Briefly, the purpose of a cultural probe is to conduct user research from a distance. So rather than having to literally follow the user around for two weeks, they contribute to the probe, either explicitly by writing ‘diary’ entries, or implicitly by leaving ‘digital footprints’ of their online activity. One might label the former as a reflective diary probe and the latter as a ‘lifestream’ log probe. Both types are useful, the lifestream log as evidence akin to analytics of what they actually do, and the reflective diaries in terms of exploring the motivations behind what they think and do.

In years gone by, diary studies have ridden both peaks and troughs in popularity with social and market research practitioners, but these days there are now many ways to conduct a probe online, for little or no cost (aside from recruiting users and compensating them for their time). For example, you can easily setup a blog to act as an online diary—I’ve done this using WordPress on a number of occasions—but if you’re less technically inclined or want the convenience of using an “off the shelf” tool, then there are things like Tumblr and Posterous.

My colleague, Chris Khalil, touched on using a Tumblr blog in his UX Australia presentation last year. More recently I’ve been using Posterous for a similar purpose and thought I’d share some hints and tips.

1. Think about whether a probe is suitable

   Are cultural probes for everyone? No, not all research objectives are suitable for probes, nor are they necessary for all research projects.

   Similarly, if you’re investigating an audience that isn’t big on ‘public’ discussion or extroverted self-promotion as some call it, or if the subject matter is not something people want to discuss openly, then online probes are probably not suitable.

   Having said that, I’ve used probes and diaries on several different research projects, including those where it didn’t work that well. There’s no better way to learn.

   Are online probes for everyone? Likewise, it’s not always suitable or effective to use an online probe. If you’re studying offline behaviour or if your audience is not big on online, then an online probe is probably going to be counter productive. Using the method might actually skew your results because to find people willing to participate in the probe, you’re automatically selecting people comfortable with digital media (either that or they just won’t do it).

   Offline probes can work very well (for example, an A5 booklet that participants fill in over the course of the study). In fact I believe they work better than online diaries because they:

   • cause a moment of pause, you have to stop, think then write (separating the medium from the message)
   • can easily be ‘multimedia’ with little effort (ie write, draw, cut+paste),
   • are easily transported anywhere,
   • exercises and ‘puzzles’ are easily integrated.

   The main argument against these old school probes are that they do not share the medium we are (usually) studying; if someone is using the web to do XYZ, then reporting what they’re doing online would be easier. Perhaps for some, but you at least need to have an alternative for those who don’t find that to be convenient.

   Ultimately, you need to decide if a cultural probe is going to be suitable for your research project, and whether an online or offline probe will work best for your participants.

2. Is Posterous right for my probe?

   The main benefit of Posterous is the fact that you interface with it using email, primarily. So the participant simply sends an email to a unique email address and it creates a blog post for them automatically (in our case it becomes a diary entry). There are other interfaces, which are described below, but the email interface is a boon for those investigating an audience who is adept in the use of email, but possible little else in the web world.

   

   Posterous can be useful for both the shorter, ‘lifestream log’ style probes and the longer, ‘reflective diary’ style probes. But that’s not to say it has to be the only tool you use, your probe could actually be made up of several elements: Posterous (via email), iPhone app, Twitter updates and hand-drawn ‘mud maps’.

3. Timing is crucial

   The timing of a probe is possibly the biggest factor that determines its success as a research method. You need to ensure your probe takes place during the activity that you wish to investigate is occurring.

   Recently we were researching people undertaking renovations to their house and how they interact with tradespeople, a diary that spanned the period of their renovation would be extremely useful. Again, the recruitment is such a crucial part of this method, you would need to find participants that would be willing to keep a diary over this time. One way of selling or “incentivising” the idea would be to talk about the fact that keeping a diary of such a big thing in their lives can be very rewarding to look back on later. Mention documentaries and TV shows like Grand Designs.

   (Talking about benefits, I’ve found that participants usually really enjoy the diary experience. They tell me it’s fascinating to actually see what and when they do certain things. This is particularly the case with the reflective diaries; they find the reflection quite enlightening.

   So the timing (or more accurately the duration) of a probe can be a big deal in terms of both recruiting appropriate participants and encouraging their participation.

