Tag Archives: users

7 Harsh Truths about running online communities

Posted in Site content on by Paul Boag

In ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ I highlighted some of the problems I perceive in how companies run their websites. However, many organisations are not content to simply run a website, they want to run an online community too.

Don’t get me wrong, I am excited to see organisations embracing the idea of community. I have been involved in running virtuals communities since 1996 and in 2004 I wrote about the business benefits of community. To this day I encourage Headscape’s clients to build relationships with their users.

A well run community can…

  • Drive traffic to your site
  • Generate a passionate, evangelistic users
  • Encourage repeat traffic
  • Help develop your products and services
  • Save you money

This is not a ‘rant’ against community, or even corporations running communities. It is an argument against the way they sometimes choose to do so. I continually see the same mistakes being made by organisations. It is time that they faced the harsh realities of running an online community.

1. Technology does not create community

When clients ask for help to build a community, they almost always talk in terms of technology. “We want to add a forum to our site” or “can you create a profile system”.

In ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ I write about how a CMS will not solve your content problems. In the same way a forum will not create a community.

Vanilla Website

Community is about people and relationships, not technology. The technology is the easy part. You can have a forum like Vanilla up and running in minutes, but it will take months of hard work to build a vibrant community.

If you implement the technology and just sit back then your community will fail. The technology merely allows you to engage with your community in the same way as a telephone lets you talk to your friends. It is a tool and nothing more.

2. Show some commitment

I have already said that building a community takes time, but it also takes commitment.

Too many website owners start communities only to give up when they do not see fast results. A community can take months to get off the ground and years before it shows real returns.

It also takes ongoing input. To make your community successful it must be nurtured on a daily basis. When a user posts, you need to replying promptly. Until your community is well established it will need monitoring multiple times a day.

You also need to demonstrate commitment to the individuals that make up your community. You need to take on board their input, address their concerns and encourage their contributions. You need to show you care.

3. Learn how to lead

As well as caring for your users, you also need to know how to lead them.

This is not leadership in the ‘managerial’ sense. These people are not obligated to listen to you or do what you say. You need to inspire, excite and encourage them.

Running a community requires you to be more like a politician or preacher than a manager. You need to mobilise people around a common cause and stamp your personality on the community.

Unfortunately there are few course that teach these kinds of skills. However, I would encourage you to look at great leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and even Barak Obama for inspiration. These men can teach you a lot about engaging with people and encourage others to follow your direction.

Photograph of Barak Obama

4. An antisocial community is your fault

As the leader of your community, your personality sets the tone. As a result if the community behaves in ways you do not want, then you only have yourself to blame.

I have seen many bloggers write about the negative comments they get on their posts. In most cases this is due to the tone they themselves strike in their writing. Although there are exceptions I believe that users will respond in the same voice you yourself set. If you are irreverent, then so will your users be. If you are rude, expect rude responses.

A good example of this is the social news website digg.com. Digg has developed a reputation for its ‘harsh and juvenile’ comments. I believe this comes from the leadership of founder Kevin Rose in his associated podcast Diggnation. This irreverent, comically and highly entertaining podcast has set a tone that has been carried across by users into the comments.

Diggnation Homepage

This is not a criticism of diggnation. Digg.com has become very successful because of their passionate community. It is merely an observation that you reap what you sow.

5. You need to swallow your pride

Another aspect to leading a community is the need to learn humility. No matter how well you run your community, you will mess up. When you do, how you respond is of crucial importance.

Because of the ‘distance’ that the web affords, people are often more critical than they would be face to face. Feelings are overstated and there is an inability to read the non-verbal signals we normally rely upon. This can often lead to confrontation and disagreement.

I have seen communities fail because the organisation alienated its community by responding badly to criticism.

If you want to run a successful community you must swallow your pride and never respond defensively to criticism. Instead acknowledge the comments and thank people for their honesty. Ask others what they think and hopefully they will come to your defence. If not, then you must seriously consider whether the criticism is valid. If it is then you need to admit your mistake and correct it.

By admitting you are wrong, it is possible to heal a relationship with your community and actually leave them even more enthusiastic about your brand than before.

flickr blog post - Sometimes we suck

6. Stop trying to control the message

If you work in marketing some of these points may make you feel uncomfortable. It feels messy and you do not have control over your message. Unfortunately that is the reality of community.

Community is not marketing in the traditional sense. It is not a broadcast medium, it is a dialogue with your users. Failing to grasp that will rip the heart from your community and force it underground.

I have seen unsuspecting companies experience a terrible backlash from a community simply fed up with being sold at rather than listened to. Users do not want a sales pitch or a feature list. They want the opportunity to feedback and a chance to help shape the future of the product or service they use.

Another tactic for controlling the message is to moderate. In extreme cases I have seen organisations moderate every single user contribution that appears on their site. However, I have also seen companies quietly remove negative comments made about their products and services. This is enormously counter productive because people feel censored and will go elsewhere to express their feelings.

That is the trouble with community, you simply cannot control it. If you do not allow it to flourish on your site and engage with it there, then it will pop up elsewhere where you have no control over what is written.

Adobe complaints on Get Satisfaction

7. Nobody likes to be alone

The final harsh truth I want to raise is that “users don’t want to be alone”. Too many organisations launch a forum with a plethora of topics and discussion areas only to have it lay dormant and unused. The reason – it appears empty, so what is the point of posting.

Before you can even consider adding community features to your site you need a critical mass of users that want to get involved. A lot of companies add community features not because users are asking for them but because management wants it. Communities like that rarely succeed.

Also there is a tendency to go straight for a forum. However, a forum requires a substantial number of users to work. Contributions can often become buried in some thread or topic and remain unanswered because it is never seen. If your community is small you may be better starting with comments, reviews or a mailing list. User contributions are much more likely to be noticed using these tools.

Finally, make sure you are seeding the discussion through new topics of your own. Asking lots of questions is a great way to stimulate discussion and prevent people from feeling like the only kid at the party.

Conclusions

After reading this you might feel that running a community is too much like hard work. You may decide not bother at all. However, that would be a mistake.

The ultimate harsh truth is that your users will be talking about your website, services and products, whether you want them to or not. The only question is whether you want to engage in that discussion.

10 ways to Battle Site Bureaucracy

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

Running a large institutional website is frustrating. Your site is often held back by internal politics and bureaucracy. Let me show you 10 ways to cut through the crap and get results.

My recent post ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ generated a huge number of comments both on my own blog and on Smashing Magazine. I seemed to tap into an undercurrent of frustration that exists within the industry.

However, although there was a lot of agreement about the points I raised, there was also resignation. There was a feeling that little could be done to overcome these problems because institutional websites are too entrenched in bureaucracy and politics.

Although I can sympathise with this position and have myself suffered from the problem, I am not one to give up! Over the last decade of working on these sites, I have developed a number of techniques which (sometimes) help to smooth their evolution. Hopefully they will help you too.

1. Educate and inform

At the heart of any technique for dealing with politics and bureaucracy has to be education.

Although there are occasions when people are just ‘trying to be difficult’, in most cases their objections are based on ignorance.

You cannot expect people to be as knowledgeable as you about the web. If you want people to make informed, sensible decisions you must educate them.

Education is also not just about giving them the background to a specific decision so they understand ‘why you are right’. It is about increasing your organisations general understanding of the web.

Run workshops, publish email newsletters, do anything that informs people about the latest web innovations. Increasingly I am invited into organisations to run short seminars on everything from accessibility to facebook! This kind of ongoing education means people are better informed when tough decisions need to be made.

2. Hold stakeholder interviews

One technique that we find very effective at Headscape are stakeholder interviews.

Stakeholder interviews involves meeting individually with anybody who has a ‘stake’ (interest) in the website. This is typically members of the marketing and IT teams, as well as departmental heads and senior management. However it should also include suppliers, customers and users of your website.

These one-to-one meetings provide two opportunities…

  • Requirements gathering – It is easy for website owners to live in isolated bubbles, separate from the rest of the organisation. These meetings provide an opportunity to understand the real needs and objectives of others within the business. It will highlight ways that your website can help, which you might not have previously considered.
  • To be inclusive – Stakeholder interviews offer a ‘political benefit’ as well. By meeting with people individually they feel included in the process. They feel their opinions are valued and listened to (which they should be!). People are much less likely to object if they have been consulted before a decision is reached.

People often complain about the website in stakeholder interviews. Allow them to do this and avoid becoming defensive. They will feel more favourably towards you and your website, if you listen to their concerns. We all like to be heard.

3. Avoid group committee meetings

The key to stakeholder interviews is their one-to-one nature. Group meetings can be very destructive. This is for a number of reasons…

  • The need to defend – In large organisations that have internal politics, everybody feels the need to defend their own ‘turf’. If somebody criticise the website, you are forced to defend it to ‘save face’ in front of others. Equally others feel the need to defend their own positions for the same reason.
  • A tendency to compromise - When two individuals in a group reach an impasse, the others try to find a compromise. This kind of ‘design on the fly’ inevitably leads to a bland solution. It will neither offend or inspire anybody. Unfortunately, to create a successful website you need to make tough choices that some will not like. A group approach does not lend itself to this.
  • A loss of control – It is easy for you to loss control in a group meeting. One-to-one meetings work better because you can divide and conquer. Only you know what the other stakeholders said. This puts you in charge and allows you to ‘cheery pick’ the feedback you receive. In a group meeting things can easily get out of hand and decisions are made without your buy-in.
  • The dominant individual - Every group has one or two dominant individuals. These are the people who bounce the rest of the group into agreeing with them, forcing their agenda through. A dominant individual drowns out quieter members, who become resentful later that nobody listened to them. Meeting with people individually prevents this because the dominant individuals cannot force their point of view on others or overwhelm quieter ones.

One cannot expect a larger organisation to run its website without some form of committee. However, there is no reason why that committee needs to meet as a group.

4. Target your influencers

Talking of dominant individuals, another successful tactic is to target influencers.

An influencer is somebody that others respect and follow. Their opinion is incredibly valuable and if you can sway them to your cause, others will fall into line. However, be careful not to confuse dominant people with influencers. A dominant person will ‘bully’ others into publicly agreeing with them. An influencer will fundamentally alter somebody’s attitude.

Identify who influences your decision makers and speak to them personally. This person might not even be a decision maker themselves, but they carry enough clout to make them worth your time.

When you meet with your influencers, really listen to what they have to say. They often have valuable insights which may change your strategy significantly. Do not go into a meeting with an influencer simply intent on pushing your own agenda. Instead try and shape your approach around their perspective.

If you get an influencer enthusiastic about your project it can make a huge difference.

5. Use third party experts

A variation on the influencers technique is to back up your ideas with third party expert opinion. This can be done in two ways…

  • Reference the work of a third party expert – For example, if you wish to discourage internal stakeholders from overwhelming users with options on the homepage, you might refer them to Steve Krug or Jakob Nielsen who have both written on the subject.
  • Hire a third party expert - I often find myself brought into companies simply to confirm what in-house staff have already been saying. Unfortunately, decision makers often doubt the opinion of their web team because they either undervalue them or feel they are pushing a hidden agenda. An independent expert can add creditability to your opinions.

Of course, for this approach to work the stakeholders need to respect the expert. There is no point referencing Steve Krug or hiring Jakob Nielsen, if the decision makers have never heard of them. It is often necessary to sell the credibility of your expert first.

6. Rely on evidence, not opinion

Sometimes it is better to avoid personal opinion entirely (even if that is the opinion of an expert). In such cases statistics can be your friend.

Nothing is more powerful for driving home a point than referring decision makers to Google Analytics. However web stats are not the only evidence you can draw upon. Others include…

  • Surveys and polls are an excellent way of getting feedback from your users that can then be presented to decision makers.
  • Twitter search and Google Alerts can be used to gauge how people view your site and brand. These can be powerful testimonials to present decision makers.
  • Heat maps can be used to take some of the subjectivity out of design.

Of course one of the most powerful evidence you can present is the results of usability testing.

7. Focus on the user

As website owners we know that a successful website is user focused. However, not all our decision makers will understand this and even those who do may get ‘distracted’ sometimes.

It is therefore important to constantly move our decision makers away from their own personal preferences and back on the needs of users.

User testing is one way of doing this. Being able to show decision makers how real users interact with your website is incredibly powerful. It helps them empathise with the needs of users rather than thinking only about their own agenda. Play them video clips of users interacting with your site or at the very least quote them the feedback of users.

However, even if you involve decision makers in user testing, they can still get caught up in their own agendas. One gentle way of preventing this is to word your questions carefully. When you need a decision makers response to something don’t ask…

What do you think?

Instead ask them…

How do you think users will respond to this?

This will keep them focused on the needs of users.

8. Control the feedback

As well as wording questions carefully there is also a need to control the feedback you receive. This is important if you want the decision makers to make considered decisions.

Take for example design sign off – never ask a decision marker if they like a design. It is too broad a question that will lead to a plethora of uninformed and ill considered responses. Instead ask them more specific questions such as…

  • Does the design conform to the brand guidelines?
  • Does the design meet the needs of our users?
  • Does the design emphasis the right content?
  • Does the design have a clear call to action?
  • Does the design fulfil our business objectives?

This prevents the decision maker from falling back on their gut reaction (i like it / I dislike it). It forces them to focus on the issues that define whether the design is successful or not and ignore personal preference for specific colours or layout.

Of course, sometimes you will not like the answer to these specific questions. When that happens you need to ask why.

9. Ask why

This is probably the most powerful of all the techniques I have listed here and yet by far the simplest.

When you face opposition to your plans, always ask why. Too often we switch to defensive mode and focus on better communicating our own position rather than understanding the opinion of the person opposing us. This is a mistake.

The question why is powerful for three reasons…

  • It informs – Often the objection raised initially is not the true underlying issue. By asking why you get to the root of the problem and that allows you to offer alternative solutions. Asking why ensures you have all the information required to deal with the issue.
  • It can confound – Most of us make decisions based on an intuitive leap. We do not always think through our decisions and so find it hard to articulate the underlying reason. By asking why you force people to stop and consider their logic. When they struggle to express the underlying reasons, they weaken their position.
  • It shows interest – By asking why you allow them to have their say. You demonstrate an interest in their opinion and establish empathy with their point of view.

    • Ultimately asking why avoids the disagreement from turning into an argument with entrenched position.

    10. Avoid confrontation

    I avoid confrontation at all costs. Going head-to-head with somebody especially in front of their colleagues achieves nothing. You can rarely get somebody to shift their position through confrontation.

    Once a disagreement escalates into a confrontation, nobody can afford to ‘lose face’ by backing down. It becomes a matter of ego, where pride dictates the outcome. Your website will almost certainly be caught in the cross fire.

    A better approach is to agree. The word yes can be immensely powerful. Whenever somebody suggests something to me, no matter how stupid, I will do the following…

    • Acknowledge and thank them for their input.
    • Say yes we could do that.
    • Go on to explain the consequences if we did.
    • Offer an alternative which could achieve the same aims.

    In short I tend to go around problems rather than bashing my head against them. I always look to work with others rather than against them.

    Conclusions

    So there you go, 10 techniques for battling site bureaucracy. I do not claim these techniques are foolproof. Neither do I suggest they are always appropriate. However, they are useful techniques in your arsenal which you may want to call upon from time to time.

    Finally, this is not a definitive list. I could have written more but then it wouldn’t have been a ‘top ten list!’ However, I would be interested to hear what works for you. Post your techniques in the comments.

    152. War?

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show: Daniel Burka and Joe Stump from Digg discuss the supposed war between designers and developers. Paul talks about using twitter effectively and we ask ‘are you placing too much emphasis on your homepage?’

    Play

    Podcast: Download (34.0MB)

    Download this show.

    Launch our podcast player

    News and events

    How to film video case studies

    Increasingly your web strategy is about more than a website full of pretty pictures and well written copy. Video in particular is playing an increasing role, whether it is embedded in your website or shared via YouTube.

    Video can be used in all kinds of ways from product demonstrations to viral marketing. However, a growing use for video is customer case studies.

    This week 37 Signals have published a fascinating insight into how they created their customer case studies for Highrise. The article covers everything from…

    • How they chose who to interview
    • The way they shot the videos
    • What questions they asked
    • How they conducted the interviews
    • How they edited the videos
    • The time they spent preparing the whole thing

    There is little written about producing quality videos and even less about customer case studies. Without a doubt these kinds of videos are extremely powerful and so it is great to read quality advice about their production.

    Effective communication in web design

    Smashing Magazine has posted an excellent article that I would highly recommend to all website owners. No, it is not my excellent Twitter article that I will cover later. It is actually an article entitled – Clear And Effective Communication In Web Design.

    In essence it talks about how to communicate on the web through both copy and visuals. It is a comprehensive overview (if somewhat superficial) of all the key considerations of communicating effectively through your website.

    The article focuses primarily on your website, largely ignoring broader communication issues. However it does tackle…

    • The different methods of communication – Images, text, titles, icons, design styling, colour, audio and visuals.
    • The challenges of clearly communicating – This includes the curse of too much copy, the need for personality and much more.
    • What you should be communicating – Your company vision, the websites offerings, the benefits to your users and calls to action.

    It also nicely demonstrates how the design and copy work together to communicate your message. This is something I will be discussing with Jeffrey Zeldman in an upcoming show.

    Do we place too much emphasis on the homepage?

    Following on nicely from my recent post about where we invest our money, Christian Watson recently wrote about one of his clients who requested a homepage redesign.

    In the article he writes…

    Sure, I could refresh the colors and move some content around. But is this a good use of my time and her money when the home page represents 20-25% of page views?

    It is a good question. Christian goes on to argue that we often place far too much emphasis on the homepage and that in fact it is little more than a gateway page to direct users to more important content.

    He uses a nice analogy borrowed from Jared Spool. He compares the homepage with a hotel lobby…

    When visitors arrive at your hotel, certainly they should find that the lobby represents the hotel favorably. It should be attractive, spacious, with elegant lighting, welcoming colors, and the odd feature here and there.

