Usability Shark

On a Restricted Wikipedia

A quick note: some things discussed in this article were later shown to be not entirely factual. For an update, see this post: Addendum to On a Restricted Wikipedia. I still feel that the discussion here is worthwhile though, so the rest of this entry remains unedited. Enjoy.

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The big news in social media lately, at least from where I'm sitting, is the slow introduction of moderation to the enormously successful Wikipedia. The New York Times reported today that in a matter of weeks users of Wikipedia will be faced with a new barrier to entry, so to speak. Articles about living people will now be protected, and edits to them will have to be approved by a "trusted" editor (still a volunteer, notably).

This is clearly a fundamental change to the original spirit of Wikipedia which up until now has made it's way with self policing as it's primary means for protecting its content. Why the change of heart? Well, let's look at some other news surrounding our favorite informational site.

1. Composer Maurice Jarre dies at age 84. Newspapers all over the world include with his obituary the quote "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear". A fine, lovely quote that could not have been more perfect for the situation. Of course, it was a fake, added to the man's Wikipedia page by a sociology student. (read about that here)

2. Journalist David Rohde Spent 7 months in captivity after being kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan. An editor at Wikipedia repeatedly tried to update the site with this information only to have it continually pulled down. Turns out, Wikipedia was in cahoots with the NYT to keep Rohde's kidnapping a secret, reportedly in order to increase his chances of survival. (explanation, from the NYT)

3. In 2005 the Wikipedia page for John Seigenthaler, Robert Kennedy's Administrative Assistant in the 1960s, was edited claiming the man was connected to the Kennedy assassination. The offending information was removed at Seigenthaler's request by Wikipedia administration. (in his own words) 

4. More humorously, in 2006 Stephen Colbert encouraged users of Wikipedia to log on to the site and edit articles on elephants to indicate that their population had tripled in the last six months. Not long after, nearly 20 articles on the site had been accordingly vandalized and had to be locked. Colbert's account was also blocked. (more details) 

I could probably hunt up various other examples of shenanigans and outright vandalism of more a more sinister kind if I liked, but this probably suffices. It is certainly enough to show why the founders and key players at Wikimedia Foundation would be thinking about moving towards a moderation model. Still, are these good enough reasons to fundamentally change the spirit that has gotten Wikipedia where it is today?

The original NYT article argues that given Wikipedia's significance and ubiquity it is critical that it be carefully moderated to avoid the kinds of issues I listed above. There is a genuine fear here that false information could quickly be spread with no oversight. Those obituaries quoting Jarre from Wikipedia certainly did not bother to do any significant source checking resulting in misinformation on Wikipedia suddenly being backed up by seemingly more powerful sources.

That's relatively compelling at first glance, but should Wikipedia necessarily be picking up the slack for decidedly lazy reporting? I don't think so, and to play devil's advocate, I think a restricted, moderated Wikipedia is flawed in some significant ways.

Firstly, Wikipedia was initially created as an experiment, if you will, to see what would result if you created a free encyclopedia run by volunteers that anyone, literally anyone, could edit. The result? The most popular source of information on the internet today. Whenever you google for something, the first results are nearly always from Wikipedia. That's a testament to the power of that initial experiment. In a way, it proves it worked.

Would moderating content change that? Yes, in some ways it will. Now the power to actually update the information will lie in the hands of an elite group of editors, specially selected. That creates a barrier to entry for some folks. It also means that all the power lies in these people's hands. Not to jump to conclusions, but imagine what this would mean if that group of editors had a particular political bend. The information making it onto the site may well turn out to be biased.

Is that a reasonable risk? What about all that potentially false information that gets out there when there isn't any moderation? Well, I for one want to lean towards the side of openness. What we forget about in the stories above is that they were eventually revealed, reported on and corrected. Potentially there are examples that were not, but what's wonderful about every Wikipedia article is that there is this often overlooked tab: "discussion". Here there's a running conversation on why certain edits were made and debates about whether something should be changed. It can get down to pointless minutia, but what's wonderful about it is we all have access to see those discussions. Add in a moderation level, and we have no idea what changes were proposed, which were rejected, and why.

