User Experience Monitor

How Many Users Are Sufficient for a Discussion Group?

LinkedIn recently reported as part of its initial public offering package that most of its members don't use the site on a regular basis.

The fact was picked up by Jim Edwards in a recent article on bNET, recently. It's an interesting issue on at least two levels:

1) First, because LinkedIn is revealing they can't differentiate between active, inactive, and even dead members

2) Secondly, because (I would posit) it does not impact the user experience of an active member - at all.

If you actively participate in group discussions on LinkedIn, does it matter if there are only 10-20 active participants?

Would you rather have 40-50? Or 200-300?  I don't think it impacts the user experienc within a discussion group.  I currently belong to both national and regional discussions. This story was reported on in a regional discussion group of which there are less than 700 members.  There are probably "lower limits" below which a discussion group seems to become a bit lame, but I'd be hard pressed to say what those limits are.

I think quantity and quality are two wholly different aspects of any online discussion, and I for one am perfectly happy having 40 intelligent users in the conversation provided the conversation "works for me."

 

US Digital Trends in 2010

Comscore just released their report on trends in the US digital marketplace - "U.S. Digital Year in Review."

Top trends reported incude in this latest report include:

• Although portals are still large in online (measured by total time spent online/day), the general shift away from portals to social media and entertainment sites is a major trend.
• Facebook takes the lead on Engagement (no surprise), with 180 million visitors/month. Facebook now accounts for over 12% of the time spent online in the US.
• Smartphone adoption surges past 25 percent penetration in the US. One third of Americans now access mobile browsers and applications.
• In the area of search, 2010 saw the integration of real- time search, improved blended search results and other new search modules, all of which have enriched the search experience.
• Online TV viewing is showing significant growth in 2010.  On an average day in December 2010, more than 88 million Americans watched online video, up 32 % from a year earlier.

Download a copy of the report on comScore's Website.

 

A Targeted Site for Usability

The User Experience Monitor is now part of the "pond" known as the UX Pond.  This interesting new site has a targeted (they call it "acute") sesarch feature that lets you find listings of usability-related blogs, discussions, articles, events, tools, and other resources.

Or, as UX Pond puts it, "why search the ocean when the answer's in the pond?"

Next time you're looking for an answer related to User Experience, check out UX Pond's specialized usability search feature.

A New Approach to Understanding New Media

John Carey and Martin Elton's new book has finally arrived from the University of Michigan press. "When Media are New: Understanding the Dynamics of New Media Adoption and Use" has been published by the University of Michigan Press, and is also available online at Digital Culture Books.

Carey and Elton, two distinguished scholars both with a long history in user research and analysis of interative media and technologies, have compiled their years of analysis and thought into a far-reaching book that takes a unique look at the evolution of consumer technologies.

Their analysis includes how and why new media technologies are adopted, the key factors that differentiate failures from successes, the impact of interactive technologies on television viewing and the "long road" to interactive television, as well as the emergence of new consumer media such as satellite radio and mobile phone technologies.

If you're in the process of creating new new interactive products or services this book is worth a look.

Buy it online at the University of Michigan Press

Read it online for free at Digital Culture Books

The Power of Visual Communications

Clive Thompson, made a good case for visual thinking recently in Wired Magazine.   Visualizing problems can help you solve them, and he cites some interesting examples. They can also help to get people  "seeing the same mental model" as visualization expert David Sibbett told Thompson.

Thompson is looking for digital communications tools that can help people communicate more easily (like quick sketch tools on touch screen devices).  Such tools may have already arrived, but few may have embraced them: British painter David Hockney, for example, starts every day creating digital art works using a simple app called "Brushes" on his iPad.

This is a thought-provoking article for those of us in the visual communications field, and raises the question: can we do accomplish more in our everyday work by being visual communicators?  Anyone who has suffered through an all-text Powerpoint presentation knows what I'm talking about.

 

Ways to Use Twitter

Want to think out of the box?

Not sure how your business can use social media?

Bloomberg Businessweek.com published this concise slideshow of 20 different ways that businesses can use Twitter. Great when you want to jumpstart an ideas session.

 

A Short List of Market Research Blogs

I came across Kathryn Korostoff's excellent short list of market research blogs in Quirk's recently, and found it worth passing on:

A research blogger on research blogs - the 10 must reads (and a few honorable mentions)

My particular favorite is Bruce Temkin's Experience Matters blog, but there is something for everyone in this list from top marketing and market research pros.

QuickLook: Google's New 'Search as You Type' Feature

Google has recently launched a new feature that may shake the Web industry, from how search happens on sites, to how users across the Web get to sites, and it looks like this:

The feature, known as Google Instant allows a user entering a keyword term to see a dynamically changing screen as s/he types in the search text field.

Unlike other iterations of "type ahead" search that simply show the user most popular search terms through a pull-down menu, this feature has much more going on under the hood: the entire screen of search results change as you type.

Now, a dynamically changing screen can either be a great thing, or a not-so-great thing. Will users adapt to it? Like it? Hate it? The good aspect is that you can instantly fine-tune your search to get something...well..different than you had originally intended.  The negative aspect is that users may or may not understand what is happening right away.  Also, my experience in usability testing has shown me that many adult users are bothered when an interface changes rapidly, especially if they don't understand why it is changing.  It could potentially make some users nervous.

Nevertheless, I believe Google's latest feature  will have many long-term implications for search engine optimization and search advertising, as well as how competitors view the whole "search animal."

Follow more coverage about Google Instant on: PC World

 

 

What the Search Engine Wars Teach Us About Web Design

Recently, Google and Bing have been feeding off each other's design work. Well, let's say Google has been feeding off of Bing. The New York Times, among other publications, have been in turn feeding off the "Search Engine Wars."

Case in point: Google "lifted" the idea for the left-navigation of results from Microsoft's Bing a few months ago. My question is: is this so bad? I think this kind of derivative one-upmanship is at the core of the growth of the Web - everybody uses everybody else as a stepping stone to get where they want to go.

In the case of the Internet, that kind of strategy advances the collective user experience of the Web, provided the features and design used represent a good user experience. 

 

via www.nytimes.com

 

Major Resistance to Web Video Captioning

We fight a lot of usability battles in our line of work, and one always seems to be making the Web more accessible.

Why is it so hard to get closed captioning on the Web?  This article from the New York Times details an issue that has been bothering me - making Web videos accessible:

On Web Video, Captions are Coming Slowly

It seems that even the large entertainment companies are laggards when it comes to Web video captioning.  Now, I can see a small organization balking at the time and expense to caption Web video, but why would a news site or a major service like Netflix have issues with this? It's only going to help their business (and their business' credibility) to have their material accessible to the hearing impaired.