Anchors & Curators

Curated content on the internet is all too much like the employee-picks shelf at the local bookstore (or video store). A selection, maybe even an interestingly thematic one, but just a collection of existing items. And presented with no other information to help you decide, but what you would find if simply searching on your own. Consider instead what people with Curator on their business card actually do. They collect, investigate, verify, and organize. They then build exhibits of some items from the collection, in a manner that tells a story. They add their own content. Maps, brochures, labels. Often, it all works together to make the point, to reveal deeper truths about the collection, and to encourage the viewer to explore further on their own. Compare these two paintings, though 20 years apart, the similarities help point out how the artist has grown in the intervening time. Or, consider the classic format of the national nightly news. Behind the scenes, the anchor is the Head of News. He sets the tone for the whole department, and makes key decisions about what and how it will be presented. Then as the on-air anchor he gives an intro to the story, frames not just the basic facts but the reason we care. If there's a graphic over his shoulder, it may well be a map, so you know where this is taking place. And then he hands off to a reporter who was on site, or at least pretends to be based on footage retrieved otherwise. And maybe, if it's a multi-faceted story, then you go to another reporter who gives another point of view; after the on-the-spot report, the reaction in Washington.
All this is all in relation to a number of posts* and discussions I've read and had with people about the point of online media. And it's coming up since I am being paid during the day to actually develop an IA for a very large product catalog, and integrate existing (magazine and other) content and personal details into one experience. I have seen at least a little of most of the available experiences. I don't subscribe to them because I am un-thrilled with the consumable media available. I still read paper magazines, because even cut down to save on costs, They do a much better job than pretty much any digital version. Web and tablet versions seem to have lost the key point of sidebars or related stories, and just use paper paradigms instead of developing their own; or learning from education, museum information design and broadcast radio/TV media even.
If this seems like a subtle change, it's not. Go back to the examples, and look at how much internet content is served. I call most of that a subset of "portal theory." An article is reduced to a smaller version, on a category page. It can be reduced to a smaller-yet version, even a title-only for a higher level category, for cross-linking or for the (portal) home page. Instead, I am starting to think that I want to break that whole model, and use the intelligence of humans, not just to tag and categorize and group things, but to differently re-order, to choose what is presented and not just sort, and to not just crop but actually rewrite content to present it most relevantly to the context. No, I don't have diagrams, or mockups for you. Yet. Maybe later. The only impediment, as I see it, is people. Good, smart, dedicated people who can write have to be found, persuaded and paid. And too much focus is on technology solutions, and paying for software. We have the software and interaction nailed enough. Now it's time to bring people back into the job of presenting information. Give me a news aggregator with the voice of an anchor, and I'll listen. But it could also be a great opportunity. To give a new type of voice -- or a reason to hope for the future -- to writers, and to the whole profession of journalism. If not this, then something like it simply must happen. Not to preserve a dying business, not just to make money in a new market, but to keep the public informed so we can all make decisions about the way we live.
* Now that I look for the links, way too many seem to be centered around Khoi Vinh. And he's a good voice in design and interactive publishing. But I swear others are talking about it also. And some rather interesting ones I can't quote.

** When searching for the links I ran across this, which I swear I didn't read before. It also has good points about curated computing. Very different ones, but the over use (or I say, mis-use) of the term "curated" is covered pretty well in there, if circuituously.

More on trustworthy data

You are flying a high tech airliner, at night, over the ocean. Your instruments become useless, airspeed and altitude randomly moving from off-scale-low to other, arbitrary values. Or are they true values? The computerized control system reacts to those with a series of warnings, some of which are contradictory: over-speed and stall, at the same time. Without any visual frame of reference, there's no way to tell even roughly how high or fast you are going. What do you do?

Ask for help.

Air traffic control has radars covering the area (it does for most places airliners fly, but not some of the deep ocean routes) so you call back and ask them to give you accurate information off their screens.

They can easily, if slowly and by voice, give bearing, direction of travel and speed.

Who knows what is wrong with this last data point?

Altitude is not derived from radar data, but is instead telemetry; the aircraft sends the information, along with those identifying codes at the top, to the radar as part of the transponder data. If flight instruments are inaccurate, its very likely -- and in this case, indeed true -- that the number on the ATC display screen is wrong also.

And as a result, you fly into the ocean.

Aeroperu 603 New York Times article Wikipedia article

There's plenty more to hate about this crash (and the similar Birginair one) from a human factors point of view, from providing static and pitot port blocking devices, to the difficulty the flight crew has of focusing on a problem with so many conflicting instruments and warnings.

But I think there's something to be said for the problem of displaying the trustworthiness of data in this one narrow context. ATC systems have worked like this forever, and will probably continue to do so. I was surprised no one seemed to be aware of their manner of operation. And remember, the ground controller does not have as many issues as the aircrew, so should have had a chance to think over the issue. I presume he was, deep down, aware of how the system works.

But I generally avoid anything that has training as its backbone. Would there be a way to denote how information works, or where it comes from? I have nothing now, but its worth considering. The big problem as I see it is that the information is of mixed sources, and therefore mixed reliability. When transponders fail, or are turned off (terrorists, smugglers), the data supplied by it simply disappears. But before that, its displayed in the exact same manner as the systematically, radar-derived data.

