In the web connected world there are many different types of software to facilitate collaborative work processes when people are not all co-located. One I have recently come across is ConceptShare, whose software allows collaborative sharing, commenting and reviewing on uploaded media. Supported media includes:

• Documents
• Video
• Websites via urls
• Vector graphics files

I’ll review the product by some basic functional areas, with the first being the member area.

Member Area:

Once an account is created, a simple process with minimal data needed, members are invited to be in a workgroup with a shared workspace. Each member has their own personal profile and workspace areas. The member area is straightforward and has a small customization option (you can add a photo to your profile). The photo also has stars implying the ability to rate it, but I and others working with this program have yet to figure out how, not that rating is really something important for this application…

Reviewing and Commenting functionality:

The reviewing and commenting portion of the software is strong. Once media is uploaded into a “workspace” and the requisite members have joined, they can view and comment on the posted work. Functionality includes the following:

• You can move the drawing around and zoom in on it
• You can see the page full screen with comments automatically pushed to the side or blended together
• Comments are threaded in conversations
• When accessing a piece of media that has a comment, the page will render at the zoom and markup level that it was in while the comment was being made
• You can print out a workspace which will show each piece of media along with all associated comments
• In your member area you can also specify if you want to be emailed each time a comment is made, receive a digest, or only see emails about replies to your comments
• Each comment is shown on a separate instance of a page so you don’t get all comments cluttering up one page

From a design standpoint you can draw with a pencil tool and add photos to images and check spacing with a ruler tool. While some of these tools might help with reviews of media, I did not find this functionality to be facile or robust enough to be of great use. If ConceptShare builds this area out, I could see using ConceptShare for brainstorming collaborative design or prototyping sessions.

ConceptShare also had a chat function but it was not easily visible and did not post the time of the comment do it was difficult to thread the “virtual” conversation. Posts to the chat were not emailed out to recipients either, leaving the conversation in the workspace instead of sharing it out to the collaborators.

Final Thoughts and Recommendations:

It might be helpful to have a view with all comments on a page in order to get a visual sum total of what people have been commenting on.

ConceptShare seems to be made for intermittent commenting and updating, and is easy to use in short iterations when people’s schedules don’t allow them to meet all at the same time. It functions like a super robust Adobe Acrobat file with comments, but everybody can comment whenever they like, and all comments are aggregated in one place. To focus this comment period, I’d recommend posting a document along with a “comments closed” time and date to make sure iterations don’t go on ad nauseam. Seeing the threads of each comment may also help the designer/creator/client understand the review process and reasons pointing toward the final decision. To have final confirmation of a work, however, it may be best to have a traditional meeting with everybody in a room at the same time to address immediate issues. In sum, co-workers in different locations can successfully comment away (with a specifed deadline), but don’t bother to design or chat yet, and finalize the review in a more formal setting with all of those who need to be present.

The Presidential debate frenzy is upon us.  Remember the days when you just watched  it on TV and made comments to your friends and family in the living room?  Thanks to the age of connectivity viewers also have the ability to make their opinions known in a public venue while the debate is taking place. This can be to the delight of pollsters who may watch over the formal and informal feedback arenas, but complete transparency into the audience as a whole has yet to be created.  It looked like there were two areas in which the “opaqueness” happens –  geography and technology.

I was watching the debate on the East Coast on a local channel.  Towards the end, a question would flash on the screen asking  “Which candidate do you think has won the debate?” and prompt the viewer to log on to www.thebostonchannel.com to vote.  When I logged in and voted, I noted that the opinions were quite close, with Obama at 39%, McCain at 38%  and 3% were undecided.   The total numbers of voters were not large – under 2,000 – leading me to understand that the polling was strictly local.  I had expected to see more information on a national level, since the whole country was watching at the same time.  What was happening in New Hampshire?  Ohio?  Colorado?   The next day I talked to a colleague at work about the debate and he had also watched it but was commenting and connected to it via Twitter, the micro blogging tool.  His view of opinions from others was not limited to geography, but by technology.  “Twitterers” are people who , by enlarge, take an early adopter role in  technology use and subscribe to a micro blogging service –  software has yet to be taken up by mainstream America. 

