Merlin Mann over at 43folders posted this YouTube video of Ira Glass.  It’s one in a series in which Ira advises people who want to get into storytelling and television.

In all honesty I haven’t watched them all.  I don’t feel that I have to.  Nothing can top the simple but crucial advice he gives in this one.  You can replace “television” with any art form and it applies.  I wish, oh how I wish, someone I respected and admired said these words to me when I was a kid and I truly absorbed their meaning.  For years, my desire to be creative was constantly being squashed by the dread of the inevitable dissatisfaction I would feel with what I produced.

I remember one of the many times in high-school when I was fustrated that I couldn’t get what I saw in my head out onto the paper, my art-teacher told me to “stop being arrogant. Only an idiot expects to be great at art right out of the gate.” That sentiment and what Ira has to say is somewhere in the same neighborhood, but Ira presents the idea in a much more accessable, postitive, and sympathetic manner.

For anyone who wants to do something creative as a profession, watch this video.  And then pass it on to as many people as you can.

Link to YouTube video via 43folders

Here is a very interesting presentation on the common pitfalls and suggested best-practices regarding online testing.

It is a recording of a live web-conference given by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing Experiments. He has a wonderful speaking manner and goes through great lengths to address some of the more common anxieties novice researchers have about online testing; including framing the right questions, statistical validity, and determining metrics. While Dr. McGlaughlin does not go into great depth on any of the topics that he covers, the surface-level advice that he gives could improve most of the online testing that we see today.

Much of his presentation is centered around his copyrighted “formula” to prove the usefulness of a given research project.

The formula is “usefulness = 2(questions) + treatment + metric + 2(validity) + interpretation.” Dr. McGlaughlin doesn’t explicitly show values being put into this formula but it appears that he considers all the components of valuable, with “asking the right questions” and “making sure the research is valid” to be twice as important as the rest. As all of the variables are subjective, I’m not sure of the formula’s overall value but maybe that’s not the point.

It’s a useful presentation to anyone who has wanted to test the output of a new website project or has struggled with coming up with a clear strategy of how to gather reliable data from an online initiative.

The case study that he uses is from a project with Britannica Online to improve the conversion rate of their free trial offer. This case study is a great example of how to correctly construct a solicitation form.

Link to presentation (flash based)

When it comes to usability design, my definition of “prototyping” is an interactive artifact that accurately simulates the interface experience. The interactive elements perform as expected (dropdowns, rollovers, sliding panels, etc.) and the click path of the task flow is also simulated correctly.

Prototypes allows a UX designer to determine what is and what is not working within their designed schema. There is no other practice that I know of that is more immediate, effective and economical.

I think the idea of using prototypes has been seen as a valuable tool in web design for over 10 years, but up until recently it has been seen as a luxury. Like user testing, prototyping is often seen as a step in the project plan that is quickly abandoned because of time or budget considerations.

But as we continue to move away from flat content web pages into more RIA interfaces, the use of prototypes will become mandatory. There are too many unanswered questions and unexplored nuances if we rely strictly on wireframes.

There have recently been some postings in the UX blogosphere about prototyping so here is a roundup of a few:

David Verba posted an article over at A List Apart speaking about the benefits of prototyping, not only as a proof-of-concept tool for the interaction designer, but as an effective communication artifact that helps bridge the language barriers between various web design disciplines (graphic designers, technical developers, client stakeholders).

Alexa Andrzejewski over at Boxes and Arrows posted a very detailed tutorial on using Flash for prototyping. The only downside as I see is the interface elements are not actually being built and revised in flash. Rather she is using flash as a delivery mechanism for screenshots created in some other graphic design application. Her use of screenshot images as a click-through in flash is very reminiscent of postings screen shots in HTML pages with the “interactive” elements actually using image maps hotspots.

For me, I am sold on the idea of prototyping. Its just a matter of how to incorporate an efficient solution into my work flow.

My Dream UX Application:
I am looking for a tool that allows me to build the interactive elements in the application using a pallet of components. Ideally, I would be able to drag and drop elements into a workspace, define transitions, gesture reactions, conditions with error handling and extended click paths.

