If you aren't already, do follow me on Twitter.
So for all the Twitteratti / Tweeple / Tweeps out there, here's my list of top 10 tools / plugins (in no particular order) for Twitter to enhance your Tweeting experience.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck takes all the information from Twitter and helps you manage the information overload by grouping them into managable pieces or based on your interests.

Twitturly

Tracks Top URLs which are talked about on Twitter. Extremely useful service and helps you find the most interestsing and latest information on the web.

Twitter Patterns

Helps you give your twitter page some style! They have some really cool designs, check it out.

Twitterfeed

Very useful app, which automatically tweets whenever you publish a post on your blog. Helps you get some link love!

Easy Tweets

A handy tool for online and digital marketers who wish to leverage the advantages of social media and microblogging. Easy Tweets enables you to switch between multiple Twitter accounts, track follower, replies etc all from one dashboard.

Hashtags

Hashtags enable you to track and follow conversations on Twitter. Follow @hashtags on Twitter and the service will index your tweets. Then add a #tagname to your tweet and this can be instantly looked up or searched.

Quotably

This service lets you follow a user's conversations in a threaded manner, showing you all the various people the given user has had a conversation with. Interesting tool, especially when you trying to find out what others are saying about your brand/service.

Plodt

Power Twitter

Twitter Keys

Twitter keys is a fun tool for Twitter which enables you to use UTF8 symbols in your tweets.  Once downloaded, this appears as a floating window, so all you need to do is to choose your symbol, copy n paste. So come on, get creative in your tweets using these symbols.

One special feature

Vakow

Vakow is an India focussed service which lets you post to Twitter as an SMS. Very useful and probably the cheapest way to pot to Twitter via mobile in India.

Let me know what you like and what tool you use.

Even with the "Wizard" interface of Open Office Impress, it took me literally 2 minutes to figure out where to start. I didn't get the toolbars and buttons on the screen I wanted to start off my presentation. I went to the ToolBar menu to customize it, but that again took 2 minutes to figure out what is happening. Then I selected one template and inserted some bullet-points in the first slide. Now I wanted to change the colour and transition effects of the text, and again I had to search through the screen to find how to do the same.

This is the place where MS Office Powerpoint 2007 excels. I have tried it earlier for my college presentation. Their patented Ribbon-style interface just helps you do what is there in your mind. It never obstructs the flow of your thought. Be it changing the colour to inserting an audio file and animating the slide, it just works seamlessly. And you feel that its all there in front of you, ready to be used at your command.

That is how User Interface should be for your software product. You should know how your user is going to interact with the product. You should know the types of users and how they work, how they think, what they need first when an app starts. Don't make the user think. Don't let him pause for a moment and stare at the screen. Moreover, the User Interface should help the user use functionality of the product which he didn't even intend to use in the first place, and which will enhance his work even more.

I know that the User Interface of Open Office Impress is very similar to MS Office 2003 version and I have used MS Office 2003 for lot of presentations. But now I am used to the look and feel of Office 2007.  I think only about 'what' to do, not 'how' to do, while using it.

That is the reason I love MS Office 2007 and wish to buy the same.  Lets see what can be done with my presentation. Will give it to someone who is still very familiar with Open Office or do it on a machine that has Office 2007.

Quisiera que todos pensáramos por un momento si no tenemos en nuestras casas o apartamentos un retrete como el mostrado en la fotografía, un poco mas lujoso o sencillo, pero en general con la misma configuración de diseño, ... un lugar NO hecho para ORINAR!. Por mas dominio o destreza que un hombre tenga del espacio, distancia y tiempo, o por decirlo de otra manera, por mas puntería tenga tal persona, al final encontrara sus orines salpicados en alguna parte exterior y expuesta del retrete, ... quien no ha discutido con alguna mujer con la cual comparta su vivienda o se ha alarmado cuando tiene alguna visita femenina, debido a aquellas desagradables gotas amarillas que podrían estar en algún lugar exterior del baño?...porque si es un problema generalizado de los hogares colombianos, TODOS los arquitectos del país siguen diseñando baños con la misma configuración de diseño?..., te has puesto a pensar que quizás no es por tu falta de destreza o puntería que te ves involucrado en situaciones desagradables tanto en tu propia casa como en una diferente a la cual has sido invitado?.

Sugerencia de Diseño.