It occurred to me that the debate forum would do well to try and create a feedback loop that was wider in scope and more accessible.  Content differences aside of the programming, why couldn’t the debates include the American Idol format of voting by text messages?  Cell phone use is widespread and American Idol’s popularity indicates that the model of texting as voting is familiar to many TV viewers.   Local TV stations would need to join forces with a central polling service which would parse the messages geographically and integrate them with the texted votes.  Then viewers could see the tally as a whole and by region and device (if they wanted to go that far).  This kind of information transparency would increase knowledge about the voter population, engage a wider audience and further involvement and interest with the debates.  With the long tail theory of internet use,  pollsters might even find out how many Ron Paul supporters are still out there…

How does one design a good experience, online or offline? One of the most important aspects in design is to know your user well enough to provide the basic services they may need.    Then judiciously add elements to serve more specific needs, and if possible, delight by supporting needs/desires your customers may not have realized or articulated.

Take Visitor Center/rest stops, for example, on our interstate highway system.  A pretty mundane and locally run (state by state) companion our nation’s interstate highway system.  The quality and services provided are extremely divergent, and  influence a person’s driving experience as they travel through the state.   (Ever want something other than Dunkin’ Donuts or MacDonald’s  type fare while on the Mass Pike)?

 Done well, they can create a great introductory experience to the “doorway” of the state and create a returning visitor for future events. Take the state of Vermont, which builds on its reputation as a tourist destination for its scenery and quality Vermont made products.  As you cross over from Massachusetts on 91 or 93 into Vermont, you will soon encounter a well lit, welcoming visitor center. On the outside is ample parking for cars and trucks, good lighting, picnic tables, a covered picnic area and a dog run on a swathe of green grass.  Inside the building are vending machines and bathrooms for basic needs, and then a whole host of other information for those with more explicit needs.  (No discount liquor store here, just maple syrup).    They have exhibits featuring destinations throughout the state, free wifi, free coffee,  rocking chairs with sheepskin cushions so you can sit and peruse their material, free maps and pamphlets for businesses and recreation areas,  a chalkboard listing highlights of the week or weekend and most amazingly, live visitor representatives, 24 hours a day, who are ready to help you with whatever you want to do during your stay in Vermont.   You may walk in needing the restroom  most of all and a cup of coffee a not to distance second,  but you leave with more knowledge about where you’re going, new ideas things you might want to do and collateral to support you along the way.  All of this can contribute to the thought “That was so fun/convenient/helpful – I’ll do it again.”   (I was so pleased with my experience that when I left the state I wished they had an exit from the southbound side of the highway so I could visit and gather more ideas for my next trip).  Mark this with the contrast of the neighboring  Massachusetts  “rest stop”  a dark, empty parking lot with trash cans and no facilities, rendering it  an example of dismal neglect and lack of concern for potential visitors.   

A person’s experience with a brand or product or website should strive to create this type of supportive, multi-tiered experience.  The first step is to welcome a visitor in to a recognizable space and provide the essential functions or information they need in order to meet their initial goal.  The second is to seamlessly provide access to information visitors may find relevant in the accomplishment of secondary, more long term goals.  The most challenging but most worthwhile one is to “delight” the visitor so they leave with a new appreciation for the brand/product/service and become an advocate who returns time and time again.

Usability studies have become part of any comprehensive design project of a web site or application. Conducting a study with mobile devices – observing how a person interacts with their device and any web sites or applications on it – is similar in many ways to a usability study with a computer. However, there are some key issues when working in a mobile environment that should be taken into account while preparing, moderating and reporting on a study:

· Participant recruiting has more variables to nail down, making it a longer than the usual process.

Obviously you need people. In a mobile study, you need people who have a mobile phone, plus other variables. These include:

- Other features on the phone that are used in the study, i.e., camera, GPS, mp3 player, etc.

- Service provider compatibility with your application.

- Service plan details, i.e., can the participant perform the tasks you are studying?

- Verification that the user can access the application you are working on.

