Feed-aggregator

Mark Spicer of Intel is February's Certified Usability Analyst of the month.

It’s not often you would see a rugby app featured on The Next Web but with the RBS 6 Nations rugby tournament commencing today, Europeans will be finding that comfy spot on their sofa to take in the best that England, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy and Ireland have to offer.

To accompany today’s matches, a new official has been commissioned to help armchair rugby fans enjoy the spectacle, fusing sport with a little bit of social to deliver RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge, an informative and fun game app for iOS and Android.

RBS says it is rugby’s first ever interactive in-game companion app, from what we have seen, it could be right. The Challenge app compliments the company’s existing fixtures application, delivering scores, stats, gameplay in the form of an in-game quiz and a social scoring system to pit people against their friends via Facebook Connect.

The app is best used when matches are in progress, with RBS pushing trivia questions to smartphone and tablet owners as events occur on the pitch. Think Toby Flood will make that conversion for England following a try? Back him and be rewarded with a points win should he score. Each answer will be compared to other gamers, and your friends if they are connected to the app from their devices.

All of your results can be automatically shared to your Facebook wall, motivating others to join you and show you their rugby knowledge.

  

The app will activate 40 minutes before each live match and enable fans to test their rugby knowledge with a few pre-match questions. It doesn’t matter which app you use or on what device, RBS will make sure that scores are updated in real-time, enabling you to face-off against your friends and family from either your tablet or smartphone.

The app also saves your data so you can add to your score throughout the Championship, tracking where you stand on the leader board based on your selected supported nation, matches, or friends playing.

RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge is available to download now; if you fancy yourself as a bit of a rugby pundit and want to take on your mates, make sure you grab it today before the France vs Italy match kicks off at 2:30pm GMT.

➤ RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge – iOS | Android

Amazon has amended listings for its Kindle Touch e-reader, enabling visitors to Amazon.com to ship the keyboardless device to a large number of countries outside of the US.

The eBook Reader spotted the modification, noting the amended product description – Kindle Touch, Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display – for international shipment – and addition of a dropdown which customers can specify which country  the device can be shipped to.

Whilst a number of regions can be selected and allow customers to ship their touch-sensitive Kindle internationally, some are still unavailable to select, including the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France — instead directing customers to their local Amazon website.

There’s a reason for this, although Amazon won’t tell you why.

The Kindle range is the bestselling product range on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es and Amazon.it, at least over the holiday season. Instead of quietly rolling out the Kindle Touch worldwide, Amazon has slightly capped its launch in these countries so that it can give them a dedicated launch, suggesting to us that it will soon debut the Kindle Fire also on those European shores.

If you live outside of those five countries, you can now get your hands on your very own Kindle Touch, although for the time being you will not be able to buy the 3G-enabled model.

For those of you living in Amazon’s ‘hot’ regions, we guess its only a matter of time before Amazon sends its press release onto the newswires, finally launching the rest of the Kindle family.

De laatste dag! About to start... Ik hou weer aantekeningen bij op mn site.

lees verder

Fab.com is hot, hot, hot. The daily deals site has seen some amazing growth in the past four months alone, and it doesn’t look to be slowing down at all.

Today, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg shared some interesting stats and trends on his personal blog about the company.

Most notably, Fab saw its direct traffic pass traffic from email for the first time since ever last month. That means that the company has serious brand reputation which could be driving some wild word of mouth advertising.

In his post, Goldberg shared a graph showing the jump:

His insights on why this is?

We believe that the rise in direct traffic is because of 3 reasons:
- Mobile visits now account for nearly 1/3 of all visits.
- More and more people are just typing in www.fab.com into their browser at 11am ET / 8am PT each day instead of waiting to click on our emails.
- With 2 million members now, growing by 450,000 in January 2012 alone, we’ve reached a bit of a tipping point in general awareness of Fab.

The fact that its email traffic has dominated so much is a testament to how much its members love the service. That much traffic just from email campaigns is impressive.

Speaking of hot services, Goldberg also pointed out that Pinterest has now passed Twitter in referral traffic to the site, a pretty impressive feat for a service that’s still in its infancy as well.

Once every few weeks a new app hits Apple’s app store that has a very hidden, yet very sought after feature, tethering.

We reported on one just a few weeks ago, called QuasiDisk, which has since been taken down by Apple. Another app called “PayUpSucker” also saw a similar fate.

According to InformationWeek, a new one called “iRandomizer Numbers” has found its way onto the store and might be able to stay there the entire weekend, since Apple’s reviewers don’t tend to work weekend shifts.

When you download the app, which is $4.99, simply enter “1984″ in as the minimum number and “31337″ as the maximum number. Tap generate, and boom you’re able to tether any machine to your iPhone and use its 3G connection.

The CEO of the company behind the app, Nick Kramer, told InformationWeek that this feature was originally meant for friends and family:

Reluctantly, I will admit that my application ‘iRandomizer Numbers’ does have a hidden tethering feature. I say reluctantly because I didn’t plan on the feature being released. I designed the tethering functionality for my family and close friends not thinking it would be disseminated outside that circle.

If you don’t want to pay your carrier for tethering, grab the app now before Apple figures it out and takes it down. Pay at your own risk!