    The lobby should make it easy for the visitor to orient themselves — to see where the front desk is and where the lifts are. It should make it easy for the guest to find out any important information at a glance — upcoming events or where the conference is being held.

    However, hotels are ultimately judged by the quality of their rooms.

    It is an excellent post that provides real food for thought.

    Back to top

    Interview: Joe Stump & Daniel Burka on War Between Designers & Developers?

    Paul: So I am really excited to have joining me today Daniel Burka and Joe Stump from Digg. Hello Guys

    Daniel: Hello

    Joe: Hey hey

    Paul: I have had both of you on the show individually and Joe you were on not long ago were you really…

    Joe: ermhh yes a couple of months ago maybe

    Paul: What can I say, we cannot survive without you. So erm but I though lets bring the two of these wonderful people together and talk about designer,developer relationships and how the two of them get on together working at Digg. I mean I have to say this is just a rip off really isn’t it, it’s a rip of a panel you did. Was that Future of Web Design (FOWD) you did that panel?.

    Daniel: Yes it was Future of Web Design in New York. I think we are rehashing the panel at South By South West (SXSW) this year so if anyone is there it would be awesome if you dropped by.

    Paul: Excellent, I need to persuade you two to come along to the SXSW live Boagworld as well, but I will hassle of of air so that you can back out if you want to without committing yourself live in a interview.(Paul laughs). OK so lets kick off by talking about the designer and developer relationship and really I think that it strikes me there is a lot of mythology around this that you know designers and developers hate one another and I am not convinced it actually works like that in practice. When you guys did your panel at FOWD you actually were agreeing on a lot of points so I though we would start of by maybe highlighting some of the differences and then look at ways of working together er mm further down the line so lets talk about to begin with what you guys see as the main differences in outlook I guess between designers and developers. How do you look at the world in different ways, do you think? Maybe Joe do you want to kick us off. How do you think developers see the world differently to designers?.

    Joe: Sure I think erh developers are definitely, their default kind of response erm is that they would rather, I always make the joke that coders by default are lazy, good coders are extremely lazy people that’s why they’re good coders because they want to automate as much of their lives as possible. Ermm so I think that erm developers tend to get a little complacent when it comes to the actual erm product sometimes because they are so busy and so interested in and so worried about the actual code or the more nerdy side of things you know like are we running the latest greatest versions of different softwares. Developers also tend to be a lot more interested in what the new hip nerdness is as opposed to what’s actually going to make the product better for users, you know so like I have been in product review meetings where people are like “well Why isn’t this new version of some strange bizarre open web specification that nobody has ever heard of ahead of some major forward user feature” . (laughs)

    Paul: (laughs)

    Joe: So ermm I think that that tends to be like a big difference. The designers you know it is their job to be curators of the website in my opinion and kind of move the user experience forward and often times developers don’t have a whole lot of interest in that. (laughs)

    Daniel: On the flip side of that if we are both going to slag our own professions ermm I think designers are often you know pushing unrealistic goals. They are interested in building you know the perfect product and you know aiming straight for that instead of looking pragmatically at doing things in steps and figuring out what is technically possible and I think there is also a gap where designers can only see sometimes what features that they can view and don’t understand, don’t see the vision, of where developers can see you know amazing things they can you know do pro grammatically that designers just aren’t envisioning.

    Paul: Yeah

    Joe: I think that’s er is another key difference that I know that there is a lot of, there have been struggles and tensions between Daniel and I in the past over this idea of a holistic approach to design where where Daniel designs his vision and his vision is normally version 10.0 and I am looking at you know the technical roadmap and things that I need to do and like I am OK well lets talk about version 1.0 and then we can start talking about 2.0 like, developers are much more focused on an iterative process as far as releasing, you know like small chunks, reducing risk etc. etc. and designers tend to kind of like go well erm you know it is like I wanna build a pyramid it’s like great well how about first we start out by finding some limestone and then we work our way up to building a pyramid.

    Daniel: So what you are saying is we have got a fantastic optimism. (laughing)

    Joe: Yes

    Daniel: But I think that’s partly it. Developers are very interested, as Joe was saying,in mitigating risk and in a lot of ways designers are very adverse to even thinking about risk and want to think about opportunity. So I think this is kind of the crux of the whole thing and what we are trying to talk about on that panel is that both of those views are super valuable and if you manage to find the right mix of those two things then you can develop a fantastic product that is both concerned about risk and pushes the boundaries of what is possible.

    Paul: Mmmm I remember one point that came out from the presentation which is one that you made erm Joe which is about the dangers of if that mix is not right. It is always the designer that’s in front of the client or the boss or whatever ermm the kind of realism of the developer is kind of left out of the process and ideally the developer either needs to be involved in those kind of meetings or there needs to be a conversation that happens between the designer and the developer before anything is ever presented. Is that kind of, do you still feel like that is that still a valid point?.

    Joe: Yeah, I feel that is a extremely valid point for two reasons erm and this is a discussion that Daniel and I just had yesterday in fact. The thing is as a developer the reason I want to be involved early on in the development or in the design and like development of the product phase you know when requirements are coming together and when you know the first kind of formations come out of the clays so to speak is because two reasons. One ermm and they all kind of come back to this same kind of problem, is that the designers and the product people don’t know the system, the actual bits and bytes that like you know go into making the product, as well as the developer like the data and the code and the actual systems and stuff like that and how they are put together. So Often times two things happen Daniel comes up with a design and there is like one small minute detail on the page that would require you know one of the largest computer farms in the world to calculate in real time. Whereas in lots and just as often as you know that happens where it is like Daniel I can’t calculate that number in any meaningful way on a regular basis so you gotta remove that. But just as often as that happens because of you know as a developer I have such like intrinsic knowledge of the relationships in the data and what data we are storing and stuff like that just as often I am like well why don’t we expose this data or do this and Daniel is like I did not know we could do that actually I totally would have done that if I had known that that was possible or feasible.

    Daniel: Yeah and that’s, especially that side of things designers often hear the first part Joe is talking about, the you know well that is just not possible or more difficult than you think. Any designer that has worked with a developer has heard that aspect of it you know and that is of course very valuable but it is the other side of things that I think people fail to leverage most frequently is the ability of developers to see different patterns than you in the data and come up with those suggestions, you know it might still be your call whether or not that is a valuable thing for the user but just hearing these ideas coming out is is amazingly valuable. That has shaped a lot of Digg.

    Paul: So would you say that is a kind of you know a common mistake that maybe designers make with developers that they don’t communicate enough with them ermm

    Daniel: Absolutely

    Paul: yeah

    Daniel: Designers often see developers as mules its like I made this thing go build it and that is a bullshit attitude, its terrible.

    Paul: mmmm what …

    Daniel: Its not just designers either all product people have a tendency to do that. In some ways, as Joe was talking about developers being involved in the process, at Digg we’ve got a pretty good structure where design actually falls under the marketing team and in some ways I see design as a bridge between marketing and business development you know product interests and the development team. Because I am often sitting over here and I hear you know someone from business development or marketing throwing around an idea and I am like “I’m no developer but I have a good sense of what the developer sees as important and you’re talking crazy talk like that is going to be nuts” and they are about to go and pitch that to a potential partner and you know like every week I put the brakes on from that kind of thing I am like listen you need to talk to Joe you need to talk to a developer because that what you are talking about is going to be months of development and you are promising it to a partner in two weeks that’s nuts and so I like that in you in some ways the design team can often be a bridge between product marketing people and the technical teams.

    Paul: Joe from your perspective what kind of, you know as your communicating with Daniel and other designers within digg looking back where do you think you’ve made mistakes in your relationship with designers?.

    Joe: Ermm I mean the mistakes that I often make ,its a not even a mistake are I don’t wanna say are what we do are like flat out mistakes it’s just more ermm you know being a bit more reserved and not necessarily defaulting your answer to no. Err You know I think that Daniel often talks about how a natural tension between design and product and development is actually good for the product because you have eventually, as long as you can keep that at a good tension and not you know bad or where things are breaking but ermm I think often times developers are quick to say no. You know they will be sitting in a meeting and it is just immediately no I am not going to discuss that when in reality if they sat back and let the idea germinate you know they would, Its kinda weird because I have in a lot of meetings where things were, where the developers were like be oh my god that is an amazing product but we will never be able to build it and so it is like they want to build it but their default is to avoid risk so they say no. So a lot of the times when I talk with Daniel now and this is something I like quit doing I try not to say no unless it is just like blatantly in black and white no way that is possible kind of thing. I might let the idea germinate more I might no say no immediately I might want to go back and spend a couple of hours thinking about it if it is actually feasible because maybe you know. That’s what engineers love doing they love solving difficult problems and if you are saying no to difficult problems then you are failing at what your passion and hobby is. Ermm so I think that ..

    Paul: There is also an aspect is there not of not just saying no but explaining why you are saying no so that the other party is kind of educated into the kind of problems you face so as Daniel said earlier that they can be the bridge to you know business development or whoever else.

    Joe: Yeah absolutely, I am the king of analogies at this point ermm but the other thing that developers erhh, this is extremely common that they utterly fail at is that they think for some reason that they are like the target demographic of the product so they will come into a meeting and say this product will absolutely fail because it doesn’t have key binding so I can keyboard shortcuts it’s like nobody uses keyboard shortcuts like in the real world, they are all mice people like you know. It is stuff like that that a lot of the time developers are like “this will never work unless you have least 14 completely nerdy niche features in it” you know and I think developers too often you know they do that and that is just silly.

    Daniel: Hey guys that’s been a special problem at digg,since we started of as the pure technology side so it was seen as by developers for developers and you know we have obviously branched out from there and now we have got other interests I want to make sure peoples mums can use the website and that’s you know certainly a , you make different choices based on that.

    Paul: I mean it is very timely from my point of view to have this interview with you because on Friday we had a internal meeting in Headscape where we talked about all kinds of production things and one of the things that came out of the development team was this desire to be involved in the process more and err to have their say more and just to be included earlier. So I am quite interested in you know because obviously you guys have been working together for a long time what kind of practical advise would you give to a , maybe this is just a question for me and not for anyone else, but what kind of practical advise would you give for designers and developers working together within the organisation. How can that relationship work better?

    Daniel: Yeah, absolutely involving your development team earlier in the process but that doesn’t necessarily mean sitting around brainstorming right at the beginning of a feature with them. I mean I try to sit down work out an idea get it 20% of the way there, you know work out some of the basic issues figure out what this thing really means what’s at the core of it you know it might be ten different features together but what are we actually trying to achieve with it right so at least get that far even throw down so basic wire frames or some really basic comps and then present it to the developers its like listen this isn’t just an idea I came up with you know last night I just want to spill my entire brain out in front of you it is something at least I have thought through you know I have put a few things through my brain and now here is this totally unformed, not totally unformed, slightly formed idea but it is not baked you know don’t wait until you have got it baked and then you are so disappointed when the development team says well that’s not possible or have you really though about this and you have got this complete package already made up in your mind but come to them with a least you know the kernel of the thought out idea and get them to poke holes in it. Get them to push it in other directions and show you what else you could be doing and then go back to the drawing board again.

    Paul: What about from your point of view Joe?

    Joe: Well yeah, So ermm I agree with Daniel in some sense on that I think it is crucial to before you take it to developers to formulate a cohesive problem or hypotheses. Like if you come to the developers with a half baked problem that you are trying to solve you are going to get like, they are just going to run wild with it and it is like you know difficult sometimes to keep developers focused when they get excited about a problem. So have a formulated problem that you know you have a small idea of how you are going to fix but not fully baked. The other thing too and this goes on both sides of the aisle it shouldn’t be get developers plural involved and it shouldn’t be get. like a lot when you are first germinating that idea and you haven’t really moved it forward start small and then continuously expose it to more and more people errmh because I find if you involve too many people early on in a the process whether it is designers, developers, product people things tend to , you tend to loose focus quickly and everyone wants you know it’s kind of like port barrel spending and major bills its like everyone wants to piggy back extra features and stuff and pet projects that they have wanted for so long into like some major new feature.

    Daniel: It is just simple death by committee

    Joe: Right

    Paul: Yeah Yeah OK That’s interesting a little random question I remember going to a talk once where, and I can’t remember who it was who was giving it, where they suggested that errmh designers and developers swapped roles for a while. Where you try and sit in the other persons shoes and I was just interested whether you two had tried anything like that?

    Joe: That would be disastrous for me. (laughs)

    Daniel: I I mean I appreciate development roles and I am you know somewhat technical for a designer but yeah I know I have never done that but I have always worked so closely with the development team like at silverorange where I worked previously to digg there was only ten of us and I sat in a room with developers all the time. I worked in their code with them and worked on problems as a group so I think I, you know I have never worked in a place like say you worked in a big enterprise and your in this classic where designers are in one office and developers are in the other office and you toss stuff over the wall yes then I think that would hold value at least go and sit in the other office, go work in the other office for a few months just hear the other discussions that are going on because there are a totally different set of concerns a totally different set of values than what you are doing and if you don’t at least appreciate and understand that, and not just understand it so you know what you are fighting against but understand it to know what is important and how you can work with it then you know you would be really missing out.

    Joe: I think I am ermhh I think I am kind of spoiled at Digg because you know I work with two of the webs brightest, you know Daniel and Mark Trammell as well so I actually push back on my developers pretty frequently where they you know we will leave a meeting and they are like I really really completely disagree with what Daniel or Mark are doing with the design and you know I tell them all the time like look you are not a designer and you definitely not at the level that those two are at and you sometimes have to defer to them and trust that they are doing their job and they are doing it well you know and ermhh I think developers don’t do that often enough they make these assumptions that you know the arty-farty designers are doing stupid shit again and that’s not the case. I mean they would not be especially where we are at at Digg and what not I mean Digg is able to be very picky with who they bring on and the people Daniel has brought in to design are extremely competent at what they do err so I am probably not qualified to answer that question because I am so spoiled at Digg but that is a common problem I see from developers where ermhh they don’t let the designers do their job and they try and be designers when in reality you know they do not have the experience or the expertise so.

    Paul: Lets talk about conflict resolutions, sounds very grandiose but basically you know how do you go around resolving a situation where you know OK you kind of respect each others skills and you respect each others competencies but you know where some feature is suggested by Daniel and you know and you Daniel from your point of view it is absolutely core to what you are trying to achieve you know it is extremely important and then from a technical angle Joe it just seems incredibly complex and very very difficult. How is the eventual decision made as to whether that feature should be implemented and in what way it is implemented? How do you go about resolving that difference?.

    Joe: Ermhh Well I mean I think as far as making the decision whether or not the feature makes it in, because there is actually two possibilities when it comes to the conflict resolution. Whether or not a feature actually makes it into the product and in what capacity does that feature make it into the product and I think in the former whether or not the feature actually makes into the product if Daniel comes to me and he’s resolute like this feature has to be in the product the feature is going to be in product. I am always going to defer to Daniel on on, if he feels that strongly and is that passionate about it you know and it is not something completely hare-brained like I want magic ponies to come flying out of the screen I am going to defer to his expertise on the fact that feature needs to be in the product. Where the conflict resolution comes into it is what capacity is that feature going to come into the product like a perfect example of I think of something where there has been we have had a recent discussion at Digg and where this has happened we have, and I talked about this probably in our last talk but, there are these little green badges on the digg buttons and they indicate one of your friends has dugg that story and when you hover over the digg button it shows like a little sample of the people that have dugg it. Ermhh So those were causing significant strain and problems with our systems and our code and on our databases so I came to Daniel and of course again as my risk aversion developer brain was coming to Daniel I was like Can we axe this feature until we can figure out how to like fix it. He was like “No” that feature cannot absolutely be axed and then we came to a resolution which was a short term solution until we can get a better solution in place where operations now have knobs they can dial down so the green badges don’t show up on stories older than 48hrs, they don’t show up on stories that have more than say 5 or 600 diggs and stuff like that. So the conflict resolution came in basically making trade-offs in how that feature is surfaced in works ermhh at our scale more often than not what that means is that Daniel has to give up the notion that everything is in real time. The feature will work it is just that it may take you know thirty seconds to a minute for an action to be distributed across the entire system, that is probably more how things are now at Digg so.

    Paul: What about from your point Daniel, when do you back down over something and when do you keep pushing on it? How do you decide you know how serious Joe is about something and whether you should keep pushing or not?

    Daniel: Right I mean it kind of comes down to you know when I am looking at the product I am not thinking of any one feature, I am thinking about the whole set and I want it all to work together and so you know I know I want to push out six different features this month and if I push and push Joe to do the one really hard one well that is going to affect the other five I wanted to get done. So any feature is tied to other features and it is also based on a time line if I want something done in a certain time line and that’s just not possible well then I have to start making compromises so you know you have to be realistic and then at the same time you have to realise developers work well with shame and so if you tell a developer well I bet a good developer could do that (All laugh) they will go back to their cube grumbling at you and figure out a more efficient way to do it.

    Paul: OK. So now we are getting into the realms of how to manipulate each other.

    Daniel: Absolutely.

    Joe: That’s definitely err one that I agree does work but is not a trick you want to pull out of your bag too often.

    Daniel: No it is the same with designers too, it is like I want to do this really complex thing, no way I can explain that to users in a way they will understand. “I thought you were good” arhh shit I will go back and try that again.

    Paul: That is quite interesting what you just said there because so far we have talked very much about you know designers initiating features and that kind of stuff I mean are there situations where the developer is the one initiating features you know just said there a developer wanted to do something really cool and you said you couldn’t explain it. Does it run that way as well? or is it always the designer who drives first?.

    Daniel: No Absolutely that happens at Digg, it happens sometimes at Digg so Joe yesterday sent me an email that had two big feature ideas in it. They may not be things we implement this month but maybe later on this year. I was looking at them and you know it is easy to disregard well he is a developer he does not understand what’s going on with the product but you look at the ideas and they are strong and they fit in with what we are doing and now I am trying to figure out you know how they make sense in the big picture I guess. So we have got a brilliant development team a lot of people over there with great ideas and we try to sit down, you know I guess Kevin has been doing those where we do meetings once a month I guess where developers if they have been working on a side project you know something they have always wanted to build into Digg they can present this at the Digg ideas meeting.

