On 7&8 August, I will be teaching a 2-day master class on information architecture and collaborative design, run via Ark Group. The thing that is slightly different about this workshop compared to my IA workshop is that, duh, it includes a lot of collaborative design.

I’m adding more material on user research, design games, usability testing and designing in teams - I don’t usually get to teach these in a one-day workshop. And 2 days allows more hands-on, practical stuff than one, and that is always good.

So if you know someone who may be interested, and can get to Sydney, please pass on the details: Information architecture and collaborative design workshop.

This numbering system (or strange names) problem exists throughout the car industry. It is just one of the things that a consumer needs to learn before starting to navigate the car world. It has been around for a long time, is fairly embedded, and there are plenty of people who know the system. Just not everyone.

The thing that we can do, as user experience designers, is to make sure things work on both levels - to provide ease of access to those who know the system, and help people who don’t know the system to learn it quickly - to lower the barrier to entry.

So given I’ve been spending too much time on car websites recently, I thought it would be worth looking at some examples of how some brands are managing this.

High learning curves

First, here’s the some bad examples.

Peugeot’s model range page is based on numbers and provides no further information:

Alfa Romeo doesn’t have a ‘models’ landing page so the only entry is through the navigation in the middle of the page. A simple addition would be to add the model name to the scrolling banner image - at least I could then watch the image and get an idea:

Citroen are the same - no ‘model’ landing page, so all entry is through the number-based navigation at the top of the page:

Low learning curve: At a glance

Renault and Volkswagen both show names and thumbnails at a glance. Nicely done and easy to understand.

Audi have a go at it, but the thumnails are a bit small to tell the cars apart (I do like that they show starting price here - that’s handy too):

BMW tries as well, but the images are too busy to see detail of the car:

This is the most common approach with other manufacturers doing it with varying levels of usefulness

Low learning curve: Easy to reach

Fiat has a ‘Model range’ widget on the home page that lets you scroll through the range, so you can visually connect the picture to the name:

Low learning curve: details on hover

Saab have thumbnails of the models on the home page, with good detail on hover (and consistent navigation options for each):

Holden too have a ‘more details on hover’, interestingly attached to flyout navigation (I did nearly miss this though):

Just goes to show, it is possible to do better…

And now I should get back to work and stop thinking about cars (though ping me if you love/hate your recent-model Peugeot, Alfa or Fiat).

The back story …

I’ve recently started to think about buying a new car. I don’t mind my current one (it’s a Nissan X-trail) but it is a bit bigger than I need and sort of just not me. I’ve been thinking about buying a Peugeot for well over a year - they’re terribly green (very low fuel use, low emissions, and supposedly would run on biofuel if it ever turns up) terribly sexy and quite well-priced. Every time one goes by me I notice it and think about buying one. I hadn’t even considered buying anything else.

Until I visited their website.

I’m a girl - you probably know that. For me buying a car is a bit of a scary idea - every car purchase I’ve previously been involved in had a boy part to it. That shouldn’t be so scary, but there are still great big blocks of the consumer world where girls are treated differently (wine stores and wineries are the other, but I’ll whine about that later).

And I’m sort of organised, which is why I’m a decent information architect. You’d hardly expect me to do something so important without research. And I’m a web chick so the website was the natural place to start.

When I approached the website, I had three goals in mind - to find out about the new model that I had seen advertised, figure out which model was good for me, and learn enough to sound sensible when I went to the dealer. Sounds like a decent, straightforward research task.

Problem #1 - The home page:

Not much help there - a big picture and a bunch of numbers.

Problem #2: The ‘Model range’ page

Another big picture and a bunch of numbers. This number problem is consistent in the whole car industry - you have to decipher the numbering system before doing anything.

Problem #3: The ‘Build your own car’ page

No image this time, but still the numbers.

So I just dug around for a while (like, an hour) to figure out the numbering system and to vaguely figure out what I might want. I narrowed it down to a 207 (small hatchback), 307 (medium hatchback) and 308 (new, medium hatchback) with 5 doors and diesel. My main criteria are a hatch so I can drop the seats and put stuff in the back, low fuel use and low emissions.

