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The McFarlane Prize for Excellence in Australian Web Design

Greetings from Koh Tao, Thailand (a.k.a. heaven on earth).

Just a quick note to help spread the word about this new Australian web design prize. For me, I think a lot of the current ‘awards’ are pretty lame at the moment (speaking from both the judging and the judged perspective). Hopefully this one will actually help to unearth, promote and reward real excellence in practice in our industry.

This prize is a little different from others in at least two ways.

Firstly – you don’t have to pay a fortune in entry fees to have your site considered. Too often, great work is not included in awards because the entry fees are prohibitive. Congrats to the Macfarlane Prize team for not following this trend and allowing everyone to be involved. However,…

Secondly. There are only four judges, expert in each of the critiera for the awards (Usability, Design, Accessibility and Coding). I hope these guys (and gal!) have nothing much on in the next few months, because they will have a mountain of entries to get through, I predict (especially due to factor one: free entry!).

I have mixed feelings about the small number of judges here and the fact that there is only one per category. Particularly Design and Usability which can be such subjective areas. (Perhaps accessibility and coding can also be subjective, certainly coding seems to be! I’m not so expert in those fields so I’ll leave others to comment). For me I probably would have rather see 3 judges per criteria, but perhaps that would start administrative hassles that the ‘Prize’ can’t afford just now.

Anyways, congrats to the team for getting it off the ground. Go check it out for yourself.

Here are the details as forwarded by Maxine Sherrin:

Named in memory of noted Australian web pioneer Nigel McFarlane, the inaugural McFarlane Prize, aims to recognize and encourage excellence in web design by Australian developers.http://www.mcfarlaneprize.com/

The Prize will reward excellence in web design in the broadest sense, from the appropriate use of technology, to design aesthetics, to its impact more broadly on the web.

Open to Australian designers or teams for a site launched or significantly upgraded between August 1 2005 and July 31 2006, the Prize aims to be a showcase of the best in Australian web design, and to inspire other developers in their endeavours. Nominations are now open.

http://www.mcfarlaneprize.com/nominationform.html

The McFarlane Prize will be awarded by a jury of Australian experts in various fields of web design and development. Based on two rounds of judging, the McFarlane Prize shortlist will be announced on September 22nd.

The announcement of the winner of the inaugural McFarlane Prize will then be made at the Web Directions Conference Reception, September 28 2006, during Australian Web Design Week.

So, if you’ve been doing some web excellence lately, be sure to get along to the website and submit your site. I look forward to seeing an amazing showcase of great Australian work.

Meanwhile, for me, I have some snorkelling to do, followed by some lazing on the beach with a trashy novel.

I’ll be back online ‘seriously’ in a couple of weeks. Hope you’re all well! Until then

in transit

apologies for the break in transmissions… well, not apologies at all really.. I’m on holidays. I was in Malacca, Malaysia today and visiting their ‘History and Ethnography Museum’ and brewing up a great post re: ethnography, but it will have to wait. In Singapore, where I am at the moment, there is a plethora of unsecured wireless networks. I’m not so sure that will be the case in Thailand, where I’m heading tomorrow evening. I’ll have a lot more time for reflection there, but possibly no access to the internet… so with any luck, whenever I next get to post, it will be a thoroughly reflected and sub-edited attempt (which will make a nice change, won’t it!)

anyways. think of tropical weather and cocktails, and I’ll be back with you before you know it!

links for 14 July 2006

• Thoughts on False Memories (WebWord)
  What does this mean? The language we use really matters. It shapes outcomes. Words change our perceptions. What we hear and what we say can bend reality. This is not trivial.
  (tags: language memory)
• Blog Gender Theories: ProBlogger
  Darren Rowse recently conducted a poll on his ProBlogger site to determine the proportion of male/female readers. In this post he considered what the resultant stats and the m/f balance in commenting might mean re gender and blogging
  (tags: gender_theory blogging)

boxes and arrows (10 ways that packing up a house is like doing information architecture)

So, what exactly is it about packing and moving that is so entirely horrendous?

I’ve said to many people in the past week that it’s an exercise in ongoing under-estimation. Underestimating how much, how long, how expensive, how heavy, how tired.

It’s got a lot in common with working on an enormous project with not enough time and not enough budget, and the media booked for launch.

(This is why I’ve started encouraging my clients to work in increments now. I’m starting to think all enormous projects are doomed – not to mention rarely profitable… but that’s a whole other post).

