Remote User Testing Article at ALA

A List Apart has posted an article this week by Nate Bolt titled Quick and Dirty Remote User Testing. He is a co-author of Remote Research, published this year by Rosenfeld Media.

In the article he discusses techniques and tools for conducting remote UX, usability and design testing. While he is right to state that this doesn't take the place of being on-site and running a thorough test, this is, as the title states, quick and dirty. He outlines three general methods with a quick overview of techniques and links to tools. The methods are based on the humorous but practical principles of:

1. If you like people;
2. If you like machines better than people;
3. If you like people, just not talking with them.

He even thoughtfully provides a link to a Google spreadsheet of every remote research tool he knows of. As a bonus (and if you like the article), there is a link at the bottom for 20% off his book. I'd tell you the code, but that defeats the purpose of reading the article.

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Too Much Hype over Location-Based Services?

Chris Treadaway is founder and CEO of Lasso, a "hyper-local advertising platform for media outlets and small businesses." He was recently on a panel in Austin, Texas with Gowalla CEO Josh Williams, where he may have seemed like a buzz kill to many in the crowd.

Chris tells his story in a post on Mashable titled Are Location-Based Services All Hype? As an avid user of Foursquare, Brightkite and to a lesser extent Gowalla (and the quasi-aggregator Check.in), you might be surprised to hear that I tend to agree. Not that the concept is hype, but that the potential for monetizing it is hype.

In his commentary he offers some metrics that we don't see today, but that can provide real-time (or near-real-time) feedback on how location-based applications are being used:

• Percent of Active Users: What is the percentage of users who have checked in during the last day? The last week? This will give us an indication of utility and/or fatigue.
• Revenue: Exactly how is all of this translating into revenue? For the LBS app companies? For brands that advertise? For local businesses?
• Average Number of Checkins Per Day: How often do people check in? Is this derivative metric improving or declining? This will tell us about the value proposition of checking in for the average consumer.
• Time Spent in Application: What is the average time spent per day inside the application per user? This informs the market about the experience consumers have with the application and how well it captures users' attention.
• Percent of Users Who Have Been Inactive Over the Last Month: How many people installed a location-based app but got tired of it and now no longer effectively use it?

While I don't agree with some of his assertions about what motivates people to use these services, the article is a good read from someone who is in the industry and trying to survive off it.

Related

• Mapping Location-Based Social Media (this article is also at evolt.org)
• Don't Let Social Media Get You Robbed (or Stalked)

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Google Analytics Opt-Out Add-On Is Out

That title was more fun to write than I thought it would be.

Back in March I mentioned that Google had decided that it would let users opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics (Google to Let Users Opt Out of Analytics Tracking). That day is here. News sites all over the web lit up today with the news that the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on (BETA) is now available for download. And yes, that is its real name. It's still listed as a beta product, and it's only available for Internet Explorer (versions 7 and 8), Google Chrome (4.x and higher), and Mozilla Firefox (3.5 and higher).

There does seem to be a little something odd about adding more cruft to your browser to disable the cruft people have added to their sites to see how you surf their cruft. And this is assuming you believe that Google would release a free product to the end user that disables a free product targeted at site developers that also supports their paid Adwords product. Considering all the privacy flack Facebook has felt lately, however, it makes sense that Google wants to be able to say they are staying ahead of these issues. Google's download page explains... not much:

To provide website visitors with more choice about how their data is collected by Google Analytics, we have developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics.

To repeat myself from March, if you really want to surf anonymously, run Netscape Navigator 2 or version 3 with JavaScript disabled through an anonymous proxy. From a cave.

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

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Facebook Privacy UI Redesign Ideas

Facebook has been taking a (well-deserved) beating lately for all its privacy (or lack of) controls. No longer is Facebook getting beat up in the world of blogs and tech journals, now it's taking fire from the likes of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and even has the cover of Time magazine. The New York Times took the time to display all of Facebook's privacy options as one flow chart, attempting to display how 50 settings with 170 options, bolstered by its 5,830 word privacy policy.

See the image in context at The New York Times.

Fortune magazine gathered a few user experience designers and asked them to prototype some revisions to Facebook's privacy settings. Fortune made a gallery of a dozen samples, consisting of a brief description for each sample. While the gallery could have been a bit more robust, the teaser-style images certainly provide some interesting perspectives on how to minimize the massive confusion the current Facebook privacy screens create. Simple suggestions include embedding the privacy options inline with the items to control, and showing numbers next to grouping options (how many users does "friends of friends" encompass?). A couple samples are below.

This morning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed privacy concerns in a column in The Washington Post (From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings). From the column:

The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. [...] In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use.

