Warmest Greetings,

What is Usability in One Word?  

:: Friday, February 25, 2005 ::

John S. Rhodes asks "If we blasted "usability" into oblivion so that it could never be used again, what word or short phrase would replace it?"

Weird karma. Last night I couldn't sleep, and was wondering the exact same thing!

It's no secret that in usability-land, which is made up of folks from all kinds of backgrounds, nobody agrees on what usability is. It's been argued that usability testing is faulty because the science behind the methodolgy isn't even standard practice. There's disagreement on whether to call people "users". The goals for usability in design aren't universally understood, and yet we're asked to prove the return on investment anyway.

WebWord's John S. Rhodes first wiggled out some comments from Ron Zeno in a Cre8asiteForums thread called Usability or Donkey Design? (Or, Why do you love usability?).

RonZ wrote, "I don't see how usability is like Donkey Design or mathematics, though it might make sense to compare a specific usability testing method to Donkey Design. I don't think there is anything analogous to mathematics - testing methods are too specific while usability itself too vague."

In What is Usability in One Word?, John decides to dig into the sandbox.

He writes, "But the more I think about it, and the more I talk about it, I think usability is best summed up with this word:

--> EMPATHY <--

No word better describes the intent of usability."

For my search engine optimization and marketing friends, who are getting more and more interested in the user centered design side of web site enhancements, how we present ourselves as a user centered industry must be quite entertaining.

If we're so determined in our belief that things should work properly, wouldn't that include the ability to work together to make product improvements? Are we missing unified standards, or is it that nobody agrees on what they should be?

As for me, shortly before falling asleep and mulling this over, I decided usability design is the same as being co-dependent.

We'll just do anything to make your experience better.


Honk If You Miss Me

This is my last post until I return and recover from my trip to the Search Engine Strategies Conference in NYC

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/25/2005 11:50:00 AM

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:: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 ::

That he says it's just common sense makes it seem like anybody can do this stuff. Luckily for him and an entire industry centered around logic (and I'm not talking about math, ok?), there's more to user centered design than visualizing what they want and how to give it to them.

There's also a secret ingredient not often evident in the usability field, which I still visualize as stuffed shirt and proper knee length dress oriented. The real appeal of someone like Steve Krug, author of the famous web site usability design book called Don't Make Me Think, is he's hilarious.

This is also what makes or breaks some blogs. They either reach out and wrap their arms around your head and do that thing with their knuckles rubbing hard on the top of it so that you scream out "Uncle!", or they're simply eyeball scan material while you're waiting for your email to load.

A nice interview with Steve Krug and discussion at Cre8asiteForums from some Steve Krug fans reminds us that usability can be fun, as well as just plain common sense.

For example, see how fun it is tell a client what the web site priorities should be. This is what Steve says they are:

"Organize the site according to what your users are going to be looking for, not according to your corporate org chart, or even according to your business priorities--unless they happen to coincide with your users' interests."

Yes. That will get you a raise for sure. Or not. (Who do you know in corporate-fantasy-land that cares about how people actually use a web site?)

The secret thing he does is simple. He tucks little bits of funny stuff in places where you're not likely to look, but you're drawn there because if you get the fact that Mr. Krug cares about your web site visit experience, then you know he put peanuts on the bar for you.

Things like on his Advanced Common Sense site (the name itself is funny, like there's a course in it or something). The content is conversational, as if you just asked where the bathroom is and he wants to show off the pretty purple towels. He knows his readers like beer. He laid out the page so that you want to keep scrolling down, and he knows you will, because he's posted the weather in Boston.

The man's a freaking genius.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/22/2005 11:54:00 AM

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:: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 ::

I was an equestrian during my growing up years. First, I had to learn how to ride a horse. Then, as I became an experienced rider and entered horseshows, I learned to train my horses how to jump and listen to my subtle body commands. I knew they could "hear" me because they would perform the task I'd just requested or I could watch their ears twitch forward and backwards, on the alert for feedback or encouragement from me.

Web design reminds me of the long road I had as a horseback rider. In the beginning, when I was still small, it seemed everyone rode better than I could. I wasn't aware of my horse as much. It was enough of a challenge to keep my heels down and learn what a "lead" was when a horse cantored.

