Cennydd Bowles on user experience.

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!?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

It’s said there are more books about chess than all other games combined.

To non-players, a chess book is an arcane mystery of jumbled letters and references to openings with such exotic names as the Nimzo-Indian Defence, the Nescafé Frappé Attack, and the Sicilian Najdorf Poisoned Pawn Variation.

But notation is deceptively simple. Each move simply lists the moving piece and the co-ordinates of its destination. Be4 is a bishop move to a central square. Rxa8 tells us the rook is capturing whatever’s in the top-left corner.

So far, so functional. However, chess notation also provides means of passing judgment on the moves. Expert annotators earn their living by peppering games with punctational shorthand:

These symbols can be combined. ?! denotes a dubious, but not awful, move. !? is used to mark an novel idea that looks promising but may prove to be unsound.

It’s the !? moves that I’m most interested in.

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Eyetracking Web Usability – review

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Time to pick sides: Jakob Nielsen has written an eyetracking book. I can scarcely think of a more divisive pairing: mention either within earshot of a UX aficionado and you’re in for impassioned advocacy or scornful ridicule. Me? I’ll confess both subject and author have left me unconvinced in the past, but I approached Nielsen and co-author Kara Pernice‘s new book with curiosity and as objective an outlook as I could muster.

Eyetracking Web Usability is the outcome of the largest eyetracking study ever undertaken: 1.5 million fixations from 300 participants. Nielsen and Pernice are clearly keen to stress the magnitude and legitimacy of their research. Their test script, posted in full, is well considered and comprehensive, covering a range of tasks representative of real web use.

After a brief recap of eye physiology and saccades, the book begins in earnest with a detailed breakdown of research methods. Findings then stretch across chapters discussing specific web elements in turn: navigation, forms, images and so on. At their best, these chapters reveal flashes of usefulness. A chart of eye fixations versus layout density shows minimal correlation, demonstrating that busy pages simply dilute attention from the most important information. The book also touches on the important role of information scent and microcopy, declaring insightfully that “a link is a promise”.

In typical Nielsen style the text is heavily punctuated by summary boxes. Sadly, it quickly becomes apparent that these make the point just as effectively as the full text. Eyetracking Web Usability is all fat, no meat. Wasted space includes a page on why a 7-point Likert scale is better than a 5-point one, and five pages on male users’ propensity to fixate on dog genitals. The writing, meanwhile, veers from redundant to simply cringeworthy: “Give that Wii a rest, and go prioritise your Web page layout design. You can do it!”

A chapter on adverts (whose raison d’être is of course to attract the eye) starts promisingly. An ad has a 36% chance of being seen by a user, a figure surprisingly unaffected by user task. However, it soon descends into known generalities: banner blindness and users’ dislike of irrelevant advertising. The chapter encapsulates Eyetracking Web Usability’s main shortcoming. Eyetracking demands specificity: carefully planned tasks on an individual site. Nielsen and Pernice’s 300-person test can only dilute potentially salient points into generalisations that even a novice designer will already know. The conclusions cover ground so well trodden as to be barren.

Despite the authors’ focus on rigour and transparency, serious concerns surround the research methods themselves. Heatmaps from the tests are dated from late 2005. With lab time accounting for five months, the study was therefore complete by summer 2006. Why then was this book not published until the brink of 2010? It is hard to avoid the impression that the results sat untouched for years and were subsequently rushed out in a lull of client work. Eyetracking Web Usability also misses a huge opportunity by focusing solely on informational websites. Web apps are discounted since eyetracking can’t handle dynamic elements, including Ajax and even dropdowns. The results are thus only valid for an increasingly small part of the UX designer’s 2010 workload.

Most worryingly of all, it seems that the tests were conducted in Internet Explorer 6. Browser choice does not appear to have been offered to users, and where browser chrome is shown (it is stripped in the vast majority of the heatmaps), it is unmistakeably IE6. If this is indeed the case, it nullifies many findings since the primary browser innovation of the 2000s – the tab – is unavailable. In IE6 a link is an entirely binary choice: go there, or stay here. Modern browsers allow an important new behaviour: Open In New Tab, creating tentative and plural navigation steps. It’s likely Nielsen’s participants relied far more on the Back button and their short-term memory than today’s users. Their search engine use is also likely to be different, since IE6 lacks an inbuilt search box in the UI.

