Experience Planner

My boss’s boss at agency X just forwarded an email to the team: On November 13th, 2008, LexisNexis and Elsevier Science will be hosting the tri-state (OH, KY, IN) World Usability Day event in Miamisburg, Ohio.

This year’s WUD theme is Usability in Transportation. As the event planners say in their email: “The tri-state area is lucky to have many different practitioners from many industries and disciplines so we feel it is more important to share what we do with our colleagues than to stick to the theme. This is our time to appreciate all the good work in usability, UX, and UCD in our community.”

Right now, they’re looking for participants. So if you’re in the OH, KY, IN area, be sure to come to the event or share some work… there will be refreshments and a keynote speaker.

For more information:

http://www.worldusabilityday.org/

If you were to go to the iTunes App Store and drill down to Productivity, you might come across a very lovely icon. It’s a big, orange “2″ on a blue background (seriously, that 2 is pretty). The app name is compellingly enough, “Number Two.”

As those who know me can attest to, I will be inexorably drawn to #2. 

It’s called #2! I couldn’t wait to find out what it would help me do.

So, here’s the description: “Who is your Number Two? Your Number Two is the person you call second most often. This app is the simplest dialing app in the App Store.” 

Open the 99 cent app, and it immediately starts dialing your #2. 

Of course, for another 99 cents you can call that someone in your life that is more important than #2 with the app, “Number One.”

When I learned about the release of Google Chrome, I was filled with apprehension and dread, but I was still very interested.  In my former role as a writer, my current role as an experience planner and my long-time role as a curious person, I have an LTR with Google and Google Scholar (for when I’m a nerd). I also have an LTR with Firefox, so I’m not sure if I’m ready to give that up. And getting to know another browser is not exactly at the top of my wish list.

But change is afoot, and I had to get my curiousity satisfied.

(BTW, I’ve got pretty decent connectivity [although, I'm pretty certain that I lose my connection every few minutes]. I’m testing on my workhorse, a T61 ThinkPad provided by agency X. I especially like her because when I see the “T61,” it reminds me of the Terminator–the original–who was a T-101.)

Downloading Chrome

Superfast. Supereasy. The download screen was classic Google… clean and to the point. Good balance of imagery, text, and white space. As my boss likes to say: Just enough, just in time. I opted to not help make Chrome better (you can opt-in to auto send usage stats and crash reports), but I did appreciate the opt-in/out aspect. And it installs nice and fast.

Chrome required that I close out Firefox (domination begins with the first click) so it could import my bookmarks, settings, and logins/passwords from Firefox. Awesome. (Seriously, this would have been a significant barrier to adoption. I cannot remember every login and p/w combo.)

I’m not a person who does points, but if I were: Chrome, 5; Firefox, 0.

Upon First Opening Chrome

Chrome’s first action was to show me (via a small bit of text in a little box) that the address bar is also the search field. The helpful hints continued by explaining that the empty boxes on the screen would be filled with most visited websites.

I’ve seen users access sites in many different ways, and using the address bar to perform search was one of the most used paths. For less savvy users, these little nuggets of info can be very helpful to them and can also grow adoption.

I’m not crazy about the start page. At. all.

I love my feeds. I couldn’t see how to sign into iGoogle from the start page. But, it wasn’t too painful to bring up Google, sign into iG, and then find out how to set my page as the start/home. Of course, to set iG as my start page, it took a minute or two to figure out what I needed was the wrench (icon, not the tool).

Chrome, 2; Firefox, 0.

Plays Well with Others

I’ve heard that some people are having problems with Flash (clunky) or CSS (obeying alt CSS). I’ve gone to a few sites now, and it does seem like Flash is slow. Overall, Chrome is speedy, so the slower Flash load was surprising.

I’ve not had any CSS issues though. I’ll continue testing this. 

Chrome, 0; Firefox, 5. 

Initial Takeaways

Chrome is:

• Fast
• Simple
• Blue
• Cheeky (language-wise)
• Recommended

So, I experienced an interesting problem/opportunity recently.

I was working on a project to add community to an existing website. The client is in healthcare. If you’ve not worked in healthcare before, it is a highly regulated industry. For example, getting site content approved requires several rounds of review by several reviewers. It sounds tedious, but it isn’t bad.

So, adding forums and user-generated content represented a significant step… it will be a moderated community, but one in which the approval cycle is shortened to minutes and not weeks.

So, all in all, it’s an excellent step.

However, while discussing the interactions and experience during the wireframing process, two points were brought up by the marketers:

1. Why can’t people just write what they want without signing in or registering for the community?
2. Why should we let people upload an avatar? They might upload something “bad.”

I thought these were very interesting issues… particularly because they seem to counter the idea of community and specifically the community we were creating for our personas.

Issue One: Guests

The site’s personas rely heavily on peer to peer contact for shared wisdom. Personal knowledge of the person or an understanding that the person who is providing the wisdom is or has undergone similar experiences lends a high level of credibility to what they are saying/writing. Our research indicated that this expertise was extraordinarily important to our users.