Web sites, when built by someone new to design, aren't as focused on their visitors and search engines. They're at the stage where they're learning how to use their software, maybe trying CSS, or wondering how to make that hover effect for links. They're not listening to feedback and in many cases, they're turning a blind ear to that and the fact that they should be seeking feedback at all.

Someone once came to me asking for free advice for his web site, in the form of a review. I know that to do my job fairly and accurately, I need a lot more information to perform a usability review, but I offered a few basic clues on navigation and helping the visitor understand the purpose of the web site, at no charge.

What I received back was thanks, but they didn't need my help after all. What the person told me was, in essence, the site is doing well and the owner knows what its about, and that's all that matters. So, I wondered, why was I asked to review it if it's doing so well? In addition, since I had trouble understanding the navigation, I guess I didn't count.

There was a poster that used to hang in a barn at one of the horse stables where I worked for my riding lessons (I always worked in return for my lessons.) It was of three monkeys with their hands over their ears, mouth and eyes and below that it said, "See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. Have no fun."

I saw that poster often, for years. It eventually came to mean, "If you want to do what you want and have fun with it, you better listen up."

Why is it that usability seems to be in the forefront of any discussion about web design and search engine marketing? Is it because in general, we're past the early education stage in our lessons and now into the advanced stages, where we're more aware of our surroundings? Have we just realized that not everyone uses our web site the way we do?

Can You Read Me Now?

I love studies in human factors, user experience, usability and search engine usage. I can never know enough about how people will react to a web site, no matter where they found it, or what it looks like. Some studies are very surprising.

One of them is the Reading Online Text with a Poor Layout: Is Performance Worse?. It seems as though people are willing tolerate more than I gave them credit for when it comes to reading content online.

The study concludes, "Results from this study showed that, interestingly, reading performance or comprehension was not influenced by the quality of the page layout, despite the fact that participants often had to sometimes read around a photograph in the poor layout passages."

It also points out, "Higher satisfaction and preference of the better layout, should not be discounted, however, since such variables influence whether a user continues interacting with a website or simply moves on to one with better visual appeal."

Which brings me to the point I like to make over and over about why we should test our sites or seek suggestions for improvements. You didn't build it for you, and you alone, to use.


PS - Thank you to the Cre8asiteForums member who told me about the grammatical error I had on my UE site. I fixed it. I appreciate the time you took to notify me.



Related articles

1.) Seen in today's SearchEngineGuide - Why Search Engine Marketing Has A Passion for Web Site Usability

2.) Seen in today's SiteProNews - Do Not Drop Your Web Site Off the Search Engine Cliff

3.) Seen in today's blog post by Diane Vigil at Developed Traffic Human-Computer Interaction is, uh …. Where Diane says:

"Me, I'm a fan of plain-speak (you know, that stuff that normal people can understand). Unfortunately, one often has to translate depending upon the audience. And since the Web Design industry, done right, includes a whole raft of other disciplines and industries, one finds a whole lot of translating quite necessary if one intends, you know, to communicate."

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/16/2005 01:53:00 PM

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:: Friday, February 11, 2005 ::

In order to better understand something, we like to put things into terms we understand and can relate to. Dating is one of them. Why is it that just before Valentine's Day I'm seeing romantic or relationship references everywhere?

Take Romancing the User Experience. If you don't want to read the article, the comic by Tom Chi and Kevin Cheng says it all. If you've ever dated a Virgo, you'll REALLY get it.

Cheng writes, "Romance, or indeed any human relationships, are not very usable. Ever see the fake remote controls to control the opposite sex? That's a good user experience. One-click happiness. Wouldn't it be great to just have 1-click Valentine's and Birthday solutions? Yet even if we were offered such an option, we'd probably take the difficult, unusable choice instead. Why would we subject ourselves to this?"

Well, this is where it's messed up. You can't control someone or change them into something you want. I know I learned this on both ends, where I wanted someone to change or they wanted me to change. And in one particular case, a boyfriend and I broke up because he fully expected the Mothership was coming to get him and he couldn't take me along.

I kid you not.

With web sites we want to control where our visitors go, even if we have no clue where they're coming from or why they've come at all. We call them users, and again, this is a term that sounds too much like dating, human relationships and sad to say, suffering some trauma from that.

