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Designing for Push and Pull

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 07:37:48 -0600

The profession of improving usability asks how we best help our users fulfill their goals. The goal and task orientation of usability is carved into stone in the ISO standard definition for what usability is. There is however a part of the usability profession that can’t be concerned with a clear goal.

What if your users do not have a clear purpose for visiting a website? What if we need to help them provide a purpose? Are we then talking User Experience (UX)? Are we improving usability for our users if we help them solve a goal they didn’t first know they had?

Heavy task orientation assumes that our users have an urge to pull: to complete the task they had in mind or to find the information they were looking for. Users who pull have an extraordinarily large motivation to finish the task they are trying to complete.

However, in many other cases our users do not have a clear task to accomplish. They might not even have a clear purpose of visiting your website other than wasting time, having fun, getting a laugh, “surfing around”, or just keeping updated. There is no pull that motivates them in a specific direction, but they’re somewhat open to being pushed.

Push and pull can be defined as to opposing strategies for influencing your users – or two different modes your users can be in.

Push

When we design to influence our users through a push strategy, we begin by forecasting their needs and then designing the most efficient system to ensure everything our users need is available at the right time and the right place. This is at best a carefully scripted mechanism which can deliver a useful service. Most often however, push becomes just another call-out for attention.

The premise of push is that the “pusher” knows what is in the best interest of the user – or at least what triggers a pull in the user. The pusher believes to have found a way to apply the right mechanisms and triggers in order to ensure success. As it is hard to predict future behavior, push tends to be a replication of past experience tweaking the current environment by minor changes.

The push strategy is used all over. Media is programmed, packaged, and pushed to users based on their anticipated needs. Pushing is editing the bigger picture and tailoring it for the end user. Some would say that push is knowing better than the users – its utilizing a strategy that is not afraid to say “Do this, not that!” or “This is better than that!”.

Most push strategies utilize emails, twitter, facebook, or merely a front page full of content which the user can stumble upon and find interesting.

Pull

When pull works best, users can easily find and access resources when they need them. A prime example is search: users query what they want and results are delivered.

An even more sophisticated form of pull is a rather serendipitous one. We go to the places where the chance of making it is bigger. We go where the chance of being lucky or running into the right people is bigger. Software developers move to Silicon Valley, country musicians to Nashville, aspiring super-models to Paris or New York, skateboarders to skateboarding.com, and designers to Smashing magazine or something similar. Users tend to go where they have the biggest chance of running into what they need in order to take the next step – even if they don’t exactly know what that next step is. We go to social media sites in order to run into old friends, new acquaintances, and discover people who might be useful for us: we go there to let these things happen to us.

Online communities is a great example of the pull strategy being applied well. Here, users with shared interests, but far apart from each other hang out in online communities to learn from people better or as good as themselves.

Going from Push to Pull

The art of it all is going from push to pull. It’s striving for delivering value to the end-user when he or she pulls it rather than trying to push things that most likely are irrelevant.

Utilizing pull is trying to find a way to motivate people to act. To motivate people to have a purpose or end-goal. Going from push to pull is moving the burden to the users: letting the users take action instead of you. Going from push to pull is easing the cognitive load on the user and letting the user explore – access, attract, and achieve rather than being instructed.

Examples of great pull in traditional push environments

iLike.com music challenge
iLike.com once had a music quiz where the user should guess what song was playing within 30 seconds. A quick answer would be rewarded with more points than a late answer. The more points gathered, the higher rank the user would receive.

iLike.com successfully converted a typical push situation into a pull. Instead of trying to force all sorts of music down the throat of the user, just to play something (push), a pull is created around the notion of gathering points. The user is provided with a purpose – a task. In the process, iLike.com learns a great deal about the user’s music preferences (a knowledge about certain music can indicate a preference toward that) and allows for a serendipitous music session where the user gets the opportunity to stumble upon music that he likes.

LinkedIn.com
LinkedIn.com wants you to browse and interact with your business acquaintances. The straight forward way of using LinkedIn.com is to browse for people you know or are interested in when you feel the pull to do so.

However, LinkedIn.com successfully applies several mechanisms to let the user want to pull more. They do so by providing interesting tasks that was before visiting linkedin.com unknown to be interesting for the user. One such task is to stalk the people who showed interest in you. It is interesting when the user sees it, and provides a reason to come back and check at a later time.

- Original article by Anders Toxboe for UI Patterns.

A Dialogue With Your Home Page

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:25:54 -0500

Often when I’m designing I try to imagine a screen interaction as a face-to-face dialog between two people. Specifically, I try to imagine that the person visiting or using the screen is trying to have a conversation with a person representing the website or software the screen is part of. Of course, real-life conversation is by its nature reactive…we can instantly respond to a direct question and generally structure our responses based on where the conversation is going. When we design, we don’t have this luxury, and so we are left with designing a one-sided static conversation. This is hard!…and the results are often stilted and not at all like a real human conversation.

In the conversation below I imagine what it would be like to talk to most home pages…you know the ones…with the giant “Sign Up” button that commands your attention above all else.

