ArticleRead (13): User Experience at Google: focus on the user and all else will follow

User Experience at Google: focus on the user and all else will follow. by Au, I., et al. (2008) In CHI 2008 Proceedings Extended Abstracts, ACM Press (2008), pp 3681-3686

Which research approaches should ensure that user experiences are interpreted to reflect underlined norms of online users, and promise a better identification for designers to predict user behaviors in the system design process? The case of Google in this article demonstrates a multi-method of user experience based on its corporate philosophy: “Follow the user and all else will follow”.

On the one hand, Google have traditionally sought to adopt their data-driven approach by applying web analytics of quantitative investigation in reflecting what is happening. On the other hand, built on the qualitative approach, Google interpret contextual factors of why users interact with the system designs via field research, diary studies, face-to-face interview. Such an approach is applied by the Google user experience (UX) team in exploring user behavior of Google Maps for the mobile application. They follow a method called Mediated Data Collection approach, in which participants and mobile technologies are assumed to mediate data collection about use in natural settings. Therefore, methods such as prior research on log analysis, recorded usage, focus group study, or field trial, telephone interviews, lab debriefs are combined to utilize the investigations on user behaviour.

This article stresses the bottom-up company culture as a key for designers and project managers to understand the essence of user experience. Three techniques are employed by: (1) injecting the corporate DNA to educate and train engineers and PMs about user experience (i.e. the ‘Life of a User’ training program and ‘Field Fridays’) (2) scaling to support hundreds of projects by UX team (3) helping focus projects on user needs by UX team or user research knowledge base.

Unlike the traditional desktop software design updated on annual basis, Google UX team practices some agile techniques to respond the rapid web cycles. For examples, solutions include guerilla usability testing, prototyping on the fly, online experimentation or enabling a live instant messaging dialogue between observers and moderator during lab-based testing.

The above three approaches are also combined with a global product perspective of designing for multiple countries. In sum, these 4 combinations of the Google case provide us an alternate analytic framework, and best enlist the methodologies for the studying of online user experience practically and implicitly.

ArticleRead (10): Patterns of Information Search and Access on the World Wide Web

Patterns of Information Search and Access on the World Wide Web: Democratizing Expertise or Creating New Hierarchies? By Alexandre Caldas, Ralph Schroeder, Gustavo S. Mesch, William H. Dutton, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 769–793

The patterns of information search and access are found to have no power law distribution on the Web scale, but this result is not consisted in the case of small clusters of expertise within a narrower scale. There are three propositions of arguments on what patterns of access to information over the Web: Power Law (winner-take-all); Non Power Law (egalitarian effect of search engines); Benkler’ complex interpretation (The Wealth of Network).

To investigate the extent that the use of alternative search technologies decentralizes access to scientific knowledge, Caldas et al (2008) focus on quantitative methods for analysing the Web in terms of the structure of hyperlinks among Web resources. Together with the qualitative interviewing approach, they test two hypothesis: (1) different search engines result in different outcomes; and (2) centrality, connectivity and subgroup structure can be used to identify regularities and patterns of the Web.

Two hypothesis have been tested positively on the Web scale through comparing six main search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSNSearch, AskJeeves, Gigablast, and ScholarGoogle) with a set of three keywords for each six global topics (climate change, poverty, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, trade reform, and Internet and society). Regularities of results in Web Networks show that the average distance among reachable pairs is small, and the density within link blocks is relatively low. Therefore, they view this fragmented nature of these Web network as the evidence of “democratization” of the Web. Moreover, the significant clustering process, which defines a clique as a subset of the network with at least 3 nodes interlinked, is the main reasoning for the “reinforcement (clique) effects and not the power law effect.