4. Carefully recruit participants

   One thing that academic researchers (design PhD students etc) who use probes, stress is the importance of, is recruitment. They even go to the extent of interviewing candidates beforehand to select the best people to participate in a probe. This is obviously time consuming and costly, but it goes to show how important it is to get the right people. It’s a case of “garbage in, garbage out”, I suppose. This can start to lead or influence the process somewhat, rather than it being completely open and exploratory, but the amount of time and investment in a probe justifies the risk. I’ve learned this the hard way!

   I usually make do with a phone call, as described below, but it’s also a good idea to build as many fail-safes into your recruitment processes as possible. My main point of concern in this regard is what exactly the participant has been asked and told; using a third party recruiter often means you relinquish control of this information flow to a certain degree.

   Tell your recruitment firm to recruit suitable candidates; those that meet your specs and are willing to spend two weeks keeping an online diary. I usually suggest telling potential participants that it’s like blogging but private (only they can see it), and they will be required to write a few entries a day. Usually recruiters want you to quantify the effort required, in terms of minutes per day etc. This can be difficult but you need to make sure you’re going to get people who are going to use the diary.

   Get the recruiter to send you the participants’ phone number and email address, if nothing else. That way you can call them and send them important details in writing, both of which I recommend below.

   By the way, if you’re not using a professional recruiter, the above still applies, just perform the actions yourself. Then ask yourself why you’re not using a professional recruiter :)

5. Send each participant a “welcome pack”

   Via the recruiter, I almost always send each participant a document (a “primer”, if you will) with an overview of the research and general instructions on what they have to do. This allows me to ensure that each participant gets the information I want them to have before they start the probe, as well as setting focus questions or pre-tasks as per a normal primer.

   In terms of guiding the participant in the use of their diary, I usually include the following list of tips in the welcome pack:

   • Write as much as you can about your experiences, both positive and negative, big and small.
   • We are interested in whatever you have to say, no matter how minor it might seem to you.
   • We are especially interested in things that are surprising or unexpected.
   • If you’re not sure whether to include something or not, please put it in.
   • If you make a mistake, you can correct it, or you can just keep on going.

6. Setup a Posterous account for each diary

   You can create an account with Posterous for free, and it’s possible to create up to three blogs per account. You can “add a contributor” to each blog such that you have one blog per participant, creating more accounts if you need more than three blogs. Making each of the blogs private means each participant can only see their own blog, but you as the researcher, can see them all. This works fine, but since each participant is only a contributor, they don’t have a Posterous login and thus cannot use things like the “bookmarklet” (described below).

   A better solution is to create a Posterous account for each research participant, with one private blog for each account. I create these accounts as generic research accounts (eg myresearchdiary1, myresearchdiary2, myresearchdiary3) that are re-used for each project, I simply clear out each blog and reset its security when a project is finished.

   

   Add one participant to each blog using the email address they provided during recruitment, if they have multiple email addresses they might want to use (eg work and home) then them all. When you add a contributor you have the opportunity to send a welcome email to that contributor. This is when you send them the details of how the diary works.

   Make sure you include the unique details for each blog in the welcome email:

   • The “post” email address (eg post@myresearchdiary1.posterous.com)
   • Blog URL (eg www.myresearchdiary1.posterous.com )
   • Password (one idea is to set the password to the participant’s surname)

   Make yourself a contributor for each blog, so you can monitor what’s happening and also ask questions or make comments if need be.

7. Call participants on the phone

   Before the probe begins, call each participant and introduce yourself. It goes a long way to making the whole process much smoother if there is a real person they’re talking to via the diary. Of course you could meet them in person too, but there are many reasons why this isn’t practical (eg travel time and cost).

   Other than building rapport, you want to use the phone call to check that they…

   • Have answered the recruiter’s screener questions correctly
   • Have received the research “welcome pack” including the consent form
   • Have received the Posterous welcome email (see above)
   • Are able to send a test email to Posterous
   • Are willing and able to participate in the diary for two weeks

   (Get the recruiter to arrange the phone call for a specific time when they will be in front of their computer and able to access their email.)

   You should also reiterate the purpose of the research and what you’d like them to put in the diary. They should have already received the welcome pack and the welcome email—if you use them—but it doesn’t hurt to run through it all again and answer any questions they may have.

