Web 2.0 and Usability

October 03, 2005 | 14 Comments

I see all sorts of people talking about what “Web 2.0” is. To me this is all about people trying to get their mind around a really exciting time for the Web and technology in general. The “read/write” Web is finally here! Hooray!

So, anyway, one of the things I don’t see too much talk about is what it all means in terms that matter to the people use the technology. Where does Web 2.0 meet the user experience of the Web? I think technologies like Ajax are great, but unless you can tell me how I can use it to provide a better user experience it’s just Web 1.0 to me.

It seems like so much of the discussion is focused around the technology, the “Web 2.0” business model and methodologies that we’re yet again losing out on the most important part — the people.

By people I don’t mean Jason Kottke, Jason Fried, Tim O’Rielly and Richard MacManus. I mean the people that really matter. Those kids who are using MySpace and through it just discovering blogging. The people who use Flickr and post ideas for improvements to the Flickr Ideas forum. The people who are “getting the most out of Basecamp.”

I love all the talk about what this stuff means to businesses and those who turn the gears behind the scenes. And, don’t get me wrong, I love reading about the latest Ajax technique and how Ruby on Rails can save all sorts of time with Web application development. But I want to start to talk more about what this means to the people on the receiveing end of what we do.

Things like:

How I can use Ajax to save my customers time and provide a better experience.
Using blogging to solve customer support problems.
How to make RSS more usable for “the masses.”

My hope is to explore these issues further in future posts and hopefully really get into what Web 2.0 means to the user.

In the meantime, please, by all means, give it a think, leave a comment and let’s talk about it a bit. Oh, and if you know of a good piece that talks about this stuff, lemme know!

Filed under: Usability
Keyword Tags: web+2.0 usability peoplecentric+web

Comments

1. Neil Cadsawan said:

You’re right on the money. It’s about the people and what they’re able to do with what Web 2.0 offers. Ajax is just one enabling technology. Ruby on Rails is another, and so on down the line of emerging technologies. These don’t, in and of themselves, make up what Web 2.0 is. It’s about thinking differently about how we interact with and through the web.

Posted on October 3, 2005 06:44 PM | #

2. kevin said:

“How I can use Ajax to save my customers time and provide a better experience.”

I think this is actually the problem most of the time when I hear people talking about Ajax. Throw technology out the window for a second - what’s the best user experience possible? Now, look at the technology that might enable it then scale back UX as appropriate based on constraints or do something completely new. Being chained to “what can we do with (x) technology” isn’t how new, innovative solutions happen. As designers become more and more technical and developers move further and futher into design the latest and greatest technology (which Ajax is not) can become a crutch.

Posted on October 3, 2005 07:34 PM | #

3. Gabe da Silveira said:

First of all, every time one of these new terms comes out it just kind of rubs me the wrong way. In the 90s we had DHTML, then it was AJAX, now Web 2.0 (not saying they’re the same, but there’s a definite thread). The irony is that these terms are often used by people who claim to hate nebulous marketing hype. Yet marketing is what these terms are all about.

I guess I’ve come around to the need for this terminology as a starting point for conversation (nothing wrong with marketing), but still I think that the conversations end up being very fluffy because there’s so much anticipation about the new tech, but not enough real experience.

“Web 2.0”, in particular, means something different to everyone who uses it and nothing outside the web design blog circuit. Personally I think it’s nothing but a memetic waypoint in the smooth evolution of the Internet. The web has really proven to be the killer app that has sucked the masses into computer use. Web 2.0 just means more interactivity, more communities, and getting more done on the web. This transition is not tied to any particular technology or confluence of events, it’s just the natural evolution of web standards, techniques, and ideas.

Posted on October 3, 2005 09:42 PM | #

4. Scrivs said:

From a VC who has to hear the term every single day.

Posted on October 3, 2005 10:12 PM | #

5. Adam Fellowes said:

You have got this right, seems a bit of hype at the moment, of course there are some really great examples of these new techniques.

