Yummy or Crummy?

OK, I’m now back from the Google Analytics training. Unfortunately I cannot talk about a lot of the things covered there, because it’s either soon-to-be-released secrets by Google or their internal company info that they would rather not share with the public.

It was great to meet the folks from Google, and take in all the good information they had to feed us. I’m still very much new to GA, so it was good for me to learn about what it can do and how everyone else is using it. It really is a whole different way to make decisions about your site. As a design-oriented person, I’m trained to rely on problem-solving methodologies and the best practices that are supposed to yield good results. And yes, admittedly, that sometimes includes gut instincts that could be proven wrong from time to time. GA, and to a greater extent their new product Website Optimizer, if used right, eliminate the guessing work because the numbers are all there. There’s really no reason to waste time talking about which one is the best solution. It’ll be so easy to implement testing that will tell you exactly what the best solution is. I’m not saying these tools will make designers obsolete — instead, I’m hopeful that these products will be yet another tool in a good designer’s toolset. It’s another reason to collaborate with marketers, statisticians, developers to create the best user experience possible, and keep iterating on your success because the target is always moving.

It was also nice to hear about how Google anticipates the Optimizer to be the next big thing for them. They are excited about the product, and it was great to hear them encourage us and others to give them lots of feedback as well as ideas about how the tool can be improved. They recognize the importance of integration partners like us to spread the use of a new product, so it was great to get the sense that they value our opinions.

Overall a very good trip — I had fun, and I feel like I learned a lot. Now my challenge is to share what I learned with my co-workers, and inspire them to feel the same way!

POP has been a Google Analytics partner for a while. Every year Google hosts a training/conference for all the partners to attend. This year, with the new UI/features for the analytics tools and the new Optimizer being unveiled, our search and analytics guy thought someone from the user experience team should take part and share in on all the learning.

So — I’m off to Mountain View for Thursday and Friday this week. Will try to take some photos if I can, but I’m really not sure what to expect since this will be my first time!

8 BIT: a documentary about art and video games

Our friend Shi Kai told us about this movie, so we checked it out together at Northwest Film Forum this weekend. I thought I knew what to expect, because in the last year or so I have seen a good amount of works inspired by old-school video games, mostly in the visual arts category. I remember seeing an artist featured in Readymade, and in most cases I see these things through forwarded links from friends and co-workers, probably because it’s a subject that resonates with many people my age and the hipster DIY culture.

So I thought this would be like a collection of all those links and articles, showcasing the pieces and the artists, and talking about their motivation, etc. Well, the documentary did that, but it went much deeper.

The movie treated this kind of art as a new movement, something that takes us beyond modernism and post-modernism. Sadly I’m not familiar enough with the official definitions of these terms, so I can’t write intelligently about the validity of the claim that Marcin Ramocki (the director) makes. But it was interesting to sit through the post-screening Q&A with Ramocki. Basically the meat of his claim is that this is no longer part of modernism or post-modernism because we live in a world where reappropriating previously existing work has become an acceptable (almost encouraged in some cases — he pointed to object-oriented programming as an example) medium for working, including art. So reappropriation is no longer a taboo, and it’s certainly not a criticism of the original work. It’s something we have yet to define academically, and he seemed both excited and discouraged about that, like we are screwed because we can’t keep up.

While I would have been happy enough to see a slideshow of cool art inspired by nostalgia such as Atari and Nintendo, I was even more pleased to have caught this film in its limited showings. My only criticism is that it was a bit heavy on the scenes about the chip music, which tends to get annoying after a while. But Ramocki did admit that he loves this stuff and that it was already cut down substantially. When you love something, I guess you can’t hide it!

Lucretia and I are in the market for buying another car, but we’re not ready to “buy” it online. Over the years, the internet has proven to be a great platform for people who want to research about cars, so they can go into the dealer fully prepared with all the information. We are no exception, so we have been frequenting the dealer sites and various auto-shopping sites out there. I hope to do reviews of some of these sites soon.