    Paul: Ah OK

    Daniel: A bunch of those products will make it into the full Digg I mean its awesome these brilliant people go and throw around crazy ideas and show you what is possible.

    Joe: I think err yeah I mean I agree with that you definitely have, it is a two way street erm largely stuff comes from product at this point the Digg ideas meetings is definitely helping that you know open that up and kind of what I would call level that playing field a bit. But one of the things I think developers are in a in a unique position just like Daniel I work with people across the entire companies so I know initiatives that are going on in marketing I know initiatives that are going on in PR and biz dev etc. and you know if nothing else developers are very good about noticing and pointing out and discovering patterns and err a recent product that made it out that err was a developer initiated product was Digg dialogue because basically I noticed this common pattern where business development and Marketing and PR were setting up interviews and then like reaching out to people to like conduct interviews using the Digg engine kind of thing and I was why don’t we bake this into like a cohesive feature that’s turnkey because you know business development like Daniel was saying earlier lots of times they are just making these one off deals you know and they don’t really recognise when there is a product to be had there erm so that is another one that recently went out. It was like I recognised a pattern and baked this into something cohesive and move it forward.

    Daniel: That is a good example of where we are being lazy some people want to do this one off thing over and over again and it is a bunch of work to don it each time well like we will just build a system to do it and we won’t have to do all the work every time. It was great.

    Paul: OK that is really good lets leave then with one final question or one thing from each of you. Which is if you could give you know one piece of advice to either designers or developers on how to kind of interact with their counterpart what would that one piece of advice be?. Lets kick of with you Daniel what would be your one piece of advice to designers about dealing with developers?.

    Daniel: My one piece of advice would be to see the big picture, you know aim for version 10 like we were talking about earlier and know what you want to build in the future but be realistic enough to back it up and build it in stages. You know waiting and building a feature over six months and eventually launching it is a terrible way to develop and it’s a terrible way to design having an idea of where you want to be in six months but realising in one month increments is so much better you’ll end up in a different place but at least you know where you are heading and you can adjust that goal as you go forward

    Paul: Yeah. Brilliant. Joe what about you?

    Joe: Ermhh I would say to the developers out there that there is different shades of no ermhh that you know there is the, the default should not always be no and remember what I said about the conflict resolution you should be deferring to the people that are experts in their field by default for the most part and to work on compromise in how the feature operates and make your concessions and have them make their concessions rather than just defaulting to saying no to the entire feature.

    Daniel: And as a developer push to be involved early in the process, even at Digg we struggle with that a lot and as a designer I appreciate when developers want to be involved I want to hear their opinions you know it is fun to have them involved I hear all kinds of crazy stuff I never even considered that’s awesome.

    Paul: Excellent. Thank you so much guys that was really good I appreciate you coming back on the show yet again. It was really good to get your perspectives together on that relationship because it is one a lot of people struggle with. So it is good to hear that it can work most of the time. Thanks for your time

    Daniel: Thanks for having us on Paul

    Joe: Bye

    Thanks goes to Shaun Hare for transcribing this interview.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    With everybody from Britney to Obama now on Twitter it is safe to say the social networking platform has gone mainstream. But what does this mean for the service and how can we as website owners use it? Read More

    10 harsh truths about corporate websites

    Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

    We all make mistakes running our websites. However the nature of those mistakes varies. As your site and organisation grow, the mistakes begin to change. This post addresses common mistakes in larger organisations.

    Most of the clients I work with at Headscape are larger organisations – Universities, large charities, public sector institutions and large companies.

    Over the last 7 years I have noticed certain reassuring misconceptions within these organisations. The idea of this post is to dispel these illusions and encourage people to face the harsh reality.

    The problem is that if you are reading this post you are probably already aware of these things. However, hopefully this article will be a useful tool for convincing others within your organisation.

    Anyway, here are my 10 harsh truths about larger websites.

    1. You need a separate web division

    In most organisations I work with the website is managed by either the marketing or IT department. However, this inevitably leads to a turf war and the site becoming the victim of internal politics.

    In reality running a web strategy is not particularly suited to either group. IT maybe excellent at rolling out complex systems but they are not suited to developing a friendly users experience or establishing an online brand.

    Marketing on the other hand is little better. As Jeffrey Zeldman puts it in his article ‘Let there be web divisions‘:

    The web is a conversation. Marketing, by contrast, is a monologue… And then there’s all that messy business with semantic markup, CSS, unobtrusive scripting, card-sorting exercises, HTML run-throughs, involving users in accessibility, and the rest of the skills and experience that don’t fall under Marketing’s purview.

    Instead the website should be managed by a single unified team. Again Zeldman sums it up when he writes:

    Put them in a division that recognizes that your site is not a bastard of your brochures, nor a natural outgrowth of your group calendar. Let there be web divisions.

    Screenshot of Zeldman's website

    2. Managing your website is a full time job

    Not only is the website often split between marketing and IT, it is also normally under resourced. Instead of having a dedicated web team, those responsible for the website are often expected to run it alongside their ‘day job’.

    Where a web team is in place they are often over stretched. The vast majority of their time is spent on day to day maintenance rather than longer term strategic thinking.

    This situation is further exaggerated because the people hired to ‘maintain’ the website are junior members of staff. They do not have the experience or authority to push the website forward.

    It is time for organisations to seriously investing in their websites by hiring full time senior web managers to move their web strategies forward.

    3. Periodic redesign is not enough

    Because corporate websites are under resourced they are often neglected for long periods of time. They slowly become out of date both in terms of content, design and technology.

    Eventually the site becomes such an embarrassment that management step in and demand it is sorted. This inevitably leads to a complete redesign at considerable expense.

    As I point out in the website owners manual this a flawed approach. It is a waste of money because when the old site is replaced the investment put into it is lost. It is also tough on cash flow with a large expenditure happening every few years.

    A better way is continual investment in your site, so allowing it to evolve over time. Not only is this less wasteful it is also better for the users as is pointed out in Cameron Moll’s post ‘Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign‘.

    Screenshot of Cameron Molls Article

    4. Your site cannot appeal to everyone

    One of the first questions I ask our clients is ‘who is your target audience?’ I am regularly shocked at the length of the reply. Too often it includes a long and detailed list of diverse people.

    Inevitably my next question is which of those many demographic groups are most important. Depressingly the answer is that they are all equally important.

    The harsh truth is that if you build a site for everybody it will appeal to nobody. It is important to be extremely focused in your audience and cater your design and content around them.

    Does this mean you have to ignore your other users? Not at all. Your site should be accessible by all and should not offend or exclude anybody. However, it does need to have a clearly defined audience that the site is primarily aimed at.

    5. Your site is not all about you

    Where some website managers want their websites to appeal to everybody, others want it to appeal to themselves and their colleagues.

    A surprising number of organisations choose to ignore their users entirely and build their websites entirely around an organisational perspective. This typically manifests itself in inappropriate design that caters to the managing directors personal preferences and content full of internal terminology and jargon.

    A website should not be about pandering to the preferences of staff but about meeting the needs of users. Too many designs are rejected because the boss doesn’t like green. Equally too much website copy uses acronyms and terms that are only used internally within an organisation.

    6. Design by committee brings death

    Illustration showing why design by committee fails

    The ultimate expression of a larger organisations approach to website management is the committee. A committee is formed to tackle the website because internal politics demand everybody has their say and all considerations are taken into account.

    To say that all committees are a bad idea is naive and to suggest that a large corporate website could be developed without consultation is fanciful. However when it comes to design, committees are often the kiss of death.

    Design is subjective. The way we respond to a design can be influenced by culture, gender, age, childhood experience or even physical conditions (such as colour blindness). What one person considers great design another could hate. This is why it is so important that design decisions are informed by user testing rather than personal experience. Unfortunately this approach is rarely followed when a committee is involved in design decisions.

    Instead, design by committee becomes about compromise. Because different committee members have different opinions about the design, they looks for ways to find common ground. One person hates the blue colour palette while another loves it. This leads to design on the fly when the committee instructs the designer to ‘try a different blue’ in the hopes of finding a middle ground. Unfortunately this can only leads to bland design which neither appeals to, or excites, anybody.

    7. You’re not getting value from your web team

    Whether they have an in-house web team or use an external agency many organisations fail to get the most from their web designers.

    Web designers are much more than pixel pushers. They have a wealth of knowledge about the web and how users interact with it. They also understand design techniques including grid systems, white space, colour theory and much more.

    Post from Twitter complaining about being a pixel pusher

    It is therefore wasteful to micro manage them by asking for ‘the logo to be made bigger’ or to ‘move that 3 pixels to the left’. By doing so you are reducing their role to that of software operator and wasting the wealth of experience they have.

    If you want to get the maximum return from your web team present them with problems not solutions. For example, if you have a site aimed at teenage girls and the designer goes for corporate blue, suggest that the audience might not respond well to the colour. Do not tell them to change it to pink. That way the designer has the freedom to find a solution which might be even better than your choice of pink. You allow them to solve the problem you have presented.

    8. A CMS is not a silver bullet

    Many of the clients I work with have amazingly unrealistic expectations about content management systems. Those without one think it will solve all of their content woes, while those who do have one moan about it because it hasn’t!

    It is certainly true that a content management system can bring a lot of benefits. They…

    • reduce the technical barriers of adding content,
    • all more people to edit and add content,
    • facilitate faster updates,
    • allow greater control.

    However, many content management systems are less flexible than their owners wish. They fail to meet the changing demands of the websites they manage.

    Website managers also complain that their CMS is hard to use. However, in many cases this is because those using them have not been given adequate training or are not using it regularly enough.

    Finally, a content management system may allow for the easy updating of content, but that does not ensure it will be updated or even that the quality of copy will be maintained. Many content managed websites still have out of date content or are filled with poor quality copy. This is because the internal processes have not been put in place to support the content contributors.

    If you are looking to a content management system to solve your site maintenance issues you will be disappointed.

    9. You have too much content

    Part of the problem with content maintenance on larger corporate websites is that there is too much content in the first place. Most of these sites have ‘evolved’ over years with more and more content being added. At no stage has anybody ever reviewed that content and asked what can be taken away.

    Many website managers fill their sites with copy nobody will read. This happens because of:

    • A fear of missing something – By putting everything online they believe users will be able to find whatever they want. Unfortunately, with so much information being made available, it is hard to find anything.
    • A fear users will not understand – Whether it is a lack of confidence in their site or in their audience, many website managers feel the need to provide endless instructions to users. Unfortunately, users never read this copy.
    • A desperate desire to convince - Many website managers are desperate to sell their product or communicate their message. Text becomes bloated with sales copy which actually conveys little valuable information.

    Steve Krug in his book ‘Don’t make me think’ encourages website managers to ‘Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left’. This will reduce the noise level of each page and make useful content more prominent.

    10. You are wasting money on social networking

    I have been encouraged that increasingly website managers are recognising that a web strategy is about more than running a website. They are using tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to increase their reach and engage with new audiences.

    However, although they are using these tools, too often they are doing so ineffectively. Corporate twitter accounts and posting sales demonstrations to YouTube miss the essence of social networking.

    Social networking is about people engaging with people. Individuals do not want to build relationships with brands or corporations. They want to talk with other people. Too many organisations are throwing millions into facebook apps and viral videos when could be spending that money on engaging with people in a transparent and open away.

    Instead of having a corporate twitter account or indeed even a corporate blog, encourage your employees to start tweeting and blogging themselves. Provide guildelines on acceptable behaviour and the tools they need to start engaging directly with the community that surrounds your products and services. This not only demonstrates a commitment to your community but also a human side to your business.

    Screenshot of Microsoft's Channel 9 website

    Conclusions

    Large organisations do a lot right in the running of their websites. However, they also face some unique challenges that can lead to painful mistakes. Resolving these problems will involve accepting mistakes have been made, overcoming internal politics, and changing the way you control your brand. However, doing so will give you a significant competitive advantage and allow your web strategy to become more effective over the long term.

    For more information on how you can make your site more effective read the Website Owners Manual or discuss your site with Paul personally.

    There is a followup to this post entitled ‘10 ways to battle site bureaucracy.’ Check it out!

    Why speculative design is wrong

    Posted in Design on by Paul Boag

    Many web design agencies are refusing to do unpaid design work before a contract is signed. This is not because it is damaging to them. It is because they believe it is damaging to their clients. But why?

    On the surface asking a web design agency to produce some design concepts before you sign on the dotted line appears to be a good idea. After all, it allows you to assess the quality of their design work and see whether they have understood your brief.

    However, if you scratch the surface of this once common practice, you quickly expose the flaws. Here are just five…

    1. It costs everybody money

    In order to remain in business every company needs to recover their cost of sale. This includes web designers. As speculative work is part of the sales process, they ultimately have to charge you for it. The web designer is forced to roll the cost of that work into the project if they win.

    However, it is worse than that. The web designer also has to recover the cost of speculative design done for jobs he did not win. This means that if you choose to work with an agency that produces speculative design, you are paying for their failed sales pitches! Why should you be paying for other people’s design work?

    2. It is about selling not delivering

    As somebody who used to produce speculative designs for years, I can tell you that doing this type of design work is not about delivering a solution the client actually needs.

    Speculative design is about impressing the client and creating the ‘wow factor’. The target audience is the client and not the end user.

    Being a good web designer is about encouraging the client to make tough choices. A good designer will challenge your preconceptions and suggest better ways of meeting your business aims. However, they are not going to take that risk in the sales process. They will play safe, showing you what you want to see, rather than telling you what you need to hear.

    The danger is that if you then hire this company the speculative design is adopted for your site. Ultimately you end up with a solution that fails to meet your businesses needs.

    3. It is wasteful

    Even worse than actually using a piece of speculative design is throwing it away. I have worked on many projects where the design work created as part of the sales process is discarded on project commencement.

    What was the point of producing a piece of design only to discard it? Because ultimately you (the client) are paying for the design it is absurd that you would then choose not to use it.

    Of course the reason you discard it, is because it is not fit for purpose. Not only was the design was created to sell, it is also largely uninformed.

    4. It is uninformed

    No matter how good the brief you distribute to agencies, they are still not going to have all the facts.

    Good design comes from being well informed. The designer needs to understand business objectives, success criteria, brand personality, competition and numerous other factors in order to provide the right solution.

    Most of all the design needs to emerge from an understanding of your users. Until the designer can interact and empathise with your users, he can produce nothing more than a superficial solution.

    5. It ignores the collaborative nature of design

    Finally speculative design ignores the collaborative nature of the design process. Good design is not just about a designer having a moment of inspiration and producing a master piece. Design is not the same thing as art.

    Design is a collaborative process between the designer and the client. The designer may have the expertise in design aesthetics and usability, but the client knows their business and target audience.

    If the designer works in isolation he cannot hope to produce a rounded design. Without mood boards, sketches and initial concepts there is no dialogue between client and designer. The design will only tell half the story.

    Example Mood board

    To request speculative design is to deny your own importance in the process.

    The alternatives

    So where does that leave you? If you should not ask for speculative design, how then can you assess the design skills of agencies?

    The answer obviously lies in their portfolios. However, in my opinion it is about more than just looking at ‘pretty pictures’. In order to know whether a design has been successful you need background information.

    I recommend that where a portfolio piece is relevant to your sector or project, you request the contact information of the client. This provides you with the opportunity to speak to that client and find out how well the design fulfils their business objectives.

    Speaking to the client also gives you the opportunity to find out more about the designers. Did they understand the brief? Did they provide positive suggestions? Did they deal with criticism well? Were they flexible and understanding of broader objectives?

    Ultimately there is far more to be learned by talking to existing clients than requesting speculative design.

    Tips for a transformed twitter

    Posted in Marketing on by Paul Boag

    With everybody from Britney to Obama now on Twitter it is safe to say the social networking platform has gone mainstream. But what does this mean for the service and how can we as website owners use it?

    Paul Carter from New York writes:

    Paul, I notice that you have been lamenting a lot on twitter about it becoming a marketing tool. Is that really wrong? Shouldn’t we be embracing and using it?

    I sent my first twitter in November of 2006, only 7 months after the services launch. For me it was a way to keep in touch with new friends I had made at the Refresh 06 conference. It was less intrusive than instant messaging and less formal than email. I quickly became hooked.

    For the longest time it was the tool of geeks. My friends laughed at me as I sent tweets from the pub, my family stared blankly as I explained the service. However, that has all changed now.

    Like Facebook before it Twitter is everywhere at the moment. It was even recently discussed by Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross on the BBC in front of 4 million viewers. It has become mainstream and increasingly it is being used as a marketing tool. There is no going back.

    However, Paul is right. I am wrong to lament what Twitter once was and should embrace it as a tool I can use. Nevertheless like everybody, I need to be careful how I use it. I do not believe Twitter users will allow the tool to be reduced to a broadcast mechanism for pimping the latest blog post or special offer.

    So how am I choosing to use Twitter?

    I guess the first thing to say is that I am not a Twitter success story. Sure I have nearly 4000 people following me but that pale into insignificance when compared to others. That said, Twitter is turning into a third string of my online presence, alongside this blog and podcast.

    With that in mind let me share with you a few tips that have helped me better utilise this interesting new tool.

    1. Above all, keep it personal

    Although twitterers like CNN breaking news have been very successful, generally I feel corporate twitter accounts are a mistake.

    In my opinion twitter is about person to person communication and not a broadcast tool for faceless corporations. To use it in that way is to miss the potential of twitter.

    Does that mean you cannot have a twitter account for your organisation? Not at all. For example if Vitaly Friedman created a twitter account you might not recognise the name. However, if he used the name SmashingMag you are more likely to follow because you know the Smashing Magazine website.

    It is not the name that matters so much as the tone of posts. In my opinion your tweets should be more than an endless string of press releases and links. It should include personal content and a dialogue with followers.