Desde mi perspectiva el problema radica en dos situaciones especificas, la primera relacionada al hecho de que como personas en general, asumimos muchas veces costumbres o productos solamente porque estos se han abierto un lugar generalizado entre las costumbres o creencias de una comunidad, y no adoptamos una actitud critica que nos ayude a encontrar mejores alternativas que nos hagan la vida mas fácil. Yo creo que es el caso del baño típico colombiano, sumado a la segunda situación la cual en mi criterio tiene que ver con los diseños arquitectónicos de los arquitectos de hogares colombianos los cuales por razones que desconozco siguen utilizando la misma configuración tradicional de los baños. Teniendo en cuenta esta perspectiva mi sugerencia es la concientización tanto de nuestros arquitectos como también nosotros mismos de utilizar configuraciones alternativas que YA EXISTEN, como por ejemplo apartar un espacio para un pequeño orinal para hombres y NO utilizar el retrete para tal fin.

4. Testing is a pain- either on the device or using simulators

3. The huge range of  display output sizes and types

2. The what seems like millions of user input styles : pens, styluses, keypads, keyboards, touch screens, voice commands

1. The always evolving and growing of the insanely diverse set of users - people with different technical backgrounds  across different ages, cultures, and environments ....

Every week I read tens of thousands of blog posts. Here, for your weekend enjoyment, are some highlights from my recent reading, for you.

On Starting Up...
http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2008/09/what-is-early-s.html
The question is asked, "What is an early stage company?"

On Design & Product Experience...
http://css-tricks.com/the-usability-problems-of-useitcom/
On the usability issues of Jacob Nielsen's UseIt.com.

On Modular Innovation...
http://www.drpic.com/
Modular Innovation in the online image editing and storage space by DrPic.

Have a great weekend!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

Add to Social Bookmarks:

1. Google’s focus on the uptime of your website (keeping the server that runs your site up is more important than ever)
2. The important of keeping your website bounce rate low (bounce rate are the number of visitors who come to your site and leave within 5 secs, or only look at one page). From the article: “If you're bouncing over 80 percent of the time back to the search results, it's highly likely that the rankings will either be demoted or drop off completely.”
3. Google’s monitoring of the # of RSS subscribers you have and ranking blog articles higher if the blog has more subscribers….Considering that Google has acquired Feedburner, this changing focus on RSS subscribers as a measurement of the value of your site should not be all that surprising.

This has huge implications for nonprofits.

Website Uptime and SEO

If you don't monitor your website's uptime, you should. Create a free account on Pingdom today.

Bouncerate and Google Ranking

Look at your bounce rate within Google analytics. If you have a high number, there are two possible explanations:

• One, you might be ranking for keywords that aren't related to your core mission. This is where optimizing that page strategically with keywords related to your mission comes in. You can find older articles on this blog that talk about keyword research & and where to put those keywords on your page.
• Two, your homepage might be just plain confusing. This is where running a usabilty test comes in. The simple 8 second test is to take print out of your homepage, give it to a person who hasn't seen the site before and let them look at it for 8 seconds. Then take it away and ask them three questions: 1. who owns the site? 2. What is the site about? 3. What can I do on this site? If you get answers not aligned with the goals of your site, you're in trouble.  It's best to get a professional firm to run an un-biased usability test of your site, but if you're financial strapped, you can get volunteers and run a test yourself. Jakob Neilson's usit.com site has usuabilty testing resources you can use.

RSS Subscribers

If you have a blog and haven't created an RSS feed using Feedburner's tools, you should do that today. It will allow you to create a widget on your blog where readers can receive blog updates via email - and those emails are then captured by you and exportable through the Feedburner interface. While I'm talking about RSS, here are a few other free tools I like to use to evaluate the popularity of blog posts. The first is Aids RSS is shows you how popular each of your blog posts are and where they are being bookmarked and shared.

The second is FeedCompare which lets you compare your subscriber #s to your competitors. This is really valuable. And finally here's a listing of places where you can submit your RSS feeds to promote your site. You might also submit your blog to Wikio which ranks popular blogs by subject matter. It's also a good idea to follow those popular blogs & provide appropriate comments on posts you like with a link back to the blog you own.

So while nonprofits would rather not think about things like website uptime, the usability of their site, or engaging in social media, all of those items are becoming even more important, and an avoidance of dealing with some of those issues might result in you being booted off the Google index...something you shold avoid.

Many developers like to quickly prototype and push code out quickly, and I am a fan of this. However, if taken to an extreme, it can lead to products based on incorrect assumptions. Noah Kagan notes that at Mint:

We did surveys, user testing and psychological profiles. This was extremely useful in identifying the types of users we may have on the site and especially for seeing how people use the site. I never really did this before and was AMAZED how people use the site vs. what I expected

As Noah points out, usability testing can be easy and cheap. What it requires is simple:

1. Determine what you are trying to test. This is usually a list of the form, "How easy is it to complete task X?"

2. Recruit representative users. If you're testing a new user experience, Craigslist is fine for this [Tip - if your core user is a middle america, . But make sure that your testers are truly representative. Your existing user base is another good place to find testers, but make sure that you're not just listening to just your loudest users. The key is to pre-qualify the users to ensure that they are "average".

