What really resonated with me:
- apps don’t talk to each other
- social media doesn’t launch apps
- the UI is different for every app so you need to work out how each works
- yah, multitasking… no multiple tabs!
- web content is still free

Really makes me wonder about the volume of trade in the ipad app store. The crucial differences between iphone apps and ipad apps are the display size of the device, the cost of apps, subscription (you keep paying) and the fact that it doesn’t really matter if media companies have worked out how to automatically redirect urls to an optimised experience… as it was in the old days with the iphone… if it is a half decent site to start with that is!

Now, I know there are plenty of places and people and purposes for this. But my post is speaking generally. After all the business model should be about attracting as many consumers as possible. So how many is possible?

I wonder if users are going to be paying more for premium products will it equal less variety per user? How thin will that dollar need to be spread out across the media landscape? Will people really be loyal to more than one paper and a few magazines? And that’s just the slither of the market who are interested in the short to medium term.

At least this whole consumer fanaticism going on in the net world might distract the attentions of developers getting that one URL thing sorted and keep the iphone app industries pockets licked.

Even so, there are free news apps on this device to compete with already. And in many cases they got to market first. Just like the real web. (real, ha!) So does it all come back to brands backed by plesant experiences? (note brands first and loyalty second… UX as insurance?)

I guess what I’m really saying is that we should also be focused on making sure our current web properties perform well on these new devices as well as hopping on the app train. Just like you would support and test for any browser. Users already have two communications bills on the whole. One for our internet and the other for our phone.

Sure, the app store is an amazing business model and a cash cow if you get it right, but is it as neccessary for users with a larger screen for sites with good web infrastructure? In a competitive market it is likely that someone else will get this right if you don’t.

- Josh Harris, Protagonist of We Live In Public (Ondi Timoner’s Sundance winning doco)

Josh Harris, most remarkable for his online video and streaming businesses / experiments did some ground breaking and odd things in the late nineties, just before the bubble burst.

Here is a list of just a few of them featured in the film:

• Founding Jupiter research (brought by Forrester Research in 2008 well after Josh floated, sold and then moved on to begin his next project)
• Founding Pseudo.com an internet tv station (1993)
• Creating an alter ego called Luvvy, the clown who would happily come out at networking events
• Filming and streaming  footage of 100 ordinary Americans and artists who were living in a wild and sanity challenging bunker in 1999. (totally nothing like Big Brother)
• Filming and streaming his own relationship from home
• Becoming an apple farmer

Josh is extreme, visionary, in many ways successful and decidedly strange. His success came from a ballsy approach so there is no surprise that his high flying take on things meant he would suffer badly in the dot-com crash. Josh always spent his personal profits on the next big idea and he loved to live it up wildly. Audiences will probably think he’s a jerk, but they will certainly find him interesting. I’m glad people like him exist, because extreme thinking and doing is just so damn interesting. For me, this film is a net-nuts must because it explores an era at its most insane and because it is totally wild and annoyingly fun. Thank you Trimoner!

Here are some useful examples:

20 Fantastic Resources For User Experience Know How:
http://www.inspiredm.com/2009/05/15/ux-madness-20-fantastic-resources-for-user-experience-know-how/

50 iPhone Apps for Web Designers and Developers
http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/iphone-roundups/50-iphone-apps-for-web-designers-developers/

20 Tools to Make the life of a Web Developer Easier
http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/20-tools-to-make-the-life-of-a-web-developer-easier/

25 Most Useful Blogs for web design and development
http://www.webappers.com/2009/04/06/25-most-useful-blogs-for-web-design-development/

50 Great Examples of Data Visualizations
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/50-great-examples-of-data-visualization/

5 impressive Mashups of Twitter and Flickr
http://mashable.com/2009/05/11/twitter-flickr-mashups/

30 days to become a freelancer
http://www.skelliewag.org/30-days-to-become-a-freelancer-961.htm

Trend spotting a fashion that is beginning to get irritating.

Self explains that Obama knew he was never going to raise money for his campaign in the traditional way.

“What Obama did,” Self says “was to gather 10,000 people together at a rally and ask each and every one of them to use their mobile phones to sms a number and pledge five bucks”. Certainly not a big ask but there you have it – $50,000 in 50 seconds.