    This is important because it enables you to make a connection with your users. An open and honest relationship with users is very powerful. It builds trust, loyalty and engagement. It encourages repeat traffic and word of mouth recommendation.

    CNN Breaking News Twitter Page

    2. Learn from others

    I have learnt a lot about Twittering just by reading the tweets of those I admire. Merlin Mann for example injects a lot of humour into his posts and his followers really respond to that. Darren Rowse on the other hand strikes a good place between recommending content others have written with promoting his own posts.

    As well as examining the style of others you can also examine statistics. Use a tool like TweetStats.com to examine how often others tweet and how often they reply to their followers. All of this helps to build up a picture of what makes a successful twitterer.

    There are also a growing number of great sites which give advice on how to get the most out of twitter. One of my personal favourites is TwiTip that covers subjects such as “The Merit of Twitter Competitions” and “How To Get Unfollowed On Twitter“.

    TweetStats

    3. Get a good desktop client

    Without a shadow of doubt the most powerful twitter client currently available is TweetDeck. This air application not only runs on Windows, Mac and Lynx but also provides a range of superb tools for managing your life on Twitter.

    With TweetDeck you can create groups, filter tweets, monitor certain subjects as well as tweet, reply and retweet posts.

    In fact it is so powerful that it can be somewhat intimidating at first. Don’t let that put you off. Check out this short tutorial into TweetDeck’s core features and you will be up and running in no time.

    TweetDeck

    4. Use twitter on the road

    If your twitter account is going to be personal as well as professional then you will almost certainly want to use it on the road. One option is to simply use Twitters mobile website. However if you are fortunate enough to have an iPhone then there is a wealth of Twitter clients available to you.

    I think I have paid for and tried almost every twitter client on the Iphone, but the winner hands down is Tweetie.

    I love Tweetie. It has a clean, easy to use interface, and yet is packed with powerful features including the ability to:

    • Handle multiple twitter accounts.
    • Navigate reply chains.
    • View twitter trends and perform custom searches.
    • Access complete user profiles.

    In many ways it is even better than TweetDeck because it has much of TweetDeck’s power, but in a much cleaner interface. If only they did a desktop application!

    Tweetie Screenshots

    5. Tracking the results

    Although I have already mentioned TweetStats, that is just the tip of the statistical iceberg.

    There are an ever growing number of tools you can use to track your activity on twitter. However, the ones that really interest me are those that track click throughs. What I really want to know is if I mention a link in twitter, how many people click through.

    If the link is one on my own sites I could use Google Analytics using their URL tagging tool. However, this is somewhat fiddly and only applies if I am linking to my own site. What is more these URLs can get long, which is a problem when limited to 140 characters.

    Fortunately there is a tool called TwitterBurner which solves these problems. It shortens the URL and tracks all click throughs even to sites you do not run yourself. Best of all it is now supported from directly within TweetDeck (although not Tweetie unfortunately).

    Tweetburner Homepage

    6. Follow as well as be followed

    Always remember that Twitter is a two way conversation. A big part of successful twittering is about replying to those who tweet you.

    Twitter is also not just about who follows you. It is also about who you follow. One service that I find particularly useful is Mr Tweet.

    Mr Tweet will provides two type of information.

    • First it suggests people you might want to consider following because they fall within your broad network (people who are followed by your friends).
    • Second it suggests those from your list of followers who you should follow back.

    For each of these people it provides various stats including:

    • The number of followers they have
    • The chance of them replying to you
    • How often they update

    This is a great way of extending your network of contacts and potentially increasing the chance of your tweets being retweeted. Its also a great way of meeting new people!

    MrTweet homepage

    7. Integrate whenever possible

    If you are intending to use Twitter for anything other than personal use it needs to be incorporated into the rest of your web strategy. That means it needs to linkup with your other online activity including your website and other social networks.

    There are no shortage of tools that help you do this from the basic twitter widget to a tool for sending your tweets to facebook.

    One tool that particularly caught my attention is called TwitterFeed. It posts content from an RSS feed to Twitter which is a useful way of updating your followers about new posts.

    However, use any tool that automatically posts to Twitter with caution. It can easily become annoying if used too much. Also it lacks the friendliness of a personal post.

    twitterfeed homepage

    8. Don’t over think it

    Of course the problem with all these tools, statistics and analysis is that it can suck the spontaneity and personality from your tweets.

    Although some of those late night drunken tweets are best gone, you want to avoid your tweets becoming too sterile.

    Let me explain what I mean. I am naturally a fairly good public speaker. However, once I was sent to a public speaking workshop. They taught me all the techniques you should use to be exceptional. However, instead of it improving my skills it made me so amazingly self conscious that I was paralysed. I was over analysing what I was doing.

    The danger is we do the same with Twitter. Sure, Twitter can be used as a marketing tool but that doesn’t mean it cannot be fun too. Don’t let articles like this suck the joy out of twittering!

    Twitter message from Boagworld: mmm... caburys cream egg and redbull. Nice post lunch snack

    Win a copy of 'A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web'

    Posted in Design on by Paul Boag

    Everybody involved in the web design process needs an understanding of design fundamentals. That is why everybody should read “A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web”.

    Maybe you are a website owner who has to sign off on a design comp. Maybe you are a developer who has to implement the design produced by somebody else. You might even be responsible for a sites design without having any formal design training. Whatever the case, you should probably read Mark Boulton’s new book.

    This PDF book covers the underlying principles of all good design. Whether it be online or in print, good design is governed by certain best practices. This book introduces the reader to these principles, including subjects such as…

    • How to start the design process
    • Research and ideas
    • An introduction to typography
    • The basics of colour theory
    • The rules of good layout

    The book is unsurprisingly beautifully designed. However it is also well written and engaging. I can highly recommend it.

    Page sample from Marks book

    Win a free copy

    You could go and purchase a copy right now for only £12 (and I would encourage you to do so). Alternatively you could win one of three free copies by entering our twitter competition.

    For your chance to win a copy of this inspiring book, twitter your top design tip using the hash tag #designTip. For example your tip might be…

    #designTip – If you wish to draw attention to a design element surround it with whitespace.

    The closing date for this competition is Friday 27th February, so get your tips in before then.

    The winners will be chosen by Mark and we will direct message them shortly after the 27th. To ensure we can do so please subscribe to the Boagworld Twitter feed.

    The winners will also be announced over twitter and on the boagworld podcast.

    Current entries

    Below you can view the current Design Tips that users have submitted.

    My Favourite iPhone Applications

    Posted in Mobile, Reviews on by Paul Boag

    I often get asked what my favourite iPhone applications are. Its hardly surprising considering the excessive number of application I buy and the amount I go on about it. I therefore thought it was about time that I compiled a list of my favourites.

    One caveat before I begin my rundown of top 5 applications – I am a fickle creature and so my favourite applications change regularly. What you see here is a snapshot of my current setup. It will no doubt change in a week or two!

    1. Omnifocus

    Fav iPhone app: Omnifocus

    I am a Getting Things Done addict. Its the only way I can stay on top of the ridiculous number of half finished projects I have. I am also a worrier so having a system really gives me a sense of control I would otherwise lack.

    I started off using Omnifocus as a desktop application. It is designed around the GTD methodology and I would only recommend it to people who are serious about this approach. Also the iPhone application is far from cheap but for me it was worth every penny!

    Omnifcous is not perfect (adding tasks to the inbox takes too long) but I use it far more than any other application and I could not live without it. If you feel out of control in your life, read Getting Things Done and then buy this app.

    2. Evernote

    Fav iPhone App: Evernote

    Evernote ensures you have your notes wherever you are. They offer a desktop client (both mac and PC), a web client and an iPhone application.

    You can add text notes, audio notes or images. You can tag the notes, sync them across all your clients and even capture images using the iPhone camera or web cam. However, the real power of Evernote is its optical character recognition. If you upload an image to the evernote server it will convert any text in that image into a searchable format. Very useful indeed!

    3. Tweetie

    Fav iPhone App: Tweetie

    I have tried every twitter client available on the iPhone and Tweetie is by far the best for anybody serious about Twitter.

    It allows the management of multiple accounts, access to entire conversation threads and offers a powerful search functionality. It also allows you to get detailed information on other users and to manage of your relationship with them. However, it is the interface I really like. It is clean, customisable and easy to use.

    I cannot recommend this application highly enough.

    4. Google Reader

    Fav iPhone App: Google Reader

    This is my only web based iPhone application. There are actually a number of native applications that integrate with Google Reader but none of them are as good as Google’s own application.

    I need an RSS reader which syncs across my iPhone and laptop. Google reader does that and does it using a clean and fast interface. I love the way Google handle RSS and so wanted an iPhone app that works with that.

    That said I would prefer a native application. Occasionally mobile safari chokes on the Google reader application and it often makes the page reload unnecessarily. Unfortunately all of the alternatives I have tried are slow and unresponsive. Either that or do not offer as extensive functionality as Google’s own application.

    5. Mobile Fotos

    Fav iPhone App: Mobile Fotos

    My final choice of application was a tricky one. I could have gone for facebook, brightkite, speakeasy, yammer or any number of others. In the end I chose Mobile Fotos.

    Mobile Fotos is an application for managing and uploading to your flickr account. It is extremely well executed and they have thought of everything.

    It is incredibly easy to manage your own photos and to access the photos of your contacts. It offers a powerful search functionality and allows you to view photos in the same intuitive way you do with the built in photo application.

    Best of all it provides the ability to share a photo through either email or twitter. As a heavy twitter user this has proved invaluable.

    Conclusion

    This is the tip of a very big iceberg of applications. It was a hard choice to pick my favourite five. For example, I had to leave out Yummy which is the best delicious bookmarks application I have found. I have also had to miss ‘Bible‘ which is a very well thought through application and Instapaper which has been a life saver on long plane flights.

    Of course the application I am really excited about is the SlingPlayer for the iPhone. But I am just going to have to wait for that!

    If you recognise that the mobile web is important and you need help deciding on a strategy, then book a mobile consultancy clinic.

    Book a consultancy clinic or contact Rob about a more in-depth review.

    Comment spammers – Stop wasting your time

    Posted in Marketing on by Paul Boag

    So you want to drive traffic using comment posting? Well, there is a right way and a wrong way.

    The wrong way

    I am constantly amazed how many comments I see like this…

    An example of comment spam from boagworld - shows a comment that just reads I totally agree

    This is a classic example of comment spam. It adds no value to the conversation and the poster has made no effort to participate in a meaningful way.

    If you follow the link it goes to a web design agency that is obviously under the impression that this will improve their SEO ranking. It will not.

    If we look at the source code of that link you will see why…

    Source code of a comment on boagworld

    As you can see the comments on boagworld (and the vast majority of comment systems) have a no follow instruction in the code. This effectively prevents the poster from gaining any SEO benefits from the link.

    Of course, they maybe relying on users clicking the link. However, why would a user do that? The content of the comment does not motivate me in anyway to do so.

    The spammer maybe using an automated tool to add the links and hoping that one in a thousand people will click them. Its possible I guess, but I have seen a lot of comments like this that have been obviously written by real people. Also I doubt this would have got past my multi-level spam filter.

    If you want to encourage people to click you need to say something to get their attention.

    The right way

    Good commenting that drives traffic is about two things…

    • Quality – Your comments have got to say something of value. You have to add something to the conversation. By being a quality poster, people will start to notice you and respond. It takes real thought and effort.
    • Quantity – You cannot just post once and never return. You need to be consistent, by posting on a regular basis. You need to participate in a community on an ongoing basis to have an impact.

    I know the names of the people who post quality and quantity on this blog. I respect their opinions and even though I know they are doing so to drive traffic to their own sites, I do not mind. The reason is they add value to my site. It is a transaction if you like. They add valuable content and I send them traffic.

    5 options when website budgets get slashed

    Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

    Your site is in desperate need of a redesign, content is out of date and the technology is archaic. Unfortunately times are tight and your budget has been cut. What do you do?

    The economic downturn is affecting everybody and even at Headscape we have noticed the budgets of clients shrinking. With less money to spend how can you maximise the return on your investment?

    To be honest I think it is a good thing that people have less to spend on their websites. We have had too many clients approach us asking for complete overhauls of their sites when that is not what is really required. Often more subtle changes can have a greater impact over the longer term. They certainly generate a better return on investment.

    We have been working closely with our clients to suggest ways they can improve their sites without breaking the bank. Here are just 5 of our suggestions.

    1. Realign rather than redesign

    Why do you need a redesign anyway? Redesigning your entire website is time consuming and costly. However, more importantly it is often unnecessary. I seem to be quoting Cameron Moll’s excellent article “Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign” a lot recently, but that is because he talks a lot of sense. He writes:

    Like a kid in a candy store, we creatives redesign like it’s the new black. Why do we possess such an insatiable desire to refresh and remake? Why do we thrive on renewal? What tempts us to be seduced by the sway of renaissance?

    I believe it is because we see a redesign as the solution to a failing, tired site. However that is rarely the case as Cameron goes on to explain:

    Too often, look and feel, color scheme, layout, and identity are presented as solutions to problems… long before regard is given to other less-aesthetic issues that may very well be the root of the problem. The old warning against treating symptom rather than cause comes to mind.

    What is more redesigns can often cause more harm than good by confusing the loyal users who are familiar with your old site.

    When budgets are tight let go of the notion you need to do a complete redesign. You can improve your site many times over with the smallest change. Just take the case of the $300 million button I mentioned in show 150 of my podcast.

    My facebook profile

    2. Simplify

    As website owners we are always looking to expand our websites by adding more features and content. However, that costs money we may not have.

    Here is a radical alternative – Instead of adding more to your site, why not take things away.

    Typically websites are stuffed with content and features that users simply do not use. A quick look at your analytics package will demonstrate the problem. The vast majority of traffic is to a handful of pages.

    The problem is we tend to leave content in because ‘somebody might find it useful’. Although this maybe true, it does not necessarily mean keeping content is a good idea.

    The more content and features we make available the harder it is for users to find what they need. It is the proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’.

    Fortunately, simplifying your website does not have to be entirely about removing content. According to John Maeda’s book ‘The Laws of Simplicity‘ we can also streamline our sites by shrinking and hiding content too. Consider ways to reduce the prominence of less important content, to place a greater emphasis on what matters.

    When budgets are tight take a long hard look at your site and ask whether more can be achieved by simplifying what you have rather than adding complexity.

    Apple Homepage

    3. Prioritise and phase development

    Another technique which can be used when budgets are tight is to phase development. There seems to be a tendency among website owners to store up changes and roll them out in a single large deployment. Unfortunately this means a large single expenditure too and that can be problematic from a cash flow perspective.

    A better approach is to roll out incremental changes on an ongoing basis. Not only is this better from a financial perspective, it brings other benefits as I explain in the Website Owners Manual. Phase development also provides:

    • Faster delivery because new features are launched independently. Some features can be launched while others are in development. This prevents a single feature stalling the entire rollout.
    • More accurate estimates. Bigger project are harder to estimate. Breaking them down makes it easier for suppliers to quote accurately.
    • Better PR opportunities. Whenever a new feature is launched there is an opportunity to publicize the site. New features can motivate users into taking another look. A single large project only provides a single opportunity to grab peoples attention.
    • Limited risk of working with a new supplier. Choosing an agency is always a risk. Until you work with somebody, it is hard to gauge how good they are. Reduce this risk by limiting the size of project they are commissioned to build. If the agency fails to perform, you can look elsewhere when commissioning subsequent work.

    This is an approach commonly adopted by larger websites with their own in-house teams but much rarer among smaller sites who use external agencies. Nevertheless, it is an approach which works well in tough times.

    Digg Technology Homepage

    4. Reuse and recycle

    Too often we reinvent the wheel. When budgets are plentiful this can make sense. Although there is similar functionality out there, we might choose to develop it ourselves so we have more control or can customise it to our exact requirements. However as budgets begin to get squeezed these are luxuries we cannot afford.

    In a world of widgets, APIs and open source it is becoming increasingly hard to argue the case for custom builds. Why build your own mapping application when there is Google Maps? Why build a forum when you could use an open source alternative like Vanilla?

    My only word of warning is in regards to integration. It can be hard to get these ‘prebuilt’ tools to work together. Be careful that the savings made are not lost to integration problems. Where possible use tools like WordPress that provides an architecture with a wide range of plugins for quick integration.

    opensourceCMS screenshot

    5. Move beyond the website

    Finally, I think it is important to remember that your web strategy is not all about your website. We spend the majority of our ever decreasing budgets on adding bells and whistles to existing websites when there are large number of potential customers who never reach our sites.

    Instead of sinking your budget and efforts solely into your website consider looking further afield. Could your web strategy be better served by putting resources into a Facebook group or a twitter account for example? Would your target audience listen to a podcast? Do they read RSS? What about a mailing list? The possibilities are endless.

    Ask yourself where your target audience congregates. Instead of constantly trying to draw users to your site begin to spend time where they already meet. What social sites do they use? What editorial sites do they read? Contribute to these communities and offer to write for the editorial sites they read.

    Many of these things can be done at almost no cost and with little technical knowledge. All it takes is some time and enthusiasm.

    Conclusions

    Whether a site is successful is not dictated by its budget. However many larger organisations have relied on money as a method of driving their web strategy forward. As these budgets are slashed there is an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by being smarter.

    Hopefully this post has demonstrated a few of the possible avenues available and inspired you to discover some more of your own. However if you would like some more personal advice specific to your own website then feel free to drop me an email.

    150. User Manipulation

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show: Liz Danzico talks about user research. Paul explains how to create an effective call to action and we discover how one button cost $300 million in sales

    Download this show.

    Launch our podcast player

    News and events

    The $300 Million Button

    Our first news story is an incredibly tale from usability expert Jared Spool, which really shows the power of usability testing.

    In the post he writes about a client who had a fairly standard checkout process on his website. The process began with a login form:

    The form was simple. The fields were Email Address and Password. The buttons were Login and Register. The link was Forgot Password.

