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I kept thinking about the Jared's point of view about another security -vs- user experience trade off.

In this case, Jared stands that you can't require the same security for a "Magic tricks Forum" and for a "Bank website". I agree with that. I  really hated when Mingle asked me for an ultra secure password for a trial version I wanted to use in my network. Everyday I wanted to login into the system I had to try several password... Well, at least I was feeling lucky® they decided no to block my account in the process :)

However, I think you can't put everything in the same bag. He was using this argument to say that applications should specify what was wrong when the login has failed (was it the username or the password?). The usual behavior is a message similar to this one: "Either your username or password is wrong, try again! Did you forget your password? ".

This kind of messages goes against the UX because it's imprecise. If you are more precise you can help him (and others trying to log in) to solve the problem. But, it's also true what me and others argued about how we -as users- manage usernames and passwords everyday. To make it short, users have the same passwords and usernames all over web, in different sites. I do that and many people I know do also. Ok, my bank web site password is not the same that the blogger's one.. but I cannot be sure about other "not-critical" sites. I can't even remember all the sites I am registered in!!! Can you?

The point is: can you forget security issues if you are designing the "Magic tricks Forum" when you know it is the actual behavior of your users? Lets put it in another way. What happen if some of your user's account is hacked (sometimes all they need is the username because it's a valid email), and this information is used to steal more important data of him in other site? Ok, it's not totally your guilt, but, couldn't you avoid it? Can you just blame your user because of his uninformed behavior? I don't think so. How will your user feel about your site? Do you think he will just guilt himself or will your site also pay the penalty? The second one is more probable and for sure your team will look incompetent.

You know, sometimes UX is indirect. You can just try to improve it but you may end provoking a terrible headache for your user in name of it. Although in this case you may share the guilt with your user, if something happens, you can be sure you will pay for it because -as always- bad UX has more publicity. 

If I were you, I would stay defensive to avoid boomerangs.

Labels: Internet, Technology, Usability, UX

# posted by leovernazza : 2/11/2008 01:58:00 AM  0 comments links to this post

Are you feeling a déjù vu? As always, we need to watch not only the picture but the full movie to understand what is going on.

As Jared Spool said, every market goes through four steps (in this order): Technology, Features, Experience and Integration.

We are now in the Experience phase. Web 2.0 is all about user experience, tell that to 37Signals. However, in the software industry there is an always subjacent war about platforms. Windows, Mac, Office, Google, SAP, Facebook, Data, Html, Browsers... everyone want to be the winner platform, and in this way, they have to open the doors for developers to empower their position, and so, they make a public API. Each day, someone else is entering in the API game, and this is good for all of us.

But the real interesting point are the assumptions in the background.

If you build an API and someone else can replicate your software... which is your competitive advantage? You get the database, the raids, the data center, and the 24x7 problem and the third party the advertisement?  Actually, in my modest opinion, there are two very interesting assumptions: the URL fidelity and that data remains in your side. And you know, Facebook is living from its three-tables-database (Users, Friends and Applications) and the gift-card they received from Microsoft to send a message to Google. For this reason, you and many engineers in these companies may think: "we won't put this data available through the API because this is our key data".

The URL fidelity is a very interesting topic. 15 years ago nobody knew about urls and now you can't get a decent one. What will happen in 10 years with urls? Who cares? In 10 years we will be in Web 7.0.

However, the point about the data isn't so clear anymore. This was ok until someone wrote a robot capable of stealing all your data (slides), and now, you can steal and then store it somewhere (it would be very funny to take amazon data and save it back in the EC2, would you join the project?).

But here is the funniest part of the history: they don't need a public API. They are using HTML as your public API and taking all the data they need, to do whatever they want. You can also use this robot and be sure I will be doing it in the future. Hey! It should be illegal! Don't tell me, and what do you think Google has been doing from the beginning? Ok, they call it crawl (not steal) and don't save it in a relational database but in a home-made File System, but this is just tech-stuff.

You know my point of view, users should own the data, or at least, not just [Put Your Favorite Company Here]. I would love to hear your opinion...