Setting: The beautifully designed lobby entrance to your company’s corporate headquarters.

You: “Hmm…I just found this place by taking a path that looked interesting. You do software or something?”

Him (Salesperson in building lobby): “We offer amazing Software!”

You: “Ok, what is it?”

Him: “Sign up Now”

You: “Um…what does it do?”

Him: “Sign up Now!”

You: “How does it work?”

Him: “No obligation or credit card necessary!”

You: “I’m trying to figure out if this thing can work for me.”

Him: ” Did I mention it’s free to sign up?”

You: “Ok, what does it look like?”

Him: “Here’s a tiny screenshot you can’t see any detail on. Sign up Now!”

You: “You’re not answering any of the questions I have.”

Him: “Sign up Now!”

You: “I’m done here.”

Him: “Sign up Now!”

----

The above is an excerpt from Joshua Porter's upcoming book Make them Care!

The Levitating Japanese Photographer

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:24:23 -0500

Talk about defining your niche... Today I came across a Japanese photographer named Natsumi Hayashi (aka Yowayowa Camera Woman) who only shoots portraits of herself, levitating across all sorts of places including train stations, alleyways and roads. Here are some of her photos - interesting stuff.

Contrive Digital Featured in .net Magazine

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:05:55 -0500

Tom May, editor of best-selling web design magazine .net, recently interviewed (Issue 217) Usman Sheikh about what makes Contrive Digital tick. The detailed interview covers everything from the unique idealogy behind the agency to engaging talented freelancers to working with high profile clients. The interview also includes a showcase of some of the most recent projects that the agency has been involved in.

Click here to subscribe to .net magazine >

Why user-centered design is crucial

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:25:47 -0500

Just came across this fantastic little video explaining the importance of user centric design by using cat food as an analogy. The points raised in this video are unfortunately all too familiar to most of the designers who have to go through an up-hill struggle to convince the clients that what they want isn't necessarily what the end user would want.

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Is Groupon a Strip Mining Operation?

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:42:34 -0500

Groupon filed for an IPO. They have 83 million couponers in their club. They've grown their revenue 20,000% since June of 2009. These are gaudy numbers. And Groupon CEO Andrew Mason has outlined several characteristics that he says define the company and should justify investor confidence in an increasingly competitive space. This via Huff Po:

"We don't measure ourselves in conventional ways"..."we are unusual and we like it that way"..."we are always reinventing ourselves"..."we aggressively invest in growth."

So Groupon has big numbers, says edgy things about themselves, has a super-slick tech interface, and writes funny-as-hell copy. Man, that copy is Onion-like funny sometimes. The net-net: Groupon has produced diamonds while the global economy has become so many lumps of coal. But what about the companies they prospect for and the investors they court?

Let's start with a basic question: Does Groupon create profitability for the companies it works with? Fellow Austinite Sam Decker wrote a piece entitled"Analyzing Groupon Profitability" about this very question last October. Frankly, it has more analysis in it than many people would be wiling to do, including myself. Here's an excerpt worth noodling:

Assume you’re the owner of a spa salon and you offer a coupon of $50 for $100 of spa services (to make it easy), and you sell 1,000 of them.

You get $25 from each sale (because typically 50% of the $50 goes to the group buying site). If you had 50% margin on the $100 list price, then you’re losing $25 on each deal and 1,000 of these coupons is costing you $25,000 in negative margin.

On the plus side you’ve acquired 1,000 new customers. However, how many of those are actually ‘new’? This is the first key assumption and the maturity and visibility of your company will be important in determining this value. Let’s assume 20% of those who received the coupon would’ve bought at full price. That’s 200 customers that would’ve given you $10k in margin, but instead cost you $5,000. That’s a $15k net swing.

The remaining customers are new, 800 customers that cost you $20k in negative margin But, how many will buy again at full price over the year? This is another key assumption and the type of business you have and the kind of service or product you provide have impact on the lifetime value calculation. For this exercise let’s assume 20% of the 800 new customers will come back and spend $100 in services again three more times in the year. That’s 160 customers driving $150/yr in margin (3x $50 margin) = $24k in margin.

As Sam concludes in this hypothetical situation, Groupon is not profitable for the company that uses them. Sam goes on to quantify additional factors that couldlead to profitability for the company running the Groupon. This analysis really stuck with me and made me think that Groupon might just be in the business of extracting shovels of value from the many organizations who work so hard to create it for themselves. But in the short term, their need is so great that there's no time to think it through. Saying "yes" is too easy. The copy is too funny/ And then they see the shovel-shaped hole left in their revenue and perhaps even their brand left by this interaction. You got Grouponed!

Something else jumped out recently through the Twitter stream while I was considering the above. A gent named Peter Kafka wrote a piece entitled "Where Did Groupon's Billion Dollars Go?" Good question. And the answer comes from a review of their S-1 filing:

The details: Groupon raised a total of $946 million in two funding rounds last winter. It kept $136 million of it help run the money-losing company. The remaining $810 million was paid out, via stock purchases, to CEO Andrew Mason and some of his backers, including Eric Lefkofsky, and, notably, the Samwer brothers, who sold their CityDeal company to Groupon in 2010.

