COM597_IVS_Bing_TermProject 

COM597_IVS_Bing_Presentation

COM597_IVS_Bing_Report

Our class assignments helped me complement a theoretical knowledge acquired during the lectures with the practical understanding of basic design principles. The biggest take away from it was the terminology as well as methodology on how to translate business ideas into designers’ language: flowcharts, wireframes, etc. From my past experience, the lack of this knowledge can definitely cause some inconveniences or problems.

Looking at a pruduct from a designer’s perspective, it is easier to figure out what exactly makes a product (un)usable. One of the biggest findings was that very often a part of product’s usability is sacrificed towards its coolness and performance. IPhone is the great example: the in-depth analysis shows multiple usability problems with it. However, the Apple team had managed to find the perfect balance between cool design and actual product’s usability: e.g. on-screen keyboard that is extremely cool, but it covers a significant portion of the screen.

From the other side, online (web) design today matters as never before. the ideas and products are so easy to copy and improve, that sometimes battle of the products transforms into the battle of product designs (which is also accurate for a number of non-virtual products). Bing is the great example. My research helped me to understand, that the way search engine is designed to interact with user matters more than I could previuosly think. More intuitive interface, better usage of a space, great colors and some additional design tricks and solutions that help users solve their existing problems is what’s really important.

Talking about other in-class exercises and home assignments, I should mention that they allowed me to take a look at regular things from a completely new perspective. Thinking about how things are designed and thinking how it is possible to improve their usability was totally refreshing. No matter what is it, a desk with built-in computer or a buzz-in button not to interrupt lectures with questions, it’s just an idea that needs more further development and a designer’s touch to become a reality.

Although I don’t see myself as a designer in a future, an advanced knowledge of theories and practice of interactivity would definitely be helpful for a marketing specialist like me. Talking to designers on their language and understanding how they work may help (honestly, this also helps to shut up sometimes and let them do their work, without derailing them with your own “great” suggestions). Anyways, this was a great class, however it could have been a little bit better if we would spend more time studying more general design concepts without unnesessarily long work-shoppish design exercises during the class time.

Unfortunately, I currently don’t have enough resources to research the topic of mobile application developers’ needs, so I can’t proceed without the following disclaimer: I’m currently operating basing on a limited knowledge of the problem, generously brought to me by a major search engine and on my assumptions.

Tools. Did you know that the first rule of social production is: “Give them tools!”? Releasing SDK won’t be enough. Giving developers more tools that help make their lives easier is the very first step to attracting them. Project management tools, bug tracking systems, interactive feedback soliciting form, some kind of a checker for compatibility across devices etc.

Monetization. Although a lot of developers I meet are really smart and have at least some kind of the business vision of products they work on, none of them would refuse to get some kind of assistance with bringing their applications to the market. Offering them a competitive way to marketplace their products would be good enough to create service envy.

Reputation is one of the most powerful non-monetary riches, truly the currency of Internet. Helping developers to create their personal brand and reach a certain level of reputation and recognition can be as powerful as monetary reward. Unfortunately, a brand of cell phone service carrier isn’t the best to be affiliated with from a standpoint of developer’s recognition (comparing with Apple or Motorola): it’s just to broad and doesn’t provide a direct connection to the technology used. However, there is an advantage in that developers could create applications that could be supported on different platforms and not be locked within certain technology.

Social production opportunity could be an additional advantage which could gain more weight once the number of developers using the platform grows.

Let’s see what would it take to upload a new picture to replace the profile icon.

The process of updating (or even accessing) a profile seems to be fairly complicated, making the interface less intuitive. Things are not just where you expect them to be… Subsequently, a small rearrange would fix the problem:

Disclaimer: Although this change seems to be pretty minor, its implementation might require some major changes in how the entire system works. In my opinion, a platform like Media Space should be profile-oriented, not task-oriented like it appears to be now.

Use case

Step 1: User logs in.

Step 2:  User clicks on the “(My) Profile”

Step 3:  User selects “Edit Profile”

Step 4:  User clicks on the “Edit profile icon”

Step 5:  User uploads and crops picture

Step 6:  User clicks “Save” button

First of all, it’s natural curiosity and great marketing efforts behind it. However, in our digital era nothing kills bad product faster than good marketing. Apparently, Microsoft has something else under their belt to make first-time users stick with Bing. My research will reveal, what exactly it is. Better, simpler, and more intuitive interface? New algorithms behind their search? Equipping new Windows 7 and older versions of IE with Bing as a default search engine? My assumptions would be yes, yes, and yes…

However, the question of usability would be the most relevant for this particular case study. I’ve never used Bing before, so my usability tests and further research would have to reveal a couple of really important things:

1. Simplicity. Can you make search even simpler than Google does? Is it what the users want? Maybe they want something else? What is it? How does Bing’s interface address those needs?

