UsableMarkets - markets, design, usability, research

For those of us in the user experience community, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal about why most social networking / community sites fail comes as no surprise. The article, itself based on a study by Beeline Labs, highlights some trends:

Thirty-five percent of the online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members – 6% of these businesses spent over $1 million on their community projects. “A disturbingly high number of these sites fail,” Moran tells us.

And why do they fail? Metrics for success are not well developed; not having people experienced in community sites manage the site; and finally companies, when building their community / social networking site “have a tendency to get seduced by bells and whistles and blow their online-community budget on technology.”

The suggestion to rectify this — that companies spend more time and money reaching out to their users — will come as no surprise to anyone who has built websites only to find that they missed the mark in understanding what their users really wanted. Perhaps the moral of the story here is: just because it’s “Web 2.0″ doesn’t mean it’s automatically more useful and usable.

I also find it fascinating that the report suggests that one day CMO’s should really be CCO’s (or Chief Community Officers). Of course marketing is about so much more than building a social networking site, but point taken.

Your future CCO

~alex

I’m not the only one with a bit of fascination about all the oil inspired information graphics that are out there. Junk Charts picks up on these from The Guardian.

For those of you who are UsableMarkets aficionados, you will of course remember my fascination with oil inspired graphics earlier this year, here and here.

~alex

First, a great post from Health Populi on how the cost of oil affects health care.

Next, John Delaney, of Intrade, on why prediction markets should be legal, and regulated by the CFTC. And why they’re so darn useful. This is a good read.

Finally, how walkable is your neighborhood. Mine is a 94.

Why I like working from home

~alex

I’ve tried to ignore much of the hub bub around Yahoo v. Icahn v. Microsoft v. Google. But this graphic from TechCruch caught my eye.

I did suspect as much about Mr. Icahn, but it’s nice to see it shown in such a simple and stark way. (Of course, I’m blithely ignoring the fact that the man does get involved with failing companies, so I suppose we should control for that. But regardless, his record is bad. Not nearly as impressive as some other honored investors.)

~alex

Information aesthetics has been keeping track of sites that do interesting search visualization. By far the most fascinating is Viewzi, which allows you to decide how you want to view the results.

Use a slider to pick your view of the results:

The photo cloud view:

The shopping view:

And you can easily switch from one view to the next:

Great stuff.

~alex

I’m working on a project right now where cool (spectacular!) navigation — navigation that doesn’t just guide us through a web site experience, but is the experience — is something we’d like to do. While not appropriate in all situations, sometimes it’s good to live a little.

An example of what we’re thinking about can be found at Etsy, the market for hand made goods. There are all sorts of neat ways to navigate their goods, including by color (which is not only novel, but useful).

PicLens also comes up frequently enough, and navigating through Flicker images with PicLens can be pretty cool. In particular what I like about it is that you can browse many (many!) images at once without have to always click “Next Page.”

Also, there’s Tag Galaxy, which takes navigation metaphors about as far as one can take them (galactically speaking). Navigate through a metadata solar system, select the planet (tag combo) you’d like to see, and then watch the images fly in.

Certainly this is no longer your father’s web navigation. One wonders how long before the old standbys — left-hand nav, flyout menus, etc — will be a thing of past.

As always, thanks for listening.
~alex

Anuj Gangahar writes a rather interesting story in the FT this weekend. Dark pools — non-public markets where hedge funds and other privileged people can trade large amounts of stock — may be having an adverse impact on our efficient (and public) stock markets.

First, a little background.

It has long been posited that public markets, such as the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, follow the efficient market hypothesis. This hypothesis, backed by research, states that the price of stock in these markets incorporates all known information about that stock, so that no particular person can have an advantage. In other words, it’s unlikely that anyone can beat the market by having additional information that others do not have.

But dark trading pools, secret by nature, allow market participants to take a position on a stock without expressing it in the public, transparent stock markets. And, since these markets are not regulated, and therefore not transparent, insider trading seems likely. And even without insider trading, participants in dark pools could be trading on information which is not available to the public markets. This would give rise to differences in price. Which would give rise to arbitrage opportunities.

This situation could be resolved in one of three ways. One, the financial institutions that run dark pools will be true to their word and mark dark pool prices to the public markets at all times. This would be great, but may be expecting too much.

Two, arbitrage, being perhaps the only free lunch in financial markets, would give rise to opportunities that traders would be compelled to take advantage of. And in order to take advantage of these opportunities they would have to take positions in public markets, which would then, theoretically, bring that information to the public prices. If this process happened quickly enough, the difference in prices between the two markets would be arbitraged away.

The third outcome to this situation is the same as the second, only that it happens slowly enough that prices remain different between the two markets for significant periods of time (and I decline to comment on what a significant period of time is).

In this case either the public or the private market would be right about the direction in price, but certainly not both, and someone would lose money. Who loses (or which markets loses) depends on who has the better information. And one would assume (although it’s certainly not guaranteed to be true), that dark pools would have the better information, since dark pools are only open to the privileged (i.e. better informed).

Whatever the outcome it is unlikely that dark pools will go away anytime soon, since they play a valuable role for large institutions. They allow them to make large trades anonymously. This anonymity is valued since it allows them to express an opinion about a stock without tipping off anyone else what that opinion is. Or, in other words, they can keep their valuable information to themselves.

As always, thanks for listening.
~alex

Anyone looking to do a usability analysis of their site should start with a simple search. There’s much to be discovered. There truly is.

(Of course, you know this doesn’t relieve you of the obligation to do true user research and usability testing, but it may help you find the obvious problems.)

In addition, if you want to know what people think about your brand, you can also search for your company at the ever fun Brand Tags.

AT&T is American … and annoying … and a whole lot more.

~alex

Today in usability news:

In case there was some doubt (and who could blame you for being doubtful) Bill Gates is concerned about usability after all. In fact, he’s horrified by Microsoft’s poor usability I quote: “What an absolute mess.”

And Robert Hoekman Jr., author and design expert, rants about the much loved user-centered design (UCD) process falling flat (or being over-hyped, at the very least). To quote:

“No method is perfect, but in my experience, UCD has far too many flaws to come even close. And considering there are so many great apps out there designed and built without an ounce of app-specific user research, it’s safe to say you can indeed create something wonderful by throwing traditional UCD methods entirely out the window.”

Don’t tell Forrester, which sees UCD as part of any successful redesign.

~alex

The FT has this interesting piece in today’s paper regarding a new rating agency for carbon credits. The interesting bit:

Carbon credits have come under increasing fire as investors, academics and non-governmental organisations have complained that many lack credibility.

Recent studies have confirmed findings by the Financial Times last year that suggested as many as half of the carbon credits promised under the Kyoto protocol would fail to materialise.

…

“If we are to attract the levels of finance necessary to make this a mainstream market and have a strong impact on emissions reduction, risks must be clearly understood, articulated and managed. A detailed ratings system is a vital tool to bring greater clarity, transparency and certainty to the market,” he said.

To help clarify how important this is, imagine buying a bond without knowing if it was as safe as a US Treasury bond, or as risky (and junky) as a bond issued by the flimsiest of fly by night companies.

Have I got a carbon credit for you!

As always, thanks for listening.
~alex