The User Experience (UX) disease

Some businesses get user experience, but for every one that does there are 999 that don’t. Companies like that aren’t interested in serving the needs of their users.

In the past Cennydd’s had to make companies take usability seriously. Now, undercover user experience is designed to help usability professionals to progress in these companies.

The Undercover Usability Manifesto

• Go undercover
• Ground up, not top down – don’t approach your boss asking for resources, just do it.
• Change through small victories
• Delivery, not deliverables
• Good today is better than great next year
• Work with people, not against them
• Action, not words

Let’s take action. Two big things you can do now:

1. Expert Review

Using heuristic evaluation. Step through processes with your website, is it:

• Made for humans – is it relevant, useful or enjoyable? Does it fit their mental model?
• Forgiving – does the site prevent errors, does it minimise them?
• Accessible
• Self evident – is it clear what the site’s for?
• Predictable – does it use known web conventions
• Efficient – is the site responsive
• Accurate

2. Analytics

This is a topic that’s not given enough attention in user experience. Looking at the stats, consider:

• Visits per unique user – are people coming back?
• Entry pages
• Bounce rate
• Referrers
• Keywords
• Navigation paths
• Registration / purchase conversions – where are the largest drop offs?
• On-site search – an underused trick. A real gold mine of understanding what the user is looking for. Test those search terms, are they finding what they want?

The real user experience process takes time. Do your business research first. It’s tempting to jump in without finding out:

• Objectives of the project
• Requirements
• Un-requirements
• Exclusions – things that cost too much or services like Flickr have sewn up

You can never find all this stuff out because it’s held in tacit knowledge. If you can never know everything, you are allowed to get it wrong. This is a relief, you don’t have to get it right first time.

The best way to be a user experience designer is to understand the culture of the company. Several warning signs exist.

1. Cash cows. Most companies have them. You won’t be able to make changes to these unless you can prove you’re going to make the company more money. These are dangerous because changes may go wrong and you might lose the company’s interest in usability. Be careful.
2. Paralysing process. It’s difficult to get new processes and new techniques into these companies. It’s only when you come up for air, that’s when people will challenge your work. Don’t be overly eager to share your work until it’s ready. If results are already positive that will skew the company’s view in your favour.

OK, real UX

You can do some quick and dirty qualitative research. Remote research is becoming a big topic in user experience. Phone your users up, yes you’ll miss some nuances, but at least you’ll get something. Speaking to your customer service staff is also useful, their insights can help you understand who’s coming to your site.

Quantitative research is also easy.

Finally, market research can give you information on psychographics and demographics. Data driven personas help you design for a particular type of user. Data driven personas don’t require much one-to-one research with users. It’s not scientifically valid, but if you treat this as a living document it’s still much easier to design for this ’person’ than a collection of numbers.

If you’ve done your research, make some small changes and see if they work, if they do you’ll start to be included in decision making discussions.

At Clearleft they use design games like divide the dollar (which I think is this) to come up with ideas.

The undercover UX designer needs to stay as low-fi as possible (e.g. pen and paper). It doesn’t matter on the tool, you need to convey as much information as possible in the smallest amount on time.

Test informally. Use a laptop and a cafe. They use Silverback (since they made it). Get people to talk aloud and explain any difficulties they have. You can even do remote testing. The videos and the output you get can be very persuasive.

You need to make sure the business is happy with the work that the user is happy with. As designers, UX people get much more then developers because everyone has an opinion. To run a quick critique session, get the stakeholders in the room. Explain the decisions you’ve made before you show them your designs. The real trick is to not get into an endless loop of changing things.

The idea is to list what needs to change to meet the clients approval and the users approval. Then get these changes signed off.

Don’t make user experience combative.

There are three tiers he uses when discussion usability decisions with clients:

1. Direct feedback from the user, if he doesn’t have that he’ll go back to the…
2. Research he did at the start. If he has neither of these he’ll fall back just on…
3. General points of good design.

Getting to know people (and beer) help the process.

Q and A

I didn’t really take notes on this except he mentioned a new service called Performable just out of beta, worth checking out. Of course you can use Google Website Optimiser as well. Of course, this presentation was also a lead up to his own book, Undercover User Experience.

He also mentioned a book by Dan Saffer, Designing for Interaction.

Some background about the presenters

Presented by Molly Stevens from the New York office and Jens Riegelsberger who works in London. Jens works on Google Maps. Before working for Google he worked on Microsoft’s Xbox 360. He got into usability ten years ago. Molly is a user experience researcher who’s been with Google for three years working on products for advertisers. She has a Masters from Georgia Tech University.

What is user experience at Google?

Some can’t understand what research and design goes into Google products. What do you really need to do to a search box? The point is, the box has stayed the same for all these years. The focus for Google is on simplicity and the core task. The User Experience department is a small part of Google, the number of people employed in it is in the low three digits. For comparison, Product Management is larger – in the low four digits and Engineering larger still – in the low five digits.

