I’m certainly not trying to defend Nielsen’s study, nor the experiences of the dozen participants. In fact, I’ve struggled with the new operating system on a Surface RT review unit and I have 15 years of hands-on I.T. experience in Fortune 100 companies that relied heavily on Windows. Plus I have some previous with experience Windows Phone, which has used a similar interface to that of Windows 8 since 2010. But Windows 8 is more than tiles and touch targets.

There’s a learning curve

I couldn’t figure out how to share a web page, for example, but the function is there; thanks to my podcast co-host, Matthew Miller, I learned that the Charms section has a context-aware Share feature. Closing applications on Surface RT stumped me as well, but then I found out how to do it: While in an application, swipe down from the top of the screen to the bottom and the app will close. Well, it’s supposed to, anyway. Russell Holly at Geek.com notes that some apps are still running in the Task Manager even after closing them in this fashion.

So part of the issues then, could be due to a learning curve; not from poor design. That’s certainly a problem, but one that can be corrected through education on Microsoft’s part.

Microsoft’s multiple personality disorder

Nielsen is spot on when it comes to the touch-friendly tile user interface and the old desktop mode, however:

Unfortunately, having two environments on a single device is a prescription for usability problems for several reasons:

• Users have to learn and remember where to go for which features.
• When running web browsers in both device areas, users will only see (and be reminded of) a subset of their open web pages at any given time.
• Switching between environments increases the interaction cost of using multiple features.
• The two environments work differently, making for an inconsistent user experience.

While Windows 8 is probably the biggest break from Microsoft’s past operating systems, it’s not a complete break. Support for a desktop mode is a by-product of legacy design and, to me, represents the largest missed opportunity for Windows 8 tablets. The old Desktop mode is really there for one reason only: Microsoft Office. Instead of creating a Desktop mode for the productivity suite, Microsoft should have created a productivity suite for the touch-friendly environment. It’s as if it was easier for Microsoft to simply cram Office on tablets in a special mode rather than redesign it for effective use on mobile devices. And we know the latter can be done: Look at QuickOffice, iWorks or any number of productivity apps that work well on touch devices.

The world isn’t flat, but icons can be

I don’t quite agree with Nielsen when it comes to his criticism of the flat icons in Windows 8. I find that these fit in well with the tile interface and reduce the amount of flashiness found in icons on other systems. Utilitarian? Perhaps, but isn’t that what a section of choices for device settings is? Here’s a look at what Nielsen is complaining about, in particular.

He notes that few users actually tapped the “Change PC settings” link when tasked to change the background wallpaper in Windows 8; they thought those words were a label. Given that they were using a Surface RT tablet, perhaps the link should be “Change device settings” but this is easily fixable in a software update. The fact is — and it bears repeating — this is a new platform and there’s a learning curve involved, just as there has been for iOS and Android devices.

Scaling mobile up or bringing desktop down?

Getting back to the core issue is the approach that Microsoft has taken: One that keeps its legacy alive with a desktop version of Office. Here, I agree with Nielsen when he says:

The underlying problem is the idea of recycling a single software UI for two very different classes of hardware devices. It would have been much better to have two different designs: one for mobile and tablets, and one for the PC. I understand why Microsoft likes the marketing message of “One Windows, Everywhere.” But this strategy is wrong for users.

Looking to Apple, I see a different, so far, more successful, approach when it comes to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Much of the core of iOS and OS X is shared, but the interfaces are different: The former is designed solely for touch while the latter is solely for mouse and keyboard. While some apps are similar — think iPhone, iMovie and the iWorks suite — they’re designed to work effectively on their respective form factors. In some sense, Apple is scaling up from mobile as it brings more mobile user interface tweaks and services to the desktop.

Microsoft on the other hand, is still doing what it has done for a dozen years with its Tablet PC platform: Scaling the desktop down. Granted, it’s doing far less of that than ever before as Windows 8 is the best version for touch devices yet. But that doggone Desktop is still there and once you get there, touch becomes an exercise in frustration and you revert to the keyboard and touchpad on a Surface.