    It is the kind of form I have seen on many ecommerce websites. This feature, which had been designed to help repeat customers, created two distinct problems:

    • New users resented the idea of having to register. One user said: "I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something."
    • Repeat users rarely remembered their username or password. They wasted substantial time guessing, before eventually resorted to creating a new account. In fact after examining the database Jared discovered that 45% of all customers had multiple registrations. Some did go as far as clicking on the forgotten password link but of those only 25% went on to place an order.

    In the end the site was redesigned, allowing the user to continue without registering. Within a year this created a $300 million increase in sales.

    Of course $300 million is a meaningless figure in itself. It is the percentage increase that matters. In this case is was a 45% increase. That is a staggering number and one that really drives home the importance of testing with real users.

    Read the ‘$300 million button’

    The UK government and graded browser support

    A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the importance of graded browser support. In my post I explained how we should not limit our support to the browsers we test and how it is unrealistic to push for identical support across all browsers.

    This is an approach which has been adopted by the likes of Yahoo! and the BBC for some time, but which now also extends to public sector website in the UK.

    According to The Web Standards Project the rules surrounding browser testing on public sector websites have been changed to better reflect best practice in graded browser support.

    Changes include an emphasise on functionality over identical layout across browsers (paragraph 39):

    You should check that the content, functionality and display all work as intended. There may be minor differences in the way that the website is displayed. The intent is not that it should be pixel perfect across browsers, but that a user of a particular browser does not notice anything appears wrong.

    As well as support for progressive enhancement (paragraphs 17-18):

    You should follow a progressive enhancement approach to developing websites to ensure that content is accessible to the widest possible number of browsers.

    This is excellent news and certainly provides a great reference for UK designers and website owners looking to convince others of the importance of graded browser support.

    BBC Graded Browser Support Table

    Read the UK government guidance on browser testing

    50 Illustrator tutorials

    List of Illustrator tutorials

    From development to design now, and a list of 50 tutorials that help you get your head around Adobe Illustrator.

    The list is compiled by UK web designer Chris Spooner. He echoes my own experiences when he writes:

    Adobe Illustrator can be a little tricky to get your head around, particularly after getting used to the workflow as applications such as Photoshop. The difference between layer use and creating and editing shapes can be especially strange at first hand.

    I am a Photoshop man and I have found it very difficult to make the transition to a vector based world, so this list was particularly appealing to me.

    Its a great list that you will definitely want to check out, if like me you have never got to grips with Illustrator before.

    Read 50 illustrator tutorials every designer should see

    A new approach to PNG Support

    Finally today I would like to draw your attention to a new technique that has been developed by Drew Diller for using PNG transparency in IE6.

    Unlike previous techniques this one allows you to use PNGs as background images instead of just as IMG tags. This opens up a world of possibilities and overcomes one of the most annoying limitations of IE6.

    This minor miracle is achieved not by using AlphaImageLoader as has been done in the past, but with VML.

    Implementation seems fairly straightforward and involves adding a Javascript library to your page. Because this is for IE6 only you can embed the code within a conditional comment. This means other browsers will not even download it.

    Although I have yet to use this approach myself, I have high hopes that this will finally solve the IE6/PNG barrier.

    Download DD_belatedPNG now.

    Back to top

    Interview: Liz Danzico on User Research

    Paul: So joining me today for our little interview is Liz Danzico. Liz, why don’t you start off by introducing yourself a little bit. Telling us a bit about yourself and your background.

    Liz: Sure. Um, I am a user experience consultant, I am here in New York City, I have been developing web sites and user experiences online for about 12 years now. Um, I do a lot of work with Happy Cog Studios here in New York, with Jeffrey Zeldman and Jason Santa Maria. Um, I’m also chair of the new MFA interactions design program.

    Paul: Okay.

    Liz: At the School of Visual Arts in New York.

    Paul: Excellent. I mean, so, to say that you’re an expert in user experience would be a slight understatement then, Liz.

    Liz: Well I wouldn’t go that far.

    Paul: You’d be too modest, obviously, to say that. Okay, so we got Liz on the show, I met Liz when I went to Future of Web Design and we got talking. Um, she’s got some fascinating insights into the whole area of user research, and usability generally, so I thought let’s get her on the show and let’s maybe, you know, try and cover things from, from the very basic level, a kind of introduction to this concept of user research. Um, so, perhaps a good place to start, if you’re okay Liz, um, would be, how would you go about defining the area of user research? What would you include, what would you exclude from that?

    Liz: Right. So … user research, even today, we’ve been doing user research on the web since, uh, the very beginning, so it’s a very old concept but it’s still fairly controversial. So the basic concept is it tells you what really happens when real people interact with your product or service. So, there are no real rules about what it includes and what it doesn’t [inaudible]. You can basically speculate about what your users want, or you can find that out, um, you know? And uh, and the, uh, the latter is probably a more useful approach for you to take than speculation. But with either one, thinking about your audience is useful no matter what. And so, so there are no real rules, now um, when you disconnect thinking about your audience from your business objectives, and you start getting, you know, very excited about behaviors that they’re doing that are sort of disconnected from the real mission that you’re trying to sort of accomplish, then it becomes, um, a bit murky, and confusing. But thinking about your audience is, just in general, is an extremely useful approach.

    Paul: Okay. I mean one of the things that, that, um, I’ve heard said before by, particularly cynical clients I have to say, but I’ve heard it said before, you know, ultimately user research, and all of this kind of stuff feels in some ways like, um, just another way for web designers to suck a bit of extra money out of us, you know that fundamentally how, I know my audience already, is the kind of attitude that many web site owners have, so why do you see it as an important part of the process?

    Liz: Well uh, you know, as we’ve been seeing design flaws often translate to lost business opportunities, you know, usability is becoming more important than ever as the number of web sites and products is, you know, increasing more and more every day. So, we design these products and services, and we are at the same time users of them, but there’s no way that we can really tell what are users, um, might want. And the best way to, you know, usability research doesn’t cost a lot of money, so, the best way that you can help your clients kind of understand that you need to do usability research in some way is to let them know that usability research is important and it doesn’t need to, um, suck up a lot of time or money in the, in the process. So there’s a great fantastic book by Steve Krug, called Don’t Make Me Think, which I’m sure you’re probably well aware of.

    Paul: Uh huh.

    Liz: And in one of the chapters towards the end, he has a chapter called "Usability Research on a Shoestring", or it’s probably better titled, which talks of this approach of going out into the hallway and kind of grabbing people, and just sitting them down, and putting them in front of your product or service, and getting some feedback. So getting some feedback from people, no matter who they are, is better than getting none at all. And so, I think starting there with clients, instead of the, you know, $100,000 user research project that’s going to take you across 8 markets, you know, in the United States, the UK, and Asia, then, is going to be a much better approach than kind of intimidating them with the very extensive projects.

    Paul: Mmm, I mean, when it, the kind of one scenario that I’ve come across before, um, is where we’ve come across with clients that say "Well we’ve already done user research, we already know our audience ’cause we’ve got somebody in to do this or that." Is there a difference between user research that’s been done primarily with an offline audience, and those with, you know, when you’re interacting with people online? Is there a difference in the kind of results and information that you’re after, and even the techniques, maybe, that you use?

    Liz: So, they are probably, when they say that they’ve done user research, they’re probably talking about focus groups. I would venture to guess that when they talk about that they’re probably talking about either focus groups or surveys of some kind and those are not, well, I wouldn’t say that they are, those are bad things to do, but those are not the kinds of user research techniques that are going to give them feedback about their product’s usability. Those kinds of techniques are going to give them good information about, um, certain kinds of things but they are not going to give them information about whether or not people can use the product or service that they’re looking at. So, you want to find out exactly what kinds of user research they’ve conducted. If they say the words "focus group" then you know you want to move them towards something that is a one on one kind of interview. Focus groups tend to be conducted with groups of people, as the name might suggest, um, and when groups of people get together to talk about, you know, they put forth a question for these people, and when they, you know, groups of people get together to talk about the question they might influence one another in their answers, they’re typically aren’t talking about an interface, they’re typically talking about ideas, so you’re not getting good feedback, like in a one on one kind of scenario. So you want to sort of guide them to a more individual, one on one kind of experience. Surveys, on the other hand, are good, but they don’t get that kind of personal experience with a moderator, sitting with an individual, kind of looking at an interface in a kind of task-based scenario.

    Paul: Okay, yeah that makes a lot of sense. I mean, let’s then talk about some of the techniques that can be used to better understand individuals, or how those individuals will interact with your product. What different kind of techniques do you use? I mean, there’s the kind of very basic usability session, but do you do, or are there other things above and beyond that, that you do?

    Liz: Right. Well, the sort of big secret is that, there are names and there are certainly techniques, but the big secret is there are really no sort of techniques beyond knowing who your users are, kind of documenting what you’re seeing, and then kind of analyzing/prioritizing the results of what you see. So, you can, I’m gonna tell you a number of techniques that we can go through, but if those basic sort of constructs are there, then you’ve done sort of good user research. Now, that being said, the techniques that you can do are usability testing, usability testing traditionally has taken place in a user lab where a moderator is sitting with an individual looking at a screen, or a product, or a sketch of an interface and going through questions in sort of a task-based way, asking people "Show me how you would search for x" or "Show me how you would check out," or, you know, and seeing, measuring the success or failure of that kind of task. The clients are typically sitting behind a one-way, a one-way glass, or mirror, and observing these kinds of things. People have been not so thrilled about this technique recently, saying that it kind of, um, is not, it doesn’t produce natural reactions from users, but that is one kind of technique. There is, uh, kind of creating personas, and using personas, user personas which are an archetype of your site or product’s users, and getting everyone involved in activities around those personas, whether that be using those personas as your talking through features around, you know, a brainstorming session, and getting people to sort of role-play those personas. That’s another user research method. There are, there’s sort of the ethnography kind of take, where a lot of people have been doing kind of in-home interviews and observations recently. Ethnography, cultural anthropologists and people who have been doing traditional ethnography have been watching closely the design research that we’ve been doing recently, and wondering if we’ve been doing it right and so on, but ethnography, in that sort of observing users in their "natural environment", has been I would say a more successful way recently of watching people use products and services, um, so I would say that those three things, usability testing in a lab, sort of using personas and scenarios, and ethnography or kind of going out into the field and watching users, whether they’re in their homes or their offices, are the three kind of key ways to gather user research with users. The fourth way that I’ll mention, and we can talk about this in a little bit, is not with users directly, but it is certainly user research that’s available more and more now, and that is data on sort of analytics, which you can gather from Google Analytics, Shaun Inman’s Mint, these kinds of things. Watching site data and user behavior through site analytics is another form of user research that gives you, you know, some information, and you can watch these traffic patterns on your site. It doesn’t answer the question "Why?" but it does show you some evidence as to how users are behaving on your site.

    Paul: It’s quite interesting that you bring up eth, ethnography, whoa I can’t even speak today, because, that’s of interest to me, because that’s an area that we’re beginning to explore a little bit more, and have kind of discovered the same thing, that there’s a real value of going into you know, somebody’s home, seeing the environment that they access the internet on, you know, do they have kids under their feet? You know, where they access their PC, can they sit comfortably at it? All those kinds of things. Um, I guess it’s also an advantage you don’t have to hire an expensive usability lab and all of the rest of it. But I have to confess, I’m a little bit new at it, so talk me through maybe some of the things, you know, how does it differ from a usability test that you would do in a usability lab, other than that you’re in a different environment?

    Liz: Well, uh, it depends. It doesn’t have to differ at all — it depends on the goals of the test. I would say that you could construct a test that’s exactly like one that you’d conduct in a lab, it just happens in someone’s home or office, or in a different environment. But as you said, you get the more realistic interruptions, and that kind of thing, and are they going to be able to complete this task given the natural kind of occurrences of their day. And that, depending on what kind of test you are constructing, that’s either going to inform your results or not. If you are doing task-based testing, so I could maybe talk about the different kind of usability testing that you could do.

    Paul: Yeah, that’s good.

    Liz: Yeah so there are different ways that you could conduct a usability test. Um, traditionally there is task-based testing, where you set up pre-written questions, before you get to the test, that are based on the goals of the testing. So, if we were testing a photo site, we would test whether or not users could upload photos, could they task photos, you know, those kinds of things. So we would write those kinds of questions up beforehand, and then ask those questions during the test. Um, that’s one kind of test. You could do that in a lab, and you can do that same test in someone’s home. In a lab there would not be the children screaming, and the phone ringing, and that kind of thing, or, if someone say were uploading a photo, you would never be able to tell if sort of, timing out, would be an issue, or if anything with time or space or motion would be an issue. If those kinds of things are a goal of your test, then you might want to think about doing it in real time, in someone’s home environment. Another type of testing is something that, I’ll say it was first coined by Mark Hurst, who is a user experience consultant at Good Experience, I think he coined it, it’s called "Listening Labs". Listening labs are, I’ll call them experimental, but they’ve probably been going on long before I was aware of them, where people are designing usability tests in real time. So in other words, you go into the test with absolutely nothing written down, and you sit down with users, and based on your initial interview with them, you hear who they are, and after understanding a little bit about how they use photos in general, say, then you kind of write the questions on the fly, and then sort of develop a test around who that person is and their behavior, with your product, or product type.

    Paul: Which I guess, makes people more engaged with the test, because it’s about what they specifically interested in. Is that the idea?

    Liz: Exactly. So it’s a more natural way of doing the test. That’s the idea. That kind of thing you could do either way, and probably is even more rewarding if you’re doing it in someone’s natural environment. And then the third type of test is sort of a web, a web wide kind of test, where you have people just surf the internet, as it were, and uh, and just have them think out loud, and that kind of thing is also, I’ve found, more rewarding and fruitful in someone’s home environment, because they have their bookmarks there, and they have their post-it notes. Whereas you put them in a sort of artificial setting and they don’t have those things around them. So, if you, it kind of just depends on the type of testing that you’re doing. If you’re doing just the first kind I talked about, just task analysis and having people go through that kind of task-based testing, doing it in a traditional usability lab is great, you know, I mean you really do get the answers that you’re looking for, and it just depends on your goals.

    Paul: I mean, it’s interesting, going back to Steve Krug’s book that you mentioned, I mean he talks about, I guess his agenda in that book is to get people to do testing who perhaps aren’t previously, and so, you know, he really downplays the demographic of who it is that you test, and that it’s more important that you test than that you get the right people, you know and all of that kind of thing. Um, but when you’re going into somebody’s home, and interacting with them, I’m guessing it’s more important to get the right demographic? Is that right?

    Liz: Yeah, I mean one of the, um, I think it’s always important to, it’s always important to get the right demographic. Um, but, well I would say that there is a hierarchy of common mistakes around usability testing that kind of has a trickle down effect. You know, the number one mistake is not conducting any research at all, um, and conducting research on the wrong audience is kind of further down the list. So, you know, yeah if you’re doing research on the wrong audience, it’s not going to affect, whether you do it in a lab or you’re doing it at your desk, or at the water cooler, or at home, it’s going to affect your results and your analysis, you know, no matter where it takes place. So, you know, I think that the drawback is you are going to waste more time going out to that person’s time going out to that person’s time, so it’s going to be a drawback for you, but I don’t think that, it doesn’t matter really where it happens, because if you’re testing on the wrong audience, you’re testing on the wrong audience. Um, you’re probably going to get more information out of that experience if you’re in someone’s home, than if you’re not, so if you’re going to test on the wrong audience, do it in someone’s home, because you’re going to, it’s a richer experience, you’re going to get more information out of it than if you’re just testing in a lab.

    Paul: No that makes perfect sense, I kind of see that. No, it’s difficult, isn’t it? Because, uh, obviously finding the right demographic of people, and picking the right people to test on is tricky, you know, it’s a more difficult thing and it can be time consuming. So have you got any advice about that? What really matters here? You know, for example, if you’re designing a web site for an over-60s audience, you know, are you, do you want to concentrate on the age aspect of that? Or the technical literacy aspect of that? You know, is it okay to have somebody younger if they’re not as good with the internet, if your audience is, do you, I’m kind of not wording this very well, but you get the idea — what’s important when you’re trying to match demographics?

    Liz: Um, well, it’s very specific to your clients. Developing a, so, whenever you are trying to match demographics, you want to work with your clients to develop what’s called a screener, and a screener is a, I would say, whether you’re trying to develop a pretty rigorous recruiting demographic with a professional recruiter, to say, recruit 300 people for an extensive study, or whether you’re going to go out into the hallway and grab some people, or whether you’re going to recruit from something called Craigslist, which a lot of people are familiar with, um, which a lot of people do, I would say developing a screener which kind of outlines your demographic is a really good idea.

    Paul: And what kind of things would that include? Sorry I interrupted you.

    Liz: Yeah, what a screener is, it kind of goes through, it’s a questionnaire that outlines a number of questions that you would ask a potential recruit, that says, if this person can answer a particular question we should keep them in or out, so it’s actually a really good exercise to go through that allows you to kind of think through the type of demographic that you would have. So that doesn’t answer your question in any way.

    Paul: It’s very interesting, though. Can you give me an example? Sorry, I’m interested in this screener thing, cause I haven’t come across it before. Can you give me an example of the type of questions? I mean obviously they’re going to be specific to the individual client, all the rest of it, but what kind of questions?

    Liz: Um, what kind of questions? So, let’s see, would this person, so, let’s see, has this person, I mean typical questions could be around financial demographics, age demographics, you know the sort of typical things. But let me think of some more interesting things. So, is this person a full-time student? Has this person been fired from a job in the last 6 months? Has this person participated in usability research in the last 6 months? Those types of things, so if the person answers yes or no, then they’re not a good candidate. But there are other kinds of things you could put into that screener that would be more specific to the project.

    Paul: So could it include something like is this person aware of a certain brand, because you want to associate with that brand?