There is actually another, mid-point solution. You can have openness + moderation, and I think this is a good direction to go. Envision this: a user submits an edit on an article. As soon as they click save, it's viewable to the whole Wikipedia viewing public, with one difference, it's visually denoted as being a pending, unverified change. As soon as the moderators have a chance - they can clear it for permanent inclusion, or reject it. Rejected edits should be saved and viewable and should always be shown with the reason for the rejection.

I fully understand the reason for wanting moderation. It's a natural progression for any online community as it grows to critical mass. Still, the openness of Wikipedia has always been a fundamental part of it's ethos and power. You don't have to give that up necessarily. In fact, you shouldn't have to give it up at all.

Read the Original NYT Article Here

On Wii Fit, EA Active and Gaming as Exercise

I felt it might be time to take a break from Twitter and Facebook to talk about something totally different. So, today I'm going to do something of a comparative look at two exercise systems for the Wii from a strictly usability-focused perspective. I make no judgment calls on whether one will help you lose weight faster than the other - for I am not a personal trainer of any kind. What I am though, is someone who hates gyms and wants a reasonable way to get some exercise without having to leave my apartment.

Before jumping into a deeper look at the two games, an aside. How fantastic is it that gaming systems are entering this arena? For a long long time games and gaming consoles have gotten a raw deal in the media. They've been blamed for a number of insane things which I won't dwell on at the moment. Now, with the Wii, games are getting a new sort of exposure. With the introduction of Wii Fit, video games suddenly had the potential to make us healthier. I think that's fantastic for the game industry in general, and specifically, I think it's great that it means new and casual gamers have another entry point into this completely entertaining field.

That said. Let's break it down.

Wii Fit vs EA Active: which exercise game reigns supreme?

Breaking Down Wii Fit

Wii Fit gets extra points for being the first, and truly being the incentive, for this genre of video games. Still, there are down sides to being first.

But let's start with the positives:

1. Tracking: Wii Fit has a great system for tracking your progress as you try to lose weight. It let's you set goals and generally has a friendly and encouraging 'demeanor' when it comes to helping you reach those goals. It will also track the amount of time your spending with the game as well as how much time you spend on other activities.I personally found that tracking was the key to keeping me diligent about not only exercise but my diet as well.

2. Variety: It takes a little while to get bored with this system. There are strength exercises, yoga, light aerobics and entertaining balance games. You can pick and choose which ones to do, and mix it up from day to day. In particular, the balance games add a nice level of playful fun to the exercise routine.

3. The balance board: Wii Fit, designed purely for the balance board, clearly makes excellent use of it. The board is actually a bit better at providing feedback than the slightly less sensitive wiimote as I'll explain when I get to EA Active. In general the graphics showing you how you're doing balance wise are well done and helpful for keeping you focused and doing the exercises correctly.

It's not all sunshine and roses though. There are some frustrations with Wii Fit...

1. No pre-programmed or custom built workout routines: perhaps the biggest irritation with using Wii Fit is that between each exercise you have to navigate through the menus to get to the next one, wait for the balance board to verify your weight, and then finally load the next routine. Additionally, not being much of a workout guru myself, it would be nice to have some recommended complete workouts that a you could simply load up, and run through without picking and choosing on your own. This, is Wii Fit's biggest weakness.

2. Creepy Trainers: Maybe it's just me, but the trainers (especially the male trainer) Wii Fit provides to guide you through yoga and strength exercises are a tad off putting. It's certainly not great for user experience, and would be a relatively easy fix. They come off as being stilted and false in a sort of uncanny valley way.