2. Intuitive interface. How is it designed? What are possible tasks the end users would want to accomplish? How well is Bing’s design thought through for the completion of these tasks? What could be done to make it better?

3. Innovative  solutions. What’s new? What makes Bing different? What’s better and what’s worse?

My goal for the next several weeks is to use Bing for all of my search needs and find out what are the main factors that make it (un)successful.

According to multiple online and offline user reviews, iPhone seems to be almost perfect from the usability standpoint. I’ve been using it for a little while, and have to mention that it’s really hard to find some usability imperfections in it.

It’s pretty obvious that Apple engineers had to sacrifice a part of iPhone’s usability to its coolness and performance. The iPhone has a couple of minor to moderate disadvantages, but most of the users are pretty happy with their device.

The first and the biggest usability challenge is definitely a touch-screen keyboard that has tiny buttons and covers a significant portion of a screen. The problem of tiny buttons is not new and almost all the phones I’ve used have it. It’s pretty much impossible to create a large enough keyboard that could be used without any constraints without the increasing a device size.

iPhone’s 3.5-in., 480-by-320 resolution display screen is large enough to browse the web using a regular browser and read for a while without your eyes getting tired. However, when you need a keyboard, a half of the screen is getting effectively covered with it, and another half might not be large enough even to see entire login form without scrolling. The horizontal keyboard definitely works better than the vertical one, but it’s available only in Safari.

Five-hour battery life in a combination with non-replaceable battery is definitely the another poor usability factor. A huge back lit screen that has to be constantly on in order to actually use the device as well as browsing the web on 3G speeds literally drains the battery. Unfortunately, 5 hours is not always enough to carry a “heavy” user through the entire day, so you have to either rely on your laptop to do some of the tasks you could have used your iPhone for, or fight the fear that you won’t be next to a charging receptacle outlet when you would really need it.

Camera. A built-in fixed-focus 2.0 megapixel camera is relatively good for a cell phone camera, especially in the combination with a number of additional applications that enhance camera performance. The only disadvantage of the camera is its location: located on the back of the phone, it doesn’t make it easy to use it for video conferencing (think about Skype application) which is pretty unacceptable for such kind of an interactive device.

Ability to run only one application at a time: in our world where almost everybody is used to multitasking, such kind of a limitation has a very big impact on the usability. Users can’t switch between different apps and therefore copy and pasting doesn’t really work. Try including several links from your browser into a single email… Pretty tough, isn’t it?

Flash and Java browser’s restrictions don’t make too much of a difference at a first glance, – a lot of flash websites worth looking at have HTML version anyways; however, with the spreading use of flash technologies in building more interactive interfaces, it becomes more and more of a usability limitation.

For some reason, not too many people talk about it on Flip the Media blog (which is a little bit surprising). Thus, I’m going to fill this gap…

First of all, I would really love to see some kind of a reputation system that would be able to drive collaboration and provide an additional motivation to contribute. To create a viable model of a system like that we would need publicly accessible profiles (showing up in a search) that indicate contributor’s performance by earning reputation via posting content, commenting and rating other posts.

Another idea is to create publicly accessible wiki on the MCDM site for the student groups to work on their projects. All the projects a particular student iss working on should be displayed in his profile, showing his/her area of interests and expertise

Advantages of this approach:
- Unique content (either aggregated from different sources or created in the process of research)
- Defined focus and proper atmosphere of the website (not just posts about everything)
- More students would be providing content
- Contributers gain an additional motivation (each project they are working on is attached to their profile and helps them to build their expertise in a certain area, defined by a project)
- Students do a better job since their work results would be visible to others
- It’s easier for other groups to evaluate their classmates’ work
- This approach helps develop remote collaboration skills

Building an effective reputation system is a difficult task that would require a lot of time and resources. However, the benefit of gaining a control over the direction you want you users to follow would definitely pay off.

Yammer: An Experiment In A “Closed” Tweetspace, post by Kathy on November 12th, caught my attention and I decided to give it a try.

Today, almost 3 months later, I recovered my password and went back to check it out.

There are currently 7 u.washington.edu groups on Yammer. None of them show too much recent activity. 3 of them have 0 messages.

Looks like I wasn’t the only person who didn’t feel Yammer to be a fit for my needs. So, what were the reasons that made me abandon it?

1. Lack of novice. That wasn’t something new, and I was supposed to use this advanced Twitter clone for interacting with people I already followed on Twitter anyways
2. There was no need for the “walled garden”. I didn’t mind my comments to be public
3. Not too many people used it due to the subscription model limitations
4. Inability to integrate Yammer account with other platforms I use (which is pretty obvious in a “walled garden” case)

This case clearly illustrates that Yammer didn’t work either for UW in general or for smaller groups within the UW community for a number of reasons. However, I do believe Yammer is a great solution for smaller businesses with multiple locations that collaborate remotely.