Last week my voice turned into a croak. That was a bad sign because I had a big weekend ahead. My daughter turned 18 years old and I was hosting a party for friends and family here. I made her cake and all the food. Every one could tell I wasn’t well but I pushed on. The party was a great success. Lots of fun for all the kids teenagers young people. I visited with my sister, whom I haven’t seen in over 5 years, and my nephew. I really enjoyed that.

Fifteen minutes after the last guest left, my fever shot up to 101 degrees and the kids were piling blankets on top of me. That was Sunday. Today I learned just how sick I am because I finally stopped being stubborn and went to the doctor.

Being stuck in bed, when there’s piles of work to do, is no fun. But, the week wasn’t a complete loss. This is what I learned…

1. I want a makeover. After watching one daytime TV show after another, buried under the blankies, inhaling Vicks like a little kid and watching beautiful size negative 4 women prance about the screen, I’ve decided I want to be entered in some makeover contest.

2. I want those diet secret pills that promise me I can be negative 4 in two weeks with no exercise whatsoever.

3. SEO’s get on Oprah.

4. I still have no idea how delegates work, but I think I have a handle on Super Delegates.

5. When Hillary wears blue, it really brings out her blue eyes.

6. I’m not superhuman. After dealing with what I instinctively knew was bronchitis for a week, I finally gave in and went to the doctor. She said there’s a really bad strain of it that comes with a bonus sinus infection (which is why I can’t breathe) and no amount of organic food and vitamins would have saved me. She kept trying to tell me I’m human…go figure.

7. I found a station that runs Charmed re-runs. This is important. When I was in first grade, I wanted to be a witch. A nice one. Who could make boys fall on their butts and stuff.

8. Eric learned how to use the new dishwasher, that we’ve had for about 4 months or so.

9. Jennifer pretty much has me burning with curiosity about Twitter. I can’t join. Every one will say “I toldya so!”

10. Work doesn’t stop coming in. Thanks so much for waiting me to get better.

11. Spammers don’t stop coming just because you’re too sick to log in.

12. While waiting for my antibiotics today at the drugstore, I was looking for Valentines Day cards for the kids and husband. There was a section for “Funny”. I like funny. But when I tried to find funny “Husband” cards, there were 4 columns for “Wife”, and one with a mixture of “Girlfriend”, “Pets” and two slots for “Husband”. One of the husband slots was empty and the other card wasn’t funny.

Over in the serious and romantic section, there were “Wife” cards all over the place. I managed to find 4 cards for husband’s and one that I liked that didn’t sound dysfunctional or co-dependent in a “Honey, be my valentine or I’ll let the air out of your tires” kind of way.

My daughter had tried to find a Valentine card for her step-dad but couldn’t find any step-dad ones. Where are all the cards for men?

I decided to pass this tidbit of discovery to Eric, to show how hard I worked, sick and all, barely able to breathe, no makeup in the store (sheer blasphemy!) and hair pulled up in a pony tail…well, some of it. I didn’t fuss. Anyway. I told him I really had to look hard for a card for him and that most of the cards are for women, and the funny ones…well, do women not have a sense of humor I asked him?

He told me he was lucky to get a card. A friend of his got his wife a card and flowers and he hesitated after giving it to her, kinda waiting for his gift from her. She hadn’t thought to get him anything.

I don’t get it.

13. I have a question. Does working from home make your immune system messed up?

Happy Valentines Day to all the happy people.

As more and more people jump on the SEO and Usability bandwagon and write about it, a few different arguments are presented. In some, one set of skills is more important than the other, or “first”. For others, one can’t live without the other.

Still others think they have a purpose together and create new terms for practicing it.

I’ve written extensively over the years on the relationship between SEO and web site usability. Five years ago I felt that SEO efforts were helpful up to a certain point before a well designed web site takes over. Sort of the “You can lead a horse to water but can’t make them drink” theory.

This viewpoint is also expressed in more and more blog posts and articles. It’s a start but nowhere near the true value of combining SEO with web site usability design and testing.