3. Breaking a Sweat: Wii Fit may provide some aerobics, but aside from the free running options, nothing in its repertoire is really going to make you sweat. Your heart rate may climb a bit, but not overly much, which means you really do need to supplement Wii Fit with something more intensive if you are really looking to either lose weight or gain muscle of any kind.

4. Scolding: Maybe it's just me, but if I go away for a weekend to visit a friend and maybe live it up a little, it's a real downer to come back and have my Wii Fit harsh on me for having gained 1.1 pounds. Granted, it's good to be thinking about why you might be gaining or losing weight, but the threshold for Wii Fit picking on you seems terribly small. As the system itself will tell you - it's not uncommon for your weight to vary by up to 2 pounds in a single day.

Verdict?

Wii Fit is a solid experience, and I know it can work. I got the game for Christmas and had lost 12 pounds a mere 8 or so weeks later. I do want to stress that I think this is mostly due to the tracking and the resulting awareness it provided me and less to do with Wii Fit's workout options, though I'm sure they didn't hurt.

The New Kid: EA Active

Now a confession. I bought EA Active because I was getting bored with Wii Fit. I mostly blame this on the tiring necessity of being reweighed in between each exercise. I'd seen some ads for EA Active pushing the 30 day workout regime and most intriguingly, the set workout routines. No more tedious navigation between exercises! But, enough of that, what else does EA Active have going for it?

Positives

1. The Workout Routines: as I expected, the highlight of this game compared to Wii Fit are the set workout routines. Even better, you can use the 30 day workout plan which will mix up your workouts daily, helping you get a theoretically well balanced routine. The great thing about that is you won't get bored doing the same routine everyday and your muscles won't get overworked as EA Active switches up the focus depending on the day. Lower body workout focus one day, upper body the next. Also, you can create customized routines if you're the type to know exactly what you want to do.

2. Diet Tracking: A nice feature that Active has that Wii Fit doesn't is the "Journal" feature. You have the option of taking a short quiz everyday that will collect information about how many vegetables you're eating or glasses of water you've taken in. It's a nice thing to have if you really want to force yourself to think about your diet on a daily basis and can provide a nice push to get you to improve in certain areas. I like this a lot more than Wii Fit's tendency to scold you whenever your weight skews upwards a bit. It's much more specific and less obnoxious. Also, you can skip it entirely if you don't want to deal with it.

3. Doesn't Need the Balance Board: the balance board is awesome, but it's nice that EA Active doesn't actually require it. This means it can be used by folks who don't even own the balance board which opens the market up nicely for EA. Also, the balance board isn't actually useful for a wide variety of exercises (particularly arm exercises). In place of the board, EA Active uses the nunchuck, often housed in a handy leg strap you affix to your upper thigh. It works fairly well, most of the time, and is better for arm exercises and (in my opinion) seems to track lunges and squats a touch better.

4. Breaking a Sweat: EA Active has a three different workout levels you can choose from. The low and medium levels won't get your heart rate up very high, but oh that high intensity workout. I've found myself worn out after some of those workouts in a way that I never did with even 45 minutes to an hour of Wii Fiting.

5. Better Trainers: EA Active uses a mix of live videos and a CGI avatar as your trainer and the female one I've been using is light years better than the ones in Wii Fit. Her encouragement feels more natural (Wii Fit's tends to repeat itself a great deal adding to the creepy effect) and the graphics are much better as well.

Still, its not a completely easy win, EA Active does have it's downsides...

1. Distinct Lack of Weight Tracking: EA Active will track your dietary choices, your calories burned, but oddly, not your weight. If you didn't own Wii Fit (or, um, a scale) you wouldn't have a way to see just how well you are progressing. This struck me as a conspicuous enough missing feature that I had to wonder if Nintendo had purposefully kept third party developers from accessing the balance board's scale feature. I couldn't find any information to that effect - but it is food for thought.