Google’s approach

The most important thing is be agile for your users. A lot of what they do is data analysis. For example, with Google Analytics they conduct a lot of A-B testing, just like the functionality in Google Website Optimiser. They invite people into user testing labs to observe and test. They also do in-the-field observations. For example at Victoria Station in London, they did ad-hock observations of how people navigate. They also look at how people navigate shops etc.

Adwords (case study)

Molly displays a picture of an advert-laden door in a street in Cairo. This is the original Adwords. Targeting users to give the most relevant content possible is important for Google. They go into offices to see what kind of data people need as they use their products. They notice the equipment people use, computers, notebooks etc. Context is important.

Users don’t often appreciate their own behaviour. A lot of people ask ‘who really clicks on ads’ in Google products? People do, they just don’t know it. Some background: The system is designed for realtime; it’s a pay per click model of advertising; with Adsense, bloggers and publishers can make money on their websites with ad blocks; ads are made relevant to the content of the page.

In 2007 they started a project to update Adwords, it hadn’t been updated since it was built. Since 2003 they’d added more tools like Ad Scheduling. Additional reports and tools were coming into the interface but the framework wasn’t there to support it. User experience was asked to understand what the experience is now, plus it needed to be as usable as possible around the world. They focussed on three things:

• Lab studies
• Field visits (to understand context)
• Task analysis

They travelled the world to get to diverse markets. Visited large advertisers and small businesses and other users of their service. One example – they went to a small Canadian business that GeoTargets Ads to Canada (picture shown of small mom-and-pop business), the owner finds it works.

The researchers came up with some key tasks. They focused on the task that advertisers spend the most time on. In the new Adwords interface, things that came out of this:

• ROI – needed to be clear to the users, so they could tell what they were getting from it
• Efficiency – with the task and analysing ROI
• Clarity – how clear can we make it about exact costs

Design principles in addition:

• Speed
• Guidance – important to be given at the right time
• Consistency – so users are thinking about the activity not navigating the interface

The redesign took two years from 2007. In 2009 they visited Google advertising agencies and search marketers in Mexico City and used them as a test model. They looked at two things:

• User experience now
• What’s happening in the field

They found Mexico was similar to other markets but some of the pain-points were exaggerated. E.g. If you’re in Mexico city the traffic is really bad, also it’s also difficult for advertisers to target people in their local vicinity based on the technology available. However even new people with little marketing experience were happy with Adwords. Google expected more unhappiness, but couldn’t find it.

Some things they saw:

• One of the larger advertisers set their language to English(US) which meant the date format defaulted to US format in the interface. So there were some things they were able to fix on the product
• In Mexico there were less people educated in the web, there’s a much less robust tech infrastructure and level of knowledge about how to do things effectively. Google identified a need to find a way to get this knowledge into the population.

Changes to Adwords from this work – they set up a navigation panel and gave deeper links. They also added a help widget that gives relevant content for the topic of the page.

Google Maps for mobile (case study)

Jens presented this case study starting with explaining a field trial from two years ago. The UK and Germany had poor uptake of mobile maps. They went to Hamberg, Munich, Manchester and London. They had  six people in each location using the maps software on their normal phones. They had install parties. Where phones don’t come with it pre-installed, getting maps onto the phone is the biggest hurdle (depending on the phone, of course some have app markets).

In the study they asked to record the participants’ searches and sometimes even called them to get the context of the searches. Through this they got detailed information on the goal, plus what did and didn’t work so well.

They went back after two weeks. They found that some small issues get larger by rubbing people up the wrong way over time. One such feature was that the map reverts to default view every time you start it. This upset people on their mobiles since they may want to start the map where they left off.

They set competitions to test the speed of the app vs. the real world equivalent – for example, go to a petrol station and ask someone directions. From this they realised minimising app startup time was important.

Zoom function. The engineers assumed people would learn the maps interface (‘They’ll find the zoom button the second time they use the app’). Using these real world tests they could show people had difficulty finding the button on repeat use. The interface had to be changed.

Jens’ favourite bug story was of a Manchester participant who tried to pull up Manchester Airport, however in maps she found herself teleported to Manchester Airport in New Hampshire (US). App  teleporting, or ‘warping’ users over to the US has been improved but it’s still not perfect. Importantly they combined real usage with detailed logging to find these problems.

Driving directions in India (case study)

The question, what’s the best way to use Google Driving Directions to show which way to go? Even with complete data a list of turns would not be good. The initial research on this happened in India and the US, they spent a long time looking at human way-finding. From this research they came up with a proposal that was literally test driven in India through the busy traffic using landmarks. The final product was launched in November 2009. They decided to includ confirmation landmarks in directions (as well as turnings), but these weren’t necessarily places where you change direction.

Google Maps India uses a Wikipedia model, maps and landmarks are contributed by users. Google chose to give colloquial directions to people to make it clear in the same way you’d give directions to a friend, this took a lot of engineering.