The column goes into more detail on the overall privacy debacle, but I'll leave that up to you to read, I'm just looking at the UI options today. Whether or not anything we see in the sample UIs will make its way into the screens on Facebook is anybody's guess, but from the column, we should know in a few weeks.

Additional Stories:

• Facebook and Privacy: What a Mess at PC World.
• How Facebook Is Redefining Privacy at Time Magazine.
• Facebook, MySpace Confront Privacy Loophole at The Wall Street Journal.
• Facebook Open Graph: What it Means for Privacy at Mashable.
• Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking at The New York Times.

Update (May 25): Mashable reports New Facebook Privacy Controls Arrive on Wednesday. That's tomorrow for those not near a calendar.

Update (May 26): It's Wednesday, and no new privacy controls. Although Facebook did announce them, show a screen shot, and say they'd be coming in the next few weeks. Mashable reports BREAKING: Facebook Announces New Privacy Features.

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More Salvos from Apple and Adobe, to No One in Particular

I was out of the country when Steve Jobs posted his open letter on Flash to the Apple web site. Had I been around I would have dissected it. Today Adobe published its own open letter(s) about how great Flash is, why open markets are good, and even an ad campaign promoting choice. This passive-aggressive slap-fest is really just another reason for me to use my Apple vs. Adobe graphic that I spent nearly 10 minutes creating over a month ago.

To put my own preferences out there again, I have been critical of Flash for a long time (Jakob Nielsen roasted it 10 years ago now). The technology itself is mostly harmless, but developers have latched onto it for years to create confounding, inaccessible, and cryptic interfaces for web sites. To be fair, if they hadn't used Flash, they might have still made the same terrible chum, but Flash just enabled their poor behavior. Apple has always been the plucky upstart that despite being just another corporate computer company had somehow tricked masses of designers and wanna-be-cool-but-different (as opposed to being just different, like *nix users) folks in to giving them free advertising via legions of window stickers and the like. Except now people are recognizing them as the corporate juggernaut they are (When did Apple become uncool? at Yahoo! News).

Let me compare and contrast some points from the two letters.

Open vs. Closed

From Apple:

While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

From Adobe:

The core engine of the Flash Player (AVM+) is open source and was donated to the Mozilla foundation where it is actively maintained. The file formats supported by the Flash Player, SWF and FLV/F4V, as well as the RTMP and AMF protocols are freely available and openly published. Anyone can use the specifications without requiring permission from Adobe. Third parties can and do build audio, video, and data services that compete with those from Adobe. [...] There are no restrictions on the development of SWF authoring tools, and anyone can build their own SWF or FLV/F4V player. [...] Adobe Flex, the primary application framework for Flash, is also open source and is actively maintained and developed by Adobe and the community.

As an end-user, I need help understanding Apple's point. How is what Adobe states any different from Apple's own WebKit? Because they claim it started as open source, whereas Flash didn't? The points in these letters don't speak to the average user, that's for sure.

From Apple:

Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. [...] HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member. [...] Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

I'm going to let Adobe off the hook on this one. As I have said before, HTML is NOT a final specification yet. Apple is clearly pleased as punch that Safari supports much of HTML5, and good for them. But they are really pushing the canvas element as the Flash replacement. Given how quickly the W3C wraps up a spec, and browser makers get it into their browsers, and users download it, it's just not a good argument. It may be worth noting that JavaScript was originally Netscape's creation and is now known as ECMAScript.

Bear in mind that HTML5 has been handed off by the standards committee (W3C, of which Adobe is also a member) to the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG, of which Apple is a founding member). It turns out that Apple, Mozilla, and Opera were unhappy with the W3C progress on XHTML and HTML, and so broke off on their own. As a result, WHATWG is working on HTML5 alongside the W3C HTML working group, using the same human editor.

Touch Interfaces

From Apple:

Apple's revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn't use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. [...] Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

From Adobe:

Flash was actually originally created as a technology for tablets with touch interfaces. And today, Flash has full support for working on touch-based devices. [...] For new Flash content developed specifically with touch in mind, Flash Player 10.1 provides a complete set of multitouch and gesture APIs.

Ok, Apple has a point, Flash does not support multi-touch. Multi-touch is relatively new, however, and Adobe promises it in their (much delayed?) Flash 10.1. I do take issue that Flash does not support touch devices. About 4 years ago we developed a Flash application to run on touch-screen displays for a kiosk, and it worked very well. The issue is again not with Flash specifically, it's with developers who are terrible at designing interfaces.

Security

From Apple:

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009.

From Adobe:

The Symantec Global Internet Threat Report for 2009 found that Flash had the second fewest number of vulnerabilities of all Internet technologies listed (which included both web plug-ins and browsers).