Hmmm. This info puts these quotes from Mason, "we are always reinventing ourselves," and "we aggressively invest in growth" in a whole new light. As in, 'we are always buying new things for ourselves' and 'investing in our own personal portfolios.'

This whole operation starts to feel a little bit like strip mining to me. From the wiki: "This type of mining is generally only feasible when there are large amounts of mineral to be extracted very near the surface." Exactly.

My unofficial gut read on this? All buyers beware of the meta effects of this trend in the market. And consider how it may just be thinning out the already brittle value of the many for the gain of the very few. Then again, that might be exactly why you want to buy Groupon. Just know that you might be a party to changing the small business landscape for the worse.

As my fellow FearLess contributor Gino Bona quipped, "Groupon is empowering groups. But Groupon is empowering groups to do the wrong thing. And in the process, these Groupon-led groups are devaluing businesses while Groupon rakes in a staggering profit based on the thinnest of values."

Let the free market debate rage in the Comments section.

Original wording by Adam Butler as published at fearlessrevolution.com

Illustration by Rachel Marshall

Scientists create touchable holograms

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:40:49 -0500

This has to be the most exciting thing I read today - apparently researchers at Tokyo University have come up with a technology that is a first and significant step away from the mouse and keyboard – touchable holograms.

[Hiroyuki Shinoda, Professor, Tokyo University]:
"Up until now, holography has been for the eyes only, and if you'd try to touch it, your hand would go right through. But now we have a technology that also adds the sensation of touch to holograms."

The technology consists of software that uses ultrasonic waves to create pressure on the hand of a user “touching” the projected hologram.

Researchers are using two Wiimotes from Nintendo’s Wii gaming system to track a user’s hand.

The technology was introduced at SIGGRAPH, an annual computer graphics conference, and has so far only been tested with relatively simple objects.

But its inventors have big plans for touchable holograms in the future.

Why Isn’t Google Chrome A Part Of Android?

Wed, 18 May 2011 04:30:05 -0500

Over the past couple of years covering Google, there’s one seemingly simple question that comes up again and again, that Google just can’t seem to answer. Why isn’t Chrome a part of Android?

Read the wrong way, that could seem like a deep question. But it almost never means “why isn’t Chrome OS simply merged with Android?” or the like. Most of the time, it’s simply a question wondering why Google’s very popular web browser is not a part of their very popular mobile operating system? After all, that OS has a browser (the aptly-named “Browser”), but it’s not Chrome. Why not?

Unsurprisingly, the question came up once again at Google I/O last week. During a panel with a bunch of engineers on the Chrome team, it was one of the first questions asked. The response? “It’s not something we’re talking about right now.” Ouch.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” the engineered continued. Okay…

Another team member, probably realizing those answers sounded both cryptic and harsh, chimed in. “The important thing at the end of the day is to make browsers better. While it’s not strictly Chrome, we share a lot of code with the Android team. We’ll share more over time.” Okay, that’s better. Still, a bit odd.

Based on my understanding, after having a number of discussions on this topic over the years, it would seem that boils down to a few things. First, the Android team is a completely separate team from the Chrome team. Second, it’s a branding issue that Google isn’t quite sure how to resolve. Third, the Android browser, while similar to Chrome, really isn’t Chrome.

The first and second issues are interesting because more and more, they’re related. As they showcased at I/O this year, Google now is fully backing two horses in the OS race: Android and Chrome OS. Each are made by two entirely different teams that don’t often mix with one another.

As Google executives kept saying over and over again when asked last week, the two OSes have different goals — and are going about things in completely different ways. While Chrome may have started out as a web browser, it’s now much more from an ideology perspective inside of Google. No one will admit this, but if they’re to ultimately succeed, they sort of have to believe that Android won’t. That makes it hard to work together.

When Android first launched in October of 2008, it seemed like either a small oversight or precautionary measure that the browser bundled with it wasn’t branded as Chrome. After all, Google’s browser had just launched in beta (on Windows) the month before. Assuming people liked it, you would have assumed that Google would transfer the branding over to use in Android, right?

Well people did like Chrome. A lot. And yet, Google never moved it over. This despite the fact that Apple did just that on the iPhone with its much less successful Safari browser. Meanwhile, Opera and Mozilla’s Firefox were committed to mobile versions of their popular browsers as well. But Google stuck with “Browser” for Android.

And now they may be stuck with it for good. The problem is that Chrome, for better or worse, is now associated with another product that is similar but different from Android — again, Chrome OS. Imagine if they start including a Chrome browser on Android tablets and then next year Chrome OS tablets launch. Consumers will wonder what the hell the difference is? (And this may already prove to be an issue on the PC/Chromebook side of things, we’ll see.)

All that aside, it is still important to remember that Android’s Browser really isn’t Chrome. The two are both based on WebKit and use Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, but there are dozens of other features that Google is trying to associate with Chrome that they couldn’t possibly squeeze into a mobile web browser (at least not yet).