Five things they’ve learned

1. 20% products are important to Google. Molly and Jens work on the usability of other people’s 20% products. For example, an engineer worked on search insights looking at the top five things in rising search trends. They turned this turned into flu trends, they found this correlated with actual cases. Countries are now using this to track diseases. In fact it was used in Mexico during the swine flu outbreak.
2. Prototyping. Important to do. Sometimes using a paper prototype is good or engineers hack something together.
3. Launch early and listen.
4. Observe in the field. A recent study in Tokyo showed that a large number of users take pictures of PR codes (not sure what this is?). Instead of using maps on their phone, they bring up Google Maps on a computer and take a picture of the screen with their mobile.
5. Everyone at google is a gatherer. The usability guys collate. Being a user researcher is often like being a doctor, you diagnose.

Q and A

Q. With the 20% projects, what’s your process of selection?
There isn’t one.

Q. Where do designers fit in this?
(Jens and Molly only mentioned designers once in the presentation). They work so closely with the designers they forgot to mention them. They are a part of the same team as the Interaction Designers etc. Jens and Molly only emphasised engineers because they wanted to stress their importance. Besides, everyone on the Product team came from an industrial design background.

Q. Road names change, some have two, some don’t have any – how does Google Maps handle that?
This happens in India quite often, it also apparently happens in Greece. Every road can have multiple names in Google Maps. Google also like to emphases other aspects like landmarks.

Q. Questioner likes the idea of 20% projects, are they peer reviewed?
There are project fairs (where employees can pitch for help with their project) but no review board. 20% projects are bottom up, if it has a good technology it might grow naturally.

Q. Do 20% projects get shoved to the bottom of the pile? Do employees end up spending 2% of time on them? What happens when things get busy?
It varies from person to person. You can bank up time so the deadline for your main project is passed you can sometimes spend weeks on your 20% project.

Q. Does Google prefer usability stats over qualitative insights?
The most effective is a combination of the two. For example, the teleporting maps problem in Manchester. This was taken back and found to have happened more often than they would have liked so things were changed.

Q. Do you ever take a lead in the research strategy? Meaning, is it always lead by engineers?
The Google Maps India landmarks research was a good example of a significant project (over two years) that was driven by the Product team.

Q. Field studies. You mentioned one big one, but do you think you spend enough time in the field?
Field studies happen in parallel and in multiple locations. Jens actually feels he spends too much time away.

Q. How do you keep up with all the products that Google produces?
We don’t. The Product team are a limited group.

But if it wants to follow on from the iPhone then it has to extend what’s gone before. It’s going to have to fill the space as advertised and provide some desktop-like features. To occupy the sub-notebook/netbook world, it’s going to need a bit more functionality than a mobile phone. It’s revealing that I’m writing this on an iPhone but will upload it from the desktop where I feel I have more control.

Screen size

When web browsing I’m expecting to get the full desktop version of every website, unless a page has specific browser detection this already happens with the iPhone. But on the desktop I expect to have extended ways to deal with the content, of which plugins and background processes are a big part. Will Apple allow me to install a Delicious plugin or chop and change between 2 – 3 apps running at once? Will I be able to have my web code open in one programme and the site I’m working on in another? Better yet, will they let me install an alternative browser, one with a wealth of extensions already developed? All very doubtful.

Size of the market

Currently I see good uses for the iPad in business and education. Imagine the delivery person using it to find your house, or the hospital doctor pulling up digital X-Rays, or the classes with lessons tailored to individual students with content delivered at a suitable pace and level.

If marketed and priced right, I can even see it becoming the next big gaming device at Christmas. Evidence suggests major games developers are already switching to the platform. But what will take the iPad into the mass market?

Essential or extravagance?

With the iPod and iPhone, Apple were entering established markets where demand for the product type was already developed. With the iPad it’s different since most consumers won’t have heard of a tablet, let alone be convinced of why they need one.

The boundary between creating and consuming could be what makes the difference here.

The adaptable device

The genius behind this device is that Apple haven’t bowed to the pressures of the rumour mill. They haven’t created an overcomplicated piece of hardware full of whizz-bang features (OK, it could’ve had a camera). The genius of Johnny Ive and co. is that they didn’t tinker with a winning formula. It looks like an oversized iPhone. This leaves the software people to work from a solid foundation and build features into later updates that match developer and consumer needs (sorry guys, not necessarily ‘wants’).

Another genius move is that Apple haven’t cornered themselves too much with the possibilities for this device, meaning that everyone interested has their own thoughts and hopes for what it can do. Software driven products like the iPad have a huge potential to capture the imagination.

So if anyone’s listening and if this post can be at all useful, I’d be interested to hear your ideas on what you’d like to see it do.

Crowdfunding works in a variety of ways but is difficult to set up legally. A research project for the Open Society Institute couldn’t come up with a way for it to work.