2. Wonky Wiimote Controls: While it is nice that Active doesn't rely on the balance board, the system does not always seem to be correctly tracking the wiimote and nunchuck. This may be something that could be corrected with the addition of Wii Motion Plus, but for now it is a mildly aggravating problem with the game. In particular, some of the arm exercises are very particular about how you are holding wiimote and it's not always clear why a particular motion is not getting tracked correctly.

3. Lack of Yoga or Balance exercises: I really like these two aspects of Wii Fit, so it's a little disappointing that they were overlooked in EA Active. The stretching and balance routines are a nice, more relaxing, method of exercise after a difficult day.

Final Verdict

If I were pushed to chose just one of these two games, it would be EA Active by a wide margin. It feels like a better workout, and the experience of using the game is simply easier and more enjoyable overall. However, it's not a hugely overwhelming victory. The lack of weight tracking as well as the yoga and balance games means that sometimes, I seek out Wii Fit even though I've got EA Active waiting in the drive.

Both games are worth checking out though, if you are looking for a gym-alternative exercise routine that fits your gaming lifestyle. Now that strides are being made in this area, the future for health-oriented games is going to be pretty interesting. Wii Fit 2 is already announced, and will for a fact, have workout routines as part of the package. Here's hoping that EA Active makes similar strides when they put out their next version.

Also of interest will be how these games make use of the Wii Vitality Sensor that was unveiled at E3 this year. I anticipate that we'll be seeing a huge number of health and exercise related peripherals for the Wii, and potentially for the more hardcore games systems as well. When Natal launches, it will be a whole new ballgame and one I'm very interested to see.

Introducing the Wii Vitality Sensor

And Project Natal:

Side note: isn't it interesting how much that Natal video resembles the early Wii videos demonstrating the motion sensing controller?

Addendum to Social Networking Demographics

Interesting things happened today that I felt impacted some of the things I talked about in the last blog post.  First, Facebook bought FriendFeed. What's that got to do with anything? Well, that particular bit of news lets us know that Facebook is doing anything but standing still. Buying FriendFeed gives them a great deal of talent more than anything else. After all, FriendFeed doesn't have anywhere near the usage that Facebook does. What it does have, is a bunch of very smart people working on it who are now working on Facebook.

I theorized last time that the demographic numbers indicated that potentially older users were moving from Twitter to Facebook. It seems that Facebook may actually be gunning for those very users by pushing Twitter features on their platform. 

See here: Facebook Launches Realtime Search

The Mashable article mentions that along with realtime search that will easily compete with Twitter's search, Facebook will also allow users to post their status updates publicly - essentially making them into Twitter tweets.

In any case, there is a lot of interesting movement going on in this space. Keep your eyes open.

On Social Networking Demographics

I've spent more time than is potentially healthy thinking about Twitter recently. This is partially due to conversations at the office about the popular micro-blogging service, but it's ever-presence in the news over the last several months is keeping it on my mind as well. Last time I waxed a bit poetic about how Twitter has become ingrained in our communication system today. This time, it's going to be all about demographics and statistics.

Huh? Here's the thing. Twitter has a really interesting demographic makeup. A demographic makeup that has me really curious about a few things.

My interest was piqued when I saw a set of two fine articles put together by Peter Corbett at iStrategyLabs. The first was a summary of the demographic breakdown of Twitter.  Dig around in the numbers and at least one really interesting thing pops out:

More than half of Twitter users are over the age of 35

Why, you ask, is that so interesting? Well, traditionally speaking, social networking services are the playground of the young. Folks under the age of 35 have, in the past, been the early adopters of this kind of technology and have continued to make up the bulk of the user groups. Thus why marketing attempts on Facebook or My Space are geared to a younger audience.  So - that has me thinking, why it Twitter different?

Ok, first I'll bet you want proof of some kind that it actually is different. That brings me to the second article, which helpfully provides a breakdown of Facebook demographics. We can see here that around 70% of Facebook users are under the age of 35. My Space, although a service that is falling out of favor, skews even younger with over 30% of its users clocked in at under 18 and around 75% total under the age of 35 (that data was pulled from this presentation). So - Twitter is something of an unusual animal in that landscape.

