That weird "empty feeling" from bulk-content creators

I'm sure you've seen them. More and more these days when you search for information - real information, the answer to a problem, for instance - on the web, you come across scores of sites chock-a-block full of content, but with no real inherent value.

They're usually tagged with innocuous, ambivalent sounding names like http://www.snappy-answers42.com, have somewhat decent navigation, and no end of links to what seem like good answers to your question.

The problem, however, is that the only thing they have in common with the question you're answering is the keywords in your search query.

As an example, I find most of my technical answers on Deja News *, but when I find weird processes running in my Windows task manager, I frequently just type the application's name in Google to find out what it does and whether I should remove it.

That worked pretty well, up until about a year ago. Suddenly, out of the blue, the first page or so of links that came up mentioned the application's name a dozen or more times in the page, but never actually said what the application DOES, or whether it's harmful.

Like I said, reams of information containing my question, but very few pages with the answer.

I wish I had bookmarked one of the more informative sites I used to find. The neat thing about the Internet is that I didn't really need to know where I found the answer, before. I just needed to look for it, and it would be there.

It seems that savvy SEO consultants and Content Management gurus have made it more difficult to find real information anymore. They discovered some time ago that if you hire 10 people to write 1000 articles with your site's most popular keywords, link to your site through them, then get people to visit them, they'll increase your site's search engine ranking. Probably not their fault since they are just adapting to indexing algorithms used by the biggest search engines, who are in turn adapting to the hacks and tweaks web developers used to make to cheat their way into number one search engine listings.

Dunno where it's gonna go from here...Wikipedia, Deja, CNET, Del.icio.us and a few other sites are still great for the niches they serve. As for finding anything relevant through pure searches, I'm left with this weird "empty feeling" in my head...

* Google Groups, but I still remember Deja, so I still call it that, and the URL still works =]

Setting the bar for Usability...

I try to work on maximizing my impact within my own sphere of influence. How big that sphere is, and how much I can do within it, is just about up to me (most of the time). Therefore, in UCD projects, where my team is asked to contribute usability methods to measure user requirements and risks to the user experience, I try to position us at the point of greatest possible impact on the outcome. So far, our strategy has been to try and be there right at the point of idea conception - before money has been spent, before a real solution has been chosen, often before the rest of the team members have been assigned. It's there, I think, that we can have the most effect on the eventual usability of a system or solution.

However, over the years, we have consistently been trumped by the holiest of all project metrics: cost. Time and again, even when we can clearly identify the most usable solution at the outset, clients go with the cheapest option, regardless of any usability impact. I definitely don't think that's wrong - businesses have to make money. There is no valid argument against that fact. The problem, I believe, is that usability, and the metrics which define it, have not yet matured to the point where an accurate cost value can be associated with any set of solutions.

True, we can measure productivity, both in time saved by users of a system, steps removed from a manual or inefficient process, or resources saved. But those numbers don't cleanly tie to a legitimate opportunity cost of going with an un/usable system.

The whole point of the above is that we should set a bar for usability. A goal that, when achieved, will place usability at the same level as cost, in deciding the solution to a problem.

Within Artificial Intelligence circles, the Turing Test is the bar that, when surpassed, will have proven that a machine is conscious or at least indistinguishable from a human being. Why can't we set one for usability, in making business decisions?

How about: "The needs of people who use technology systems will have equal weight in business decisions that affect technology, when their needs are sufficiently quantified to evaluate against and offset pure cost factors." Or maybe more simply, "When all technical solution costs consider the increased expense from poor usability, then users will have equal weight in technology decisions."

It's kind of a half-formulated idea, but I hate to see people make decisions without knowing all the information. I don't think people get the information they need because usability hasn't yet made it blisteringly easy to understand it.

How we might work in the future...

Adding to the Information Workplace topic from earlier, I was curious about what the IW might eventually look like, so I created a demo to illustrate how social networking, presence awareness, role-based content and simplified intelligent controls would look somewhere down the road.