Note that just because air travel is a high-reliability system with lots of history, these systems are not bulletproof. Changes to the displays frequently are poorly implemented and cause confusion. I suspect much of the design is status quo, and is not that good were testing to be done on it. Problems are alleviated with training and procedure, leading to accidents that result from poor training, breakdowns in procedure, and poor communications of changes in either.

Form Submissions

Aaron Barker was just IMing me with some questions about form submission standards (such as they were) when I was at Sprint. We won't get into those, as they are muddied, and full of politics as well as design issues. He's got a similar issue, though, working in a big group, for a huge organization, trying to settle standards for it all. But one bit of info informing his question was a post by Luke Wroblewski on buttons. Its interesting, but I think flawed in some ways. Check out the heatmap. That must imply rigor. Well, its nice, but I'd rather have seen the numbers for speed to complete. Its mentioned in the text, but the article is overburdened with these graphics. Which, since they are what you'd expect, aren't that interesting. Overall, I am most disappointed with the dataset tested. I have always said that the primary design principles you can mess with are:

1. Position
2. Size
3. Shape
4. Contrast
5. Color
6. Form

(Form is like type weight, and other minor changes, but to familiar elements so its relevant. Still last though.) Many others have their own ideas. I am sorta enamoured of the time-based ones, and will have to ponder that a bit more. But working off my theory, items D, E & F changed position, but did not address the shape, contrast (minimally) or color aspects under test in A, B & C. Were it me, I'd have tested A-C, then re-tested with those results to make a set that tries out position changes independently. (Also, the use of that faded gray background under the buttons is way too specific an element for anything I'd test in this sort of research; I wouldn't go past space and an HR). But still, I have a problem with the A-C set. Gray is never a good secondary color. Gray is perceived (for real, in front of users) as unavailable. Grayed out. Users can work it out, but its not great. And, there was no consideration of shape (aside from the text vs. button) or size. Size doesn't have to mean there are two button standards; "submit" and "cancel" are basically identically long. I (and content people I have worked with) always tried to make the cancel action shorter, much shorter if possible, than the submit action. More like "Save changes" and "Back." This does help. Shape and color can be pursued really interestingly if you want to. Bank of America used to have these neat color/shape items accompanying their buttons. From memory, they were something like this. Sprint uses these little GT symbols for some buttons, and I occasionally tried to use the GT version on the submit, and nothing for cancel, but am not sure if it matters with the lack of much implication for the symbol, its frequent use as a bullet point across the site, and its relatively low contrast as a while element on a colored button. Additionally, forms are hardly ever as neat at those he's got in there. There's lots of discussion of forms going right down the left side, then you arrive at the buttons. But even this over-simplified version the country selector immediately above the buttons requires the user to jog over to the right. While there is mention of form F being least efficient due to fixation times, I see bounces left and right in all the tested cases. How much change? How much impact on total time? Could a different visual treatment of the page itself have changed how this worked? Overall, I've had very good results with the purportedly failed version E. Submit/continue on the right works well, especially for multi-step processes. But it does need to be consistently used, the graphic design of the page needs to support it, and secondary buttons need to be differentiable even without positional changes. Of course, I don't have access to Sprint's research, couldn't share it in detail if I did, and don't have a laser to shine in people's eyes to prove this, so what do I know?

Michael Geist shows me the true meaning of Web 2.0

Social networking sites are often the very definition of web 2.0. But an editorial this morning describes many of these services as walled gardens, and calls to open them up. And now that I think about it, I agree. As usual, I think I always have agreed, and just didn't know it. Of course all information should be free, and so on. However, in the real world, there are other problems. Disregarding technical difficulties, I see two:

1. Monetizing it: An excessively open structure is hard to make money off. How is twitter gonna make anyone rich? Okay. Skype, Flickr, etc. do have a plan, and are (for as much as I follow things) possibly going to profitable with their businesses for the long haul. This model won't work for everyone, of course, so it takes a forward-thinking company to just be nice enough to start opening their data. It took some effort to just get Sprint to move all their help info in front of signon (and people are still suspicious of it). Feeds and tagging and other "2.0" features are a step beyond, and "to be nice to customers" or "its cool" will not sell them to the guys with the checkbook.
2. Legal restrictions: Or at least, security restrictions. I've dealt with scads of them, but how about Netflix? They recently discussed why they cannot disclose your rental info. Its a law, and is what has caused the extra burden of customer-acting disclosure, and limits on how far their social network technology can go. Similar concerns (or, if we're unlucky, laws) will dog the pure social network services, especially when we think of the chidren. Sure, its mostly theater and hype, but there are some risks to just releasing all your info for search, or getting RSS feeds, or allowing any schmo to build a plugin.

Like everything, it seems we've gone too far, and not far enough all at the same time. So, how to do it on a legacy product?

1. Pray you are not in a highly regulated industry.
2. Okay, even then its not a huge deal. Customers can release information, delegate others, etc. Within limits, but its possible. Everyone needs to get used to this sort of security what with increasing fear or the increased maturity of the internet (take your pick)
3. Find a value proposition. A direct one is best, some way to either sell the service, sell access to other services as a result, or find some part of it to be sold as a premium service.
4. Improve your brand. If there is no direct way to monetize the new features, sell the improvements in trust, stickyness and interaction. Some marketing guys will object to missing their goals for page views in their current model, so you will need to work around that to make sure other sorts of interactions count, and get them the traffic they need to support your case.

P.S. The lists above are supposed to be numbered. The are showing as bullet lists to me though, so just pretend. Or tell me if they work for you. Bah, blogger!