Blog Posts About: Online Usability

Let me start by saying I like Vimeo. The video host has great features (like the thumbnail chooser), a personal attitude and slick interface. For our purposes, we like Vimeo because they focus on controlling privacy - you can share a video with just one person. We use it to share rough cuts of videos with clients. Vimeo does a lot of things well.

That is why I'm both perplexed and disappointed by an experience lately. We tested the privacy system to see what happens when we share video with someone who is not a member.

Sachi is a member and added me (using an old email address) to her list of people with access to a video. I received this email:

Sachi wants to share! Yaay!

I then clicked the link and saw this page:

Whaaa? Boooo!

It's great that the privacy works, but how about a little more information about the remedy? What do I need to do to see the video that has been shared with me?

How about adding this tiny bit of information:

"You must become a member (or be a logged-in member) of Vimeo to view a protected video. You can do that here."

That would help a lot. Thanks!

Government web sites must have to work really hard and spend tax payer dollars to come up with such poor online experiences. My bet, in this case, is that the person writing the user assistance did not know or did not bother to find out what "managed by managers" actually means. I see this every year and it always amazes me.

Yeah, um, thanks.

I know you may be tired of me talking about the March of Dimes Share Your Story Community, but it's growing into an incredible resource and I'm more and more proud to have been involved all the time. I'm sure Nancy White has a lot to say about this too...

As a quick example, the representatives of the March of Dimes are becoming stars of the community. Check out this blog by MoD person James SooHoo and how he is relating to the members around Prematurity Awareness Day. As you see in this post, these kinds of relationships weren't happening before the community was founded.

I think the March of Dimes is finding what more organizations will find in the future - that future success will be built upon enabling, connecting and mobilizing a community of supporters using the Web.

Tags: communityindicators, marchofdimes, shareyourstory, share, onlinecommunity

I'd like to invite you to help me with a not-so-hypothetical situation. Let's say I have a new blog and I think it is essential that people can subscribe via RSS and/or email so that in either case, the person is notified when new entries are posted.

I’m looking for the simplest way to handle these subscriptions. Here’s one thing to consider:

I could have a link at the top of the blog (and with permalinks) that says “Subscribe�?. When clicked, the next page (via pop-up or javascript? Ajax?) displays these two options:

Updated: I should also mention that the email subscriptions will only be for members who have previously registered on the site.

An important part for me is context and clarity. As opposed to there being a random and persistent RSS button in the sidebar, the “subscribe�? link would be at the heading of the blog and make clear for the reader what exactly they are subscribing to.

In the case that I have a number of subscriptions to offer, I might have a "View All Subscription Options" page that offers the choices above for other types of feeds, even Flickr, Del.icio.us, etc. This might be similar to the way Corante or 43Things does it. This page might also include a “superfeed�? that is a feed of all feeds.

So, dear reader, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Would this work for you? How else might I provide email and RSS subscriptions in an integrated and understandable format? What am I not considering?

One of my favorite presenters at WebVisions was BJ Fogg form the Stanford's Persuasive Technologies Lab. (blog) Will has a quick run down of his presentation.

One point that I loved and represents something that I’m currently thinking a lot about lately has to do with adding features to a product. BJ said something along the lines of…

“My belief is that each feature added to a product actually decreases its chance of future success.�?

I’ve not always felt this way, but lately points like this have become so real and make so much sense. The future belongs to simplicity.

I was filling out a business license renewal form for Common Craft and came across this perfect example of how not to do user assistance. I clicked the blue question mark in hopes that I would discover what "managed by managers" means. Instead, I get a lesson on using radio buttons.

I wonder if the person that wrote that sentence chuckled at themselves as they did it?