Moving on to new domain
Dear readers, as you may already have concluded from my post title I’m moving to a new domain. This blog as served me well and I will continue using WordPress as my plataform, but there are many topics here that I’m no longer working on so I decided to start a new one that reflects what I’m doing and my interests. I’ll be writting more often 
Thank you all for following me and hope to hear from you at my new domain: http://susanavilaca.livethoughts.net
Filed under: About me | 1 Comment
When designing a landing page we have to be very careful with what we put on that page as it’s a key page and very important in the overall picture of your website. These articles on Wikipedia have a very good description of what a landing page is and how important it is:
- Landing Page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page
- Landing Page Optimization – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page_optimization
While looking for information on how to design a great Landing Page I stumbled upon a Google Webinar called “7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design”. It’s webcast given by Tim Ash, the president and CEO of SiteTuner.com, and it talks about serious and common mistakes we make while building landing pages.
It’s a very interesting webcast, and if you’re interested in seeing it, here it is:
Filed under: Webdesign | Leave a Comment
Tags: how to make a landing page, landing page design
The Web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect – to help people work together – and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We chump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner. What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly, represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that society we build with the Web is the sort we intend.
Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web *
When I started working at Wingman one of my first projects was related with travelling (the same project I referred in my previous post). Everybody knows that a must have for any travelling website is its capability of integrating a social network that supports reviews, comments, recommendations, etc. Resuming, it’s critical for its success! So when we started having ideas for the social network, I faced it as a natural project requirement. But then I went to another project, and another, and another, and in almost everyone of them we used some kind of social tool! As a newbie in this area I started thinking: “We use social in everything!! What does it have that is so special?”.
As an attempt to find an answer to my questions I went to Wingman’s library (it’s not a real library, just a bookcase with some books) and picked up a book called “Designing for the Social Web” by Joshua Porter. When I started reading this book I understood why social networks are so special, and why almost every website, specially e-commerce websites, need them to survive.
Let’s first have a look on what a social network is: Wikipedia says that a “social network is a Social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, sexual relationships, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.” As you can see social networks are not dependent from technology, in fact, they have been among us since humans exist. We are innately social creatures, we exhibit social behavior, and live in social groups. The consequences of our social nature is that our behavior is profoundly influenced by the people we know and groups we join.
However, our social groups are not the only thing affecting our behavior. As psychologist Kurt Lewin says “an individual’s behavior is a function of both their personality and their environment.” Traditionally there can be two different environments: a social environment (social groups, etc.) and a physical environment (weather conditions, etc.). Both these types of environment combined with our personality define how we behave.
However, how the concept of social networks, so natural among the non-technological world, became so popular in a virtual technology-based world?
By reading the book from Joshua Porter and from my own experience, I came to a conclusion. In this Information Age we are simply overwhelmed with the amount of information we have to deal everyday. When we join a social network typically the first thing we do is to connect with the people we already know in the physical world. People with who we share values, visions, ideas, etc. So social networks are helping people manage their attention in a world where it is increasingly hard to do so. They help us connect with people who have the same interests we have and focus our attention on what really matters. These concept is known as Attention Economy. A proof of this is the Amazon Effect. Amazon was on of the first e-commerce sites to implement customer reviews. This social tool that allowed people to see others recommendations on a given product. This simple social functionality that provided users with information not biased by sellers, acted as a magnet pull of Amazon. Suddenly people had the truth, this made all the difference.
But where does social software fits in the law defined by Lewin?
Logically fits in the environment variable. But what type of environment: physical or social? Being environment what defines what we can and can not do, when we are using a social application what defines what we can and can not do is the user interface. As Joshua Porter says “While we are intuitively aware of this [...] we rarely reflect on how much our behavior is determined by the interface we use”.
The big challenge of social software is to build interfaces that support the behavior of the people who use them. Many have succeeded here. Take for examples, cases of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc.
Resuming, social networks became so popular because they support our inactely social behavior: they allow us to form social groups with people that share the same interests with us, focus our attention on our interests and share opinions, recommendations and other types of information with others.
* quote taken from “Designing for the Social Web” by Joshua Porter
Filed under: socialnetworks | 3 Comments
Tags: popularity, social networks
Another great talk from Sir Ken Robinson regarding creativity. A must see!
Filed under: Interesting | Leave a Comment
Tags: creativity, education
Colors and User Experience
After being away for nearly three months I decided to finally bring my blog back to life. A few weeks ago when I was working on a website related with traveling a colleague of mine asked “What’s the color for traveling?”. Although I can’t remember the answer to this question I remember another question that came up: “Why is choosing the right color(s) so important and how it affects our experience while navigating through the web?”.