Guess what I might want to do next? I might want to compare the specs for these three narrowed-down options side-by-side. Compare dimensions, options, fuel use, emissions and price. I’d sort of like a neat table that lets me scan and compare each.

Let’s give that a go - the ‘Build your own car’ so doesn’t build a car, but does let me filter into all the possible cars and display results.

Problem #4: The comparison results

After choosing 5-door hatch, diesel, it told me there were three models and 8 versions, so I thought that was enough. Here are the results:

I can choose each of these, but not compare. My only choice now is to open up each ‘family site’ and dig through it. No side-by-side comparison. Nothing but sending me into three different organisational silos (oh, and the links don’t work anyway, so I can’t go anywhere; and what the * does ‘visual no contractual’ mean).

Problem 5: No consistency

You know what makes this all worse. I could just cope with having to dig into three different ‘family sites’. If they were consistently done, I could find the specifications part for each and flick between browser tabs. But no, each family site is structured differently.

Different visual approach, different navigation options, different styles of content. I still can’t compare. I’d be better driving to the dealer, getting brochures and putting them side-by-side on my kitchen table. And what’s the point of having a website?

The conclusion…

You know, I only tolerated this because I really, really, really wanted to buy a Peugeot. But every minute and every further moment frustration decreased my love.

I started by being totally convinced a Peugeot was the car for me. I finished by making a stop this morning at the Alfa dealer.

And just as a last image, do you think they talking about the car, or bandwidth:

Last time I changed my name was pre-internet and it wasn’t terribly hard. But now I have identity spread out all over the web, and am wondering just how easy it will be to change my name, and how important name is to identity.

I anticipate one thing will work in my favour. In the main, my name isn’t necessarily tied directly to my username. My main usernames are maadmob, maadonna & donnam. I don’t need to change them at all, but it certainly would be interesting to know what would happen if someone did need to do that.

So I’m keeping a running post of progress as I go - both to highlight the identity issues and good/bad examples of user experience.

Facebook

First stop (for no other reason than convenience) was Facebook. On my account page was a clear option to change my name (image below taken after I had done it), followed by a big warning about the types of names they won’t accept, and that all name changes are checked.

Wordpress

I was wondering what would happen with Wordpress. Ideally I’d be able to change an author’s name, have old posts under the old name, and new posts under the new. After all, the author doesn’t change, just the name.

Turned out I can change the nickname, but not the name. So I think I’ll probably set up a new author with a new name, rather than risk uncertainty of just changing a nickname.

LinkedIn

This was dead easy & only needed a minor edit in one field:

More to come…

I’ll be speaking at this year’s User Interface 13 Conference, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’m teaching a full day workshop called Information Architecture Essentials: Best Practices for Organizing Your Site’s Content. I’ll also be doing a 90-minute presentation, but haven’t yet figured out what it will be.

I’m excited about this for two reasons. I look at this conference every year and want to go every time - it has a consistently strong line-up of both topics and speakers. And I get to present my favourite workshop - one that I have done enough that I know people *always* enjoy and learn from.

More details to come, and a discount code for you to use!

So if you all of a sudden see comments, posts and general noise from Donna Spencer, it’s still me.

When I looked at the program this year, I was a bit disappointed that some of my favourite and noisiest IA folks weren’t speaking. It felt a bit odd to see a program with loads of names I didn’t know (back story - I’ve been on the organising committee and closely involved in the previous 4 summits). It didn’t bother me, and would never stop me from attending, but did feel a bit strange.

But then I was hanging out in the hallways in a break today and spotted lots of people with ’speaker’ ribbons that I didn’t know. And I felt something I thought was interesting. I felt glad that there were loads of new-to-summit folks who had gotten their stuff through a tough review process; and glad that there was a venue for the same folks to communicate their ideas to peers.

It really felt quite strange, and reminded me of why summit is my favourite conference, by far, for the year.

