Developing Usable Experiences

Motivation and influence in the blogosphere

March 18th, 2008 11:03 pm —  105 views

blog_research1.jpg

I’ve been pounding away on the keyboard tonight, trying to organize my thoughts. I’m working on a project that is researching an information system that relates to behavioral psychology. Big surprise that I chose the vast domain of blogging, eh?

The whole idea of blogging and why people blog is very interesting. One article from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication1 suggests that “rather than promoting isolation, computer-mediated communication tools such as blogs often function to enhance existing relationships.” While I’m not entirely sure this pertains to blogging across the board, there is certainly some truth to that statement.

Shucks howdy, I said the word “truth” again. You know how that gets me all worked up. I could easily go into what it means for something to be true, but I won’t. You need to see it for yourself. But consider that for something to be “true” it has to be obvious or readily verifiable to the person considering the validity of that truth. In this case, that would be me. Or you. Or one of us at least.

But I digress. I’ve spent the better part of the last hour going over journal articles about blogging, motivation, influence, and the psychological aspects related to blogging … yet have not been inspired by the “muse.” This project requires that we (my group) produce a report totaling no more than 5 pages. These 5 pages need to be focused and concise, but therein lies the challenge.

The thing is, if you asked me to tell you about my experience blogging over the last year-and-a-half, I could go on for a long time talking about how my approach has changed based on reader input and my own education and how I’ve found various ways to observe user behavior2. Is this enough though? Is personal experience sufficient for an academic paper that seeks to analyze behavior and principles of social interaction. I would say, without hesitation, yes! But why then am I struggling to find my voice?

Oh.

I must be tired. Damn. Being a moonlighting student has its price.

Image: Yet again, my desk is covered with research articles that I’m pouring through, looking for insights, quotes, and motivation. I have to admit, the research articles my group has found are very interesting and have yet to contradict the ideas I have about blogging in general. Shix…another late night and I can’t help but feel there isn’t much to show for it. Here I am again, blogging with one eye.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  1. Titled, “Writing for Friends and Family: The interpersonal Nature of Blogs” [↩]
  2. I hope to present some of this to my class next week when we consider the subject of witnessing user behavior and I have to present an information system that is an example of such witnessing. I’m hoping to blow some minds. Google analytics, Awstats, Statspress…such fun! [↩]

Related Posts

Comment 

ExpoSItion and Real Folk Blues

March 17th, 2008 10:32 pm —  121 views

exposition.JPG

I spent my lunch on campus participating in the annual “ExpoSItion.” This is where students and groups show off their hard work on projects from classes or for various competitions. It was pretty chaotic. Our unofficial leader “L,” did a great job presenting our pitch to the casual passerby and the somewhat odd cameraman. Nice job L!

As I returned to my day job, the contrast between the chaotic environment of student projects and the quiet work of development was tough to reconcile. I was glad that classes aren’t so much like that. I really like the perspective and new ideas I get when I learn or am exposed to new material, but this thing today was…well…it was a good learning experience. I’ll leave it at that. But still…I sure like working with the BGE.

So why the “Real Folk Blues?”

I’ve been fighting some sadness today. The Waltzing Bear lost his Grandpa recently and I’m grieving with him and his family. They are close knit bunch and he was very fond of his Grandpa. Even though he knew this wasn’t far off, it is still the Suxor. Hang in there Waltzing Bear. You’re surrounded by people that care about you. You know how it is; this shix happens without our permission. Is how it rolls.

I listened to this show on NPR while heading to campus where a woman was being interviewed about her husband that she lost to cancer. It was good interview but damn if it didn’t make me feel sad. Then on the way home the market report is all doom and gloom. Should I be stocking up on canned goods or something? The American economy is a bit depressing these days. Just got to keep on keeping on.

Yeah, there are some blues going on. I know it is St.Patrick’s day and all, and I had some bourbon in the Saint’s honor. Like I used to tell myself when I was younger and feeling unhappy about something; “this too shall pass.” Just need to wait it out.

Image: The pictures I took today weren’t that great. The lighting was lousy and I wasn’t trying to get careful shots. I think it is time for a camera that can keep up with my NADD.