Labels: Internet, Platform, Technology

# posted by leovernazza : 12/06/2007 12:30:00 AM  0 comments links to this post

One of the first things I understood after I created this blog was that Google is using their power (position) in a very insane way. To say in their words, they are being a little evil.

People think Google indexes the web, but really, they don't make too much (after they created the brand and the PageRank algorithm). Some studies say 30% of the web isn't indexed. That is, 1 of 3 pages you are looking for, is not present in any search engine.

Believe me, you have to work hard just to enter in a search engine (one month or more from your submission), and then, if some day they decide to include your website, you have to hire a SEO to make Google work properly, and appear in the first page when the user type your name... Google should be indexing the web in the right way, not you (by hiring a SEO for them), or Google should pay for it.

It is a vicious circle, you pay a SEO and Google get more people working for them to get the top-5 positions for the "britney spears" search entry. Then, that word becomes more competitive and you need another SEO to keep your position. It is ironic, everybody doing the Google's work while they give 20% to their employees to create Orkut for Brazilians and play ping-pong ;)

But if it is not enough, Google consumes your bandwidth (money) every time they crawl your site. Ok, you may think it isn't too much waste, they are just using a little part of your bandwidth... but, what would you think if 1 million of companies start crawling the web and your site, just like Google does. Clearly, that is different, because the abuse becomes obvious. On the other hand, you can't use a robot to consume their money (i.e. writing a program to auto-click adSense advertisements) because they may sue you. So, why can they waste my money but I can't waste theirs? Do you think it is fair? I know, I can write a robot.txt file to avoid the crawler, but why should I waste my time for them? Why are they assuming they can use my bandwidth?

I think it will be a problem in the long run. But don't panic, it won't happen for a while. Some day, if everything continues as it goes, people will notice that Google is not producing accurate results for their searches, because SEO's are manipulating them, and a fairer search engine will emerge. Google is becoming a advertised menu, and I don't want to search stuff there.

Let be sincere, Google is not producing the web, they are just getting money from your production and using your resources to do that! It could be a fair model when they were a start-up, but nowadays, that they are earning billions of dollars with your customers and your bandwidth, and you have to outsource a SEO for them, I think it can be considered evil, don't you?.

I can think in two solutions to this problem on the top of my mind: Google should pay-per-crawl your site, and they should crawl your site only if you specifically allow them (crawler should be disabled by default).  But I will keep thinking, in Internet you always can do something to avoid the use of the power.

What do you think? May be, I am the only one thinking that this model is wrong.

Labels: Crawlers, Google, Internet, Technology

# posted by leovernazza : 8/28/2007 10:40:00 PM  0 comments links to this post

I think the Google Analytics Team did a very good work with the new version of their toy. However, I have a list of 6 usability problems I have found:

1. Like most of the ajax applications out there, the back button doesn't work consistently. For example, it never remember if you have changed the graphic kind. For instance: change the graphic from visits to pageviews, drill down in any other information, go back, the graphic is again set in visits.
   

    

2. The date-range is consistently being lost. When you define a data-range it is lost while you navigate through the different reports. I can't remember a path to reproduce it, but it has probably to do with the ajax stuff too.
   

    

3. Google commonly doesn't add scrollbars to their applications and uses just the browser ones. This is right in many situations, but when you are watching a lot of  data in a grid, you need to fix the titles. You can't guess the columns titles at the bottom of the list. To solve this, they would need to add scrollbars to the grid at the content level.
   

    

4. Most of the graphics looks pretty well, but some of them make no sense. For example, in the content by title section, why are they showing me the total visits in a timeline? What do I need to see there? I don't know, but something showing me content by title isn't a bad idea. The same happens in languages, etc. They just inserted the same graphic all over the website, without caring about if it makes sense or not in each specific context.
   

    

5. You can not set the time frame in reverse way. This was the first issue I found. I usually know the last day I want to see and then I start going back in my mind to estimate the starting date: so, I put the last day first. But then, when you click a the new starting date, the final date is removed and you have to start again. It could make sense, but I have still an apply button. So? Why don't they put the validation there? Came on!
   

    

6. Pie charts are very informative and they use them to show you referral sources, for example. One thing I don't understand is why are they highlighting the pie chart sections if nothing happens when you click them... This is like "deceptive feedback". What I want? To navigate, and view in detail that specific pie chart section.

