Pathfinder Blog
Topic Archive: Case Studies

When content overwhelms community

Elyse Sanchez, Monday, January 29, 2007 @ 1:51 pm

In his Alertbox article, Participation Inequality, Jakob Nielsen asserts that "In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action." And that's his best-case scenario: he claims that the "more radical" 99--1--0.1 distribution is common in some social websites. Worst of all, the lurker-poster ratio for Wikipedia, by Nielsen's reckoning, tallies in at an even more disproportionate 99.8--0.2--.003.

We recently worked on creating a vision for optimizing the community features of a large, content-rich website.  Aside from some acknowledged usability issues, a major user barrier to community participation was the issue of trust: target users were hesitant to share personal information in a public forum. We felt this reluctance had its roots in the demographics of the site's users, whose average age was in the early forties. Contrast this with the openness of communities such as myspace, which attracts a younger user base willing to provide the most personal information--even to the point of rashness. On our project, we had to take the conservative user preferences as a given, and try to develop ways to entice users into interacting with the site more frequently and easily.

To do this, we had to encourage our client to think beyond the concept of "Community"= Message Boards alone, and give their users more pathways for generating content for the site, which is driven by features, content and experience. We gave a lot of thought to how the participatory elements would be placed, and conceived flow-based design to enhance how people touch them, interact and behave.

I'll discuss some of our specific strategies in Part II.

Topics:

user experience design User Experience Design

What’s on my Bookshelf

Alice Toth, Tuesday, January 9, 2007 @ 10:12 pm

Having recently been asked to review a book on CSS (which at first glance looks good but I'll go into details in a later post), it caused me to take a look at the crop of knowledge currently gracing my bookshelves. Hmmm, I thought. If I wanted to recommend two of those books, which two would I recommend? A nice little challenge. Deciding to keep the choices within the realm of the practical, rather than the theoretical, here's what I came up with.

First up is Designing Visual Interfaces, Communication Oriented Techniques by Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano. The book begins with explaining the principles and elements of design and how they can be applied to user interface. There is no "one size fits all" solution but rather a discussion about techniques such as hierarchy, relationship, balance, etc., how they are used and why they're important in software design. The author also gets into module, programs and how structure, predictability and efficiency apply. Further chapters explain establishing modular units or using a grid layout. In other words, the book gives a great explanation of what design theory is and how it's the structure for well-designed user interfaces.

Next up, Designing from Both Sides of the Screen, How Designers and Engineers and Collaborate to Build Cooperative Technology, by Ellen Isaacs (interaction designer) and Alan Walendowski (software engineer). The book is divided into two parts: The Goal and The Process. The first part takes you through designing software with user centric design principles followed by the second section, which walks you through the process of building a software application illustrating what the authors did and, more importantly, why they did it. It's a good case study in creating technology that cooperates with people, shows how good designs help the user flow into their tasks instead of fighting them, and shows how design and engineering goals need not oppose each other. An good description of a theory and the application of same.

So there you have it, two recommendations off my bookshelf. The first promoting design principles and the second advocating user centric design. What's on your bookshelf?

Topics: , , , ,

user experience design User Experience Design

The Case for Case Studies

Elyse Sanchez, Tuesday, May 9, 2006 @ 7:57 pm

Currently, I've been tasked with writing up our team's recent projects, for the immediate purpose of publishing these stories on our website to support our marketing efforts. Using case studies for this purpose is a recognized, and arguably successful, way for designers to document their successes and describe the ways a good design has contributed to a good software product or website.

But I always wrestle with the narrative. What is the story we want to tell? How design, detached from the larger context, was appropriate, optimal, on-target and on-budget? Shades, perhaps, of "the operation was successful, but the patient died"?

Classically, a case study provides an opportunity for providing "an exemplary or cautionary model." A good case study should equally document the mistakes and the milestones, the lessons learned as well as the goals achieved.

Does this alter the tenor of the corporate case study? Hopefully.

Topics: , ,

user experience design User Experience Design

About Pathfinder

  • We design and build extraordinary applications for companies looking to make the next great idea a reality.
  • learn more

Topics

Blogroll

WordPress

Comments about this site: info@pathf.com