This may mean you need to conduct a quick test after the participant has been selected and before they arrive for the study. You should have a couple of extra phones on hand during the study that can be used in case issues come up with the participant’s phone. Just be aware that the participant may not be familiar with the phone design, making complex tasks take longer and impacting completion rate metrics.

· Gathering data will take more work.

Unfortunately, you can’t easily sit behind a person and watch them use their phone and get the same visual information that you can from watching a person using a full-sized computer screen. Technology has yet to develop simple software that allows you to watch in real time on a larger screen what a user is doing on their mobile device. To gain the most from a mobile usability session you may need to:

– Have at least two video cameras; one on the user, and the other on the phone.

- Adjust the camera focusing on the phone on the fly if the participant moves their phone out of the lens range while they are performing a task.

- Be extra vigilant about asking the user to think aloud so you can always be aware of where they are in the process or on a particular screen.

- Slow a task down or ask the user to repeat an action if it was not immediately visually available.

· Adapting to new situations during the session is key.

Due to variances in phones, services and applications, there are more variables out of your control during mobile usability sessions. Potential areas to watch out for are:

- Devices may show information differently.

- Service providers may cause issues, such as a slow response time or cutting out.

- The participant may get calls during the session.

- User’s proficiency with devices varies widely, more so than general keyboard and mouse skills, influencing task completion.

· Being flexible and having a back up plan(s) can reign in the potential chaos.

Usability studies are mostly designed to have a predictable flow of tasks or events. Since device or connection issues may interfere with such a flow, it is important to have alternative flows or plans at the ready. Briefing your team at the beginning of each session about the order in which you will try different plans will slow the time needed to re-adjust a new plan flow. It may also help to “chunk” your tasks or investigations in a modular fashion so they can be moved around in the study if users are having issues completing a particular task. Recording errors will also let you (and your client) see if there are patterns, such as phone type and/or service plan having issues with a particular download, that you can try avoid in future sessions.

In sum, mobile usability studies, like the mobile device environment, is more open and variable than traditional usability studies. Be prepared to spend more time than usual finding the appropriate participants that have the correct device/carrier combination you need. Be extra vigilant during the study to make sure you are capturing – visually or audibly – the important data, which can be hard to see. And most of all, be flexible and prepared to adapt to a variety of unforeseen circumstances. The extra preparation and effort will pay off in the end, though you may always have the need to improvise. Don’t forget you have more opportunities to learn – off task investigation can lead to important discoveries about your user, their device use, and their expectations of mobile experiences.

Since May 2007, when Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s transformation into an application development company, the number of applications available to Facebook users has grown at an impressive pace. Currently there are over 2,300 available with weekly additions. Facebook’s effort to create a platform for social networking widgets/application development seems to be working. How does this development opportunity translate into business opportunity for the widget creators, individual or company driven?

Currently there are over 2300 widgets on Facebook; the most popular are:

· Top Friends – manage your top 32 friends in your profile, by iSlide – 10M users

· Graffiti – lets you draw on your friend/s profiles – has 5.7M

· Video – by Facebook – a video publishing tool for your profile – 5.3M

· iLike – a place to share/purchase music, purchase concert tickets – 5.2M

· X me! – Rock You!’s tickle, poke(sending a nonverbal “hi”), etc. application – 4.8M

iLike & Hangouts: A comparison

iLike’s strategy of creating a deep connection with the user to encourage more transactions in the user’s profile space is working. Importantly, these transactions involve money. You can purchase songs and concert tickets via your personalized iLike ‘Canvas” page and receive recommendations on the information you feed it. A sense of community is supported in the musician/concert area in a number of ways. Users can post reviews of past concerts and linked profile photos of facebook users attending future concerts are shown. Even those who wish they could attend the featured concert are given page space – creating opportunity for members to interact with local music enthusiasts. iLike creates a number of “pages” within their application – Concerts, Free Mp3s, Challenge, and My Music, all built to encourage further use and community. This richness and detail, however, could not have been built for Facebook alone without significant time, investment and deep backend capabilities. As you may suspect, iLike has a fully functional website which was established before its presence on facebook. The music company leveraged existing content and backend power for widget development. Allowing the widget to grow on Facebook gives iLike an extended user base and information about the users they could not tap as effectively on their main site. This double pronged strategy allows iLike to continue building and capitalizing on both potential income streams.

