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PhotosynthThursday, January 24. 2008Ajax and usabilityWednesday, January 2. 2008
Ajax is showing up more and more online. Not that it’s a new solution – it’s been around for years – but has become increasingly popular in online applications and websites.
What is AJAX? It stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XHR (XMLHttpRequest). Translation? It updates web content in the page without a full page refresh. This is done by retrieving data from the server and displaying data only in a portion of the page instead of refreshing the entire page. Example 1: Auto Save The best example I can think of to share, given its popularity, is the autosave feature in Gmail. As you’re drafting an email, the email is autosaved into your draft folder, and the ‘save’ button appears deselected, letting you know that the system is saving for you. The page never reloads, yet the user sees a change in display on the page. That’s Ajax.  Example 2: Auto Suggest Ever had a list of search terms auto-populate in a dropdown list as you’re typing in your keyword? Yahoo’s search engine does this currently. Ajax again.  Usability considerations At the Usability Professional Associations’ DC conference in November, John Whalen from Human Factors International spoke about the usability of Ajax, and knowing when to use Ajax as a solution, and when not to. Like any solution, using Ajax gratuitously or incorrectly can decrease usability. I love kayak.com and find that they’re using Ajax really nicely. One exception is when the user changes the flight times filters and the page data refreshes (without reloading) with new data, but very little feedback is provided to the user that this has happened. The user has to look quickly because the visual cue indicating that the data is changing is very easy to miss, displaying for half a second. If the user’s looking elsewhere on the page, they may not realize that their flight options have changed.  Progressive Disclosure I’ve also seen Ajax being used to enable progressive disclosure. This is an interaction design term referring to presenting small amounts of content at a time, upon user prompt, so as to avoid overwhelming the user with too much information or options at a time. Banana Republic, and most of the Gap brands, use this approach on their sites. Users are able to discover additional information about an item - what colors it’s sold in, what sizes remain – and can even add the item to their cart without ever having to reload the page.   Another Ajax example using progressive disclosure is on tripadvisor.com Long lists or sections of content are displayed in a summary view, and the user has the option of discovering the complete and expanded list by clicking on the ‘Click to expand’ prompt. The page never reloads, but additional content is disclosed to the user.  In conclusion At Forum One, we tend to work on the information architecture of content dense sites; I can see a number of ways that Ajax will be a good fit for some of the challenges we approach. The remaining questions I have are around the accessibility of Ajax, and the impact it has on site statistics. If you've got insights on those topics, please share. Traditional Media Gets CrowdsourcingTuesday, June 26. 2007 Nature (.com not .org) is by far one of the most reputed science journals out there and I have friends at the NIH whose career ambition would be to have their papers published in it. Scientists go through a tough process of editorial screening then exhaustive peer reviews before anything gets published in any serious science journal. So what is interesting is that Nature created a site where it posts all the submissions it has received prior to any peer reviews. They call the site Nature Precedings, with a subhead: "Pre-publication research and preliminary findings". By doing this, it gives the science community a chance to glean over the body of papers that are good but may not make the cut, and the ability to even vote of them. If this takes off, then Nature will also benefit from getting some input into which ones they may focus their attention on (although I am sure they'd have to read them all anyway). A case of a serious traditional print media taking new media crowdsourcing seriously. According to Nature's Timo Hannay:
[via: Joho the blog] Massively Collaborative Data VisualizationsFriday, June 1. 2007 Many Eyes is a neat tool/site provided by IBM Research that allows you to visualize datasets through a set of visualization types and share the results allowing visitor comments.All the maps are interactive. Currently there are 3107 (as of 6/1/2007 1:34PM EST) visualization. They say they will be adding rating and other social networking features in the near future. Here's an example visualization: 
Scrapblog = Flickr + YouTube + Photoshop + BloggerFriday, April 13. 2007 Scrapblog is what Apple would have done in 6 months with iLife's iWeb. It brings together photos from Flickr, movies from YouTube into a web-based photoediting interface, where you can create a scrapbook of photos, movies, on nice preset layouts and backgrounds. You can then post it like a blog entry to their site or to your blog, allowing comments to be posted. You can also export to MySpace, Flickr, to print, or make a book or DVD. Sweet. Business model? "Google Buy Me!" 