The same issues are true with Apple’s regular Safari browser and their mobile one. But that browser generally seems to be less feature-focused, so the branding might not be as big of an issue. Plus, even if the two sides don’t work closely together inside of Apple (though it seems like they might), does anyone really believe there’s anyway in hell Steve Jobs would let the browser in iOS be called anything but Safari?

Back to Google, on the flip side of things, the Android team has their own wants and needs for the browser bundled with their software. And imagine if a problem on the Chrome team was stalling a new Android build? Or vice versa?

But with the launch of Honeycomb, Android’s Browser is now starting to look a lot more like Chrome as well, thanks to the tabbed browsing experience it offers. This will only lead to more questions. And it’s only a matter of time before users start demanding that elements are fully synced between the two (Chrome and Android’s Browser).

At that point, Google may have to consider this question yet again. Is it time to bring Chrome to Android?

- Originally published by SG Siegler @ Techcrunch.com

Facial Symmetry

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 06:34:01 -0600

All these photo portraits have one thing in common. They are part of the project “Echoism” that focuses on facial symmetry. The subjects were pictured front to carema. As a part of the study, they were asked not to express emotions. Then each photograph was split into a left and a right section with one side to be horizontally flipped, afterwards pictures were recombined to create two separate and symmetrical identities of the person. We must admit this is a very interesting and cool idea.

Why Paying Attention To The Fold Is Stupid

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:45:54 -0500

We’ve all heard the question before. “Where is the fold?” If you haven’t been asked this question before, consider yourself lucky. Wikipedia says…

“Above the fold” is a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper. Most papers are delivered and displayed to customers folded up, meaning that only the top half of the front page is visible. Thus, an item that is “above the fold” may be one that the editors feel will entice people to buy the paper. Alternatively, it reflects a decision, on the part of the editors, that the article is one of the day’s most important. By extension, the space above the fold is also preferred by advertisers, since it is the most prominent and visible even when the newspaper is on stands.

The term can be used more generally to refer to anything that is prominently displayed or of highest priority.

This term has been extended and used in web development to refer the portions of a webpage that can be visible without scrolling. However, some have suggested that this term is inaccurate as screen sizes vary greatly between users, especially in an era where websites are viewed with mobile devices as much as home computers."

The problem is that the people asking this question haven’t been properly educated as to where the fold actually came from and how we can use it or if we should even care.

Resources For Educating Fold-Mongers
To start off here are links to some valuable insight from industry experts both recent and spanning back several years.

Blasting the Myth of the Fold
The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing
Utilizing the Cut-off Look to Encourage Users To Scroll

These three examples alone should be enough to convince even the most staunch fold evangelists. Hell, even this report from 1994 by usability expert Jakob Nielsen says,

In more recent studies, we have seen that most users scroll when they visit a long home page or a long navigation screen. This change in behavior is probably due to users getting more experience with scrolling Web pages.

When We Should Pay Attention To The Fold
Now that we have truly established that paying attention to the fold is stupid, I will put on my stoopid hat and give you a couple reasons where we SHOULD pay attention. These are more common sense examples and really will help the usability and user experience.

1. Short Pages
If you have a limited amount of content that CAN all fit on one screen (above the fold) it’s best to try. There’s no reason to force the user to scroll a couple hundred pixels.

2. Don't Give a Reason to Second Guess
Check your designs at different resolutions. If you have any hard horizontal breaks across the page, make sure they’re not right at the fold. Easy to fix by vertically spacing your content. We want to avoid guessing if this is the bottom of the page or not. Guide them down the page by trying to avoid these fold breaks.

These two examples may seem contradictory to the posts title, however they’re not meant to be strict usability guidelines and are more design common sense.

Summary
Whew! Glad you made it. This is below the fold and I was a little worried.

There are mountains of data and information slaying the fold myth. Some are backed by years and years of expertise and research and some are more comical and intended to prove a point. It is almost as absurd as not turning the page of a book if it ends with a period.

It is our responsibility to educate those who aren’t familiar with the findings and continue to study user behaviors to educate ourselves.

Original text by Jeff Olsen at fuelyourinterface.com

Focus On Authenticity

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:46:16 -0500

When examining your brand communications, be sure to evaluate how authentic your messages are. Authentic messages are ones that speak to your audience

and engage them on an emotional level. If your messages come across as too corporate or safe, it will hurt the value of your brand. This doesn’t mean that every brand should be edgy or extreme. Rather, it means that your brand should feel “real”. An absolutely stellar example is the new the Intel refresh. Their branding chief, Deborah Conrad, deserves huge kudos for their new geek chic, “Sponsors of Tomorrow”, commercials. Rather than promote a specific product or new innovation, the new branding admits — even celebrates — the nerdiness of Intel’s work. Even though you know it’s just another commercial, it feels authentic in a way that most technology ads don’t. Here are some of their latest commercials:

Original wording by Brock Ray from fuelyourbranding.com

BP Oil Fiasco Rendered Using Unreal Engine

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:23:32 -0500

If you are of the type of the gamer who actually keeps abreast with daily world news besides gaming then you should not be a stranger to the BP Oil fiasco.