This sort of activity is a great example of how Obama focused on a grass roots campaign rather than doing the traditional fancy dinner party for maximum donations of $2300.

Self says that once voters consider pledging $5 it is easier for them to consider stepping it up to $10 and $20. By lowering the barrier to entry and asking voters to pledge an amount they could afford, they generated an enormous amount of good will into the campaign. Voters now had a greater vested interest in the candidate they had reached into their pocket to support. These voters were more likely to remain informed, speak about the campaign to friends, neighbors and colleagues.

The focus of any campaign is on money, message and mobilization. By valuing small contributions the Obama campaign knew that this would have an incredible impact on mobilizing their message. During the campaign US$770 million was raised, and 35% of that was online. 68 million Americans door knocked or made phone calls to encourage votes for Obama. The campaign generated 1800 videos online with over some 50 million views and 6 million email subscribers were acquired by promising those people they would be the first to know who Obama elected as Vice President.

Other media assets Blue State Digital were responsible for during the campaign were:
Personal fundraising pages:  http://my.barackobama.com/

Fight the Smear – a website dedicated to fighting rumors during the campaign (rather than rely on traditional media to fight the smears for you): http://www.fightthesmears.com/

Seven tips to building relationships online:

1. Don’t ask for too much at once
   Relationships aren’t that different online as offline, Self explains. You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, so don’t go for the full hog off the bat online either.
2. Make the best use of timing
   During the campaign the most amount of money was donated the day after Sarah Palin’s first speech in which she flamed community organisations.
3. Be authentic
   For example, emails are personal. Make it real. A real person wrote it, so get them to sign their name.
4. Transparency
   For example, Blue State Digital created hundreds of video journals from Obama, to campaign managers chatting about how it was all going.
5. Lower your barrier to entry
   Give people multiple options for how they want to be involved so that they can elect an activity that is meaningful and accessible to them.
6. Raise your expectations
   Begin with asking users for something simple, like a sign up, then you might ask them to perform an action such as refer a friend. Later, ask them to write a blog post or by a product. You get the idea.
7. Measure everything
   Measurement is really important so that you can know what worked and what didn’t. Test and refine along the way.

And with that, Self ends by explaining how savvy audiences are. He encourages building relationships with your user base from a good, genuine and passionate place. Otherwise, it will not work.

There are many ways for users to consume content online, begins Pickard. They consume, react, curate and create. Unfortunately we spend most of our time and efforts engaging them to consume and not enough engaging users to react, curate or create.

UCG or user generated content is considered a pretty dry term by Meg, she’d prefer to think of it as users expressing themselves about stuff they are passionate about.

People also tend to get social media and social networking confused. To often the media tends to provide social media tools in a separate environment to the content, rather than having that engagement interacting with the content.

Meg  encourages that we consider social media as an activity that should be rapped around the content. Moving forward Meg would like us to think not of content as king but context instead.

Another common misconception says Meg, is that social media should be social. Sometimes, it is quite anti-social. For example, a path exists through the forest because many people have walked it over time. This doesn’t mean these people have forged the path together, but more so that they have tracked down it one at a time. However, it is the fact that the path exists that is important because previous interactions with it define the best way to go for future travelers. Having said that – the herd isn’t always right and even if they are you need to figure out where they are going and if that is right for you? Or – if forging your own direction is right for you.

Meg also encourages online media junkies to play where people are already playing. She gives the example of the Guardian’s Message for Obama project which they set up on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/groups/messageforobama/pool/ In this example, the Guardian observed no confusion as to whose project it actually was. They monitored the online chatter and were pleased with the amount of good will this project generated with their readership. Meg advises, “Do what you do well and go else where for what you don’t”

Also, sites need to think about how to encourage participation and reward their passionate users. Being a host isn’t just about being a bouncer and sending your users to the naughty step, says Meg. What we want to do is find a way to engage our more proactive users.

Guardian user cycle = casual > connected > committed > catalyst

…on, developments at the guardian.co.uk, how to receive user feedback and designing for your mum.