➤ iRandomizer Numbers

Just in case you were wondering if Apple would start making lower-priced MacBook airs and other mobile devices based on the ARM chip set, ala Microsoft, the company has no interest according to a report by AppleInsider.

Citi analysts recently met with Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Openheimer, and one thing was clear: the company is focused on the iPad, as Cook feels like the tablet market could soon overtake that of PCs.

Instead of creating smaller and cheaper version of its MacBook line using ARM chip-sets, the company is going to focus on making the iPad feel more like a PC, or at least give it the capability to do just as much as a desktop or laptop can do.

Analyst Richard Gardner shared that he:

walked away from this meeting with the impression that Apple feels iPad satisfies—or will soon satisfy—the needs of those who might have been interested in such a product.

Given the success of the iPad, it makes complete sense that Apple would stay on its current course. Apple is a software company after all, and it clearly feels like most of the gaps between the PC experience and tablet experience can be solved with a strong operating system.

According to a report by AdAge, Facebook has made a huge hire which will change the way the company markets itself to consumers. In fact, Facebook hasn’t done much marketing of itself at all, so this hire is a one to pay attention to.

Reportedly, Facebook has hired Rebecca Van Dyck to be its head of global marketing. Having spent just 11 months at Levi’s, Van Dyck worked alongside Steve Jobs at Apple during the release of the iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTunes. Needless to say, Van Dyck knows consumers.

Van Dyck’s history is impressive, as you can tell by her previous experience:

- SVP, Chief Marketing Officer at Levi’s (11 Months)
- Sr Director, Worldwide Marketing Communications and Advertising at Apple Inc. (3 years)
- Sr. Director, WorldWide Advertising at Apple (4 years)
- Global Account Director, Nike at Wieden+Kennedy (12 years)

Given that Facebook will be publicly traded within the next three to four months, the company will need to put itself out there to draw more users, developers, and most importantly, businesses to advertise on the platform. Given Van Dyck’s pedigree at Apple, the company could fast become a more user-friendly when looked at from the outside.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and haven’t heard back yet. We’ll let you know if we do, though.

UPDATE: A Facebook spokesperson told us:

We can confirm that Rebecca is joining the marketing team and we are thrilled she’s decided to join us.

Apple has issued an update to its Apple TV software that ads the Genius feature to its Movie and TV sections, reports Appleinsider. It seems clear that this was always coming, but in practice it makes a ton of sense as a counterpart to Netflix’s recommendation engine.

The new sections appear below the Movies and TV Shows sections and dispplay several rows of selections based on recent movies watched. Whatever algorithm is being used it seems fairly loose, and not based directly on genre or actors involved, at least going off of the choices it gave me.

I do love that there is a chick flick followed by Krull, a movie I love but have never watched on my Apple TV. Seems to be a good selection available for both my wife and I, who use the device together. The two rows that follow are based on specific titles, so it’s a tad easier to see how it spins these choices out. One thing that I noticed immediately was that there is a bit of repetition going on across the categories. This could be due to the fact that we only casually use Apple TV rentals and spend a lot more time in Netflix.

The TV selections are nearly spot on, with almost every selection being to either my tastes or my wife’s. I watch more TV than she does on the Apple TV so much of it is curved toward the sci-fi or genre shows, although The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, two of her favorites, make a showing as well.

The comparisons to Netflix’ recommendation engine are immediate, of course, and fill in the gaps in the Apple TV’s ‘discovery browsing’ capabilities. This should help in those ‘what to watch’ situations when browsing through movies and their connected properties via the standard browsing just didn’t turn up likely options.

These additions won’t likely convince someone to purchase content instead of watching it for free on Netflix, but it does bring the Apple TV browsing experience more in line with what you can get on the streaming service. That ‘poke around and see what it thinks I will like’ serendipity was missing without Genius.

According to Transit Wireless, a company formed to respond to the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s requirement for a shared wireless infrastructure for NY Transit, New Yorkers can now look forward to cellphone service and free WiFi in 30 more subway platforms over the course of 2012. So far, only two stations have been outfitted by Transit Wireless (14th and 23rd Streets), which happened late last year.

The network was designed to act as a neutral host to extend a variety of wireless carrier services, and numerous carriers have already signed up (notably, AT&T and T-Mobile). The free WiFi access will be sponsored and available to all riders, which should help ease the pain of long subway commutes across the city.

Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Columbus Circle and stations along 96th Street are just some of the many stations that are planned to be wired for cell service this year. According to Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the MTA:

Bringing wireless service into our underground subway system reinforces the MTA’s effort to use technology to improve customer convenience that allows them to stay in touch with friends, relatives and business contacts. And by having access to real-time service status updates while underground, riders can better navigate the system.

The WSJ reports that the MTA had previously estimated “the of wiring all 271 subway stations in the transit system at roughly $200 million, a cost being borne entirely by Transit Wireless.” Now, it has been decided that “Transit Wireless and MTA will share proceeds of the company’s contracts with wireless carriers, MTA officials have said, with a minimum annual payment to the transit system of $3.3 million once the cellphone network is complete.”

It’s a sigh of relief for me, as not having cell phone service during a long ride can be a big pain in the case of “emergencies.” That said, I’m not looking forward to hearing every rider yapping on their phones —  probably the modern equivalent of the boom boxes that spanned NY’s subway stations back in the 80s.

