While I read this post about the headache caused to an end-user by diigo’s “find your friends” feature with interest, I had linked to the post because I was expecting to read something more along the lines of how the diigolet (really bad name, by the way–reminds me a little to much of toilet) or the diigo tool bar slowed Firefox way down after install. That’s my end-user complaint and it’s based in no fact, and other than that, my other big complaint is that I keep hitting my “post to delicious” button when I’m on a page I want to bookmark since it’s such a force of habit. And then I have to wonder if it even matters because I have so many bookmarks and tags that my only hope of ever finding something I’ve bookmarked is by using the search feature and praying that at the time of reading I labeled what I was reading in such a manner that will allow me to pick the same key words six months later.

But I did not title this post “my inefficient social bookmarking habits.” So first, my unpopular comment. I think this blog post is a little unfair. Back last fall, I received an invite for Quechup and joined and went through the invite your friends routine. And as has been noted by others, instead of checking against one’s email address book and giving a list of names, Quechup emailed everybody. Now I can certainly understand Dean’s frustration with Diigo, since I was extremely annoyed (understatement) with the Quechup incident. And here is my confession: Despite how annoyed I was with that Quechup incident, I still did the “find your friends” search with Diigo, even while thinking, “These people could be total jerks like that Quechup site was and betray my trust and send an email to everyone I know.” And yet I still did it. Even though I was irate beyond belief last September, I still put my trust out there again. And didn’t click the button to submit to everyone who wasn’t in Diigo already and didn’t spam everyone and their mother’s realtor’s brother accordingly. Clicking a button that is labeled in a way that indicates no one will be emailed –and having everyone emailed –that is duplicitous and underhanded. But when an end-user is led through a series of steps that they do automatically, but which produces undesirable results (from the end-user’s perspective), this is a usability issue but not necessarily an unethical company at work.

What can be done to address this as a usability problem? How important is it to an end-user to invite all their “friends”? If it is not very important and a company’s main goal is user satisfaction, is there a way to make it an extra, purposeful step to invite friends that don’t already use the site? Does anyone even use this feature, especially with gmail, where every contact you’ve ever emailed is saved automatically to your address book?

I fortuitously aggregated upon the essay Vernacular 2.0, which discusses the development of user expression as it has morphed from the 90s into the 2000s. First, her observation: “The space that we’ve researched as a new medium for the last ten years has turned into the most mass medium of them all” rings so true that it gives me pause. But the internet is not mass media as we understand that even somewhat neologistic term, given the relatively short context of “mass communication.” Thus, should a construct of mass communication whereby a few formulate and communicate messages to many be modified? Has what we call “new” media, for lack of a better term really, actually been just a new mass communication tool that has flipped all the rules of mass communication around? Maybe this is just semantics. Certainly, with the direction that “new” media has gone, with the proliferation of tools at the “common” person’s disposal, the power of mass communication is placed in the hands of a whole lot more people. Whether their message will be part of a mass communication message will depend on a number of other factors, but certainly the whole “famous to 15 people” may be true. (Although this confounds the meaning of fame and suggests it has nothing to do with mass anything but instead social distance?)
As usual, I digress. What Lialina’s Vernacular 2.0 article brought to the forefront of my thoughts is the increasingly intensified expectations for web presence today. An early assertion in the article, picking up from earlier observations about home page construction and early user expression in web environments is about the usurping from ordinary users:

“It is also clear now who owns the home with the garden and who are the gnomes grimacing on a manicured lawn in the company of plaster ducks and real flowers.” - From Vernacular 2.0

Ok, pulling that quote out of the context that abruptly requires you, the reader, to head to the essay and figure out why we’re talking about gnomes in the first place, but essentially the idea is that a home page was never analogous to a home, but to a gnome hanging out in the garden outside the home. Enter Web 2.0 interfaces: google pages, myspace, etc., and suddenly the garden gnome/traditional home page is a duck out of water among the corporatized, more standardized designs.

Certainly, on the one hand, the availability of these tools has given users a whole lot more robust usability. Whereas with a standard traditional web page, if the page got big, one struggled with file management underneath the surface, today it is possible to set up a CMS and create a database-driven web-site, where the user doesn’t have to concern themself with back-end data management. But I hear what Lialina is saying loud and clear, and for me it begs a larger question: what skills are necessary to move from an amateur to a specialist in “new media?” If you have students developing a home page, which is so 1995, is this a valuable skill and necessary step in the process of learning, or is it so old school as to be obsolete? My web design abilities grew up simultaneously with the medium, to an extent, so to me it has been a natural progression, but if one were to come in without that context, does the whole big world of creating art, objects, communication, etc. for the web seem overwhelming? Or does it seem touch-of-a-button easy as all the message-creator needs to do is learn to exploit existing tools? Which is it? Or can it be both?

