Thank you January. Welcome February…
There are Spring violets under the snow.”
- R. H. Newell
January sneaked past and what started out as a lethargic post-holiday season month quickly turned into a fast-moving and exciting time.
The first month of 2010 brought welcome changes to personal and professional life. Finding and moving into a proper (and sweet!) house in a more central part of Cambridge was a great relief in more ways than one. Finally getting rid of an age-old company liquidation matter and other financial ghosts from the past is also a wonderful feeling. At work on the other hand things are just starting to become really interesting: a top secret UX project is underway, GoTestIt is finding its feet within Red Gate and most excitingly new e-commerce responsibilities have just magically fallen into my lap. Oh yes, and this little blog of mine keeps growing in popularity with now just under 3,000 monthly visitors. Woot! as somebody I know likes to say :-)
But what does February bring?
Well, first things first, it’s my birthday in February and this year it’s a big one. I will mostly be celebrating by popping up to Aberdeen (a mere 8 hours), bundling clothes, furniture and cat into a van and together with my better half finally making the move to Cambridge a little bit more permanent. Can’t think of a better birthday gift :-)
Apart from that though, some other interesting things are in the pipeline! Stephen Chambers (head of UX at Red Gate) and myself wrote a short position paper on UX within organisations which (Woot!) has now been accepted and we’ll therefore be presenting in London on the 25th Feb at BCS. (Details here.)
Neil Davidson also kindly put me in touch with the chaps at CUTEC with a view to moderating a session at this Innovation Session & Networking event. That’s on the 6th of March so make sure to pop around if in Cambridge then. Cool stuff.
And to start the month off on the right note, this week I’ll be getting my first free Red Gate massage. Like the SQL Servery wasn’t enough! If you want to get in on that sort of stuff, check out our fab vacancies and the unmatched list of benefits Red Gate offers.
Hope to see you soon!
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Calacanis Scores?
Just read Jason’s diatribe today on Comscore.
The dude certainly has balls and if he’s right I certainly applaud his very public call for a Comscore boycott. Will be an interesting weekend seeing Fred Wilson’s, Mike Arrington’s and others’ reactions :-)
Update: Mike Arrington, Fred Wilson and Comscore reply.
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HCI 2009 Review on UXMatters.com
My review of David Siegel’s qualitative research workshop at the HCI 2009 conference in Cambridge is now up on UXMatters.com
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The most badly designed page in the world?
This is Facebook’s “transition” page for the new privacy settings they’re currently rolling out. I can’t for the life of me make heads or tail of it. I nominate it as the most badly designed web page in the history of usability, user experience and information architecture.
What are my “Old Settings”? (There’s no way of finding out.)
Why can I switch some things to “everyone”, some things to “friends of friends” and some things to “friends”? What if I want photos to be available to everyone or just my friends?
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Why Copenhagen won’t work: Hypocrisy is built into the system
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Giant Steps Forward
I just came across this music video by Maltese rap band No Bling Show titled “Lucija u Samwel”. I was impressed at the quality (artistic merit aside which I also think is cool) of the production, creativity and technique. It may seem ‘normal’ for other bands and countries but for Malta, it’s a giant step forward . Well, like any change, it’s not just “one giant step”, it’s a build up on top of countless small steps by other musicians, artists and creatives who slowly but surely have promoted, encouraged and enabled this kind of quality.
Anyway, I was going to write a long, thoughtful and insightful post about all this but Toni Sant beat me to it with an excellent one that just expresses everything I could have wanted to say. Click here to read it.
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HCI 2009: Top 5 Tips for UCD Qualitative Field Researchers
Given the choice, how many people would swap a gloriously sunny Cambridge Saturday for a 7-hour long tutorial about, wait for it, qualitative field research methods and analysis? Yet thirty odd people did just that last Saturday and elected to be closeted in one of Churchill College’s nicer rooms to listen to what User Centred Design (UCD) practitioner and researcher David Siegel had to say.
It turned out to be a highly motivating, fast-paced and anecdote-rich journey through the process of designing and analysing qualitative field-work in a product design context.