Here's a link to my write-up and a link to the functioning prototype at the bottom. If you happen to get a look, let me know what you think...

http://www.bryanminihan.com/case-informationworkplace.html

Regarding Consistency...

In response to a well-thought-out post by Russell Wilson on the IxD discussion board, I responded with my take on enforcing consistency in homogenous user experiences (e.g. our company's intranet portal users - primarily employees from different business units with similar expectations of the service)...enjoy =]

I agree with your overall tenet that consistency is not the be-all and end-all arbiter of design decisions. Creativity is equally important to the experience and occasionally unique circumstances require varying from the norm (consistency) and/or completely reinventing the wheel.

On the other hand, the Wheel example in your post illustrates the boundary between consistency and creativity quite well. You're right, neither bicycles, motorcycles, vans nor sport cars should have the same wheel design - but they're all round, have a hole in the middle, are sized according to their load and treaded according to their anticipated use.

In our last portal redesign, we determined that consistency was the number one problem with our interface, in two veins:

1. The overall experience was TOO uniform and looked the same everywhere you went, and
2. Behavior elements like buttons, links, menus and body content were completely different on just about every page, and frequently several times within the same page.

In our redesign, we implemented a principle called "Interface consistency with content creativity". We normalized all links, menus, buttons and typefaces to one font style and behavior (blue underlined links, etc). At the same time, we added 20-odd slightly different "themes" tied to business units, to give people more visual cues to understand where they were in the 500+ community portal. We relaxed some standards around images and clip-art (ugh), let users be a little more creative in their communications, and the resulting portal is much more "friendly, social and usable" than before (taken from recent surveys).

The statement above, "Interface Consistency, Content Creativity" really helped us clear the cobwebs of what we (as the UCD team) meant by consistency. When communicators & business folks understood we weren't trying to change the way they communicate, they bought into the concept much more quickly. In fact, I'd say part of our job was to empower communicators by reducing variance in general site behavior, in favor of highlighting the true content that every portal visitor needed to know.

The lesson learned from our previous portal? Creativity is a necessary part of designing an interactive, friendly experience. Inconsistency for *purely arbitrary reasons* (i.e. because the designer wanted to be different) achieves the opposite of the site's intended effect - it shifts people's focus from the content or task to questions like "Why the hell is that button shaped like a wagon?"

I don't know if I'm agreeing with Russel's post or not, but definitely appreciate the discussion. It's important and worthwhile having with any development group who questions the relevance of Section 508, W3C, or corporate web standards.

Our air freshener needs help...

There's a little wall-mounted electronic air freshener in our men's room on the floor where I work. It's one of those advanced things that automatically spits out a certain amount of freshener every so often. Thankfully, and probably optimally, they have mounted it above a little doorway just inside the men's room entrance, before you reach the sinks.

I say it needs help because it's been complaining for the past two weeks.

Every ten seconds or so, it beeps twice. Kind of quiet, in a very polite way. It sort of makes this little "meep...meep" sound. It's a little bit like a timer letting you know it's still there.

I can only assume from the fact that it's been doing this awhile, and by the two zeros on its little display window, that it's out of air freshener. We have a pretty clean group at my work, so you can't really notice the difference too much.

Except for the "meep...meep". Every ten seconds.

It got me thinking...what a clever idea to make the air freshener meep like that when it runs out of air freshener. It makes sense that it would keep doing it until it's refilled, because our attendants visit twice a day to freshen up in there.

On the other hand, our attendants visit twice a day, have done so for two straight weeks, and yet......"meep...meep". They don't hear it. Or maybe they hear it but the cartridges for the thing are too expensive.

Whichever is the case, I think it's hooked up to the central electric supply. It would be sadder if not, because in addition to the "meep...meep" we would all hear it slowly peter out over time, which would make it sound like a very patient little forgotten robot, stuck in the men's room, complaining about the smell, or lack of "air-freshened" smell, with no hope of rescue before its little batteries ran out.

