Interaction Audit – test your page and create an objective diagnosis

Josh Williams from Hot Studio had a great speech at Web2Expo on reshaping ebay.

The two outstanding feature were:
he gave a definition of “feel” in “look & feel”
he introduced a well shaped method called Interaction Audit

The feel is an interaction groove – “It can be click-click-click oder clickp-hover-type or click-scroll-type – it does not matter, as long as you don’t start to turn a telephone in an airplane cockpit.”
The target of controlling feel is not only to attract the user, but also to make him feel comfortable, so that he can reserve bigger parts of his mental bandwidth for the content of a site instead of it’s technology.

In the interaction audit (which aims to check and harmonize the feel), they started with
* defining some example workflows: what do users do, what tasks do they perform on the way.
* that led to a task-activities matrix to find out similar activities in different tasks.
* Detailed descriptions of both were collected in a database
* The number and the number of variations in the interactions are now a criteria o quality (links, tabs, forms, mouseovers etc. – 16 different types of reactions/behaviours after you click on a link, 5 different types of forms ertc.)
* in addition to interaction inconsistencies, also task inconsistencies were analysed
* object inconsistencies as well.

This was a base that could be used to define targets, go through the enterprise universe and clean up.

What makes this so great?

It’s all about structuring – shaping and describing a problem is maybe not solving it, but it’s a good start to avoid it in the future.
There is no common taxonomy or reusable usecase for that – it’s up to us to create the best practices and to find innovative ways and solutions.
As long as you don’t forget your goals, there are never to many details – all those small pieces (if kept in a clear structure) will help you understand new problems that will keep arising every day.

Boy and girl intranets

In evaluating all the intranet solutions in our Group, this is one of my central findings:

There are boy-intranets and there are girl-intranets.

That does not only depend on who creates or manages them; the main criteria is how new content is treated.

New content in a girl-intranet is welcomed quite strictly: “Take off your shoes, hang your coat here, do you want tea or coffee? You will sit here; hand on a second, I will be right back”.
That’s a lot of work, but it creates a clear and tidy surface.

New content in a boy intranet has a more relaxed entree: “Beer is in the fridge, the TV is there – help yourself.”
That’s less work – but it works only, if the rules are simple and clear.

If you start thinking about exceptions – that’s like marrying: can be heaven, can be hell, but it definitely only works if the rules are very clear.

(I will get back on this with some examples)