    Liz: Absolutely, so does this person drink Coca-Cola on a regular basis, yes or no? That kind of thing. But I’ve found that the screener, because the clients that you work with are often kind of speaking in those terms about their audience, the screener is a really good way to kind of help them understand how you’re recruiting audiences, and a good tool to kind of work together with them to narrow down who you want to be in the target audience for your testing, or your research in general. So, that said, how do you develop a good kind of set of participants for a research study for, say, a product for people over 60? Um, what’s most important, you know it depends on, and I know I hate to say that it depends, but you’re going to develop a goal for the testing, right? And the goal might be about usability, the goal might be about navigation, it might be about design, it might be about, it’s going to have, you have to first identify the goal, and depending on what that goal is, then you can identify the audience. So, the audience, you know the goal might have nothing to do with age, although the product has to do with age. So you can kind of strip away, you can pull apart the product from the goal of the testing a bit, and sort of just focus on the goal of the test. That’s why developing goals for user research is so critical, um, because often times you can separate those and therefore develop a better set of participants for that user research.

    Paul: Mmm, that’s really good. I think what we’ve done here, is, a lot of people that listen to this show probably have a basic understanding of user testing. Maybe they’ve done some basic user testing before, or maybe they’ve even written a persona before, but I think what we’ve done, or what you’ve done, is push people a little bit further to kind of consider it in a little bit more detail what they’re doing in order to kind of refine the results that they’re getting back, and that’s really, really great. I mean, if somebody has just kind of done the very basics, you know, they’ve grabbed some people, they’ve done some user testing, maybe in their own office in front of their own PC, and they’ve got a few people in, um maybe they’ve created a couple of personas, what’s the next step for them? What should they be pushing? Is it through this screener? Is that the number one thing they should be doing? Is the goals more important? Is getting a better demographic more important? What’s the kind of next step for them?

    Liz: Mmm, that’s a good question. I think that one of the most, well, doing the research is really key. Analyzing the research and connecting the research to the next iteration of a design is also key. We haven’t talked about that at all.

    Paul: No, we haven’t, we ought to.

    Liz: It’s often a grey area, um, you know there are lots of reports that are produced, you know, diagrams and things, but there’s a lot of kind of intuition that happens between sort of translating the research and putting that research, feeding that research back into the design. There are hunches, leaps of faith, um, you know kind of between that analysis and design. I mean there are clear cut recommendations that one can make, but then there are a lot of more grey areas. So I would say that, I still think, even though I mentioned we’ve been doing this kind of research for at least, you know, more than a decade online, and you know quite a long time offline, I think we still need to get better at the rigor at which we translate those recommendations and findings. So that’s one place I think we need to focus. Um, in terms of the actual research itself, uh, you know, there’s something, I think there are other sorts of techniques. I’m interested in these kinds of emergent, I would say emergent techniques like the listening labs, um, you know where the kinds of things that we’re looking at today with kind of mobile research, where people are, we need to be looking at how people are using our sites not just in the browser on their desktop but, you know, in the browser on their phone, and how their context is changing constantly and how we need to sort of look at that adaptation. So how do we develop tests that are more emergent and can be a bit more flexible, rIght? So I think there’s something interesting about that listening lab, where we kind of understand the person, and then develop the questions around a person and how they use a product, rather than having a pre-written set of questions. So, something that’s more emergent, I think that’s an area that’s interesting to kind of look at. Then, uh, ethnography, really understanding, goes right along with this sort of, emergent, as you said you’ve been getting more excited about ethnography as well, so, thinking more about kind of fine-tuning our approach to people’s own context, whether that be ethnography, going into their homes, their offices, you know, where people are using our products, whether that be on the street, in the hallway, wherever it is, but really understanding how to find people where they’re using our products and test them or do some research around that, I think that’s really exciting and a really interesting opportunity. Um so that, that’s the next step for us, uh, and I think that the way that people are designing tests and doing some usability testing now, is, you know, is good, I don’t think that there’s a big next step that we can all take together, but I think these are three areas that I think as a discipline that we’re going to see people moving forward together in.

    Paul: Excellent. Let’s finish off, then, with a kind of where people should go if, you know, they’ve been excited by this interview, they want to learn a little bit more, um, about user research and user testing. You’ve mentioned Steve Krug’s book. What other resources are out there that people should be looking towards?

    Liz: Well, let’s see. You know, I was thinking about, I was thinking about that and there are physical places that people can go, but they’re all in San Francisco in the United States, so that’s not going to help anyone. There is, you know, A List Apart has a User Science topic that often publishes user research related methods-like articles, there’s always BoxesandArrows.com which publishes user research related topics, um, Adaptive Path, which is a user research consultancy, or at least one aspect of what they do, they have published a number of articles but they also do events. A lot of events are in the United States right now, but they may have international events as well. But they do kind of give away a lot of their content. Um, and then last but not least, there’s a new-ish publisher called Rosenfeld Media, and the books that Rosenfeld Media publishes are about methods in user experience and, one recently in web form design, was about the usability of web form design by Luke Wroblewski (called Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks).

    Paul: Yeah, I saw that. That looked very good, I have to say.

    Liz: Yeah, so that’s something to keep an eye on as well.

    Paul: Excellent. Thank you so much, Liz, that was absolutely superb. And I will be fascinated to get you back on the show in the future to talk more depth about some of these issues. Thank you very much for your time, Liz.

    Liz: My pleasure.

    Thanks goes to Jason Rhodes for transcribing this interview.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Every website should have a call to action, a response you want users to complete. But how do you encourage users to act? How do you create an effective call to action. Read More

    Back to top

    Snape and Keith, separated at birth?

    Video: Introduction to WCAG 2

    Posted in Accessibility on by Paul Boag

    I recently gave an internal presentation at Headscape about WCAG 2. A number of people expressed an interest in seeing it so I made a point to record it.

    At the end the presentation I references a stripped down version of the guidelines found here.

    I also refer to a quick reference guide to WCAG 2 that can be found here.

    Apologises

    Apologises for the poor audio quality of this video. Unfortunately the decision to record the presentation was made at the last minute and so we didn’t have a proper mic setup arranged. You can also tell it is not quite as slick as my normal presentations :)

    I would also like to apologise for the lack of transcript of this video. Again, it was not my initial intention to put this video online as this was an internal presentation containing my initial thoughts on WCAG 2. I am still learning a lot about the new guidelines and will publish a more considered article when I have a better understanding of the subject.

    Feedback

    On that subject, I would be interested to hear your feedback on the thoughts I present. Do you agree with my interpretation of the new guidelines? Have I misunderstood anything? Are there other elements I should have addressed? Your thoughts would be appreciated in the comments.

    Update: We now have a transcript!

    Thanks go to Anna Debenham who braved the horrendous audio to transcribe the presentation. If you cannot face the video we do at least now have a written version!

    Paul: Ok, this has worked out a little bit weird because the idea initially with this presentation was that it was really about bringing us up to speed with WCAG2 now that WCAG2 has been released. But I made the mistake of mentioning it online and several people said “ooh, can you record that?” so now it’s a little bit of both, a little bit of a presentation to you guys and a little bit of a presentation that will go on the web.

    Paul: So as you guys probably know, WCAG2 has now been released, and as accessibility is a big part of what we deliver and we talk a lot about accessibility, we need to be up to speed on it and we need to know what we’re doing. Obviously accessibility has become such a part of what we do day in and day out that we don’t necessarily think too much about it, it’s almost an intrinsic part of what we do, but with changes to WCAG2, or with the arrival of WCAG2, there have been differences, changes, things that have altered, so I want to make sure that everybody is up to speed with it. Feel free to butt in with questions, that’s absolutely fine.

    Audience: Will the video be able to see the screen?

    Paul: The video will be able to see the screen. Ok, so, WCAG2. Basically, WCAG1 came out in 1999 which is a good old time ago, in Internet terms that’s like forever, and there was a real need to make some changes and improve WCAG1. Let me just pop back and just explain.

    The Journey to WCAG2

    Paul: So, yeah, like I said, WCAG1 came out in 1999, it quickly dated as technology evolved, and some of the guidelines actually became harmful in a way. So you guys know that for example, we don’t always take note of what they say about Access Keys, we don’t always take note of what they say about “make sure you put text in an empty form field” and things like that. And WCAG1 was very much built with HTML in mind, and obviously the web is a lot broader than that and there are a lot more formats about. But unfortunately development of WCAG2 was very slow, and also fraught with controversy. I mean, famously with Joe Clarke who is an accessibility expert wrote on A List Apart “to hell with WCAG2″ because it basically had become a bit of a joke, because it was very generic; they were trying to write a set of guidelines that really made no effort to mention specific technology because they didn’t want it to date like WCAG1, but the result is it became unreadable and nobody could understand it.

    WCAG2 Reborn

    Paul: But, things did change. Major changes were made to the WCAG2 draft and things did improve dramatically. They really listened to the community, and the language in it now is much clearer. So what I want to do now is talk a little bit through what WCAG2 includes and what it doesn’t, and how we’re then going to go about implementing it and how it affects us.

    Principles

    Paul: Ok, so let’s look at the structure of WCAG2. Basically WCAG2 has 3 tiers to it that you need to know about. Tier number 1 is the idea of Principles. So this is kind of the most generic of the tiers, you know, it’s really kind of aimed at the kind of things you would tell a board of directors that doesn’t really understand anything technical, that doesn’t really understand accessibility at all. And there are 4 principles which are the foundations of web accessibility and these principles I’ll come onto a little bit later.

    Guidelines

    Paul: Underneath each of those principles are Guidelines. So, within each principle there are 3 or 4 guidelines or a number of guidelines that is different for each principle. But there are a total of 12 guidelines, and these are goals that you should be working towards in order to make your content more accessible to users.

    Success Criteria

    Paul: Under each guideline, there are Success Criteria. So now we’ve really hit the nitty-gritty, these are kind of specific, measurable goals that you’ve got to achieve. And this is how you judge whether your site is WCAG2 compliant, if you like. So, this is the really important level if that makes sense, but it’s organised within this hierarchy of guidelines and principles.

    Techniques

    Paul: Now, actually, there is kind of a 4th tier as well which is techniques. So you’re trying to, maybe as designers, you’re trying to conform to the Success Criteria, well there’s a whole load of different ways and different techniques that you can do that and you could read about those, and you could make up your own techniques if you wanted to, but there are some laid down that can help you get going.

    Working with WCAG2

    Paul: So those are the 3 levels that WCAG2 is built around. Now let’s dive into those a little bit. I had to think about how much detail I want to go into in this room. Obviously we don’t want to go into every technique that you could possibly apply and we don’t even want to go into necessarily every success criteria. That’s really for you guys to look through afterwards. What we are going to do is look at those guidelines and those principles, and hopefully help you to understand where WCAG2 stands over stuff.

    Perceivable

    Paul: Ok, so, the first… heh, totally illegible text, isn’t that great. Very accessible!

    Audience: (laughter)

    Paul: So the number 1 principle is Perceivable, and that’s 1 of your 4 principles that you’ve got here. And perceivable is basically talking about “information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways that they can perceive”

    Audience: (laughter)

    Paul: Unlike that! (points to presentation)

    Audience: (laughter) Is the rest of the presentation like this?

    Paul: Yes.

    Audience: (more laughter)

    Paul: You actually don’t need to read this anyway which is very useful. So, Perceivable is basically about “can you see it?”, that is it as far as the principle is concerned, and the answer is “no you can’t”. But perceivable then breaks down into a series of guidelines. So, let’s have a look at what these guidelines are. So basically, perceivable is broken down into 4 guidelines. And if we talk through each of those it should give you an idea.

    Text Alternatives

    Paul: The first one is text alternatives. So this is stuff we already know. “Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.” So this really applies to things like video, audio, forms that you create, and interestingly CAPTCHA is particularly mentioned here. And that is a particular accessibility problem that hasn’t been particularly well solved I don’t think.

    Time Based Media

    Paul: The next way that Perceivable works itself out is in time-based media. What we’re talking about here is that you need to provide an alternative for anything that is time-based. So here we’re talking about captions for video, sign-language maybe, media alternatives, but it also applies to live and pre-recorded video. So if you’re streaming stuff, then you need to think about this as well as with stuff that’s pre-recorded. Now, it does take into account the difference between “crap, how are we going to make streaming video accessible?”. If you read into the guidelines it does give some good advice there. So that’s not quite as scary as it first sounds.

    Adaptable

    Paul: Anything that we produce needs to be adaptable. In other words, content can be presented in different ways. For example, a simpler layout maybe for people with cognitive disabilities for example. Really, this boils down to things like using semantic markup, meaningful order in your HTML so that if the CSS is stripped away it still makes sense in the order that it is presented, and not relying on colour and other sensory elements to convey information.

    Distinguishable

    Paul: And then finally it’s got to be distinguishable. So it’s about making it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background and that kind of stuff. So we’re talking here about contrast, colour, and control over things like audio and video, that kind of stuff. So that’s where we’re at with perceivable.

    Operable

    Paul: Let’s move onto the next principle which is Operable. So, Operable is about user interface components and navigation, and making them easy to use so that somebody can use them whatever disability they may have. So this again breaks down into 4 different guidelines, the most obvious of which is Keyboard Access. So everything that we produce has to be accessible via a keyboard. So, for example, the Flash video that we’re currently creating for the Wiltshire Farm Foods home page needs to be keyboard operated, alright? Which I bet it isn’t at the moment! And to be fair, it’s part of production, I’m sure they’d put that in at the end if I hadn’t reminded them. That existed under WCAG1, so there’s nothing different there. So everything needs to be keyboard accessible.

    Enough Time

    Paul: You also need to provide enough time for people to take in the information that they’re being presented with. So giving the ability to pause, stop and control time based material is really important as well.

    Seizures

    Paul: You’ve got to take into account seizures, some people can have seizures triggered by animation and that kind of thing, so there are various limits that the guidelines lay down about flashing objects and stuff like that.

    Navigable

    Paul: And then finally it’s got to be navigable. So this includes things like skipping content, having descriptive page titles, tab order, links that make sense out of context, lot’s of headings, that kind of stuff. Is this all making sense?

    Audience: Yes, apart from time-based media, I don’t understand that.

    Paul: Time-based media, we’re talking about video and audio. So let’s say you had… one of our podcasts. So, there are certain things we need to ensure. One is that it is operable, in other words, a user can pause the podcast if we get annoying, or they want time to take in the information that we’ve said, but the other thing is that we also need to provide an alternative way of them getting it which is why we provide the show notes that we do and the transcripts and stuff like that.

    Audience: Ok, well that kind of fits under Text Alternatives and giving it control so it’s under Operable… I just don’t get where it is under perceivable, as a perceivable thing, it has to be perceivable?

    Paul: Yeah, basically.

    Audience: Video, audio… all has to be perceivable then?

    Paul: Yes. Some of these principles and certainly some of the guidelines do overlap to some degree. But when you draw down to the Success Criteria level, of how you actually apply these things, then there are more specific techniques. I think what they did is create a load of success criteria, and then kind of chunked them together in meaningful groups, but sometimes they’re not so meaningful. But it is a vast improvement on WCAG1 as far as being able to understand it.

    Understandable

    Paul: Ok, talking of understanding it, our next one is Understandable. So this is the next one of our 4 top-level principles, so everything you produce has to be understandable. So what does that mean? Well that results in 3 guidelines. It has to be Readable, Predictable and has to be able to provide Input Assistance. So how does that work itself out in practice?

    Readable

    Paul: With Readable, we’re talking about making content readable, text content mainly. So this works out in things like setting the language in your HTML, you know, setting what the language is in the header, avoiding using jargon, finally we’ve got a decent reason to go back to clients and say, you know, “you can’t use that kind of language, nobody understands it!”. Also things like abbreviations need to be explained, and also reading level as well, and that’s something I really want to get through to a lot of our clients because a lot of our clients, especially the public sector clients that we have, have this attitude of “well of course, people that look at our site are of post-graduate degree people, and they have excellent reading level”, but that doesn’t take into account things like people that speak English as a 2nd language, who can be very intelligent but not particularly good at reading, also people with Dyslexia can be incredibly intelligent but not particularly good at reading. So reading level is an important aspect of it.

    Predictable

    Paul: For it to be understandable it also needs to be predictable. So with this we’re talking about things like consistent navigation, and no uninitiated changes. And this is a particularly important one in our world of AJAX and JavaScript and all this cool stuff that we’re doing where we can often trigger events without asking the user’s permission first. When I say “asking for permission” I mean they haven’t clicked on link or they’ve not initiated it in any way. Users need to initiate these actions… and no pop-up windows without them clicking first to trigger a pop-up and being aware of what’s going to happen. It’s all about making it understandable and making them aware of what’s going on.

    Input Assistance

    Paul: The last guideline under Understandable is Input Assistance. So this is going into the realms of when we do forms, how do we handle errors, what kind of feedback do we give to the user, what labels – are things clearly marked up as labels, are they descriptive of the fields and the forms and that kind of stuff. We’re also talking about help, what additional help are you provided in terms of tool tip and contextual help and anything else that you care to mention. So that’s Understandable, that’s what that principle is driving at.

    Robust

    Paul: The final principle is Robust. “Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.” In other words, what we build has to work on everything.

    Audience: What about AJAX?

    Paul: I think that’s where we get into the realm of progressive enhancement, that it’s fine to use something like AJAX as long as, if the AJAX is taken away, it still operates. Or, you provide an alternative version, the guidelines do actually accept that you can do alternative versions of something. So Gmail is a good example of that, Gmail, it actually doesn’t work if AJAX is turned off but they do provide an HTML only version of it which does the same thing. I’m not a great fan of that because it’s twice as much stuff to maintain, and one version become out of date and all the rest of it. My preferred technique is to build it so it works normally, and then to layer on the JavaScript and AJAX on top of it to provide enhanced functionality, which is what we guys have been doing pretty much all along and we need to continue in doing that.

