User Experience Monitor

An Ode to Search Innovation

You may not think of Amazon as a Search Engine, but of course it is on many levels.

Anthony Grafton's interesting (and wistful) discussion in The Nation about Amazon: "Search Gets Lost," reveals how Amazon has changed its focus from innovation to commercialization.

Amazon once allowed users to access something called SIPs, or statistically improbable phrases in any book, which got the essence of a book across (thus, SIPs of Karl Marx's "Labor" would be "average social labour," "Labour fund," or "abstract human labour.")  Capitalized Phrases, on the other hand, were people, places, things or topics most frequenlty mentioned (such as the word "time" in T.S. Eliot's "Collected Poems."

What was cool about these features was that they had no commercial value (or not enough commercial value).

Today, according to Grafton, these features have been phased out in favor of the ubiquitous customer-generated content (tags, reviews, etc.) that help monetize the product.  It's only natural for a giant of industry to have changed its course in favor of monetization (I think), but Grafton makes a good case for mourning the transition.

Why Texting Won't Ruin Writing

Educators (K-12 teachers and college professors alike) have often worried that texting and email is "ruining writing," referring inevitably to the emoticons and abbreviations that show up in their students' papers. This is a dire prediction, indeed, but one handily refuted by John McWhorter's commentary "Talking with Your Fingers."

This is a good analysis about equivalence in communication.  I have long held the view (supported by many others) that Internet writing is best when it's similar to oral communication - that is, colloquial.  "Write it like you would write for radio," I often tell colleagues abd friends who ask about how to get started writing material for their new Websites. That's One-to-Many communication (or broadcasting).

McWhorter takes this analogy into writing for one-to-one communication. Text and email are more like conversation, he asserts. And it's perfectly fine if they sound like conversation.

Read his commentary

Rethinking Brainstorming

For as long a I can remember, brainstorming sessions have been a part of the corporate creative process for developing software and information systems.  You sit in a room with a team of people (who in the case of interactive systems design usually include business managers, content folks, designers, and developers), and you bounce ideas off the wall. You write on white boards, you scribble flows and page layouts and where you want buttons and pulldowns and graphics or tables.

Different people pop up to add their two cents.  You know this scene. I have slugged through many a brainstorming session in my own career, and often wondered if it was as useful as everybody thinks it is.

Now, there's some new thinking on the matter, and the answer is: No.  Group sessions do NOT, it turns out, produce better output than simply  having individuals come up with ideas (or inventions or designs or whatever) on their own. At least, not as a matter of course.

Read this NYT editorial from Susan Cain: The Rise of the New Groupthink", about the many misconceptions we have on group vs individual creativity. Cain is the author of "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking," and she makes a strong case for the value of individual creativity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?emc=eta1

The Value of A Space of Your Own for Design

For many years I've struggled with the pros and cons of group work vs individual work in the area of software app and Web design.  Sometimes it's great to have a team, and a creative team at that, to work out specific problems.  Other times, well, I just need to be on my own thinking quietly about the problem (and so does my Art Director, and so does my developer).

So, I relished this article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine:  The Rise of the New Groupthink, and the research behind individual vs group creativity. And guess what the long and the short of it is? Individualism wins out when it comes to innovation. And introverts rule.

Browse vs Search - The Evolution Away from Serendipity

There's an interesting aricle in The Economist's Online Magazine "Intelligent Life" by Ian Leslie on how Internet may be hampering innovation.  He points out that as search engines like Google and social networks like Facebook give us back more of what they guess we want (rather than what we may need) we end up in a less varied and diverse world - at least online.  Many innovations come about by serendipity, and the Web is moving away from that, and more towards a tailored, personalized experience.

I am not sure I buy the entire argument, as many Web users (including myself) find a way to "discover" information in innovative ways, even using Search alone.  But it is interesting as a framework for the larger issue - the move towards Search and away from Browse as a model for behavior on the Web.

Do we want tailored? Is personalized always good?  Possibly not.  Check out Leslie's article and see for yourself:

The Search for Serendipity

And the UI Innovation Award Goes To... "Zen Mode"

Most web and mobile users look for zip and jazz and wow factors in their interfaces.  I am in love with simple interfaces.

Therefore, I applaud the Nieman Journalism Lab for their "View in Zen Mode" button.  What could be simpler?  You're reading along in an article, and you want to focus on it.  You push the "Zen Mode" button and whoosh! all the distractions of left columns and right columns and headers and footers fall away and magically, you're just - reading the article.  Sweet.

Try it out on this terrific article by Ken Doctor: "The newsonomics of the long goodbye: Kodak's, Sears', and the newspapers'" and see what you think. (Hint: The "Zen Mode" button is on the right).

The article in regular mode (a few distractions, like most Web articles)

 

The article in "Zen Mode" - mmm, lots of white space. Doesn't look exciting in this little screen capture but when you're reading it, it feels very, well, Zen. I feel calmer already.

 

 

The iPad at Work and Play

I enjoy reading Usability News, and recommend this online newsletter that comes out of the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University. In their December 2011 issue authors B.Nguyen and B. Chaparro have a summary of the results of a  study on the ways iPads are being used:

iPad Usage Patterns On-the-Go and At Work

 

Case Study: Using Designers for Problem Solving

I can't think of a more impressive testimony to the use of designers - and by extension the design process - in problem solving than is pointed out in an article by Justin McGuirk in The Guardian about some processes happening overseas - in Finland, to be exact.

The Finnish Innovation Fund advises governments on ways to solve pressing social problems (and Finland has its share). What's unique about this group is that it  incorporates designers (whether from web and interactive, urban planning or architecture) into its process for their ability to redesign systems and improve the user/customer experience - and keep their eye on the long-term picture through implementation.  It may be a way of avoiding the kinds of social disasters we're all so familiar with, when policies are implemented by bureaucrats who don't think through problems.

It's all about human-oriented outcomes.  As McGuirk points out:

"While strategic design can't necessarily find the perfect answer, it at least begins by asking the right questions.

Read more at The Guardian

The Semantic Web - but Not from the User's Perspective

CNET writer Laura Locke's article and interview with Gi Fernando on the changes coming down the pike at Facebook is interesting because they discuss the "semantic Web," not from the user's perspective, but from the advertiser's perspective.

As Facebook begins to implement its new approach to such action verbs as "Read," "Watch," and "Listen," the Internet giant will begin to monetize things in a new way. As always, the game-changer continues to change the game.

Read the entire interview

Tracking Google's Influence: A Review of 3 Books on the Search Giant

This is an interesting article  by Daniel Soar in the London Review of Books about the influence of Google.  He reviews three books out this year: "The Googlisation of Everything (and Why We Should Worry)" by Siva Vaidhyanathan, "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives" by Steven Levy, and "I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" by Douglas Edward, and analyzes what they're saying collectively about the search gian.

I love his assertion near the end of this article that: "Google is getting cleverer precisely because it is so big."  This is the antithesis of what most analysts think about Google!  How does he come to this conclusion?  You'll just have to read the article.