Monday, February 11th, 2008 |
Tonight I was playing with some YouTube features that I need for a web project. Those features are not very common for the vast majority of the users. I am talking here about playlists and custom players.
If you describe to a technical person those features, or even if you only name them, instantly they’ll understand what are they about and they’ll see great use in them. Unfortunately we, technical people, tend to forget that our frame of mind has nothing to do with the regular user. The regular user that comes in huge numbers and it’s our main revenue source. And by forgetting that, we overdevelop things that we like and by doing that we overdelay the launch of the product or we ignore the common features considering them insignificant.
The YouTube features I mentioned above work like total crap. The playlists never display the correct number of videos and the custom players never display all the videos and more than that, this morning were displaying other people playlists. Who the hell cares beside me and maybe a dozen other people. Youtube works well on what is suppsoed to do. Upload and play videos.
If you are in a control position, try explaining to the top management or your client that the fancy crap he needs are not worth any delay. Time is money and the markets are crowded. Release in small chunks and release often. Keep in mind that your products has a final target in the masses not in the elites. Screw the early adopters. Let them complain. If your unique, fancy (and useless most of the cases) features are so important, the early adopters will wait for them.
Posted in Information Architecture, Usability, Web 2.0 | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 |
When the new Gmail version was made available, lots of new features were announced and than people started to point to new ones. But behind the great fireworks some other small changes with deep impact were made.
Here is an example on how some small changes can lead to feature awarness.
A few nights ago, my girlfriend called me that she saw that Google added, to the compose screen, the option to create invites for Gcal. While I knew that this was an pretty old feature, I knew that something has changed but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Happily, you can switch between the old and new interface and than I saw it:
Gmail old interface:
Gmail new interface:
(click on thumbnails for the bigger pictures)
What really changed so that feature become more vizible to the “regular” user:
- In the old version, the link to create new event was placed on the far right of the screen. Most people don’t move their eyes so far so is practically invisible even though it’s in front of your eyes.
- Labeling. In the original version, the feature was labeled “” Add event info”. That basically doesn’t say anything to “regular” users. What event? It’s an freakin email. What info should I add?(those questions appeared in the rare case they spotted it). In the new version, the label says “Add event invitation”. This label is more clear and in plain view.
Those 2 small changes might appear as insignificant to most of the people. But I am willing to bet a lot that the spike in usage after the roll out was pretty huge.
So, summing it up. Just because you use the internet on a daily basis and develop web apps that doesn’t mean that those are going to be user friendly. Not even if you are a huge, popular company. Hiring a team or an usability company, might not also guarantee your success but at least you have more chances than your competitors
Posted in Google, Information Architecture, Usability, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
