Google admits Buzz social network user testing flaws

The BBC understands that Buzz was only tested internally and bypassed more extensive trials with external testers - used for many other Google services.

Google said that it was now working "extremely hard" to fix the problems.

"We've been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while," Todd Jackson, Buzz product manager, told the BBC. "Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn't quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild."

In yesterday's post, I speculated Google Buzz was only tested by its own engineers. Today, Google admitted to the BBC that was true.

Jackson told BBC News that the decision to create these automatic lists was borne out of the idea that Google "wanted to provide a great user experience straight out of the box".

Well, not quite. Google focused on providing a great Google employee experience straight out of the box. The article reports even when Google does "user testing", it uses "a network of friends and family of Google employees". That sounds like a privileged class, not everyday users.

Google needs to refocus its core products for the real users making up its market share, before insular thinking damages Search audience driven revenue.

Google, these are your users

While we mock those users, the simple fact is they haven't necessarily failed, something failed them. With all of our talk about the semantic Web and search engine optimization and tailoring search results to the individual user, there are thousands upon thousands of users performing the same simple search and following the same wrong road. If this were a standard traffic sign misdirecting this many people, it would have been pulled down long ago.

People won't use your product the way you want. They'll use it the way that works for them.

Last week's Buzz was around Google's spectacular privacy missteps in the launch of its Twitter killer, but should have been around the other illustration of Google's more fundamental failure: becoming Microsoft.

In 2009, Ballmer famously derided a Microsoft employee for using an iPhone. Encouraging engineers to eat their own dog food is a great way to find pain points and fix them. Discouraging engineers from openly using best-of-breed products the way their users will use them is a great way to stifle both innovation and the understanding of what real users want.

Google's engineers were likely delighted when Buzz automagically preconfigured their Follow networks. Then again, engineers are not known for social skills. Engineering was so far removed from how "real people" would react to seeing their most emailed contacts exposed, they missed how even engineering's most avid disciples – tech bloggers – would react.

For this mistake, Google took a massive hit in public trust. Down the road, Buzz will be held up as an example of why one company should not be allowed to control too much of our information. Google semi-apologized (saying it was "sorry for the concern", not sorry for the feature) and will hopefully consider its non-engineering users' concerns in the future.

While Google can afford this mistake with Buzz, it should worry whether the same lack of connection with everyman puts its core product at risk.

If Google starts getting Search wrong, it is in serious trouble – and the "facebook login" incident suggests Google's getting it very wrong.

A decade ago, I switched to Google because it offered me a search box that led to nothing but results. That's all I wanted, and all it did. This match made in heaven catapulted Google ahead of Excite, Lycos, Altavista, and Inktomi.

While the search box has stayed the same, Google's users have not. Today's Googlers don't know the difference between a URL and a search term, or even between a browser and the Internet. (I talked about these users in an earlier article about the iPad, commenting on how removed bloggers are from "most people".)

By focusing on features such as real time web search or categorized results for tech-savvy users, Google is stranding its mass audience – a mistake its advertising business model absolutely cannot afford. Google needs to cater to the folks who ended up on ReadWriteWeb through their typical use path, making Google work for them and get them where they're trying to go, instead of trying to retrain them to adapt to Google.

Google needs to refine the "I feel lucky" button until it's good enough to be the default, helping the Internet's least savvy users find where they want to be even if they're doing it wrong.

Usability week ending February 14th

Saturday, 13th February, 9:04 PM
#Google learns value of #usability #testing, hastily revises #Buzz start-up experience based on user feedback: http://j.mp/9bpgW6 #ux #ia

Thursday, 11th February, 9:04 AM
Google Buzz is disruptive because all about open, standardized user data: http://j.mp/awIJJ1 #usability #ia

Wednesday, 10th February, 10:48 AM
By focusing on only 3 core features in a first version, you're forced to find its true essence and value: http://j.mp/cNYGG7 #ia #ux

Tuesday, 9th February, 10:58 AM
A novel idea to push the social media "signal vs noise" quality problem into authors’ hands: http://j.mp/bNLXII #ia #ux #ui #facebook

Monday, 8th February, 9:16 AM
Font stacks are ultimately #design factors, and should be scrutinized as such--use better #CSS #font stacks: http://j.mp/dbUw26 #ux #ui