Charles describes himself as a ‘corrupted social scientist’. His talk was designed to cover how to finance ventures. There are four conventional ways: venture capital, angel investors, family loans and loan finance.

Loan finance is under used. There’s a fixation on venture capital (VC) in the tech world. VC is problematic. Venture capitalists insist on preference stock, different from ordinary stock. They usually want extra rights and extra protections, they’re taking a risk yes, but anyone else investing in your business do to, for example friends and family. Why should venture capitalist’s be different?

Venture capitalists will lure you with high valuations for your business. But they completely screw with your corporate governance and articles. For Trampoline their articles became 12 times longer once venture capitalists became involved. You also suddenly have to hire lawyers, of course there are bills associated. Venture capitalists also use stealth control.

There are all kinds of agendas that are connected with VC fund life-cycles. You’re tied into the life-cycle of the VC fund. He’s not saying venture capitalists are bad, but there’s not enough discussion of their drawbacks. The recession and what’s happened over the last couple of years has had affects that some people think means VC funding won’t exist in the same format in five years time. They’re investing in fewer and larger deals. They’re focussing on seed and post-breakeven businesses. This leaves a large swathe of businesses not covered by VC.

What is crowdfunding?

The name comes by applying the concept of ‘crowdsourcing’ to that of money. It’s based around using the internet to build a much larger group of private investors. It’s a shift to a much more transparent form of investment (normal VC is very secretive). With crowdfunding everything goes into the public domain.

The concept of crowdfunding came from the early years of the 90s. The first wave started with the music industry. Sellaband.com and BandStocks.com are examples of crowdfunding. An artist puts themselves on the site and fans get a share of the proceeds if they make money. This works well in the film and music sectors where fan bases already exist.

The second wave (of which KickStarter.com in New York is one) was in the non-profit world.

The third wave was based on journalism. Conventional journalism was in decline. Spot.us is a site where journalists pitch ideas.

Trampoline started with VC funding and raised $6m in 2007. They realised it wasn’t a good time to bring in VC funding so they looked for alternative ways to do it. They spoke to their solicitors about crowdfunding, but lawyers don’t like innovation. The legal sector is based on precedent, their solicitors simply said crowdfunding is illegal.

Instead, they found a lawyer who wasn’t dismissive. Francis Irvine does work with the Open Rights Group, he likes innovation. After two months of scratching their heads, they found a legal way to do crowdfunding. They set themselves a £1m target to raise within a year. They’re doing it in a few tranches, they’ve closed their first and the second will close in the Spring.

This method of funding is not mainstream yet, but it will be. However it’s not for the faint hearted.

Benefits

They’re not victims to the VC fund life-cycle. They have a much bigger pool of influential people (investors) that will make them successful (Trampoline is only just seeing the benefits of this). Some would think having so many investors/voices would be a nightmare? However, arguing with investors is good, it challenges your ideas.

It’s not widely known, but the UK Government runs an Enterprise Investment Scheme which is unbelievably good. Wealthy people get 20% written off their tax bill and are covered for 60% of ther investment if the company goes bust.

The FSA is a nightmare though. If you get it wrong you are personally liable (not the company). It’s not easy to get started, you need to work your networks hard, do due diligence and speak to a lot of people. The Trampoline website has a few case studies. However you won’t find any content inviting people to invest on their site, they have to stay within the law.

Questions

Q. There seems to be a bias towards rich people. In the FSA regulations, if you’re seeking investment you can’t advertise it to the world (this protects the grannys). The FSA says you need to be a high-net-worth individual or a sophisticated investor to do it, but Charles how do you do it?

A. It’s illegal with a private company to incite people to invest. However, journalists can say anything they want. Journalists are your friends. You still need a website, but Trampoline’s is full of case studies. There are still exclusions: high-net-worth means £300,000 in net assets not including their main residence. You can tell these people or someone who works in the finance industry (a ‘sophisticated’ investor) that you’re looking for investment. But even if you tell them, you still can’t give them a business plan. You have to set up a labyrinthine system to get them to the next step towards investment. Sellaband and BandStocks are not selling equity, trampoline are the first to do this.

Q. What type of person are we talking about as an investor? Who invests in you?

A. There are two categories. Either 3rd or 4th levels down in their network or friends (friends of friends). Also, people who’ve read about them in TechCrunch or some other publication, they’re often semi professional tech investors.

We traditionally assume that PLCs float their shares on the stock exchange, really they can give their shares to anyone, Charles is looking at ways to reverse engineer a public company to be crowdfunded.

Andrew Shoben of Greyworld

It doesn’t take much for humans to creatve a narrative. Andrew shows off his work called Trace, at Hampton Court. The point was for people to go in and lose themselves, not to find the centre. Inside there are fragments of sound designed to add to the feeling.