After doing some research and some questions I realized that this color issue is a matter of much more importance. Colors carry a psychological meaning that interferes with our behavior and feelings: colors are able give us a sensation of peace, joy, sadness, cold, hot, etc.
But what this have to do with the colors I choose for my website? I just want it to look great!”.
Imagine that you own a site for selling baby stuff and that your designer comes up with a fabulous design with a color scheme involving black and purple, for example. In spite of being fabulous you wouldn’t want to pick that design for your site, because black and purple are colors that people usually associate with death not with life! So by choosing that design, more specifically that color scheme, you would be passing the wrong emotions to your users, what would lead them to confusion and not trusting your site. So by choosing the right colors you can transmit emotions to users. Emotions that relate to your business, that are convenient for you, etc.
Also through colors you can also transmit a message to your users. Imagine that you choose for your baby stuff website the colors blue, red and yellow. It’s not a very good combination, and the first thing users may think when they go to your website is “This site is so amateurish that I don’t know if I trust these guys…” or “This site is so ridiculous! No way I’m gonna buy these guys something!”.
By now you may already have noticed that all goes down to TRUST. By choosing the right colors (and of course, making a good design) you can make your users trust you.
Another important aspect of colors is that they affect the usability of your website. In terms of readability, if you choose the wrong contrast between the background and your text users won’t be able to read it. Also if you want to emphasize some important section/information on your website you can do it by choosing a color that highlights the content.
For more information about:
Color Psychology: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html
Website Coloring: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_red_queen_color_theory/
Colors in different cultures: http://www.office.xerox.com/small-business/tips/color-guide/enus.html (see comment by Bruno Figueiredo)
Special thanks to José Luís Devezas, Diogo Coelho, Ivo Gomes and Paulo Pereira for giving me their opinions on the matter.
Filed under: UX/Usability | 8 Comments
Tags: color psychology, usability, user experience, website design
Is Usablity no longer enough?
A while ago I read a post by Dr. Eric Schaffer, CEO of Human Factors International, about Usability being no longer enough which put me thinking.
He says: “Usability is no longer enough to create successful websites” and “traditional usability practises focus on creating efficient sites that are simple and easy to use. But just because a site is easy to use doesn’t mean it will engage customers and meet business goals”. Considering his position regarding Usability he presents a new approach to web design: PET Design, which allows companies to influence and deeper their interactions with online customers through Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust (PET). PET Design is about understanding users, how and why they make decisions, the motivators and motivational triggers that influence how they react to website messages and content.
I think Dr. Schaffer’s vision of a successful website is a very business-oriented one. His view focus mainly on websites for doing business (e-commerce, etc.). However there are several other types of websites, from informational sites to web applications people use to do their work, where the focus is not selling goods but finding something or accomplishing tasks quickly and efficiently. In these cases I think Usability is enough. Of course I think there are other important factors like the ones referred on Perter Morville’s User Experience Honeycomb but Usability is the main point.
This approach, PET Design, is very interesting and in my opinion brings new potential to e-business, but stating that “Usability is no longer enough” I don’t think it’s right. Usability still has a long path ahead.
Filed under: Opinions, UX/Usability | 3 Comments
Tags: PET Design, usability
Last month the Portuguese versions of Google Maps and Google Transit were launched.
Google Maps is pretty the same only written in Portuguese. The only problem is that there are many errors on street names. Where is Google going to get the streets database for Portugal? Google Maps is very good at finding locations but this problem really affects its performance!!
Google Transit is a very useful feature. However only two transportation companies in Lisbon are actually integrated on the system: Carris and Metro Lisboa. The problem with Carris is that bus stops aren’t georeferenced, so bus paths are always straightforward from start to end points. It’s actually funny see bus routes go over trees and buildings , but is definitively a feature to improve.
I hope more transportation companies, like CP and Vimeca among others, join the system because at the moment we have mainly have information of how to travel by public transports on the city centre and it world really be helpfull to know how to get to the periphery.
Ultimately I hope this system to be extended to other Portuguese cities where it would be equally usefull.
Filed under: Opinions | 2 Comments
Tags: google maps, google transit
“If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.” Alan Cooper
The other day I was running trough some presentations on Slideshare and I found a presentation that got me interested in the Polite Computing topic.
So what is Polite Computing? Polite Computing is about building software that is:
- Interested: polite software remembers users preferences and helps users make desired choices. It is not enough to give choices now and forget them later. When choices repeat, software should remember the last user choice as its default. Also, choices should be simple and clear. A choice that is misrepresented and/or misunderstood only confuses users and does not represent a real choice.