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending February 7th

Friday, 5th February, 9:54 AM
Why the Apple iPad has no Java or Flash http://post.ly/MKQc

Thursday, 4th February, 1:38 PM
Not only must interfaces be simple, elegant, usable, and accessible; they must also be honest: http://j.mp/94x9R5 #ux #ui #design #ia

Wednesday, 3rd February, 3:56 PM
In global age of #UX thinking and design, we must develop better appreciation and understanding of cultures we work with: http://j.mp/91tvpi

Tuesday, 2nd February, 5:42 PM
The growing percentage of users on non-Flash-capable platforms is a wake-up call to get the basics right first: http://j.mp/9QhMCb #ia #ux

Monday, 1st February, 2:37 PM
An information appliance for the caveman in us http://post.ly/LewE

Monday, 1st February, 11:54 AM
Great products are triumphs of taste, trying to bring the best things humans have done into what you are doing: http://j.mp/93Ksxg @Apple

Sunday, 31st January, 7:01 PM
Good #design is always hard to program. 12 ways to help #developers make software more human: http://j.mp/dtohKO #ux #ia #teamwork

via twitter.com/terretta

Why the Apple iPad has no Java or Flash

Apple iPad is the first complete, general purpose, computer DRM platform and all people complain about is plugins. Music DRM went away because it was stupid. Idiot users pirate everything not bolted down and you end up with Bluray, Xbox, Playstation, Kindle, iPhone and now the Apple iPad. There has never been more DRM and people think they are winning. No, because Internet piracy and hardware piracy has given birth to yet another locked down platform. Because companies need to make money and do what is required.

The iPad exists because you wanted it. Blame yourself if you don't like it. Personally, I might buy one for my mom. Because it's probably a great piece of web surfing, picture browsing, hardware. And OMG do I need one of those.

At first that read like a rant, but Jan ended up wanting one for his mom.

We've been saying this for a decade: if you make music and video easy enough, users will pay for it. Pirating is hard, but pirating is because users want to consume media on their terms: when they want, and on the device they want.

Users' sense of ownership was formed by physical things. Buy a book, share a book, get the book back. Copy a CD you play on the stereo to a cassette you pop in the car. Excessive restriction fosters circumvention so people can use the media they consider theirs. Follow iTunes' lead to work with users. Let them share in the home, and have 5 copies on 5 devices. Maybe even give them a way to loan or share with a few friends. The iPad itself is sharable, like a comic book or an LP.

Make life easy enough, and users don't actually care about the DRM. They just want to watch and listen their way.

An information appliance for the caveman in us

This past weekend, I overheard all too many conversations about the iPad, echoing complaints friends read online.  The most common was "Why do I need one when I already have an iPhone and a laptop?"

Stop right there.  

If you already have an iPhone and a laptop, you're among the technology elite, and a minority.  Put your iPhone back in your pocket, close your laptop lid, and look around you.  What are other people using?  If you're at a Starbucks or Panera Bread, or an office that supports the iPhone, the people you see are the minority too, so you'll have to look farther afield.

Most Americans aren't laptop and iPhone toting early adopter creatives commenting on blogs, emailing business plans, designing marketing materials or coding a startup.  Most Americans are consumers.  Most Americans spend their time on passive leisure that makes them feel happy.  

Instead of observing fellow laptop users at Starbucks, go find how "most Americans" use computers.  Watch people at a public library or even at the computer aisle in a Best Buy store.

When confronted with a keyboard (invented 1867), people don't touch type, they eyeball and poke at one key at a time.  Given a mouse (invented 1972), their gestures are tentative. They look at the screen, then look at their hand on the mouse, move it, and look back at the screen.  They want something from the computer, but the tediousness of telling it what they want frustrates them.

Why is a tool designed in 1867 for people creating office documents, and the esoteric skill required to operate that tool efficiently, still getting in the way of people just wanting to read an email, find a book or song, watch a video, or browse friends and family pictures on Facebook?  Why does it take a Steve Jobs to imagine most Americans don't want an electric typewriter with a nicer screen?

Who wants to have to learn this:

To do this:

Photo via Flickr/Scott Chang

Engineers should get out more.  This decade's netbook form factor is still dictated by vestiges of the typewriter age and the "data input" daily routines of academia and corporate America.  Regular folk don't type.  Regular folk poke, prod, and ogle.  How ironic, then, that regular folk may better appreciate than the technorati what the liberal elitist New York Times calls a triumph of taste?