Some folks have speculated that this is a result of the apparent inbred narcissism of the younger generation. Those much-maligned Millennials and member of Generation Y (my own horribly named generation) "realize that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless" (read more about a 15 year old analyst who made that pronouncement). I alluded to that a bit last time, that Twitter is a communication device equivalent to shouting into the void. Do younger people find such shouting dreary since the likelihood of anyone shouting back is so small?

The preference of the young does appear to be with services that provide a more immediate feedback mechanism. You post a status on Facebook and your friends comment on it. You link to something interesting, they comment on it. Wait though, it isn't as if this isn't possible with Twitter. I can post an update and my friends or followers respond with a friendly @rknickme. It isn't so different is it?

But it is actually. See, there is so much more you can comment on in Facebook. Twitter on the other hand feels, to someone used to that flexibility, like a status update mechanism without much else going on. Heck, you can't throw a sheep at someone on Twitter can you? (Personal aside: I detest Superpoke).

So, that's my pet theory. Young users want a wealth of features at their fingertips. Twitter by its nature isn't any more or less narcissistic than Facebook or My Space. All the services are ways of broadcasting yourself and awaiting feedback and justification from the masses. What's really different is this:

1. Number of Features

2. Customization

3. Simplicity or lack thereof.

Twitter could not be more simple to get the hang of. Make an account, post a tweet. The tweets can only be 140 characters, so even that initial barrier of looking for something of substance to say is pulled down quite a bit. It is uncluttered with applications and add ons. There isn't (or wasn't until recently) much confusion surrounding privacy settings. Facebook, in comparison, is a landmine of confusion with an interface to match. That, I propose, is why Twitter has become the playground for over 35s.

What's a bit magical about that is it leads to another interesting statistic from those Facebook demographics I mentioned. The fastest growing group on Facebook? 35 - 54 year olds with the over 54s a tight second. Why the influx? Maybe it is as simple as this completely imaginary story:

A 40 year old woman is surfing the web looking for information about why her Comcast internet isn't working. She stumbles serendipitously onto ComcastCares at Twitter. She decides to try this new fangled thing out, and creates a Twitter account in order to ask the kindly people running that service what the deal might be. Now she's in. Before you know it she's sending tweets out multiple times a day, and she's following a slew of celebrities along with her family and friends.

Later, a well loved nephew or niece tells this woman about a service she's only vaguely familiar with. It's called Facebook, and the kids say you can do even more with it than the magical Twitter. They say she'll be able to add applications like Visual Bookshelf so her friends will know what she's reading. They say she can connect to her Netflix queue and everyone can see what she's watching. A couple of months ago all of that might have sounded complicated and overwhelming, but our friend has been twittering for awhile. She knows the basics of how this stuff works. The barrier to entry has been effectively lowered.

Maybe that's part of the picture. Surely, there are a number of intersecting reasons for all those juicy statistics, but the view that it can all be summed up as an effect of those narcissistic 20-something is extremely limited. The landscape of social networking on today's internet is a grand and multifaceted picture.

Of course, if I'm partly right, and the growth on Facebook may in some way be attributed to the already strong numbers of over 35s on Twitter, what does that mean for the future of Twitter? Will we start to see usage slip if people migrate from one to the other?

I doubt it, but I do think we will see an evolution in the way Twitter is used. We're already seeing an increase in marketing and customer service use on the site, and I'm confident that will continue. Could Twitter eventually be overrun by celebrities and companies shelling their personal lives and goods for our consumption while we, the unwashed masses, hide away in Facebook to share when we're going grocery shopping or are attending some rad rock show?

It's hard to predict, but in another year, the internet, Twitter and Facebook will be a completely different animal than the one we see today.

On Twitter Fails and Internet Panic

Today, Twitter was down. Down down down. The internet nearly imploded with anxiety. Why exactly? Do we really need Twitter to get through a few hours on a Thursday morning in early August? How important is Twitter really?