I like Nielsen’s idea of one platform dedicated solely to phones and tablets. Essentially because of the design choice Microsoft made by lumping the OS for tablets and PCs together, I find that the Surface RT device competes more against other Windows laptops than Apple’s iPad or Android tablets. In my mind, that’s the biggest issue here; not how flat the icons are or the learning curve for Microsoft’s new platform.

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There’s been an awful lot written about Steve Jobs in the wake of the Apple co-founder’s death, and that has only increased in the wake of the new biography from Walter Isaacson, which a number of media outlets have been running excerpts from. In addition to Jobs’ opinion about topics like Google, the book also includes some comments from famous tech-industry players about Jobs, and one of them is from Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates — a man who was Apple’s nemesis in many ways. Gates says he liked Jobs, but that the Apple CEO “never really understood much about technology.” The Microsoft billionaire no doubt saw that as a put-down, but looked at another way, it was one of Jobs’ biggest strengths.

Although the two men apparently gained a grudging respect for each other, they couldn’t really be any more different, both as people and as CEOs and founders of technology companies. Jobs, who famously spent time in India and was a practising Buddhist, apparently told Isaacson that Gates would have been a more interesting person “if he had dropped acid or gone off to an ashram when he was younger,” while Gates told the author that Jobs was “fundamentally odd” and “weirdly flawed as a human being.” The Microsoft founder also admitted that Jobs had an “amazing instinct for what works” — while Jobs said that Gates was “basically unimaginative and has never invented anything [but] just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

The part about ripping off other people’s ideas could also be applied to Apple, of course, at least in its early days, since much of the graphical user interface that made the company’s computers so recognizable and gained Apple designer Jef Raskin so much fame — the mouse, the desktop metaphor, the icons, file folders and pull-down menus — were based on ideas originally developed by Xerox at its Palo Alto Research Center division.

Technology is the least important thing about Apple products

But while Gates saying that Jobs “never really understood much about technology” was probably intended as a criticism, the truth is that in most cases the technology is the least important thing about Apple’s products, and probably wouldn’t appear anywhere on the list of the main reasons why devices like the iPod or the iPhone or the iPad are so appealing. Someone like Gates, who spent his youth programming and was involved in much of the code behind things like Windows, would like to believe that superior technology wins — but for most users of both software and hardware, design is what wins.

Jobs was a famous admirer of Dieter Rams, a designer for Braun who had a number of mottos and aphorisms about design — one of which was that “good design will make a product understandable.” That applies to a lot of Apple’s most famous products, which were so painstakingly designed to be usable, even when (like the original iPod shuffle) they didn’t even have a screen to tell you what was going on inside them. A video of a one-year-old child using an iPad and then trying to use the same gestures on a magazine (embedded below) went viral recently, and Daniel Donahoo at Wired pointed out that in addition to the message that much traditional media is “broken” from a usability point of view, it also reinforced just how instinctive much of Apple’s design and usability is.

When people talk about Apple’s design principles and philosophy, they often mention the unrelenting focus on simplicity (based in part on Rams’ motto: “Less, but better”). Jobs said that among the most important decisions in product design were what not to include and that this process involved “saying no to 1,000 things.” That’s a very difficult principle to adhere to at the best of times — but it’s especially hard if you are a technology geek and obsessed with all the ways in which your product is going to beat your competitors because of the cool features it has. That’s what causes the classic “feature creep” phenomenon, which often occurs when professional engineers get hold of a device.

It’s not about the features — it’s about usability

In a nutshell, that’s what accounts for much of the difference between Microsoft and Apple, or between Apple and just about everyone else — not the technology but the usability. Think about the early days of the MP3 player, before the iPod came out: I had an early device made by Archos that was a brilliant piece of technology, a laptop hard drive with a shell that turned it into a music player, and it held a then-staggering 6 gigabytes of music. It was also an ugly piece of crap in a lot of ways — it was huge and bulky and unfriendly to use, but I used it anyway. Until I saw an iPod.

Lots of people focus on how Apple’s design was similar to high-end furniture or other non-technological products, with its white or black exterior and clean lines, but the real killer appeal of the iPod or the iPhone or the iPad was how easy they are to use, and how integral that ease of use and design is to the product itself. Microsoft made plenty of MP3 players and tablets and the Zune and so on, many of which were fine from a technology point of view. But did anyone want to rush out and buy them? No. That’s not to say Apple hasn’t produced some great technology, from FireWire to the oleophobic coating on the iPhone screen — but the technology isn’t the most important part of those devices.