The next project he showed is one they’ve just finished called ‘Words‘. Andrew likes his work to be known as public art, not sound art or any other name you put on it. The BBC came to his company asking for a project and Words was the result. It was designed to see how much a word weighs, e.g. Does the word’s length add to its weight? People were given a box at the installation. As they walk through the box begins to glow, as you walk around the space you realise there are lots of words. You realise in the space you can hear other peoples words (through headphones), words that they’ve left hanging in space. New meanings emerge between your own words and someone elses, they create a third meaning. This project was inspired by the lyrics of David Bowie.

Q. How do you come up with ideas?

They usually come up with them in the space where it will be displayed. The BBC are quite adventurous, but often push the boundaries into technologies that are still developing and may not be able to support the original artistic vision. This project was designed to be rock solid in current technology. It works on computer tracking through visual sensors. Technically it’s not clever, but it’s fulfilling the artistic vision fully. One guy who experienced it said it’s like walking through someone elses dream.

Eva Rucki of Troika

She focusses on the boundaries of technology and design.

One project took a portable projector that was used to display mobile phone text messages on street signs and random objects. Warner Bros. wanted to use it for a concert for the band The Streets. During the concert people didn’t understand what was going on because there were multiple projections. The projectors were trained on any surface, even members of the crowd. They found thst if you restrict people to a format, in this instance a text message, they are much more likely to respond and send texts. The blank canvas scares people.

BA ‘All The Time In The World’

They created an unconventional world clock for British Airways at Terminal 5 (Heathrow). It shows times across the world but by smaller city not the capitals. The idea is to get people travelling in their minds. They wanted to push typefaces, they used electroluminescent material. Their display is very adaptable, they wanted to give it a human touch, it can display caps, small caps, joined up etc. It’s beautiful.

BA Cloud

Individually controllable flip dots, magnetic components. The installation was to be hung in the space between escalators. They compared the space to an aircraft takeoff. It used 7km of wires inside. One of the most rewarding parts of the project: because it was art all the engineers and construction workers who put it in place were cynical, but as soon as it was switched on people started to take pictures and send them to their families, this was important since the art was connecting with people straight away.

Onedotzero

Installaton photo shoot. Was an interesting challenge. Troika’s brainstorming process can be random, it doesn’t work to just sit around a table without any ideas, people must come with them and discuss. Their idea was zoetropes. They figured out they could use different spacings between letters to bring different words into focus at different frequencies. This project is featured in the Decode exhibition.

Newtron virus

Uses the drop detector in the MacBook. Brilliant (however if you want to ‘infect’ your computer and have Snow Leopard, at time of writing you’ll still have to wait). Find out more about the Newtron virus.

Enrico Tessarin of New Treatment

He started by mostly talking about Sophia’s diary, a series on Bebo. However, New Treatment are known for an unfinished project called Block X. Cordless show is a project they started a year ago taking a new approach. Sophia’s diary needed a trailer to get funding from brands. They found Sophia was  compelling to the audience because she was average. Lots of teenagers could sympathise with her. Daily video diaries. The story was directed by the audience, she asks a dilemma on the Friday, then what the audeince wanted happened on the Monday.

Block X

Hammer (the horror people) approached him. It’s another online series. The project is still in development. Some ideas for interactivity include: Secret content to your mobile phone; lots of options for game play; augmented reality games. Advertising is really important to this guy. He wants to incorporate brand selling into a made up CCTV control room which is also part of the website interface, e.g. A room sponsored by Ikea?

How do you survive in a world where big brands no longer invest in web shows? Answer, could be a format like the Cordless show. It’s pretty much T4 for the web. Done on an extremely low budget. The show developed a reputation, 30,000 hits per month. Advertisers can’t ignore that. What the Cordless show unique is their branding and interactivity. “The peoples vote” feature on the site. Create your own profile and vote for your favourite performer. A few universities asked for a live version, this brought in money since people will pay for a live performance. After momentum built they got funding from the BBC.

In any web project the first question Enrico asks is why did you choose the web as the medium? If it’s only because you can’t find the funding elsewhere, there’s no point. It’s telling that the BBC and Channel 4 require an interactive plan for any new series or documentary.

Questions

Q. Will interactivity with film go any further than it has?

The methods of interaction are very different. Inevitably it will all converge. It only depends on how traceable human behaviour is, that’s where the money is going to be. It depends on the target audience, it’s generational. Young people don’t necessarily watch TV anymore. Cinema will stay as it is. The future is definately interactive. Now that we have computers and networks that can transmit a different film for each cinema screen, there’s potential for more tailored content. The big issue is where you draw the line between an interactive and passive experience. A big thing that’s happening is the semantic web (woohoo, someone mentioned it – this probably links in with the Words project).

Q. Does the message get lost? Are there other pressures from technology and commercial considerations?

(This question was mostly aimed at Enrico since he was adamant that a new project must be get financial backing from advertising). Block X, although highly commercially orientated, the story was very important. Enrico was keen to stress if the story doesn’t stay, he’s prepared not to make his project. Is it art or ‘advertainment’? He’s looking at real world considerations. He runs a company and has to pay wages. However, big brands try to influence content shot by shot. Even as a producer you have to swallow hard.