I wrote this little piece because, while it must have seemed like a clever idea at the time, giving the air freshener a "meep" doesn't seem to have increased its chance of being filled one iota. The result is kind of annoying (feels like you have to hurry up in there), and if you think anthropomorphically, a little sad.

I guess a better solution would have been to provide a transmitter for the beep, to let whoever manages the attendants know to order more spray stuff. Another option would be to make it beep whenever someone with an attendant's badge comes in - but louder, more insistently, and perhaps let it spray something different for them. Something that says "I'm not helping the situation in here, and can you help me?".

Even better, it would be great if someone left a pack of air freshener cartridges in the men's room, so I could just replace it myself.

And now, for something completely gross...

Ok, I'll admit this is something of a gruesome topic, but I'm known around the house for doing the Dirty Jobs, including carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and landscaping that involves "things that have gone bad".

One particular day, a few weeks ago, I'm cleaning up the yard and remember our bird feeder needs to be cleaned out. I had filled it months ago, but it's buried under a climbing vine on our back patio, so birds fail to find it (a usability problem, no less). Add to that - it's a cheap bird feeder and has a crack in the top so water seeps in. Combine those two and you have the equivalent of a toxic waste dump no self-respecting bird would go near.

So I get around to taking a look at the bird feeder, up close, and realize after a few spine-crawling seconds, that the bird seed in the bottom of the feeder is moving. Ever so slightly, in little ticks and bumps that look like the legs in a slow-churning popcorn popper.

It didn't take long to realize that the entire column of bird seed, up the plastic enclosure, was moving in slow motion; that the pea-green liquid and decomposed seeds around the outside were moving around in lavalamp-esque gloops and glops.

Trust me, there's a usability bent in here somewhere, I'm getting to it...

After taking a few seconds to compose myself, and re-position my stomach, I got to work cleaning out the bird feeder. I will spare you the gruesome details, but the cause of all the motion was a small herd of fly larva, or maggots, if you prefer. I don't think I've been that ill about a backyard chore in a long time, and hope not to in an equally long time, if ever.

To get to the point and put this story to rest. I had two highly competitive emotions running through me during and after the cleanup job: 1) pure an unadulterated revulsion at what was in my backyard, and 2) a deep-seated primal urge to somehow share what I had just experienced.

That's when I decided to go online. Oh sure, superficially I was looking for advice on fixing crummy bird-feeders, but I quickly found that answer (throw them away) and I kept looking. That's when I came upon this little site called "Make a good house a GREAT home: Killing Maggots". The really neat thing about this site is that there are 316 little tiny stories about the exact same thing I had just experienced. Every one of them written by someone just as repulsed as I was, all with a desperate cry for help. People share their empathy, offer some advice (some practical, some primal) but everyone working together against a common enemy.

Just reading the first hundred or so posts quenched my thirst to bond with someone who had seen what I had. The Blog/discussion forum format made it a very simple and easy process. I didn't have to learn how it worked, didn't have to download, install or transmogrify any of my settings to purge my system of the need to bond with my fellow humans.

This strikes me as a "usability" story not because of its innovation or flashy design or superior aesthetic. It's an amazing example to me of how the Internet can help people communicate without getting in the way of that experience.


Oh, and by the way, if you want to know what I did with the birdfeeder, I cleaned it out thoroughly and hung it back up. The previous occupants live somewhere in the forest behind my house. I know, I should have killed em. Then again, connecting with my fellow humans reminded me that some of the shorter amphibious residents of my yard need to eat, too. One animal's revulsion is sometimes someone else's dinner.

Who will deliver the Information Workplace?

If you're not familiar with the term, Forrester Research coined "Information Workplace" as the next evolution of business web portals. Follow the lines of Web 2.0, portal applications, collaboration tools and various new devices that access the Internet, it seems natural that these concepts will eventually converge in a truly interactive, context-sensitive, role-based usable environment that will finally help people work and learn what they need to do their jobs.