According to reports, the amount of oil spilling in to the Gulf of Mexico stands at 25,000 barrels a day. Now how much is that in terms of quantity one might ask? We have got the answer for that. We got a video from Youtube which uses the Unreal Engine to render 25,000 barrels. Check it out, its pretty interesting.

Original article published at gamingbolt.com

iPhone vs Android: What do users really prefer?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:14:41 -0500

Nielsen's smartphone numbers show a lot of interesting and often unexpected findings in demographics.

(Though not sales--iPhone's still drastically outselling everyone but BlackBerry in the States.) Despite the hypermasculine branding of the country's most popular Android phone (the Motorola Droid) which was expected to appeal mostly to young men, the gender split is about equal among Android and iPhone users. In fact, while both platforms skew male, Android is slightly more female-heavy than iPhone.

Another survey asks respondents to list their next desired handset. 80% of iPhone users want their next phone to be an iPhone, while only 70% of Android users will stick with Android. And many more Android users are interested in iPhone than vice versa.

Nielsen also tried to measure what folks are actually doing with their smartphones, and found that Android users have a wider array of uses for their phones than iPhone users. iPhone users download more apps, games, and music, but Android users seem to be more active in most other categories, including mobile internet, video, customization, and GPS services. That may change as both platforms mature--Android has a music streaming service coming up in a release or two, and once the iPhone can multitask, more iPhoners might use instant messaging or stream music.

Original article by Dan Nosowitz @ Fast Company.

The 8-bit Pixel Invasion of New York City

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:11:35 -0500

The latest short film by Patrick Jean, simply titled 'Pixels' is an awesome visualisation of New York being invaded by 8-bits creatures!

The film features well-known 8-bit games like Space Invaders, Pacman, Pong and Tetris - all of whom are beautifully merged with live footage of New York City and special effects produced by One More Production studios. Have a look and judge for yourselves..

Interview: A Decade in Web Design

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:07:39 -0600

Veteran journalist and editor of leading technology website TechRadar, Paul Douglas recently published an article reviewing the most influential online trends and technologies over the past decade. The article was an amalgamation of opinions, experiences and interviews with a number of leading online professionals including heavy-weights like the father of web standards - Jeffery Zeldman, the usability and accessibility guru - Jakob Nielson and the brains behind Carsonified - Ryan Carson.

Contrive Digital’s Usman Sheikh was also one of the select few asked to share their opinions on the subject. As a strong supporter of open source technologies and an experienced ecommerce consultant, Usman was asked by Paul to share his thoughts on how the advancement in open source technologies has affected online retailers. “The web has truly matured over the past decade.” - Usman replied. “We’ve seen businesses starting to understand and harness the power of the Internet to support their operational and commercial objectives. Ecommerce is no longer a luxury only the larger retailers can afford. With great open source and feature-rich platforms arriving in the market, we’ve seen smaller retailers give the big boys a run for their money.”

The article continues with great insight over the advancements in dynamic websites, standards compliance, the adaption and acceptance of video on the web, usability and accessibility and the realisation of the importance of good user experience design. If you would like to receive a digital copy of the complete article then just send us a quick email and we’ll be more than happy to send it to you.

15 Tools for Testing Your Website on Multiple Browsers

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:42:31 -0600

Browser testing is one of the parts of the design and development process that is necessary but never really enjoyable.

With the number of browsers and operating systems that are available, it can be a very time-consuming process to test your website in the environments of visitors. There are a number of tools and resources that have been created to help with this situation, and we’ll profile 15 of them in this post. Adobe BrowserLab Adobe BrowserLab is a free resource that allows you to see how your site looks in a wide variety of browsers in Windows XP or Mac OS X (you will need an Adobe account). Once you’ve chosen a browser and an operating system you can enter the URL to see how it looks. You can view one at a time or side-by-side from two different browsers.

BrowserShots BrowserShots is a popular and free resource for getting screenshots from various browsers and operating systems. Enter a URL and wait a few minutes (sometimes longer) and your screenshots will load. Priority processing is also available that will cut out the waiting time and allow you to get as many screenshots as you want of any site. The price is $29.95 per month.

Litmus Litmus produces screenshots from major browsers on Windows and Mac OS X, plus there are features for bug tracking and testing private sites. Litmus also includes features for testing emails in various email clients. A limited free plan is available, and paid plans start at $39 for 14 days.

Browsera Browsera is a bit different from many of the other resources listed here because it runs reports and sends you the details. It detects differences in a site’s rending in browsers to make your testing a bit easier. Browsera can also test private pages protected by a login. A limited free plan is available and paid plans start at $39 for 14 days.

CrossBrowserTesting CrossBrowserTesting is a premium service (with a one-week free trial) that allows you to pick a browser and an operating system and test a site. This allows you to test a live website rather than just producing a screenshot, and automated screenshots are another feature. The Basic Plan offers 150 minutes of testing for $19.95 per month.