Eyetracking Web Usability thus lacks the rigour required to be taken seriously as an empirical work; however, its adherence to factual reportage make it a chore to read. Even the most ardent enthusiast will skip over paragraphs that merely disclose participant actions in minute detail. It’s sixth form science at best; utterly literal, over-eager for the praise of the adjudicators. The effect is exacerbated by the disappointingly scant acknowledgment of others’ work. Few external insights or breakthroughs are admitted, although NN/g reports are of course suggested as ways for the reader to supplement his knowledge.

The book’s conclusion will come as no surprise to the reader. “Eyetracking fills in the details… Most companies should not bother conducting their own eyetracking studies.” It is hard to disagree. The book does nothing for the eyetracking industry except cement its status as an expensive diversion; the excessive cover price of £44 only reinforces this. If this is the accumulated wisdom of the largest eyetracking survey in history, we can safely consider the technology inconsequential.

Remember those design principles you learned ten years ago? Eyetracking shows they’re right. Carry on.

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Next to godliness

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

In a 2010-inspired outburst of premature spring cleaning, I’ve been tidying. You’ll notice a fresh design and cleaner code for the blog. As with all personal projects it’s a work in progress – the typography in particular will evolve with the advent of certain font licensing applications.

Desktop '10

In the physical domain, I’ve finally given the new iMac space to breathe, accompanied only by my printer and the artefacts of my emerging stationery fetish. I’m becoming more interested in how pictures can complement words, and I hope to spend as much of the year sketching as writing.

How long my workspace and mindset will stay this pristine is anyone’s guess, but for now it really does feel like a new year.

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Looking back, looking forward

Monday, December 21st, 2009

2009 has been kind.

Professionally it’s been unsurpassed, despite the recession. Clearleft have grown to double figures, moved into a studio with decent wallspace, produced some great work, run two successful conferences and were humbled to be voted Agency Of The Year in the .net awards.

As the office winds down, colleagues jet off overseas and lunches linger into the afternoon, thoughts turn to gifts and time off. Since I opt out of the commercial trappings of the season, I’ve chosen this year to make my annual donation to WWF and Reprieve, two fantastic clients I’ve worked with this year. I’ll be spending a unique Christmas on a military base. In lieu of ubiquitous WiFi, it’ll be an opportunity to spend time with family, read, write and get my breath back.

2010 will be a year of abundance – and the first casualty, sadly, will be my carbon footprint. I have three speaking gigs booked so far (South by Southwest, the IA Summit and UX London) and as a punter I’m hoping to grab a seat at Paris’s Content Strategy Forum, Berlin’s UXCampEurope and New York’s Design for Conversion. But of course 2010 is likely to be dominated by the book. Emails are a-flying and chapters are a-forming. More on that soon.

Thanks for sharing this year with me and here’s to the next one! Merry Christmas.

{PS. It’s also the done thing to list your favourite albums of the decade. In no order, I’ll throw out Michigan, Tarot Sport, Change, Turn On The Bright Lights and Leaves Turn Inside You.}

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May links

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

In the absence of sufficient time to finish my drafts, some interesting reading:

I wouldn’t have got round to reading many of these if it weren’t for the marvellous Instapaper iPhone app, which I highly recommend. Having my to-read backlog to accompany my daily commute has been a godsend. More thoughts on the commute later.

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The h1 debate

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Warning: There follows an arcane debate about HTML semantics, which will be extremely tedious to some.

Today has seen a minor revival of one the web’s perennial debates: whether the site header or page header is the most important. Its trivial intractability is perhaps only exceeded by the old UI chestnut of whether positive confirmation buttons should go on the left or right (think OK/Cancel versus Prev/Next). Frankly, it matters little, but I can’t sleep and I’m not one to miss out on a nuanced semantic debate.

Right now, you’re on my site Ineffable, reading a post The h1 debate. So which is the most important header on the page? Whichever is chosen should be marked up as an <h1> (the HTML for the topmost header) for reasons of search engine optimisation, clean code, and so on.

The case for the site header

A purist might say that semantically and logically the site’s name is the primary tier. This would mean the hierarchy for this paragraph is: Ineffable > The h1 debate > The case for the site header.