8. Remind and encourage your participants

   Inevitably you will have some (possibly all) participants who are really not sure what they are supposed to be doing. Even if you use a welcome pack, you may still need to prompt them into action.

   The beauty of an online diary is that you, as the researcher, can monitor the submissions as time progresses. If necessary you can prompt participants to write diary entries by

   • sending them a reminder email
   • posing a question (or task/exercise) in the blog itself
   • commenting on one of their posts (asking for clarification etc)

   I find that positive feedback and examples of what you’re after, can go a long way. I usually don’t like to be too perspective, preferring to “let nature take its course” but sometimes you do need to step in and guide or moderate.

   Posterous has a nice feature in terms of email notifications. If I write a post in a diary asking a specific question or setting a task for the participant, the system will send them an email. They can simply hit Reply and starting typing their answer, hit Send and their response will be added to the diary as a comment on my original post. Neat and simple.

   But be careful not to spam them.

9. Introduce the Posterous “bookmarklet”

   If the participant is comfortable with Posterous via email, and if you feel they would benefit from a more powerful interface with their diary, you can suggest two additional tools that might be more convenient for them. The first is the Posterous bookmarklet which can be added to their browser toolbar and allows quicker and easier posts to the diary (especially good for video etc). But not everyone will “get it” or be able to “install” it (eg corporate IE6 users).

   

   You can also do the lifestreaming using the Posterous “autopost” feature, allowing the participant to bring in their activity from social networking services like Facebook. This is where Posterous is on par with Tumblr.

10. Suggest the Posterous iPhone app

    Going beyond the bookmarklet, the Posterous iPhone app is much more convenient for posting to the diary when using an iPhone, especially good for photos taken with the device. Again they need to be fairly savvy in order for this to be worth the time it might take to explain it to them (and they obviously need an iPhone).

    This app is great if you’re doing research that expands wider than just the online environment, and into the ‘real’ world. For example if you’re reaching the process of buying a new car, you might have research participants document that process using photos and Twitter-esque snippets of text via their iPhone.

    You can tell them about these more advanced features in the “welcome pack” or during the phone call, or you can wait and see how they handle Posterous in the first place and then make the suggestion to those who you think are up to it.

11. Follow-up with an interview

    It’s pretty important to conclude the probe with a face-to-face interview (or ‘contextual inquiry’ if you like). This is where you can talk through the diary and any other artefacts created, and get the all important explanation from the participant: why did they do this? what did they mean by that? who did they talk to then?

    It makes sense to have access to the Posterous blog and go through it on-screen, but if need be you can print it out and go through it on paper, adding scribbles and notes as you go.

12. Collect the right data

    As with any research method, you need to use a probe in the right way. Namely, the type or style of diary determines the data you are typically able to get. For example, a reflective diary is self-reported and thus trying to capture an accurate picture of their activity is difficult, but you can legitimately explore their motivations and reasoning. Similarly, a lifestyle log is like a record of their activities, but will probably tell you very little about what they were thinking whilst doing it.

    This decision regarding the style of probe also impacts on how you encourage participation. Asking participants to post entries ‘as and when’ doesn’t work so well if you want reflection, and alternatively if you want to view their lifestream then one entry a day isn’t going to work.

13. Be aware of confidentiality risks

    There is, of course, the issue of security and confidentiality risk. Any online service like Posterous is not going to be 100% secure, so there’s a chance that the contents of the blogs could be leaked. In reality though it’s a small chance; who is going to bother trying to break into a research diary?

    Besides the system itself, your participants might be the problem. My standard practice is to have all research participants sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) along with the consent form, but that still won’t stop information from getting out if someone wanted it to. Your company’s strategy or potential new website features might be leaked to your competition. But that’s the case with any user research or usability testing, and the risk is the price of being user-centred!

    Typically though, the contents of a diary and the questions asked of participants, are not that commercially confidential. I certainly believe the benefits of this type of research far outweigh the risks.

So there you have it, my top 13 tips for using Posterous for cultural probes. I stand by probes as a useful research method, though some of my peers question my continued fascination with them. What’s important is to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of probes, as with any research method, and ideally use them in combination with several other methods.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have had any experiences with cultural probes, or indeed with using Posterous as a probe tool. I’d like to read your feedback.