Brandon Watson, the leader of the Developer Experience team for Windows Phone 7, is leaving Microsoft for Amazon. Watson had worked for and left Microsoft in the past, and it isn’t surprising that he left a second time, considering that his new job at Amazon will see him serve as the Director of the Kindle Cross Platform team.

While at Microsoft, Brian Watson worked on developer marketing and developer platform products. The details of his departure were first leaked on twitter:

Huh? Where did @BrandonWatson go?

— Ryan Lowdermilk (@ryanlowdermilk) February 3, 2012

ZDNet later confirmed the change:

Watson confirmed his departure via e-mail, telling me  “it was a hard decision, but the opportunity placed in front of me that was too big to pass up.”

So far, no replacement for Watson has been appointed. I’ve asked Microsoft for comment on the company’s plans here and have not received word back.

Watson’s departure follows the lead of Former Windows Corporate Vice President of Strategy Mike Nash, who left Microsoft back in February of 2010. It’s telling that Amazon has chosen to headhunt from Microsoft’s latest and most promising attempt at breaking into the smartphone market.

Color, one of the seven elements of art, is one of the most important aspects of any design. Because of this, it’s surprising that there aren’t many tools available when you require something more than just a color picker.

If you’ve ever needed a quick way to convert colors from RGB to Hex, or needed to grab css codes for a gradient, ColorHexa is an elegant way to do so. Simply search for a single color and you’re presented with an encylopedia-like entry of everything from analogous colors to auto-generated html elements and related shades.

The site is capable of more complex actions, too. You can blend multiple colors together simply by typing them in (e.g.: red+blue) and you’ll be get tons of information on the calculated result.

From ColorHexa:

ColorHexa.com is a free color tool providing information about any color. Just type any color values (view full list here) in the search field and ColorHexa will offer a detailed description and automatically convert it to its equivalent value in Hexadecimal, Binary, RGB, CMYK, HSL, HSV, CIE-Lab, Hunter-Lab, CIE-Luv, CIE-LCH, XYZ and xyY.

ColorHexa will also generate matching color schemes such as complementary, split complementary, analogous, triadic, tetradic and monochromatic colors. So you will be able to know what colors best suit with the one you chose. It is also possible to blend colors together or create a gradient between them

The site’s design is sleek and simple, as it should be, and is snappy enough to suit any workflow. It’s definitely worth a look, especially if you’ve ever found yourself bouncing back and forth between your browser and Photoshop for color information.

> ColorHexa

You might also want to check out this list of 9 resources to inspire your next color palette.

Google has removed the Verizon version of its Galaxy Nexus from all support pages and its list of Android Open Source Project products, effectively nixing it from its flagship ‘Nexus’ program, reports The Verge. The move has been attributed to Verizon’s continued reluctance to support the Google Wallet feature. Updates below.

Verizon has been dragging its feet on adopting the Google Wallet standard for a while now, with Verizon’s Jeffrey Nelson blaming its desire to have the “best security and user experience” in payment systems for the delay.

The delay has apparently been too long for Google and it has orphaned the Galaxy Nexus from its flagship program. Google responded with the following statement when asked about the removal of support documents from its system:

Google is also a developer within this ecosystem and we want to offer the apps we develop such as Google Wallet, so people have access to the full range of functionality offered by the platform.

This appears to place the blame for the change squarely on the backs of Verizon’s failure to adopt the Google Wallet standard. This news comes just a day after indications that the GSM (read AT&T) version of the Galaxy Nexus in the US would support the Google Wallet payment system.

Under this new arrangement, the Verizon version of the Galaxy Nexus won’t get updates pushed out immediately from Google and would need to get them solely from the carrier. This sort of kills the point of it being a ‘Nexus’ device, which traditionally gets updates almost immediately after Google issues them.

This is a very aggressive case of Google exercising one of its ‘big sticks’, the availability of software updates, in order to force carriers and makers to toe the line when it comes to feature updates. Unfortunately, this is likely to hurt customers more than it does Verizon as they will now be waiting longer for software updates and, if the lockout continues, may end up getting a version of Ice Cream Sandwich that has a bunch of ‘special Verizon additions’ instead of the stock version that they’re used to.

As a Verizon Galaxy Nexus user myself, I’m fairly torn. I want to see the carriers have less control over the software on my phone and would like every Android feature to arrive there unaltered, but delaying updates is a fairly consumer-hostile way to make this happen. How this plays out should be very interesting indeed.

Update: Verizon has reached out to The Verge to say that it will continue to support the Verizon version of the Galaxy Nexus with official firmware updates and that its earlier response that referred to Google Wallet was ‘incorrect’. So, that’s good news for consumers, but still leaves the future of Google Wallet in question.

Fresh off the leaked Windows Phone 8 news that seemed to signal the end of Zune as we know it, Microsoft has a new deal out that seems to paint a very different picture.

Let’s go back a few days to the leaked Windows Phone 8 news, and what it had to say about Zune. We’ll quote PocketNow, the original source for the leak:

Moreover, Windows Phone 8 will reportedly scrap integration with the desktop Zune client in favor of a syncing relationship with a dedicated companion application. In other words, Microsoft is bringing back a (presumably) richer version of ActiveSync after letting that program die out for the most part.

