February 1, 2010, 7:03 pm
A lot of people have shown interest in the Multimedia usability project and it turns out that many questions are similar. I would like to answer as many questions as possible, but on the other hand I also have to optimize the time devoted to such activities. A good venue for this kind of Q/A is the Wikimedia “IRC office hours”, a weekly event during which a Wikimedia staff member answers questions on IRC.
As a consequence, I will be available on IRC to answer questions related to the Multimedia usability project this Thursday, February 4, 2010 @ 1700 UTC. You can use the fixed time world clock to check the time in your timezone. Please join us in #wikimedia-office on Freenode using your favorite IRC client; you may also use web-based clients (check out the IRC office hours page on meta-wiki for more information on how to do that).
Looking forward to your questions.
January 27, 2010, 3:48 am
The last couple of weeks have been quite busy for me. I moved from Toulouse, France, to San Francisco, California as a consequence of my hiring by the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit that runs Wikipedia) where I work as Product Manager for Multimedia Usability.
I just got my Internet connection at home set up, so you should see more regular blog articles now. I have a few drafts in the works and a lot of updates to post related to my work at the Foundation. In the meantime, I invite you to read the summary published today on the Wikimedia blog.
December 1, 2009, 6:01 pm
As part of the Wikimedia Multimedia Usability project, we are currently doing what is called Domain research. Basically, it means that we look at how similar websites work and how they deal with the same issues we encounter. Since our goal is to make Wikimedia Commons more usable, we want to look at other media sharing platforms, such as Flickr, Youtube, Fotopedia, Picasa web, Panoramio, etc.
I would like to ask for your help to accomplish this research. It can take a lot of time if only one person is doing it. On the contrary, if ten or twenty people step in and all do a small part, we can collect helpful data very quickly. Besides, it is always better to have several people with different perspectives look at the data we collect, in order to better see the “big picture”.
Your help is crucial in order to move quickly towards the requirements definition phase. I have already prepared a list of websites and a few questions we are asking ourselves; they should facilitate the collection of data that can then be used directly by the team.
Please join us and make your contribution to the Domain research page on the Usability wiki.
November 25, 2009, 9:26 am
For a few months now, I have been maintaining a newsletter on my weblog in French called “Actualités Wikimedia“; it consists typically of very short stories and links about news of the Wikimedia universe that I find noteworthy. Part of these news come from RSS feeds in English that I follow; I summarize them in French in order to bring them to a larger audience.
I also follow another set of RSS feeds related to User experience (UX), Interaction design (IxD) and Usability in general. Until now, I have been reading them for my own benefit; but with my new job, it makes sense to pick a few interesting pieces of information for Wikimedians who want to better understand the work of the Wikimedia usability team(s). As a consequence, I will try to maintain a “UX & IxD newsletter” on this weblog, starting with this one.
User research
What is the point of user experience research? It may seem obvious to any designer, but it is harder to explain to clients or, in my case, to the Wikimedia community. People who are not familiar with interaction design and product development in general often have a hard time understanding why it is critical to “lose” time in research (it is really “invest”) at the early stages, even when the course of action looks so obvious. David Sherwin provides a “cheat sheet” to explain the value of user experience research in plain English.
What are the benefits of using personas in product design? Personas are fictional model users based on behavioral patterns and goals of real users that we have studied. More than just stereotypes with a stock photograph stuck on a board, they are very much like other scientific models based on experimental data. As a trained scientist and a follower of the Cooper methodology, I make an intensive use of personas for my work on the Wikimedia Multimedia Usability project. Despite their broad use in design teams, few studies have tried to assess the actual effectiveness of personas; Frank Long has now published such a study.
Design principles
Let users explore and discover your website. There is a trap MediaWiki developers easily fall into: the interface of MediaWiki (and, as a consequence, the one you see on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons) is cluttered by dozens of unnecessary links and verbose descriptions. On the other hand, the software is so complex that a lot of features remain hidden even to established participants. What we need is a simpler interface that provides the relevant links and hints when appropriate, and at the same time empowers and encourages users to be bold and explore the interface. Amber Simmons provides a few pieces of advice on how to improve discoverability in order to make websites more explorable.
Product implementation
A babelfish for designers and developers. In the world of software and website development, it is not uncommon to find designers and developers working together. This is for instance the case with the Multimedia Usability project, where the core team is comprised of two people: me and a software developer. However, communication between designers and developers is not always easy, because of their different backgrounds and perspectives; it could be compared to chatting in a foreign language. This is something I have also experienced during my previous work as an interdisciplinary researcher: I was a physicist and microtechnologist working closely with chemists and biologists. In her latest article, Theresa Neil provides some good advice in order to facilitate the communication and collaboration between designers and developers.
November 25, 2009, 9:07 am
Dear blogger,
I assume that you write your weblog in order to be read. The more people read your work, the further your ideas travel and the more impact you have. At least, it’s how it works for me.
Like many other readers of yours, I use RSS feeds to stay informed of new articles you publish. I collect RSS feeds from many websites into a desktop application that sorts them by topic.
I happen to travel a lot these days, which means I have scarce Internet connection. As a consequence, I update my RSS feeds when I can and read them offline later, for example in the train I am right now.
The problem is that your RSS feed only contains the first three lines of your article. Sometimes, it even cuts a sentence in the middle. In order to read the full article, I have to visit your website, because somewhere in your blog’s configuration, you disabled a setting allowing the full article to be included in your RSS feed.
Please don’t do that.
Don’t force me to read your work online on your blog. It’s annoying. It’s rude. It frustrates me.
I want to be able to read your work wherever I am, whenever I want, even if I don’t have an Internet connection. I am really interested in what you have to say; I value your ideas, your insights, your sense of humor; I enjoy reading your prose.
Dear blogger, if you care about your readers as much as they care about what you have to say, please make it easier for them to read your work. Not more difficult.
Thank you.