Users don’t scroll?
In a month long study analysing over 120,000 web pages Clicktale found:

• 91% of the page-views had a scroll-bar.
• 76% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled to some extent.
• 22% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled all the way to the bottom.

“While 22% may seem low at first, it is actually quite high as many page-views are repeat views where the visitors have previously scrolled all the way to the page bottom and are already familiar with the page.”

Ok, well how long was the page?
Further more, when digging deeper, Clicktale did not find that longer pages performed worse than shorter ones. The graph below shows the percentage of users who scrolled more than 90% of the page relative to the page length.

More excellent articles on myth busting can be found on http://uxmyths.com/

Four Lifelong Shopping Mind-Sets

(contributed by Pat)

Over on Greenbook, the folks from AMP Agency write Unraveling Her Shopping DNA: Four Lifelong Shopping Mind-Sets about their research into women and shopping behaviour which…

…uncovered four distinct and separate shopping mind-sets that stay with a woman throughout the entire course of her life. In fact, despite whatever life throws at these women, their approach to shopping does not change.

Touch Gesture Reference Guide

(contributed by Manuel)

Luke Wroblewski has written this “unique set of resources for software designers and developers working on touch-based user interfaces”:

The guide contains:

1. an overview of the core gestures used for most touch commands
2. how to utilize these gestures to support major user actions
3. visual representations of each gesture to use in design documentation and deliverables
4. an outline of how popular software platforms support core touch gestures

The Quick List

No waffle, just links.

• Pat suggests Social Networks Said To Account For 60% Of Mobile Web Usage by Doug Caverly
• Pat suggests Design Thinking Made Visible by Humantific
• Scott suggests UX Engagement Metrics by Joshua Porter

UXurls

(contributed by Melissa)

You’ve seen popurls.com but now there’s UXurls.com. It’s an aggregation of everything UX from the last 24 hours, created by Harry Brignull, who says:

It’s a really simple popurls clone, intended for people who are too busy to set themselves up with their own RSS reader, or just fancy a quick glance at the sites I’m reading.

This blog is not one of the 130 sites Harry has included, so you’ll still need to come back and visit us :)

Rapid desirability testing

(contributed by Chris)

On UXmatters, Michael Hawley shares a case study where his team used the Product Reaction Cards developed by Microsoft Research to assess the “desirability” of design alternatives, from the user’s point of view:

To test which approach would best align with our intended goals, we conducted a desirability test using product reaction cards. Starting with the full Microsoft list of cards, we revised the list to include only the adjectives we felt were important for this brand, after assessing our early user research. We narrowed the final list to 60 adjectives, but kept the 60/40 split between positive and negative terms Benedek and Miner had suggested.

We’ve used this technique, or a very similar approach, on many occasions. The Product Reaction Cards are quite versatile and can be used in many other situations also. For example, for producing a view of the desired future state of a system, which can be very interesting in comparison/contrast with that group of people’s view of the current system.

In another recent project, users were asked to liken the website concepts to an image of a person. The images personified a variety of emotional responses, for instance a cool, young woman or an older, corporate gentleman. Overall, users felt one of the designs was quite young and feminine, which is what the project aimed to achieve.

Experience maps

(contributed by Angus)

We really like Gene Smith‘s experience maps, produced for a recent project:

[...] the research was much richer than anything we could capture in an alignment model. Hardcore gamers invest a lot of time–on forums, in stores, with friends–before buying a game. We wanted to show how these different experiences shaped their behaviour.

The solution we came up with was an experience map–a diagram that combines a persona with an abstracted story about the gamer’s journey from researching games to purchasing, playing to sharing experiences about that game. The story includes the details on the different channels where gamers get their information along with supporting quotes form our research.

They are great diagrams, I imagine most UX practitioners would be very envious of such high quality deliverables!

Researchers plan to automate web image description

(contributed by Pat)

In what might help to improve website accessibility, the E-Access Bulletin reports that a new UK academic research network aims to enable computers to describe visual content on web pages:

The network is aiming to develop a web browser plug-in which would be able to analyse an image and describe it to a visually impaired user. It is one of a number of projects exploring computer vision and computer language programming to be undertaken by the new V&L Net – the Vision and Language Network of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Beyond just demographics

(contributed by Pat)

John Williams gives a good example of why we need to look beyond demographics…

This [...] highlights what researchers refer to as psychographics – emotions, beliefs, attitudes that explore why people do what they do. It adds an important dimension, giving you much deeper insight into consumer motivation – it helps you understand what makes shoppers open their wallets…

A nice overview that you should show clients who fail to look deeper than age, sex and income to see the real people they are describing with market segmentation. Hat tip to the Next Gen Market Research group on LinkedIn for this and lots of other useful research tidbits.