We're having a go at the term "user" in Are you a loser if you use the word "user"?, in which I stir up the kettle but made points by showing a visitor "annotated resource links".

Anyway, like I said before, in order to better understand something, we like to put things into terms we understand and can relate to.

When it comes right down to it, web sites and lovers want the same thing. Conversions. Making a good impression. Return visits. Committment. And we try things. We always try stuff. It keeps the journey exciting. Things like user instructions. It helps with communication, both for web sites and for dating. Don't take anything for granted.

Test test test. See what works and what doesn't. Usability testing is less of a hassle than dating because usability specialists work from a plan. My dating experience consisted of listening to a variety of pick up lines at the bar, and watching them struggle to pick just the right one. Sorta like navigation labels. If they hit the right one, I'd click on and take them somewhere, usually the dance floor.

User personas are getting to be all the rage and I think this is great. But chances are the design folks won't nab some of their more colorful visitors because they don't know how to talk to them or even imagine them into existence on paper. They don't have the right terms. Think teenage web sites.

You have to go out of your element and do something odd, like sing.

This is how I knew if a guy would work for me or not. If could sing the song about putting the lime in the coconut and drinking it all up and they didn't think that was just totally weird for me to be singing, they were a good catch.

And if they sang along with me, heck. That was a conversion for sure.

May you all have a user-friendly Valentine's Day.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/11/2005 06:06:00 PM

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:: Thursday, February 10, 2005 ::

Part of the excitement of being selected as TechSmith's "Blog of the Month" winner for February, was their hope that I'd write an article for their newsletter as well. Which, of course, I did. And, I got to yack about my favorite two topics - search engine marketing and user centered web design.

TechSmith Morae is new software for usability testing. Among their clients is Jared Spool of UIE, as well as Dell, Yahoo!, and Amazon. The Morae newsletter covers usability topics, and is nifty in that you need not to have purchased the software to be able to get their newsletter. Which means you can click here to see them write about my blog.

"Kim Krause Berg, usability consultant, is the owner of Cre8pc.com (get it? Create peace!) which is a well-written and interesting blog about "usability, SEO, Web development, search engines, and Internet stuff."

Thank you TechSmith, for your very kind words.

The piece I wrote is called Why Search Engine Marketing Has A Passion for Web Site Usability

Snippet:

"Today’s top web design companies offer search engine optimization and marketing, as well as usability testing and skilled user centered design staff. They’re hired to construct a web site that achieves business requirements, while also surviving an uphill battle in search engines. Their usability specialist is a bonus for a client’s long term success because their input increases conversions. Pioneering user experience design skills include persuasive design, copywriting, information architecture, and creating an emotional connection with web site visitors. It’s not just about colors anymore."


Rumblings and fumblings in SEO-Land

Is there really an SEO industry?

Is Search Engine Optimization Getting Harder?

What is Donkey Design?

WebWord's John S. Rhodes, of Oristus wrote one of the few posts on usability that has ever made everyone totally shut up in Usability or Donkey Design? (Or, Why do you love usability?). I mean, like, NOBODY responded to his essay.

Guess John got in the last (web)word.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/10/2005 03:37:16 PM

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:: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 ::

I always enjoy it when Chris Ridings and his merry band of rabble rousers have a go at the SEO/SEM industry. Their First Annual SearchGuild Birthday Search Industry Awards ceremony was well worth cramming into my last minute reading before "LOST" airs on TV.

I'm especially pleased that Cre8asiteForums was nominated for "best search engine forum", but lost because we don't grovel for worshippers and didn't faint when Danny Sullivan's SEO forum launched (which also lost, by the way.)

Nah, nah.

Although I have a huge crush on Mike Grehan, I was pleased my good friend and co-Cre8asiteForums Administrator, Ammon Johns (aka Black Knight), won the "Most knowledgeable person who's name isn't "Danny Sullivan" or "Mike Grehan" award. They wrote,

"In the end we decided that Black Knight's long standing in the industry and willingness to share his knowledge should win it."

Kudos to SearchGuild.com for being the alternative-lovers alternative. Clap hands. Smiley face. Balloons. And toss in the drinking buddies emoticons thingy too.

(This is how we forums folk communicate you know.)