I’m sure when Bill Gates looks at the iPad or the iPhone, he thinks about all the features it doesn’t have, or all the things that it can’t do. But no one else thinks about those things — all they are interested in is what they can do, and how much fun it is doing them, and how appealing those devices are. And that is one of Steve Jobs’ biggest gifts to the world of technology and design.

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For example, the study found that users aren’t crazy about using their iPad devices to deal with complicated forms that require lots of user input, especially if those forms are found in non-optimized websites, rather than housed in an app. Users would skip registrations processes rather than deal with inputting information in many cases. The solution to such a problem would be to make forms simpler, requiring less information, and reduce the need for repeat entry of information (so apps that offer to remember login details are better, for example).

iPad users also aren’t as able to decipher non-obvious control systems as some developers might think. In cases where it wasn’t made clear what tapping an item that wasn’t obviously a button (i.e., a logo) would do, users often missed the functionality. Examples cited in the report include the logo in the top left of The Daily app, which returns users to the app’s home screen. USA Today  originally used a similar mechanism, but changed their logo to include a “Sections” label to tell users that it was in fact designed to be tapped and tied to a function.

Likewise, gestures in apps can sometimes cause trouble when there are no visual cues to provide information about how they work. Don’t think that placing an instructional video or graphic at the beginning of the app will solve the problem, either. Many users don’t read instructions, though visual instructions that are incredibly obvious, like those used by Bing for iPad, tested well with those participating in the study, since users couldn’t avoid grasping their meaning even when they quickly dismissed them. Nielsen Norman Group advises developers that they’re much better off including visual markers throughout, indicating that swipes and other gestures can be used. For example, magazine apps like Wired include arrows that show the direction a user should swipe to unveil more content.

Another alternative is to provide explicit tips in the form of dialog boxes, like Adobe Photoshop Express does. The iPad Photoshop app uses gestures to control effects like “soft focus,” and pops up notifications to alert users of what to do. Tips can be hidden at any time, so they won’t become annoying.

What users find very annoying according to the report are splash or loading screens. No matter how clever, or how easy on the eye, splash screens and animations become annoying very quickly. Startup sounds, in particular, are singled out as especially bad, because of the potential they have for unpleasantly surprising people who open apps in surroundings where noise might not be appreciated.

Also, almost universally, apps will benefit from having back buttons on nearly every page, and should aim for a simple homepage-like table of contents over more complicated navigation schemes. Users prefer a home base from which to operate without having to hunt through carousels or wade through long columns of thumbnails, and they always want the option to go one step back from their current position, because of accidental taps or to refer back to something they just saw.

As mentioned above, iPads tend to be communal devices, at least within the household. But the report also highlighted some other interesting points regarding how we use the Apple tablet. Generally, we use it for gaming, checking email and communicating via social networking, watching videos/movies and reading news. We also tend to shop, but the participants in the study generally preferred shopping on their desktops, and some even perceived iPad shopping to be more risky from a security perspective. iPads also tend to be carried around by many users, or at least taken along for the ride when long waits or trips are expected.

Now that the iPad is more than a year old, it’s interesting to see how people are using it, and what is and isn’t working when it comes to app usability design. No doubt there’s still plenty of innovation left in iPad app interface design, but this report illustrates that some things never go out of style when it comes to user experience.

How does your experience with the iPad either agree or disagree with the findings described above?

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The real world experiences of children using the iPad has not stopped the Nielsen Norman Group from releasing a preliminary 93-page report detailing the usability problems of the iPad. (Thanks to Mark Pilgrim for the Link). Citing problems in learning gestures, hidden controls, small buttons, and many other usability errors in 34 popular apps and sites. The researchers admit that the report is not up to their usual standards, since the iPad has not been available long enough to know how people are going to use it.

This report is less thorough than our normal research reports and does not contain as many detailed and actionable design guidelines as we usually provide. We decided to publish the report anyway (as a donation to the community), because all experience from the last 30 years of usability shows that early usability findings have disproportionately large impact on design projects.