But there’s nothing like the real thing, so we visited a local dealership to do a test drive. Maybe it was just the one guy that was helping us, but I think the attitude of the car salespeople have shifted to reflect the shift in the consumers’ attitude because of the internet. We felt confident knowing all the facts about the car, so we were ready to deflect any sales talk coming remotely close to BS. But we were almost disappointed when the sales guy took a REALLY laid back approach. He didn’t even come on the test drive with us! Is this normal? (We hadn’t visited a dealer since 2001.) It was almost like he knew not to BS people anymore, that he knew that would be a waste of time. We haven’t tried other dealers, so it’s hard to say for sure — but I felt liberated, like I would get what I wanted for a reasonable price, as long as I researched properly. If the dealer respects my space and my ability as a consumer, I respect their product, and grow to believe that I’m getting a good value. Honesty, building trust, and folksy attitude — it feels very Web 2.0!

On the other hand, the online experience is getting harder and harder to enjoy. The so-called consumer sites are riddled with ads and promotions by the dealers, I don’t know what information to trust anymore — unless I look at everything very carefully. It’s almost like the online and the offline experiences swapped places….

I’ll post more updates as we continue our car shopping. But so far going to the dealer has proven to be more efficient and productive than researching online, when considering the amount of time spent on both.

Apple has announced the much awaited iPhone today. It looks pretty damn impressive, and it has classic Apple signatures all over it.

I was intrigued by the decision to go exclusive with one carrier, in this case Cingular. This is a great news for Cingular, who will no doubt benefit from the exclusivity and being associated with such a premiere “cool” brand like Apple. I obviously don’t know the details of the deal, but I wonder if Apple has more to lose by going with just one carrier.

In the North American phone market, it is commonly believed that the carriers exercise more control over the phone manufacturers about the features, even the design of the phones. They dictate where the phone will display their logo, and what kind of features to enable/disable on the phone.

I would have thought that with Apple’s brand reputation and the huge number of loyalists that grows everyday, they don’t have to play by the same rules — Apple can turn it around and command more from each carrier. Make them play nice with each other, and get the greatest market share possible with the phone. Look at RAZR — there are variations from each carrier, and of course some “exclusive” models exist, but you can get a RAZR from every carrier now, because it’s perceived as cool and they probably lose business if they don’t offer it.

Well, I’m the first to admit I don’t know what I’m talking about. There’s probably a sound business reason to go only with Cingular (for now, anyway). I just hope that when the phone comes out for real in June, it looks as impressive as it does now, without all the meddling from Cingular.

Lucretia’s old phone was getting REALLY crappy — some buttons stopped working, and the battery wasn’t charging well. It was time to switch, which meant that we could finally look outside of Cingular. After doing some research, we settled on T-Mobile since their selection of phones was decent, plus she was really set on getting a PEBL.

I probably could have kept my SonyEricsson S710a, which I really liked. But the battery on that was dying as well, so I decided to take this opportunity to switch to something else. I think in general, SonyEricsson has the best phones. Nice, satisfying industrial design, better-than-average UI, and great features. It’s just that North American carriers don’t sell any of their good phones, and you end up paying a lot if you want an unlocked one. As expected, T-Mobile didn’t have any SE phones that I wanted, so I chose the next best thing — the relatively recently released BlackBerry Pearl.

My first impression is that it’s slick. Shiny and slippery — but not in a bad way. The buttons are small, but with a stick phone you deal with it. The back cover on mine comes off a bit too easily, although I talked to a friend who has one and his is too tight. Go figure.

The namesake feature — the “pearl” trackball in the middle is easy to use, and it’s pretty good for scrolling down a long list, which the BlackBerry UI has many of. I’m afraid of wearing it out with constant use. If the trackball breaks, I guess I can use the keypad as the directional pad (which I just discovered) — but that’s no fun at all.

So I’m assigning both “Yummy” and “Crummy” to this post — because there are some things I like about the Pearl, and there are some things I definitely don’t like.

Yummy

• Email — I hooked up my personal and work emails, and they come in with no problem (I had to play with the work email a bit, but it didn’t take very long). I realize I’m not away from a computer all that much, but it’s still nice to be able to read quick emails when I’m sitting on the couch or whatever. Plus it’s great when you are actually away.
• Camera — has a flash. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
• Browser — I haven’t played with the settings, but it looks like I can tweak it to make the pages look more like they do in real browsers. I got T-Mobile’s unlimited internet access, which seems to work in most places that I would go, and the speed is not bad for a phone.
• Address book — can handle many fields. It even kept the notes field from my Mac address book.

