Cooper’s latest journal is out and inside it contains a fascinating teaser article called Beautiful Monsters

David Fore authors part one of a pending series on the topic he calls “Ecosytem-Centered Design”.

The problem comes when UCD is taken too literally, for it can also promote a myopia that blurs what’s outside the immediate reach of individuals, preventing us from clearly seeing the inter-woven social, industrial, and environmental ecologies within which people live and companies exist. This must change. Whether interaction designers hear it or not, we are being called upon to address the broader ecological contexts of the companies that build what we design, and those who use the product of our labors. It is, therefore, urgent for our design values, methods, and collaboration habits to evolve. Now.

What is called for is an Ecosystem-Centered Design, a shared set of ideas and methods to guide our way toward more sustainable creative endeavors that address vital social, organizational, and environmental influences upon—and consequences of—the creation, use, and retirement of what we design.

Will be keeping an eye out on this one.

When I was in college, there was a class that occurred every semester where we always knew when its most popular exercise was taking place. Students would be everywhere on campus with blindfolds on, being led by their guide person to classes and lunch.

I’m reminded of this class experiment when I visit web sites with clumsy navigation. They may start off with a simple “walk forward” link and think this is good. However, it’s not. If you’re blindfolded and someone tells you to “walk forward”, you may ask, “Where are you taking me” or “Why?” We have the same questions when we walk around web sites.

The “scent of information” is a funky phrase that means, “Give me a strong hint about where you’re going to take me next”. We’re more likely to take the step forward if we know we’ll be rewarded with something we want or need, and if we’re confident we’ll get there intact.

Getting Lost

I was on Twitter’s web site today and, being curious as to why the “older” button is deactivated, I decided to poke around the site to see if it was something I had done. This is typical user behavior. We blame ourselves first when something doesn’t work. I, like some of you, think that while we were sleeping, tiny gremlins went into our favorite sites and wreaked havoc on our personal settings.

I clicked from the Twitter homepage to their Help page. Apparently, they want to keep me on that page forever because they removed the top global navigation, including the user support and frequently used links like “home”, “settings” and “find and follow”. If I hunt for links to get back to where I started from, I find some navigation in the footer, along with a copyright date of 2007, rather than 2008. The only “home” link I found went to the homepage of the “Help” hub. If the way back “home” is on this busy the page, I didn’t want to hunt for it. Things have to be where I can see them without any effort.

Despite the fame Twitter has, it’s also an example of too much hoopla, too soon. If they even have Performance Testing Engineers, those people are battling every day to keep a site up that’s live and “in production” from crashing every hour. As Twitter users know, Twitter’s as fun to use as training a toddler to use the potty. Some days it works. Most days it doesn’t.

Lost in the Hub, Bub

I was hired to test a web site that’s famous around the world. It’s a gigantic site aimed at readers all over the world. Despite its credible reputation, the web site is clunky, chaotic, not consistent from page to page or hub to hub and has an alarming number of big ads on each page that make reading difficult.

It’s broken into categories, which are set up as “hubs”. Hubs are like rooms on a site with windows on the walls.

A typical hub is an About Us section where the hub’s “homepage” explains what’s interesting to see inside that hub, may contain a mission statement and devotes some space to proof of the company’s existence like a picture of the store or office.

Left side navigation takes visitors to the other “windows” in the room, such as press releases, media kit, or contact page.

Sometimes hub windows contain window panes, or another level. This means that if you click from the hub’s Homepage into the Contact page, you may see breadcrumb navigation to “Staff”, “Bio’s, and “Directions”.

On the famous web site I reviewed, there was a weak attempt to create hubs but it wasn’t finished. I couldn’t locate the way out of some hubs to the main site in some cases. I certainly couldn’t jump from hub to hub, or if I could move deeper into a hub, I became stuck there. There was little or no direction on how to escape or move backwards. They also made another common mistake, which is to remove all navigation from pages like privacy policies and terms.

I Love Navigation Cliffhangers

Most web sites are designed for forward momentum. This means if you land on their homepage, you’ll find key, top-level links to move inside the web site. What becomes less obvious is when you want to return to where you were, or move side to side from hub to hub without first requiring a click back to the main homepage first. Try not to force visitors to go home to reorient themselves or find a new hub to explore. This is especially handy advice for landing pages, which have their own requirements for navigation and usability.