Also interesting to note is that the research was carried out using seven people, one-on-one, for 90 minutes each.

One of the most interesting aspects of the report is the inclusion of websites into the study. Nielsen Norman Group summarizes its findings:

For a truly optimal experience that takes into account both the constraints and strengths of the device, an iPad-specific website may be the solution.

After reading through the report, I find it “must read” material for anyone developing iPad applications or marketing their website to iPad users. The usability testing is not a study of the usability of the iPad itself, but the usability of the apps that were tested, which can vary from one app to the next, and change as each app is updated. Very little attention was paid to system wide software like the keyboard, or how the device is handled physically other than saying that it was “heavy.”

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines define certain aspects of how an app should look and feel on the iPad, but given the disparity of user interfaces between apps, it’s obvious that developers need studies like the Nielsen Norman Group’s. Time will tell what the best interfaces are for the platform, and what UI mistakes developers are making now. What we should not do is hold this report as a study of the usability of the iPad itself, which my young son will happily tell you is just fine.

Such eye-tracking research is not cheap, however. For teams who don’t have the research budget to do full usability studies, Trailhead provides a way of creating limited heat maps inexpensively: It offers one free test, and additional tests are $1-9 each, depending on how many one buys. Trailhead can’t track users’ eye movements, so it tracks mouse movements and mouse clicks instead, via a small piece of tracking code that is added to pages being tested.

Trailhead users can view the heat maps for each in-progress or completed test, and can make the maps public or private. For each page being tested, the resulting heat map begins with a static representation of the design, over which trails of mouse movements, and triangles showing mouse clicks are superimposed. One can turn any of these layers on or off.

Not surprisingly, the web design layer doesn’t display moving elements, so one won’t see how visitors interact with interactive elements that change, like drop-down menus, scrolling DIVs, IFRAMEs, Flash movies, or slide shows like the one on the WebWorkerDaily home page. Trailhead says that one can run tests on mobile sites, although I didn’t try this feature.

The folks at Trailhead let me run several tests, and I found creating them to be simple. One provides some basic information about the page to be tested, including its URL, when the test should be started, and the page’s width in pixels (Trailhead can’t run tests on sites with variable widths). Trailhead then generates a tracking code to be included on the web page. The test then appears in the user’s dashboard, which shows how much data has been collected so far. Since each test covers 1,000 user sessions, it may take hours or days to complete, depending on how much traffic the tested page receives.

A graphic designer colleague is skeptical of the usefulness of Trailhead’s heat maps. He points out that since Trailhead can’t collect data on how users’ eyes track web content, this tool would not be able to tell whether, for example, the click-through rate on a banner is low because the content is not interesting, or if it’s just not being perceived by visitors. There is also no way of separating out the behavior of new visitors from that of those who’ve been to the site previously.

Trailhead won’t replace full usability testing, or even traditional visit statistics from Google Analytics, AWStats, and the like, but for those with limited budgets, it may provide insights that complement other research.

Do you find heat maps useful?

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There’s been a lot of talk about privacy concerns when it comes to Google’s Buzz, with both the Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s office and the Federal Trade Commission looking into the service, people complaining about their contacts being exposed without their knowledge, etc. For me, that stuff isn’t really an issue — rightly or wrongly, I’m pretty much an open book on the Internet when it comes to social networks. As far as I’m concerned, the biggest issue with Buzz is just this: I’m not sure it works.

I’ve tried to like it and find ways to use it, I really have. And I’m not saying I’m giving up on it completely. But I’m skeptical about whether Buzz really fills a critical need in my life, and whether it adds enough value to keep around or devote more time to it. Could this be a result of social networking fatigue? Possibly. But to be honest, Buzz just seems too convoluted and cumbersome in so many ways, the user interface too chaotic and hard to filter, the settings difficult to understand and configure, and the potential use case too hard to figure out.