It's actually quite an intriguing question and gives us some insight into the nature of communication in our culture. Global communication culture actually. Worries and complaints filtered in from New York to Brazil to Russia to Hong Kong. Some amused and curious as to what happened. Others a bit panicy. A favorite comment of mine on the Wired blog: "Down in Maryland 10:43 AM, and I’m freaking out. I was about to Tweet “How do you confirm Twitter is down without Twitter?” before I realized Twitter was down….."

For every message like that, there is another one telling everyone else to get a life. Twitter is charmingly polarizing in that way. A potent drug to a large number of people, and an annoying fad to another. One thing that can't be denied though: when Twitter goes down, everyone (at least, everyone with a computer) notices.

Let's think for a moment about communication technology. Here's a ridiculously brief history:

1. The Postal System - Letters, taking weeks at times to reach the recipient.

2. Telephones - took some getting used to, but instant connections between two people.

3. Email - instant delivery, but not always instant receiving. Also limited to defined recipient groups.

4. IM - Like phones, instant connection, but again, limited recipient groups.

5. Twitter and it's kin - instant, global communication. The cyber-equivalent of shouting your message to the world where it will most likely dissolve into a haze of other shouted messages.

That's part of the beauty of it though. Being able to shout into the void, and the glorious wonder of seeing the Hive Mind of the void form as a result. That is a unique and new form of communication. Inherently global, and surprisingly useful. It isn't anything we thought we'd need or even want a couple of years ago, but technology moves faster than our desires do. Now here we are, attached to Twitter and reliant on it's servers for a previously unrealized and unnoticed need for connection.

So, on a standard Thursday morning, we hunt the web for news to explain the outage. We scour the blogs for confirmation that we are not alone. We create as best we can a Twitter without Twitter.

Pause for a second, what would have happened if a decade ago the telephone network went down completely for four or five hours? We don't actually have to wonder. Plenty of large scale phone outages have occurred in the past. As I was researching this article, I read this story about a fire at the Illinois Bell Central Office in Hinsdale, Il circa 1988 (source here). That wasn't a complete outage, but certainly was enough to cause panic amongst the public. Police were sent out in the affected area so residents without service would be able to report emergencies. Society by this point had become reliant on the phone service.

Now, I don't mean to imply that Twitter going down is something as severe as that incident. It clearly wasn't. What I mean by bringing up the comparison is to show that once we have a technology in our hands, we become reliant on it faster than we may realize. We have adjusted our lives to let that technology in, and losing it is disruptive. Look at the way Twitter was used during the Iran election. The State Department actually stepped in to request Twitter delay it's scheduled servicing in order to not disrupt usage during the upheaval.   

What is most fascinating to me to consider is, if this relatively recent technology can so quickly become indispensible to so many, what on earth will come next?

Meanwhile, visualize the panic of Twitter outages in this brilliant video from SuperNews:

Being on a Twitter kick, next time I think I'll talk about demographics and what that might mean for the future of Facebook and Twitter.

Welcome to Usability Shark

Here begins a grand experiment. Well, perhaps "grand" is over selling things just a little bit. Let's try again...

Here begins a small scale experiment. The early, stumbling steps of Usability Shark, the blogger. I have dabbled in this arena before, but never in any serious way nor about anything of real seriousness. So, this is new, because I think we can agree, usability is serious business. Well, it can be anyway.

So what will you get out of Usability Shark? The benefit, such that it could be described that way, will be experiencing my somewhat educated opinion on a range of usability issues. From the small annoyances to the big ones that plague our everyday lives with technology, I'll offer what I can as far as opinions and experiences and maybe even advice.

What topics can you expect to see covered here? Design mistakes, site reviews, complaining, comparisons, social networking, web 2.whatever, and maybe a dose of strategy. Do stop by from time to time, and I will try my best to be interesting.