Notes from NTEN 2007Monday, April 9. 2007 I attended the 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington DC last week (April 5, 6). Here are some notes and highlights from the sessions I attended. Session 1: What Technology Can Do for Your Mission Interesting session with Charlie Brown (Ashoka), Isaac Castillo (Latin American Your Center), and Roberto Cavlcanti (Conservation International) presenting on the way each organization has been using technology to further their mission. Charlie talked about Changemakers (Forum One helped build their current site) and how putting their competition process online has allowed innovators at the periphery to participate. Issac talked about how creating an online database of their members has helped them focus their efforts and be more accountable to their funders. Roberto talked about the technology challenges of a scaling global organization with offices in many countries. (and how an investment in teleconferencing equipment paid itself off the first time in was used due to the saving in airfare) My take aways: First figure our what problems need to be solved then find and use technology strategically to solve them. Session 2: What Works with Online Community Learned nothing new that I didn't know already about how to grow and maintain an online community. Well maybe that's a little too harsh. I did learn that there are 3 types of users that participate in online communities: goal-motivated user, socially motivated user, and curious learner. My take aways: Not much, just that adding photos next to posts increases traffic. Session 3: Fundamentals of Storytellig in Online Communications This was an interesting session presented by Jonah Sachs and Susan Finkelpearl, our friends at Free Range Studios, the creators of The Meatrix and Grocery Store Wars. It covered the basics of good story telling - that you need a hero (Luke Skywalker), nemesis (Darth Vader), mentor (Obi-wan), oracle (Yoda) and an animal familiar (R2-D2), and how they used these elements to produce their flash-based campaigns. The nemesis doesn't have to be someone, or an organization. It can be something within people such as, in the case of global warming, indifference, ignorance, greed, laziness etc. The best stories sometimes ends up being stories that your users tell. However you have to provide clear directives for the users to tell their stories: "who influenced your most in school?" rather than "tell us a story about your school". They also gave a step by step guide to storytelling:
The first question from the audience was interesting: "When should you not use storytelling?" I thought that Jonah answered this question well - most of what they were talking about was targeted towards the general public, however for academics or researchers who look for hard data or research, storytelling the information may not be appropriate. In short, taylor your message to your audience. My take aways: Let your users tell the stories for you. Let your organization be the "mentor" of the story (Obi-wan), and the user be the "hero" (Luke Skywalker). Session 4: Branding Through Websites: Building your brand from the first click Laura Quinn (Alder Consulting) defined brand as, "your gut feeling about an organization", which is creatd by rational (e.g. what you do) and non-rational (e.g. people who hate the color red) factors. It is the external perception of your organization that is out of your control, but you can influence it. And whether you like it or not "you already have a brand." Some exercises that get to your branding are:
Website are a powerful and often the only way to communicate to your constituents. You have control over the following factors that influence your brand on your site:
During the session, as an exercise, the audience was divided into smaller groups and given a site to figure out what they do and who they serve. Megan, our
My take aways: You have a brand whether you like it or not. How do you make sure it is an accurate reflection of who you are? Session 5: New Approach to Social Change: Technology and the Social Entrepreneur Great session with Steven Clift (E-Democracy.org), Charles Best (DonorsChoose.org) and Kris Herbst (Ashoka, Changemakers), about what it means to be a social entrepreneur, applying business practices and using technology opportunistically. Steve provided better tips for maintaining a productive community than the session I went to yesterday. On e-democracy.org he has a couple of rules:
