Piers Jones

Magazines on a tablet

With the arrival of hardware like tablet PCs people will be able to consume news and media in new ways that build on how they read print but take advantage of the capabilities of online.

I can't help thinking that the iphone user interface has had a major part to play in shaping how that might look for the next few years.

I like this concept  for reading magazine content on a tablet called Mag+ from from Bonnier and can imagine myself reading a magazine like this on the train. What do you think?

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

thanks to one man and his blog for finding this over a coffee

A summary of User Experience in 2009

For those interested in Product Development and User Experience, this is a good summary of how User Experience design has evolved from the Information Architect, Jesse James Garret. 

Its quite a long video and quite heavy on theory but worth the effort if you have half an hour to set aside.

Jesse James Garrett | UX Week 2009 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Talking to users of your product

It goes without saying that the more people that you talk to that actually use your product, the closer you are going to get to understanding what they need. Then you stand some kind of chance of delivering a product that actually meets those needs. However its very easy to forget to do that as often as you should and get wrapped up in the process of delivering products instead.

In my experience as a Product Manager to date I've found a variety of ways of taking feedback from users in order to improve the quality of what is delivered. There are times when pouring over web stats or undertaking formal usability testing is exactly what is called for. Sometimes though its just good to get out of the office and go and talk to people.

Today I tried out a new and very easy way of gathering product insight by using some software called Silverbackapp. I had know about this software for a while but never actually used it in the wild so to speak.

Its very very simple, you can talk to website users and as you have a conversation with them the software records the on-screen activity as well as filming a video of people's reaction to the product. This all plays back in a video at the end.

With the expert help of Martin Belam - we recorded quite a number of sessions today from website users. I hope the results will help us design some improvements to the product we were discussing based on those insights. I would recommend silverback app to anyone wanting to try more informal testing of their product - as well as recommending that getting out from behind your desk and talking to real customers is a really worthwhile thing to do for anyone in product development. You learn a great deal for free, just by asking.

Here's a video explaining silverbackapp in more detail:

Essential strategies for creating a successful web product from Dion Hinchcliffe

There is some excellent advice from Dion Hinchcliffe in this article outlining '50 essential strategies for creating a successful web 2.0 product'

Although web 2.0 is mentioned in the title I think these ideas could apply to most online products, especially "start by solving a simple problem".

I have a feeling that this is one of those reference articles that I may have to come back to from time to time. Its a great checklist.

RSS adoption rates still low according to Forrester report

There was some debate overnight in content of my googlereader inbox about the implications of a recent Forrester report saying that adoption of RSS stands at around 11% of internet users. Apparently the full report calls on marketers to make more efforts to explain the benefits of this technology to consumers if usage is to grow (I haven't read the full report, it's $279 and although I was interested I am going to make do with what I can get for free).

Steve Rubel feels that usage may have peaked there since "According to the research, of the 89% of those who don't use feeds only 17% say they're interested in using them" . Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins of Mashable counters that usage is in fact much higher than 11% since so many sites and features rely on RSS to provide content and users are already using these tools without realising it.

Whatever the true figure may be if you ask the average person in the street about RSS people rarely have a clue what you are talking about and why should they? I'm of the opinion that most of the 89% have no real interest in a piece of technology for the sake of it, they'll become interested if someone explains something interesting that they can do with it, easily.

The name, RSS explains the format if you are geeky enough to know what it stands for but it doesn't explain the benefits to anyone of actually using it. Feeds, feed readers, news feeds are all a much better explanation, we should choose a better name and then stick with it. News feeds are probably the best that I have seen so far.

Despite some tutorials that explain the principles of RSS just like the eco-kettle in the office where I work, if you need an instruction manual to understand it, its just too complicated. Even if you like the idea of an eco-kettle, when you want a cup of tea you just want to press a single button and for it to work. Yes I have learnt to use the kettle over time but it was a barrier to adoption.

We haven't quite got there yet with the usability of news feeds (or of eco kettles for that matter). Just because the technology has been invented it doesn't mean that we can stop there. RSS still has a long way to go in the way that it is explained to the non-technical user, concentrating on the benefits rather than the features and by supplying tools that are ridiculously easy to use. And of course finding a better name.

If that were done successfully I think the adoption rates of news feeds would be much higher than 11%.

Mashups, it pays to be a big or a small fish

A couple of interesting articles that I picked up today on the subject of mashups. The first from Dion Hinchcliff looking at Mashups as the future of software development, the second from Janko Roettgers at GigaOM on whether the ability to create a new site using a mashup would be a useful litmus test to assess startups against.

It seems likely that the use of mashups will vary according to the size and resources of the people or groups involved. The smaller you are the easier they will be to set up, being bigger means you have the resources to create data sets that no one else has. Maybe being in the middle is a problem? as Nat mentions there is no thing as a free API.

Individuals - may want to create mashups using Yahoo pipes and widgets to create very light weight and flexible services either for themselves or their community

Small companies - may want to mashup as a way of getting quick to market with a new product, by mashing up data and services from larger providers.

Large companies - are still working out how to use mashups for themselves but may want to concentrate on opening out their large and hard to re-create data sets via APIs, RSS or as SaaS (software as a service) so that other smaller companies or individuals can mashup their data for them. The innovation (or mashup) can then take place elsewhere using their data. If they are really smart then they will be gathering more intelligence from the collective use of their data by many individuals to further enhance what they have.

If you are the one mashing up someone else's data then the question to ask would be 'what value am I adding for the user?' and 'what stops someone else doing the same?'. It's not hard to envisage lots and lots of small companies that could make a good business out of repackaging data for someone else if they are providing good services which meet user needs. Of course if you are doing it, then it's pretty easy for someone else to do the same thing.

Why you need usability for your site

A good report from e-consultancy here on building up a business case for Usability.

To their top five points I would add another but I'm not sure it would be down at number 6.

Helps you prioritise features. Of the 200 features that you want to launch or change on your website which ones are actually relevant to people? Which ones should you be spending your development budget on? Usability helps to answer these questions and priortise your changes and new feature requests.

Explaining RSS to non techies

I came across this excellent video which explains RSS to non technical users.

Click To Play

                                       

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

A long overdue explanation which I hope gets picked up and worked on even further.

Maybe we could even think of a better name for it?

From common craft (the site went on Digg and seems to be down at the moment!)