Browser Sandbox The Browser Sandox is a free tool that allows you to run any of the major browsers on your system. Click on the browser that you want, it will open and you’ll be able to test any website live in that browser (note: this service does not appear to work in Chrome).

Expression Web SuperPreview Microsoft’s Expression Web SuperPreview is a free download for Windows. Web SuperPreview is a standalone application that will allow you to test in various browsers and operating systems.

IE NetRenderer IE NetRenderer is a convenient, free resource for testing in IE5.5 – IE8. Simply choose the version of IE that you want and enter a URL. You’ll be able to see the full length of the page, but you can’t interact with the page in the browser.

BrowserCam BrowserCam allows you to test a site live (as opposed to screenshots) in any brower and operating system. It also includes features for testing on mobile devices, and testing emails. There are a number of different plans to choose from based on your needs and the length of subscription that you want. A 24-hour free trial is available that will allow you up to 200 screen captures.

Multi-Browser Viewer Multi-Browser Viewer is software (Windows) that can be purchased to help with testing your sites and designs. It offers 16 virtualized browsers and 48 screenshot variations. You can run any of the browsers quickly and easily. A single-user license costs $129.95 and 14-day free trial is available.

NetMechanic NetMechanic’s Browser Photo will provide you with screenshots from a wide selection of browsers and operating systems. Browser Photo is available for $150 per domain per year, or $15 for one-time use.

Test iPhone Test iPhone is a free iPhone simulator that allows you to preview how pages will look on an iPhone, and you can also interact with pages through the simulator. Note: if you want to access a mobile version of a site you will need to enter the URL of the mobile site.

iPhoney iPhoney provides a 320 by 480-pixel canvas (powered by Safari) so you can test sites as they may appear on mobiles (it is not an iPhone simulator, just an appropriately-sized browser). iPhoney is available for free download from MarketCircle.

IETester IETester from DebugBar is a free web browser (Windows) that allows users to test websites in IE8, IE7, IE6, and IE5.5.

ViewLike.us ViewLike.us isn’t a tool for testing your site in different browsers, but while you are doing your browser testing you may also want to test at various screen resolutions. With ViewLike.us you can choose a resolution and enter a URL to see how it looks. It’s a quick way to test a page or site for a variety of resolutions.

Original research conducted by Steven Snell.

Is Apple’s Marketing Strategy Becoming a bit too Predictable?

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:37:54 -0600

For the past couple of days, the media seems to be overflowing with reviews, criticism and all sorts of banter about the latest Apple gadget – the iPad.

With the Apple leadership using words like “Magical” and “Ground-breaking” to describe their far-from-perfect stab at the tablet market one can’t help but ask if Apple’s marketing strategy is becoming a bit too predictable?

It seems like a given fact now that Apple would leave out blatantly obvious pieces of technology from their initial launches, only to introduce them less than a year down the line. We all remember the glorious and uber-hyped launch of the first iPhone - a truly remarkable device that would change the way we communicate and access the web. But to launch such a content focused mobile device without a 3G connection, surely was not an oversight. As expected, the iPhone 3G was launched shortly afterwards with everyone running back to the stores to get their hands on one. Apple seems to be confident that their loyal followers will go ahead and buy their products irrespective of what it lacks. This time around the first version of the iPad seems to have most of the same short comings as those found in the iPhone.

The inability to multitask and lack of support for Flash content might have been tolerable on the iPhone (which was in effect, a phone) but for a device that is being pitched to us as “the ultimate web browsing experience” these drawbacks might prove to be a deal-breaker. Here’s a more detailed list of other items which were expected to be included in the iPad, but ended up being missed out. All that said, as far as marketing strategies are concerned it seems Apple can’t go wrong. The iPhone revolutionised the mobile phone market by being the first true multi-touch device and the iPad seems set to do the same for the tablet market – which is already dubbed as the technology of the year in 2010. With Wall Street analysts predicting a year one sales of around 3-5 million units, the iPad seems set to be the next big Apple success – even with all its shortcomings.

New Article: The Link Between User Experience Architecture and SEO

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:34:14 -0600

Contrive Digital's Usman Sheikh has recently published an article about the link between User Experience Architecture and Search Engine Optimisation.

The article revolves around the idea that since most modern search engines try to emulate human behaviour in ranking the relevance of each web page then surely actions which improve user experience would have a positive impact on search engines as well? Click on the link below to download and read the full article.

Download Full Article »

Note: If you're not able to view the PDF in your browser then please right click on the link above and select "Save Link As..." - this would allow you to download the document and view it in Acrobat Reader on your computer.

Contrive Digital Adds Interactive Fun to Awards Event in London

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:28:40 -0600

Contrive Digital were recently commissioned to develop an online application that would add an element of fun and interactivity to the .net Awards in London.

Following the brief, Contrive utilised the highly flexible Twitter Framework to power interactive display screens at the awards arena. The online app added interactive fun to the event by allowing the audiences to send live tweets to the screens by using their mobile phones.