Related Posts

3 Comments 

ExpoSItion and Usability testing

March 16th, 2008 9:28 pm —  134 views

bge_expo_work.JPG

Both yesterday and today had me heading to campus to work on various projects. Yesterday I met with the BGE1 to put together a tri-fold display highlighting the project we worked on last semester. The project went very well, our client was pleased, and our professor gave us kudos (and an A). Each year there is an exposition where any student or group of students can put together a display to showcase their effort. While I’ve never been to one of these before, I understand that businesses come to check things out, sort of scouting. Though I’m not looking for a new job, I’m curious to see how this whole thing works. Plus, it’s great working with the BGE again.

Today we conducted the third of our usability tests. These carefully2 arranged usability tests are very interesting and provide concrete information about the system we’re evaluating and how user friendly it really is. We’re evaluating a web-based application that students at the university use to enroll for classes. We’ve created 5 tasks that we ask a person to perform. I use my laptop with a camera, microphone, and software that captures (as a movie) everything the person is doing in the interface. We then ask them to complete the tasks while speaking out loud what they are doing and thinking. This is pretty standard usability testing done on a shoe-string budget.

It’s interesting to see the types of challenges they run into, the loops they get caught in, and their reaction to the system. Patterns are definitely emerging that reveal where attention is needed. The focus of this project has been to evaluate and identify aspects of the web application that cause confusion, are difficult to understand, are inconsistent, or counter intuitive. Each milestone has come at it from a different angle and between them, we’re identifying some important interface and design issues.

I also met with another group today to work on a project having to do with blogging, the blogosphere, and related aspects of behavioral psychology. We are focusing our effort and research on matters concerning motivation and social interaction as they relate to blogging. We have identified a number of research articles from journals of psychology, journals on computer-mediated communication, and other recent academic research. This is a very interesting project.

Why people blog, what motivates a person to continue or stop blogging, and how blogging impact their social lives, both online and off-line, are questions whose answers may lie in the realm of behavioral psychology. Like I’ve alluded to before, blogging, reading blogs, and commenting on blogs is something that a person has to do of their own free will. Seems simple enough, but how much of it can be meaningfully articulated?

So I have to admit, I’m kind of burned out on school work for tonight. A hot bath and a good book sounds marvelous. The idea of going to bed before 10 PM seems even more so. The next few weeks are going to be full of hard work and late nights wrapping up projects for the semester. The semester is almost over and summer, golf season, concerts, camping trips, and rock hunting await. Life goes by so fast.

Image: I took this yesterday when I was working with the BGE cutting and pasting pictures and thumbnails on our exposition board. The expoSItion is tomorrow during lunch. Should be an interesting experience.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  1. Best Group Ever [↩]
  2. Mostly carefully. We learn things to do and not do with each test we conduct. [↩]

Related Posts

Comment 

Can blogging be a bad thing?

March 13th, 2008 7:56 am —  181 views

spike_and_kiosk.JPG

A little voice in my head (that oddly enough has an English accent) asked the question whether blogging might be a bad thing as far as social interaction goes.

I’m probably going to get some shix for blogging my thoughts on this subject as it is exactly the sort of approach that is in question here; are blogs, blogging, commenting, and responding taking the place of or supplementing social interaction? Do blogs bring us closer together or drive people apart? Do blogs encourage or discourage people’s interacting with each other?

These are interesting questions that I can’t really answer with any authority. I’m inclined to think that there is the possibility for anything to be “bad” when taken to an extreme. However, there is a growing body of research that is revealing the effects of blogging from a behavioral science perspective and what that research seems to be finding is evidence that people generally like to interact with other people and that our basic nature is a social one.

Whether through a blog, blog comments, Twitter, email, Skype, cell phones, smoke signals, making eyes, music, poetry, literature, photography, art, fart noises, or all the above, people like to socialize and tend to leverage whatever medium is readily available that other people are using. This is one of the key aspects behind the whole social networking craze. People (like me perhaps) that spend a lot of time on their computer end up finding ways to connect with others in unique and changing ways. Like through blogs.