Crummy

• Camera — no video! WTF?
• Bluetooth — doesn’t seem to be able to receive anything. It can send, though. This may be due to some settings I don’t know about, but it should work out of the box.
• Browser — can’t display Flash. No YouTube on the go for me.
• Email — can’t handle attachments other than images. I sent myself an MP3, but no go. Do I need to install something? It’s not clear. UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I have opened a .doc attachment on BB. Haven’t been able to open a large PDF, and still no luck with MP3. To clarify, MP3 plays on the phone, if you manage to put it in the right folder. I just can’t get the phone to recognize the file in email attachment.
• Clock/calendar — when I flew to Chicago for Christmas, the phone detected that the network’s timezone changed. But the phone’s clock wouldn’t automatically change! According to this messageboard found by another friend, it’s so that your calendar doesn’t get messed up. Dumb!

Overall, I must say I miss my S710a in a lot of ways. I would consider switching back if the battery on it wasn’t so dead and the email didn’t work so well on the Pearl. But the emails keep popping in no problem, and now I can see why people get addicted to it. Any free moment I have, I reach in my pocket and start playing. I really should do my homework and read up on how everything works and maybe download/install some add-ons — so my impression may change over time after I take the full advantage of all of its features. I just hope SE phones will have penetrated the market better by the time I consider switching to a new phone after this one!

I know, I know. Everyone else blogging about getting a Wii used that spelling. But I can’t help it. It’s just so exciting. I feel so shallow and silly for being excited about a video game console. Maybe it’s the fact that Lucretia and I won it in a raffle at my employer’s holiday party. It was the top prize of the night, and we had won the DS (would have been our second one) prior to the Wii drawing — but when our number was called for Wii, I jumped up and returned the DS for Wii. I didn’t want to be a prize hog!

Anyway, the gameplay is sweet. It’s amazing how sensitive the controller is. A slight turn of your wrist is all you need to tweak your bowling or golf swing. And I can easily believe all the reports of people getting injured and breaking stuff while playing the game. (I already banged our Wiimote on the low ceiling. It doesn’t seem to be broken just yet, though!)

Here’s Lucretia playing tennis. And yes, I was planning on gutting it out with our old POS TV, but now with Wii in the house, I may have to upgrade soon.

And to add to the excitement, Wii now has a web browser. Hmm — I can watch a Flash video of a show on YouTube using the Wii browser on my TV. Love how everything comes back full circle…

And finally, these are our Miis.

For a while there I had a concept for creating a series of blog posts containing completely unresearched and unsubstantiated statements that could sound true, but are difficult to prove either way for an average person. Like: “On average, hand washing a fork consumes more energy than hand washing a spoon.” Or: “One adult sheep weighs as much as about 20 wool sweaters.” I just thought it’d be fun. Kind of makes you appreciate (not that I need a reminder) that there is A LOT that you don’t know for sure.

Well, I’m sad to discover that there is already a whole website with a similar concept. It’s blufr, and while you might have trouble pronouncing the name of the site (why not bluffr?), you won’t find it difficult to get addicted to it. It gives you one statement per screen, and you get to choose if it’s a bluff or not. No login necessary, just start clicking. Kind of like Hot or Not! And the points you “earn” as you guess correctly seem so arbitrary, but they sure make you want to guess again. Pretty clever. I just wish I had thought of making a whole site first!

IDEA 2006 is here. Wasn’t sure what to expect — all sessions sounded promising enough, but you know how these events go. This is the first year, so as far as that goes I think everything has been running well, and speakers all seem well prepared, and they’re all well spoken. Unlike the Webvisions, it is about ideas and high trends. No talks about practical applications, but it’d still be nice to get some consumable take-aways at the end of each session. They talk for an hour and you’d think they’d repeat the three things everyone should remember at the end. None of them explicitly did that, but Linda Stone’s talk was well structured enough that you got her message (you were sleeping if you didn’t), and David Guiney from National Park Service had a really sincere, memorable approach to his presentation. Others were pretty standard, I thought.