Q. What about the economics on the web, don’t people expect things to be free?

Bebo made the first web series called Kate Modern. However Bebo Originals has shut down because they couldn’t find advertisers to support them. (Personally I don’t think enough was said about funding models other than advertising. What about paying for the service? What about content in closed networks distribution channels such as iTunes?)

iMetLion.com

He started off by explaining from personal experience, how autism affects the way people use the web. Autism is about processing. It’s just a different way of thinking. Most people with autism are affected by changes in sensory input. For example, Jamie sometimes can’t read when there’s a background sound. So having an audio file play when your site loads is not only irritating it’s inaccessible.

Language processing can also be a challenge. When people talk very quickly he often can’t keep up. For example, when web videos cut quickly from scene to scene he finds he gets left behind, he has to rewatch them over and over. This can be stressful.

Following a theme from the previous presentation, Jamie expressed an issue with literal commands. His experience is, early in his life when asked to wash his hands ‘in the toilet’, that’s literally what he did. Subtleties in life and on the web can cause problems. For example, when adding friends in Facebook, the function performed by the site can be different depending on the context. On some pages the functionality is to simply add people who are already registered, on other pages you’re expected to enter their email addresses.

After this initial section the presentation changed format. Seeing as it seemed to have worked in the past, Jamie then struck up an interview dialogue with Henny. She posed questions along with the rest of the audience. The next bit follows that format (with a stream of consciousness thrown in).

Q. You said with video you have to rewind. This would be awful when streaming video (e.g. iPlayer), how can this be made more comfortable?

A. Captioning and transcripts. The BBC now has a nice live text captioning system using HTML5. However, sometimes he uses a screen reader when he gets stressed, Jamie explained. In fact, to help him process information he built his own screen reader using a Mac, the inbuilt VoiceOver and some AppleScript. His reader uses Microformats and embedded semantics. He built it because he uses non-sighted navigation quite often to understand a page, but can find this difficult because the visual and code order of the page are often different. This means unmodified VoiceOver can be difficult to understand. Using AppleScript he gets the website to read in the order he wants. Snow Leopard now has intelligent select so VoiceOver has caught up with what he needs.

Q. Is his screen reader source available?

A. Err… Yes but it’s hacky and built specifically for him.

Jamie is keen to break down assumptions on assistive technology, it’s not just blind people who use screen readers. With this in mind, his opinion is that web designers should not use the title attribute. He’s noticed an obsession with using nice long titles. Often web designers use title and ALT text plus the usual copy all at the same time. Jamie hears all of them. An example of this is the Amazon website. It’s really accessible with all of these attributes, perhaps too accessible.

The discussion moves to VoiceOver and any specific features that make it easier for Jamie to use:

• Detection, one to one representation of movement on the keyboard and movement on the screen, this is new with the Mac gestural track pad.

Of note, screen readers can be too fast for Jamie. Also there are some that try to sound clear and others that go for a human voice. So which does he choose? His answer was enlightening, he chooses a human sound if the page is written in a human voice, this helps his understanding. Concatenative speech engines sound better but are less responsive. Most developers are not even aware that there’s more than one voice. One problem with VoiceOver is it can take too long to read keywords.

Q. Did he create his own presentation design?

Yes. ;)

Antonia (hiantonia.wordpress.com) has been working in accessibility for 10 years. She’s a web designer and consultant. See Antonia’s notes at her blog or see her slides.

Her belief is that people are not defined by their disability, partly because they could have many. There are lots of ways to go online, not just one fit. Learning disabled people have increasing control of their lives, and expect to be able to use the web. On the web people like to take their time and not feel judged by their disability. However, many people are locked out of websites. Design is often the key to whether a site is accessible.

Antonia played her first video interview. It features Martin, a man with autism, using the eBay site as Antonia sits beside. Generally he likes it. He likes the wealth of information displayed and the clean layout. He could comfortably associate items with the descriptions. For him the interface fails when he sees the first ‘buy it now’ icon.

He clicks on it, gets confused when nothing happens (it’s not a link) and this stalls his flow. Once he was through to the product page he understood what parts of the page were actionable.

Websites sometimes use context as part of their interface, this causes issues for those who fail to pick up on such subtleties. That’s a cognitive accessibilty problem.

Next Antonia asks Martin to visit the Amazon website. He likes it, it’s nice and bright with lots of colours plus using search is OK. But Antonia asks ‘How would you buy an arsenal shirt?’ He selects a size, this brings up another window with sizes to select. It puts an orange border around the selection, he notices that the information on the right side of the page changes. He knows where the checkout is because the icon looks like a shopping cart. Beyond this he gets frustrated. He thinks the link to account is the ‘go to shopping’ button. He’s right, it’s hard to find. How to logout? He finds this difficult as well. He either wants to close the browser window or use the back button. In the end he had to be told where the sign-out button was.

