July 2009 posts

Disabilities: to harness or to punish?

By Frankie Pagnacco on 31 July 2009

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I’ve been following ‘British Hacker’ Gary McKinnon’s story in the press for a long time. Today I hear that he is one step closer to being extradited to the US to face charges of breaking into US military and Nasa computers. What is particular about this case is that Mr McKinnon has Asperger’s and admits hacking but denies it was malicious.

A couple of the many features of Asperger’s are a narrow focus of interests and, for the lucky, an uncommon intelligence with things like numbers or computers.

Mr McKinnon was trying to find information about UFOs which I imagine are the subject of his focussed interest. That he hacked in to such high security computers shows exceptional ability. Nevertheless he could face the rest of his life in a US jail far from his support and comfort network.

It strikes me that it would benefit the US military and Nasa much more to discover how their billion dollar security was breached. To learn something from Mr McKinnon about themselves and their systems. Maybe even to employ him? A bit more understanding about his condition (not to mention harnessing of it) could lead to such a different outcome. And a vulnerable man, even if guilty, could not only be avoiding a frightening future but contributing his unique skills to society.

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What is Friends Reunited actually good for?

By Ismail Ismail on 28 July 2009

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I notice that the question mark over the future of Friends Reunited has re-emerged again in the press over the weekend. Very little of ITV’s original investment (rumored to be around £175 million) will be recouped if they allegedly sell to Oakley Capital for £15 million. But needs must and with falling broadcast advertising revenues ITV clearly needs to balance their books urgently. But I can’t help wondering what a would-be buyer would actually do with the Friends Reunited platform if they actually bought it?

Back in 2000, when Friends Reunited launched there was nothing else like it which made it a very compelling proposition. Even having to pay for a subscription wasn’t a big deal because there was no digital alternative. But over the last few years the growth of freely available social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo has forced Friends Reunited to abandon their subscription model and rely on advertising revenue instead.

Friends Reunited was initially viewed by users as a way to rediscover past relationships but unfortunately they were too slow to use their platform to mediate social interaction. The core user need that keeps users engaged on Facebook is ongoing and persistent social contact. Throwing sheep at one another and tagging photographs of your friends with salacious comments is compelling stuff.

So while Friends Reunited initially met an important user need by brokering a re-introduction to your old school mates they were slow to support ongoing interaction. If you think about it, you’d go online onto Friends Reunited perhaps 2 or 3 times a year now compare that with how you use social media today!

I’d argue the latest Friends Reunited incarnation is well designed and usable – in fact it’s very similar to Facebook in many respects – but unfortunately it’s come too late to be competitive. With Friends Reunited losing market share to Facebook and Bebo it’s going to take a minor miracle to transform the every-reducing unique visitorship into ad revenue.

So the question I’m asking is this: if you were to acquire Friends Reunited what would you do with it?

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Faster Internet for Africa

By Mru Kodali on 27 July 2009

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The first undersea cable providing high speed Internet access to East Africa went live last Thursday. Until now this region has relied upon expensive yet slow satellite connections, holding back Internet usage and associated benefits from not only businesses but also the population at large.african-sunrise

Now that Internet access is set to become faster and cheaper, the hope is that East Africa can finally, truly join the information superhighway that so many of us in the west take for granted. Countries to benefit from this advancement include Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique and South Africa.

There are huge expectations that this will boost economic and social conditions, which no doubt will happen in the long run. In the short term I expect usage of popular, bandwidth-heavy sites like YouTube and Pandora to rise. Similarly, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn should take off in a big way. I imagine we’ll also see a greater representation of the African continent among the world’s bloggers and tweeters. And not before time.

Photo credit: Mara 1 via Flickr/Creative Commons

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Be’s new IE6-unfriendly launch

By Frankie Pagnacco on 24 July 2009

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I spotted this at the bottom of an email newsletter telling me about the launch of Be’s new look website:

P.S. We’ve not designed this to work fantastically in IE6 because it’s really old and, well, we’re all about the future. So, if you’re on IE6 please upgrade to IE7 or IE8 or even Firefox. Sorry if you’re stuck with IE6.

Am I alone in thinking that’s just not good enough?

For one, statistics for June 09 show that nearly 15% of internet users are on IE6. IE7 users account for 19%, which is only 4 more than IE6. Point made right there.

For two, the rate of fall in IE6 use has been very slow and steady since the beginning of time suggesting it is a reliable and loved browser. On the other hand IE7 users have been happy to jump ship to IE8 (not something that happened when IE7 turned up). I was about to launch into statistics freefall but I got bored just thinking about it.

But the real point is that the ‘hey-ho’, jolly, pally tone of this PS suggests a lazy attitude to engagement on a persuasion and emotion level.

Be has not considered the needs of its entire user base. It’s admitted to this fact in a PS, with scant apology and no regard for facts and figures. It has potentially made 15% of its current and future customers feel like they use substandard services and have insisted they upgrade (which even though it’s free is a big ask).

So when I checked out this new look website on ‘even Firefox’ I was faced with an invalid certificate alert. But that’s a whole other story. One to do with trust.

A big thumbs down for and from the user.

PS. I can’t fault their internet provision though; fast and reliable for 2 years without interruption.

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5 Free User Experience Design Tools

By Alexander Baxevanis on 23 July 2009

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Trying to improve your website but your organisation has no budget to buy you the latest shiny piece of software? Here are some free tools to help you get things done through the recession:

  • If your team is geographically spread, you’ll know that sharing screenshots and videos of interactions is essential for communicating your design ideas. Jing is a free screenshot and video recording tool and can even upload your screenshots directly to Screencast.com, an online service perfect for sharing design materials with your colleagues or clients.
  • The Pencil Project is a free wireframing tool that works as a plugin for the popular Firefox web browser. This means you can easily and quickly install it on any computer that runs Firefox, so everyone can view and edit your wireframes. It also comes with lots of pre-defined objects for mocking up desktop applications for Windows and Linux.
  • Although the full version isn’t free, the Balsamiq Mockups wireframing tool also offers a limited free version that can be accessed from any web browser. It takes moments to create a simple mockup and download it as a PNG image, ready to share and discuss.
  • It’s sometimes helpful to visualise small changes to a website, such as changing the size and colour of a heading or rewording some text. You can easily do this using Firebug, a Firefox extension that allows you among others to click on parts of a webpage and change them on the fly.
  • Finally, a lot of wireframes start on paper, and instead of buying generic graph paper notebooks, try downloading the Konigi graph paper PDF files and print your own paper with layouts optimised for wireframe design.

We often use most of the above tools in Webcredible, but we’d also love to hear your experiences if you try them. Feel free to leave your comments below, and do let us know if you’ve used any other exciting free tools!

Photo credit:  Svadilfari via Flickr/Creative Commons

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