Contrary to some interpretations, the IW is not just about web portals. It's about incorporating the total user experience of employees and optimizing every opportunity they have to interact with business applications and information. It does not assume that everyone is an information worker, but that information is vital to nearly every position. If you have access to Forrester's research, they describe these principles much more eloquently than I.

On the other hand, current web portal companies are jockeying to deliver the full Information Workplace, whether or not they will actually be the lynchpin for this new world of work. Personally, I believe the brunt of effort will be born by organizations and knowledge managers, who will need to define the many nuanced roles and relationships that people have with information.

Since my company uses one of these portals, I recently tried to determine who was the better bet to deliver the "portal" part of the IW, and here's what I found:

Who will deliver the Information Workplace?

Introduction

Enterprise web portals allow companies to communicate with their employees, business partners or customers. They differ from Internet web portals by providing secure access to content, content management, team collaboration, enterprise-wide search, personalization and some business integration through small applications called “portlets”.

Enterprise web portals improve daily tasks for employees called “knowledge workers”, who excel at finding and collecting information. However, portals do not meet the needs of all employees. Creative workers lack tools to brainstorm and strategize. Problem solvers lack a way to learn from others, share their findings and see problems from end to end. Scientists, factory workers and other “doer” workers lack ways to interact with the real world through the portal (Moore & Driver, 2005).

Connie Driver and Erika Moore from Forrester Research coined the term “Information Workplace” (IW) to define how portals will meet the needs of all employees, not just knowledge workers. While they predict the Information Workplace is more than five years away, many business professionals believe some of its features will arrive in only two to five years. There are many portal vendors on the market, but in order to deliver the Information Workplace in the next few years, the predominant vendors will have the best chance for success. The question is, which of the predominant vendors will deliver the Information Workplace?


What is the Information Workplace?

In 2006, Moore and Driver studied the future of enterprise portals to determine how they would evolve to serve the needs of knowledge, creative, problem-solving and productive workers. They predicted that the enterprise portal will meet this need by evolving into the “Information Workplace” (Moore & Driver, 2006, p 1). According to Moore & Driver:

The information workplace (IW) will be much simpler, yet richer than today's tools by incorporating contextual, role-based information from business systems, applications and processes; delivering voice, documents, rich media, process models, business intelligence, and real-time analytics; integrating just-in-time eLearning; and fostering collaboration.

To deliver the full Information Workplace, portal vendors must find ways to deliver more contextual awareness, real-time and team collaboration tools, tighter integration with alternative devices (PDAs, cell-phones) and customized business process integration.

Regardless of how long it will take to deliver, near-term realization of the IW seems to hinge on a portal’s integration with collaboration tools, email, scheduling, document management and business processes (Levitt, Quirk, 2006).

Therefore, the vendor who provides seamless integration between these features will likely deliver the long-term benefits of the Information Workplace as well.

Currently, none of the predominant portals can provide the IW, but three will contend for the title: IBM Websphere, Microsoft Sharepoint, and BEA Aqualogic. (Gootzit, 2006). Forrester’s survey reported that many business owners believe Microsoft and IBM will likely deliver the IW (Driver & Moore, 2006), even though BEA is one of the predominant portal vendors, and favored to deliver the IW by Gartner (BEA, 2006). All three vendors are planning to provide some of the near-term benefits of the Information Workplace. Between IBM, Microsoft and BEA, which is best positioned to deliver the Information Workplace?


How will IBM Deliver the Information Workplace?

IBM’s enterprise portal, Websphere, is a Java-based framework within which companies can provide traditional portal features, such as departmental home pages. Lotus Workplace provides team workspaces, instant messaging, presence awareness and web conferencing. Lotus Notes provides email, calendars and scheduling for employees. Until now, these tools did not work well together and failed to deliver true integrated collaboration for all employees.