Generally the Amazon site doesn’t have enough good or meaningful icons, in Martin’s case he only understood the shopping cart. Signposting was not relevant. There was bad typography and poor contrast between elements. Buttons were not defined enough, this denied Martin access to parts of the site.

But won’t catering for people with cognitive disabilities cause more design ‘noise’ on a website?

When designing for cognitive accessibility, making everything literal is key. In the same way as designing for someone with a physical disability, making your site accessible can often benefit everyone. Antonia displayed a poster meant to convey the message not to run on the tube. The poster was less than clear. Making it literal, e.g. with a big red cross over the runner, could’ve improved the explanation for all.

Design advice

• Use a hierarchy of visual language, e.g. headings that decrease in size.
• Group elements of a similar type or function. Sometimes less is more. Anecdotally, Antonia surveyed eight people and only one knew what ‘i’ meant when signifying information, the rest understood ‘?’. Sometimes it’s good to have one link that takes us through to a page that groups things together.
• Sometimes different sized icons are useful. Apple’s Interface Manual uses different colours for different contexts.
• Hovering states are really useful.
• Colour coding is also really useful, despite designers sometimes thinking it will ruin their design.
• Giving users alternative ways to change text size is important. They often can’t remember (for good reason) where to do it in the browser. Education can be the key here, often people don’t know the difference between a browser and a website. Discoverability for preferences is an issue. Just being able to get back to the view window is important, sometimes this becomes a major challenge.
• Use adequate spacing. For example, the BBC homepage is complicated but good because things are grouped with adequate gutters. Putting things into modules makes them look bigger.

Is this my responsibility?

It’s not just down to developers. It’s everyones responsibility, including the browser makers. Cohesion and consistency when working as a team is important. Martin was a confident user, but most people think their inability to use a web interface is their own fault.

Where to go from here?

Where can we get more information?

• Changepeople.co.uk are working on a manual for this kind of accessibility.

With its Symbian OS, I’ve always recommended it with the warning that it’s a bit of a geeks phone. Downloading applications from the net, they don’t go through the same vetting that takes place with the Apple App Store. Some can be a little less stable than others and in some instances they conflict. Feature-wise it’s a solid phone if you’re prepared to perform the odd restart and fault find.

I’ve always thought it’s the utilitarian answer to the iPhone. Where Apple customers are until now unable to copy and paste, you can with an N95, but the button is somewhat hidden. Patches, fixes and apps exist for the Nokia where the system is not as locked down. What’s great about the N95 is that, where the need arises, someone’s usually solved a functionality problem in advance. The answer is hardly ever ‘we don’t support that’.

So before I get swept away in Apple and Palm hype, I thought I’d log my favourite apps. Here goes:

• Fring. One of my favourite apps for functionality. It links with Skype and you can have what looks like a normal phone call through WiFi (free if you’re calling someone on their computer). I regularly talk to people in Australia on this and after a few hitches (generally with the net speed at the other end) it now works perfectly. It also works with other social networking sites.
• Gmail. An amazingly fully featured app from Google. It keeps a local copy of your email but syncs with their server. You’ll never lose a message and it has better functionality than the iPhone app. I’m able to search, a feature iPhone users have only had through their web version up until now.
• YouTube. Another Google usability triumph. Although it doesn’t always seem to be as up-to-date as the web version and clicking on browser web links don’t open the app automatically, it does have one killer feature: it’s the only app I have that (without hacking) streams video over the 3G network. Really useful.
• Google Maps. Simply amazing. This app takes advantage of the inbuilt GPS receiver in the phone. With this I’m never lost, I can always find directions to a destination from my location to within a few metres. Coupled with Google Latitude, it’s a great tool for keeping up with people across London. I can also access Google Street View from my phone, I can’t count the number of times this has been really useful.
• WirelessIRC. Despite the name red-herring, I actually use this to access Twitter. Unlike most other Twitter apps, it runs happily in the background. Whenever I want to update myself on other’s activities I can immediately view, rather than take the time to launch an app > connect to the network > download tweets etc etc. I can easily copy and paste text to re-tweet (RT) and using Nokia’s inbuilt functionality, I can copy and paste posted URLs to my web browser. (NOTE: On the N95, the copy and paste functions are found under the key that looks like a pencil on the bottom left below the screen).
• BBC iPlayer (1.5). Although newer versions exist, they seem to have been blocked from working on the N95. Don’t despair, you can still download the app from sources across the web. BBC iPlayer is a fantastic boost to the multimedia capabilities of this phone. As long as you’re not worried about the jump between the listings app and the in-built RealPlayer to stream programmes, you’re never going to miss a programme again. Shame it only works on WiFi (unless hacked) and doesn’t support downloads.
• Opera Mini. A web browsing experience comparable with a PC. I use this mainly to access Google Reader. The Mini browser comes with the ability to create ‘bookmarklets’, something that when mixed with a little Javascript, allows me to post interesting links to Delicious. All of this functionality is a life-saver on long train rides (or even the cramped commute to work).
• Web development apps such as SIC! FTP and s60HTMLed. This combination means I can effectively edit web pages from anywhere. s60HTMLed is a great application but takes some setting up. You need to download Python for S60, the ‘appuifw2′ extension and in my case I had to Symbian Sign the web editor.
• Shozu. A multipurpose photo up-loader that allows me to tag and describe pictures that I upload to Flickr.
• Snaptweet. A service that scans my Flickr account and adds pictures with the ‘snaptweet’ tag to my Twitter stream.
• GooSync. Synchronise your inbuilt calendar with Google Calendar. Simple and effective.
• Last but not least, the other inbuilt features like the WebKit browser (yes, the iPhone isn’t the only one that comes with this); 5Mpixel camera; and accelerometer for quick transition between landscape and portrait display. (NOTE: to set the display, go to Menu > Tools > Setting > General > Personalisation > Display > Rotate screen ‘Automatic’).