The Xbox Companion app, currently found on Windows Phones, will see a partner client on Windows 8. Skydrive support promises seamless sharing of data between devices; Belfiore gives the example of instantly having one’s music collection available on a newly-purchased Windows Phone, without the need for a PC sync. It sounds like the tagline for this so-called Windows 2012 relaunch, or “Windows reimagined,” will be “The New Familiar.”

Call us crazy, but that sounded like a strong signal to us here at TNW that Zune is losing every last ounce of its cachet. One reason we have been bullish on Zune (in the sense of it not dying) in the last year was that its stock rose with the sale of each Windows Phone handset. If that ends, Zune is simply the bastard software child of a failed hardware-based music push of yesteryear.

Enter today’s news: At Microsoft Stores, if you pick up a Windows Phone handset there, you will be given a full year Zune Pass. Given that the expected Windows Phone 8 launch date is within the next 12 months, this makes no sense, assuming that Zune and Windows Phone are set to part ways.

We have no idea what is going on here, but it sounds like some classic confusion at a company who is famed for having warring business units.

According to CNN, the United States government has reportedly created a “modified version of Google’s Android software, which is being developed as part of an initiative that spans multiple federal agencies and government contractors.”

The phones will be sent to US troops first, and later on, US officials are ”expected to get phones for sending and receiving government cables while away from their offices.” According to Michael McCarthy, a director for the Army’s Brigade Modernization Command:

The Army has been testing touchscreen devices at U.S. bases for nearly two years. About 40 phones were sent to fighters overseas a year ago, and the Army plans to ship 50 more phones and 75 tablets to soldiers abroad in March, he said.

It’s clear that the US has chosen Android because of its open source nature, but it’s surprising that this program has managed to move so far along without third parties revealing that it was happening. And as far as other mobile operating systems go, people involved in this program have said that they hope to support all mobile phones in the future, including Apple’s iPhone, but at this point that’ll have to wait.

The concern for security isn’t misguided, as many apps are known to request more information than is necessary. For example, “a weather app may automatically send a phone’s GPS coordinates over the Internet to deliver a local forecast, or games may send the device’s unique identifier along with a high score.” Android has experienced particularly big problems with the use of unlocked phones and unofficial app markets.

It’s great to see the US government playing catch-up to provide officers and military personel smartphones, but It’s interesting to see how hesitant it had been up until this point. If the US is truly concerned about the security of mobile devices, it should be diving in head-first to emerging technologies before it falls too far behind.

[ Transcript Available ]

The goal of any site is for the right audience to find the right information. But beyond your actual content there are many things that can cause findability issues. These tend to be unanswered questions about your primary audience and whether or not you’re satisfying the need of that audience. Good information architecture can help guide your design decisions so that your users can effectively engage with your content.

Lou Rosenfeld offers up suggestions in his virtual seminar, 8 Better Practices for Great Information Architecture: Closing the Findability Gap. Lou believes information architecture offers long-term strategic value, and is more inclusive than some people may think. There wasn’t enough time to address all of the question during the seminar so Lou joins Adam Churchill to answer the remaining ones for this podcast.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.

“…I spent a lot of time talking about the Zipf Distribution, which is basically a rule of many sites that a little goes a long way. Things like, a few of the search queries that people do on your site account for a huge proportion of all search activity. So a handful of queries needs to work well in order for search overall to work pretty well. Or, a handful of your documents are the ones that most people are going to be accessing, or are going to be accessing far more than any of the other documents.

So really not worrying so much about the long tail of the Zipf curve, but the short head. And once you have a sense of what that short head is, you can start working on smaller problems that, when you solve them, go a long way…”

Tune in to the podcast to hear Lou address these questions:

• Are there any special considerations regarding intranets?
• How many audiences can a website reasonably handle?
• Is there a distinction between engagement and involvement?
• Web analytics and UX tell us different things. How should you balance knowing when something is wrong versus why something is wrong?

How do you use information architecture to solve findability issues? Share your thoughts in our comments section.

Recorded: December, 2011
[ Subscribe to our podcast via ←This link will launch the iTunes application.]
[ Subscribe with other podcast applications.]

Full Transcript.

Adam Churchill: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the SpoolCast. Lou Rosenfeld recently joined us for a virtual seminar entitled, 8 Better Practices for Great Information Architecture: Closing the Findability Gap. Now, the seminar yielded lots of good questions and comments, and we decided to have a follow-up conversation that we could make available as a podcast for you.

Now, Lou’s seminar spoke to new opportunities for information architects that add significant value to projects. We’re fortunate that Lou gives us a lot of time, and he’s graciously offered to come back and tackle some of the questions that he thought we could re-address from the seminar.

If you didn’t listen to this particular seminar, you can get access to the recording in UIE’s growing User Experience Training Library. There’s presently 80 recorded seminars there, all great topics from speakers like Lou from the world of Experience Design.

I wonder if that’s any coincidence that the two seminars Lou presented for us happened to be numbers 50 and 75 in our arsenal. Nice milestones for us, and with one of our favorite speakers. Hey Lou, welcome back.

Lou Rosenfeld: Thanks, Adam. I guess you’ll get me scheduled for number 100 pretty soon, right?