Sub-navigation and breadcrumb navigation are planned out during the information architecture stage, not as a last resort. When navigation schemes are mapped out in accordance with IA there is less chance for cliffhangers. I love these. It’s when you get going on a site and you’re rolling along until suddenly you’re taken to a page that drops you off into the Unknown Internet Universe. Typically, the browser’s “Back” button has been disabled, making this trip all the more groovy.

Every web designer faces navigation hurdles. This is why user testing during the design phase or pre-production is so valuable. I grow frustrated with the number of stories I hear from the field by IT folks, programmers, project managers and QA Engineers whose companies completely ignore user testing and usability/accessibility design or standards. They’re not happy to be knowingly building a “piece of crap” and it boggles one’s mind when upper level management encourages them to do so.

The blindfolded students learned many lessons, as did their guide persons. As a user experience web site designer, you play the role of both.

Now, if we could just convince your blind managers and directors to get with the program, we’d have software that works when we want it to and web sites that never drop us off the side of the road.

One thing you can count on when it comes to “usable” web site design is that nobody can agree on what that is. Is the perfect user experience when a web page comes up near the top in search engine rank? Is it high conversions? Is it a site that blind persons can use?

One of the quirks of Twitter is that you can participate in spontaneous one on one conversations and your “followers” can “listen” in. The other day my friend Elizabeth Able picked my brain with questions like “Is marketing like war?”.

I replied with my 147 character limit,

War? no. War is forceful, no choice. Marketing is ideas, persuasion, suggestion, competitiveness…

Thinking about marketing, she asked about war vs. competition. Are they the same or different? I said,

I think to compete is to lose with grace and war is a fight that never ends.

Competition allows for negotiation and permits the wise ones to learn from the experience. War teaches more war.

Liz wondered if marketing can work without hype?

I felt that,

Marketing w/o hype? Yes. It’s called value proposition and that has to be honest and real, not fake.

How do these marketing questions relate to user experience design?

The other day I visited a site that claimed to do online usability reviews of various web sites as a weekly feature. I read their critique. I hope the company didn’t pay for it. The feedback was “The colors are boring”. It was designed for 640 resolution. First of all, for a weekly feature, I would choose a web site built in the present century to review.

There was no information on conversions or traffic. Nothing about value proposition, credibility or accessibility. Clearly, there are parts of the planet that aren’t on the usability train yet or don’t understand WHY a heuristic exists.

The search engine marketing industry is often at odds with one another about setting best practice standards. Obviously, for an industry made up of people who tend to be quite independent thinkers, the very idea of rules or being told how to do their job by some governing entity isn’t going over very well.

The same standards idea exists on the usability side. No two usability companies, when given a site to test, will come back with the same results. When Jakob Nielsen came out with “discount usability” and testing heuristics, he may as well have stood on a mountain top reading from tablets. His Alertbox posts are still often considered usability gospel.

I consider his advice as guidance and observations. His data is often really helpful, if even only to add insight or understanding into a common practice or behavior. Most practitioners, in both the SEO and user centered design houses, test practices and theories. They have to. Nothing on the Internet stays the same. Human/computer behavior changes as we adapt to the latest technology or cool-web-thing, like social networking.

Why the Dark Ages?

Matt Bailey wrote an exceptional blog post on real estate web sites that shows just how far behind one niche remains when it comes to web site design. He nails point after point in Online Marketing in Real Estate - Fast Start to Stagnation

Not only does he point out all the ridiculous usability errors, but as someone trying to use real estate sites to find a new home, he’s a potential customer who is finding the user experience to be infuriating.

When I was looking to buy a new house in 2003, I ran into the same thing. I wasted untold hours on real estate web sites that didn’t know how to sell online, but were chomping at the bit to get my personal information so they could call me.

Finally, it was the photography that worked. I swore I’d never buy a cape cod style home. I never liked them. Then one day I went onto my local realtor’s web site, which is barely tolerable, and found 10 rotating views of a cape style house interior located nearby that looked move-in ready. The pictures showed all the living space on the inside, but they forget to add some other value proposition points.

Therefore, when my kids and husband-to-be drove down the long driveway and saw the built-in pool in the back, it was a real shocker! Then, there was the huge half circle garden leading up to the deck coming off the back of the house that was designed as a private paradise. The house was loaded with extras and had room for my home office and organic vegetable gardens. None of this was mentioned on the real estate web site.

I made an offer that same day. It may not have happened if the site didn’t at least have professional photos on it. I could have cared less what the resolution was. (However these days, a mobile phone ready real estate web site is a strong competitive design choice.) I’ll always wonder why the Realtor didn’t include the pool in the house description or place any emphasis on the outside of the property. Some buyers, like myself, are gardeners or like trees and fields around them. These are selling points.

