Mad Web Skills

A marketing email from Loop11, the maker of online usability testing software, did the rounds among local government IT managers, marketing teams and mailing groups last week claiming in it’s subject that “City Of Melbourne website ranks 2nd in Australia.”

Screenshot of the Loop11 website offering the usability case study.

The email, offering a usability case study on six of Australia’s capital city websites, got passed around some of the execs/managers at my day job with much interest, then passed to me for evaluation – well, actually it was more of a “TL;DR. Why aren’t we on top of this list?” (We’re not a capital city for starters. )

On reading the published report, there were a few things that immediately stood out for me. First of all, this post is not intended as a rant, merely an observation and commentary on both the marketing aspect of the report and the user testing process. Loop11 looks like a great tool, and this exercise has most likely drummed up quite a bit of interest in their product as well as the idea of user testing in general.

There is some obvious link-baiting going on in the email subject. Not to detract at all from Melbourne’s great website (of which I’m a fan), they came second out of six captial city websites, not exactly “2nd in Australia” as mentioned in the email’s subject. There’s no doubt that the sole purpose of the report was an attention-grabbing marketing exercise for Loop11′s user testing software. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however the test itself seems rushed and inconclusive.

The six council websites were tested by 600 random world-wide internet users to complete one single task (100 testers per website) recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service which, to me, sounds like the internet equivalent of a sweat shop. The testers were paid 5 cents each for completing the task.

When conducting your own testing, you would be better to test a much smaller selection of people. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen believes that 85% of problems can be found with only 5 users (and a follow-up test with 5 more users should pick up most of the remaining problems.) You would also likely offer higher compensation (such as a free cinema ticket) to get a better buy-in from your participants.

The task the testers had to complete was “Find out what day your household waste is collected”. So in the end, the result is less “most usable website” and more “most prominent waste collection link“. In a real-world test scenario, you would obviously test more website functions across a number of council services.

As I said before, I actually really like Loop11′s software and think it can be really beneficial when performed adequately, however the price tag of $350USD per test ended up being a bit of a sore point for us. Being a developer of web applications who enjoys a challenge, it has definitely given me a bit to think about regarding perhaps developing my own in-house user testing application in the future.

Those zany boffins* at ZURB have just unleashed their latest creation: something they call Bounce. Their website claims Bounce is a “fun and easy way to share ideas on a website” and after a quick play, I’d have to agree. It allows you to instantly take a screenshot of a website, annotate it with feedback and share it with others to provide their comments, all without a single login or sign up form in sight.

Bounce is a lightweight and totally free (as in beer) version of their Notable app, created as a way of both spreading the word about their paid offering, as well as a “sandbox” of sorts, allowing them to test new interface ideas and features without potentially upsetting their paying customers with untested concepts.

I think this idea is brilliant. It’s very similar to the way that 37signals uses their free apps, Ta-Da List and Writeboard, to promote their bread-and-butter products such as Basecamp. As a bonus, for those users that are happy to just go on using just the free app, the 37signals brand is still in the back of their minds as a generous company willing to share some of their simpler tools with the wider community.

Personally, I’ll be getting getting a lot of use out of Bounce, and I’d be very interested to find out how this move pays off for ZURB in the long term.

* While I can’t personally vouch for the exact level of boffinry possessed by ZURB, I’m sure they’re quite bright.

This javascript NES emulator (ported from vNES) is pretty amazing. It runs full speed in Chrome on a modern PC. Try it out, but make sure you have nothing else important to do this afternoon.

I’ve always been a bit wary about “The Secret“, the same way I’m wary about psychics and mediums. Many people are sold on the idea based on some kind of silver-bullet or magic-wand notion that it’s going to make them feel good or change their lives forever.

While I personally believe that psychics and the supernatural like are a load of old bunk, I can understand the reasons and the value placed on them by those that who do believe, such as grieving relatives looking for closure after the passing of a loved one. What makes me angry are those that prey on the weak minded, giving false hope instead of comfort and closure with the aim of extracting more money, but that is a rant for anther day.

Unlike psychics, I have no doubt that “The Secret” can work, but not in the way that the author and her publisher would have you believe. While it may work, that doesn’t mean it will work. It’s not like some kind of magic switch, in fact, there’s nothing spiritual, mystical or phantasmagorical about it. There’s no Jedi force, glowing auras, harmonic resonance or any phoney “Law of Attraction” at work here. It basically boils down to one basic truth.

Your chance at being successful at something increases exponentially the more passionate you are about it.

I’m not talking about a casual hobby or a passing interest. I mean an all-consuming passion for the subject where you can work so hard on achieving your goals but you’re so focussed that it doesn’t feel like work. Take a look at successful people throughout history. They weren’t bestowed with phenomenal cosmic powers or share some ancient powerful secret. Their success came from their passion, their will to see it through, and the hard work that went along with it.

I’m a web guy. It’s not just what I do; it’s who I am. I’m always being approached by people with the idea for the “next big thing”, even having to sign the odd NDA or no-compete clause. You know how it always ends?

1. I build out the project on spec, on time and on budget.
2. The client sits back rubbing their hands together, waiting for the money to come in.
3. The website is left to stagnate, usually closing within 2 years, rarely turning a profit.

I swear, it’s like South Park’s Underpants Gnomes every time.

Of course I have my own “big ideas”, and maybe one day I’ll work hard and make something of them, but the point I wanted to make was that you can have the best idea in the world, the best plan and even the best execution, but I guarantee you will be beaten by someone who wants it more and will work harder. I can also guarantee you will fail without the correctly channelled enthusiasm required to see your plan through to success.

That’s not magic. It’s what’s called “applying yourself”.

I’m not up on a soap-box here. I’m not entertaining any ideas of becoming a motivational speaker and I’m certainly not telling people anything they don’t already know.

I just think it’s worth reminding ourselves that you don’t need to spend your hard-earned money to have Oprah or anyone else tell you what you already know about life and living.

Mad web scientist, David Desandro (who you may remember as the creator of the fantastic jQuery plugin, Masonry and the Opera logo in CSS among other wonderful things), has done it again, this time crafting an entire typeface out of CSS3.

Dubbed “Curtis” the typeface is entirely rendered in the browser, comprised of spans, background colour, borders, border radius and absolute positioning.

All we need now is a jQuery plugin to apply this typeface to our own elements.