Flightpath's User Experience Designer was published in iMedia Connection this month.  The article outlined four essential tips for creating social media that is usable and engaging including:

• Learning what your user's social media behaviors are.
• Creating a social media space that makes sense in your consumer's lives.
• Supporting ease-of-use with basic usability best practices
• Joining the conversation with your consumers in a way that is meaningful and supportive.

Read the full article here: 4 steps for creating usable social media

It’s always interesting to me when I hear about people in completely foreign lines of work that share similar professional challenges to those of us in the digital marketing industry.  Over the weekend, I was confronted with two very interesting stories that seemed aligned with some of the issues we face when developing and rolling out web sites intended to achieve business goals on behalf of Flightpath clients. 

While stuck in traffic on Friday, I heard a story on NPR about the Airtrain that connects JFK airport to the NYC subway system.  As reported by WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein, five years after its inception, the AirTrain draws 5 million passengers a year despite confusing signage and insufficient passenger information.  Listening to the story, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to challenges we face in creating simple, usable, user-friendly web sites.  This is a fascinating story for anyone who creates web sites or is considering commissioning creation of one.

Next, the weekly Public Editor column in Sunday’s New York Times titled ‘How Did This Happen?’ chronicled a comedy of errors (seven, in fact) that made their way into Times reporting rushed into print around the death of Walter Cronkite.  The newspaper printed wrong dates, incorrect information about Cronkite’s work, and more. 

Apparently, many of rules and processes the Times employs to check facts and approve stories fell by the wayside as they rushed to meet deadlines.  Anyone that’s ever been involved in web site quality assurance will likely understand the cascade of events chronicled in this thought-provoking story and remember checks and balances they’ve implemented in order to circumvent similar problems.

Author Clark Hoyt explains that ‘seemingly little mistakes, when they come in such big clusters, undermine the authority of a newspaper.’  The same holds true for a web site.

There has been a lot of talk at the conferences and panels I have been attending lately about the convergence of PR, marketing, branding, communications and, well, you name it, online. While presenting her case study on peoplepets.com at the recent Business Development Institute Social Media Communications Leadership Forum, Kimberly Miller, VP of Consumer Marketing at People.com, talked about how social media could become a vehicle for gathering usability feedback for one of their new social networks. That was something I had not heard lately. 

Before Kimberly presented, JetBlue’s Morgan Johnston, a regular BDI presenter and all around good guy, highlighted JetBlue's policy change to not charge the same 50 bucks for fold up bikes that fit into a carry on bag. This policy change was made based on  feedback from JetBlue's twitter followers.  Seems pretty obvious, but why not listen to the people using your social media to help guide your design?  Next thing you know someone is going to actually ask the good folks in the corporate call centers what people are complaining about regarding the websites when they call in!

As my regular readers know I love to talk about the ultimate value of usability (Momma Said Knock U(sability) Out, and Can't afford usability testing? Think again) I applaud Time Inc’s recognition that listening to the users is what matters most and then combine this social media driven feedback with a traditional battery of usability testing to make the appropriate adjustments after six months of operation. 

Way to go Kimberly! And you too Morgan… I need to get myself one of those fold up bikes. Then I guess I can finally take those ugly bike racks off the top of my Jetta and put the bike in the trunk.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project published a report last week outlining Generations Online in 2009.   The findings of this report are two fold: first it illuminates that there are a growing number of older users engaging in technology (and specifically the web); secondly it distinguishes between the different activities each generation is engaging in.  From online banking to social networking the reach of the web is steadily growing and in somewhat surprising market sectors.

Understanding how each generation uses the web can give us further insight into how to design for our users.   The table below represents a small portion of the study and was taken from the Pew Internet & American Life Project study mentioned above.

Source for Online Teens data: Pew Internet & American Life Project Surveys conducted Oct-Nov 2006 and Nov 2007-Feb 2008.  Margin of error for online teens is ±4% for Oct-Nov 2006 and ± 3% for Nov 2007-Feb 2008. Source for Online Adult data: Pew Internet & American Life Project Surveys conducted August 2006, Feb-March 2007, Aug-Sept 2007, Oct-Dec 2007, May 2008, August 2008, November 2008, and December 2008.  Margin of error for all online adults is ±3%, the average margin of error for each age group can be considerably higher than ± 3%, particularly for the “Matures” and “After Work” age groups.  See Methodology for average margins of error for each generational group.