Physiological responses in user research

(contributed by Pat)

A new report from One to One Interactive on user generated content (video and flash animation) gives a good glimpse of the more sophisticated research methods being employed across market research and user research today.

Some of the findings in the report are quite interesting (such as “57% of Internet video viewers intentionally watch Internet videos to change their current emotional state” and “Supporting viewers in the creation of the right expectations for your digital media may be more important than simply getting them to watch your material”) but it is the approach used to study engagement with UGC media that is most intriguing…

While watching their media, participants were connected to OTOinsight’s Quantemo™ neuromarketing research system. Quantemo™ simultaneously records multiple biophysical signals (breath rate, galvanic skin response, heart rate, body temperature) in addition to eye and click tracking information. After recording the biophysical measures, Quantemo™ combines the measures into a single representative measure of physiological engagement. The Quantemo™ Physiological Index or QPI serves as a single point of reference of the overall level of physical engagement (or disengagement) exhibited by a research participant. Positive QPI scores represent stronger physiological engagement while negative QPI scores represent weaker physiological engagement.

A thinly disguised piece of PR for their product it might be, but very interesting nonetheless.

Norman replies to Nussbaum

(contributed by Pat)

There have been many reactions, rebukes and arguments generated by Don Norman’s blog post Technology First, Needs Last (which we mentioned a few weeks ago) but one quite prominent response came from Bruce Nussbaum at Business Week…

Norman tells designers to get over themselves. It is science and technology that drive truly disruptive innovation, not Design’s focus on the needs and wants of people. Ethnographic research, Norman says, can generate small, incremental innovations but the blockbuster game-changing stuff, comes from the lab, not the village or the mall.

Don Norman himself appears in the comments, in an attempt to clarify his position (which I happen to agree with)…

Sorry folks, but I think you miss the point. I too bristled at Norman’s conclusion — and I happen to be Norman. I have long argued that we should seek out the fundamental needs and afterwards build the relevant technologies and products. But as a scientist, I rely upon data, and the data have convinced me that this is simply not the way things happen. I resisted this conclusion for a long time, but the more i examined the evidence, the more I decided that I had no alternative but to embrace this controversial position.

One of the issues at the heart of this debate is ambiguous terminology. For example “design research”, “ethnography”, “design” and “innovation” are some of the most widely misused and abused terms, so much so that many of the (quite often heated) discussions concerning Norman’s post are based on a straightforward misunderstanding. There are many cases of people being “outraged” and disagreeing with Norman, but if you read further it seems they actually agree with him but are reacting to what they think he was saying based on their interpretation of the terminology used.

Value and nostalgia are top consumer trends for 2010

(contributed by Pat)

The folks over at trendwatching.com have given us their predictions for 2010, with consumer-centricity playing a big part:

It is always important to know where consumers are headed, as that is what business is all about – serving changing consumer needs. It is extra-important in 2010 because consumers are insecure and thus any brand that can help them solve their worries, any brand that shows they understand their situation, will be remembered when times are good again.

There’s some great stuff to be found over on webnographers.org for anyone interested in virtual ethnography. Here’s their blurb…

Cyberanthropology is but a fetal field, far from defined. This website was developed in the interest of providing a central hub for those interested in ethnography of the internet. Created by and for webnographers, its success in contingent on your participation.

Ethnography is not constrained solely to anthropologists, and indeed the barriers that divide the various social sciences are at once arbitrary and collapsible. Any individual interested in the complex social, cultural, and psychological facets of humans relating with and through the internet is encouraged to join in this nascent community. Webnographers unite!

