Tapping, swiping and consistency in the language of user experience

I bang on about the language of UX. Most people refer to it as 'conventions' but for me, it's a language. The motions and interactions that a user has with a device to execute commands is a language, in the same way that we talk of programming languages.

Languages, of course, evolve. The same is true of UX languages. New commands come into play as the operating systems gain new functionality. For example, on a phone, tapping a picture magnifies it to fill the screen. This is true whether you're looking at socks on eBay, fish on Facebook or houses on Rightmove. Likewise, Twitter. It's the equivalent of a green light on your traffic lights. It's a universally applied command. If your spouse says, "Take out the rubbish!", you don't load the washing machine.

But closing a picture hasn't had a universally applied language. Historically, coming from the world of non-touch PC screens, a little cross in the corner of a picture was a prompt to close it. Actually, some people didn't know that and Facebook, for example, changed the little cross to a 'Done' button. But this is the world of touch screens, where physical interactions - taps, swipes, shakes etc - are prevalent and intuitive. Intuitive, that is, until one service breaches the rules of the language. And Twitter was the culprit.

A little like saying "I went for a run tomorrow", meaning "I will go...", Twitter was - as far as I know - the only service that used tap both to open and to close a picture. Facebook and the rest followed a different rule: tap to open, swipe down (or up) to close. Once open, tapping enabled the user to show or hide text overlay or written commands.

Yesterday, it seems, Twitter came into line. Tap open, swipe closed.

Why does this matter? Because if we go back to the question of "eliminating distraction and restoring focus to digital media consumption", which was explored at the last MEX, minor inconsistencies in UX language disturb the user from enjoying an immersive experience.

There's a term I learned from reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, a psychological principle known as "stimulus response compatibility". Essentially, it means that a cue suggests a certain behaviour. Like the green traffic light. Kahneman talks about the expectation that a door handle triggers the response "pull" but this is violated by architects time and again. How often do you find yourself pulling then pushing a door because there's a handle. I did it two days ago at a conference in the Shard. To confuse things further, one set of doors required a pull; the second, a push.

Whether opening a door or looking at pictures, we should not be required to switch to slow thinking. Maintaining consistency across stimuli should be a goal of the developer, so that the user can more fully engage with the content: the device and the app should become, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

So, thank you, Twitter, for making the change. I can no longer use your iPhone app as an example of stimulus response compatibility violation.

How Instagram beat Hipstamatic to the $1 billion prize

Three weeks ago, FastCompany broke the news of a new partnership between photo app darlings Hipstamatic and Instagram, which essentially meant that Hipstamatic was the first service that could post to Instagram. The suggestion implicit in the article was that Hipstamatic and Instagram, winners of Apple's iPhone app of the year award in 2010 and 2011 respectively, should work closer, perhaps even merge.

In the short time that has passed since then, Instagram - with heavy VC backing yet not a cent of revenue - has been acquired by Facebook for $1 billion, while Hipstamatic - entirely bootstrapped and profitable since the second week of its existence - is left on the sidelines (for now).

So how is it that Instagram has won, while Hipstamatic makes money?

Hipstamatic is fundamentally a camera app, which post-processes images taken with the iPhone camera, using selections prior to taking the picture. It mimics to a degree the pre-digital photographic experience, which did not (easily) allow for the manipulation of images after they'd been captured. In simple terms, you choose a film and a lens then take your picture. If you don't like the effect, you reselect a combination and retake the picture. You can share your pictures on various services like Facebook, Flickr and, now, Instagram. The app was born of a desire to recreate the cheap and unexpected effects of the original Hipstamatic, a plastic molded camera that had a very short life, and was in turn born of a love of the Kodak Instamatic. 

Instagram, meanwhile, is a social network. You take a picture and share it with your friends directly within Instagram, and cross-post to Facebook, Twitter and a number of other services. Yes, you can alter the image after taking it by selecting from a number of effects. However, that is not the main aim of the app. The name - Instagram - tells you all you need to know about the intended purpose: you use a simple image to tell the story of your occasion, instantly.

So while Hipstamatic has about 4 million users, who have paid for the app and many of whom have paid for further lenses, films and flashes, Instagram has around 30 million users, who haven't spent a single penny on it. Instagram allows you to share and see your friends' pictures easily with the app; and Hipstamatic forces you to choose the (far more sophisticated) camera filters prior to taking the picture. The ease-of-use of Instagram and the social connectivity built into it are worth far more than the sophistication of the Hipstamatic app and the clever business model.

Once again, success depends on being free, simple and connected.

Social media: ubiquitous but not quite there yet

IKEA UK YouTube Store

I came across a presentation recently from  The Social Practice, which talked about the trend for social media to go from being a destination to a dispersed network. In particular, it touches on the nature of 'Social' as ubiquitous, intuitive and dynamic.

A nice illustration of the ubiquity of Social, which the presentation mentions, is in the IKEA UK YouTube Store, which we are told is powered by Facebook data. I thought this was fascinating, so I took a closer look. And was a little disappointed. As The Social Practice state, "We're not quite there yet".

I compared the experience of a user who logs into the YouTube store with Facebook credentials with that of one who doesn't. Taking the latter first, we are asked "who's in your bedroom?" and asks you to click and drag an icon of a man, a woman or a baby into a circle. It allows for single sex couples with a child but you can't have a ménage à trois. If you go for a childless couple, whether gay or not, you are then asked "How long have you lived together?"

