Strategy Blog: Viget Labs

TJ Ward - User Experience Designer :

"It's just a big iPod Touch."

"Exactly," I say. "Isn't it great?"

There's been a lot of criticism of the new iPad around here at Viget.  With most of the office working on MacBooks and living out of their iPhones, you'd think the Mac FanBoyism would be strong, but on the whole the lab rats don't seem to be impressed. But I think i think it's a fascinating product offering.  Why?

As a user experience designer, I love the way Apple evolves their user interfaces. Apple warms its users up to new ways of interacting with their products by introducing simplified versions of an interface and gradually add more features and apply it in more contexts as users become comfortable.  Let me give you a few examples.

Case Study: Cover Flow to Quicklook

Apple first introduced the Cover Flow carousel in iTunes.  It was a clever idea that made your mp3s a little more "physical."  An OS update or two later, the Cover Flow appeared in the Finder as a way of looking previewing files.  Apple continued to iterate on the idea of giving you larger previews of your files by introducing Quicklook, where you can actually scroll through PDFs, documents and spreadsheets.

Case Study: Keyboards to Touch-screens

I'm always hearing people say that they'll never transition to a touchscreen keyboard, but I think those who use Apple laptops have been doing just that without knowing it.  Over the last several generations of its notebooks, Apple has reduced the travel on its keyboards considerably.  While at first it looked like Apple was compromising tactile feedback for form-factor, I think they've been training their users to happily use touchscreen keyboards by gradually reducing the tactile feedback they expect.  Now, the iPad introduces a nearly laptop-sized touch-screen keyboard. It's like the parable of the frog in the pot.

Case Study: Two-finger Scroll to Multi-touch and Gestural Control

Two-fingerscroll wasn't necessarily the most innovative feature Apple ever introduced, but I've seen it change the way people navigate on their lappies. Whether we knew it or not, it also changed the way we thought about our trackpads, showing the concept of gestural commands to users who don't spend their days geeking out on how people interact with their computers.  With the introduction of the iPhone, Apple was able to give users a more direct way to use multi-touch and gestures to interact with their information.
http://www.apple.com/macbook/features.html#trackpad

On to the iPad

Yes, the iPad is a big, and I dare say, horsey-looking (thanks for the adjective, @graphicsgirl), iPod Touch. And yes, I'm a little disappointed that my next laptop purchase won't be an Apple Tablet with a 2.4GHz+ Intel Core 2 Duo processor. But when we step back from our unrealistic consumer expectations for a minute and look at the iPad next to the iPod Touch, there are two important things to note.  First, size does matter. With a 9" screen, not only can we really read on the thing, but I can get most of my 10 fingers on there at once. The possibilities for multi-touch interfaces are much more compelling when you have room to use two hands and see what you're pointing at (see the Jazz Mutant Lemur for an example). Second, the iPad is aimed at entertainment and netbook consumers. The iPad is the not-so-missing link between the iPhone and a true Apple Tablet.  As users become familiar with multi-touch as their primary input method the UI designers at Apple have time to identify and overcome the limitations of multi-touch for more complex and critical tasks (as @crnixon says: "It's not a computer if I can't program on it").

As for me, I'm pretty happy with this evolutionary step.   As an electronic music nerd who got on the waiting list for one of the first-iteration monome and has more music-making or midi apps than info or organization apps, I'm downright giddy at the idea of having a 9" multi-touch screen I can use to control Ableton Live and Max/MSP.

M. Jackson Wilkinson - Former Staffer :

Almost any site that has user-generated content has an identity system in place. Choosing that identity system is one of the first decisions made by any product team, though most seem to punt on it and go with the standard option of allowing users to create a username or screen name of sorts. There are other options, though, and this choice can have a pretty substantial impact on not only the functionality of the site, but also on the character of the community that gathers there. Here are five primary options, with some examples of sites in the wild that use them, followed by a few ideas on how to choose.

The Default: Pseudonyms

The vast majority of sites are based on a pseudonymous identity system, where users choose a name by which they'll be known on the site. For example, on most sites where I register, by pseudonym is 'whafro,' and has been for nearly twenty years now. It's not anonymous, per se, because actions are attributable to someone in particular, though their genuine identity may not be known.

Wide Open: Anonymous

Far fewer sites provide an anonymous system, where there isn't any identity attributed to a user, real or fictional. Craigslist's anonymize option is probably the most noteworthy example of this type in the wild, and it's a double-edged sword for them. On one hand, people take advantage of the anonymity to use the service in ways they probably wouldn't otherwise, and it's led to a very healthy site. However, the site can come across as being sketchy, especially when it's used to commit a crime, and that likely keeps away many folks who may otherwise use the site.

Of course, the question of whether or not any user is ever truly anonymous is a different one. Often, these sites maintain logs of IP addresses or other information that could be used to identify a user in the event of criminal activity or something like that.

The Truth: Abstracted Names

Yelp uses what I call an abstracted identity model. Users are generally represented using their first names with a last initial, like 'Jackson W.' This creates the feeling that you're interacting with real people, while still providing a healthy amount of distance between your actual identity. Especially for a site centered on local reviews like Yelp, this model can help establish authenticity while not scaring folks away.