Charles had a fascinating presentation of how he started DonorsChoose.org out of frustration, when he was a high school teacher in the Bronx, with $2000 of his own money (while he was living at home with his mom). In the beginning, he also had his students handwrite letters to potential donors. Teacher have great ideas, but are unable to get funding, so DonorsChoose.org provides a platform for the teachers to submit proposals for school activities and for people who wish to fund a project to be "confident" about the project they are funding, by doing the background research for them, and providing follow up emails about the project. In Charles's words: DonorsChoose enables every public school teacher to be a social entrepreneur and every person to be a philanthropist Donors can search projects by location, subject, grade, keyword etc. Interestingly "autism" is one of the highest search terms and despite conventional wisdom, more donors fund outside their locale. One poignant question from the audience was, "Won't this encourage funding for education to be cut further?" Charles answered, "if that happens, we will all quit." He went on to say that a local politician who was visiting the site was outraged to find that some schools in his district didn't even have dictionaries, and caused him to act. Also surveys showed that those who donated were likely to show more interest in education issues. The biggest challenge that DonorsChoose faces is scalability. Scaling operations means more staff, and actually studying supply chain management. Also scaling in to other states means maintaining a ground presence in each locale. Charles emphasized that "the internet is not enough." I didn't take notes on Kris's presentation since I know what Changemakers is about, but I did ask him and the panel the question: "If you are about 'open-sourcing ideas', how do you feel about open-sourcing your platform?" Kris answered that they plan to open-source the competition module they developed in Drupal. But this is the dilemma that most social entrepreneurs must face. How do you let go and let grow an idea that you have so close to your heart? My take aways: Social entrepreneurs are myth-busters. Muhammad Yunus (An Ashoka Fellow) broke the myth that the poor are not credit-worthy. Rapid developments and access to technology lowers the barrier and enables social entrepreneurs to tackle society's pressing problems. Session 6: Using Online Social Networks to Build Buzz, Community and Support for Your Cause Scott Goodstein (Catalyst Campaigns), and Heather Holdridge (Care2.com) talked about creating online buzz about your cause around new social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook. Heather summarized by saying:
Scott emphasized that it takes a lot of work to establish and maintain a presence in MySpace. Just like energy drinks (Red Bull, Jolt, Tab etc) or niche radio stations market themselves based on understanding their niche audience, so should your online campaigns be. Your organization needs to develop its "online persona." My take aways: It is wrong to think, "If you build your MySpace page, they will come." It takes effort to understand who you are trying to reach and speak to them in their terms to create a wave of buzz. Books, Business and Social Impact within Second LifeFriday, October 20. 2006
Second Life Library Blog
oh... and on the open-source CMS front... the 4th Annual Plone Conference will take place this month in Seattle... and in Second Life. Content AggregatorsThursday, October 12. 2006 I'm a fan of Edelman's Steve Rubel's blog. Earlier this month, I linked from it to the Web 2.0 Toolbar, an aggregator of user-generated content in various forms.The sight describes the tool as a way to 'save time and keep up on the latest Web 2.0 news right from one browser toolbar. The Free Web 2.0 Toolbar aggregates the best of Social Search, Social Bookmarking, Social Pics, Social Video and Social News websites.' With the introduction of social media, we've been so inundated with data that I welcome these kinds of aggregation tools. Another one of my favorites: Pure Video. Lists the top 10 videos from a bevy of resources including YouTube, CNN, ESPN and others. Second LifeFriday, September 29. 2006
Normally I wouldn't bring my hobbies into the UxD blog, but I believe this may be an exception. For a few months I've been involved in something called Second Life. It's most easily described as a video game, but that is actually fairly misleading. The current popular term is 'metaverse,' which is a bit more accurate. I'm beginning to think that what Second Life is, is the future of the web. This article in "The Economist" gives a decent overview. They mention the phrase "Web 2.0"... so I'm not the only one thinking of this technology's future impact. (For those of you more interested in business than technology, it might interest you that Second Life has its own thriving economy and currency exchange, which fluctuates daily.) 