While more companies grasp that usable web sites bolster their marketing investment, they have a limited understanding of exactly what this means. They’ve figured out that the horse can be lead to water, and they’ve managed to get it to drink, but they haven’t worked out the importance of that horse telling the entire herd about that water source and leading all of them there to drink as well.

Web site usability goes far beyond the user interface. It’s wonderful to hire a search engine marketer who knows how to design web pages that appear high in search results and are smoothly indexed. Even better is the marketer who designs expert landing pages and researches your target customer. They’ve done their job when someone has no problem finding the web site they seek and wants to click into it.

The expected results go from being located in search engines to being visited.

And then the logic seems to stop.

Visiting a web site is one step in the overall user experience, but there are many other steps to consider and build for such as browsing the homepage and conducting a task or two. However, the moment the web site misses a beat somewhere, such as a functional defect, dead-end navigation, loopy information architecture, sleepy content or invasive form requests, the moment of bliss is over.

People know their search engine has other web sites to show them.

SEO and usability is not an either/or decision. It’s a concentrated and blended effort to go above and beyond basic expectations to reach for goals like great customer service, findability, word of mouth advertising or brand building.

Marketing a poorly built web site can be a waste of money, but truthfully, a lot of people will use a web site they dislike because they have time constraints, there aren’t many options, they’re patient, it has the right price, they have no desire to look at competitors or all the sites in that niche are also clunky to use.

You can most certainly hire an SEO and ignore the investment in the web site design. You can go the other way and build a gorgeous web site and ignore SEO, but good luck with that. It’s not a mountain I’d want to climb.

What really counts is bringing both skill sets together for the unified goal of creating a kick-ass user experience.

This means considering the user experience from the moment they fire up their favorite search engine, to the moment they click into a web site from SERPS, to every second they spend on the site and, of equal importance, what they do after they leave.

Could they use it? If they use assistive technology like screen readers, could they move about the web site and understand what it offered? They’ll tell their friends if you made your site accessible.

Was the value proposition presented well? Did they really believe your claims? Could they find your phone number for customer service? Did they stick some sale items into a shopping cart and then have to go make dinner and if so, will your cart remember them if they come back? IF they come back? Does your site let them go or was there a function to remind them to return and finish shopping and oh by the way, here’s a coupon as incentive.

You can just hear the herd of horses stampeding now, can’t you?

Bottom line?

If you don’t show passion for your web site, it will perform that way.

I like accessibility. It’s taking some time to learn and there’s a lot to remember to do. Much of the documentation and standards for laws and guidelines are hard to understand. However, it’s well worth it and for some types of web sites and in some countries, meeting accessibility standards is the law.

In my work testing sites, I can tell that most developers still miss the basics, like alt and link attributes, contrasts, text alternatives to scripts and plug ins…to name a few. I found myself agreeing with Helping others understand web accessibility and decided to ask others for their opinions on whether or not implementing accessibility standards is difficult.

I asked “What do you think prevents mass adoption of good accessibility implementation? What prevents you from learning it in greater detail?”

Some of their replies:

After ignorance comes laziness in second place. Considering the vast number of sites that don’t scale text, or have strong contrast in fore/background colours etc., it’s not a suprise that a large number of sites aren’t very friendly to certain user-types. Some people simply do not stop and think, let alone test.

The answer, my friends, is that most developers do not actually understand what they are doing.

They learn something and that is their tool and approach from then on out. Being able to build in Dreamweaver or Wordpress, to create in Photoshop, to add-on osCommerce, etc. is being able to utilise extremely useful applications BUT how many of those same people can hand tweak them? Actually know what those scripts and code mean and do?

Accessibility doesn’t ring a bell, because:
- people think it is related to handicapped people only
- there’s no obvious direct connection between accessible coding and good results
- it is branded as “accessibility” in terms of “do it for the 15% and for the law”, not “to earn 15%+ more money”.

I have to say that at a fundamental level, web accessibility is very easy. As the complexity of the site grows, so do the accessibility issues, but when you take a relatively simple example site, making it accessible is simply not all that challenging.