3. Do the test. First ask them what their first impressions of the site are. What captures their attention? What would they do first? Ask the users to speak out loud during the session, explaining what they are thinking at all times. Then ask them to complete the tasks that you have listed. Watch and listen. Note what they find easy, what they find confusing, and what they don't find at all.

This can be incredibly frustrating for you. You'll think that some things are "obvious" that are not, or you'll be shocked to see how unfamiliar users are with your site, or even with how browsers work. Remember that your role is to learn, not teach. Don't touch the screen, the keyboard or the mouse; don't point out how to do anything (even when they are "doing it wrong", even if it is a "basic mistake"). You can provide encouragement and reassurance, or ask questions about why they did something, but that is it. You'll be surprised at what you see.

The key is to internalize that there is no such thing as "user error" and there are no "stupid users". If users are having problems achieving the tasks that you laid out for them, then the fault lies with your site. You'll need to review your UI.

I prefer to do these usability tests over webex with users at their own computers. This makes the interaction as natural as possible for the testers. As an added bonus, you can then record both their screencast and the phonecall for later review.

Usability testing does not have to be a lot of work/ You only need to test five users to uncover most usability problems.

The most striking truth of the curve is that zero users give zero insights.

When you've completed your usability test, go back and makes some changes, but then come back and test again:

You want to run multiple tests because the real goal of usability engineering is to improve the design and not just to document its weaknesses. After the first study with 5 users has found 85% of the usability problems, you will want to fix these problems in a redesign.

After creating the new design, you need to test again. Even though I said that the redesign should "fix" the problems found in the first study, the truth is that you think that the new design overcomes the problems. But since nobody can design the perfect user interface, there is no guarantee that the new design does in fact fix the problems. A second test will discover whether the fixes worked or whether they didn't. Also, in introducing a new design, there is always the risk of introducing a new usability problem, even if the old one did get fixed.

Also, the second test with 5 users will discover most of the remaining 15% of the original usability problems that were not found in the first test. (There will still be 2% of the original problems left - they will have to wait until the third test to be identified.)

Finally, the second test will be able to probe deeper into the usability of the fundamental structure of the site, assessing issues like information architecture, task flow, and match with user needs. These important issues are often obscured in initial studies where the users are stumped by stupid surface-level usability problems that prevent them from really digging into the site.

This can all feel like overhead when all you want to do is launch. Trust me, it isn't overhead. Getting this stuff closer to right the first time will only help you reach your goals faster.

Auch auf eine Signatur wurde verzichtet.

Und das vom Organisationsteam eines "e-biz-egovernment awards". :)

Fundamentally Xcite Digital will help you to:
1. Increase marketing Return on Investment (ROI)
2. Decrease marketing costs
3. Maximise the lifetime value of the customer
4. Improve visitors interactions with the campaign

However, there are so many smaller projects in which, due to timing and budget, usability is never really tested. Sure, for a lot of things you can rely on the empirical knowledge of a senior user experience planner, but really observing people and their behavior with your end product, always shows that you can optimize the experience. Sometimes, you even find critical issues, no matter how well you thought it through.

Therefore, the question for anyone charged with the planning of experiences always is: how do we get user experience testing set up without being on the client's agenda or in his budget? We usually fall back onto informal testing rounds and rapid prototype development with the designers making changes as planners generate insights and recommendations. We also developed small modules on how accomplish quick turnarounds on such issues as screening and recruiting and developed special agreements with our testing partners. However, we never formalized it as a process.

Today, I came across a great article by Paul Nuschke of Boxes and Arrows and his approach to the problem. Definitely a good read for all the Experience Planners out there.

The Web is shifting to a DIY [Do It Yourself] model of user experience creation, one where people assemble individual combinations of content gathered form elsewhere for expressive, functional, and (many) other purposes. The rapid growth of widgets, the resurgence of enterprise portals, the spread of identity platforms from social network destinations to blogging services, and the rapid increase in the number of public APIs syndicating functionality and data, are all examples of the DIY shift.