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/09/2005 07:33:11 PM

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:: Friday, February 04, 2005 ::

Mystery meat navigation, business execs that don't care about the web site drywall, confusing web design with sex and using Microsoft FrontPage (blech!) to build a site are just a fraction few of the points in the hilarious The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004.

Stunningly accurate, this pie-in-your-face look at web page techniques that suck is far better than any lecture, or web site checklist. Learn by humor. How come Jakob doesn't do this?

Speaking of which, if you work on a web site for teens, Jakob Nielsen has a good piece on usability testing findings...Usability of Websites for Teenagers.

In the UK?

Netimperitive has this thing called The Lifetime Award (left side nav, scroll down.)
"Vote for who you think deserves to be recognised for their lifetime contribution to the UK's digital business."

I don't know many of the folks, but notable is Danny Sullivan, who has become part of the living room furniture on both sides of the ocean. More info.

Behind the Curtin

Okay. So there are days at work where you feel like you are either Dorothy, Scarecrow, The Tin Man or the Lion - or all four. You're out to see the Wizard. To complete the journey, there's project management, sub-contractors, angry emails to the departments holding you up and a place to scream when management just doesn't get it.

Do you hide information, just to keep some project sanity? Or, so the client has no idea they hired a place that's dysfunctional? There's some interesting thoughts on the matter by the makers of Basecamp, an online project management software tool.

In Open and honest communication, Jason Fried at Signal vs Noise, writes,

"One of the top requests as of late is for a company to be able to hide contractors from their clients. They don’t want their clients to know that third party contractors are working on their projects. Anyway you look at that, someone isn’t getting the whole truth. It puzzles me."

Ego Trip

Somebody is sure to fall for this stunt. Like I'm gonna pay someone money so I can "see expressions on people's faces when I show up with my Tiara and Boa."

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/04/2005 02:18:26 PM

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:: Thursday, February 03, 2005 ::

When I was in High School, the senior class voted me for two awards. One was for "The Most Radical". The other was for "The Most Freakiest", which even today, I don't know what that means.

I was, as far as I viewed myself, a few things. Very fair minded. And I disliked being plopped into any one group. As far as I cared, people are people and what you do or what you wear isn't who you are.

Fast forward to 2005, and things still aren't feeling right. For example, in a long debate about the troubles at DMOZ, someone made reference to there being a difference in the types of end users who use the Directory product. There were webmasters or searchers. And, then there were customers. What a surprise to learn DMOZ may be making a distinction, and will judge submissions, or worse, feedback, based on which of these types they're dealing with.

Search engines and directories are for all people, know matter their motivation.

However, there are people who vehemently believe that anyone in the search engine optimization or marketing business is there soley to manipulate or trick search engines into delivering something people want. My clever friend, Ammon Johns, once said, "SEO is all about usability and accessibility."

His insights were on the money, and bare repeating in a year of massive changes and competition between search engines and directories. Ammon also said,

"The basis of all SEO is really simple: we design for one more broad type of user-agent than most of the designers ever think of – even the so-called progressive ones. SEOs design for the spiders to get as much out of the site as the human users can."

To accomplish this goal, which is to help search engines provide accurate results for the people who search, takes more than sticking in meta tags or creating connect-the-dot muliple domains.

Innovation, these days, is understanding what people want and building it for them.

This is happening. Peter DaVanzo, unhappy with long waits for submissions to the giant Directory, DMOZ, built his own Directory, called RubberStamped.org. He took enormous heat for doing so, even from his own SEO/SEM industry peers. But, time will tell if his goal of meeting the needs of end-users will prove to be the correct choice. When DMOZ stopped listening to its "customers", whether they paid for the service or not, they risked losing loyal visitors.

We all know that Google is constantly buried in R & D. MSN, surprise-surprise, has gone back to the drawing board and relaunched MSN Search. They didn't do this because they were deaf, dumb and blind, though one wonders. Acting as if there was no problem, or no competition, helped make Google the number one search engine. We're watching the games begin, now that some of these giants have woken up.

Today I tried Yahoo!'s new Y!Q. I loaded it into my Firefox Browser, which Yahoo! smartly chose to not ignore as a browser to make this application functional in. Y!Q is a tool that allows you to run a search on something you may be reading about and, at your whim (which we all have, right?), you can stop and run a quick search to learn more on a phrase contained in the article, or a question you just thought of.