However, it does require attention to detail, compassion, and understanding.

But I’m guessing that most of the problem is that most websites do not have a good webmaster/project manager who is the key to getting all the parts of the puzzle (programming, marketing, branding, design, information) together.

Nice related post by Lorelle today - Blog Challenge: Testing Your Blog’s Accessibility

She writes:

There is a growing number of bloggers and blog readers who are reading your blog right now with a screen reader which reads your blog to them, or some other magnification or screen customization tool or device that enables the visually or physically impaired to read and communicate with their computers and the web.

Have you tested your blog’s design for web standards for accessibility?

I haven’t given in to Twitter yet because I’m stubborn. Maybe I’ll eventually give into Twitter because I’m curious. Not being a Twit makes me feel old. I appear to be in the minority and boring. Am I old and grumpy?

Here’s some things not Twittered by me.

Defending The SEO Castle

Danny Sullivan addresses a A Bad Month For SEO’s Reputation. As always, he’s a genuine charming Prince.

Lisa Barone walks the castle hallways wondering… Does The Search Engine Optimization Expert Really Exist?

Which Came First? The SEO or the Usability Person?

An amazing article by John Ferrara …Search Behavior Patterns

Search behavior is the result of interplay among several independent factors the user brings to the search operation, six of which are described below. Designers have no more control over these than they have over the color of the user’s hair.

Creating Usable, SEO-friendly websites

Usability spawns SEO, not just the other way around.

Who’s The Best: Design, Usability or SEO?

For the internet to realize it’s full potential, we need sites that people can find, that are compelling enough to capture their attention, and that are usable enough to keep that attention. Like it or not, that means we need designers, usability specialists, and SEOs.

User Skills Improving, But Only Slightly

Users are also overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that many sites dump on them.

From John Rhodes comes this thought provoking article - Choice Kills Usability

Next time you’re thinking about giving your customers 100 choices, think about the effort that it takes to investigate each decision. Think about the cognitive effort required to sift through option after option. Look, if you “know” there is one best choice, eliminate the junk and focus, focus, focus.

Reaching Over the Pond

QA Session on User Persona Method with Lene Nielsen

[Atul Manohar]
A large section of work (for most Indian IT Companies) comes out of off shoring. In a typical offshore scenario, what are the considerations, parameters, limitations, advantages for using the persona method?

[Lene Nielsen]
Not that I have any experience with off shoring, but I do have an opinion I think that when the programming is taking place with a distant relation to the HCI persons who have done user studies, personas become even more important. I find that the personas descriptions should be part of every specification requirement, in order for the programmer to understand what he is doing and who is supposed to use the system. That way the scenario would become more precise and communicate more that the mere specs.

The upside side is longer than the downside side. With One Remarkable Move, The SEO Guru Kills the in-house, out-house Debate

I once felt that Facebook was something I’d never get into because I couldn’t understand how I’d use it or what the big deal was about using it. But last summer, I joined it and surprise, surprise, I liked it. Now, I’m resisting Twitter.

The best writeup on Twitter I’ve read so far is the latest by Jennifer Laycock, with her series on Twitter beginning with Part One: From Twits to Tweeple, Why I Embraced Twitter and You Should Too. I admit that the moment someone says I “should” do something, my first reaction is to rebel against it. Several friends have told me I “should” get Twitter. It’s had the same affect as my telling my kids they “should” clean their rooms. There’s never a good reason why.

Jen does the best job describing what Twitter is like. Her next part in her series will discuss how it can be useful. This will interest me because this is where I really hold the line. Will she convince me to try it?

Idol Worship

For me, I have the most trouble understanding why anyone would want to know what I’m doing. The people who decide to include usability into their web site development cycle aren’t typically marketers and marketers are the perfect target market for Twitter.

I can see SEO’s loving it. I can see those who work from home liking the activity. It can fit a need. However, I’ve been working from home for years and rejoice in trips to the store because are people talking, not typing.