I think this assumption that people will want a DIY web experience can be debated.  Surely, there are some alpha-geeks that are extremely comfortable building and using technology to suit their specific needs.  By virtue of reading this post, you are likely one of these.  I would argue that most people -- your grandma, your mailman, your barber -- don't want to spend the time tailoring environments to fit every need, and don't care enough about information tech to do so.  Most people employ a satisficing strategy, where they go with a solution that's good enough, rather than going after an optimal design solution. Some examples:

• Take hodrod, customized cars in the 50s/60s.  A few people became expert at building sweet hotrod cars.  They wanted to find the right carborator to fit the engine that they custom built.  And a lot of people envied those souped up cars.  But most people just got in their regular old car and went about their business.
• A few people will build their own computer to get the exact configuration they want to maximize performance.  A far greater number of people will go to their local big box store, or Dell, even Apple, and select one of the preconfigured systems that meets most of their needs.
• In the early to mid 90's, dial-up internet service providers provided people with internet access (you remember when you finally got to 56kbps, don't you?).  AOL came along, and sent you a disk with a simple install process.  Millions of people joined AOL, even though you had to use their browser, and could only access services they allowed.
• A few people will host their own blog, photo gallery, etc.  And as Joe suggests, syndication feeds, web services, and widgets are making it easier to mix and mash functionality to make your own site.  But a lot of people are getting a lot of value out of Facebook, MySpace.  Sure, you could build your own site, but Facebook and MySpace hits a lot of the functionality that you want most often.

Satisficing means that people don't typically search or work exaustively to find the best solution.  Instead they have some criteria for 'good enough, ' and go with the first solution that meets that criteria.  Its why you don't look through all 1.6M search results Google gives to you; its why you don't compare results between Google, Ask, Yahoo, Live, and every other search engine out there.

Now, one might argue that Gen Y and neomillenials (people born after 1980, often called digital natives) are more active participants in social media, and are more likely to want to create content.  And a few of those natives will likely create a cool framework or mashup that allows his peers to connect in ways we haven't thought of yet.  But based on my limited experience working with these digital natives (3 years in grad school, some mentoring, some TAing an intro programming course), most in this age group almost take the presence and abundance of technology tools for granted.  I don't believe they want to build or tailor an experience; they expect the experience to be there, or will come along soon, and don't care to expend the time/energy to create it.

Given that, I think the future is bright for excellent designers, user experience researchers, ethnographers to understand the wants, needs, and environments that people consume information products, and design solutions that meet those needs.  Yes, we need good frameworks to enable more powerful, effective, and efficient information products.  But people want, and will continue to want, excellent experiences given to them, rather than taking the time and effort to develop their own.

I was using the time to arrange an upcoming trip, and was quite surprised to see this brick wall when I tried to access TripIt.com:

The "Your organisation..." is a bit misleading. I was just using the free wifi point.

If anybody from Air NZ is reading ... what?

I realise it's been a few years since I worked in a big corporate, so I might just be unaccustomed to being treated like a little kid by an IT department, but seriously what are you trying to prohibit here. You don't want me to visit travel related websites while I'm in the Koru lounge?

What's worse, you actually allow me to do it, but you want to make me feel naughty in the process? As it was I just clicked the "Use Quota" button and it let me straight through. What other sites you don't think are acceptable, I wonder?

Quite weird.

By the way, speaking of Air NZ and TripIt...

Has anybody else run into problems with the new format e-tickets emails that Air NZ have introduced recently? I'm using Mail.app on OS X and am having a problem with the attachments:

The item in the inbox has 9 attachments, but the message itself has only 6. The 3 that are missing are the PDFs with the booking details.

When I forward to TripIt it is no longer able to automatically add the booking as it has in the past.

When I look at the same message through gmail.com it has all 9 attachments and works fine when I forward to TripIt, so it would seem to be a Mail.app problem.

Is this just me, or have others seen this too?

Except that there are limits.

Currently, Facebook users are allowed to be members of just 300 Groups at a time. If you try to join more, you get the disturbing and disheartening error message "You have too many groups. You must leave one to join this one." Too many, they say?! I must say that three hundred is not nearly enough!

Another serious flaw in Facebook Groups is that members can't opt out of mass mail: Either you stay and receive every message from admins to all members, or you leave the Group entirely. How unfortunate to so many basically attractive Groups, that even occasional mass mails can be a major annoyance without it being their own fault. Group mass mails are a problem essentially because the usability of Facebook Messages (an equivalent to web mail) is really poor: users can't create folders or filters for their incoming messages.

So, how do I deal with my "too many" favourite Facebook Groups?

I've created a separate web page, titled "Examples of Facebook Groups". This page gives me a quick big picture of my personal favourites, and also solves another cluster of usability issues on Facebook, namely the way that Groups are categoricized there. Their way is just as bad and idiosyncratic as any other linear and static classification system. And as if that weren't bad enough, users can't even browse their own Groups by category.