This is a very interesting area of research, and an area in which our team is expanding with each and every project.
(forwarded by Pat)

The 10 dos and don’ts of website development (that every CEO should know)

Over on the FatDUX blog, Eric Reiss shares his top 10 list for management:

[...] the web has become more important than ever as a means of communicating with customers/clients/membership. But I have yet to meet a CEO who likes website development. It makes business leaders uncomfortable. The web experts speak in a cryptic language – CMS, KM, XML, CSS. The site seems to take forever to build, costs more than expected, and invariably provides less value than the organization had hoped.

No one likes signing a big check without some idea as to what they’re getting. So if you’re a business leader, here are a few basic, non-technical tips that will significantly increase your chances for online success. And they let you do what you do best – lead.

There are some good points in there, and the central point of reminding business leaders to not get caught up in the detail, but rather to be leaders is excellent. These tips were obviously learned and refined over many, many client engagements!
(forwarded by Pat)

Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film

Over on Gizmodo, John Herrman discusses Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Designs Them…

Designing a fake dashboard for an imagined supercomputer or a hovering control panel for a worldwide surveillance system is a different process than creating a genuinely usable UI. Your goal is to imply things: that a machine is powerful; that a villain is formidable; that the software is intuitive, but that the breadth of its powers borders on unknowable. At no point does real-world usability factor in, and nor should it—this is pure fantasy, for an audience raised on Start Buttons, desktop icons and tree menus

He forgets to mention the “Unix system” from Jurassic Park, possibly the most ridiculous of all of these movie UIs :)
(forwarded by Angus)

Dimensions of design/Against ahistoricity

Adam Greenfield talks about looking beyond the obvious sources of insight and inspiration, including those who have come before us…

Let’s face it: brighter and more sensitive people than us have been thinking about issues like public versus private realms, or which elements of a system are hard to reconfigure and which more open to user specification, for many hundreds of years. Medieval Islamic urbanism, for example, had some notions about how to demarcate transitional spaces between public and fully private that might still usefully inform the design of digital applications and services. By contrast, the level of sophistication with which those of us engaged in such design generally handle these issues is risible (and here I’m pointing a finger at just about the entire UX “community” and the technology industry that supports it).

Even if you don’t like Adam’s writing style, this is a thought provoking piece. Especially interesting was the introductory quote from the book Responsive Environments: A Manual for Designers which outlines how design can actually make people do things – as suggested by Jon Kolko and argued against in the recent Sydney UX book club.
(forwarded by Angus)

Walt Disney’s Creative Organization Chart

Delphine Hirasuna writes about the typically unique way in which Disney went about things, in this case the humble org chart…

The Disney org chart, on the other hand, is based on process, from the story idea through direction to the final release of the film. All of the staff positions are in the service of supporting this work flow. Perhaps the question now is what should the org chart of the future look like, given the global workforce, telecommuting personnel, virtual employees, outsourced jobs and contract workers who sometimes outnumber salaried staff? In an idea-based, rather than a manufacturing-based, economy, how should a business organize itself?

(forwarded by Angus)

Content Strategist as Digital Curator

On A List Apart, Erin Scime examines the role of curator in digital media…

When a site launches, your audience arrives to learn more about what you know most about. It’s critical to create a content experience with purpose, that is consistent and contextual. This helps to assert your brand’s authority, establishes relationships with your audience, and secures a return visit based on your content’s value. The content strategist-as-curator is the one who makes this happen. How?

(forwarded by Angus)

Landline phone numbers in electronic forms

Jess Enders shares the results of her research on how to best format phone numbers…

The research findings: one long string is the clear winner. Like the mobile phone numbers, one long string of digits—including area code—was the most common method of data entry: out of 640 landline phone numbers provided by interested research participants, 39% were entered as one long string of 10 digits (i.e. no spaces and no chunking).

(forwarded by Angus)

4 Out of 5 Viewers Leave If a Stream Buffers Once

Janko Roettgers reveals some interesting video-related user behaviour…

More than 81 percent of all online video viewers click away if they encounter a clip rebuffering, according to a new study by Tubemogul. The Emeryville-based video distribution and analytics startup took a close look at 192 million video streams over the course of 14 days to figure out how much rebuffers matter. The result: 6.81 percent of all streams rebuffer at some point, and around 2.5 percent rebuffer twice.

