The Flip Side of Technology

I recently bought a new Flip video camera like the one pictured here. It's great for capturing videos of my kids. And while I like it a lot, when it comes to the quality of the videos it captures, it's certainly not the best camera on the market. But it fits in my pocket, is super easy to use and cost half of what a "real" video camera would cost. It's a perfect camera for a generation of Youtubers who want a simple way to capture and share videos - not make "movies."

What amazed me about the product was how simple it is to use. I never even opened the manual and yet in less than 5 minutes I figured out how to do everything I needed to do. It has a simple, minimalist interface, with just a few buttons. Point and shoot. Its iPod-ish looks and ease-of-use makes me think it's the video camera that Apple would build. (iCamera anyone?)

Okay, so why do I bring this up... It turns out the Flip has captured 13% of the market for video cameras. Just as everyone was moving high tech and high definition, and getting super-sophisticated, along comes simple. A product with good usability can win out over a superior product that is a negative experience to use.

Something magical happens when products make out lives simpler and easy. When you can make my music portable you get the Walkman. When you can make watching and recording taped shows easy, you get TiVo. Make it easy for me to load and unload the film from my camera, you get the Kodak Instamatic.

Many of the web's most successful sites are successful because they make our lives easier in some way. They help save us money or make it easy to order books. They help us find things or help us all stay in touch with our friends. Again, many of these sites are not the most beautifully-designed nor are they the most technologically advanced. (Think Craigslist and eBay.)

It just goes to show that when it comes to humans interacting with technology, you can often be more successful by focusing on the humans more than the technology.

The 3 types of content

I read a lot online - articles, stories, summaries, blog posts, comments, etc. I think there are only three main types of content:

Worthless - Unreadable. Too wordy. Uninteresting. You think: "I'm too busy for this. What's next? Click."

Useful - Interesting. Informative. Edifying. Worthwhile. Applicable. You think: "I'm glad I read that."

Remarkable - Fascinating. Funny. Thoughtful. Engaging. You think: "This is great. I need to comment on it or share that with someone."

The trick is we're all different. What may be interesting to one person could be incredibly boring to another. What one person may find remarkable and forward to you, you may think is silly and unworthy of your attention. (Ever have those friends that forward you every silly joke they read?)

With so much content available to us every day, we all basically have constructed our own mental spam filters as a method of determining what's important and what's worthy of our time and attention. We bookmark sites we find valuable. We subscribe to feeds of blogs we like to read. We know not to waste time reading that email joke from that certain friend.

Knowing your audience and creating content that "gets around their spam filter" and provides them something useful or remarkable is the key.

The Implicit Web is Watching You

We've all seen links like "Most Popular Articles" or "Most Emailed" on a website. Or e-commerce recommendations like "You might also like this" at a place like Amazon or LL Bean.

The concept is simple: sites are becoming "smarter" and more able to present information in a personalized way. This personalization used to be done based on explicit information the user had provided - an age, a sex, a zip code, a profession. But now, more implicit, behavioral factors are feeding this revolution.

I highly recommend this article on The Implicit Web.

Incremental improvement

Once in a while we get the budget, authority and time to make something big happen - a new project or a website redesign.

But most of the time that's not the case. Our sights are lower - our tasks are smaller. We find something wrong, we fix it. We add new content to fill a gap. We improve the search results by adding meta-data.

A website is never finished. It's both a blessing and a curse. It will always need updating and always have room for improvement. Products can undergo incremental improvement too. Stamps that you don't need to lick. Notes that have sticky stuff on the back. Ketchup in a squeeze bottle. Cars with anti-lock brakes.

I enjoyed one summer I spent working construction building townhouses. I always liked the satisfaction of walking off the work site at the end of the day and being able to look at a wall or a roof that you had helped build that day. Progress was clearly visible. That's not always the case when your job involves pushing paper (or pixels). But by making the little things a little better, we can get that same sense of daily accomplishment in the digital age.

Scale-ability: Wait gain

My wife has a weigh scale in our bathroom that's pretty neat. You enter your sex and height and it gives you back your weight and estimated percentage of body fat.

Believe it or not, my problem with this device is not with the numbers that it gives me (although they could be better). My problem is how difficult the thing is to use. There are only two buttons on the face which looks nice and simple. But simple only works in product design if the experience is as simple as it looks.

Here's what I have to do to use my wife's scale:

• Push Set (default choice is "Adult")
• Push Set to choose Adult
  
• Toggle the arrow button twice to show "Male"
• Push Set to choose Male
• Hit the arrow button 19 times (or hold it down and wait for fast-forward) to enter my height (the default height is 4 feet, 4 inches!)
• Hit Set
• Jump on, hold still and wait.