Twitter reminds me of the “status” in Facebook, where you can tell everyone where you are, how you feel, where you’re going that day, if you’re sick, if you broke up with someone or fell in love, if you’re drunk, if you just ate an apple, whether you’re hating the snow, and whether or not you just bet your life savings on the Giants winning the Superbowl. You can update your “status” as often as you like. Many Tweeters use their’s to point to what they’re twittering about, leaving those of who are untweeted in the dark.

I’ve never had the feeling that anyone gives a cow what my status is, so why would I add Twitter to keep everyone informed? I don’t want to be followed. Am I too private for Twitter? Do you have to have marketing blood to “get it”?

Communication

The argument for Twitter is it helps with networking and communication.

I own a global forums in the industry I work in. An entire community of people is there every day and night from around the world. I’m never lonely and never without someone to talk to at any time of day or night because somebody is always awake. I can start a conversation there if I want to or contribute to an existing one.

There’s always a conversation there and it’s not limited to friends I’ve given permission to talk to me.

It’s open, which means I’m exposed to different cultures, viewpoints, language, expression, experience levels, humor, and education. It means I’ve opened myself up and made myself available to a helluva lot of people already. I’m needed there. My moderators would be unhappy if I spent more time Twittering and less time participating in the forums. In fact, a few moderators blame Twitter and Facebook for the absence of moderators, who have been less active because their time is spread thinner.

Add this blog to my daily conversation route and Bloglines for my information fix. Granted, I chose where my sources come from, which is different from Twitter, but I have a wide net in place. In fact, too much inbound data comes in and I’ve culled my sources several times.

Add my comments at Sphinn and other blogs. Add to this my articles which are republished around the ‘Net. If someone wants to know what I’m up to, I’m not that hard to find.

Do they want to know when I’ve just made dinner, leaving the house to walk my dog or what I’m reading this very second? Do they want me promoting my blog posts? I have a feed. Come when you wish to. Need me in a hurry? Facebook has a nice message feature, plus I’m online a lot for email and if I’m offline, I want and need that break.

I’m not that important or vital to the success of anyone’s day other than my family, cats and the dog. In the reverse, my peers and friends who Twitter are also easy for me to find. I see them everywhere. When I want to find them, I will and I do. I don’t need Twitter for this.

Twitter for Work

As far as I know, none of my usability work depends on whether or not I just posted to my blog. My clients use traditional methods to stay in touch with me such as the phone or email, with some of them also participating at Cre8asiteforums or subscribing to my blog because we’ve developed a rapport and friendship through our projects.

I’m sure none of them wants to know if I’m outside pulling weeds in my gardens.

And this brings me to my main reason for not getting Tweetafied. I need to unplug. I love to read books. I have very active kids involved in dance, sports, school (homework), jobs and music who want or need me at their things. I love their friends. I love making dinner and having the kitchen crammed with family and friends. There’s no laptop or cell phone Bluetooth piece stuck into my ear when I’m being mom. Kids hate that. I won’t do it.

I’m not as jazzed up about Facebook lately for the same reasons why I won’t tweet. I don’t play most of the games in Facebook because it takes me away from work or family. I don’t have a wife to cook for me, a housekeeper, gardener, or salesperson. I run a business, family and forums. In off-time like weekends, I’m studying, reading more case studies, or teaching myself something like new software or hunting for new web sites of interest.

I still have to check on the forums too. Those doors never close and I think a lot of people never consider that.

Twitter may be one of those things that, like all the social networking sites and software I’m invited to join, are truly threats to my valuable time. It takes tremendous discipline to work from home when you’re the parent in charge of kids and household, especially when your spouse is gone from morning to night working outside the home.

I gave in to Facebook. Now I’m wondering if the TwitterBorg will assimilate me too. The “push” technology it offers is perfect for a knowledge junkie like me, but I’m already feeling fried and burned out. It’s not an argument that works for me.

I can’t help but think that if you’re a real friend, you’ll visit me here or at Cre8asiteforums because you want to, not because I just tweeted a reminder that I’m alive and posting.