Life at the Guardian

Meg jokingly calls her self an ‘insultant’ for the Guardian (internal consultant), but in all seriousness highlights the value of having someone responsible for focusing on the user agenda, constantly asking ‘why are we doing this?’ and ‘why would people want that?’. If you don’t know what your really asking of your users, then they most certainly won’t get it either.

Meg describes her job as understanding cultures and spotting patterns of which her background in anthropology is proving useful.

Innovation

The web has changed and now there is a much greater desire to be “of the web and not just on it.”

Some of the things Meg and the Guardian team have been thinking a lot is new ways for streams of information to talk to one another.

For example, how can we combine content and data to provide new and interesting information (data journalism). Or, how can a news article not only reference the past, but also have points to referencing the future. How do we turn one click into two? So that we are thinking of content discovery in terms of how did I get here and where would I like to go next.

Meg emphasizes that publication is no longer the end of the authors relationship with their content as it was in the newspaper print days, but only the beginning.

One solution The Guardian is working on to address challenges in terms of resourcing online curation, is by looking at how keywords can be harnessed to direct traffic around your site. Meg discusses the need to go beyond individual keywords as an effective solution. A typical example we use at work is Paris Hilton, because Paris is a person and a place, however, it could also be that you not only want to know about Paris the place, but also cookery there. To try and assist users to find the very specific content that addresses their needs the Guardian have begun working on a project that looks at constellations of keywords.

Later in the year they will be launching rich keyword pages. These keyword URLs will look something like this: www.guardian.co.uk/keywords/paris+cookery+class allowing users to string keywords together and get tailored results and then grab an RSS feed for it.

Meg’s objectives are to reach the power users, not just the lowest common denominator as these users are the ones who pull the others forward. A User Experience design shouldn’t be about designing so that your mum can use it, but so that it is engaging and relevant for the future. Such thinking breads innovative ideas from the team at the Guardian, as they focus on the needs of niche communities – not just churning stuff out for the masses.

… Looking at how we consume, not just where.

Typically the majority of property listing sites or travel sights requires users to enter a location to begin their search for information. What Meg has found is that many users don’t think about their holidays or where they would like to live in this way. Rather, they think of it in terms of a set of requirements and much greater flexibility in the location. “I’d like to go somewhere sunny, for under a $2000, near the beach or with a pool.” Another good example of a property site offering something different in the market is http://www.propertysnake.co.uk a site that lists properties which are dropping in price. This concept acknowledges peoples flexibility in looking for something they can afford.

A Note on Accessibility…

Don’t just think of it as an issue for audiences with impermanent – but as accessibility in terms of everyone everywhere. So we are designing for ability and devices as well.

Managing User Feedback

We all know people don’t like change… Meg says that this hasn’t only been true in her own experience, but among her colleagues as well. A friend at Flickr noted that their users get really angry when new features are added, accusing the development team of polluting the product and within 2 months it is a feature they can’t live with out it.

So how do we manage which feedback is useful?

Ignore all user feedback for the first 48 hours.

Over the following 2 weeks, write down the complaints and then ignore it. If after that ikf users are still complaining about the same issue go back to your notes and look at the issues raised.

Tips for in House User Experience Teams

Meg recommends user experience teams developing their own labs and proof of concepts. Don’t wait for the boss to take notice! She also acknowledges the need to illustrate your business analysis skills by having an internal blog.

Meg also told us all to look at http://www.pluck.com for affordable widgets to encourage user involvement on our sites.

The media really love to focus on the scare stuff when it comes to social media… but I thought you would be interested in this one as it is quite an extensive article about trolling – hammed to the max in the morbidity of death and anonymous cruelty. Another example of focusing on the negatives to convince us that connectivity is a scary thing? Probably…

“That the Internet is now capacious enough to host an entire subculture of users who enjoy undermining its founding values is yet another symptom of its phenomenal success. It may not be a bad thing that the least-mature users have built remote ghettos of anonymity where the malice is usually intramural.”- http://tinyurl.com/trollNYT

Also – interesting stuff around unenforceable legislation and the ungovernable…

Pesce is always an interesting listen – he cases topics at hand in real world examples which are really engaging.