The goal of this community was to foster online social groups through shared conditions and experiences. It’s hard to foster friendships and alliances with people who are not invested in the community, who are not in the community.

Issue Two: Avatars

Let me just first say that I don’t know that I want to imagine this community without avatars.

An avatar is a simple way of saying, “Hi! I’m a person.” An avatar is quickly recognizable and gives some indication of what kind of person you are. For example, a friend of mine’s avatar is a monkey and a banana smiling, with their arms around each other. The caption says, “BFF.” Goofy, yes… but hey, so is she.

Compare that to the default avatar: the gray silhouette of a woman. What about that says there is a person with a unique identity here? Does that convey credibility?

How It Went

Fortunately, we addressed the issues and were able to re-align as a group and move on. Yes, letting the people take the reigns of the dialogue can be nerve-wracking for brands in highly regulated spaces. But, ultimately, it can also be very rewarding.

My iPod is dying.

It’s at that sad point where I can only use it when it is hooked up to my computer or external power source. It freezes often. It drives my computer absolutely up the wall. They’re, as the nerds like to say, not compatible anymore.

I’m pretty down about it.

It’s a color screen iPod–when it came out 2 or 3 years ago, it was called photo iPod and was quickly overshadowed by its svelte, sexy sib, the video iPod. I got it for my birthday. Like a lot of the best things that I have, I wanted it for years before someone got sick of hearing me ramble on about it for the 1,537th time and gave it to me as a gift.

Of course, little did they realize that while they had alleviated their annoyance factor, everyone around me (especially my coworkers) had to listen to my holy-crap-you-don’t-have-an-iPod-go-out-and-buy-one-this-thing-
changed-my-life-they-do-free-engraving-you-can-have-poo-and-farts-
and-stuff-engraved-on-your-iPod rant (soon to be followed by a loud proclamation that the iTrip wasn’t a perfect solution, but a pretty good value).

So, for real, the iPod altered my perception of music. I always loved mixed tapes and I’m a person who likes to listen to music by emotion state, so the ability to make a playlist on iTunes and on the go with my iPod — well, let’s just say that I am like freaking Grandmaster Flash. Only with no cutting and no scratching. And probably a little depressing. Whatevs, I love the ability to put together a playlist worthy of concept album status (in my own mind).

So, I’m bummed, b/c I’ll miss Little Guy and his constant presence in my life. And I’m super unhappy with Steve Jobs for his Tyrell-like move. 2 or 3 years old and already biting the dust.

And yes, I could get the battery replaced.

But have you seen the 32 GB iPod Touch?!

One thing that I like to hear when I first dig in on a project at Bridge:

“We used to be able to do this type of website in a month. Now it takes seven.”

There are a few things that have changed in the three years that I have been with Bridge–all of which run through my mind and, as most who know me know… if it is on my mind, you’ve got a 78 percent chance of hearing it. Things like: We’ve instituted rigorous process; we’ve added subject matter experts from several disciplines; we’ve made large, complex websites the focus of most of our engagements.

But, mostly I think that 1) it never took a month, it took six, 2) those six months made a lot of people run away (and by run away, I mean cry, yell, or quit–and sometimes I wanted to run far, far away), and 3) the hours ran away. They really ran away.

Not that I want to start a trend or anything, but Jeff sent an email a little while ago w/the subj line: AdAge on becoming a TRUE interactive agency. The story went something like this: One firebrand initiates a digital revolution at his agency. Agency adopts senior technology leadership to shape direction, begins a deep love affair with IA, and reengineers process to become a TRUE interactive agency. Agency successfully becomes TRULY digital. (I’m not sure what’s with the TRUE, that might be Jeff making a pt or AdAge.)

Well, Bridge is on that very same road. When I started at Bridge in April of 2005, there were three centers of excellence that drove client work: Account, Creative, Research, and Technology (let me make this clear: that was in alpha order). And we were nutty. Technology was… I don’t know, either Flash or the support desk. Anyone could do a site map. Sometimes, it was the client. Often it was creative. Sometimes it was technology. As for process… well, we had process?

And then Uncle Chally came. I don’t know if he knows this. Frankly, I don’t know if anyone else realizes it either–but I’m blown away by CH and Bridge. Overnight we went from, “User experience is like … uh, usability and junks right?” to “Hey, this is not the optimal experience for the user. How can we fix it?” We went from designing for the client and what made sense to us to… well, designing for the user.

We adopted a complex and rigorous process. If I could digitally snap my fingers to show you how fast, I would. But, it was an intensely different philosophy and approach to the work, and everyone jumped on the 5D process.

And finally, IA. Well, I’m a senior experience planner. There weren’t any XPs walking around, loving on IA 2 years ago.

We even have SEM guys–three of them.

Yes, all of this takes time. But, it adds focus, thinking, strategy, tactical and executional excellence, risk mitigation, and outstanding results.

This is not the agency I started at. Thank god.

Viva la Revolution!

* Are we allowed to swear on this blog?