(forwarded by Angus)

How UCD and Agile can live together

David Farkas sets out a framework in which UCD and Agile can work together:

Diagrams are pretty, Gantt charts set expectations, but reality is far from perfect. At the end of the day, a project manager must own the project and there must be some sense of reporting. Depending on the project manager’s background and personal goals there will tend to be a focus towards the needs of UCD or Agile… Finally, friction exists from misaligned expectations from UCD practitioners forcing their methods too late in the game or agile practitioners trying to wean out hard requirements before purpose is fully understood.

(forwarded by Sophie)

Huffington Post wants to add paid tweets to its articles. Will advertisers bite?

(or, an alternate headline offered by one commenter, “HuffPo Sells Remaining Fraction of Soul for Ongoing Revenue Stream”?)

In Advertising Age, Nat Ives reports…

The Huffington Post has started offering marketers the ability to inject their own paid comments among reader comments and place paid Tweets among the live Twitter feeds the site assembles around news subjects and events.

Marketers haven’t bought in yet, but they seem likely to be intrigued. The biggest question is whether marketers and the Huffington Post can execute the program without marring visitors’ experience reading and interacting with the site.

(forwarded by Sophie)

Should journos have their Twitter profiles taken from them if they change job?

And, on the subject of journalists tweeting, Mumbrella asks whether journalists should have their Twitter profiles taken from them if they change jobs:

There’s an argument both ways. You could view it in the same way as when a reporter changes newspaper, they’ll take their contacts book with them. I’ve now got business cards and contacts books stretching back 20 years. I’m not sure what use the private phone number for Farnborough ambulance station in the UK would be for me now, but I’ve still got it somewhere.

(forwarded by Sophie)

Don Norman stirs things up with…

I’ve come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs.

(forwarded by Angus)

A Rebuttal to Technology First Needs Last

Todd Warfel replies to Don Norman’s post…

Technology didn’t drive these innovations, it was merely the road. The driver was an opportunity for invention and design research was right behind the wheel.

When both sides of a debate are highly respected experts, it makes for an interesting read!
(forwarded by Angus)

Short-Term Memory and Web Usability

Jacob Nielsen reports …

The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines are dictated by cognitive limitations

(forwarded by Angus)

My big list of 24 Web Site Usability Testing Tools

Craig Tomlin shares his list…

In the past few years, there has been massive growth in new and exciting cheap or free web site usability testing tools, so here’s my list of 24 tools you may need to use from time to time.

(forwarded by Angus)

Make the logo bigger! (the song)

In the finest tradition of Spinal Tap comes this mock-metal song Make the logo bigger, sure to raise smile on the face of anyone who’s had to deal with clients who want their logo…just that little bit bigger. (Warning: make sure you turn down your volume before playing the song)

(forwarded by Angus)

iPhone app for The Independent (UK)

Over on Econsultancy, Graham Charlton reviews the latest newspaper website mobile app…

The Independent iPhone app is a departure from some other newspaper apps, as it is designed to allows readers to download all the articles while they have a decent 3G or wi-fi connection, and saves them for reading while offline.

An interesting approach.
(forwarded by Sophie)

Surrender! Foucault and Twitter

Ian Delaney laments the direction in which social media may be taking us…

Some of my early hopes for social media, that it represented, like Kevin Kelly reckons, some kind of renaissance for socialism in the western world, are starting to run dry.

Do we blindly accept “social media networks as empowering, democratic and all about spreading fresh ideas”? Delaney says “The reverse may be the case: any given information about ourselves donates some portion of control to another party”. It’s the “dark side of social networking” he says. An interesting philosophical read to break up the mountain of practical posts, articles and reports we read day in and day out.(forwarded by Chris)

A summary of user research methods

Lastly, on his personal blog, our own Patrick Kennedy summarises a whole bunch of useful user research methods…

In this article I give a quick overview of the methods I commonly use, broken down in to main categories:

• Direct user contact—where the researcher does very much interact with users, or members of the audience as I prefer to call them
• Indirect user contact—where the researcher does not actually interact with members of the audience

The E-Access Bulletin reports…

Two American universities have rejected the market-leading Kindle DX electronic book reader as a textbook replacement due to its inaccessibility for blind students. Both Syracuse University in New York State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have chosen not to use the Kindle – manufactured by Amazon.com – as a teaching-aid, after their own trials found it was not fully accessible.