- Respectful: polite software does not hold back useful information and declares itself and its source. If the users are not acknowledgeable of all the useful information, they can’t make the right choices. So it’s important to present them all the facts. Also, as a common interaction, it’s made of two parties: the user and the software/service. When one party is hidden, it can be accountable for its actions. A polite software declares itself to let users know what they’re dealing with.
- Forgiving: polite software lets users undo a mistake. When users make a mistake it’s important that the software lets them correct it, so that they feel confident and under control of the interaction.
From its characteristics, it’s possible to say that politeness is a key social requirement for Human-Computer Interaction.
So how can we make our software more polite? In my opinion the answer is on adaptive interfaces. Adaptive interfaces go beyond the “easy to use and work” interface, to interfaces that have personal meaning to the user by personalizing the interaction according to users most common tasks.
An adaptive interface can be defined as an interactive interface that improves its ability to interact with a user based on partial experience with that user. This type of interfaces shows “care” about the user and also respect for him.
Like everything, adaptive interfaces also have its cons. Because of its adaptive nature, this type of interfaces change, and users may feel a lack of consistency on the location of items. Also this problem leads to some difficulties on users learning how to operate with the interface. Resuming, adaptive interfaces may lead to users experiencing a sense of randomness and unpredictability. That’s why it’s important having good sense when building these kind of interfaces and study the past errors on this area, so that the you don’t end up introducing another Mr. Clippy on your interface!
In spite of its dangers, adaptive interfaces bring great improvements on the user experience subject. The key factor is not to mess too much with the interface and keeps things simple. Remember that doing things wrong may be worse than not doing it at all.
Filed under: UX/Usability | 1 Comment
Tags: adaptive interfaces, polite computing, user experience
World Usability Day
Tomorrow it’s the World Usability Day. It’s a day about making our world work better and about “Making Life Easy” and user friendly.
The World Usability Day was founded on 2005 by the Usability Professionals’ Association with goal of ensuring that services and products are easy to access and simpler to use. So each year, on the second Thursday of November over 225 events are organized in over 40 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice.
This year’s theme is Transportation and understanding how our use of transportation impacts our environment and our everyday life.
This year I’m going to participate in an event organized by The Usability Page where I’m going to talk about Usability, its importance and then a little about what’s going on in Portugal in this area.
These event will be held on the beautiful city of Porto at Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto.
Check out the World Usability Day Event Map for an event near you.
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Tags: world usability day
Yesterday I went to Peter Morville’s talk about User Experience Strategy, at User Experience Week. It was a great talk and Peter talked about some very important topics like Information Architecture (IA) and Findability.
He focused on the importance of IA and its applicability not only to web sites but to software in general and on how important is to think about the target audience when building IA schemes. He showed some examples related to wealth industry where it was used a very technical taxonomy to categorize several diseases, and when you wanted to find information about “Diabetes” you wouldn’t know where to look.
Then he talked a little about User Experience introducing his User Experience Honeycomb and how it emerged of usability being no longer sufficient. He explained that usability is becoming a synonym of quality and therefore it’s necessary to go beyond usability and explore other facets of User Experience, like desirability, credibility and Findability.
He is particularly very fond of Findability as he believes it will be the driver of UX future. Findability is the quality of something being locatable or navigable, the degree to which an object is easy to discover, and the degree to which a system supports wayfinding and information retrieval. On this picture the “search” functionality plays an essential role as a complex and adaptive system that allows users to find their way across the Internet, Intranet and complex websites.
Regarding User Experience Strategy itself Peter didn’t went to deep only refering his User Experience Strategy Honeycomb (another honeycomb ) and emphasizing that “executives can no longer afford to formulate strategy without embracing user experience, and to the extent their offerings include web sites, software products, and interactive services, these leaders must understand the complex interplay between strategy, scope, structure, semantics, skeleton, and surface”.
Additional Information:
- What is Product Excellence? by Luke Wroblewski
- ambientdevices.com
- Search Patterns by Peter Morville
- Presentation – http://semanticstudios.com/uxstrategy.pdf
- The Information Architecture Institute
Filed under: UX/Usability | Leave a Comment
Tags: findability, Peter Morville, user experience strategy
Recent Entries
- Moving on to new domain
- 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design by Tim Ash
- Social Networks – Why are they so popular?
- “Being creative is challenging what you take for granted” – Sir Ken Robinson
- Colors and User Experience
- Is Usablity no longer enough?
- Google Transit and Google Maps in Portuguese
- Polite Computing and Adaptive Interfaces
- World Usability Day
- Peter Morville @ User Experience Strategy
- My talk @Shift 2008
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