5 Usability Problems that Web Apps Need to Overcome
Looking through the hundreds of popular web apps that are out there, it seems as if the same few UI problems keep cropping up. Some have been solved to some extent where some have simply been ignored. So, I think its time to “out” those little problems so they can be beaten back with good interface design.
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The dark side of the Web 2.0
One the the interesting things about the Web 2.0 is that users can easily contribute to the content they are viewing. An example of this is digg, where users viewing digg also control what appears on digg. its a very interesting concept and not one that can be recreated in other forms of media. One of the inherent downsides of this is that site owners have great difficulty in controlling what happens on their site. As seen with services such as YouTube, this can lead to inappropriate or copyrighted content appearing. The other risk is that sites are misused and abused. The classic example is digg gaming. This is where sites make it to the digg front page without diggs from genuine users. This can take a number of forms but usually revolves around multiple accounts being created to digg up certain storied or where influential users are paid to digg certain stories/sites.
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YouTube and Revenue Sharing - Unanswered Questions
A story popped up on the BBC News Website a few days ago stating that the monster of all video sharing sites, YouTube,
was about to roll out a revenue sharing feature. This isn’t a new idea, in fact Revver has been doing it, with some success, for a while. Considering YouTube is comfortably king of the online video market, wyy would they be adopting features from one of their not-quite-as successful rivals? YouTube has built its success on the fact that it is just so easy to upload and share a video through YouTube. The difficulty increased for “Directors”, special users who are allowed to post videos over ten minutes long, and people accepted the additional inconvenience of jumping through those hoops for the benefit. I’m sure people will happily jump through just a few more hoops to get a cut of ad revenue. The benefit vs bother ratio is still favourable.
One aspect of this feature that must not be overlooked is the fact that YouTube is going to have to increase its ad revenue to support sharing. YouTube, despite its high profile buyout, is still not exactly flushed with cash generated through ads. The suggested solution appears to be running short advertisments before each, or selected, video(s). Personally, I have a problem with this. If I’m watching something on YouTube, its not likely to be Pride and Prejudice. its more likely to be of around a minute in length and of questionable quality (in more ways than one). At the moment, there is no site out there that makes it as easy to consume content of that type than YouTube. it’s interface and viewing widgets are very geared to that goal. and one advantage they certainly have over competitors, especially after the Google Acquisition, is speed. I can usually just hit play on a YouTube video and have it stream, without interruption. That is not true of Revver, for example.
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Will digg redesign force a change across the internet?
One of the Web 2.0 Golden Boys, digg.com, launched a redesign last week. Alon
g with some new categories, navigation and design (barely) there was one fairly major change in terms of impact on the rest of the internet. Of course, I’m not talking about the move away from news, or indeed the backing out of some of the more social features, but more this whole content serving “feature”.
In case you haven’t, although I’m sure you have, check out digg.com post redesign and you will find a new video and podcasting section. These aren’t necessarily all that new. People have been digging podcasts and videos for quite a while on digg. In fact, an earlier feature bump this year introduced thumbnails for videos, so it should have been clear that digg was heading in that general direction. Its the way in which this content appears on the digg site that is potentially going to cause the problems. Read on…
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How do you judge the success of a web application?
We live in strange times. The success of a business can no longer be determined by the amount of money it makes. In fact, its difficult to value a business in these times, especially with the concept of assets
evolving. Of course I’m talking specifically about web applications, spurred on by the recent acquisition of YouTube by Google.
The acquisition shocked many, both in and outside the industry for two reasons. Firstly the amount and secondly the fact the Google has its own competing product. In fact, some where as bold as to suggest barely a few days before that the takeover would not go ahead. I shant link and shame them, I think we all know who I’m talking about. This raises the question of whether YouTube is, or ever has been, a success. I’m sure that for the founders, they will call it a success, they made a pretty packet on it. But in business terms I’m not so sure. The fact remains that YouTube has a very flimsy business model and the service is potentially riddled with problems.
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Cleaning with AJAX
As someone who has a real ‘thing’ for usability I’m cosntantly astonished that AJAX is used to complicate and baffle users. As if the non-standard navigation on websites wasn’t enough we’ve now got these new behaviours that don’t follow HTML rules to consider as well. What we really need is to clean up the use of AJAX and make sure that when the word is mentioned as part of site development, its the designers and user interface specialists that suggest it, not the developers.
In fact, AJAX should only be used to solve a problem that can’t be solved with regular static pages. I would add a very loud caveat to that though, and that is a problem doesn’t necessary have to be a bad thing, but, more likely, is an internal design problem. We can apply this fairly simply to some popular Web 2 applications. How about gmail, what ‘problem’ did they solve by using AJAX? See after the jump…
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Is YouTube aquisition an admission of failure?