Similar setups have previously been used by the likes of Nike and a couple of other top brands in their high street stores where customers can interact with the messages on the display boards using SMS and MMS technologies. However, to set something similar using mobile technologies meant that you needed a mobile gateway and a number of base technologies which not only cost a decent amount to setup and deploy but also had a recurring charge attached to it based on the amount of usage. By using the Twitter framework we bypassed all these costs as the core technology that was needed was already available online, for free! Here's what Tom May, the Operations Editor at .net magazine had to say about the application and it's impact on the awards night:

“ The Twitter visualisation Contrive Digital created for the .net Awards ceremony really brought the event to life. Rather than just sitting back and letting the ceremony wash over them, this superb and very cool looking application gave attendees the chance to interact with events as they occurred, via the big screens dotted around the venue. Iphones were hammered into submission as complements, congratulations, expressions of surprise, and even a few good natured insults appeared on the screens, giving rise to further tweets and banter. For a couple of hours, the Twittersphere went crazy for the netawards hashtag, giving readers at home a chance to participate too. Contrive Digital’s visualisation gave the event an extra dimension that really added to the fun of the event for all who were there. ”

A candid look at today’s social networks and how we use them.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:21:40 -0600

Depending on how you see it, social software is either all the rage or so 2008. You know the stuff: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc - There's no talking about the web these days without it

- that's for sure—but social software tools are quickly becoming an integral part of the way we run our day-to-day lives.

T-shirt by Simon Crowley It's not just in the consumer space, either. Companies and large organizations are catching on to the benefits of social networking and improved collaboration tools. They want their intranets to be more like Facebook. They want to use crowdsourcing to leverage employee perspectives and wikis to help people help themselves. They want Twitter for the organization, (or at least they think they do).

Human-centered approaches to industrial and interaction design have long focused on studying human behavior to create informed and appropriate designs. A social interaction designer must consider not only people, environment, and existing tools, but also the unseen elements of the system such as social relationships, power dynamics, and cultural rules.

So there's a lot of budding social software out there, and a lot of opportunity to design the stuff. But for all of the press and fanfare, most social software is, well, socially awkward.

Take, for example, the satirized look at Facebook by the British improv troupe Idiots of Ants above. Idiots of Ants (the pun only emerges if you say that name with a British accent) pushes the social behaviors of Facebook to the extreme, but it's hardly the only piece of software they could pick on. Twitter, another massively successful tool, began as an attempt to facilitate text messaging among friends and has morphed into a platform for broad, ad-hoc real-time communication. But while the tool is great for flash mob conversations and celebrity tracking, the one-channel-for-everyone design is profoundly awkward for more nuanced social interaction.

A Different Kind of Design

To be fair, we're in the early days of social software. Facebook and Twitter are the modern-day equivalent of Windows 3.1—the first massively successful social tools to clearly get something right—but few people would argue that they are mature. Today we take our operating system for granted, but that wasn't always the case. Between those early days of Unix, DOS, and Windows, and the operating systems of today, there has been a long process of maturation. Collectively, as a body of interface designers and interface users, we developed a set of shared expectations about how the desktop GUI should work. And while today's offerings by Apple and Microsoft differ in many ways, they are much more alike one another than either of them are like Windows 3.

By contrast, social software is pretty far from mature, and much of what people are trying to do with these tools has never been done before. In most cases there are no well-established rules for interfaces—often there are no precedents at all. That's exciting because there is ample opportunity to produce something truly new. But these challenges come with new constraints, and require different skills than those employed traditionally in software design.

As products become more interactive, the focus shifts to the psychological. And with the networking of devices together, we see yet another shift—this time towards the sociological and anthropological. Now the designer must understand not only anthropometrics and cognitive science, but also ethnography and sociology, for an effective design must 'work' at all of these levels at once.

Software that Works on Multiple Levels

With social software, the design of intuitive, usable, or visually pleasing interfaces is not enough. Though a bit of a simplification, we might describe early software as being primarily about data manipulation: the Mac OS is used to manage applications, Microsoft Word helps write documents, and Adobe Photoshop modifies photos, for example. These are tools in which the user manipulates information within the world of the computer. But in the arena of social software, the computer is primarily a medium facilitating human-to-human interaction. The software supports, or enables, interpersonal collaboration and communication at scales or complexities not otherwise possible. From this perspective, it isn't difficult to see where most social software falls short: many tools have pleasant, user-friendly interfaces and take advantage of well-designed physical devices (i.e., they're easy to use from a human-computer-interaction perspective). But it's in the sociological and anthropological arenas where they run into trouble: most social software tools are clumsy and ineffective at smoothly facilitating interpersonal interaction.