Adam: That would be awesome.

Lou: Excellent.

Adam: So, Lou, for those that weren’t with us in November for your presentation, can you share an overview with folks?

Lou: Sure thing. This sort of came out of a bit of frustration that I’ve felt the last couple of years that a lot of people see IA in a very limited sense, and don’t see it offering much long-term strategic value. I don’t think anything could be further from the truth.

So what I tried to do was at least map out eight directions that I called “better practices,” because I don’t think there are any such things as best practices in a field where nothing can ever be perfect. You can only make things better. But I laid out eight, and I’ll go through them really quickly right now.

One is just getting better at doing diagnostics, and I spent a lot of time talking about the Zipf Distribution, which is basically a rule of many sites that a little goes a long way. Things like, a few of the search queries that people do on your site account for a huge proportion of all search activity. So a handful of queries needs to work well in order for search overall to work pretty well. Or, a handful of your documents are the ones that most people are going to be accessing, or are going to be accessing far more than any of the other documents.

So really not worrying so much about the long tail of the Zipf curve, but the short head. And once you have a sense of what that short head is, you can start working on smaller problems that, when you solve them, go a long way. And I proposed something of a very simple rinse-and-repeat process for constantly diagnosing small things that have big impacts, and correcting for those and doing those on a regular basis.

That was the first one, maybe the most critical one. The second one, simply having better evidence, more balanced evidence. I trotted out one of my favorite diagrams, Christian Rohrer’s diagram of the landscape of user research, which breaks the methods we all know and love into four quadrants along two axes. One axis around attitudinal behavioral data, and the other around quantitative versus qualitative data.

What I’m simply suggesting is to be very careful not to do all of your research in one of those quadrants, to have balance across those four quadrants so that you have enough different blind men looking at the elephant and trying to get at true insight.

I talked a little bit about advocating on behalf of the long-term and the need to create anchors, things like missions and vision statements and elevator pitches, to counteract what many of us are dealing with in the trenches, which is constantly changing plans and directions, often due to ripple effects from management turnover and just things that are constantly reactive mode. We need anchors to stabilize our work so that our designs don’t go off the tracks and our teams don’t go off the tracks.

The fourth one was some thinking around measuring engagement and really looking at how we might do a better job of developing new metrics and ultimately better and new KPI around things that don’t have to do with clear cut conversions. How might we start thinking about developing metrics around engagement, around authority, around orientation?

Really around the stuff that I call “the metrics of in-between-ness,” the things that are beyond, again, those just sort of basic conversion measurements that we’ve been doing for years. Because there are more to our sites than the conversions. There are all kinds of other things that need to have to happen in order for people to have a good experience.

The next two, the fifth and sixth, are really areas of information architecture especially that people don’t think about and aren’t investing nearly enough, and in which there are fantastic opportunities. Those two areas are better contextual navigation within our deep content, and better search, especially across silos.

A lot of people think of IA as top down navigation. They talk about IA and search, which is wrong. IA includes any kind of finding. So I proposed a bunch of ideas around investing in contextual navigation, specifically things like content or domain modeling, as well as some ideas around improving search, especially taking advantage of opportunities both in how we allow people to enter searches through the search UIs that are involved both initially and through refinement, as well as the design of search results.

And then the last two, seven and eight. Seven was combining design approaches effectively, basically looking at opportunities to have better hybrids of what robots will do for us, things like search engines, that can do certain things really well, and what humans can do for us manually, things like best bet selection, and how you might put these types of things together in more effective ways than we typically do right now.

Finally, the last one, number eight, was around just remembering that things change, and that your design, your information architecture specifically, must respond to those changes. Looking at things like seasonality as a driver for how we present and organize information, how that type of thing can be formed by data. Looking, again, at how things are constantly changing in terms of users’ needs, and being able to respond effectively to those changing needs.

So that’s my nutshell version of those eight better practices for findability.

Adam: I love that concept, the metrics of in-between-ness. That was a great part of the seminar for me. Louise wants to know if you have any special considerations or approaches in regards to this closing the findability gap, in regards to her effort looking at their company-wide Intranet?

Lou: That was a really good question, and I hope I do a better job with it this time. We’ll see. Intranets are kind of an interesting animal in that so much of what they’re there for is to help connect people with expertise and to be part of a broader ecosystem. In other words, most intranets fail because there are easier ways to move information around, primarily things like email and sending documents as attachments, and overriding the hope for benefits of putting a canonical version of any particular document in one place that everyone can find.

Core information architecture is one of the reasons people bypass intranets and move information through other means that are less effective when it comes to things like version control. So they’re a slightly different thing. They’re part of these bigger systems, and there’s also other parts of these environments that go beyond HTML, things like CRM systems and so forth.

So, intranets, still, you’re going to find a lot of the same diagnostics are useful. You’re still going to see a Zipf Distribution for things like what content is being used most frequently. But you’re also going to have to look in other places, like are there certain types of our staff directory or our CRM system that are being used most frequently? Are certain tasks that span those different technologies, and how can we make those bubble up to the surface?

So the same things really apply, except that information architects who work on intranets are even more challenged in terms of integration. It’s not just integrating content, it’s integrating systems that house different types of content. It’s also integrating people and making sure that the systems don’t get in the way of the actual human connection. Because, again, a lot of times people want to find other people in their organization who have some sort of expertise, and that’s the killer app of the intranet.