Linda Stone, opening keynote

• Our world is becoming noisier
• World is craving meaningfulness
• Sweetspot of a “phenomenon” is where human desire meets a product or a message that resonates with the desire — meaning a product/service might be great, but in order to take off, it needs to come at a time that coincides with our general consiousness
• From ’65 to ’85, the trend was me-me-me, self expression, creativity, and personal productivity
• From ’85 to recent years, we trusted the network, being connected
• Being always connected, always on means we’re scanning for activity — don’t want to miss something
• Linda calls this “paying continuous partial attention”
• But we’re all getting overwhelmed, leading to unfulfilled experience
• So we seek higher quality of information, higher quality of life
• We don’t totally give up trends from the past eras, we adapt and integrate to create a new trend
• We want protection from bad information, meaningful connections, authenticity, trust, values that resonate with ours, and clear signals over noises
• Tools that will flourish will in the next few years will provide these things
• Will help us make better choices — help us discern opportunities rather than make us scan for them
• It won’t be enough for products to be easy to use — they will need to improve the quality of our lives

David Guiney, Communicating the Stories of our National Parks
This was broken into two sessions, where he talked about the backgrounds and designing for the National Park Service in general in the first one, and about specific challenges associated in the second one. He is a passionate person who was impossible to not like. Don’t feel like posting everything I wrote down, so I’ll boil it down as much as I can.

• NPS strives to achieve balance between enjoying the park and preserving the nature
• Communication focus is on interpretation rather than straight education — what does it mean to you?
• Attitude of serving the taxpayers, because we pay for it all
• The slogan: Experience Your America
• Many contexts: signage, newspapers, films/audio, maps and guides, museums, websites, etc.
• Communication has many roles: safety, indicating historical areas, outdoor classroom, education about global climate changes, validation of what you learned in school
• Interpretation is about provocation (stirrs up something inside you), meaningful, and revelation based on information
• Successful if you come away being interested in things you didn’t know before, things you might not use in the future, things that might not be relevant to you, things you may never see again

The conference offered a nice spread of bagels and other goodies today, even though I did not take advantage. No tea, though. Just coffee.

Central Library is a nice space, but I haven’t had a chance to explore. Maybe tomorrow. Same goes for the food…

Also interesting to note is that this is the first event I’ve been where attendees are free to register for a blog account, encouraging participation by posting session notes, commentary, etc. This is a nice move.

When they first launched, both the Crazy Egg website and the application seemed a bit unstable. Can’t blame them, they were getting a lot of exposure even before the launch. Their product seemed well designed, the premise simple enough to understand and appreciate. Plus they marketed themselves really well, placing cute web 2.0 banners all over other cute web 2.0 sites.

Coupled with the instability, there were some issues that caused me to have a difficult time getting started on using Crazy Egg.

First, I got tripped up with their terminology. They use these words to mean slightly different (but very similar) things: session, page, and test. I didn’t read any instruction text (there wasn’t much) and I assume most people don’t, either. I realize now, that if I was using Crazy Egg for the exact purpose it was invented for I would understand those terms better. The app is for learning where your users are going, so that you can optimize placement for your ads, links, etc. So you set up a “page” to be watched by Crazy Egg, and then you’re supposed to try multiple “tests” of that page to see which version produced the best results. Me, I was just checking out what kind of traffic I was getting on a page, with no campaigns to test, so the subtle difference between the two words were lost on me. I still don’t know what a “session” is. I would imagine plenty of people would use Crazy Egg for simple traffic analysis, because their representation of the data makes so much more sense and easy to understand than other tools. For those people, Crazy Egg’s terms wouldn’t make as much sense as originally intended.

Second, I wasn’t sure if I had completed the steps to set up the page to be watched by Crazy Egg, even after the app told me I was done, and my page appeared on my “dashboard.” That’s because during the second step I was supposed to copy a javascript snippet and paste it into the page that I want monitored, but I hadn’t completed that task yet. Even though in my head I knew there was no way Crazy Egg would be able to begin monitoring my page without the javascript code, I was confused because the dashboard made it look like I was good to go. It would have been more clear if the dashboard had a status message like, “Javascript code was not found on the page. Have you pasted the code into your page?”

And this is a minor point, but the app doesn’t seem to support Safari well. The overlay markers are offset a bit, and background images don’t display for some reason. But I might be the one at fault here, because I’m still using Safari 1.3.2 on Panther. (I’ve been super lazy.)

In any case — after I got these “tests” running, it’s been fun to watch the heat map and the click overlays. They seem to be hard at work fixing the bugs to improve stability. I also see that they’ve been making some UI tweaks to enhance usability. It’s great that they’re not simply sitting back and watching after launch. They’re constantly improving, and that should be enough to erase any negative thoughts from the initial set-up.