Digital Strategy with Firecat Studio

Social Media Revolution - Illustrated

Found this on YouTube today, and it captures my excitement about the fundamental shift that the social media revolution represents for us.

It's full of soundbites, nuggets from different reports, eye-catching statistics, all laid out and animated with engaging typography and screencasts. Like the comments on YouTube make clear - the intent here is to get people to look at this shift as a major one - not dismiss Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so forth as fads.

Enjoy! Kudos to Eric Qualman and Socialnomics, the makers of the video - please note it wasn't us :)

My Own Twitter Learning Curve

Twitter, Back in the Day

I joined Twitter just a few weeks before the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SxSW) conference where Twitter saw its first big adoption surge. Twitter made perfect sense in context of SxSW, and I got a lot of value out of it immediately. Since thousands of my peers - web professionals - were attending the conference too, we all signed up and followed one another so we could share info while in Austin.

Because the people I was following were at that time focused on the same goal I was - getting value out of the conference - most of our tweets were relevant to the larger group."Sharron Rush giving the Web Accessibility session in Ballroom B -- amazing!" "At Maggie May's, @Veen is buying pitchers of Guinness now, come to the back room" "I need a ride to the Frog Party, who from the Hilton is going?"

Even after the conference was over, it was fun to keep comparing notes, reviewing the panels, blogging and posting videos and podcasts, and generally keeping the discussions alive. For awhile.

As that shared experience faded, I began to tire of hearing about folks sitting on the tarmac in Chicago, getting served bad coffee in Oakland, and playing tennis in Boston. Their day-to-day experiences were no longer relevant to me. "What are you doing?" as a generic prompt apparently needed some refinement. What are you doing - that I care about? was more like it. I didn't stop following people, because they were people I knew and respected. But for the most part, I stopped checking Twitter, unless I was at another industry conference.

Here Comes Everybody

Gradually, as the people I was around every day started joining Twitter, the relevance factor kicked back in. My coworkers and I had adopted Yahoo Instant Messenger as a way of communicating online all day, every day - but as more and more of our cohort participated in Twitter, and had interesting, informative things to say, we were bouncing in and out of Twitter. It began to make sense to just DM one another in Twitter instead - because it got a faster response.

I spend at least a couple hours a day just engaging in social media. I'm lucky Firecat Studio pays me to do some of it. I find it an incredibly interesting evolution of communication technology and how society connects. I'd spend time in Twitter even if I had to pay to play. 

Shared public events are still, to me, the highest and best use of Twitter. I love watching a football or basketball final, or a presidential debate, with my iphone and Twitterific Pro going. I get the benefit of "watching with" folks all over the country, talking about what's going on in a fun, snarky, backchannel fashion. It's like being in a bar with those folks - except we're all wherever we need to be. Like a chat room, but even better. Not just easier logistically - we can all talk at once, and nothing gets lost. 

How Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Vibes are Different

I'd been an early adopter of LinkedIn and Facebook too - and although many of the folks I friend or follow in those social media spaces also participated in Twitter, I noticed the conversations were different in the different areas. LinkedIn, of course, is "all business, all the time." It's great for that. And although Facebook for me was initially a business group as well, my extended family and my high school and college friends began finding me on Facebook about a year ago. I tend to discuss more personal life stuff in Facebook as a result. I'm less aware of my brand, and more inclined to let my hair down. If I need to throttle down a discussion to only the family, or only the college folks - or apply privacy toward certain people - those controls are there.

In tune with the viral nature of social mediums, I saw waves of new followers or friends in all the social media spaces. Each wave would prompt me to begin participating in that space again. We'd see a sudden surge of USAA employees in LinkedIn, for example. My cousins seemed to have discovered Facebook. The discussions my high school friends were having in big emails had moved over to Facebook.

In each surge, there would be people who "crossed over" and followed or friended me in multiple spaces. Twitter is still, for me, heavily weighted with web design and development professionals. But that's me, and purposefully co-creating the web I want, in an authentic, transparent fashion is what fascinates me.

Twitter remains a mostly public, deliberate mix of business and personal issues, for me. Although the people I follow in Twitter are mostly business people, I'm getting to know them as human beings using Twitter. That means I can work with people I know well, like, and respect. 

So if you're one of those people who gets excited about the social media r/evolution, come chat with me on Twitter as @firecatsue. See you online!

The Usability Test and Other User-Centered Design Tools

Recently, we asked some of our coworking group and other friends if they'd be willing to participate in a usability test conducted by another user-centered design consultancy. That spurred a whole, interesting conversation about what a usability test is, what we can learn from one, and when a project warrants conducting a usability test.