Integrated business processes require a tight coupling between portal software and business applications. If a company is heavily invested in Java technology, they will benefit from the Java framework upon which Websphere is built. Integrating with .NET applications will be more difficult due to the infrastructure required to support two platforms (Harney, 2005).

IBM recently added its Lotus Workplace to Websphere portal, which will ensure tighter integration between office productivity and the company portal (Rymer, 2006). IBM’s collaboration suite may integrate well with Websphere, but they do not plan to provide the same integration with either Microsoft or BEA portals.

The upcoming version of Websphere will integrate new Web 2.0 features such as Wikis and Blogs, which will further enhance employee interaction and move Websphere closer to the Information Workplace (Leon, 2007).

Because of the tighter integration between Websphere and Workplace, and the common platform upon which they are built, IBM is in a good position to deliver integrated collaboration tools. That makes IBM a good bet to deliver near-term benefits of the Information Workplace.


How will Microsoft Deliver the Information Workplace?

Microsoft’s enterprise portal, Sharepoint Portal Services, is a .NET-based framework that provides traditional portal features. Windows Sharepoint Services provide individual team workspaces for project discussions, planning and document management. Sharepoint Portal Services provide search, document management and authentication across many Windows Sharepoint Services. Microsoft Office provides employee email, calendaring and productivity tools.

Office 2007 will tightly integrate with Windows Sharepoint Services and work seamlessly together to improve employee collaboration (White, 2006). This will provide a boost to Sharepoint as a serious portal environment and will prod other vendors to pursue similar integration (Leon, 2007).

As with Java environments, if a company uses .NET technology heavily, they will benefit from the .NET-based Sharepoint portal (Harney, 2005). Integrating with Java applications will be more difficult due to the infrastructure required to support two platforms.

Microsoft’s collaboration and office productivity suites may integrate well with Sharepoint, but they do not plan to provide the same integration with either IBM or BEA products.

Because of the tighter integration between Sharepoint and Office, and the common platform upon which they are built, Microsoft is also well-positioned to deliver integrated collaboration tools. That makes Microsoft a frontrunner to deliver the first stages of the Information Workplace.


How will BEA Deliver the Information Workplace?

BEA Aqualogic User Interaction is the combination of Plumtree portal (acquired in 2005) with BEA Weblogic portal. Aqualogic portal, based on either Java or .NET, provides traditional portal features, including departmental home pages (called “Communities”) and team collaboration, document management and search capability. BEA Aqualogic Collaboration provides team collaboration, discussions and project planning. Collaboration is seamlessly integrated with Aqualogic, but is not seamlessly integrated with email and calendaring tools. BEA Aqualogic Publisher and Knowledge Directory provide content and document management seamlessly within the Aqualogic UI platform, but is not seamlessly integrated with office productivity tools.

Integration with email and calendar vendors is possible within BEA Aqualogic, but not automatically. BEA does not provide its own suite of office productivity tools, so it relies on custom integration with other vendors, or sacrifices the benefits of seamless integration.

Due to BEA’s heterogeneous architecture, and its need to integrate with both Java and .NET platforms, Aqualogic is the best fit for companies that need to bring together different content systems, search repositories and custom applications (Harney, 2006).

BEA’s plan for the Information Workplace includes new Web 2.0 features included in the latest Aqualogic platform, and new collaboration options built into its collaboration, content and document management suites (Leon, 2007).

BEA’s collaboration and content management suites are not as widely used as IBM or Microsoft’s, and neither vendor’s suite integrates seamlessly with BEA. Therefore, BEA is at a disadvantage in providing the near-term benefits of the information workplace. BEA’s best integration with existing tools is with Microsoft products. They plan to provide a Sharepoint console, through which multiple Windows Sharepoint Services spaces can be surfaced (White, 2006).


Conclusion

The long-term features of the Information Workplace do not yet exist, but portal vendors already plan to deliver some of the near-term features. Integrated collaboration, office productivity and business processes will pave the way for further improvements down the road. The vendor who provides seamless integration between these three elements will likely provide the long-term benefits, as well.