It can seem to some as though online marketing has to be cut throat and in your face to be noticed. To me, there’s nothing more frustrating than “get rich quick” schemes and affiliate template sites that show no character or USP. I’m uncomfortable with boldface text yelling at me to buy something. Who has the time to read a mile-long scrolling corn field of endless content?

Bad web site design is not a good teacher.  One person’s bad design is another person’s perfect web site. The true measure of success is brand trust, customer satisfaction, word of mouth referrals, continued business and steady sales leads. Search engines notice.

When usability reviews are presented from the perspective of marketing, it becomes easier to understand the importance of user experience design. Boring colors will not make or break a sale. Neither will flexible or fixed width pages. These are user annoyances and factors to consider for your business requirements but in no way should any design review settle for limited fixes like these.

Today’s user experience enabled web site is an honest and frank design. It’s friendly. It’s easy to understand. The experience includes what happened to find it, how your visitors feel when they arrive and leave and especially if they feel persuaded to come back.

A few nights ago I dreamed I was arguing with a woman named Mary. No matter what I did, I was being judged. I woke up, fell back to sleep, and continued to have a yelling match with her. Next, I was standing outside on a hill watching a gigantic tornado funnel cloud heading directly towards me.

I ran around trying to warn people, but they were ignoring me. As the tornado hit, I found shelter under an overhanging cliff, because suddenly I managed to fly to a hilly forest.

In real life, Mary was a woman who took me into her home when I was 19 years old. Her daughter, my best friend from high school, knew that if somebody didn’t come into my life at that precise moment, I would likely not have survived to be 20. I lived with that family for 3 years.

I never argued with Mary. She cared about me when I didn’t care about me. One day she threw 15 bras on my bed and said, “Someday you’ll thank me for this.” She was right.

I’ve never seen a tornado. But I know something is going to happen. I know a dream like this means I’ll either take care of myself in an emergency, or I’m about to do something stupid. In all likelihood, I’ll do it on the Internet, so everyone can watch and make fun of me.

When you live on the Internet, you know you’ll die there too.

Jeffrey Zeldman wrote a strange, wonderful post the other day called How to Make Love To A Ghost. In his dream, ghosts were giving him instructions and advice, such as “Don’t make love to a ghost, even if she is your wife.”

Of his ghosts, he wrote:

“These messages were conveyed clearly, and with authority. Although I knew their origin, I was not afraid. So matter-of-fact was my acceptance that I began framing what I was learning within a normal workday context. Specifically, I realized that these messages made the perfect Tweets.

For while Twitter may reduce the immense possibilities of communication to single-line banalities of 140 characters or less, it is paradoxically the perfect vehicle for distilling and broadcasting profound, irrational truths, such as those the dead share with us while we dream.”

Interesting. I do this framing thing also.

An event, such as being stranded in a K-Mart parking lot in a broken down motor home in Virginia with 5 kids, a dog, a husband who desperately needed valium for his wife, in 105 degree weather, with no hope of a tow, had me writing an article on usability, navigation, being stuck, and getting lost, in my head and later on a computer. I never ran that article because remembering that summer vacation is on my “Top 5 Memories To Put in the Never Happened” file in my head.

Zeldman’s ghosts gave advice to “Fill your eyes with tears. That is how a ghost sees”. I likely would have used that for an analogy on web site accessibility, had it been my dream.

Speaking with angels, departed souls, ghosts and loved ones who have passed over are topics that have always fascinated me because I’ve already had experiences that clearly show we’re connected in mysterious ways.

The Internet is part of the experiment. I know I’m here. I know you’re there. But we can’t see each other. Does that mean we don’t exist?

I made my husband promise that if he goes first, he should yell to me the following words from the other side: “STOP STARING AT ME!”

I like signs.

The article that experience would inspire could easily be about breadcrumb navigation or web site authenticity and credibility.

Yes. I know. You’ve never read about article or blog writing inspiration like this before.

That’s because this is a blog that ignores the rules.

Life is too short.

What brings people together isn’t always understood, but I’m starting to believe that when we’re touched deeply, there is a hook of some sort, even if we can’t label it. It’s something we feel but can’t always put into words.

What keeps us together, returning, or tied to each other may be something unique, confusing, private and unexplainable. The incentive to hold on can change, even on a whim. It’s this way with relationships of any kind.