Options:
Axure.
I haven’t run across anything like this yet but I am going to check out Axure (free 30 day demo). It seems to be the leader in a very small pack. I plan on posting about my experience with it as soon as I get a solid understanding of its offerings.

Thermo:
Many UX designers, myself included, wait with baited breath for the release of Adobe Thermo. Thermo looks like the dream app for quickly prototyping hi fidelity interface designs. Aral Balkan posted some mouthwatering videos taken from a Thermo demonstration at the 2007 Adobe keynote.

Anyone who has built or maintained a website over time knows how difficult it is to police visual standards and content organization.  Without someone to act as a watchdog, individual content contributors can quickly ruin a website’s design system by adding their own personal spin to new content or web pages.  The result is haphazard mess of inconsistent design and usability.

Now imagine the challenge of maintaining standards for tens of thousands of web pages in forty three countries?

Andrew Payne, a webmaster for Sun Microsystems, has posted a great document “Under the Hood: Sun.com CSS & HTML” that goes beyond the typical “styleguide”.  It contains the history of Sun’s web presence, the organizing system that they have evolved into, and some valuable insights regarding “lessons learned”.

Sun: Under the Hood (pdf)

Sun’s online Web Design Standards (although much of it is password protected)

Via A List Apart comments

A strange thing happens when you are in the process of moving to a new home. Despite all the trouble that comes from packing, hauling and unloading your current accumulation of stuff, you find yourself possessed with the irresistible desire to acquire *new* stuff; new furniture, new prints, etc.

When you are dealing with a two people moving, the decision to purchase a jointly-used item (say, an area rug for the family room) must be made together. And even when you are lucky enough to be with someone who shares a similar aesthetic, the decision on what is the *right* rug can become a careful dance.

Online shopping currently does not lend itself well to collective or social consumerism. For the most part, the standard ecommerce process has developed with the singular task of acquiring product. The interpersonal and social nuances that come with community shopping have been largely ignored.

As a result, for all its conveniences, the online shopping experience has been missing a critical component for a large population of consumers.   For many people, the primary purpose of shopping is not to acquire a needed item, but rather to engage in the social interactions that come with the activity. In an influential article Why Do People Shop?, E.M Tauber (1972) defines a specialized set of social motives that drive consumer behavior.

• Social experience
• Communication with others
• Peer group attraction
• Status and authority
• The pleasure of bargaining

In its present form, online shopping does not do much to take the above social interactions into account. Hou and Rego conclude in their 2002 publication, Internet Marketing: An Overview, that the online shopping experience requires users to forgo these social aspects of the ‘brick and mortar’ shopping experience, and in return the user has access to a breadth and immediacy of browse-able products not available in the physical world.

Sure, you can email a link to a product website to your friend, or post an entry on one of the many bargain forums, or haggle over price on Ebay, but for many those improvised, asynchronous solutions cannot compare to the immediate feedback of shopping with others.

A new step in the right direction:
Now let me circle back to my girlfriend and I purchasing an area rug for our new apartment.  While I was shopping on www.rugsale.com I was surprised and pleased to see a function called ShopTogether. This functionality allows for real-time interaction with another person in the context of a shopping experience, albeit remotely. 

Here is what the ShopTogether interface looks like. Once you click on the ShopTogether button, a panel appears at the top of a retailer’s web page to start a session.  I emailed my girlfriend the unique “ShopTogether Code” that was provided and she joined me in my shopping session on the Rugsale.com web site. 

In a nutshell, ShopTogether is a form of instant messaging specifically tailored for shopping activity. On a retail website that has implemented the ShopTogether functionality, you can invite a friend to join a private “shopping” session where each user can see what the other is looking at, offer recommendations and build a shopping list together. 

It also offers the perfunctory ability to text each other.

So while this obviously doesn’t allow for many of the nuances of being geographically in the same retail space with a shopping friend, I believe it steps firmly in the right direction of adding additional motivations for users to get online and shop.

Just think of it. Browsing online has always been one of life’s guilty little pleasures at the workplace. Now you can enjoy the experience even more with a friend.

Links:
RugSale
References drawn from Swatman and Chin, The Virtual Shopping Experience