It's a surreal experience to be within Second Life and to take a class from a virtual representation of a teacher and to be surrounded by other virtual students (the class I took was on 3-d modeling)... or to go to a virtual music concert where you can hear the performer playing live and talking to the crowd while seeing their in-game avatar sitting on a stage strumming a guitar. 
I believe that within a few years, everyone will have a Second Life account (or something similar), much in the way that myspace has caught on today. I see many aspects of what websites do currently being relocated into a 3-dimensional space. Why look at pictures of the resort you're planning on spending your vacation at when you could walk around a 3-dimensional replica of it? Why browse an artist's online photo album when you could walk around a virtual version of their art studio or exhibit? Why video conference or flying hundreds of miles when you could just meet in a virtual board room? Things like this are already going on. Harvard Law teaches a portion of one of its classes within Second Life. Suzanne Vega and Duran Duran give live concerts there. Hotel chains are giving tours of their newest buildings. Mark Warner and Kurt Vonnegot both gave interviews there. 
Anyway... click on the pictures to get larger versions if you like or browse around secondlife.com, and definitely check out the Economist article for more information and commentary. Color wheel app goes socialMonday, September 11. 2006 In a nice twist on the ColorWheel/Color palette applications you see on the web, ColorJack provides a social dimension to its solid tool set, by allow users to "spy" on color palettes that other have created on the site. (thx KV)
what i'm reading...Friday, September 8. 2006
designing for IE -- you're probably doing it backwards
the difference between outlines and borders
where am i?
ClearType now a browser-specific feature in IE7
ClearType tuner
rev2.org
colorzilla
Do as a non-profit may doThursday, September 7. 2006 As reported in TechCrunch yesterday: ChangeEverything.ca is a Canadian 43Things clone that will launch this month and is provided by the largest credit union in the country. Sixty year old Vancity credit union won’t be monetizing ChangeEverything, but using it as a branded promotion for its financial services along with other long running community building efforts. Corporations usually come to Web2.0 social networks sites later, after they have become successful and then either buy them up, as in the case of News Corp acquiring MySpace, or buy ad space on them. What's interesting about ChangeEverything.ca is that Vancity is doing the reverse: Building a social-network site themselves, based around socially responsible issues, thereby enhancing it's image/brand in more subtle and sophisticated ways. The creepy-factor here is that their approach to marketing here is to Do something that a non-profit may do. I see lines getting blurry here. Social bookmarking trends behind the firewallWednesday, August 2. 2006Gabbly - Unusual browser based chat clientTuesday, July 11. 2006Tagzania - Tagging PlacesMonday, July 10. 2006 |
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Following up on 
as for the currency exchange and economics of SL... economist Edward Castronova gave 
more in-line with the NPO side of things, the United Nations Millennium Campaign recently organized the 
Comments
Sat, 21.06.2008 14:10
very nice
Tue, 03.06.2008 05:13
Hi, Regarding Method #3: You can get rid of the long dashed focus border that shows in Firefox by adding 'overflow: [...]
Tue, 29.04.2008 17:45
Thank you for the assistance. It worked perfectly.
Mon, 31.03.2008 09:38
Ditto what Anna said. Each time a Project Mgr or a biz owner asks me, "when are we doing user testing"? They are [...]
Thu, 27.03.2008 16:35
Your points on the idea that you're testing a site, not the user, are well taken. But I think "user testing" can be [...]
Thu, 27.03.2008 13:18
Thanks for the great stencil. Could I talk you into applying a license to the stencil like from Creative Commons or [...]
Tue, 25.03.2008 22:08
Dave, you actually raise a good point that I think gets overlooked very often. Laptop/touch pad users tend to get [...]
Tue, 25.03.2008 14:58
To add to the semantic mix-ups, there's also User Acceptance Testing (UAT) which usually consists of testing the site or [...]