Do you have your owns?

Labels: Internet, Usability

# posted by leovernazza : 6/16/2007 12:11:00 AM  0 comments links to this post

I am sad... they will never pay for a small country as mine.

Labels: Internet

# posted by leovernazza : 5/16/2007 02:48:00 PM  0 comments links to this post

Google Analytics is now providing a new user interface.

Although it was unveiled yesterday, they will be turning it on for each account (yes, one by one) during the next two months. I loose that lottery so I have to wait to see it in action. I don't understand the reasons why are they making something like that, but I can imagine the guy behind scenes making some magic tricks by hand ;)

Once again, only those who have a lot of cash can afford a complete year just to remake a user interface, real world software developers should add some functionalities in the meanwhile too. The Office Team did the same for two years... Could you estimate the investment of that? 

But this throw light on one of the directions the industry is putting the focus: good user interfaces. It is our argument after all, software developers will need to remake their user interfaces in the following years and someone (guess who?) should provide an easy way to do that, and make their life simpler.

BTW, the demo looks great. I am wondering if they have a public API to interact at a data-level. I don't know nothing like this for the Desktop, and I think we could integrate it very easily... I will ask the guys from Urchin Software for that and keep you in track.

Labels: Internet, Usability, UX

# posted by leovernazza : 5/09/2007 10:52:00 AM  0 comments links to this post

This snapshot was taken from the Himalia's website visitor stats from Europe.

The top-five list is the following:

1. France
2. Germany
3. United Kingdom
4. Netherlands
5. Belgium

This is a little strange, if you see the Internet Usage in Europe stats:

1. Germany   50,471,212
2. United Kingdom   37,600,000
3. France   30,837,595
4. Italy   30,763,940
5. Russia   23,700,000
6. Spain   19,765,032
7. Turkey   16,000,000
8. Netherlands   12,060,000
9. Poland   11,400,000
10. Portugal   7,782,760
11. Sweden   6,890,000
12. Ukraine   5,278,100
13. Belgium   5,100,000

 50. Vatican City State 93

So, first conclusion, the Pope is using Internet and as a consequence, the Vatican firewall configuration will be a controversial issue some day ;)

And second, you need to spread the word in different languages if you are planning a global strategy. I think this post helped giving french readers to the website and turning France as the second country in the world-wide Himalia's website visitor list, after USA.

There are post about Himalia written in French, Spanish, English, and now, there's a post written in Lithuanian, but I don't understand anything about them ;)

The point is that there are a lot of people out there that never will know about Himalia just because the read in other languages, and so, we will need help with it :-)

Labels: Himalia, Internet

# posted by leovernazza : 3/22/2007 03:26:00 PM  0 comments links to this post

I have been exploring the open laszlo project.

It's another XAML/XUL-like approach to describe the presentation of a user interface layer. But isn't just another one. Why? It's build over Flash. So, it doesn't require a client installation at all... well, it obviously requires the Flash player, but Macromedia says it's installed in 98% of the internet-ready computers. I think that it turns the Flash Player the most-popular browser (browser = user interface player?). Avalon (included in Windows Vista as Windows Presentation Fundation) is following the same approach, with their own set of tools, including an animation-maker tool. XUL, impulsed by Mozzila.org, is basically the same, but built over dhtml.

I suggest you to see the lazlo on-line examples... I am sure you are ready to. So, it's great. don't you think? "Rich" web user interfaces in nowadays computers?

But now, they are thinking in moving Flash out and adding a new compiler from LZX to the Open Ajax initiative.

So, wasn't it so great?. I think this have a lot to do with the "AJAX platform war" that we are seeing today, and it's nothing but an IBM's tactical decision to impulse their Open Ajax.

I don't know which Ajax framework will finally win but there are a lot of them in the battle, supported by the bug guys.

But I am really sure that the next year, with Windows Vista released, the software industry will need a lot of cross-platforms solutions (converters, translators, abstractions, etc.) one time again.

Labels: Internet, Platform, Technology

# posted by leovernazza : 3/04/2006 05:12:00 PM  0 comments links to this post