Jackson Fox

Design Notes: Yahoo! Photos

2007-01-31T22:30:35Z

I am clearly not an important person to Yahoo. Their new Yahoo! Photos site was previewed in February 2006, went beta in June 2006, and started getting rolled out to users in August 2006. Me? I didn’t get to see the new site design until today. I admit that it could have gone live some time ago, but I have been checking periodically and today was the first day I was able to see it. anyways, now that I’ve seen it, I have to say I like it. Even more, I like that it demonstrates some smart design decisions.

Blank Slate

37signals likes to talk about “designing the blank slate”:

The blank slate is the first screen someone sees when they do something new. Where do you drop them right after they create a new account? What do you tell them on a screen that starts blank but will eventually be filled with content? Thatâ€™s the blank slate.

Logging in to Yahoo! Photos for the first time I see:

I flipped through the help bubbles and clicked on My Friends’ Photos:

In both cases Yahoo is helping me adjust to a new interface. The walkthrough of the new features in particular helps me learn where everything is and introduces me to some new concepts (assuming that I didn’t know what tags were).

These niceties should be part of any new design (or re-design), but more often than not users are thrown in to new surroundings without any orientation. Particularly when re-designing interfaces, we have an obligation to ease the transition as much as possible. Not doing so raises the possibility that we alienate our existing users just when we’re trying to improve things for them.

Links in Bloglines do not open in a new window

2007-01-10T20:43:53Z

This is a problem that’s been plaguing me for weeks, and Bloglines customer support helped me straighten everything out, so I thought I would put the solution out there for others to find.

The problem I had was that links in Bloglines used to open in a new window. I then set Firefox to open links destined for a new window in a new tab instead. All was right with the world. Then one day those links stopped opening in new tabs and started opening in the current tab. I would constantly loose unread posts in Bloglines when I would forget to right-click on links to open them in a new tab.

Solution: There are two possible causes for this problem. The first is a setting in Firefox 2 that tells Firefox to open links that should open in a new window in the current window instead (Tools → Options → Tabs). Make sure the setting “New pages should be opened in” is set to a new window or a new tab. The second cause is the Tab Mix Plus plugin. This is what was causing me problems. TabMix has a setting (Tools → Tab Mix Plus Options → Links) that says “Open links with a target attribute in the current tab”. This needs to be unchecked in order for everything to work right.

Thanks to Bloglines support for the quick and easy solution!

Google Is Like Magic

2006-12-16T04:46:02Z

I’m a big fan of Gmail, and I’ve been looking to offload my mailing list email onto another account, so I setup Google apps for my personal domain tonight. When I went to activate the Gmail service, but first I had to switch the MX record for my domain. I have very little DNS experience, so this was scaring me a bit, until I saw that Google had instructions on the page on how to do it. In fact, they had instructions on how to do it for MY HOSTING ACCOUNT. I assume they saw that my DNS servers were all Dreamhost name servers and acted accordingly, but the attention to detail is impressive none the less.

Users Behavior (ASIST 2006)

2006-11-06T16:01:28Z

Toward A Better Understanding Of Help Seeking Behavior (Xie, Cool)

Notes from the user behavior panel at ASIST 2006.

Sources of work on help seeking behavior:

Psychology: Individual Difference
Cognitive Psychology: Form of “Meta Cognition” in the learning process
Education Psychology: Help-seeking from perspective of “interactive learning environments”

Mentioned Nass’ works; computers as social actors, utilizing aspects of social interaction in help seeking interactions. Study looked ILS students who are older and use a lot of IR systems, but who are novices in the study systems.

Different ways of learning to use help mechanisms:

trial and error
using past experience
looking for help icons
using related help functions
ask a human

Problems encountered using help:

Help doesn’t present itself
Lack of knowledge about where to start
Not familiar with systems, need directions
Help is not specific enough or personal enough
Help provided is difficult to understand

Preferred help features (IR systems):

Search tips (examples) – Help options
Demonstrations – Something quick and easy to learn
Chat with librarian – Seek help from a human being
Browsing – Can’t articulate need
Help search – Locate specific information

Preferences in comparison

Specificity
Visual format
Demo
Easy access
Interactivity

Least preferred help features

Search tips: too broad, not for experts
Advanced search: not on first page
Help icon: too hard to see
Glossary: not complete

Evaluation of a help system is related to evaluation of the system itself.

Good practical discussion slide.

Question about FAQs — Mentioned that FAQs are useful, but that many times the questions and answers do not match those of the users. They were asked if they were going to interview the designers of the systems they were evaluating. They mentioned that they were working with the CS department to develop design recommendations, but that they were not talking to the designers. This brought up the issue that many times IS studies have practical applications, but that we rarely pass that information to the designers.

SIG HCI Research Symposium (ASIST 2006)

2006-11-05T21:22:08Z

Notes and comments on the SIG HCI Research Symposium at ASIST 2006.