My advice for N95 users is to every-so-often, backup everything and look for system updates. I think an amount of this functionality will not work, or would be more buggy with older software. Where lots of phone manufacturers forget about updates only months after release, Nokia have been consistent in their support so you may as well take advantage of this goodwill. The phone isn’t perfect and there’s lots of other software I haven’t mentioned, but I thought I should acknowledge this phone’s 15 months service to me before I upgrade.

The article ‘World Wide Delusion‘ brought forward my thinking about wider society’s understanding and resulting use of the internet. As society uses and understands more about the possible applications of the net, we move through the stages of 1. Awareness; 2. Utilisation (web 2.0); 3. Control (the future). I believe the development of the web is teetering on the edge of this last stage. Web geeks and the tools they once used for impromptu liberation are now being used for control in ever more diverse applications by government and big business, who crucially have the financial and legal power to back it up.

Oprah Winfrey and Stephen Fry‘s use of twitter exemplify celebrity endorsement and raising awareness of new technologies in the mainstream. Ignoring their status, they are simply individuals utilising the liberating aspects of web 2.0 to microblog their lives. However, the innocent liberation is coming to an end. As these technologies are popularised, governments around the world are more inclined to watch and censor our activities in a fashion that’s been most publicly performed by China. Where once we were protected by the anonymity of the web and trust in our government’s digital ignorance, we’re now facing a future where the web loses a lot of the impartiality that we once took for granted.

Across the world ISPs are being made responsible for the content that exists on their network. In New Zealand the so-called ‘Guilt Upon Accusation‘ law allows ISPs to disconnect individuals who are perceived to have violated copyright laws. The law allows this without any evidence or the scrutiny of a court. In the EU ISPs are newly required to track connections made through the net: i.e. net phone calls, the destination of emails (but not the content) and telephone calls. In the UK, business and government have recently cooperated to end the piracy of music on the internet. ISPs are given the option to voluntarily regulate their networks or face legislation.

Content is now also being censored. The ‘Great Firewall of China‘ is the obvious example, but similarly in the UK content is being filtered on our behalf by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). One high profile example of this included the blocking of a Wikipedia article that featured an image of a semi-naked child. In a country that prides itself on freedom of artistic expression, a debate about the image as a valid piece of art allowed the decision to be overturned. However, the worrying aspect of this example is that the decision was made without consultation or a published set of criteria. A sort of digital Guantanamo.

In fact Guantanamo Bay, although being decommissioned, is an example of the game-changing decisions that authorities are prepared to make on our behalf. Using fear of criminality such as terrorism, governments are legitimising increased levels of tracking on and offline. ID cards and a Police road camera network are just two instances where networked technology is being used to hold information on the individual. Each time you use your car, your journey will be recorded and kept for up to two years. Since most of my real world actions leave digital footprints i.e. Oyster card travel or mobile phone use, I can in theory be tracked. But that information is usually separately stored and subject to warrant to gain access. This era of control relies on centralised databases with instant access by the state.

The major issue surrounding each of these control mechanisms is that they come without regulation. Political agendas are bleeding onto the web and into our digital systems and I, as an individual, do not feel consulted on whether I agree. I believe if politics and law are allowed to encroach on our digital lives then democracy needs to follow. The control and collection of information cannot be left to unelected bodies without recourse. Governments must take back control, or at least understand the social and political climate of suspicion that they are allowing us to drift into. In the same way that the green agenda has been pushed to the fore, I look forward to a future election where digital control policies are a major point of debate.

The more information governments (or their agents) collect on the individual, the more power we give them. Without a digital democracy we must trust that this power is used wisely and with restraint. In the UK, I’m not convinced that our government will use my information for anything other than its own purposes. I’m concerned that these systems are so divorced from the political process that I have no way to affect their use.

Update 7 June 2009: “UK ‘must log’ phone and web use“.