New promotional area they have dubbed the ‘media zone’ which showcases a wide range of content in a small screen area
• Focus on ‘finer grained’ personalisation of content – their research suggests users place more value in being able to tune the content of widgets over the ability to remove/add/rearrange the widgets on the page
• Focus on the ‘Now’ with the introduction of several features to give a better sense of what’s happening across the BBC right now: Spotlight module, ‘Just in’ on the iPlayer widget, Topic Tracker providing the ability to keep up to date with over 11000 topics of interest across the BBC

After two months in beta, the new design has been launched, Jo reports.

Robert Andrews gives an external perspective in his post about the choice of horizontal navigation.

The Google Redesign: A Closer Look

(contributed by Sophie)

Whilst on the subject of home page redesigns, Tyler Tate has written a good summary of Google’s search results redesign:

What’s Changed

• The Google logo is about 30% larger.
• There is now a permanent sidebar left of the results that allows filtering by news, blogs, images, etc., as well as time range filters and options for changing how search results are displayed.
• The searchbox is now the full width of the results column, slightly taller, and has a slight drop shadow rather than the previous inner shadow.
• No more top vertical bar. The result count now sits just below the searchbox and is much smaller than before. The filter for searching locally moved from under the searchbox to the sidebar.
• Search results are now 55 pixels higher on the page and have have a higher density overall (there’s slightly less vertical space between results, and indented results have only one third of their previous margin).
• Cached, Similar, Show more, and Related links all changed from a muted purple to a brighter light blue and now only have an underline on hover.
• Pagination is about 30% larger, and there is still a searchbox below the pagination, though the blue background has been removed.
• Related searches are now displayed much more compactly.

And he goes on to explore some of the elements such as the sidebar, related search suggestions and wonder wheel in a bit more detail.

The history of Facebook’s default privacy settings

(contributed by Manuel)

This great infographic shows how Facebook have changed their privacy settings over time. The current state is shown below.

Journalists and metadata

(contributed by Angus)

How do we make sure journalists understand the value of entering and maintaining metadata (so they want to do it)? Perhaps the answer lies in this series of posts by Wired editor Ben Hammersley:
E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part One of Three
E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part Two of Three
E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part Two Point Five of Three
E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part Two Point Five Point One of Three

He gives the following explanations of the value of metadata. They might sound good to a UX person, but how important would they be to a journalist on deadline?

The necessity above all else of keeping your metadata might seem like a geeky affectation – something that is really only of interest to librarians (itself not a bad reason) or trainspotterish data-completists – but it is in fact the simplest and cheapest route for a publisher to future-proof their business…So why do everything you can to keep metadata intact? Because it’s from this information that new products can be automatically created, at a scale and rapidity that would be impossible otherwise. With every piece of metadata that you don’t throw away, you gain a factor more potential ways of slicing through your content and delivering it as a separate product, simply as a result of a database lookup.

He’s working on a CMS that will somehow ensure/mandate the capture of metadata as the story is created, and also permit easy cross-platform publishing.

The Quick List

No waffle, just links.

• Pat suggests I Remember You by Mark Schenk (if only for the quote from Terrence Gargiulo: “A story is the shortest distance between two people”!)
• Melissa suggests Updates to Google search [video] by the guys from Google
• Angus suggests How Google Got Its New Look – The process that led to the redesign of Google’s all-important search results page by Helen Walters
• Angus suggests Information architecture for news websites by Stijn Debrouwere
• Scott suggests 3 tips for getting your stories shared on Facebook by Michele McLellan