WebWord

This is a false dichotomy that has been bothering me for a while. Obviously it has been bothering Matthew Oliphant as well.

In my opinion, this can be answered pretty easily: Accessibility is usability for persons with disabilities.

When accessiblity is improved for one user group, usability is simultaneously improved for that group. In turn, usability is improved most others users as well. When the ocean of usability improvements rises, all boats are lifted.

Why sayeth WebWord readers?

“Over the past five weeks, there’s been a 42% increase in the number of Internet searches involving the phrase “homes for sale,” according to Hitwise, a firm which measures Web traffic.”

According to the author of this article, the increase in number of searches is a representation of interest. This interest, however, might be tied to fear versus growth or improvement.

Maybe I’m missing the point but this is seriously misguided. An increase in searches doesn’t seem like it would directly translate to positive real world action. It might translate to real world interest and activity, but to make the leap to the conclusion that the real estate market is getting better seems plain wrong to me.

A new indicator for the housing market?

“The team recognizes that they missed a few areas: you cannot easily switch folders without tapping the dropdown folder list, you can’t switch between applications without touching the screen, and using the dialer on most device requires one to launch the dial pad.”

Improving One-Handed Usability in Pocket PC

Related links:

• Let’s Talk About One Hand Navigation
• One handed access to the nectar of the gods
• Testing the New Breed of Smartphones
• One-handed keyboard a big leap
• One Handed Keyboards

“While we have determined that some usability features can restrict your site’s accessibility, we can ascertain that any steps taken towards accessibility should never restrict usability.”

Can Accessibility And Usability Live In Harmony?

“John Rhodes’ seminal article on Google 2.0 from September of 2001, which envisions a Google Client and predated common usage of the “Web 2.0″ moniker by years. For perspective, when this piece was written, there was no AdSense, no AdWords, no Gmail, Google hadn’t bought Blogger, and Mozilla hadn’t yet birthed Phoenix Firebird Firefox.”

Taken from Anil Dash’s A History of the Google Office

http://webword.com/moving/googleclient.html

In his column Microsoft Office vs. the World—No Contest, Dvorak writes the following:

“Currently the way most people think they can beat Word is by making something light-weight or faster or less complicated. Ideally this is all well and good, but people still choose complexity over simplicity when given a choice. This is a sad fact of life, so get over it. Ideally the best model is complexity combined with ease of use.”

People choose complexity over simplicity?  I don’t know what world Dvorak inhabits, but virtually all normal people want things to be easy not complex.  Geeks and engineers and poets love complexity, but average folks really hate it.  Would your grandmother prefer a VCR with one magic button that did everything for her, or would she like 38 blinking lights, 3 knobs, and 17 buttons?  Um, yeah.

Dvorak’s last comment about complexity combined with ease of use is also off base.  He’s throwing out a treat to usability folks, but he falls terribly short. He fails because he equates complexity with robust functionality.

(Complexity is the opposite of simplicity.)

I want tons and tons of functionality but I don’t want the often associated pain of complexity. I don’t care about associations, nuances, hidden meanings, or anything else that potentially leads to chaos. Give me a simple interface but give me the world. Leave the extra buttons to the geeks who care about them.

I’ll end by sayng that Dvorak is issuing commands, as usual, with out any data whatsoever. Why should we take him on his word on this matter. He’s been writing about technology for a long time. He’s familiar with compelxity and he assumes other people accept pain. That’s the wrong answer these days. Users demand usability. Further, there is excellent research which very clearly demonstrates that users prefer simplicity over complexity [edited: was incorrectly "complexity over simplicity"]. You can also just ask a friend: Do you prefer the Google search interface? Why? “Because it is so freakin’ simple.”

Competitive Analysis
“Even the simplest competitive analysis displays two critical dimensions: the competitors and the criteria, or what we’ll call the competitive framework. The purpose of the competitive framework is to present the data in a way that makes it easy to compare the various sites across the different criteria.”

How do you analyse your user research data?
“The ’simplest’ yet least able to be reproduced/backed up is a combination of memory and gut feel (not recommended), then there are a range of more or less physical tools from Excel Spreadsheets, to Post It Notes (which seem to be in vogue at the moment), to Mind Mapping (my current pet approach).”