Erm, so who do we believe? Neither links to a report, but they both cite Symantec. So I went to the Symantec site and grabbed the document Internet Security Threat Report: Volume XV: April 2010. I searched in the PDF for Adobe Flash and found this:

In 2009, Symantec documented 321 vulnerabilities affecting plug-ins for Web browsers (figure 9). ActiveX technologies were affected by 134 vulnerabilities, which was the highest among the plug-in technologies examined. Of the remaining technologies, Java SE had 84 vulnerabilities, Adobe Reader had 49 vulnerabilities, QuickTime had 27 vulnerabilities, and Adobe Flash Player was subject to 23 vulnerabilities. The remaining four vulnerabilities affected extensions for Firefox.

Apple QuickTime had 4 more vulnerabilities than Adobe Flash? Did I mention that when I hit the Apple site, my browser keeps trying to get me to install QuickTime? There's also this quote:

The 321 total vulnerabilities in plug-in technologies for Web browsers for 2009 is less than the 424 in 2008. Of the total for 2008, 287 vulnerabilities affected ActiveX, which is significantly more than any other plug-in technology. Of the remaining plug-ins for which vulnerabilities were documented, there were 54 vulnerabilities identified in Java SE, 40 in QuickTime, 17 in Adobe Reader, 16 in Adobe Flash Player, and 5 vulnerabilities in Firefox extensions.

16 in Adobe Flash, 40 in Apple QuickTime. I really need some help finding Apple's point. I also need help finding Adobe's point. From what I see here, Flash is safer than QuickTime, even though (in further reading) it gets targeted more. If you want clear answers, you may need to read all 97 pages of the Symantec document, which was not linked from either Apple or Adobe.

Overall

Apple's letter clearly belies frustration with may have been Adobe's missed promised delivery dates. Apple also has a point that Flash doesn't hand off the video decoding work to the processor, eating battery life. Adobe has stated this is coming in the 10.1 release. Apple points to YouTube running as an app on the iPhone, but is silent on the fact that videos embedded in a page are inaccessible but does concede, backhandedly, that users aren't missing much video. And then Apple goes on about how Flash is designed to be cross-platform, and as such doesn't enable developers to write the best iPhone/iPad apps. And this is the crux of it all. Apple just wants the control and Adobe wants in.

Update (May 14): Read Adobe and Apple: Please Spare Us the Platitudes About "Open" over at Mashable for another take on all this.

Update (May 20): Read How secure is Flash? Here's what Adobe won't tell you at ZDNet where the writer also compares the Symantec report against Adobe. He missed the point, however, that Symantec recommends both Flash and JavaScript be disabled for a secure browsing experience, something that would hamper Safari's reliance on HTML5 in lieu of Flash.

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Firefox 4: Planned Features

Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's Director of Firefox, yesterday presented an early product plan for Firefox 4 to the Mozilla community. He followed up with a blog post outlining the presentation and linking to some resources. He is careful to regularly state in his post and throughout his slide presentation that these are just plans, nothing is built and everything may change. He links to the OGG version of the presentation video and also embeds the slide presentation from SlideShare on his. Which I am reposting here:

To quote his primary goals for Firefox 4:

• Fast: making Firefox super-duper fast
• Powerful: enabling new open, standard Web technologies (HTML5 and beyond!),
• Empowering: putting users in full control of their browser, data, and Web experience.

His plan puts Firefox 4 arriving around October 2010 (with the beta arriving around June). Firefox 3.7 was going to include out-of-process plug-ins, but those are being moved into 3.6.4, essentially removing 3.7 from the lifecycle.

Today the Mozilla Hacks blog has a post on the new HTML5 parser coming in Firefox 4. Gecko's old (current) HTML parser dates back to 1998, well before HTML5 was even on the drawing board. There are four key improvements in the new parser, according to Mozilla:

1. You can now use SVG and MathML inline in HTML5 pages, without XML namespaces.
2. Parsing is now done off Firefox's main UI thread, improving overall browser responsiveness.
3. It's improved the speed of innerHTML calls by about 20%.
4. With the landing of the new parser we've fixed dozens of long-standing parser related bugs.

The rest of the post goes into detail with SVG and MathML examples. It's worth reading if you're... me, I suppose.

All of this is fine and dandy for developers, but not much of these new features interest end users. Unlike Internet Explorer and, to some extent, Safari, Firefox users tend to be a bit more savvy and are interested in upgrading the browser when new releases come out. Because of that, adoption of Firefox 4 should move along pretty well.

End users will benefit from planned security enhancements, stability improvements, and speed enhancements, and this should be enough to pull most users along into the upgrade path. There are also plans to add more personalization features into the browser. All of this, however, is up for grabs. The only certain item so far is the progress that has already been made on the HTML5 parser, which will be a boon to users if more companies move away from Flash, proprietary video, or just start to use HTML5 and CSS3 more on their sites. iPad and iPhone users, however, won't benefit from a browser they cannot install.

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