All the Friends I’ve Never Met details how a group of bloggers took down the US Attorney General and how Twitter informed him of the recent earthquake in China before it hit the wire. Great inspiring examples of social media as hyper-connected and powerful information sources.

Excellent use of 15 minutes of your day.

The world is in a frenzy. They’re all discussing UGC or UCC. (yep another acronym to further alienate us – user generated content and user contributed content). More and more we’re hearing people talk about citizen journalism. By definition citizen journalism involves public participation in the generation of news content.

So! The common people are expressing views, creating content and sharing it.

The common people are playing an active role. Hmmmm….

What I find intensely problematic about the notion (or labeling) of citizen journalism is the explicit connotations of qualified and the unqualified, the legitamised and illegitimate, the endorsed (by brand) and the unbacked.

Now, I am in no way at any point playing down the craft of journalism. I appreciate a person dedicating their days to researching, writing and publishing news and information in papers, magazines, online and in broadcast. What I’m saying is that it is all legitimate.

What I am saying is that if you need to discuss any kind of content generation in an us vs them narrative by using terms like citizen journalists… well then. You just don’t get it!

Of course, those of us who are 100% pro user driven content and contribution are also usually opensource lovers, democratic media thinkers and free speech supporters. We’re engaged in the world around us, we want to participate and we often question the validity of the dominate voice. Something that I believe should be taught in schools along with comprehension topics. How about teaching students to be discerning?

We speak and discuss the possibilities of user generated content online quite differently to traditional media publishers, their producers and the journalists they employ. These players are on the most part cautious, slightly inspired, but mostly concerned.

The publishers are talking about quality, trust and not just content! Oh, no. Compelling content as though they are the best qualified to do that. The publishers are talking about trust. Trust in them because of the brands they have built. What I’m hearing are the sounds of a big business and a venerable industry clutching on and being protectionists. What they’re really saying is that the future is here – we can’t delay it much longer but we have a value proposition for you.

We’ll be the ones you can trust.
We’ll be the ones who do the quality control.
We’ll vet your information.
We’ll only show what is important.
And we’ll tell you how it really is.

Quality control, vetting information, organizing information and quality publishing are totally required, I agree. But as you can see on newsvine, provided with a good engine, we’re all perfectly capable of doing that for ourselves. Journalists and common people together.

But!

Leave the trust bit up to me thanks.

Citizens haven’t always been that great at being discerning with media, but I think in this changing landscape they are quickly learning for themselves that they have too.

Until now, we’ve trusted the highly emotive and partisan views of mass media outlets.

Until now, my physical reality networks have digested carefully crafted scripts about a legitimate War on Terror because if your not with Bush then your part of the Axis of Evil. (title case on purpose) We’ve been listening to mass media scripts that describe the tragic deaths of women and children in Iraq as “collateral damage” or rather, accidentally whoopsies so that we don’t have to think about it or take responsibility. Now days many outlets are prepared to talk about “casualties”, because the war hasn’t really worked out too well and they have stopped investing their supporting in the former Prime Minister John Howard. We must note that this shift in language is a highly divisive and manipulative form of communication.

What is important about this example is that the media failed to question the government until it was too late. And, at large, we failed to question the media.

The future looks different. Everyone knows there is a shift that’s been taking place for quite sometime from passive consumption to active participation collaboration and contribution.

Users can decide what is newsworthy. Users can decide what is legitimate. We will discuss and debate what a legitimate view of the world is, or what is not.

Users on newsvine, current_tv and the Noise Festival, to name a few are already engaging in community driven content where citizens (journalists too) push the content they choose is compelling, they rate, vote, comment and debate.

We are choosing what is legitimate, what we trust and are fully capable of being discerning about the information we receive. Thank you very much.

Any less is as corrupt as saying – we’ll endorse free speech, but not yours, only ours. Which, we just might just be doing with big money business controlling the memes and sitting in government pockets.

So. If you talk about citizen journalism you don’t get it. Because you just can’t hold on to us and them thinking for long. The lunatics really are running the asylum.

Watch out for my next post titled – “We’re all specialists” or “Not just eyeballs”… vote now. :]

Calling for an open web – I wonder what Al thinks of Google & if he in fact uses it at all.

 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1622015,00.html