* No teen data for these activities  

If your user demographic is of an older generation, adding that social networking piece may not be the cost effective way to reach them.  Instead, harness their natural tendencies and invest in Search Engine Optimization so that you can be found easily when they are doing their research.  Also, adding a robust search engine within your site and articles with good copy directly responds to their methodical approach to the web and research.

For users who are younger and using the web for social networking, creativity, content sharing and their primary source for communication and entertainment, creating that Facebook page may be the wisest investment and may reach the widest audience.  Harnessing their more techno-savvy natures also means using creative means to become more engaging.  Utilize video, music, and technology that fits into the palm of their hands.

Many times we see companies eager to have a real presence “on the web” and in doing so a desire to use the latest technology to reach their users without knowing what current user trends are.

To be fair, these rules are not hard-and-fast.  There are many older adults who use social networking online, though usually via Twitter and not necessarily Facebook or MySpace.   As techno-savvy as they are, younger users who are using MySpace and Facebook, do not know of Twitter’s existence.  Search Engine Optimization is important for all users and all websites, and I would always recommend making your site easier to find.

Online strategy and marketing means really understanding who your users are and what corners of the web they occupy.  Shot-gun approaches that hit the latest fads aren’t necessarily hitting the bull’s-eye.

At Flightpath, we aspire to deliver web solutions for our clients that go beyond a functional solution and actually inspire surprise and delight in users.  With that background in mind, I’d have to say that I was shocked when visiting the U.S. Department of State’s web site dedicated to passport renewals.

• Messaging and iconography on the site was clear and to the point.

• Form fields were well laid out and error messaging was self-explanatory

• Editing information was hassle free

• It was easy to save and print information

Overall, they took a process that I found incredibly daunting in the offline world (would I have to go to the post office? a passport office? what were the fees? what were the required methods of payment) and used the web’s inherent ability to forge a unique flow based on my own personal needs (expired passport, at my disposal, issued within the past 15 years) to make a bureaucratic experience surprisingly delightful.  Nice work!

I start this piece by making one assumption--everyone is a Facebook  user. 

Isn’t that what makes social communities great? When they have hit a critical mass of users? Your entire community of close friends, family, coworkers, old college buddies, business acquaintances, and that girl you met at the Digital Wednesday’s networking event are all hanging out together in your Facebook friends list.

Now let me ask a rather blunt rhetorical question, “Would you invite all of these people over for Thanksgiving dinner?” Let me put things into my perspective.

My father just recently sent me a friend request, which unfortunately is still sitting in my inbox, after seeing me over Thanksgiving. My girlfriend’s sister rolled her eyes for denying her friend request after I tried to explain, “My Facebook page is really just for work purposes.”

My friends list is quite small, only consisting of coworkers and a handful of close clients. I have deliberately kept my personal   life separate from my Facebook one. This is not out of fear of possibly inappropriate content, but of the calamity that would occur if all the pieces of my social life melded into one unified bucket.

There is a huge opportunity for Facebook to expand its breadth from simple social networking into a true relationship management tool. No one   has just “friends” in his or her life. We dissect our social life mainly into family, work, and play. How are these very distinct aspects of our real social life going to interact in this digital social stew? I understand the argument—interpersonal transparency can be the catalyst for social discovery; however, we manage the relationships in our lives differently than how Facebook currently presents it to us. 

About a year ago, Facebook added a new feature that allowed those of us who have 5,000 friends to manage that immense data slurry into user-created categories. However these user-created categories are little more than a light contact list-building tool. This is the first step in the direction that I propose below. 

Facebook should allow you to designate your own categories for people in your friends list. Each of these created “friend categories” could have a separate sub-profile page where a user could design a page around that unique social interaction. This could simply all boil down to a privacy setting. You allow one category of friends to see a certain module on your profile. If a friend on your other list views your profile page, they would simply not see the module.

If you created a category of friends called “business networking” Facebook could finally be used as a quasi-Linkedin without the fear of your business prospect seeing pictures of you at the MTV beach party in Cabo last summer.