Usability Activities

There are a multitude of ways we user-centered designers gain insight into how people use websites. Mature, experienced designers should be open to finding out they don't have all the answers - but that users DO. These usability activities are the special magic behind great web design. Some of our favorite usability tools are:

• Heuristic evaluation. Measure a proposed design against a set of web design rules of thumb, or web design best practices.
• Contextual inquiry. Study how users work and perform key tasks while in their "native environment." For example, before redesigning an intranet reference system for customer service reps, we want to know about the rep's cheat sheets, post-it notes, bookmarked websites, phone directories, and other job aids, and how they interact.
• User personas. We frequently create fictional representative users of various types, and use those to check the design. For example, Jolie, our young, internet-savvy college student might be fine with a design, while Frank, the retired Colonel who struggles with e-mail will have a more difficult time - and both need to be able to successfully complete a key task.
• Task analysis. We look extensively at how and when every bit of information is transferred during a task, whether the information is moving from a database, a memory, a piece of paper, a post-it note, or a website. We consider physical aspects, environment, and time as well, like having to walk to a printer, or digging the credit card out of a wallet or purse.
• Informal usability study. Sometimes it's enough to just show the person sitting next to you a sketched layout of a screen and ask, "If you were trying to order tickets on this website, what would you do first?" or "This is a restaurant review website. How would you find reviews for Tre Trattoria?" Speaking from my own experience, the hardest part of this type of test is shutting up and letting the person find his or her own way, or to fail.
• The full web usability test. Conducted in a usability lab, with a controlled environment, one-way mirrors, videocameras recording the mouse, keyboard, user's face, and the screens.

Here's what a usability test looks like. We're seeing the participant from the control room through one-way glass; we can see her but she sees a mirror. We are able to guide her and answer questions. Commonly, a usability specialist sits with the participant.

Photo courtesy Sun Microsystems.

In web design projects, it's very helpful to watch people try to complete specific tasks using a prototype of a proposed design. A screen that the designer feels is perfectly clear in its layout and labeling can be baffling to a user, and there's no better way to help the designer understand that than for her or him to watch users attempt to perform the task.

For example, when I'm designing an airline ticketing system, I analyze the users' needs and the business requirements, then mock up what I think is a great set of screens to allow users to order tickets. I probably did a great job. But I can't fix problems I'm unable to anticipate, and that's where a usability test comes in. Here's the drill:

• Design the test. The usability specialist works with the design lead to design a usability test. We discuss the goals of the test, the users and tasks, the desired task flow, possible alternative task flows, and criteria for success.
• Recruit participants that match our criteria.
• Schedule participants into the lab.
• "Freeze" the design for the test, and provide a prototype. This prototype can be the actual code, mockups of screens, or a sketch on paper. A great usability specialist can get valid results using any of these artifacts, as long as they have the basic elements needed for the user to make decisions.
• Conduct the test. The sessions are recorded. The usability specialist walks the participant through the task without leading them (which would invalidate the results). The designer and other team members can watch behind the one-way mirror. Occasionally we may ask questions or clarify something about the task through the intercom, but it's best to remain silent and just learn.
• Document and analyze the results. After all participants have been through the test, the specialist tabulates and analyzes the results. How many participants got all the way through the tasks? Where did they stumble, and why? The usability team pores over videotapes and discusses what happened, looking for patterns.
• Write the report. It's great if the designers can attend sessions, but budgets often don't allow for that. The usability specialist must draw conclusions, support the conclusions with data, and make specific recommendations for improvement.

The scenarios provided to the participant must have enough information to ensure we know whether or not the user successfully completed the task - or if they can't complete the task, how far down the path they got. "Let's say you need to order plane tickets to Guadalajara for a trip on August 12, returning on August 24. It's you and your adult companion - who's confined to a wheelchair. How would you proceed?"

As a designer myself, I have watched - helplessly - behind the one-way mirror while a user missed the large and obvious (to me) "Order Now" button. As web professionals, it's very easy to lose touch with how it feels to be a novice user. The more experience we have, the harder we have to work at understanding "beginner mind" on any web interface or application. Watching actual users use what you've designed is invaluable experience. Sometimes quite painful, though!

Full usability tests are time consuming to plan, conduct, and report on, and in order for the results to be valid, require the services of a usability expert. The specialist who conducts the test (usually sitting beside the participant) has to be a special kind of person, one who can patiently wait through user frustration, withhold information with a poker face, and not lead the participant in any way.

If you're getting the idea that usability tests are expensive and time-consuming, you're right. At Firecat Studio, we only recommend a formal usability test when the alternative methods can't tell us what we need to know, and when we do not have the luxury of trial and error.

Alternatives to Full Usability Tests

In many cases, we can conduct informal usability tests using paper prototypes or quick mockups and uncover the majority of usability problems with much less time and expense.

Ship, Then Test

A perfectly valid approach is to "ship, then test" - put the site out there, measure users' actual success with tasks, and make adjustments to the interface after launch. Websites aren't like books - they're meant to be reworked, to evolve and grow as you learn more.

Sometimes skimping on usability is penny-wise and pound-foolish, though. A full usability test is in order when:

• Designing complex, custom-programmed interfaces, where reprogramming costs would be extensive.
• Inventing a new type of interface, one for which a widely accepted user interface pattern doesn't apply.
• Time to market is critical and reprogramming or redesign would take longer than the test process.
• A usability problem could result in a highly negative brand experience. This one's a judgment call - any usability problem impacts brand, even on screens used behind the scenes. Some black eyes are worse than others, though.

Depending on the size and business-critical nature of the project, any of these cases can make the $5,000 and up cost of a usability test seem trivial. If you're interested in finding out more about usability tests, or in exploring our other, lighter usability techniques and activities and how they can improve your business website results, please feel free to contact us for a professional consultation.