So, again, I think a lot of the same things apply, but there’s often more silos to deal with, more fragmentation, and that creates just a bunch of new challenges for information architects. Also, a lot of great opportunity. So, if you are confounded and pulling your hair out of your head, I would flip it around and say, “Hey, you’ve got a great opportunity facing you.”

Adam: Kristin wanted to know, how many audiences a website can reasonably handle?

Lou: Well, I wish Kristin was on the phone, because I’d make her define reasonable. Reasonably, I’ll hazard a guess of three to five, and even that might be generous. My thinking goes back to Zipf, again, this idea that maybe there’s one or two audiences that are hugely critical. And then there are secondary audiences, maybe even tertiary that don’t get that same level of treatment, but get some form of treatment. So if you’re an academic website, those audiences might be students, people considering applying and considering being students, and staff and faculty.

So that’s three or maybe four audiences, and you have to really consider what their common needs are for each audience. What does each audience want? What are the tasks they need to accomplish? What are the things they need in terms of information needs that need to be satisfied? That’s sort of the high-level treatment where you might invest a lot of manual effort for each of these audiences.

But then, I think secondary audiences for an academic website might be the media, it might be alumni. It might be academics from other institutions. You may not have the resources to scale up so much manual effort for those folks, but you can still give them maybe a lighter treatment. Maybe less customized information for each audience, but maybe a single page that basically gives the lay of the land of the web environment for each of those audiences.

And then maybe tertiary audiences, I can’t just really think of off the top of my head, but those folks, you don’t do anything for them other than give them the straight robot-handled forms of access. Hey folks, we don’t know who you are. We don’t know if you’re that important, but you can use our search engine and you could use our very basic site hierarchy to navigate the site. Good luck, and let us know if we can help you. So that kind of tiered approach is what I think makes sense.

Now, the math, you know, is it one audience, two audiences that gets that Rolls-Royce treatment, is going to be very much dependent on how many resources you have at your disposal. So it all becomes an issue of scalability. But at least if you tease it into different tiers, now you don’t have to treat every audience the same way and feel the pressure to give every audience the Rolls-Royce treatment.

Adam: Luke wants to know if you draw a distinction between engagement and involvement. In other words, the example he offers up is that, he may interact with a power company’s site very intensely because he’s upset, he’s got no power, but he’s not necessarily engaged. Can you just say a bit about that?

Lou: Well, yeah, I think that’s a great example. I think what I had said in the presentation was, our goal ultimately is to design not experiences, but design for engagement. In other words, to give people an opportunity to engage with us in conversation and dialogue, and to feel ownership of that dialogue. In other words, not have our web environments just be sort of this way to project a one-way monologue to people, but to give them a way to talk with us. So we listen as well as we talk, and as much as we can to give them a sense of ownership about conversation, about the service itself, and what we may be providing.

Luke’s example is great, because it’s like well, my power company makes me angry. So I’m very involved with their website, but not in a positive way. Well, again, I would look at that as an opportunity to create something positive. I know as a retailer at Rosenfeld Media every time we have a negative customers experience, and there’s not that many, but when we do we can usually win people over and give them a sense to at least make them happy, to take lemons and make it into lemonade.

But ultimately, what can we do when we have their attention? Can we help them? Can we give them something? Can we give them something that might give them a reason to come back in a way that makes them feel like they’ve dealt with a human, and they’ve been listened to and that they have certainly a better impression that might pave the way for a future engagement?

The power company, you know, if you look at that example, yes, who would ever want to engage with a power company? Well, most of us probably would. If we have a better sense of being listened to and engaging in a dialogue with the power company, we might be willing to let the power company know that there’s a problem that might be affecting the community, and might be willing to be on the lookout for issues that would be helpful to them.

We might be willing if they give us the opportunity to report on their level of customer service, how helpful, how gruff are the people they send out into the field? What would we like them to do in terms of alternative energy? They may be doing lots of surveys, but what about direct feedback? Hey, I would be willing to put solar cells in my roof, and I would be willing to spend this amount of money to do so. Those are the kinds of conversations that those companies aren’t very good at having, but probably really would benefit from.

So even the power company should be — not can be — but should be designed for engagement. And often a negative interaction might be the doorway to a longer-term and more positive form of engagement.

Adam: Lou, one of the things that came up during the seminar I thought was fairly valuable, I wanted you to say a bit more about it, and it was this. That with web analytics alone, we know something’s not working, but we may not know why. With UX alone, we may know why but not necessarily know whether it’s working or not.

Lou: That’s right. This goes back to the second point I made about doing balanced user research, and having essentially a balanced set of evidence to use to drive your decision making. I mean, ultimately that’s what we do is we’re making decisions and we need evidence to make those decisions well. That’s what design is ultimately about, and when we have a balanced set of inputs, a balanced set of types of research, what that does is, if it’s balanced we not only get a better picture, but the sum is greater than the parts. We get just better insight overall at whatever problem we’re trying to solve, whatever we’re trying to accomplish.