Ugh. I think I lost weight (and patience) doing all that.

This scale is only used by my wife and me. Our sexes and heights don't change. Yet we have to re-enter them every time as if we've never used the scale before.

Your website's visitors can get equally frustrated if you repeatedly ask them to give you the same information. User experience expectations have risen greatly over the last few years. Customers expect you to know and remember them.

Cutting corners

One summer I helped landscape the front of a bank. There was a paved walkway from the parking lot to the front door that took a 90 degree turn. As I was planting some new plants, my boss Steve told me not to put one too close to the corner. I asked why.

"Because people cut corners" is all he said. If we put a plant right on the corner, it would have been stepped on and killed by visitors cutting the corner or at a minimum, brushed often and irritated by pant legs and shoes.

Take a look at this picture of a traffic gate. Notice the tire tracks. If given the chance, people will cut corners and take the path of least resistance. Easy is better than hard.

The organization of your website should not only allow but encourage
this corner-cutting behavior. Don't put up a roadblock and make them click 4 times to get to a popular feature if you can provide a direct link. Add a list or drop-down box of "Popular Destinations" and allow users to jump right there. Configure your search engine to deliver the right results for key search terms.

Help your users cut corners and save time and suddenly your site will become more useful and user-friendly.

Broadband vs. mobile

High speed internet access, or broadband, (which 80% of American Internet users now have) has changed our opinion of the web. It has ushered in the Web 2.0 movement and an explosion of online video (Youtube, iFilm, Atom, etc) e-learning, and online gaming. It's similar to the way cable changed TV and the way satellite is trying to change radio.

Users will expect more. More audio, more video, wider resolutions, better photos, "Ajaxy" interfaces, etc.

But the mobile web movement, demands almost the exact opposite - smaller graphics, less load time, more succinct copy.

Your site needs to have a plan for both.

Does design matter?

There was a fascinating article in the Washington Post today about a social experiment: take one of the best violinists in the world and have him play out of context - in this case, as a street performer in a DC Metro stop. What would happen? Would beauty transcend? How would commuters react? And what is beauty? Is it a fact or merely an opinion? Or is it a little of each, tempered by context?

Read the article to find out the amazing results, but it made me think about websites and web design. (Hey, I'm a geek.)

Ultimately, does it matter how "pretty" your site is? Do the photos, colors, and fonts make any difference? Web designers show off their technical and artistic prowess at sites like the CSS Zen Garden and StyleGala. Meanwile "uglies" like Craigslist, Ebay and MySpace are wildly successful despite their homely appearance.

I think it's important to realize that web design is not just about the look and feel. It's about information architecture and interaction design. It's about form following function. More than anything, it's about the user experience.

Make the user experience rewarding and it won't matter that your colors clash.

Update: Read Seth's take.

Usable content

The usability of your website is not just about the forms and functionality. It can refer to your content too. Here's an example of good content that is simply not usable. Would you want to read that?

Here are some tips for better writing:

• Avoid alliteration. Always.
• Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
• Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
• Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
• Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

OK, seriously. Go here to learn more about writing for the web.

What can you do for me immediately?

The web is all about instant gratification. Users don't want to watch your flashy splash page. They barely care who you are. The question is what can you do for them? Can you entertain them? Fulfill a need? Make their lives easier in some way? Can you provide value? "What have you done for me lately" has been replaced on the web with "What can you do for me immediately?"

The Internet and other technological advancements have ushered in an Era of Now. Customers want service and information. Now. We want pay at the pump. We want debit cards and instant messaging. We want 24-hour banking, GPS navigation and self-checkout. We want the Easy Button.

The bar has been raised for customer service too. No longer is getting back to a customer in "2-3 business days" good enough. Companies are adding features like real-time chat to their sites to engage the customer and facilitate the online experience.

The layout and usability of your site needs to take this "user attitude" into account. How could you streamline the navigation to highlight your most important areas? How could you improve your users' satisfaction? What would you want to see if you were the customer?

The new rule is simple: Make it easier, faster, cheaper for your customers to do business with you, or they will take their business to someone who will.

Design for the poor

Found this interesting article that proposes that most of the Internet users are either Time Rich (wasting time) or Time Poor (trying to accomplish something quickly).

In most businesses, you want to assume your customer is "Time Poor." Design your website to save them time, make things easy to find, and make tasks easy to accomplish.