Social Interaction Design

Designing software for human-human interaction, then, is about more than user-friendly interfaces. Does the system encourage or facilitate appropriate behaviors from its users? Does it 'speak' using appropriate cultural language and social gestures? How do its target users want to interact with one another in the first place? These are not questions that most social software today answers effectively. How many of your friends on Facebook do you actually consider friends? What does it mean to poke someone? Twitter begins with the question "What are you doing?" but most of the worthwhile tweets don't answer it. And why can't I put my Twitter followers into groups? If given the choice I might say one thing to my (true) friends and another to colleagues and coworkers...but the tool forces the lowest common denominator. The term "social interaction design" is being used to describe the work of creating tools for both human-computer and human-human-interaction. At the very least, that means the work requires designers or design teams that understand as much about ethnographic methods as they do about information architecture and interface design. But merely adding an anthropologist to a design team to tackle a social software problem isn't enough. Though similar in many ways to more traditional forms of interaction design, the work is unique enough that it has forced us to look at many of our own design processes and adapt them for these new challenges.

Through a Social Interaction Design Lens

The best way to get a feel for the kinds of issues a social interaction designer wrestles with is to look critically at some real-world examples of social software. Of course, due to the dynamic nature of the medium, both the examples and the landscape around them change quickly, and by the time you read this, the systems below may already be significantly different. But with this caveat, here are a few cases that seem worth a look:

Bragster

If only there were a website where I could be cajoled into screaming out "This is Sparta!" in public or drinking an entire bottle of maple syrup. Well now there is. Bragster, a decidedly juvenile spin on social software, is also a remarkable example of thoughtful social interaction design. Users create dares which they offer to the community. Others upload video responses to those dares and compete for "bragging rights" (points). The value of a particular dare, and of each response, is entirely determined by the community. And from these simple rules emerges the most outlandish, audacious, and (in some cases) nauseating feats of human capability.

Nearly everything about Bragster differs from the kinds of social software needed by a 'typical' organization, yet we can still learn quite a bit from it. Bragster has not only attracted a community, but through a simple set of rules they encourage some truly extravagant acts of participation. Compare getting someone to drink a bottle of maple syrup to, say, asking them to regularly fill out a time card, and you see where I'm going. How is participation rewarded in your (or your client's) organization?

Aardvark

Aardvark (or Vark, as it is commonly known), is an impressive attempt to solve a problem that many other organizations have tried to tame. In the lineage of Google Answers and Yahoo Answers, Aardvark attempts to create a network of experts that can be called upon at a moment's notice to answer questions about anything and everything.

Like those who came before it, Aardvark relies heavily on people's enjoyment of being recognized for their expertise. What makes the system stand out, however, is the way it integrates into existing workflows. Aardvark requires no new applications to download, and no website to remember to visit. Instead, questions come to you over IM, SMS, twitter, or email. If Vark thinks you know the answer to a question, the system finds you and politely asks you if you can be bothered. Even with the remarkable integration into existing workflows, Aardvark still faces some significant challenges. While the novelty of answering strangers' requests carries early interaction well, that novelty fades quickly. How can my participation over time help me build reputation and respect in the community? And then there's the question of how expertise is defined: quantifying and organizing knowledge is extremely tricky but essential to automatically matching experts with incoming questions. Simple text-based word matching is rarely enough, and so far Vark's matching abilities are primitive at best. This much more complicated social (and epistemological) problem will have to be solved before Vark can become a killer app.

Google Wave

Google should be commended for never shying away from the hard problems, and Wave, its most recent buzz-generating undertaking, sets for itself an ambitious goal: to replace email—a decidedly limited medium for group collaboration—with a synchronous and asynchronous media-rich communications platform. It's still early for Wave, but the tool has a long way to go before it replaces email. Though most people agree it's a limited collaboration medium, replacing email is one of those problems that are the social equivalent of NP-hard: in order to move away from email, everyone that you email has to move away too. And to get those people to make the move, you're going to have to provide an experience at least as easy and reliable as the medium they're familiar with. For starters, Wave needs to take a note from Vark and find you. Right now there doesn't seem to be any way to know if a wave has been updated without going to the site itself—nothing is 'calling me back' to my browser to continue the conversation, and most of the time when I visit no one else is around. But even that may not be enough. Can you 'wave' with your cell phone? Catch up on a backlog of waves on the airplane? Email may indeed be broken as a collaboration tool, but it's going to take more than a slick AJAX interface and a handful of content widgets to fix it.

A Work in Progress

From an historical perspective, we are still in the early days of social interaction design. How can we, collectively, create vastly better social software for communities and society at large? What techniques have you found to be particularly useful? What key points have been left out? - This post is an abbreviated version of the original article by Gentry Underwood. To discuss this topic further visit http://socialsoftware.org.

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SummaryWhew! Glad you made it. This is below the fold and I was a little worried.

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Contrive Digital Adds Interactive Fun to Awards Event in London

A candid look at today’s social networks and how we use them.

A Different Kind of Design

Software that Works on Multiple Levels

Social Interaction Design

Through a Social Interaction Design Lens

Bragster

Aardvark

Google Wave

A Work in Progress

Resources For Educating Fold-Mongers
To start off here are links to some valuable insight from industry experts both recent and spanning back several years.

Summary
Whew! Glad you made it. This is below the fold and I was a little worried.