Great products, according to Mr. Jobs, are triumphs of “taste.” And taste, he explains, is a byproduct of study, observation and being steeped in the culture of the past and present, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing.”

The iPad is an information appliance designed the way humans have seen and shared images and writing for millennia.  See what you want. Touch what you want.  If you can trace lines in the sand, you can use the iPad to imagine, create, and consume.

Usability week ending January 31st

Friday, 29th January, 8:48 PM
Counterpoint on iPad angst: usability makes tech geeks nervous http://post.ly/LGR8

Friday, 29th January, 1:20 PM
Every single action with iPad's books is animated for natural human interaction: http://j.mp/bQMzPf #ux #ui #usability #iPad

Friday, 29th January, 12:39 PM
Snark on iPad "missing" Flash, from surprising source http://post.ly/LCbd

Thursday, 28th January, 12:28 PM
Apple's 0.7 megapixel 4:3 EDTV media viewer http://post.ly/L1NM

Wednesday, 27th January, 11:27 AM
Users faster, more successful, less error-prone, more satisfied using forms with inline validation: http://j.mp/aYlH99 #ux #ui #ia

Tuesday, 26th January, 8:45 AM
Even new @Twitter users need priming and context. Web design should give needed guidance through ‘usability’: http://j.mp/6JFaV8 #ux #ia

Monday, 25th January, 3:54 PM
#Usability lessons--short menus, top nav, blue links, clickable buttons, less graphics, calls to action, fewer buttons: http://j.mp/68kmdS

Monday, 25th January, 9:41 AM
24 hours of video player UIs. Which do you prefer? http://j.mp/6Y6msw + Silverlight Player to compare: http://j.mp/6tj1SJ #ui #ux #ovp

via twitter.com/terretta

Counterpoint on iPad angst: usability makes tech geeks nervous

For years we've all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the 'average person'. We have totally failed in this effort...

Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organising the party.

If the iPad frees people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage with enthusiastically.

This isn't a computer for geeks. It's a tool for humans.

iA's "What’s Next in Web Design?"

Technology often develops from primitive to complicated to simple. The web develops faster and more client focussed than traditional technologies. Web development is cheaper, more flexible and most importantly: everyone can contribute to its development. In concrete terms: Better interaction design, less graphic design. Better user experience, less debates about taste. Faster technology, more reliable design standards.

iA predicts the future of web design by looking at What's Needed. After 15+ years of web design, you'd imagine some of this would be taken for granted, but then again, look at magazines...

Simplicity. iA points out most sites are still too hard to use. In our web design profession, we sometimes forget the users who think "screenshot" means taking a picture of the computer with their camera. Sites need to focus on a rational business model, simplify to do it well, and be approachable for non-insiders.

Speed. Physical interfaces offer instant feedback. Flipping through People magazine is far faster using paper than online. Web sites need to be designed for fewer clicks with less latency. Using them needs to feel fluid. iPhone apps such as Tweetie 2 are getting there.

Beauty. User experience isn't the skin, it's the interface. Designers need to work more on interaction style than visual style—less on what the CEO wants and more on what the end user needs.

Applying these, iA sees trends towards getting design out of the way and unifying user interfaces, through tools such as standardized web fonts, grid layouts, and UI libraries such as jQuery.

Visual realism in UI design: just enough, but no more

Lukas Mathis's ignore the code blog offers illustrations of—and explanations for—the user interface sweet spot between visual realism and conceptual shapes.  His conclusion?  Designers should convey the essence of a symbol.  Any more detail distracts, while any less loses the symbol's intent.

Let’s look at a symbol we actually see in user interfaces, the home button. Typically, this button uses a little house as its symbol.

The thing on the left is a house. The thing on the right means «home». Somewhere between the two, the meaning switches from «a specific house» to «home as a concept». The more realistic something is, the harder it is to figure out the meaning. Again, if the image is simplified too much, it’s not clearly and immediately recognizable anymore.

The thing on the left is a home button. The thing on the right might as well be an arrow pointing up; or perhaps it’s the ⇧ key. Let me explain this concept using an entirely unscientific graph:

People are confused by symbols if they have too many or too few details. They will recognize UI elements which are somewhere in the middle.

As an aside, I keep Coda's icon on my dock because it's so uniquely refreshing.