HCI and Meta-search Engines, Amanda Spink and Carolyn Watters

Marchionini (1996) showed that there is very little overlap between meta-search engines. They used a dataset from Dogpile.com that sounds a lot like the AOL dataset that was released — if the AOL dataset had been released through an academic project, would people have reacted the same? Users in the dataset tended to be on the high end of search behavior, with ~4 terms per query and ~4 queries per search. The duration of interaction was only a few seconds, but higher than average for search engines. In general not much difference in behavior between meta-search engines and normal search engines.

Good question — what are the limitations of web log analysis? It’s generally only one facet of the picture. When interesting patterns are found in the logs, they would do separate studies based on those patterns. Someone else mentioned that Google itself has realized that the amount of information available from logs is finite, and that they are really pushing into ethnographic research to evaluate search behavior.

User Behavior During Web Information Tasks, Melanie Kellar

Big question: What are the high level tasks on the web? How do users interact with their web browsers in standard high level tasks?

Focused a lot on web information/activity monitoring. Found that most users considered RSS too overwhelming. Users are interested in changes to specific information, not necessarily an entire page (though this behavior is very much task dependent).

For designers, this implies that we need to provide better tools for users to monitor frequently changing information, at least information that people would be interested in monitoring. While RSS is one way to do this, it is still necessary to offer alternative tools.

See session later this week.

Design Of Digital Libraries, Tony Moore (Drexel)

All of the digital libraries that he has mentioned are DSpace based. While most have modified the template, they still all look the same. Talked about the lack of visualization in DSpace. The default DSpace UI is incredibly dull. There seems to be a lot of low hanging fruit in this area when it comes to visual design and interaction design. He’s working on a mockup for a more visual interface for DSpace, could be interesting to follow.

Question: Did you think about the IA of the page? The order of information on the page?

Research Tool For Investigating User Interactions With Retail Websites, Allan Harold and Brian Detlor (McMaster)

How is consumer interaction with retail websites influenced by information seeking behavior and information presentation. Mentioned a big issue, the researchers looking at web behavior need to build viable simulations of real world websites that can also gather research information. They used Amazon Web Services to create an experimental front end. I wonder if they did any evaluation of user credibility for the experimental website versus real retail websites.

Desktop Virtual Reality Environments, Jamshid Behesti and Andrew Large

Browsing is mainly a visual activity. Using familiarity with libraries to create virtual environments for browsing digital libraries.

Games And Motivating Children To Engage In Health Applications, Carolyn Watters et al (Dalhousie)

Games increase engagement in treatment, increase motivation, provide a distraction, and have social benefits. Targeted children who are managing chronic diseases. Kids wanted to share and communicate with their friends.

Measuring Usability of International User Interfaces, Dania Bilal

Bourges-Waldegg & Scrivener, 1998 — Regardless of the language of an international interface, the design of the interface should be understandable to all audiences.

Sadly, I have to duck out now, but Jenny Preece (who is sitting two seats away from me) is about to talk.

Blogs & Wikis For Conference Communication (ASIST 2006)

2006-11-04T23:16:36Z

I’m in the blogs & wikis workshop at ASIST, I’m speaking in a few minutes, but I also wanted to share my notes.

Wiki page for Blogs & Wikis Workshop on the ASIST 2006 Wiki

The first thing we did was introduce ourselves, I added everyone in the audience to the wiki page. Shanshan Ma from Drexel mentioned that she’s working on a dissertation topic involving cooperative blogs (also CIO, CEO blogs).

Important question, why are Pretzels so popular as conference snacks?

Meredith Farkas

We watched Meredith Farkas’ presentation as a Flash screencast, it worked really well and the presentation was great. Meredith gave a good introduction to the topic and her experience mirrors a lot of the other presenter’s experiences.

Charles Livermore

Charles echoed Meredith’s experience, and then shared is experience with PBwiki. PBwiki is nice because getting a wiki up and running is so freaking easy.

Heather Morrison

Talked about her experience running a group blogs for libraries in British Columbia.

Beatrice Pulliam

Stephen mentioned how he learned about ASIST through the ASIST 2005 blog, and how he felt that they were a good tool both for reinforcing an existing community but also to expand the community by acting as outreach tool.

The blog and wiki for ASIST 2005 were developed independently, and there was concern that they were competing for attention. It seems to me that blogs and wikis solve different problems for conference communications, but they do divide the user’s attention.

An interesting comment/question came up about students who felt uncomfortable posting to a class blog because of exposure. Would people feel more comfortable participating if the wiki/blog was protected and only available to participants? Is the ability to allow anonymous editing and posting enough?

Lixin asked some more fundamental questions, and I realized that we’ve missed some important groundwork: * Can search engines see the content in the wiki or blog? * How to people know when new information is available?

Brad Hemminger

Interested in scholarly communications, and in particular how we can use wikis (less so blogs) to comment and provide feedback on scholarly work. Also, how can we use these tools to “pre-conference” — that is, extend the conference discussion before the conference happens so that it can be more reactive to the audience.