This week in my class on the fundamentals of human behavior we explored a number of articles and information systems that have to do with sharing information and the subject of disclosure. The research articles we studied conducted experiments aimed at exploring the nature of disclosure, reciprocation, and withdrawal. One study sought to prove that sharing too much information could lead to withdrawal by the person on the receiving end.

The results of their experiments didn’t support their hypothesis however. It was found that when a person shares more than situationally appropriate, the other person tends to do the same. I am over simplifying their findings of course, but what I took away from all these readings was this: people tend to share information proportionately and nothing bad happens as a result of it.

So the question of whether sharing a story about changing a flat tire, studies about Higgs particles, clarifying a perspective on development practice and philosophy, details about your latest knitting project, or your fears about taking an exam on web programming, sharing is sharing and it more often then not allows people to feel more in touch with other people. And this seems like a good thing.

Thanks to Baldrick for seeding this post. I can’t help but think of Tom Glocer’s insightful perspectives about the British in general and some of the differences in mentality that he’s observed.

Image: Yesterday was a sunny and mild day here in Michigan and I enjoyed a few moments sitting outside in the sun before class was scheduled to start.

Related Posts

5 Comments 

The dynamics of computer-mediated debate

March 11th, 2008 9:44 pm —  213 views

rocks.JPG

Being a person of technical persuasion,1, I subscribe to Wired magazine. It is an interesting periodical for a number of reasons. For one, Bruce Schneier is known to contribute.2 This last issue of Wired had an article about the guys from 37 Signals, a development outfit popular for creating Ruby on Rails, Basecamp, and many other collaborative online applications.

The article was decent but alluded to (and illuminated) their attitude about development and their interest in meeting their own needs first. In response, a well known usability expert, Don Norman3, wrote a critical essay about 37 signals asking why they were so arrogant. One of the guys at 37 Signals responded on the company blog with a post on why he doesn’t agree with Don Norman. Though you may know nothing about these people, the dynamics of the situation are fascinating. Let me explain why.

From my perspective, Norman and the guy from 37 Signals are saying the same thing. Even though the interest and focus is developing useful things, they both recognize the importance of users. While they may seem to reject the more vocal users, those that actually use the systems tend to be quieter. There are those that are more vocal about their fringe interests and they tend to attract some notice. However, the bottom line is that they both seem to recognize they are not only designers, developers, and creators, but are also users.

They design and build stuff that they themselves would use. The fact that they are human and have similar needs as others is what leads to useful solutions and as the case may be, capitalistic endeavors. It’s all god4.

I’m working on a class project evaluating the blogosphere, or blogspace, from a behavioral science perspective. Over the last few days I’ve read research articles that seek to quantify the effect of blogging during crises and how organizational blogs cultivate a human connection. My personal experience is consistent with much of what is reported in these articles. Particularly an article I read on organizational blogs and the human voice.

Even though I’ve never met or communicated with Tom Glocer, his blog voice is direct and understandable. As a result I feel a sense of trust and engagement that makes me interested in his perspective. Nice work Tom. Very progressive and introspective. This seems to show your recognition of computer-mediated communication and it’s future.

Wrapping this up, I can’t help but wonder if the “debate” between 37 Signals and Don Norman isn’t orchestrated or even intentional. From a PR perspective, it certainly inspires reaction and involvement. After all, I’m posting about it. Interesting isn’t it? I certainly think it is.

Image: I took this picture last summer while hanging out at a beach in Mackinaw. Searching for a suitable image for this post, I was struck by the balance and passivity of this arrangement of rocks. Knowing me I was just being a dork taking pictures of the sand at the beach. But alas, it is an interesting picture, no?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  1. Others terms include computer geek, nerd, technophialac, etc. [↩]
  2. And if you don’t know by now, I think Bruce is a brilliant and interesting person. [↩]
  3. A interesting note: the “about me” page at this site says absolutely nothing useful or personal about Don Norman himself, which is what one would expect from a link so named. Seriously, what the hell? [↩]
  4. And no, this isn’t a typo. I’ve been studying the idea of what is divine and agree with the Einsteinian approach that all is god and that such an approach doesn’t imply a personal being that designs and outlines all that evolves. Rather it is the evolving itself. Kind of an odd tangent here, eh? [↩]

Related Posts

4 Comments 

← Previous Page — Next Page →