Sure, there probably isn't more than one Jackson W. in Falls Church, Virginia, but it's at least abstracted away a step or two from being my complete identity. In fact, a quick Google search for those terms doesn't really yield much of value.

The Whole Truth: Real Names

While it wasn't initially the case, Facebook now places a lot of emphasis on the use of real names throughout their service, making it a required part of their terms of use. For a while, this wasn't the case, and I had friends with names like "Mother Superior" and "Jaaaaaaaaybo," but they've all been kicked into line by now. Even people who change their names more than once may find their accounts locked -- so if you change your name when you get married, don't divorce ;)

This makes complete sense for a network where the emphasis is on interacting with people you actually know. Unlike many topical social networks, Facebook really doesn't have many great avenues for meeting people you don't know, and everything is tailored to help you find keep up with those you actually have met offline. Offline, people generally interact with each other using their real names, so Facebook tries to mimic this as much as possible.

Nothing But the Truth: Genuine Identities

While Facebook emphasizes the use of real names, they aren't checking IDs or anything during the sign-up process to ensure that the name you've given them is genuinely your name. Yes, that means that you could sign up for an account as M. Jackson Wilkinson and pretend that you're me -- not that there's anything remotely interesting about doing so. Other services are beginning to experiment with taking the next step and actually verifying that the assumed identity is in fact genuine.

Twitter has started verifying accounts for well-known people -- think Shaq and Ashton Kutcher -- through their Twitter Verified program. For accounts that have a history of impersonation, Twitter staff gets in contact with the account holder and verifies that it does indeed represent the person it claims to. It then places a badge in a specific spot on the profile that advertise this verification so others can have confidence that it's a legit source. Now that news agencies are actually using Twitter as a real source for news, this has become increasingly important.

Amazon has a similar process for its members, using it most often in the context of reviews. When a reviewer's name appears alongside a Real Name badge, that verifies that the name given is the same name as on the user's credit card. In this case, it's used to give users confidence in the reviews posted by these members, showing that a real person is standing behind the opinion given, rather than an anonymous coward throwing tomatoes.

Choosing the Right Combination

Of course, your product need not commit to only one of these systems. Slashdot allows for anonymous comments, posted as "Anonymous Coward" and rated down by default, while letting logged-in users post with their pseudonyms without the anonymous penalty. On SpeakerRate, one of our products here at Viget, we use pseudonyms by default, and allow users to validate their accounts against a LinkedIn profile, in which case we use their real names as defined by LinkedIn.

The key to choosing a system is balancing the needs for the contributor's privacy against the skepticism of the consumers. In Yelp's case, a pseudonymous identity system might lead some to think that many reviews of local restaurants are being posted by the restaurant staff itself. That might still be the case, but at least it's discouraged by the emphasis on abstracted real names. In Facebook's case, privacy in terms of identity isn't really necessary for people who are supposed to know each other anyway. For a forum dealing with sensitive topics like disgruntled workers, relationships, or medical issues, anonymity might be crucial to creating a safe haven for people to share their thoughts.

In the end, it's important not to gloss over the identity system. As easy as it is to create a typical signup and login process based on pseudonyms, it could be a major roadblock in the way of building a community that can grow organically. It's one of the first, and most important, elements of your product's user experience.

Jackson Fox - Former Staffer :

I was at the Agile 2009 conference last week to give a talk based on a project we did with Choice Hotels, this is the short version of my presentation. A quick thanks to everyone who came to my talk at the conference, and to everyone who provided feedback afterwards!

I like to think that most designers accept that integrating user feedback is critical to the success of a project. I also like to think that I’m not alone in struggling to find time and budget to undertake a thorough research phase on every project. As a group, UX designers have found a lot of ways do design research quickly (and cheaply) in order to make the best use of the time they have available on a project. On a recent project we found just such a solution that allowed us to gain critical insights while overcoming hurdles that made doing user research difficult.

Continue reading "Closing the feedback loop with a little help from your friends"

Jackson Fox - Former Staffer :

First, a sad fact:

• Trips I've made to Chicago: 2
• Trips I've made to Chiacgo where I eat Chicago-style pizza: 0

I’m hoping to make a third trip to rectify this injustice, but in the mean time, I wanted to share my experiences this past week at the Agile 2009 conference in Chicago. I had a good time, learned a lot, met some great people, and joined in with 1300 other geeks in cursing the lack of both cell coverage and wifi.

Continue reading "Agile 2009"

Jackson Fox - Former Staffer :

“If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.” — Alan Cooper, “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum”

A few years ago a grad school friend asked me to come in and speak to his class about interaction design. The class was 50 minutes long, and I could take as little or as much time as I wanted. I prepared some brief notes, 30-40 minutes worth, and figured the rest would be taken up by discussion. I got up in front of the class, and promptly used up all of my material in under 10 minutes. I was mortified. In desperation I pulled up some wireframes for a project I was working on, and started listing off the changes we’d made and the rationale behind them. The class was bored to tears.

As I talked through the changes something clicked in my head, and told the class that “a UI is a conversation between the system and the user.” I started pointing out how the old UI was cold and aloof, full of empty form fields and imperious demands on the user. The new UI ditched the jargon, embraced a more conversational tone, tried to make the outcome of every action transparent, and gradually engaged the user over time.

Continue reading "Designing for Politeness"