Let remember one thing - most if not all of the major well regarded applications, Google maps, gmail, 37 signals apps etc are by companies who’s main success metric is not page impressions.

One of the main issues I have with all the current ‘new’ techniques is that the majority of the industry has success based and measured upon page impressions. If they (we) moved to AJAX, Web2 or whatever most business in today’s online world would disappear over night.

The user would probably have an improved experience when using these new ‘fast’ websites but for how long?

Posted on October 4, 2005 05:05 AM | #

6. Donna Maurer said:

I have lots of ideas on this, just haven’t written them up yet. Perhaps I’ll write a long article soon!

The key is really to integrate what we know about human perception, memory, error, decision making (from HCI, cog science etc) with what we know about people’s experiences with the web to create amazingly interactive apps. This is a big, hard area and I’m sure there will be plenty of unusable AJAX (or similar) apps in the next year or so…

Posted on October 4, 2005 05:21 AM | #

7. Guido said:

call it whatever you want .. the next logical step for the web system to become a true “experience”. The browser needs to be an app that you can interact and manipulate and not something that resembles a newspaper.

I’m not going to promote my site (ironically I just did lol) .. but AJAX for the sake of AJAX serves no purpose. It’s all about useability plain and simple.

This topic is similar to the branding article written the other day. Your site will be defined by what users take away from it .. not what you the developer takes away from it.

Trust me it’s a hard nut to crack, compatability wise especially.

Posted on October 4, 2005 08:25 AM | #

8. kevin said:

Guido - items on your site are displayed in a short, scrolling box, cannot be bookmarked, and only work with javascript [hrefs point to javascript:void(0)].

Not a judgement, just an outloud observation. ;-)

Posted on October 4, 2005 09:16 AM | #

9. Steven Ametjan said:

It’s funny that you bring this up as Jeff Veen just spent an entire day at WE05 talking about Web 2.0 and using the technology that is associated with the new web, to create a user experience that is better than the standard point-click method. In his presentation he showed how the ways that Adaptive Path are using AJAX to allow for fast updates on their new product Measure Map. Unfortunately his workshop wasn’t recorded for the podcast, and I don’t have my notes here so I don’t even know where the PDF of his slides are, but it was a really useful day.

A couple of the main points he made in his presentation were that your users will never see your site the way you intended it to be seen, and how important usability testing is in all phases of a development cycle.

Posted on October 4, 2005 12:30 PM | #

10. Keith said:

Steven – I wish I could have seen that. I’ve found that Veen’s thoughts often echo my own very closely. And he’s a fun speaker too!

Posted on October 4, 2005 12:40 PM | #

11. lor said:

definitely agree with your post. just thought i would drop a line and point you to this page. there’s a podcast from Veen.

Posted on October 4, 2005 01:46 PM | #

12. Kevin O'Keefe said:

You mention wanting to talk more about “Using blogging to solve customer support problems.”

Though I have ideas as to what could be done on this front, I’d be real interested in hearing your ideas Keith.

Posted on October 4, 2005 09:51 PM | #

13. Keith said:

Kevin – I’ve got an article in the works on that very subject!

Posted on October 5, 2005 10:13 AM | #

14. Bryan said:

Good thoughts.

The key, I think, is getting RSS to be usable out-of-the-box.

For example, I think the integration of RSS into Mozilla’s Thunderbird makes it really easy to use and enjoy. It would be even better of Firefox had a way that users could right-click an XML/RSS link and add it to their thunderbird subscription list.

I don’t think RSS feeds in the Bookmarks/Favorites menu is very usable. I usually forget that they’re there.

I also noticed Safari has some interesting RSS features, but I haven’t found a mac user who knows how to use it yet.

We use MS software at work, but I don’t see any RSS-capable software anywhere out-of-the-box. Alas.

Posted on October 5, 2005 10:51 AM | #