Interesting lessons for anyone else considering an e-reader device, and who wants to make it useful for as wide an audience as possible.
(forwarded by Pat)

Clients could make better use of research

Adweek recently published an article reporting…

Consumer research is ingrained in the cultures of many large corporations but relatively few are maximizing its use, according to a new study from The Boston Consulting Group [...] In fact, based on a four-stage scale of research development that BCG used to evaluate the 40 global companies it surveyed, nearly 90 percent were in the first or second stage, where research is generally tactical and applied in limited contexts.

This has generated quite a few comments, and criticism, although nobody seems to disagree with the basic sentiment of the report (that research could be more prevalent and better used). What do you think?
(forwarded by Pat)

Map of the design landscape

Over on DesignAday, Jack Moffett shares a timeline visualisation of the major—mostly US—design disciplines created by one of his graduate students.
(forwarded by Angus)

IA tools: storyboards

Matt Hodgson shares his thoughts on storyboards…

Storyboards are a great way to describe a user’s journey, their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, capabilities, behaviours and expectations, throughout a single scenario. They’re light-weight, easy to do, and as a visual tool can be used in workshops or just by a couple of members of the team. They also work perfectly on agile projects because they’re visual and, therefore, an instant placeholder for a conversation.

(forwarded by Angus)

So you wanna be a user experience designer

Whitney Hess shares her five guiding principles for working in UX…

I have collected a set of guiding principles for user experience designers, to encourage behaviors that I believe are necessary to being a successful practitioner, as well as a set of guiding principles for experience design — which I think anyone who touches a product used by humans should strive to follow.

(forwarded by Angus)

Getting to the customer – why everything you think about User Centred Design is wrong

On Black&White, Thomas Petersen discusses solving the right problem at the right time…

What you are solving in the wireframe phase is problems inherent in the wireframe phase, not problems with the product. What you are solving when testing the prototype is problems inherent in the prototype not in the final product. There is only one true test and that is the final product. Not until then will you start to receive valuable feedback in combination with quantitative feedback. You will get it where it matters.

This is something we’ve talked about in our team on a number of occasions. It’s an important aspect of the UX design process to get sorted out.
(forwarded by Angus)

Google tests streamlining search options feature

Over on Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan tells us how Google is tackling its “UI jazz problem”…

“I don’t like jazz, because you never know what’s going to happen next,” Mayer said, continuing on to apply the musical style to Google’s search results. “I’ve been calling this problem ‘user interface jazz.’ This result looks this way, and that result looks that way [something much different], and it really does slow you down.”

(forwarded by Angus)

Some design principles from the Global Agenda Council on Design

Tim Brown, of renowned design and innovation consulting firm, IDEO, shares with us seven principles as discussed at the recent World Economic Forum event in Dubai…

Design is an agent of change that enables us to understand complex changes and problems, and to turn them into something useful. Tackling today’s global challenges will require radical thinking, creative solutions and collaborative action. Here is a set of principles identified by the Global Agenda Council on Design that could help your Council to develop ideas and strategies to address the complex problems facing us all.

(forwarded by Angus)

He asks an interesting question at the end of his article, is “reflection” part of the process of analysis. From my perspective I’d say that for a lot of the in depth research we do at News Digital Media, involves a fair amount of reflection. Specifically reflexivity, understanding how your perceptions affect what you are seeing and how that subsequently reflects on what your analysis tells you.

Being more reflexive allows you to unearth and be aware of a range of assumptions that you are making when you are analysing. Ultimatley this give you further opportunities to try and examine your data from different perspectives (using a different set of assumptions).

Here is an extract from the summary report (PDF 83kB):

Over three years, University of California, Irvine researcher and her research team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth media use to date.

They found that social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. The research finds today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

Many adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting, or playing video games. The researchers explain why youth find these activities compelling and important. The digital world is creating new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of self-expression. These activities have captured teens’ attention because they provide avenues for extending social worlds, self-directed learning, and independence.

I don’t think the findings are hugely surprising, but they are very interesting and do support other research that has surfaced in recent years with regard to how “gen Y” use online media to extend friendships and interests and engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online.

There is some great content on the project website, but there could be better use of multimedia in terms of communicating the findings (there is some video on the McArthur Foundation website though).

[Thanks to Christo who first posted this to the Antrodesign mailing list]