Paul Jones asks people to ask questions before the conference.

Heh, Brad talked about me

KT mentioned that she thought the wiki was a really good tool for extending the official proceedings by allowing presenters to share updated and new content (even whole slideshows).

Miguel did warn that you need to be careful about content on a wiki. Publishers are very picky about where information is published, and sharing pre-press information on a wiki can be considered “prior publication”. Which also forces us wiki advocates to admit that open wikis are a potential source of plagiarism. Less of a problem, though many people seem to think it is, is that other people can edit your content. This does happen, but is really the essence of the wiki model. Its up to the wiki maintainers to decide what their policy will be.

Shanshan mentioned that they have found evidence that frequently updated blogs are more popular. People like to see fresh information on the homepage. Wikis don’t have this problem.

Jackson Fox

Deborah Swain challenged me on the idea that most users don’t need all of the tools that MediaWiki provides. I still think that the majority of wikis don’t need these tools. They may be needed for really large communities, but for smaller ones, its overkill. BUT, maybe removing those tools means taking away too much. Maybe even small communities can find uses for the tools in MediaWiki. I’m not sure.

Stephen Francoeur

Stephen talked about the “info environment” the surrounds a conference: wikis, blogs, technorati, flickr, email lists, etc. He also talked about the lifetime of the conference info environment. Good metaphor: knitting information together. As a conference outsider, the info cloud makes one feel a part of the community, and allows one to find out what was said.

Heh, he just complained about the IA of most wikis. I think this is a valid argument.

Both Stephen and Brad talked about how conference wikis need better marketing so that the community can find these things. If they don’t find it, they won’t participate.

Is there such a thing as conference wiki/conference blog burnout?

People should use Technorati tags more often.

Deborah Swain

People won’t share if there isn’t trust.

How can we use blogs and wikis to advance the conversation before the conference? If we can do this, can we change the structure of the conference itself? We want to move away from the dim room and slides to promoting democratic conversations. Knowledge Cafe, something like an unconference.

I’m at ASIS&T 2006

2006-11-05T14:54:07Z

I’m in Austin for the ASIS&T 2006 Annual Meeting. If you’re in town and want to find me, you can reach me on my cell at (919) 423-4798 or via email at jacksonfox@gmail.com. I’m curious to try some Texas BBQ, so if anyone wants to get a BBQ outing together, get in touch.

Late night brain dump

2006-10-22T05:59:11Z

It’s late and I’m not thinking to clearly, but I have a couple of ideas bouncing around in my head that I want to get down so I don’t forget about them.

Inspiration

I want to start collecting insprational designs, screens, interface, etc. Back when I used OneNote all the time, I would save interesting screenshots. Alas, these are the days of the internets and OneNote has fallen out of favor. Do I start a new blog? Do I post these to Flickr? I’m inspired by Dan Saffer’s No Ideas But In Things weblog and demos of the new Backpack, Scrybe and Joyent demos and Swarmf. This leads me into my next thought…

All Wikis Suck

No, seriously. Every open source wiki sucks (sorry Roy). JotSpot does not totally suck. StikiPad isn’t too bad either. PBWiki sucks. I want OneNote for the web, and I want it now. The new Backpack is very intiguing to me.

Speaking of Wikis

I need to find a lightweight PHP-based wiki for me school website. I probably don’t have .htaccess available to me, and I’d like to avoid database servers. Does anything like this exist? Most of the active wiki projects out there are either; (1) bloated out of control, (2) too hard to setup, or (3) too hard to use. I just want something where I can create pages with Markdown, edit them via the web and (optionally) track revisions. Most importantly, I don’t want or need a heavy install. Very basic wiki stuff, but hard to get without the kitchen sink.

Ok, so that was more of a rant than I thought it would be.

At ConvergeSouth

2006-10-17T20:41:27Z

Sessions I’ve attended today:

10 Ways To A Killer Blog (Robert & Maryam Scoble)
Learning To Love Chaos (Jim Rosenberg)

Apparently this is the first time the Scoble’s have done a presentation together. I only caught the end of their presentation, but what little I did see was impressive. They made a concerted effort to get the audience involved and make the session a conversation.

Ran into quite a few Triangle Bloggers (Anton Zuiker, Bora Zivkovic, ae, Michael Kimsal, Josh Staiger, WillR) and SILS friends (Michael Habib). I also got to meet really interesting people like Ajit Anthony (Ticklebooth, Squigglebooth) and Simon Whittaker.

ConvergeSouth at Technorati

Off to ConvergeSouth in the morning

2006-10-14T17:42:59Z

I’m off to ConvergeSouth for some good ‘ole southern bloggin’. Sadly, I can only stay for a few hours. I’d love to stay for the after conference activities, but I have obligations in Durham in the evening. Still, it’ll be nice to get out of the house for a bit; I’ve been layed up with a cold the last two days.