This would open a huge opportunity for Facebook to capitalize on the business side of our social communities. Lord knows as much as we all love Linkedin, there is little "social interaction" beyond the prospect of upward career mobility, which does not usually make for great conversation. 

I wish I could create a friend category called “work” and use Facebook as an internal communication and content management system. Most companies  already use Instant Messenger as a more efficient way to communicate internally than email. IM poses its own set of similar issues. If you use the same IM username for work and at home, while you’re at work your friends outside of the company are just one tempting click away to distract you. To circumvent this whole issue I have created a IM  account specifically for work—but, if my idea happened, I wouldn’t have to.  

Facebook would do the filtering for me, and I could finally become digital friends with my girlfriend’s sister, my coworkers, my clients—and my dad.  

A number of us at Flightpath recently attended the conference, The Future of Web Design. 

While there were many informative presentations, I was reminded of just how young “the Web” is as a field.  

In his lecture on “The Future of Web App Interface Design,” Ryan Singer of 37 signals made numerous points as to how to use text sizing and interface around the screen to enhance a user’s understanding of their applications. 

I appreciated that he is bringing such knowledge to light, but I couldn’t help but shake my head, “We knew this stuff decades ago for server-side application design!” 

The web is very young, indeed.  On the one hand, it is an exciting, unbounded space where we can explore movement and art and interface; but at the same time, this idea of “novelty and freshness” often blinds designers and developers to what we have learned from years of software development and interface design.  The computer and IT industry has been available for the masses since the 1970s--we’ve certainly learned a lot in that time. 

I have to wonder, are we designers so arrogant because of our relatively new sandbox (i.e.,“the web”) that we cannot look to the lengthy history of Human Factors (or Ergonomics) and Software Design and use it to our advantage?  Does our pride condemn us to reinventing the wheel? 

Do we really think that text sizing and placement as usability enhancements is a new revelation?

OK, I’m mounting my high horse a little bit and need to take a step down.  Yes,  the web is a new, wonderful playground that offers many options that your regular old server-side apps do not.  

The possibilities of social interaction + application are so exciting.  They’re something we’ve never seen or done before (in the long history of development I mean).

Let’s be clear--I love designing for this playground; that’s why I do it.  I do think it would behoove us, though, to give some props to the history of development and our design forefathers, a nod to the psychologists who originally opened our eyes to Learning Theory, Cognition and Perception. 

So, thank you, B.F. Skinner, for teaching us how to learn and about human behavior. 

Thank you, World War II fighter plane designers, for keeping your pilots in mind and for teaching us the psychology and production of the man-machine organism.  Your work led us to the Ergonomics and Human-Computer Interaction field. 

Thank you, Douglas Engelbart, for imagining how information can be displayed on all kinds of screens and contexts. 

Thank you, researchers at MIT and Xerox.  Thank you, IBM, Apple, and Microsoft for pushing technology to what we know it to be today. ...and a multitude of others not contained in this blog post.

The web has reached its adolescence because of your efforts. 

We are still child-like with wonderment, but we are also growing up and becoming self-aware.  

We can do so much, and the possibilities are limited only to what we can imagine.  We should be looking ahead, using what we know from our history, cognition, perception and design to make the web come alive.  

We now realize that people actually have to use this stuff. 

P.S  -- If you want some serious schooling, check out some eye-movement heat maps -- but that's a whole other post.

I was fascinated to read the obituary of one Lou Dorfsman, the long-time CBS creative director who died last week at age 90. 

Dorfsman joined CBS as an art director back in 1946, was named creative director of CBS television in 1959 and in 1964 he became the director of design for the entire Columbia Broadcasting System.  He was a pioneer in the field now universally recognized as “branding.” 

According to the New York Times, Dorfsman’s graphic design style and aesthetic sensibility presented CBS ads and corporate communications via “clear typography, simple slogans and smart illustration.”  This was in contrast to the accepted advertising design approach in vogue throughout the 40s and 50s which was typically visually mundane and text heavy.

Today, in the world of web 2.0, 3.0 and the rest, it’s eerie to consider just how highly those same attributes (simple, clear, to the point) that Dorfsman harnessed to build the CBS brand are valued as good web site design.  Even the cover of the CBS annual report shown here, dating back to 1981, has a lot in common with a well-designed web page.