I’m looking forward to only have two suitcases worth of gear. Must try to keep it to that for as long as possible. It will be good to not have possessions for a while!

I’ve noticed a few interesting behaviours in the last week of organising ‘stuff’ (see, packing up a house has a lot in common with information architecture… and I get to be the architect and the user at the same time! I am my own usability test!)

Some of these may be abundantly obvious, but I’m tired enough to find it interesting.

1. It’s much easier to be diligent at the beginning of the exercise than it is at the end.
2. This is because it’s natural to leave the trickiest things to last.
3. Things are tricky when they don’t have a natural place. They don’t fit neatly into a box, or they’re hard to wrap, or no one wants to take them off your hand. They end up in a pile in the corner of the loungeroom. You enter the room with hand on hip, stare at the weird little pile, and sigh. Then walk out again.
4. You will always argue over what can be thrown out and what cannot. The person with the best rationale wins. Except if the item was originally a present. (Although, I’m not sure how the present fits in the the IA metaphor… any ideas? While you’re thinking about it, read what Christopher Fahey has to say about throwing things out and web redesign.)
5. Throughout the process you will group things together in different ways. Sometime because they are similar types of items. Sometimes because you will need to get to them at similar times, sometimes just because they’re the same shape or share a fragile nature. It doesn’t really matter. If there was a rational reason for the grouping, you’ll remember it and be able to refind the item quickly.
6. You never group things logically at the end of the packing process. You throw things together randomly. This is when you lose things.
7. Once you start throwing things together randomly, the entire system breaks down. Even those things that are grouped logically suffer because you lose faith in your system.
8. The number of ‘special places’ you have to put important items is inversely proportional to the ‘specialness’ (read: useful/memorableness) of those special places.
9. The only time you go through this process is when you move. There are some possessions you *only* see when you move house. You still don’t throw them out.
10. The longer the time between moves, the more hellish the packing process.

We’re very close to hopping on a plane and heading off on our big adventure now, so posts might be a bit sporadic and possibly off topic for the next couple weeks. Promise I’ll brew up a few great posts for my return… (from a lounge chair in the shade on a beautiful Thai beach! Now that’s blogging!)

Image Credit: io2 @ Flickr

Whacky title explanation: Boxes & Arrows, a regular read for people who do stuff like me for a living. So, when I saw this picture on my blog I couldn’t resist.

Technorati Tags: information+architecture

links for 10 June 2006

• bloggers anonymous
  ‘Living with blog addiction? You are not alone. And now you can come clean ANONYMOUSLY. We don’t needStories_1 your e-mail. We don’t need your url. In fact, we don’t need any information at all. Anonymous stories is a place where you can share
  (tags: blogging humour)
• Human Factors – an equation for calculating font size
  who knew.. there’s a formula you can use to determine what size font you should use, depending on the angle and distance that your interface is from the viewer. I haven’t tested it, but it could prove useful.
  (tags: font fontsize human_factors equation)
• Ferderal Aviation Training – Human Factors Web Course
  actually, this whole ‘web course’ on Human Factors is worth checking out. it covers off a range of interesting topics including colour, font, pre-attentive processing, worth a look,
  (tags: human_factors preattentive_processing)

feedburner plug-in

I just updated my blog with the WordPress Feedburner Plugin so that everyone should be directed to the Feedburner feed now, and not one a multitude of possible feeds. I think it’s working ok, but if you have any trouble with it, can you leave me a note and let me know pls? thanks!

The ingredients of Good Experience

I’ve been fortunate enough, in the past week, to be the recipient of excellent user experience in the ‘real world’. It’s got me to thinking – are there some key ingredients that constitute a good experience and how might they translate into work we do online?

It all started last Thursday night when I braved the cold, wet weather (no, I’m not in London yet… Sydney is just doing a good job of preparing me for it!) and headed out to visit my hairdresser for the last time. (*sob*)

A client/hairdresser relationship is an exercise in extreme user experience. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who is ambivalent about her hairdresser. She has either found one she *loves* or she’s on the hunt for one to love. It’s a trust thing.

Of course, the number one criteria that a hairdresser must meet is that they must be able to do hair in a way that pleases the client. (It’s important to note that this does not necessarily mean that they do hair well, or tastefully… that’s all too subjective, and people want to do some crazy stuff with their hair).