I will be the first to admit that I have not exactly embraced mobile computing as an educational tool. I have a cell phone, grudgingly acquired in 1998. CPW was, against his will, given a cell phone when we moved down here, which he lovingly labeled “CPW’s Leash.” This is fairly appropos of how I view mobile computing as well–both a way to be flexibly connected as well as inextricably plugged in.

Nonetheless, I love gadgets so when it was announced that we have a Treo in the office that will rotate monthly so that we all take the opportunity to get acquainted with the “possibilities” of mobile computing, I volunteered to start things rolling. Having used a pocket pc for a time, I am not optimistic over some of the limitations. With the pocket pc, for one, I couldn’t seem to connect to any wireless networks, which really killed the whole instant connectivity angle. The Treo on the other hand, comes with a data connection (obviously, we’re paying for the connection) and it was very easy to get up and running. I immediately started playing with its many features, sending a sample text message, taking a picture, checking out all my favorite websites to view them in all their glory. Blackboard was especially magnificent in its lack of functioning with the tiny interface, and apparently I need some kind of scripting installed, but the instructions as to how to enable that as provided by Blackboard were not pertinent to Windows Mobile. But I was not surprised.

Some web resources are easier to use than others with the rather small palm screen.

In no particular order:

• Flickr: Awesome! I can sign in, browse easily, download pics to pda, uploads via email seamlessly. A+
• YouTube: need flash plug-in of some kind. Seems to be Treo’s fault. Not sure where to obtain it, will look into it. Grade of I.
• Facebook mobile: Pretty good. Nice browsing interface. Easy to read what’s there. I found out, however, that uploading photos requires using the phone rather than data. I hadn’t realized this, but I have all the technology I need with my own cell phone to be an active mobile facebooker (what a relief!). So I set up my own phone to work with it. Since confirming that a phone is associated with a particular account appears to be a security issue (though why one can’t authenticate by the originating email address I’m not sure), I’m not worrying about this aspect. Facebook gets an A for considering mobile users browsing.
• Skype: Which brings me to Skype. I am disappointed by my favorite messaging program. The website is awful to try to interpret via Window Mobile. They don’t appear to have their Windows Mobile for Palm Treo, which seems very odd to me. With grade inflation being what it is, they get a C-.
• Gmail: Not exactly sucky, not completely great. I guess my biggest complaint is that I can’t delete messages. I know, I know, there’s plenty of storage in gmail, but I like to delete completely useless emails. Other than though, it’s pretty good. A-
• Blackboard 6.x: Useless. Totally useless. F- Ok, maybe that’s harsh. I will install scripts to see if I can at least see the content.

I will keep playing and trying out new resources so that I can finally get an m-life.

This post can be subtitled: Myspace vs Facebook. I know I’ve probably complained about it before, but it begs repeating over and over and over and over. Myspace is an incredibly clever social networking tool, and the most heinous excuse for bad, bad, bad, unforgivably bad webdesign. EVERY principle of usability can and/or is VIOLATED within the myspace realm!

We have:

• cluttered layout
• distracting background images and unreadable color combinations
  
• loud music starting up upon page opening
• layout that encourages people to post results of personality quizzes
• unreadable blog format

Actually any of that list could pretty much apply to any of the spaces on myspace, not just the ones I have linked. I really wasn’t trying to pick on any one “space” and in fact there are some clean templates out there, and some cool friends to be had. It’s not really user’s faults though. The point is that Myspace as a phenomena is a slap in the face to effective message design and graphic design principles, and it has been purposefully created in this manner.

I never thought I’d even go here, but Facebook, as a comparable social networking site has a much better design model and interface. Admittedly, I don’t think you can customize your profile graphically beyond photos AND THAT’S A GOOD THING! It allows a far greater level of privacy, customizable by the user. Also, the ways in which you can begin to link to others via groups is much more dynamic than Myspace allows because as soon as you start listing schools and graduation years, you can click on those links to find others in your network with the same affiliations.