So, by now, everyone on the entire world knows that Google has bought YouTube for more than one and a half billion dollars, in shares. That’s an awful lot of little pieces of paper that say “1 Google Share” on them, no doubt there multi-coloured with a bit of AJAX thrown in.
So what does this mean for the internets, that great series of tubes we all know and love. Obviously it seems like a huge amount of money, and it is, so why now? And what’s the future for Google Video? Many people are pointing to a potential bidding war for YouTube prompting Google’s action. With Yahoo, MSN and Google all launching video services and none coming close to the success of YouTube, its not a bad call actually. With YouTube’s huge popularity, eclipsing all similar sites it offered the possibility to capture a massive market share in one foul swoop. Its a very tempting proposition, even considering the numerous legal issues that are constantly hovering around.
There is another possibility of course. Many have suggested that the purchase of YouTube by Google is an admission of failure, they are admitting that their own Video service hasn’t worked. And you know what, there not that far off the mark. Google Video is clunky and hard to use. For a company known for usability, they’ve really dropped the ball on Google Video. This is something YouTube just nails. Its easy to find, view and upload videos. There’s one thing that seems to have bee overlooked, and that’s the target audience of the two services. I may not be a typical user of the internet but I tend to see completely different types of video on Google Video to YouTube. Videos on YouTube tend to be short and dirty, usually not the greatest quality and typically reasonably short. The videos on Google Video tend to be longer and of a better quality. This seems inevitable really. YouTube was based on MMS messages, the short, low quality videos that people take on their mobile phones or digital cameras. The videos you take without planning, when you see something you’ve just got to record. It seems obvious that Google video is set up a little differently. The player, by default is bigger, and the way you find content is different, you have to really know what you’re looking for. This lends itself more to higher quality, paid for content, such as TV shows. While its true that Google launched without any paid for content, it came quickly and was widely predicted, for obvious reasons. Also remember that Google video moderates video allot more tightly than YouTube.
So what will come of this? It seems like a fair bet that Google Video and YouTube will polarise in terms of content. You can quite easily see a future where Google Video provides promotional and high quality paid for content and YouTube keeps well away at the other end of the market, sticking with videos the kids are uploading. That way Google corners two opposing ends of the market. If that is their aim, its a very clever tactic.
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Standardising the unstanderdisable
As some of you may have read in a previous post, I’m a recent convert to Mac OSX. One of the problems I’m having is that my tried and tested ways of working in Windows are now being challenged for the first time in ten plus years. I had these pre-conceived notions of how an OS should work, and they just don’t hold true for OSX. Take downloads for example, in windows I download a program, probably zipped. I then unzip it and run the installation executable file, done and done. Compare this to the OSX process. Typically it will be a dmg file I download (sometimes compressed), I have to “mount” this file and then do whats required, which is usually just dropping the .app file into my applications folder.
Am I getting to the point yet? Well, yes. If you consider the fairly common process of downloading and installing a program in the two operating systems you get a feel for how differently they perform. And bare in mind this is just one very small aspect of what they do, imagine how different things like system administration could be. The other thing to bare in mind is the fact that these are both locally residing operating systems, imagine the extra confusion that could potentially be introduced when we consider remotely hosted operating systems and working environments (is that the point I see on the horizon?).
I may have picked operating systems, and I accept (and am gratefull of the fact) that we are a long way away from having stable, reliable, usable and standard hosted operating systems but the same principals apply to applications. The point is we already have this added third dimension of confusion (trade mark pending) with the proliferation of web apps. The one thing we don’t have currently is any consistency, and this causes huge usability headaches. This is something I’ve harped on about before, within an OS you have accepted standards for interacting with you applications. In OSX, hitting control and , brings up preferences, in Windows Alt and F4 closes the active Window etc. This truly fundamental level of predictable design is sadly lacking in Web apps. In fact, there only seems to be one standard. If text is editible in line, then highlight it in Yellow when the user mouses over it, and that seems like a forced standard.
What I would like to see are some evolved standards for web applications, its not too much to ask. My concern is that one of the big companies that offers web applications (Google, MS, Yahoo, I’m looking at you) will accidently create standards. All it takes is a suite of applications to take off and the others will follow.
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Ten reasons why web applications aren’t the future
I posted a short while back on the ten reasons why web applications are the future, well this is a balance article that covers why, at the moment, theres still a whole host of obstacles to overcome. Read on…
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Ten reasons why Web Applications are the future
There seems to be this willingness for people to build and invest in web applications but why? And will this trend for web applications continue to grow? Below are ten reasons why I believe we’ll see an ever increasing number of an ever increasing quality. I’ll follow this up with ten reasons why its possible the trend will not continue.
Read on dear reader…
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