In contrast, Hangouts, a widget interfacing with the website yelp, seems weak and watered down. There is only one main page, “Hangouts,” whose functionality is rather basic. It lists which users have gone out the most that month, who is going out tonight (both these are localized to an extent), your favorite spots you like to go and what you are doing that evening. While the widget can extract some data from Yelp’s site, there is the potential for much more if the two decide to join forces. I am sure some Facebook users are also yelp contributors – how about feeding that information over? Or provide the latest reviews by other yelp or Facebook users about places the user has listed as a favorite hangout? Restaurants could list their happy hours or special events that they are holding, or include reservation/invitation capabilities. Since Hangout was to be created by an individual developer and not yelp, the Hangouts widget is missing crucial elements of depth of content, increased personalization commitments and interaction functionality that would enhance its stickiness. While Hangouts provides some experience and data that is similar to yelp’s site, it does not, and cannot, fully support yelp’s business strategies and overall user experience. Perhaps yelp will take notice and purchase the widget, if it doesn’t have their own in the works. The trend seems to be that this potential treasure trove of information will need more than a lone developer to capitalize on it… Exit developer, enter supporting purchasing company/venture capitalist…

Previously seen as an endeavor for teens, social media isn’t child’s play for big media firms like CBS, Ebay and Fox Interactive Media.

By Hilary Coolidge, Experience Design Consultant, and Rob Ehlert, Senior Technical Architect, Molecular

Over the past few weeks, there has been a tremendous amount of acquisition activity in the social media world – most notably CBS bought Last.fm; Ebay bought StumbleUpon; and Fox Interactive Media bought Photobucket and Flektor.

Why the acquisitions? Similar to News Corporation’s (the parent of Fox Interactive) $580M acquisition of MySpace in 2005, these social media sites provide a social setting for their respective consumer bases. The acquired companies benefit from “the wisdom of crowds” philosophy, whereby the more people that add content, feedback, or links, the richer the experience.

Acquisitions vary between tactical and strategic

CBS’s $280M acquisition of Last.fm is purely strategic in nature. It allows CBS to gain a foothold on the “scrobbling” technology that Last.fm uses to analyze music and create music recommendations to users based on current tastes. One can postulate that it is a small attempt to answer the MySpace acquisition by accessing a social network of music lovers. Further, Last.fm’s venture into video is a bid to try and take some thunder from YouTube with a more music focused publishing core.

Ebay purchased StumbleUpon for $75M — it is a site that “learns what you like and makes better [site] recommendations.” Integrating the technology will help Ebay provide a recommendation engine in its growing purchasing universe.

Most tactically, Fox Interactive’s purchase of PhotoBucket (estimated at approx $250M) and Flektor (estimated at $15M) will stop the acrimony between photo editing and MySpace rules. In the past, MySpace blocked Photobucket’s popular video and slide show posting service, claiming technological issues and that Photobucket supported MySpace users’ inclusion of ads in slide shows. Instead of continuing to work with third-party vendors, Fox decided to purchase the technology in order to better control it, and spread its capabilities to other businesses they own that can benefit from the technology.

The rest of the market

In addition to the ever growing number of social networking sites that are out there, there are also quite a bit of product/services firms that are in the business of building, selling software for, and hosting these social networking sites. These areas are also experiencing acquisition activity.

In February, Cisco acquired Five Across, a company that builds and hosts social media sites for clients. There are many other small firms still out there; such as Ning, PeopleAggregator, GoingOn Networks, Prospero, Pringo, Pluck, etc. We don’t think there will a single winner.

As companies start to find the value in using social networking to link their consumers with their brand, we will start to see additional technology players acquiring these smaller social networking firms.

Facebook is next

With Facebook opening up of the back end and adding the possibilities of endless widgetization, where does that leave us? We anticipate that within a few months, its 23 year old Harvard founders will be smiling.