It’s this way with blogs, forums, and anywhere people interact on the Internet. We’re hooking up with each other, but how we do it is all over the place. We’re even cruel, if that gets the job done.

How to Blog

All the advice you read about how to be a blogger conflicts. I can’t remember a time when I ever bought into any of it. This particular Blog reflects me as a business owner, consultant and professional person. It also let’s readers sit on my deck, relaxed and ready for off-topic stories. I always provide them here, mixed with something useful.

I sometimes wonder why people stop by. Have I hooked you somehow? Why do you return? Did I tick you off? Was something I said important and what I find most fascinating of all, did I connect in a way you can’t even understand yourself?

My posts are all over the place. Many are like this one. They come flying out of nowhere and you wonder what I’ve been smoking. I once told someone that though dead tired, I still had to write in my Blog. For him, it is work to post in his Blog because he targets clients. I target everybody, and that’s a huge risk.

When I need to express myself, I write because I have great trouble with verbalizing what’s in my heart and mind. Whenever I try, I convey big ideas at the level of a third grader with brilliant phrases such as “I have no idea”. It took awhile to get up the courage to put personal observations or thoughts here, of course. It’s always debatable whether or not I have something worthwhile to say, that anyone could relate to. Some readers just want a professional stream of straight news or information.

What Relationships Are We Developing Now With Blogs?

How blogs are used by journalists is a topic Tamar Weinberg wrote about in Does Social Media Have an Impact on Today’s Journalism? You Tell Me.

She feels that today’s journalism is directly effected by social media and blogs. It may be so, but if it is, I’m alarmed because facts don’t live in social media and blogs. Our opinions do. Our observations. Our reactions, biases and feelings live in the social Internet. How can you trust that a story originating from a Blog is written clearly, so that no misunderstandings can occur? How do you know what a Digg article claims is actual fact?

A Blog can post a breaking news story, with something more inside it that wouldn’t be permitted by traditional news media. Maybe we are making a mistake. Are we dumbing down the news by becoming sources for it?

We already know that articles aren’t always factual or correct. Bad information is spread by articles. It’s also found in forums, which is why expert moderators are needed to weed through the nonsense. Many articles are simply pointers lifted from something someone else wrote. Some of my best articles come from field work. The mistake is taking the information and calling it gospel, setting standards or guidelines by it and telling people to apply rules that for business requirements reasons should never be considered.

There’s something more going on and I’m not convinced we’re paying attention, so I pulled out a song.

There’s Something More Than This

I’m a huge fan of October Project. One song, Something More Than This , makes me cry every time I hear it because I relate to it on such an intense level. Here are some of the words and I’ll ruin the moment with some thoughts:

In the shadow cast as you were leaving
In the beauty of the ending day
There is always something to return to
Something you allow
To slip away

The “something you allow to slip away” punches me hard every time I hear it. It’s the emotional hook. That emotional hook separates some blogs or blog writers from others. There are readers who want to be moved or touched by us.

In the empty corners of the evening
In the vacant beauty of the wind
There is always something to remember
Something to remember
To begin

I tend to feel pain and usually start to grieve whenever this part is sung. It’s the recognition of something I can relate to, but I have no idea precisely what it is. Obviously not all blogs will give you a stomach ache or make you hyperventilate. However, a good one is one that you recognize yourself inside.

Whatever you fear
Whatever you hide
Whatever you carry deep inside
There’s something more than this

The first time I heard these words, I could no longer breathe. We do close ourselves off, don’t we? We’re not always open. Not free to be touched by someone or something new. We don’t believe in a “something more” because we refuse to give permission for that to happen. When a blogger connects with a reader, it can be an extraordinary experience. We don’t hear much about these moments, but I believe they exist because people are writing blogs.

Whatever you love
Whatever you give
Whatever you think you need to live
There’s something more than this

By this point, I’m in tears because I’m no longer here anymore. I’m at the experience it’s forcing me to remember or re-live. If you can do THAT with your Blog, you’ve taken this whole blogging thing to a new level.

In the shadow cast as you were leaving
In the beauty of the ending day
There is always something to believe in
Something…
As I watch you slip away

Maybe I’m more willing to go places with my heart. It’s pretty obvious I’ll take anyone with me who wants to come for the ride.

All I’m saying is there’s something more to blogging. Whatever it is, it won’t be accepted by the Blog Rules Police. It’s more than journalist breadcrumb trails, corporate showing off, an articles repository or a free instruction manual.

It’s how I’ll reach out for you.