    Compatibility

    Paul: So that Robust principle actually only comes down to one guideline which is Compatible, so that’s about maximising compatibility with current… listen to the wording of this… Maximise compatibility with current and future user agents, so we also need to be looking forward as well and predicting the future which is always good. But that’s where it comes back to using solid, good code that is’nt reliant on lots of hacks in order to get it to work, and it goes back to the conversation that we’ve been having recently about browser testing, upgraded browser support and that kind of stuff as well. So Compatibility and Robustness is the last principle. The other thing I should have mentioned with Compatibility is this also includes things like validation, making sure that your code validates, and just generally other markup type stuff.

    What, no AAA, AA, A?

    Paul: Ok, another thing that might have occurred to you is AAA, AA, A.. Priority 1, 2 and 3. Priority 1, 2 and 3 are still there, there are still those levels of conformance, but I get a real sense from the tome of this document, and this is just my personal opinion, people watching this video who know a lot more about accessibility might jump all over me on this, but my sense is that they were playing down those 3 levels of conformance. To be honest, I think I’m pretty keen on that. I don’t think those levels of conformance have done a lot of good generally speaking, because I think it’s kind of developed a checkbox mentality amongst some of our clients “We must be AA compliant” or “We must be A compliant” and they’re not actually thinking about the needs of the users, they’re just ticking the boxes so they meet some quota that has been established somewhere. One of the things that’s quite interesting, and I’m not sure if it’s a change from WCAG1 or not, I couldn’t find the reference in WCAG1 but again someone will correct me no doubt, but conformance in WCAG2 seems to be on a page-by-page basis. So you’re no longer in a situation where you want to claim conformance so you’re claiming conformance for an entire site, but you’re rather conforming on a page-by-page basis. And this allows you to basically pick-and-mix the level of conformance you want to reach on any particular page which is much, much more sensible because there are some elements where you might be building a particularly complex application that really isn’t going to manage being AAA compliant, whereas the rest of the site is AAA, and this one page isn’t. So it’s giving you the ability to mix and match. In fact, in the guidelines it says “It is not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content. In other words they’re saying it’s just not possible to be AAA in some situations, so don’t even try.

    Start With Basics

    Paul: So how does this relate to what we do on a day-to-day basis? Well, I think the language we use with our clients pretty much will remain consistent with how it was with WCAG1 which is that we need to start of by encouraging all our clients to start with the absolute basics. A lot of people are put off of accessibility because of the enormity of it, of all the things they’ve got to do. And even to be single A compliant there is quite a lot to do if you’ve got a site that has never been built to be single A compliant before. So I think our attitude has got to be that you work towards this over time, it is an ongoing process, you don’t need to do it all in one big go and that you need to start with the absolute basics, the quick wins, the stuff… you know, it’s the 80/20 rule, 80% of the problems that people are going to encounter from an accessibility point of view is caused by 20% of the accessibility issues if that makes sense. So we can solve a small number of issues but have a big impact on the site. So we’ll start off with some real basic stuff. Things like putting in “alt” and “title” attributes, providing alternatives to media, things like video and audio, being aware of JavaScript and the problems that JavaScript can create if it’s not implemented correctly, providing resizable text so that the user has the ability to either increase or decrease the text size on sites, to build everything to be standards based because that makes it so much easier in future.

    Audience: Aren’t we moving away from resizable text?

    Paul: We’re moving away from the resizable interface where the whole thing scales up and down, but there’s no reason why we can’t keep the text itself rescaleable. The layers should be able to push up and down. It has to be said with resizeable text, it is becoming less of an issue. The reason it’s becoming less of an issue is because browsers now have this zoom functionality built into them. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet to be able to drop resizable text entirely is my current feeling… I’ve got mixed feelings about it. But the obvious aim we’re going for here is to be single A compliant.

    Build Over Time

    Paul: So all of this is about building accessibility over time. Taking the guidelines by themselves is not going to be enough, and taking this checkbox mentality that I talked about earlier is not going to be enough. Once you’ve done these quick fixes, the next step on from that is to start consulting with your community. We need to encourage our clients to start talking to their users and find out what accessibility concerns they have. I also think, which I think we’re quite poor at, that we need to start testing with real users some of the accessibility stuff that we do, and the big problem there is persuading clients to pay for that. It’s really hard to get clients to pay for that kind of testing but I do think that it’s a really useful thing to do, and there are organisations out there that provide people you can get in to do testing, or that you can send sites out and they test with them. So, testing with real disabled users is really worthwhile. I think it’s about identifying major issues and dealing with those first, just pragmatic kind of prioritisation of issues, something you do with usability. With usability you look for the quick wins and the showstoppers and those you deal with first, exactly the same with accessibility. Now, what the major showstoppers are for those navigating the site need to be dealt with. And over time you build towards AA and AAA compliance if you can. But you only do that maybe on some pages. The big concern clients have and the reason they get into this check-box mentality of saying “we’ve got to be double A or we’ve got to conform to the WCAG guidelines” is fear, a fear of litigation. Especially our bigger clients, they’re really worried they’re going to get serious issues. But I think it’s important to stress with clients that litigation doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t suddenly have come through the post a writ saying “you need to come into court about this accessibility issue on your site”. It doesn’t happen like that. What happens in reality is the user complains. And if the user is repeatedly not heard and not listened to, and not responded to and not cared about and rejected, they get angry enough to maybe approach someone like the RNIB who then take it on into litigation for them. That’s the reality of what happens.

    Quick Response

    Paul: So as a result, you can diffuse that by responding to complaints quickly. So as you’re building up over time with the accessibility policy, if someone does complain, you need to write back to them and you need to deal with that issue straight up. Ok, so that’s how the client should be dealing with all this and there’s loads more I could say on this but I don’t want it to go on forever.

    Headscape’s Approach

    Paul: Let’s briefly talk about Headscape and our approach and how we should be approaching the subject of accessibility.

    Establish Approach With Client

    Paul: Well first of all I think everything that we do in our approach should be in conjunction with the client. I don’t think necessarily we talk enough to the client about accessibility. Some clients are just so bamboozled by it that they want us to take control, others want a say in it and what to be reassured that we’re doing something about it. So I think there’s a dialogue that we need to make sure happens. And if a client just wants us to take control of it, that’s great. If they want to be involved in the process, then that’s great to but we need to engage with the client and talk to the client more about it.

    Remain Pragmatic

    Paul: The second thing and I think this is really important is that we need to remain pragmatic in our approach to accessibility. Everything I’ve been talking about before like building up accessibility gradually, about doing the quick wins first and the show stoppers and that kind of stuff, that’s all pragmatic. I don’t want us on one hand to ignore accessibility, and it needs to be an integral part of everything we do, but on the other hand you can become extremist about it. We could spend hours and hours trying to get something to work in every conceivable user agent in the world and we can worry about every type of disability to the point where it becomes like a paralysis that stops us actually doing anything. So there’s a real balance that we need to strike here. And we need to strike that with our clients and working with our clients.

    Have a rationale

    Paul: Now I think it’s worth saying that if we decide not to comply with a guideline for whatever reason, we need to have a rationale for that. So we might not conform even to single A compliance in certain situations, although to be honest I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but if we do decide not to conform, we need a damned good reason why not. In other words, we need to have thought about it. And the other thing about accessibility is that we always think about it at the end of the project. It’s too late by then, we’ve built everything. So it really needs to become an intrinsic part of everything that we do.

    Responsibilities.

    Paul: Let’s talk about the idea of responsibility here and whose responsibility accessibility is within Headscape. Basically I’m going to say, everybody. One of the absolute great things about WCAG2 is because it’s got this 3 tiered approach, it is “accessible” to everybody. It’s understandable by everybody. So therefore it can be everybody’s responsibility to keep an eye on accessibility. And so this is how I think it should split down.

    Sales/Client – Principles

    Paul: Marcus and Chris and the Client should be worried about principles. The Operable, the Perceivable, those basic top-level principles. And you should be looking at anything that goes out from the company and going “well is that really operable?” So you can take a very top-level approach to it. And I think as you talk to clients as well you take this very top-level approach to it. That’s the level you guys should be working at.

    Guidelines – Project Managers

    Paul: Project managers, I think you need to be looking and understanding from the guidelines point of view. So you need to go in and read what those guidelines are, and you need to be sure that you understand them. And as you look at any work that goes out from the company, you need to be thinking “does it conform to those guidelines?” You don’t necessarily care about the nitty-gritty of how those are measured, or the nitty-gritty of how they’re achieved, but has that guideline been met? That’s the level you need to be working at.

    Success Criteria – Designers and Developers

    Paul: Then when it comes to the designers and developers, you need to get right into these guidelines. And you need to understand the success criteria and how to apply the guideline and how to make them work in practice.

    Check Everything

    Paul: So basically, we need to be checking everything that goes out the company for accessibility. And I have to say I’m making the mistake of saying this on camera, but I think we’ve got a bit lax recently when it comes to accessibility. We reached a point where it was becoming quite intuitive to us, and we were doing it quite naturally, and then as a result of that, we stopped checking because it was the natural process of what we were doing, and then bad habits start to seep in again. So WCAG2 is a great opportunity for us to say “ok, we need to start reviewing everything we’re doing as it goes out again”. So I’d really, really encourage you to check everything.

    Needs to be second nature

    Paul: basically we need to get to the point where this is second nature to us, so that we’re doing this intuitively again, but not to the point where we’re no longer checking.

    Audience: Clients often say “what’s the difference? If I just got for single A compliancy, what won’t my site be reaching?”

    Paul: I have to say that I think I would stop talking about double A, triple A and single A compliancy. I don’t think there’s really any value any more in talking about that to the clients.

    Audience: I think there is because having the page by page conformance is a really good thing and that we can now argue that yes, we can now make the majority of your site triple A compliant, but for a page full of videos, we can make it single A compliant.

    Paul: Ok

    Audience: Clients will continue to reference it in briefs. You can’t not talk about it.

    Audience: I think it’s actually quite a strong thing.

    Audience: is it a page by page compliance, or template by template compliance?

    Paul: I think it has to be page by page because the content that goes into the page, into the template, could invalidate it. This is why I think it’s something that should be downplayed. I accept the clients will still talk to us about it, but clients still talk to us about doing speculative design, it doesn’t mean we do it. I think there’s an education thing there whereby we need to move clients away from being obsessed by double A, single A compliance, and to start thinking about accessibility policies. What is there accessibility policy and what is it that they are trying to achieve on their site? Our base mark is going to be single A, it’s always single A, and I think it should continue to be single A.

    Audience: but if you don’t talk to them about it, you could argue that less caring clients would just say “well why would I do anything about it, bottom line?”

    Paul: Yeah, I said you shouldn’t talk about single A, double A, triple A, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to them about accessibility and the improvements that accessibility brings because for people that have got that sort of attitude you don’t want to talk about the disabled if they don’t care about the disabled, you talk about search engines, and that’s the best way to sell accessibility, by talking about search engine placement. That’s the reason you want to be accessible for people who have that kind of attitude. For those that care, and are talking about single A, double A and triple A, you need to say to them “well actually, conforming with any level, it’s great that you want to do accessibility, and certainly single A should be an absolute minimum, but we’d encourage you to start working up an accessibility policy and looking at your site as a whole and say could this area do more in your site, your accessibility policy should do real world testing with real users…” all kinds of things.

    Audience: So you think that we should be encouraging large organisations that have accessibility policies themselves that refer to double A, triple A, to try and persuade them to kind of move away from that?

    Paul: No, not necessarily, I wouldn’t go that far. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they’re a bad thing, I’m saying they’re not the be-all and end-all. And at the moment I feel like the vast majority of clients think they are the be-all and end-all. They’re obsessed with putting that little badge on the bottom of the page. And it’s not about putting badges on the page. The trouble with institutions that have these policies of single A, double A and triple A is that these policies are in place for the institution, not for the user. And that’s my problem with them. That’s why I think we should try to break that mentality with clients. And I accept that sometimes we’re going to lose, and that’s fine. Exactly the same goes when we were talking about browser support. I accept sometimes we’re going to lose that battle as well. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and fight it.

    Audience: I just wondered why WCAG2 still does it, because yes, you’re right basically, and accessibility requirements should be based on user requirements and not ticking boxes, so why is it still in there?

    Paul: I think it’s in there because… my impression… I hate talking about accessibility on camera! You remember what happened last time in the podcast? It was just a nightmare! I think the reason it’s still in is because some of those success criteria are hard to meet. Some of them are damn difficult. When you start talking about streaming video, you’ve got some difficult challenges there that need to be met. So I think as a result, what the W3C is saying there is that we accept that some of these things are difficult to do. And we accept that you’re not always going to be able to do them, so we’re going to make them triple A. But come on guys, some of this stuff is dead simple and we should be doing it, that’s single A. That’s my impression of the mentality behind it, and that’s a great mentality, but it’s when someone changes that to being guidelines, which is what they are, to being rules, really instilled by Moses and presented to the people. You know it’s not that and I think that’s an important differentiation to make.

    Where to Start

    Paul: I know what you guys are like, especially designers. Ok I’m making sweeping generalisations here. But, if you guys go along to the WCAG website and you look at the WCAG2 guidelines, it’s horrible! It’s intimidating and it’s scary and it goes on for pages. And there’s a lot of text around it.

    Audience: There’s no pictures? (laughter)

    Paul: There’s no pictures! The design isn’t even very good. So what I’ve done is I’ve taken that page, I’ve literally all I’ve done is I’ve stripped out the explanation text in front of it, and the waffle at the end of it, and I’ve left you with just the set of guidelines so it looks like a slightly less intimidating list. Not much but slightly. So that’s up at http://www.headscape.co.uk/WCAG2 so if you go to that, you can get just the actual list of criteria. There’s also, on the WCAG2 website, there’s a thing where you can go and you can say my site uses tables, my site uses video, my site has this and that, and you untick the ones that it doesn’t have and it narrows down the list of success criteria to only show you the ones that you need to care about. So you might want to check that one out as well. Ok, so that’s basically all I have to say, are there any other questions before we wrap up?

    Questions

    Audience: Clients are going to ask us the 1 minute elevator pitch. What’s the difference between WCAG2 and WCAG1? What would you highlight as differences?

    Paul: I think there’s a bigger acceptance of things in the world other than HTML, so things like Flash, PDFs, all that kind of stuff, there’s much more reference to that kind of thing. It’s much better written, much better organised. I think it’s more pragmatic. It’s a little bit more… I think it will last the test of time more. It’s hard to pin down exactly what I mean by that. There is actually a document out that talks about the specific differences between WCAG1 and WCAG2 if you wanted to get into that level of detail. And to be honest, I couldn’t tell you what that is yet because I haven’t looked at it in that much depth myself.

    Audience: I think you and I do need a couple of the more detailed stuff, to get the guidelines, just one or two examples basically. Something that’s new between WCAG1 and WCAG2, and also some of the differences between single A, double A and triple A. The streaming video is an excellent example.

    Paul: Just go along to http://www.headscape.co.uk/WCAG2 and you’ll be able to see those different levels.

    Audience: It seems like, an almost unwritten principle, or unwritten in your list of principles. It’s technology agnostic.

    Paul: WCAG2 started off as so technologically agnostic that it wasn’t understandable.

    Audience: WCAG1, the first line is all about “it must be W3C technologies”.

    Paul: Yeah, it will pretty much accommodate anything. You know, it talks in terms of audio and video. It doesn’t mention Flash for example specifically, at least I don’t think it does, but it refers to those kinds of things. It refers to documents that are not HTML. I’m saying this as much for the video as anything else, I’m still learning about it as well. So I think it’s going to be a learning process for a while for us to really get to grips with this, and truth be told we probably should have started a little sooner than this, but it’s not radically different from WCAG1. This is as much getting us back into the habit of thinking about accessibility as anything else really. Ok?

    Audience: 1 more question. Are they new Keynote animations?

    Paul: Yeah, they are new Keynote animations.

    149. White Hat

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show: How to become number one on Google *cough*, are customer testimonials worth it and how do you create a reassuring website.

    Download this show.

    Launch our podcast player

    Housekeeping

    Some housekeeping to kick off today’s show I am afraid:

    Web Design Introductory Training

    Drew and Rachel over at EdgeOfMySeat.com are running two training courses next month that look ideal for those starting out in web design. What is more they are offering boagworld listeners 10% off if they enter the promo code ‘boagworld’ at checkout.

    The two courses are…

    HTML and Web Standards for Beginners – 19th February

    a one day course ideally suited to those wanting to get into web design, or perhaps for clients who have to format content with HTML for their websites. Covers the basic web standards principals of semantic markup and separation of content, structure and presentation.

    Beginners CSS – 20th February

    a one day course for learning CSS from the ground up. We go from zero knowledge right through to building floated, positioned and fixed width layouts.

    For more information visit edgeofmyseat.com/training/

    Bamboo Juice

    Next up is a conference I am really excited to be speaking at. It called Bamboo Juice and is a one day conference taking place at the Eden Project in Cornwall. There is a growing line up of speakers that currently includes people like Jeremy Keith and myself.

    It is great to see conferences happening further afield in the UK and I really want to see this one succeed. Please support it if you can. Cornwall is a stunning place and the Eden Project is a must visit. You ticket includes entry to the Eden Project so you will have a chance to look around.

    Best of all the entire conference only costs £99! Please, please join us. Its going to be great fun and it should have a nice intimate feel with lots of time for chatting.

    You can book your ticket now at bamboojuice.co.uk.

    Consultancy Competition

    Just a reminder of our free consultancy competition. Headscape are giving away a free days consultancy to a lucky winner. Email us with your name, URL and why you want us to help you out. We will pick a winner at the end of the month.

    If you can’t wait that long Paul has started running mini-consultancy clinics via Skype. You can buy 30 minutes or more of Paul’s time and he will chat with you about your site, career or anything else (within reason). Its a bit of an experiment at the moment so if you are interested in trying it out visit the Boagworld forum where he talks more about the idea.

    Back to top

    News and events

    More on jQuery

    If you listen to this show regularly then no doubt you will be aware of what a huge jQuery fan I am. I was therefore super excited this week to see the release of a new version of jQuery that builds on what is already an excellent Javascript library.

    Most of the improvements are in performance. This is remarkable as jQuery was already one of the most lightweight and speedy libraries available. However, they seem to have made some significant improvements.