So, I think there’s a lot of interesting dichotomies in the work that’s done inside most organizations that haven’t necessarily put together things like web analytics and user research. In fact, I believe I presented a slide about all those different dichotomies in the presentation people are welcome to look at. But one of them is, what versus why? So here you have all these people in one part of the organization. Maybe in one silo, maybe they’re associated with Omniture, whatever it might be. They’re the web analytics team, whatever you call them. But I have all this really rich stuff that describes what is going on based on behavioral data.

Now, if you’re on the user research team and doing task analysis, which is a totally different thing, might you want to know something about the common information needs that come out of web analytics to influence the type of task analysis work you’re going to pursue? Because that’s expensive work, and it would be really good if you had some foundation that was based on behavioral data to help you shape that agenda for task analysis.

So there’s a nice kind of complementary nature of, hey, you know, we user researchers, we’re really good at figuring out things are they way they are. We can do this sort of attitudinal research. We can talk to people, we can observe them, we can have them think out loud. But what are the good questions that we should be checking out with users in doing those studies? Well, can we go back to the data to help shape that agenda? It’s just, again, one example of how these things can come together so that the sum is greater than the parts.

And there’s a whole host of not only examples, but more importantly, opportunities. I think the organizations that figure out how to combine what are currently siloed and all these organically-evolved pockets of research and put those together in ways that are optimized from making insights are going to ultimately make good decisions. And that’s really what I’m trying to get at there.

Adam: Well, this was awesome, Lou. Thanks for circling back with us.

Lou: My pleasure.

Adam: For those listening in, thanks for your support of the UIE Virtual Seminar Program.

While the rest of the tech world has had a singular focus this week (Facebook’s filing to go public), Microsoft has been busy stirring up all sorts of narratives. It was a bit of a time getting them all straight, but we think that we have the most important bits in place.

Given the number of things that happened this week, we recommend a stroll through the TNW Microsoft archives; there’s some great, deep track, er news, in there. Now, make sure that you are following this channel on Facebook, and Twitter, and let’s get into the thick of it.

Windows Phone 8

This week Microsoft suffered from a rather public leak of, well, most of Windows Phone 8. And we mean it. A video escaped from Finland (we suspect, as it was made for Nokia), and landed in the capable hands of the tech media. Its information was later confirmed by another independent source. Here’s our short version:

• Hardware: More screen variety, NFC, multi-core processors.
• Apps: Code reuse between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, UI normalization, massive Skype integration.
• Other: DataSmart to limit data usage, better security for enterprise clients.

That’s only a sampling. For the full list, head here. Most critical of all of the news, from our perspective, was the idea of platform unification:

For the end-user on a Windows Phone 8 device, the user experience will be all but the same (albeit on a smaller screen) as on a Windows 8 tablet, we suspect. The same interface on your PC, phone, and console is no small feat; Microsoft is essentially all-in with Metro. If the design aesthetic fails, the company will pay a price for years and years to come.

For developers, this is Christmas. Code once, run in multiple places? That’s a dream come true. The Windows Store, the Windows Phone Marketplace, and the Xbox LIVE Marketplace should be reachable with a single app by the end of year, we think. That’s a simply massive audience and sales potential for any app; it’s larger than the iOS store, or will be, once Windows 8 machines begin to sell.

Microsoft is tying it all together. All of it. The current Windows desktop feels like a damn afterthought at this point.

Taken all together, we are still very much on page one of the Windows Phone novel. What is coming next is far more exciting than Mango. Apollo cometh.

The ARM Controversy

Microsoft has yet to put to bed the rampant rumors about just what ARM-based Windows 8 machines will, and will not run. There is the idea that only Metro-Style Apps will be supported, those applications that are designed for touch. Another source has it that certain, certified ‘desktop’ apps will run on ARM, but only those few.

This irks the heck out of us, but it has to have developers in even more of a tizzy. Why Microsoft refuses to come clear (not clean), is unknown to us, but we decided to throw a signal into the air:

Microsoft needs to make public its plans for ARM-based Windows 8 tablets. Developers are currently stuck in a position of ignorance. As are consumers, and the press. Windows 8 on tablets has great potential, at least so far as we can tell. But this secrecy is not effective, it’s detrimental. You have to wonder why Microsoft won’t be upfront with the information: either desktop apps will work on ARM systems, or they will not (the idea of partial support is new, and we think, weak).

Microsoft has yet to comment. Our take? They don’t have a final plan yet. Perhaps when the Windows 8 beta comes out, we’ll know.

Microsoft v. Google: The Mudfight

We are going to do this in one swoop: Google is taking flack for its privacy policies. Microsoft is getting off on the controversy, taking out ads in various newspapers and generally making a glorious hash of things. It’s been quite funny to watch. We trust that you enjoy such things.

Therefore, take a peek at our coverage here, here, and here. Make some coffee first, you must have something to spit on your monitor in mirth.

Xbox: The Delay

And finally, the bad news has to taken up: According to Microsoft France, there will be no new Xbox in 2012. Yes, after all that hype, and what were thought to be credible leaks, Microsoft has apparently laid down the ban hammer. Here’s the quote that shut down the Merry-Go-Round:

We’re in an industry that talks a lot, that likes telling stories. I am not convinced that things will happen this year. The Xbox 360′s cycle is not over at all. The proof is that we haven’t price cut this year.