I’ve been trying to use it as an aggregator for other things — Twitter, Facebook, etc. — but that doesn’t seem all that useful. I check it from time to time because the “unread” number keeps nagging me, but then when I get into it there are just tons of comments on posts by Pete Cashmore and Matt Cutts and Robert Scoble (who I eventually had to unfollow — sorry, Robert). And each time there’s a new comment, Google puts the post back at the top. I thought Google’s mission was to help me make sense of all the information clutter out there, but Buzz really isn’t helping. And it’s not just me: Jyri Engestrom, who co-founded Jaiku and helped create Buzz, has set up a Google Moderator page for suggestions about “How To Fix Buzz,” and thousands of people have voted already.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s great to read through a discussion with Matt Cutts about domain registrars because his wife is looking to buy a domain name. And now and then I come across something interesting that is worth reading or commenting on, like a conversation started by Google engineer DeWitt Clinton or David Cohn. But there’s still just a ton of noise, and I can’t figure out whether that’s my fault or Google’s. Is it the way I’m adding people, or the way Google is filtering (or not)?

A lot of people make the same complaints about Twitter — a high noise ratio, a lack of interesting posts, difficulty figuring out who to follow, etc. But I’ve managed to get Twitter to the point where it works for me, where I’m following a combination of people who provide interesting links and commentary on a fairly consistent basis. Could I get to the point where Buzz works like that, too? I thought it would be fairly simple, since I could just add people I also follow on Twitter through Gmail and the Buzz interface, but it’s still not there yet, and I’m not convinced it will be any time soon.

I’ve tried using Buzz on my phone as well, and as a standalone app (on a Mac, you can turn any URL into a standalone app using Fluid) and that gets closer to being useful. The geolocation for the mobile version — which has suffered its own problems, with a bug that could allow your account to be hacked — is an interesting feature, and I could see how viewing Buzz posts related to a venue would be useful, in the same way “tips” on Foursquare can be. And it’s easier to browse through a standalone desktop app (Google is apparently thinking about offering a standalone version at some point), but then I always get the feeling I’m missing something, due to Google’s obscure sorting algorithms.

In many ways, as David Pogue points out in a recent column, Buzz suffers from a bewildering oversupply of features. It’s a little like its lesser-known cousin, Google Wave — it’s chaotic, hard to filter, and more or less overwhelming. For example, there’s no easy way to collapse comments on posts in Buzz, to get to the new and/or good stuff — but then some conversations collapse by themselves, and I’m not sure why. Other conversations disappear altogether into a window-shade style format (although they can be expanded), and I don’t know why that happens, either. Google’s algorithms at work again, no doubt.

As for disconnecting from Buzz, give this a read and see if you can figure out how it works, because it isn’t straightforward or intuitive by any stretch of the imagination. So I guess I’m stuck with it, whether I use it or not.

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Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Doug88888

Because the technology press and hardcore technology users have an unprecedented platform from which to speak and be heard. Period. End of story.

Last week’s iPad announcement made this abundantly clear. The technosphere has labeled the iPad an unqualified failure, in large part due to lack of multitasking. News flash: multitasking is overrated. Its not nearly as important to average, everyday users as it is to the people who cover technology for a living. Despite the fact that Palm’s WebOS and Google’s Android both support multitasking, neither has come anywhere close to the success of the iPhone.

With the iPhone and now the iPad, Apple is clearly targeting a mass consumer audience. Many of these users aren’t comfortable with computers. They use them almost because they have, for email and a few other core tasks. Obviously this is changing, as the number of computer and Internet users continues to grow. Its not because computers and the Internet are incredibly easy to use, because they aren’t. In fact, the difficulty in using computers has probably slowed adoption of computing and Internet services into consumers’ daily lives, and part of that complexity comes from multitasking.

Here are three observations that also lead me to believe that multitasking just isn’t that important to most people.

1. I have facilitated or observed literally thousands of web usability test sessions over the last several years. In watching people use computers and the web, I’ve noticed three very specific behaviors: 1) most people instantly maximize windows to fill their screens and minimize distractions; 2) only the most tech savvy users use alt-tab (Windows) or command-tab (Mac) to switch between apps; and 3) people are far more likely to be confused when multiple windows and apps are open.
2. There has been a surge in interest in the last few years for desktop applications that take over the screen. This is true of Firefox, for example, which has a full-screen “kiosk” mode, and several word processors designed to let users write without distraction.
3. Despite pretty regular usage, my wife still struggles with some basic Mac operations related to multitasking, such as closing windows as an attempt to quit an app, switching between apps, not realizing which window is active, etc. While she still uses the Mac, she has moved more and more of her computing activity to her iPhone because she doesn’t have these same issues.