The above evidence supports either Microsoft or IBM to deliver the near-term benefits of the Information Workplace. Both vendors plan to provide seamless integration between their collaboration and office productivity tools. While BEA’s Aqualogic integrates best in heterogeneous environments, it lacks robust, widely used collaboration and productivity tools, and must integrate with the more popular IBM or Microsoft products.

Between Microsoft and IBM, the victor may depend on which vendor eventually dominates the market for all of these services. If IBM and Microsoft continue to compete almost equally in the enterprise software market, they will develop different versions of the Information Workplace. For CIO’s, the decision may already be made by the company’s established platform. If a company is heavily invested in .NET technology and Microsoft productivity tools, Sharepoint may be the most cost-effective solution. However, if a company is heavily invested in Java technology and IBM services, IBM Websphere seems the most logical choice.

None of these vendors has determined how to provide the long-term benefits of the Information Workplace at an enterprise level. Small, experimental companies will likely develop these long-term features, and large enterprise vendors will likely acquire those who fit their Information Workplace vision. Watch IBM, Microsoft or BEA to see who they acquire to learn how the Information Workplace will evolve.


References

BEA. (2006, April). State of the Portal Market 2006: Portals and the New Wisdom of the Enterprise. Retrieved March 10 from BEA 2006 State of the Portal Market WP.

Driver, E., Moore, C. (2006, April 27) The Information Workplace: Who Wants It And When? Retrieved March 5, 2007 from The Information Workplace: Who Wants It and When?.

Gootzit, D., et al. (2006, May 16) Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products 2006. Gartner. Retrieved from BEA article cited above. BEA 2006 State of the Portal Market WP.

Levitt, M., Quirk, K. (2006, June). Retrieved March 10 from EBSCO Host database, KM World, 15 Issue 6. KM World, 15 Issue 6, p8-9, 2p.

Leon, M. (2007, Jan 1). Enterprise Platform and App Giants Take Web 2.0 to Heart. Retrieved March 1, 2007 from App Giants Take Web 2.0 to Heart.

Moore, C., Driver, E. (2005, June 1). The Information Workplace Will Redefine The World Of Work At Last. Retrieved March 1, 2007 from The Info Workplace will Redefine the World of Work At Last.

Things that make you go...hmm.

Ok, I'll have to admit I get a little jealous of what I see out in Web 2.0 land...not really because I'm not lucky enough to have started some of these ingenious companies. Mostly because I haven't been able to take part in designing them.

My wife thinks I'm a little mad because I don't have an iPhone, and because I didn't wait in line for one, that I'm a little ticked that everyone's going to have one but me.

I wish that were the case.

I am extremely inspired by the iPhone. However, I would have given my left kneecap to have helped design it =].

For some inspiring words on what Web 2.0 really means, and how content (not just design) is reshaping the Internet and the way we do things, take a look here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Just had one of those days...

When you're on the computer all day and you get that one last email right before you leave...

The Usability of Usability Reports

From the "let's be more efficient" file...

I often straddle the line between developer, designer and usability practitioner, and I've noticed that usability reports aren't often delivered in a very usable format.

Typically, when a usability group does a study or review they like to deliver their results in PDF or Powerpoint format.  When development groups need to act on recommendations in a report, they typically need to enter each recommendation in another document, spreadsheet or bug-tracking tool.  Since PDF doesn't make it easy to copy and paste text, and Powerpoint documents typically use much larger fonts than necessary, it would help if usability folks would deliver a text-only copy of their recommendations along with any report they deliver.

The danger here, I've heard, is that the development group can always doctor the recommendations and hide things they don't want others to see.  While this is a semi-valid concern - I've seen whole reports ignored, but have rarely seen a doctored report - the likelihood is still there, it's just a little more difficult.  The practice is akin to turning off the right-mouse menu in a web page, to prevent people from viewing its source:  persistent users will find a way to view the source, while casual users will be mighty ticked that you prevented them from opening a link in a new window.