After that IKEA brings you a video exposé of 'the bedroom that might be', albeit without any options to pause rewind or fast-forward. You can then click on one of several items to be taken to its page on the IKEA online store. Altogether quite a nice idea.

So what's the difference if you log in with Facebook? Well, you'd think it would pull your relationship status and length of time since you were together, along with whether you have one or more children and their ages. That would neatly populate the questions that the app requires.

But it doesn't do that.

All it does is take your name and mine some text from your newsfeed then puts it into a little box that shows up while the bedroom of your dreams (sic) is pulled together. Like this:

(I've airbrushed out friends' names)

So, The Social Practice seems to have it right: we're not quite there yet, to which I'd add, ever so close.

What irks me, however, is the misalignment of the video window and the navigation menu above it.


Here's the presentation:

Facebook "Like" button drives up traffic for publishers

Image via WikipediaMashable ran a story this morning showing how much traffic Facebook's "Like" button is bringing to sites that have implemented it. Among the many stats quoted by Jolie O'Dell was the 200% increase in Gawker's traffic - and 500% increase in that of Sporting News - "due to this kind of plugin". So, perhaps, she's not really crediting Facebook for all the increased traffic.

I wrote about the relative influence of various social media about nine months ago, when ShareThis released some interesting figures showing that Facebook drove more 'shares', even before the Like button was released, but Twitter delivered more 'clicks per share'.

The Mashable piece includes this presentation to publishers from Facebook Director of Media Partnerships Justin Osofsky.

Working Together to Build Social News

Tweetdeck v Seesmic: ten deciding features

Mashable is running a series of weekly face-offs between various web apps: Firefox v Chrome, Wordpress v Typepad and now Tweetdeck v Seesmic Desktop.

I've been using Tweetdeck now for a while, after switching from Seesmic's older client Twhirl. Relatively satisfied, I haven't checked out too many alternatives. Yes, that appears to be an atypical lack of curiosity.

Now there's very little to decide between Tweetdeck and Seesmic. They both have very similar user flows. Both have Twitter and Facebook integration.

So where are the differences?

1. When I make Seesmic full-screen, the left edge of the window is cut off. This appears deliberate but I like to have a just a tiny margin of space between the edge of the screen and the text on it. It's a small design point only. 
2. Changing the size of the window in Seesmic is a pain. You have to click on the bottom right corner. I usually keep my Twitter client open on the right side of my screen. So to get the right width I have to narrow from the right then drag it across to edge of the screen. Once done, however, this ceases to be  a problem.
3. Worse than this, Seesmic has a limit to how narrow you can have your window, which means that I don't have full control over how I set up my screen.
4. Tweetdeck has buttons across the top of it for your different accounts. To post to Facebook or Tweet a message, you select which accounts you want to use by clicking the button. Seesmic's solution reduces the space used by putting a drop down menu next to the update window.
5. One of my gripes with Tweetdeck is that the menu of options largely disappears when you reduce the window because the options are along the top. Seesmic has cleverly put them along the side and also allows you to minimise the menu so just icons are showing. Very tidy.
6. The HOME Timeline in Seesmic is one of the best features. You can include replies, direct/private messages and search results in the same column. And at the bottom of the column is a cunning menu, enabling you to quickly move through, @ replies/mentions, DMs, messages you send, favourites and user search. This functionality existed in Twhirl and I missed it on switching to Tweetdeck.
7. The other timelines in Seesmic allow you to mix and match different accounts or keep them separate. This is not possible in Tweetdeck.
8. One of the clear differences between the two clients is in the image upload. With Seesmic, I can take a picture with my built-in webcam and upload it directly to Twitpic or similar service. Since I'm taking daily pictures of my facial hair growth for Movember during this month, this is a feature that is for the win!
9. Closing Seesmic does not mimise it to the system tray, as Tweetdeck does since the last upgrade. However, it irritates me that I can't close Tweetdeck without going to the system tray.
10. Other handy buttons on Seesmic include the toggle sound on/off for notifications, for one-click ease of use.

I haven't looked into CPU usage. For many people, this could be the deciding factor. For me that's not an issue: my current laptop has enough processing power and memory that I have not yet found myself grinding to a halt, as I did with the 2006 machine.

I'm going to give Seesmic Desktop a few days' use and then decide but I have feeling it might stick.

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Surfers become suckers at six

Online advertising works best after 6pm, according to new research carried out for the IAB, 'Receptivity of the online audience'.

Consumers were asked to rate how likely they think they are to pay attention to online ads when carrying out a range of activities online. According to respondents, the best time to reach them with ads is during e-commerce activity, whether researching the best deals or shopping online.

The research also suggests that social networking has a high level of receptivity. I'm not sure what this means. If it's suggesting that people click on Facebook ads, it flies in the face of experience.

Try a Google search on 'facebook ad performance'. There's not a lot of positive comment. One social media reviewer even says "Facebook Ad Click-Through Rates Are Really Pitiful". It's from April 2008, so maybe everything has changed now. I just can't find anything that contradicts it.

Some might contend that it's naive just to look at click-through rates. I'd agree it's not the only metric to consider. But it's not a bad starting point for measuring engagement across different sites, at various times of the day, for any given demographic.