I’m really looking forward to it - I’ve wanted to go to one of Russ’ tutorials for a couple of years. And I love teaching user experience design for the web - I’ve spent a lot of time doing it, and a lot of time thinking about what I’ve learned and how to best share it.

I hope to see you, or your colleagues, there. Please pass details on to anyone you think may benefit.

Workshop description

A hands-on workshop with user experience expert, Donna Maurer, and CSS
expert, Russ Weakley.

Over two full days you will build detailed websites layouts from the ground up - starting with page layout, navigation and form design; and ending with clean markup and elegant styling using XHTML/CSS.

Day 1: Planning and designing the user experience - Donna Maurer

On day one you will plan and design a website - focusing on the user experience: designing the navigation, page layout and forms.

You will:

• learn techniques to understand your users, and prepare user scenarios
• understand your content with content analysis methods
• create an effective and usable site structure (information architecture)
• design a range of navigation methods
• create page layouts for content, home, index and special pages
• design simple forms

For each step, Donna will outline the fundamentals and show examples from small and large website projects. But most of the time will be hands-on -you work on your own project, ask questions and discuss with the group.

Day 2: Building beautiful sites using CSS - Russ Weakley

On day two you will build your website from the ground up - starting with structural markup, adding accessible markup and then styling your layout using CSS.

You will learn:

• how to create well structured, accessible markup
• the basics of CSS including rule sets, selectors, shorthand rules, inheritance and the cascade.
• how to structure efficient CSS files
• how to create a full CSS layout from a flat graphic mockup
• how to deal with browser issues including specific browsers such as IE5,IE6 and IE7.
• how to create a resolution dependent layout
• how to create CSS for printing and hand held devices

Dates

Canberra - Monday 31 March and Tuesday 1 April

Melbourne - Thursday 3 April and Friday 4 April

Sydney - Monday 28 April and Tuesday 29 April

Brisbane - Thursday 1 May and Friday 2 May

Register

More information and registration here: http://maxdesign.com.au/workshop2008/

The situations I found myself in were something like this:

• I was writing my new ‘Why choose me‘ page. I started out writing about how fabulous I am and why you should hire me (yes, that’s crude, but go see what most consultants do). Even to me it was boring and dumb and flat and I hated it. So I thought about why I hated it and what I needed to write instead.
• I was helping someone interview candidates for a website manager job. One person really got up my nose - when asked ‘Why do you want this job’ he explained how he wanted to work in a new domain, how he needed a change and how interesting it would be. I spent some time thinking about why he annoyed me so much.
• I was struggling with a content rewrite for a client. It was hard to understand, dense overly-complex and really dull. It was potentially an incredibly interesting topic turned deadly.

On reflection on the similarities between these situations, I realised the problem - in each situation the writer/interviewee talked about themselves and how great they were, instead of talking about the person they were talking to. And I remembered something that I already knew:

Nothing is about you. Everything is about the reader/listener.

I think it was Kathy Sierra who really nailed this a few years ago (and who I would like to thank for her many ideas and insights). She put it so eloquently:

This is the key to every single piece of communication. No-one cares about you, but they do care about what you can do for them.

Remember it, embed it, do everything you can to make other people shine; and good things will come your way automatically.

I was happy to rebuild my website from scratch as it needed it anyway, and chose to use wordpress as I knew it could do what I wanted to do. But when thinking about moving my blog, the decision was much harder.

I’ve been blogging since 2002, and have used movable type for the whole time, upgrading regularly and remaining up to date with how it works. I’ve also used it for other projects - the biggest one being the IA Summit website. So I had a level of commitment that meant that it was my natural choice.

In rebuilding my blog, I had only two requirements:

• I didn’t want to break all my inward links
• I didn’t really want to start my templates from scratch, because my time and brain-power are a bit short at the moment

That’s not too big an ask is it? With those two simple requirements, I decided to stick with movabletype, thinking the second criteria was a done deal and the first should be OK given I had upgraded many times without breaking links.