    The main new piece of functionality is something called Live Events. Live Events allows you to bind events (such as a onclick event) to all elements even if they have yet to be created. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you wanted all links with a class=’external’ to open in a new window. Previously you would create a function that added an event to all links with that class so that when the link was clicked it opened a new window. The problem was that if you added more links dynamically to the page you would have to rerun the function if you wanted them to behave in the same way. With live events this is no longer necessary. This is a huge improvement and one that will streamline a lot of code.

    I really cannot say enough good things about jQuery. It really is enormously powerful and a real time saver. What you can do with it is quite amazing as is demonstrated by a post from Smashing Magazine this week entitled "45+ New jQuery Techniques For Good User Experience". Whether you use jQuery already or not, check this post out. It will definitely give you loads of ideas for enhancing your sites.

    Getting started with HTML 5

    Talking of new releases, there is a significant amount of buzz surrounding HTML 5 at the moment. This is somewhat surprising considering it is a long way from being finished and some even argue we do not need it in its current form.

    Cameron Moll does a nice job of providing a round up of what is currently being written about HTML 5 including a nice little summary at the beginning…

    The world isn’t ready for HTML 5 at large just yet, but we can begin preparing for it by using common, semantic selector names (header, nav, section, etc.)

    To be honest it is still early days for HTML 5 with some estimating it will be released in 2022 some estimating that it will not be fully implemented by browsers until 2022. With those kind of timescales we can afford not to care. Jeff Croft puts it up nicely in his post "Two Thousand and Twenty Two" where he says…

    It ultimately doesn’t matter if HTML 5 is available next month, next year, or fifty years from now. Those of us who do real work in this industry know that the only thing that really matters is what specs and technologies are supported by the browsers real people use.

    Jeff came under a lot of attack for his post but I have to say I agree with him. What matters to real web designers and real website owners is what browsers will support now. So my advice is to ignore HTML 5 now and brush up on your WCAG 2 instead!

    Web design trends for 2009

    We turn now to the more immediate future and a post by the people over at Smashing Magazine. "Web Design Trends of 2009" endeavours to look at emerging trends that could become mainstream over the coming year.

    To be honest I am not sure these are some much web design trends of 2009, as a look back at the end of the last year. However, it makes interesting reading none the less.

    The trends listed include…

    • Use of letterpress typography, where text is ‘punched out’ of the background
    • An increase in the richness of user interfaces through the use of Javascript
    • The general acceptance of PNG transparency
    • Big bold typography
    • An increased use of font replacement using tools like sFIR
    • More sites than ever using overlay boxes to display images and video
    • A proliferation of video and screencasts
    • Blogs adopting a more magazine orientated design aesthetic
    • Lots of Javascript slideshows wherever you look

    Nothing particularly surprising, but the article does provide some inspiring examples of these different trends and analysis about wh
    y they are becoming fashionable.

    Your website can thrive in a recession

    We conclude today with another post about the recession. To be honest I am getting sick of talking about it. In fact I suspect it is turning into a self fulfilling prophesy. However, Gerry McGovern has written an interesting post about how your website could thrive in a recession.

    The article mainly focuses on the cost savings that can be made by bringing customer interactions online. He quotes research which states:

    the average cost of a web interaction is 27 pence, the average cost of a phone interaction is 3.76 Sterling and the average cost of a face-to-face interaction is 9.34 Sterling.

    He goes on to say:

    So, it is 14 times cheaper to allow a customer to complete a task on a website than to have the customer complete the same task over the phone. The Web is 35 times cheaper for completing such a task than a face-to-face interaction. Isn’t that a compelling business case for a website during a recession?

    It is an interesting argument and one that may sway some of the people holding the purse strings. However it fails to take into account the upfront development cost of moving customer interactions online. For better or worse companies are focusing on short term cost savings at the moment rather than long term expenses. As a result some web design projects are being put on hold.

    Nevertheless if you work for an organisation that deals with a large number of customers then this article is a powerful arguement. It is certainly something that you need to show your boss.

    Back to top

    Feature: Becoming Number One On Google

    ‘Become number one on Google’ – The dream of every website owner and titles like that grab people’s attention. What can you do to help achieve that dream without resorting to black hat techniques? Read More

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Customer testimonials – Are they worth it?

    Question from Dave Rupert –

    “Client Testimonials” – whenever some marketing aficionado comes up with these they want them on the site. When was the last time you thought “OOOOH CLIENT TESTIMONIALS!! OMFGWTFBMXBBQ!!1!” and clicked to go see a whole page of them? Are these out of date? Does anyone care about them? Are there examples of good implementation? Do you use Client Testimonials on your site? If so, why?

    This is a good question because it has made me question something that I have always considered to be a really good thing on websites.

    I think someone in Dave’s position – who I assume is a web developer/owner – won’t ever get excited about a list of client testimonials. Let’s face it, they’re not for Dave. They’re meant for visitors to the site to try and persuade them that buying a product or hiring a service is a good idea. The idea is that customers are far more likely to trust a testimonial from an existing client than the marketing speak on a website.

    But this is where I have started to question my thinking. For example: “I am Mr X from company Y and I have to tell you that after using these people’s services I am now a better, more rounded person and I have decided to name my first-born after the MD”… this rather points to the fact that Mr X is the MD’s brother/drinking buddy/receiver of folding in a reverse handed way (delete as appropriate)… or even the MD himself!

    So, do potential customers place any value in testimonials or do they instantly think they are fiction. In my opinion, I do still think they have value, particularly if you back up an online testimonial with that particular client’s contact details in a proposal. I also think that video testimonials have more value than written ones because (unless they are a complete setup) you will be getting the client’s real feelings and you can watch their body language.

    Slightly going of point, regarding providing client contact details for inclusion in a proposal, I have started to ask potential new clients which of our existing clients they would like to talk to rather than simply providing a list chosen by me. I think this adds a further degree of trust.

    Fundamentally, I do still think testimonials are a good thing and we will continue to use them on our site. But I don’t think I will be placing so much importance on them as I used to.

    How do you make your site feel safe

    Kevin Dees asks an interesting question on the forum:

    I don’t know if this question has been asked before but I’m interested in what other designers have done to help make a site "feel safe".

    Many times I find myself leaving e-commerce sites… because they do not feel safe. I find that this is due to poor design. Big flashing buttons and the like make me wonder if I’m going to get scammed.

    So, I guess what my question is "how, as a designer, do you make your site feel safe, welcoming, and secure with the design itself? What are good practices? How do you make users go were you want them to, yet make them feel like they are still in control? What do you suggest adding or even keeping way from when it comes to design"

    The answers he got in the forum didn’t really address his question. They focused on the realities of making a site safe (security and technology) rather than on the perception of security.

    A site maybe the safest in the world but if the design isn’t right you are left with doubts. Take for example the new US government site that allows people to apply for visa waivers every time they travel to the US. One would hope that a site collecting that amount of personal data would be extremely secure but the design leaves you wondering if it is legitimate. It just doesn’t ‘feel’ professional.

    I have spent a long time trying to come up with an answer for Kevin. However, I have found it hard to define what provides that sense of security. Part of the problem is that I think as a web designer I am more sensitive to the ‘vibe’ a site gives off than the average user. I am not sure I am best placed to judge.

    Also, a lot of the things that occurred to me where content issues more than design. Delivery policy, site security, returns policy etc. are all content issues and so do not answer Kevin’s question.

    However a few things have come to mind…

    • An attention to detail – Sites that lack an attention to detail always make me nervous. Poor browser support, bad grammar, inconsistencies and ill considered design reek of unprofessionalism. If I am going to spend my money on a site, I want to know that money and time has been invested in its creation. If an organisation is shoddy in the production of their own site, then I can probably expect the same attitude in the way they interact with me!
    • Structure – I think a strong grid structure is very reassuring. It conveys a sense of order that is disconcerting when not there. I think that is the problem I have with the US immigration site. The form you have to fill in is all over the place. Fields don’t line up and the site lacks any sense of order.
    • Colour – Misjudging colour can have a serious physiological effect on how we perceive a site. Some colours ar
      e naturally more trustworthy than others. Blue for example has a very safe reliable quality. However using a conservative blue on a site aimed at young girls will project entirely the wrong image and make the audience suspicious of your site.
    • Trying too hard – Some sites just try too hard, shouting for attention. Flashy graphics, heavy sales copy and advertising orientated imagery all scream desperation and manipulation. People do not like to be manipulated or pushed into responding. They like to move at their own pace. Push them too hard and they will run away.

    I am not sure I have done particularly well at answering the question either, but hopefully there is something in there you might find useful.

     

    Effective browser support

    Posted in Development on by Paul Boag

    Browser support should focus on usability and accessibility rather than pixel perfect design. Sites should render in all browsers, but provide advanced features and aesthetics to those which can support it.

    Most web design contracts address browser support. Many agencies still treat support as a black or white decision – a browser is either supported or it is not. If the browser is not supported the site is often unusable. However, this approach fails to acknowledge the diverse and evolving nature of the web. We should be supporting all browsers.

    What does ‘support’ mean?

    Although we support all browsers, that does not mean every user will have the same experience. For example, it is unrealistic to expect a user accessing the web through a text only browser to have the same experience as somebody using the latest version of Firefox.

    As Yahoo states in their own browser support documentation:

    Requiring the same experience for all users creates a barrier to participation. Availability and accessibility of content should be our key priority.

    Supporting a browser should provide the best experience possible within the constraints of that browser, and should exclude none.

    Expecting pixel perfect accuracy across browsers is unrealistic and not cost effective.

    The problem with pixel perfect design

    With browser technology improving all of the time it is unsurprising that modern websites do not always render the same in older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 (released 2001) as they do in more contemporary counterparts. In fact even modern browsers differ in the way they display HTML.

    Many web designers go to extreme lengths to ensure consistency across their ‘supported browsers’. However although this is achievable if the number of supported browsers is limited, it comes at a cost. This includes:

    • Significant overhead in the time required to overcome limitations in older browsers.
    • Increased likelihood that unsupported browsers cannot access the site. This is because of hacks and excessive code employed to ensure consistency.
    • A tendency to design for the lowest common denominator.

    A better approach is to ensure that the site works well and looks reasonable on the lowest common denominator browser, and then ‘enhance it’ for more capable browsers.

    For example, modern browsers support design enhancements such as:

    • rounded corners
    • drop shadows
    • Improved typography

    and various other styling not supported by older browsers without additional code and effort. However as Andy Clarke explains – because these design elements are not intrinsic to the usability or functionality of the site they can be safely dropped.

    If this approach is adopted, it is less likely browsers will render sites incorrectly and so the level of testing can be reduced.

    Testing

    When a black and white approach to browser support is employed, testing can become expensive and time consuming. While website owners want to support as many browsers as possible, web designers want to limit the number supported to make testing manageable.

    However, if a modern approach is adopted the burden of testing is reduced. This is because instead of testing focusing on pixel perfect precision across all browsers, the focus is on usability and accessibility.

    Obviously, when claiming support for all browsers it becomes impossible to test in every browser combination. Instead it is necessary to prioritize browsers based on website statistics and ensure accessibility by testing in these.

    The number of browsers and versions that a site is tested on will vary depending on the budget available for testing. However, even testing on a handful of browsers will normally cover the majority of users experiences (as a relatively low number of browsers dominate the market). In addition, those browsers that are not tested should reliably render the page because no unnecessary code or hacks are used to build the site.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, building websites that are enhanced for more capable browsers – improves accessibility, reduce costs and ensure every user gets the best experience possible within the limitation of their choice of browser.

    147. Ho Ho Ho

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    This week on Boagworld: IT’S CHRISTMAS!

    Play

    Podcast: Download (29.5MB)

    Download this show.

    Launch our podcast player

    Watch the behind the scenes video

    This week’s Boagworld is our live Christmas special recorded via ustream.tv. It is our last show before the Christmas break. We return on Wednesday 14th January 2009!

    News and events

    Kevin Rose’s Christmas Shopping list

    Later in the show we are going to share your top geek gifts. However, before we do that I thought we would start with Kevin Roses’ list to Santa.

    Kevin has posted his top 10 gifts for geeks and it makes interesting reading. His list includes:

    • Amazon MP3 Gift Certificates – Notice this is not iTunes
    • A USB Drive that can go through the wash and survive to tell the tale
    • A clever little box that can stream Netflix films to your TV
    • A kit for getting you into building your own electronics
    • A HD flip camera
    • Some awesome luggage that is perfect for conferences
    • An insane all in one printer with touch screen
    • A Drobo
    • A micro tool with 19 different functions
    • A Casio slow motion camera

    I whole heartedly support the inclusion of the Drobo in this list and I love the look of the luggage. However, personally I would prefer iTunes vouchers because then I can waste even more money buying Apps for my iPhone.

    20 signs you don’t want that web design project

    Admittedly this next post is not very festive but it brought a smile to my lips and isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

    Zeldman goes all ‘ba humbug’ this week when he shares 20 signs that you do not want that web design project. There are some real gems in here. My favourites include:

    A previously uninvolved marketing guy starts telling you, your client, and your client’s boss that the minimalist look “doesn’t knock me out.” A discussion of what the site’s 18-year-old users want, backed by research, does not dent the determination of the 52-year-old marketing guy to demand a rethink of the approved design to be more appealing to his aesthetic sensibility.

    At meeting to which you have traveled at your own expense, client informs you that he doesn’t have a budget per se, but is open to “trading services.”

    Client begins first meeting by making a big show of telling you that you are the expert. You are in charge, he says: he will defer to you in all things, because you understand the web and he does not. (Trust your uncle Jeffrey: this man will micromanage every hair on the project’s head.)

    Very funny stuff and sadly, depressingly true. Nice to know even the mighty Zeldman has to deal with this kind of thing!

    2008 on the Web: The 20 Key Events

    Our final story for this Christmas show comes from Mashable. They share with us the 20 key events that have shaped the web in 2008.

    You get a lot of these retrospectives at the end of the year but this is actually a very good list.

    According to Mashable some of the key events of 2008 include:

    • The presidential election being fought online
    • The growth of data portability
    • The Apple apps store
    • Citizen Journalism
    • The Facebook redesign
    • The economic downturn
    • Streaming TV
    • Twitter
    • Microsoft and Yahoo!
    • Justin.tv suicide
    • Rick Rolling

    The complete list and more detailed analysis can be found on Mashable.

    It makes interesting reading if only to reinforce how fast things move online. In one year so much has happened. It makes you wonder what 2009 has in store. No doubt we will have a plethora of predications in January.

    Back to top

    Geek Gifts this Christmas

    On last years Christmas show we shared our ideas for the perfect geek Christmas gift. This year we thought it might be more fun for the Boagworld community to share their ideas.

    You guys have submitted and voted on some great suggestions and here is the top 10:

    1. A new Macbook Pro
    2. Adobe CS4 Design Premium
    3. iPhone 3G
    4. Marcus to play his guitar
    5. A Nintendo Wii
    6. A moleskin notebook and Lamy 2000 pen
    7. Apple TV
    8. Nikon D300 DSLR
    9. New iMac
    10. USB slippers

    I was a bit gutted to see that ‘A decent joke from Marcus’ didn’t quite make it into the top 10 list. However, I thought it deserved a mention anyway :)

    Other entries worth a mention include a netbook, A job and the Website Owners Manual!

    Back to top

    Boagworld Christmas Appeal

    Last year I decided at the last minute to raise some money for a charity on the Christmas show. The Charity we chose to raise money for was called the Bethesda Project. It is a school and children’s home in rural India. The children who attend the school or live in the home come from very deprived backgrounds and the project provides them with a unique opportunity to better their lives.

    The Boagworld community last year raised over £1000 to help this project and our money was able to buy an entire new building for the school. It was an incredible achievement and one that you should all be proud of.

    However, over the last two years the project has doubled in size and they continue to need our help. With that in mind we are providing you the chance to give again.

    I know you guys are constantly bombarded with appeals for money from various faceless charities. Its hard when you feel no connection to the people involved. I am lucky because I grew up with Sarah who helps run the project. I know her and her husband. I know the amazing sacrifice they have made to help these kids.

    I therefore thought it might help if I shared a short video interview I did with them last Sunday while at church. Apologises for the poor quality but this was a spur of the moment thing and recorded on my little digital camera.

    Occasionally I get emails from people asking who my ‘web design heroes are’. It always strikes me as a bizarre question. The web is an amazing place and I am honoured to be involved in developing something that is the pinnacle of human achievement and knowledge. However, in my opinion it does not generate heroes.

    My heroes are people like Sarah and Simon. These people are intelligent and talented. They could have earned a fortune in the commercial sector. Instead they have devoted their lives to serving others. That is to be admired and respected. In my opinion that should be supported.

    That said, I know times are tough and people haven’t got a lot of spare cash. SO, I have decided to bribe you. If you give something to the Boagworld appeal no matter how big or small we will give you the chance to win a GetSignOff T-Shirt. As an added bonus I will get Marcus to sign it (he used to be a popstar don’t you know!) and I may even sign it myself.

    So can I ask everybody to give something even if its just a few dollars. The majority of last years £1000 was made up to tiny individual gifts. Simply go to http://justgiving.com/boagworld/

    Back to top

    Question time

    The remainder of the show was dedicated to answering questions either sent in by listeners or asked directly in the chat room. Questions included:

    Paul asks – What would be you’re ultimate (non-electrical/non-computer related) Christmas present and why?

    Doug asks – what’s been your favorite site redesign, either that you have done or you’ve seen done on the internet in the last year or so?

    Paul asks – For someone interested in getting into the Web Design industry, what would be the 1 piece of advice you give them?

    Matthew asks – What would you be doing, career wise, if the web did not exist?

    Jamie asks – How much do you think technical competency counts for or against a good sales team.

    Matthew asks – What is your innate age? Have you alway been a 42 year old in spirit? Or a 12 year old?

    Paul asks – What Christmas present did you really want that you never got as a kid?

    Back to top