“Afterward, what will happen at E3, it’s still too early to say. What’s certain is that there will be nothing new in 2012. If we wanted to counter Nintendo, we would have to be in a position to release something immediately, and that is not at all the case.

“We’re not here to counter Nintendo and they’re not here to fight the other manufacturers. Nintendo has put itself in a different cycle, it’s going forward to its own rhythm, with success as we have seen with the Wii, and now it’s their turn to present their innovation.” [Bold: TNW]

If you need some help with the pain, head here. You’re welcome. That’s all for this week folks, more as it happens.

Discovering music has become easier thanks to services like Pandora and Spotify. It seems that everywhere you turn on Facebook, you’re shown a new track someone is listening to currently or a new music video on YouTube.

While all of these services provide instant and on the go music recommendations, sometimes you just want to get dirty and dig through information about musicians to find out their history and who they’ve influenced or have been influenced by. When you use Pandora, you know that a station has music that is related, but they don’t spell it out for you to learn why the music is similar.

I found a site today that is perfect for music junkies, and it’s called Music Bloodline. For someone who isn’t just a casual music listener, this site is a goldmine of information and artist discovery. By showing you how artists are influenced and who they’ve in turn influenced, you’ll spend hours digging through these links to find musicians that you’ve never even heard of.

This visualization uses the popular Rovi API that powers many entertainment apps, and was created during Music Hack Day Boston 2011.

Bob Dylan has influenced everyone

When you first load the site, you’re shown popular artists on the left hand side and those are the musicians that are the most influential. You’re shown a popular artist in the middle, and to the right of that the artists that they have in turn influenced.

If you like, you can search in the box up top to find one of your favorite artists and start from there, however I found that it’s fun to just click through what you’re shown to see the lineage between how these musicians have influenced each other over the years.

When you click on an artist, it will move to the center spot and give you a quick bio about them as well as links to tracks and albums on Spotify. It’s a really handy launching point to listen to some new music or to add tracks to existing playlists on the service.

If you’re not in the mood to listen to automatically created music that’s similar and would rather do some reading and historical digging into the relationship between artists, then I suggest giving Music Bloodline a try. Once you start clicking around you’ll probably end up blowing a few hours of your time, but you’ll be adding more music to your playlists, so it’s worth it.

Music Bloodline

Ah…We have really come a long way in Web design, haven’t we? The Internet went from a clumsy, messy place that grabbed data through our phone lines to a force for innovation and innovative designs.

But back in the ’90s, websites weren’t ugly because “that was the thing” — there were simply no great designers taking advantage of it. HTML and CSS were both in their infancy, and so was the idea of a beautiful site.

Websites from Hell is here to remind us that the Web was once (and still is, at times) a very ugly place. Everything showcased looks like it came out of GeoCities, and was created by four year-old with terrible taste. Because of this, it’s a funny site to visit, and will give you an ego boost even if you’re a beginner.

From WFH:

Websites from hell should be an antipol for pages like Cssmania, MakeBetterWebsites or Awwwards. this project is also inspired by Clients from Hell, where you can find hilarious stories from clients, submitted by the community.

You can submit your own website, a website of your ex-client or the page of the rest home from your grandma who slaps you every time you visit her. the only requirement is: the website should be ugly! there is a heavy use of gif images, more frames than you can count, java applets used as navigations, rainbow backgrounds and so on? yes, that would be a great candidate for hell! use the submit form!

You can even browse by newest, rating, views, TLD and color, giving you the ability to discover tons of gems like CandyRomeo.com (the first dog matrimonial website in India, pictured below). So go check it out, be thankful for how fan Web design has come and feel free to share the horrendous website you can find in the comments below!

➤  Websites From Hell

Apple has updated its iBooks Author app in order to clarify the language of its End User License Agreement. The changes to the EULA clarify that Apple does indeed intend the packaged product to be sold on the iBookstore only, but also make it clear that it does not lay claim to the content that you use to create the book, nor does it try to limit what you can do with that content elsewhere.

We took a closer look at Apple’s recently released authoring tool just after it was released. Subsequent to the release, much was said about the terms and conditions set forth in the license agreement that users were subject to in order to use the free tool. Some said that its terms were unfair, or even dangerous to software rights.

The new license agreement has adjusted wording in some sections, including ‘Section 2′, which was singled out for its wording. We’ve included the sections below with the pertinent sections bolded.

The new agreement’s Section 2:

B. Distribution of Works Generated Using the iBooks Author Software. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, works generated using iBooks Author may be distributed as follows:
(i) if the work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute it by any means;

(ii) if the work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service) and includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, the work may only be distributed through Apple, and such distribution will be subject to a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary); provided, however, that this restriction will not apply to the content of the work when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author. You retain all your rights in the content of your works, and you may distribute such content by any means when it does not include files in the .ibooks format generated by iBooks Author.

The old agreement’s Section 2:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:
(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

This change in wording should make it clear, as many right minded people have assumed, that Apple was never interested in limiting the distribution of content that was not packaged in the .iBooks format. The wording of the original was taken by some to mean that Apple was trying to exercise its rights on all kinds of content, including universal formats like PDF, not just .iBooks.

The EULA still includes language that indicates users are free to distribute .iBooks formatted documents free of charge by any means they choose, they just can’t charge for them anywhere else.