In a funny co-incidence, the morning of the grand rebuild I had an email from the MT folks saying there was a new version. Cool - I wouldn’t have to upgrade within a few days.

So I downloaded the install files and uploaded them to my host. Time-consuming, but relatively easy.

Then things started to go pear-shaped…

I’ve installed wordpress a few times in the last few years and think the ‘5-minute install’ is a pretty grand thing. I knew MT had a few more steps and wasn’t worried about it taking a bit longer. I followed the install wizard, which I thought odd given I’d always just updated the config file. Wizards should be less geeky than their direct-edit counterparts but this one so wasn’t:

• I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out two different types of file paths. I wish I had a screen shot of the interface or error messages, but believe me that this was one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever come across and the silly process of trial and error pushed me to the edge of my tolerance. And there was no help text.
• For email notifications I had to choose between SMTP or formmail (with no explanation beyond that) and fill in a bunch of fields. What-the!

But I took a deep breath, calmed down (something very hard for me) and continued. I finally got it installed (after an hour of working through the ‘wizard’).

Given my number one criteria was not to break links, and given I had been using MT since 2002 (with urls like 000123.html) my first job was to change the URL path to numeric (I know these don’t make great URLs, but really didn’t want to redirect). I dug around the interface for ages looking for the piece that let me customise the URL. I couldn’t find it. So I went to the official help and the support site. I couldn’t find it. After another hour of digging around, the camel’s back broke. I’d completely had enough.

From a simple, useful, usable blogging tool in 2002 MT had become a bloated, useless, unusable tool in 2008. I could no longer use it.

I deleted the MT files from my server (another hour) and changed to Wordpress. In 15 minutes I had installed, configured and imported my content. I resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to build a redirect file, which ended up taking much less time than the stuffing around with MT.

I won’t be going back to MT any time soon. Perhaps never. The ridiculous amount of complexity and lack of flexibility just proved too hard. They’ve completely lost me. I’m now a wordpress girl through and through. And happy being so.

One of the things I needed to sort out was the types of service I offer - I want to focus narrowly enough in my area of expertise to attract clients who I suit, without looking like so much of a specialist that good people pass over me. So of course I decided to focus on design training, IA and interaction design - these are my core offering, they are what I’m good at, and what I want to be doing right now.

So I had a page on my old website about usability testing (I’m finally getting to the point of the story). I automatically brought it over and added it to my list of services. I did it because I thought it was just something that a business like mine should offer.

But when I came to write the content, and convince you why you should hire me to help you with usability testing, things started to unravel. In writing it, I realised that I actually didn’t want to offer a usability testing service.

I thought about that some and realised why I don’t want to do standalone usability testing:

1. Usability testing is easy to learn and easy to conduct. Yes, really. I’d prefer to teach a team how to do it themselves.
2. Because it is so easy, it really is silly paying my rate to do usability testing. That money would be better used teaching other people to do it.
3. Usability testing really should be an integral part of a user-centred process, and happen informally (and sometimes formally) throughout a project. For most projects, getting an outsider to do this means money, which means it isn’t done as often as possible. Guess what - I’d prefer to teach someone to do it themselves.
4. I hate providing recommendations without knowing the design context, the challenges, the constraints of a project. I have seen too many usability test results that offer dumb, shallow recommendations that aren’t actionable because of the real constraints in a project.
5. I don’t mind running a solid test and providing detailed outcomes with no recommendations; but that’s not worth me spending my time on (I’m a designer and want to design), and not worth you spending the money on.

So lots of people are going to be upset with me about that, so I will acknowledge that there are some caveats:

• Usability testing is easy, but also easy to really stuff up. But for most of the types of tests I get asked to do as a consultant (mid-cyle to pre-release basic validation testing) it is not life or death.
• If you really need to do a detailed research-style study into something, hiring a consultant can be a good investment. I’m talking about fairly shallow validation testing.
• I do believe in the value of usability testing - I’d just prefer to do it on projects where I know the design constraints and issues and where I (or my small, close team) use it to help us tweak a design.

