Extra! Extra!

Rich Internet Application (RIA) formats, such as Ajax, Flex, OpenLazslo, XAML, and so on, are all the rage on the Web these days, but sometimes the tradeoff involved in moving from a clunky-feeling page-at-a-time forms-driven web interface model to the more snappy thick-client feel of RIAs is a loss in accessibility (as well as issues like breaking the back button and, as we saw with frames back in the day, the difficulty of bookmarking specific states in the middle of an interaction).

Now it looks like the W3C is taking the bull by the horns: W3C Announces Roadmap for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA). Here’s an excerpt from the announcement:

Dynamic Web Content Currently Excludes Many Users: Assistive technologies, including screen readers, speech dictation software, and on-screen keyboards help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities. To accomplish this, these tools require information about the semantics of specific portions of a document in order to present those portions in an accessible form. For example, to provide reliable access to a form element, a tool must also be able to recognize the state of that element (for example, whether it is checked, disabled, focused, collapsed, or hidden).

Web sites are increasingly delivering applications with capabilities comparable to locally-installed software. These rich Internet applications make heavy use of scripting, and developers often improvise hybrids of existing technologies, including AJAX, DHTML, JavaScript, and SVG. These applications do not always provide the semantics needed to support these technologies. People with disabilities are therefore at risk of being left out of this new world of information.

TechCrunch tells us:

Google will soon begin offering AdWords advertisers a new tool to experiment with a variety of different landing page layouts in order determine which one gains the most conversions from site visitors. Google Analytics Senior Manager Brett Crosby unveiled the tool, called Google Website Optimizer, this morning at the eMetrics summit in Washington D.C. If you find web site traffic heat maps like CrazyEgg, ClickDensity or Google Analytics’ own heat map interesting, this looks like the next generation of that kind of tool. If Google’s Website Optimizer can score high on usability, I expect it to be a big hit with small and medium size website publishers.

Yesterday Craig and I attended WebGuild Annual Conference 2006: Web 2.0 – The New Web. Industry leaders in usability engineering, internet strategy, web development, and design provided a perspective on how user experience is evolving as new web trends emerge. Much of what we heard validated that Extractable’s processes exemplify industry best practices. Here were some of the major highlights:

“Web 2.0″ is evolutionary rather than revolutionary Ram Shriram, founding member of Google, delivered the first keynote, defining “Web 2.0″ as not simply a new technology per se, but a change in user behavior enabled by more dynamic content. He identified the growth of social networking, predomination of mobile over PC and increased utilization by “bridge markets” such as China, India, Brazil and Russia as hallmarks of this new trend.

Don’t make me think Marissa Mayer of Google delivered the second keynote, describing the key behind strong information design-the user should never have to guess, “If I were the company, where would I put this feature?” Mayer discussed the incorporation of usability evaluation throughout the project lifecycle- including UI designers and PMs defining user needs early in the process, multiple iterations of usability testing, and collecting alpha-beta analytics, in order to create an optimal experience.

Stop “hyperventilating about rich experiences” Jeff Whatcott of Adobe, in a panel on AJAX development, emphasized the importance of starting with user needs first, and then understanding how to address that need through implementation, rich experience or not.

Noone is born knowing how to use a scrollbar Jared Spool, in a very entertaining talk, discussed the importance of adhering to standards in design. Contrary to what most people think, Spool said, intuitive behavior (such as a scrollbar that works the way the user thinks it should) is actually learned from previous experience. Even if a convention is arbitrary, it should be followed to ensure an intuitive experience. This initiated an interesting discussion on how “Web 2.0″ sites and applications can ensure an intuitive experience, as the user experience standards are currently evolving.

I’ve been hearing rumblings about a bunch of books in the pipeline of various publishers on designing for the mobile interface, including one to be called Designing the Mobile User Experience and another called Mobile Web Design. There are others too, but I don’t have links handy (yet).