I like how my hairdresser does my hair. He knows that I don’t spend much time maintaining it, so makes sure it pretty much does itself in the morning. I know he’s good at his job, so I don’t tell him what I want, I ask him what he thinks I should do.

He’s earned my trust by plying his trade well, but he does even more than that.

My hairdresser makes me feel like I’m a really valued customer. He does this in a couple of key ways. Firstly, when I’m there, he looks after me (and I should say, it’s not just him, it’s his entire team, they’re all great). He makes sure I’m comfortable, that I have a drink (wine? champagne? a coffee? what would you prefer?), he has good magazines, he checks in on me regularly when I’m waiting for my colour to do whatever it does in that 20 minutes.

The thing that really astounds me though is that he remembers me. He remembers little details of our conversation from six weeks before, and what’s going on in my life. If I was going on holidays between appointments, how my work was going last time. He remembers my husband’s name and where I live. (does this sound creepy? I can imagine how it might sound creepy, but as part of the ‘user experience’ it’s great!).

This is what I’ve learned this week. The essential ingredients of good experience: do what you do do well, boy (I can’t resist a country music reference), and show me that you care about me (and a musical theatre reference… these ingredients are now officially unforgettable, by me, at least!)

Do what you do do well, boy.

To get real customer love, you need to do whatever you do brilliantly. You can’t just do the job. Good enough is not good enough. You need to sparkle. You need to impress. And you need to make it look easy (for you, and for the customer/user).

Show me (that you care about me)

What makes the different between people who are really good at their work and people who create amazing user experiences is caring (or, at least, being very good at creating the perception of caring). Things like the glass of wine, the regular checking in to see that I’m ok, remembering conversations… (or whatever equivalents work in the situation you’re thinking of now) all of these things combine to make a customer feel really valued. Customers like that. They keep coming back and they tell their friends. All of this is very good for business.

When I went shopping for a camera the other week, I went to a few different shops.

1. Big name store. The guy who served me really seemed to want to look after me. He offered me a $30 discount on an external hard drive I was going to buy with out me even asking. Unfortunately, he didn’t know much about cameras… except the one he’d bought 4yrs ago and had at home.
2. Specialist camera store. Knew lots about cameras. Really didn’t want to spend time with me.
3. Music discount store that I didn’t even know sold cameras. Knew *lots* about cameras. Really looked after me – both pricewise, and also answering all my annoying questions, asking lots of questions of me so that he really understood what I needed (and compared that to what I thought I wanted).

Guess where I bought my camera.

What does this mean for a ‘digital’ user experience?

Good enough isn’t good enough. You need to make the user experience ‘sparkle’. Spend time on the details, really think it through. Talk to your users and understand them. Test your work and refine it. Make it purr.

and,

Find ways that you can ‘look after’ your customers. How can you do the equivalent to the glass of wine, the checking to see that your user is doing ok, the remembering of past conversations. But, don’t take this too literally! Every project will have very different opportunities to better look after users. We need to remember though that every ‘statistic’ that interacts with our interface is like a customer on a chair in a salon. We have the opportunity to make their experience with us amazing, or we can give them the Price Cuts equivalent. I know what I aspire to.

So, and if you’re in Sydney and looking for my favourite hairdresser, get yourself to Phillip Gallo on Crown St. His website is a bit dodgy, but his customer experience (and his hair cuts) are fabulous.

Anyone got a good recommendation for a haircut in London?

And I got my camera(s) from JB HiFi. (Who knew they sold cameras?!)
Image Credit: http://flickr.com/photos/terra3/

links for 07 June 2006

• Evaluating the Usability of Search Forms Using Eyetracking: A Practical Approach :: UXmatters
  an interesting survey of search forms on a range of well known sites using eyetracking. Includes some recommendations to enhance usability of search forms
  (tags: search usability eyetracking)

links for 06 June 2006

• Remote Usability Testing Wiki
  some resources on remote usability testing
  (tags: remoteusabilitytesting usability testing remote)
• WebPatterns
  WebPatterns is a place to discuss, document and collaborate on patterns for web design and development.
  (tags: designpatterns interactiondesign usability standards patterns)

links for 03 June 2006

• Interaction Design Summer Reading List (Adaptive Path Blog)
  ok, so for some of us this might be a winter reading list, but with weather like we had in Sydney today, what better to do than curl up with some interesting perspectives on ID
  (tags: interactiondesign)