A Web 2.0 Tour for the Enterprise
“This article aims to dispel some of the myths surrounding Web 2.0 while discussing its practical applications within organizations. Then the enterprise—businesses and their practices—can embrace and extend Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0.”

Gentle Reader, Stay Awhile; I Will Be Faithful
“If I imagine that I am inviting a single person to journey with me into a topic about which we both care, I am much more likely to reach his heart and mind, and this is what I want. I want him engaged—I want him glad he invested his time with me.”

Air traffic as seen by the FAA
“The following flight pattern visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment.” (Don’t miss!)

“In a poll of 300 software buyers, carried out by Red Gate Software, the specialist in database development tools, ease of use came out on top as the number one priority for most buyers of software – highlighting the critical nature of Usability Engineers in software development.”

Usability Engineers Critical To Future Of Software Development

Monique Cuvelier of FreePint asked me to write an article on usability. Below is her introduction…

“According to usability expert John S. Rhodes, too many companies will sooner focus on profits, engineering, marketing and operations before they think of people. In an effort to help computers mesh with humans, he writes about how to find and work with a usability specialist.”

Working with a Usability Specialist

Some other quotes…

“The bottom line is that if you aren’t focused on your customers in the right way, you won’t succeed in the long run. You cannot simply think about customers and expect success, however. You can’t make wishes and expect miracles. You have to recognise the issues and attack them in the right way with the resources and tools. You need usability.”

“The assumption is that training will solve product problems but the truth is your products should be built around users in the first place.”

“Finding the right usability specialist is like headhunting for an executive. I suggest that you treat early interactions like job interviews.”

“I strongly advocate that you should first review your business goals before you obtain the help of a usability specialist. If you have basic manufacturing issues, for example, consider fixing those first. You might be surprised to learn that the return on that investment is much higher than usability.”

“Recently, I was working with a potential client about his internal sales efforts. It was very useful to explain the usability maturity model in light of the Capability Maturity Model (CMMI) and Six Sigma. He used this information to properly place usability in reference to known executive models.”

How did I do? What did I miss? 

I was flipping through the channels and noticed that QVC was selling Dell computers. If you’re curious, it was the E-01510 (Dell 2.53 GHz Celeron, 3 Yr Warranty, 80GB drive, 1GB RAM, DVD player, etc.).

The QVC hosts took a call, which they do from time to time. The woman calling was very pleasant and the hosts asked her a couple of questions. Without hestitation, the caller made a point that she was having support issues with her Dell computer. The hosts were clearly caught off guard and quickly tried to shut the caller down. The caller made the point that Dell support is terrible and that she’s been waiting for help for days. It was really amusing.

The QVC hosts made the point that they offer a full 3 year warranty, which I don’t think is Dell support.  Maybe I’m wrong on that point…

Memorable quotes:

• “Make sure your memories are protected.”
• “Why use language that your mother never taught you?”
• “This is a great system for film editing.”
• “80GB is more than you’ll ever need.”
• “The support technicians try to speak in your language. Not techie.”
• “Unless someone in your home is a computer whiz, how can you get it fixed?”
• “I have some serious karma with computers.”

“Talking to a CEO about usability can be wonderful or terrifying. The difference between raging success and total failure comes down to understanding exactly what the CEO needs to know and then adjusting your usability message to fit. This article explains how to understand various contexts, and in turn, how to position your usability message.”

CEOs and Usability  (Chinese version)

If you’ve ever been to a class or training seminar, you’re probably familar with the task of putting your name on a piece of cardboard. Usually the cardboard is white and you’re handed a marker so you can write your name on it. Then, you face your name forward so that the teacher can read it. 

Simple, right? But could it be better?

I was recently in a classroom where a smart fellow made a big improvement. He took the marker and wrote his name on the front but also on the back of the name card. This is ingenious because it solves a problem that people in classes often enounter: If you sit behind people that you don’t know, you can’t read their name cards.

By putting your name on the front and back of the name card, the teacher can see your name and the folks behind you can see it too. Maybe other people already do this and maybe this isn’t fantastic, but I love it; worth sharing.

Do you have any simple classroom tricks and tips?