Update: Scott Weiss just posted about a few more to the IxDA list, including his own Handheld Usability, Mobile Interaction Design by Matt “Blackbelt” Jones amd Gary Marsden, and a book by Nokia called Mobile Usability that Weiss says “is more an inside look into Nokia than a design tutorial.”

One more that was mentioned in the same list thread was Designing for Small Screens by Carola Zwick and Burkhard Schmitz.

Any others?

Today Microsoft is intending to release the latest version of Internet Explorer. IE 7 features a cleaned up appearance, tabs (a favorite feature of Mozilla Firefox), RSS feed support, better printing and most importantly, improved support for HTML and CSS standards.

CNET reports that Yahoo! has beat Microsoft to the punch by release their own customized version of IE 7 already.

Scott Berkun writes about Why innovation efforts fail, citing a few common problems (“task forces and committees are separate from the real teams,” suggestions are vetoed, innovation must be a core value and not an add-on). He also identifies a few factors that help innovation succeed (startign with a pilot project, willingness to accept risks, “avoidance of innovation for innovation’s sake”).

We’re not the only shop working on mobile user interfaces these days and we’re learning quickly as we go and absorbing advice and insight from multiple sources and directions. Here’s an article published last week in UX Matters called Designing the Mobile User Experience with some good food for thought.

Nice article (well part 1, at least) on the sudden rise and total domination of Flash video over the last year or so: The Rise of Flash Video, Part 1

John Kolko, a teacher at Savannah College of Art & Design, is writing and self-publishing a book called Thoughts on Interaction Design. He’s also blogging the process as he goes along. (It’s his first book, his first attempt at publishing, and his first business, so he’s treating the entire experience as an experiment.)

His book will join Dan Saffer’s recent Designing for Interaction (Wiley, 2006),

Bill Moggridge’s recent Designing Interactions (MIT Press, 2006), Jenifer Tidwell’s Designing Interfaces (O’Reilly, 2005), and Future Interaction Design (Springer, 2005); as well as older tomes including Barbara Mirel’s Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving: Developing Useful and Usable Software (Morgan-Kaufmann, 2003); Jenny Preece’s, Yvonne Rogers’, and Helen Sharp’s Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (Wiley, 2002); Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann’s About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design (Wiley, 2003), which was the second edition of a book originally published with a slightly different subtitle seven years earlier; and Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface (Cambridge, 1991).

When planning a new site, most site managers will take great care to create and refine a thorough Information Architecture / Site Map. This is definitely a good idea. However, site planners should not spend all of their time on the IA – site search and search results deserve just as much attention. As much as 60% of your users are more likely to use search as a primary form of navigation rather than links (Remember 3 user types – Link dominant, Link/Search users, and Search dominant). Sites with very technical users are more likely to have search dominant users than sites with novice web surfers. Remember, the majority of web users search for content on Google, Yahoo, and MSN – when they get to your site, their behavior doesn’t change. Also note, search users are less patient, they expect to find what they are looking for in one click. Search users typically are not doing general research; they know what they are looking for (i.e. users looking for support or users that have come to your site from a search engine).

How do you know if your users are search dominant?
Look at the search reports and see how many searches are happening daily on the site. Then compare that with the number of daily visitors. With good reporting you will be able to see how many users are using search and how many searches each user is doing on average. Few analytics packages do an adequate job of showing/integrating the site search data.

How do you plan for good search in a new site?
Having a search box in a visible place on every page isn’t enough for any site. Make sure that your search engine is set up to provide relevant search results for all popular searches. Plan for good search reporting. Filters and advanced reporting will make your repeat visitors happy. As new content is added to the site, make sure content owners understand how to make content relevant in search results. Taking 30 minutes a month to review search reports will really help in refining search results and making search useful to your users.

*Search is also an excellent way to learn about your users.
*If your site has multiple domains (due to regions, products, divisions, etc) – DO NOT SEGREGATE YOUR SEARCH RESULTS. You users don’t care what content is where – they just want to find what they are looking for.