I’ve been in conversation recently with Dirk Knemeyer specifically about UXNet which is emerging to be a broad church for the design of ‘anything people experience’. Dirk is involved in UXnet on the Exec Council and we have been talking about different approaches in starting a new ‘experience’ community. There have been attempts to start this kind of thing before, most notably in my experience the AIGA Experience Design group which still continues

I think that when a discipline is building it gets two opportunties to succeed. One approach is by being accomodated in its precursor disciplines, and another is by shouting to the rooftops that ‘THIS IS DIFFERENT’ and by concentrating on points of difference rather than points of similarity. My view is the more fundamentalist one. I think usability lost its way with Neilsen, it lost sight of the customer/user. This was great while it lasted and we all got jobs, but now the usability culture palls on me. Personally, I look toward radical marketing thought to make my moves forward (Godin, Pine and Gilmore, Carbone), and I see that as the great barrier to broach rather than moving towards the tech.

Having said that, I have spent the last number of years being an integrator. I brought the disparate design and usability groups together at Zendor successfully, through customer focus and IA. I’ve also been a ‘big picture’ man for years. In 1998 I wrote an article for Interactions that included the words:

“HCI can grow by repositioning itself in industry as a discipline that is involved with designing the product interface rather than just the software user interface. If we do this then we leave ourselves free to pursue a broader, more holistic approach that can provide the user with a good experience with the product in its totality?

And I dont think I was far wrong in this in principle. But, when push comes to shove do the HCI community want any of this bigger view? I don’t think so (and its a shame, remember Jonathan Grudins levels of involvement?). Do the ‘behaviourist’ usability community want any of this big view? I don’t think so either, although I do know a number of individuals who think bigger.

So I was invigorated, excited and pleased to read Dirks recent article, the end of usability culture, the title of which I have nicked for this entry, with a question mark added. The US are clearly ahead of the game here, in their experience culture. Our UK usability culture is now, I believe, over the curve but not exhausted yet by any means, we have someway to go. So, with this in mind I think this UXnet has to be the right way, however much it is influenced by the usability aristocracy.

If you are interested, the first meeting for UXNet London is this month at 7.00pm on Thursday, 2 Dec 2004 at University College London Interaction Centre (UCLIC). Its free, but you’ll need to email Joshua Kaufman (the London UK Co-ordinator) uxnet@unraveled.com to confirm your attendance. Mail me (or Joshua) if you want more info.

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It seems I might have been slightly off the mark before when I noted the definition of Disneys ‘weenies’ as “… sensory clues large and small that rise to the level of great compelling details that capture our attention and stay in our memory.” Or maybe not … but I do at least now know the etymology!. Apparently the term refers to the technique used on movie sets of guiding stage dogs by holding up part of a sausage. The classic weenie is the castle at Disneyland: “It draws the eye, and the eye draws the feet, and people walk to the castle at the center of the park.”

I have to say though, I do like the initial definition … maybe that is a redefinition or extension as the term got more accepted and used. It is a bit like Lou Carbones ‘clues’ that prompt and prime customers into percieving the full experience by detail, by form as designed and staged.

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For my company Hawdale Associates, we have started using Morae from Techsmith to support usability and customer experience lab activities. What Morae does, basically, is record the screen, a webcam, an audio track and keyboard, mouse and window activity. Nothing new here particularly, but the clever thing is that it puts it all on one timeline and streams it over a network to another room where you can add your own notes.

I have to say that I was a bit sceptical initially. I have previously used all sorts of techniques, but most recently have used two DV cameras and a screen grab. This provides great quality, but its heavy on the logging and edit. When I first looked at Morae, the video and audio feed was recorded but not streamed and I did not find that useful or practical, definately not worth buying for the kinds of labs I have found useful. Having added the video and audio in 1.1 released at the beginning of this month I can now recommend it. The fact that everything is coordinated on one timeline is great, it really allows you to free your mind to insight rather than writing notes. Highly recommended.

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Check these statistics

• 57% of adults have access to the internet - web users in Britain are 27.8 million
• 5 million broadband users
• ?770 each spent on internet per year

Wow, I hear you say, this internet thing is really beginning to take off … but I think that if you look a bit harder behind the stats there is something a little more ominous. Try these stats, from the same sources (Mintel and YouGov) that are the hidden implications of the positive stuff

• Two thirds of internet shoppers don?t buy something online every two weeks
• 13% of customers bought less than they bought last year
• 84% made one online purchase, with less than a third being regular repeat - what about the other two thirds?

I see a pattern here. Maybe the internet does good acquisition … its a great draw … but it does poor retention. The experiences gained online are just not good enough to guarentee a repeat visit. In marketing spiel, its a leaky bucket.

I think we need to think about the experiences we are providing online. Are they really good enough to keep the mass market online? If it was just about Jakob’s usability and nothing else, shouldn’t we be doing better than this by now?

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