While perhaps correct from an ontological perspective (a site has many articles, with many sub-sections), this has the drawback that the <h1> is the same for every page on the site. This is bad for search engines and may make orientation more different for those using screen readers. I also have a more fundamental concern, namely that this imposes a model that matches the designer’s understanding, but not the user’s.

The case for the page title

Pedantry is often important when it comes to good markup, but here I believe pragmatism must win out. This pragmatism arises when looking at the problem from the user’s perspective.

A user arriving at the site may indeed want to orientate themselves by seeing the name of the site, but their main goal is to find relevant information. This is particularly the case if they’ve come via a search engine, wherein they entered text of interest to them and leapt straight into the article itself.

The most important thing to a user is therefore what the page is about. This topic is far more likely to be represented by its title than the site name, and it’s logical that this title should be marked up as the <h1>.

My chosen hierarchy for this section is therefore The h1 debate > The case for the page title, with Ineffable possibly coming in as an <h3>. Note that, while an <h3> may be a subsection of <h2>, this isn’t demanded by the spec; and I think this is the right solution for this particular site.

This said, the answer may be that design classic “it depends” – with contributory factors including the size of the site, its purpose, and user behaviour. Particularly for small sites where users frequently navigate from the homepage down, I could see a site name <h1> being appropriate, while large sites with lots of ‘deep link’ traffic would be better suited by a page title <h1>.

Footnote: Clearly my position ought to be backed up by my source code. However, as it happens, the markup of my current template gets it completely wrong. This will be fixed in the upcoming redesign.

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January links

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

Edited highlights of recent delicious additions:

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Recent listens

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Musically, 2008 was a pipe and slippers year for me. I didn’t buy much, I didn’t play much, and I took comfort in the songs that I’d known and loved for years. To tell the truth, I was concerned that I’d lost interest in the scene altogether: the effort required to keep up seemed too great. (Actually, that was largely caused by having too many sources of clutter in my life, which I’m starting to cut. But that’s another story.)

The last few weeks have been wildly different. Not only am I writing and playing music again, but I’ve indulged in much of the new music I’d missed out on, thanks to the happy co-occurrence of Amazon’s MP3 store, having a few spare quid, and a host of Albums Of 2008 lists for inspiration. So here are some of the albums I’ve been appreciating recently.

No Age - NounsNo Age – Nouns

Without hesitation my record of 2008. Despite potential for trendy scenester haircut crap, this is one of those ass-kicking records that puts a grin on your face the louder you play it. Despite nods to MBV and J&MC, it’s a fresh, energetic and very modern blast of indie rock.

mppAnimal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

It’s hard to judge after just ten hours, but those who are already lumping this in the Album Of The Decade category may have a point. Feels like the natural and perfect convergence of the Animal Collective direction: less psychedelic, even more beautiful, and no less wonderfully strange. My Girls, in particular, is probably a classic.

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever AgoFleet Foxes - Fleet FoxesBon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago / Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

I lump these together as two excellent examples of what I term in no derogatory way ‘boring music’. The Fleet Foxes effort is perhaps more saccharine, but both share a folky aesthetic common to many recent alt-folkers: Sufjan, Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart etc. No fireworks or surprises, just beautifully-formed melodies.

Ponytail - Ice Cream SpiritualPonytail – Ice Cream Spiritual

A three-way fight between Deerhoof, Bis and Melt Banana, with whooping animal vocals and shiny guitar lines whose quirk and energy bely massive complexity. Gutted to miss them live last year (their Brighton date clashed with dConstruct).

Gang Gang Dance - Saint DymphnaGang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna

Self-consciously esoteric, eclectic but yet a sound very much their own. Highlight has to be the astonishing broadside that is Princes, a genuine (and awesome) grime/dubstep track nestling in comfortably on a very experimental album.

Kanye West - 808s and HeartbreakKanye West – 808s and Heartbreak

A curious mix of auto-tune, funereal dirges (particularly the opening track), pop beats and self-pity. Can’t help wondering how much is purely contrived, but this is a fine outpouring of pain regardless.

Addendum: Can’t help noticing these are all American bands. Where on earth has the British music scene gone?

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