So I now don’t offer a standalone usability testing service - and don’t feel the loss at all. But I will teach others and will test on my own projects…and I’m comfortable with that.

I’ve been writing and teaching workshops for a long time - I think I what works and I know what I like.

But rather than assume, I thought I’d ask you. What makes a killer workshop? How important is the balance between:

• Most time spent on solid theory
• Real-life stories and case studies
• Practical activities during the workshop
• Discussions with other people in the workshop
• Materials to follow-up with later
• Trust that the presenter has experienced what they are teaching
• Being inspired

Can you live without some of these things? Is it OK to have nothing to use later but leave feeling inspired? Is it better to pack in lots of theory but not get time for discussions and activities?

What’s your idea of a killer workshop? (and is anyone teaching them?)

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules
2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself
3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged

So, here’s my list of things you may not know about me:

1. I have a degree in economics, though it started as accounting, and for a short time included science.
2. I’m a weaver - I have a huge loom in my front room and really, really love weaving. I never have time of course.
3. When I was a kid, my career dream was to be a veterinarian. That all stopped the moment my agriculture teacher told me how vets confirm a horse is pregnant (something to do with very long gloves).
4. At school I was never popular (smart, skinny red-head kid) and am still surprised when I realise people like me
5. I missed a birthday once crossing the date line - I thought it was really cool until I was sitting on the plane with no-one to wish me happy birthday.
6. I have not been anywhere in the Northern Territory, and have actually only seen very small parts of most other States
7. I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up
8. My career highlight so far was chairing the 2007 information architecture summit

And here’s who I’d like to know more about:

• Lisa Herrod, Maxine Sherrin and Steve Baty - three fantastic Sydney friends I don’t get to see enough
• Dan Willis - smart and completely mad and one of the best people I know
• Alex, because I’m sure he’ll have some very strange facts to share
• Caronne and Ruth because they are fantastic friends
• And Andrew because I love him (and I’m tagging him even though he has done this already on one of his blogs)

So one of the things I wanted to do was collect some new resources (my workshops are always full of follow-on reading). So I went hunting on the internet, figuring there must be some bloggers talking passionately and honestly about usability testing, the stories and the challenges.

But I can’t find them. I have a few old posts on usability testing (some which are good and I had forgotten) and found a couple of articles in online magazines. But I can’t find any good bloggers who write good, meaty, practical stuff on usability testing.

Ideas anyone?

It is less than 24 hours until Australia’s Federal Election. And I’m about to start panicking.

The same thing happens to me every time an election is called. I start with good intentions - this year I’m going to pay attention to the issues, figure out who really deserves to get my vote, learn how the voting system works and vote very deliberately.

But every time, as the time approaches, I get more and more overwhelmed. The media is saturated with crap that immediately makes me avoid it. Stuff ends up in my letter-box that is full of rhetoric and no substance. Advertising features people’s faces (which I have a chance of remembering), but I have to vote by name (which I have no chance of remembering). Pretty soon into a campaign I’m so over it that I block everything out.

Then there’s the overhead of trying to figure out the voting system. I’ve lived in NSW & ACT. State elections have a different system to the Federal Election. I’ve never gotten it straight and haven’t a clue how it works.

So I get to this point. It is 4.50pm, I have to leave the house in less than an hour to go to dinner, then vote early next morning. So I have less than an hour to figure out who I want to vote for and how to make my vote count. Oh, and I have to figure out where to vote, given I’m registered in NSW and live in ACT.

Given this marvelous thing called the internet, that should be OK. I’m sure someone sent me email this week about how to vote. I’m sure there is some good information out there.

But, really, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to spend the mental effort of figuring out where to start, finding what I want, cross-checking it for bias, absorbing it, remembering for tomorrow morning.

So I’m going to do what I always do. Walk into the polling booth, looking like I know what I’m doing. Ignore all the people thrusting how-to-vote cards at me. Get inside, wish I had a how-to-vote card. Vote for the same party I always do.