As anybody involved in UCD, User Experience (UX) or related work probably knows, field-work – be it usability tests, interviews, focus groups – is an essential tool of the trade. Yet making sense of the data and field notes collected can often be a non-trivial task. The material can easily build up to a stack of notes, transcripts and visuals that is measured in inches. Even more challenging is the task of communicating the results to the client in a compelling and authoritative way. Based on extensive real-world examples, including his work on Microsoft’s Tablet PC OS and similarly high-profile clients, David attacked these problems with vigour and enthusiasm. These are my top 5 take away tips from the day-long session:
- Preempt the Quantitative Dissenter
The big divide between qualitative and quantitative research is well known. Quantitative results sometimes tend to be more appealing because “10%” is easier to understand and take home than a page-long narrative. Deal with this by recognising and showing that a quantitative study, such as a survey or questionnaire, requires a qualitative decision making process a priori: choosing the kind and extensiveness of the questions. This is an area where qualitative field work can prove its worth by lending confidence and scientific credibility to that process (rather than leaving it up to some graduate intern). - Quantitative Doesn’t Mean Numeric
It is true that quantitative summaries and comparisons may be easier to retain than long lists or narratives. So find things to count in your qualitative data and measure them qualitatively. What does this mean? Using qualitative quantifiers like ‘rare’, ‘frequent’, ‘improbable’ and similar words to describe your findings makes your results as memorable as the quantitative “10%” but avoids an all to common pitfall that qualitative researchers fall into. The pitfall is the temptation to say something like “80% of the people we researched did not like this feature” and when asked what quantity that represents you are forced to say “8″ because you interviewed 10 people! Hardly a statistically significant sample in quantitative terms but very significant if positioned as “Oh yes, we observed that use case taking place frequently. Here is why they do it…” - Reliability Does Not Imply Validity
It seems like a no-brainer but the central point is that just because your data sources and collection may be reliable and traceable, does not imply that your conclusions are valid. Reliability (achieved through scientific rigor) is important because it sets the baseline for validity, i.e. reliability is a pre-requisite for validity. However to produce valid conclusions you need to be careful not to base them on personal bias, gut feelings, hunches, false correlations or invented cause-and-effect relationships. How do you do this? Well, experience helps but also triangulation (i.e. use several methods to arrive at the same conclusion) and judgmental heuristics (i.e. have different people carry out the same analytics to ensure the interpretation is the same or similar). - Forget the Blank Slates, Fill ‘em Up
The way to be objective is not to pretend that you can go into the field with a ‘blank slate’, or a completely open mind. Rather, acknowledge your background, assumptions, expectations, objectives and domain knowledge (as an individual and as an organisation) and map them out to create what David calls a ‘focus structure’. Doing this will achieve the goal of being ‘open minded’ because when you observe something that doesn’t fit into your pre-defined categories – and you will – it will stick out like a sore thumb, forcing you to acknowledge it and give it due attention. - Deliver Compelling Field Findings: Behaviour and Conditions
“Be Compelling!” Thanks, but how? Two invaluable tips based on the fundamental point that the big advantage of qualitative research is its richness. First, focus your reporting around behavioural characterisation. While quantitative work characterises and segments a market or demographic, qualitative work characterises and (tries to) explain behaviour. If you can show and shed light on why somebody is behaving in a particular way you’re well on your way to being compelling. Secondly, focus on conditions and once again avoid the “8 out of the 12 users we interviewed did such and such”. That is precisely the kind of statement that is itching for a smart-ass quantitative dissenter to pipe up… and she would be right! Showing frequency in this manner is not your job. Discuss instead the conditions at which something happens, how likely those conditions are to be ubiquitous (or not) and what’s at stake when they do occur.
This short review hardly scratches the surface of the wealth of information and examples David brought to the table and I would strongly recommend keeping an eye out for his (and his colleague Susan Dray’s) sessions in any HCI conference coming to a town near you.
Oh, and once again thanks to Red Gate for both sponsoring the 23rd British HCI Conference and for sending me along!
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Pathetic Attitude from the Times of Malta
Finally, at long last, the EU is heading towards a trade ban on tuna fishing in the Mediterranean.
The timesofmalta.com positions this as a “Blow for Malta“.
What sort of editorial commentary is this?
[Update: It seems timesofmalta.com changed the title of their article to "Blow for Malta bluefin tuna trade". Still not great but better.]
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The Dead Effect
I am pleased to report that yesterday’s experiment worked. The bold claim that something cool was ‘dead’ more than tripled click-throughs… and all from the usual sources (there’s your control Mr. Quantitative Dissenter).
Is it ‘lazy journalism’ as one commenter said that makes journalists go for the tabloid-like headlines? Or are they simply giving us what we want: headlines that satisfy our morbid desire to see others fail?
(Although there might be a case for saying WordPress did indeed flatline a little!)
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Blogging is Dead. WordPress is Dead. Technology is Dead.
Is “Advertising Dead“? Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki seem to think so. Michael Arrington thinks that RSS is dead and one of his guest authors thinks that comments are dead. ‘Traditional media’ is also dead (it seems to have died twice in fact) and in case you haven’t heard, Facebook is also dead.
What is it about entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts that just makes them drool at the thought of somebody else, ideally someone successful, failing miserably and dying. It could be the “Male Killer Gene” that Guy Kawasaki often rants about (but then ignores). More likely, it is simply link bait, which is a sad thing for the A-list tech bloggers to have to do because it’s just the first step to becoming Rupert Murdoch lookalikes.
Of course, they’ll be rich by then so perhaps that’s the plan. Anyway, blogging, wordpress and technology are not dead… I just wanted to see how many people click.
Update: See the results!
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