I tested it, by pulling up one of my articles, and then asking Y!Q, "Where are usability services". My own UsabilityEffect services page came up in the number 2 spot.

The software tester in me was suspicious, because I was asking Y!Q from my own IP, while stationed at one of my own pages. I wondered if that influenced the search results somehow.

So I pulled up my friend John Rhodes' WebWord web site and once there, I asked Y!Q, "where are usability services" and again, it sent me to my site. Hum. Very flattering, but I'm not convinced.

For fun, while starting at both my Cre8pc homepage, and John's WebWord sites, I asked Y!Q, Find John S. Rhodes (I added the "S" so as not to get everyone with that name. I wanted the WebWord John.) Y!Q delivered me his About John page from this WebWord site in the number 1 spot. Even if I started from my Blog, which links to his site, instead of taking me to my own link to John's site, Y1Q referred to the proper page - his. It wasn't influenced by where I was when I asked the question.

Though I'd like to see this tested more, to see if where you are or who you are has any influence on the search result, it does stand out to me as example of designing for all people. User centered design, for a mass, broad-range target market such as a search engine, doesn't matter who you are or what you're wearing. It doesn't matter if you're eating at your computer, or have purple and green hair.

What does matter to their developers is what you came looking for. And better yet, and most interesting, why.

Search engine technology is considering your needs, and believe me, from what I'm hearing, this is the tip of the iceberg.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/03/2005 11:16:07 AM

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:: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 ::

It's so hard to concentrate on writing about my big exciting announcement when my daughter keeps yelling down to my office questions about a Groundhog.

"Yes", I rattle off to her while pulling up my blog application, "The Groundhog didn't see his shadow, so we have 6 more weeks of winter." (Daughter wails to boyfriend on the phone.)

His name (the Groundhog, not the boyfriend) is Punxsutawney Phil. No, I'm not going to spell it, I yell back to her. It's a town in Pennsylvania. "The whole country watches a groundhog from Pennsylvania?" she asks. Yes, I dutifully reply. So now Pennsylvania can be famous for the Philadelphia Eagles and a groundhog.

I've impressed her with this.

Now, for my news.


Blog of the Month

TechSmith Corporation, maker of my favorite screenshot tool, Snag-It, and other products, has selected this blog for its February Blog of the Month in their "What is Usability?" section of the web site. (Scroll to the bottom of that page to see the Cre8pc blog link.)

Last year TechSmith launched Morae, a software based tool used in usability testing and user experience research. Ever since I saw their ads in the Usability Professional Association's quarterly publicaiton for members, I've been eyeing that tool for my own business use.

Along with the honor of being their Blog of the Month, I'm crafting an article for their February Morae Newsletter, which is due out, oddly enough, on my daughter's birthday.

Which brings me back to my daughter again. When I told her, on her return from school today, that my blog was chosen and I'd be writing an article, she wanted to know, "Do you get paid for it?", which translated means, "Can we go to the mall?"

I'll never be famous in my house, will I.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/02/2005 03:06:46 PM

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:: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 ::

For the record, I'm freezing my butt off in my office because my wood stove is taking forever to heat up.

Following up on the news of MSN's now official, finally legitimate, no more BETA folks, re-launch of its search engine, I have to admit, I was shocked at my very first pass.

The true test is my UsabilityEffect.com site, which came out in May, and though Google indexed it with zesto, rank is a sad tale I scream about behind closed doors. No matter what rabbits I've pulled from my hat, Google has given me a complex about that site. Meanwhile, Cre8pc.com is treated like a Queen; but of course, it's been around since 1996 and well deserves Google's nod. And (ahem) Google loves this blog.

MSN Search, meanwhile, has me gasping. Typing in web+site+usability+reviews, my UE site is on page one of SERPs. Not only that, MSN scored more points for featuring my services page first, followed up with the home page. How freaking wonderful is this?

So let today, February 1, 2005, be a day you remember where you were. Look for your web site(s). Revel in the love. Sing in the rain. Run around stark naked, screaming with joy. For one historical day, let me pathetically admit, I'm paryting with MSN. Come on. WoodStock, as you know, only happened once too.


Discussion: And then there were three - MSN Launch Search engine

Danny Sullivan's coverage: It's Official - MSN Search Launches!

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 2/01/2005 10:48:05 AM

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