In an ideal environment, entities like Facebook Groups might be classified further by admin-assigned tags and dynamic clouds of significant words derived from the content of the Group...

You Tube and Easy YouTube Player

This film shows someone with a learning disability, Lizzie, using YouTube and then the Easy YouTube player.  It highlights some of the issues around players online and shows how Easy YouTube is so much better for her.

You can access Lizzie using YouTube and the Easy YouTube player with the Easy YouTube player

You can access Lizzie using YouTube and the Easy YouTube player on YouTube

Short interviews

This film shows short interviews with two people with learning disabilities, Ann and Lizzie, talking about some of the issues they face being online generally.

You can access Ann and Lizzie being interviewed with the Easy YouTube player

You can access Ann and Lizzie being interviewed on YouTube

* I am very grateful to Ann and Lizzie and that they have given permission for these films to be shared.

Context

Both videos were shown as  part of a presentation called Online Content for People with Learning Disabilities: opening doors.

Here is the original presentation:

[slideshare id=609797&doc=onlinecontentfor-peoplewithlearningdisabilities-1221993712705861-9&w=425]

• Consistency with yourself (internal)
  • Consistent Language- For example, if a user is trying to complete an order through a website, the website should pick "Buy", "Purchase", or "Complete Order," not a mixture of different words. This is similar in a cell phone website when referring to a mobile phone, is it a mobile phone, mobile, cell phone, cell, or just phone?
  • Consistent Layout - The navigation in websites should be consistent, such as Home Page link, or the search bar should be in one place as the user flows through the website. Another example is the tabbed pane widget:

  If a tab is selected that is not on the front row, the tabs reorganize themselves to bring the tab to the front row.

While the tabs bring the active tab to the front, the orientation changes drastically which can result in disorientation for the user.

• Consistency with Representation - In different players on the internet, after pausing the player, a pause symbol will appear on the screen to show the state that the video is paused...while in other video players a play button will appear to show the action that will happen by selecting this button. An Switching tabs, hard to find

• Consistency with the environment (external) - Keep in mind the platform your application is developed for. Follow the standards for that platform, such as having a "File" menu with an "Exit" option on the windows platform.

• Consistency with previous experience - Make sure your consistent with the users experience whether in applications or in real life. If the user presses a button with a right facing arrow, make sure the button indicates a "play" action to mimic the playing that occurs in real life. An example of a violation of being consistent with the experience is using words such as "Okay" to mean canceling an action and "Cancel " meaning to continue on with the action as seen here.

If a user already has some familiarity to your system because of consistency, your interface is easier to learn!

Technorati Tags: customerexperience, design, iphone, mobile, thoughts, ui, usability

Here are some details from the post:

• The survey is open to designers and non-designers.
• Goal is to better understand both causes and perception of causes of failure.
• Survey has 7 questions, all multiple choice, and should take less than 5 minutes
• You can be anonymous, but it you want a shot at prizes, put in your email.

I just finished the survey and it doesn't take too long, so if you have a few minutes to spare, go ahead and take the survey.

The survey closes on Friday, end of day, US time. Oh, and there are prizes.

"One of the key elements of building a strong brand is color selection. Every color has a different feel and various associations. By choosing a color or a combination of colors for your brand identity, you will take on those associations. Colors Usability Matterswill evoke certain emotions and feelings towards your brand so it is vital to choose a color that will represent your identity effectively.

Research reveals people make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone.

Why Color Matters"  VIa Usability Post

I was doing a bit of research on a particular camera I had seen elsewhere to see if I could get it cheaper. I was pretty convinced I was going to buy it; the decision was now from where. However, this changed when I spotted the user reviews. They ended up being pretty mixed, and someone suggested an alternative. So I checked out the alternative, which had all positive reviews and I ended up buying it.

This was totally against my initial intention or expectation and my decision to purchase was based upon my emotion as I was led by the user reviews.

However, basic usability was not great, what an awful screen where you enter you card details:

• The layout felt weird, as the entry fields were laid out horizontally for, card type, name, number etc etc; and
• There was bad error feedback: I missed something out (I think) because when I hit next/submit (whatever the button was called to get me to the next screen) I got an error message telling me there was something wrong with my details. So it cleared everything I had entered and didn’t tell me where or what was wrong, so I had to fill out all fields on this page again. How annoying:-(

It's not a catastrophic usability error because I still completed my purchase, but it was annoying all the same. Maybe I made allowances because it was Amazon; because of the Brand I kind of trusted them a bit more, but if it a smaller and less well known site/company I’m not sure I would have continued.

Check out http://beyondusability.humanfactors.com/ where designing for persuasion, emotion and trust is thought to be essential when staying ahead.