Sure, many of us heavy users like multitasking on our computers and might not feel nearly as productive without it (I say feel because there is evidence to suggest that we aren’t really multitasking but fast switching, and performance suffers when we do). But the majority of people in the world aren’t like us. They want something that is really easy to use and understand, and that provides some level of enjoyment or helps make their lives easier. Apple’s iP products (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) are designed for these people.

What Apple is really doing is making technology disappear, surfacing content in a very human way. Even if processing power and battery life are currently capable of delivering multitasking, I’m not sure Apple will implement it in the way we think of multitasking today. Perhaps it will allow background processing and easier switching among apps, which get at core user needs, but I expect it will maintain a solotasking approach well into the future of its product designs.

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The one thing many people did not expect with a new version of iTunes was that Apple would use the opportunity to cause dissent among its fanbase by introducing another new user interface. Some classify the new styling as “needed” and “elegant and refined” while others have resorted to a variety of hacks to return to the UI of yesteryear.

We’ve gone through every corner of iTunes we could find and dug up all of the major changes in the interface. Here’s what we found.

Welcome to iTunes 9

The first thing many noticed is that iTunes 9 now launches with a Welcome to iTunes screen, offering quick links to videos showcasing some of iTunes features. Similar to apps like iPhoto and iWeb, users can disable this by ticking a checkbox.

iTunes Preferences

iTunes Preferences also featured a few notable changes, specifically adding support for grouping iTunes U content.

iTunes 9 General Preferences

iTunes 8 General Preferences

Parental Control also received a new icon (matching the icon in Snow Leopard) as well as some slight rewording.

iTunes 9 Parental Controls

iTunes 8 Parental Controls

Removed from iTunes 9 are references in the Store section to “adding to shopping cart” versus buying with Amazon’s licensed 1-Click technology. Added is an option to use the full window when browsing the iTunes Store.

iTunes 9 Store Preferences

iTunes 8 Store Preferences

Browsing Content

Browsing content within iTunes has also received a refresh. While browsing music in List Mode, the artists have been grouped along the left, making it easier to narrow down your selection rather quickly.

iTunes 9 Music List Mode

When browsing in Grid View, the first thing you will notice is that the dark black background is gone and now albums are scattered amongst an off white background. Badged content, such as Podcasts, TV Shows, iTunes U and Movies feature blue badges instead of the original red. Gone from this view are the tabs to sort content within an area (such as Music) by Albums, Artists, Genres and Composers. This can be re-enabled via the View menu.

ITunes 9 Podcasts

Cover Flow view is pretty much the same, with the refining of the “full screen” icon.

iTunes 9 CoverFlow

The iTunes 9 Equalizer also received a refresh, styling the control knobs with blue accents.

iTunes 9 Equalizer

iTunes 8 Equalizer

Icons & Buttons

Buttons and displays in iTunes 9 have been overhauled to give them a more glossy, shiny three dimensional look. The toolbar has also been realigned, removing the ‘View’ label and moving the ‘Search’ label instead the Search field. The information area has also been updated, providing more useful information during syncing and downloading of content from the iTunes Store (such as time remaining).

iTunes 9 also brings about many refreshed icons, including many of the icons in the sidebar. Specifically, playlist icons have gotten the most attention, while TVs, Movies, Audiobooks, and Applications have seen slight refreshes as well.

Syncing

Syncing is by far the area that received the most attention in this revision. Specifically, users now have the ability to sync content more selectively. When choosing a TV show, for instance, they can sync specific seasons or specific episodes. When syncing a podcast, they can choose to sync specific episodes. When syncing photos, users can take advantage of the iPhoto ’09 Faces and Places aspect to sync photos of particular people or a particular place. Many of these areas also provide a search field, making it easier to quickly narrow down and select the specific content you’re looking for.

Syncing TV Shows

Syncing Ringtones

Syncing iTunes U

Syncing Music

Syncing Photos

The biggest feature in the redesigned sync options is the ability to organize your iPhone and iPod touch apps directly within iTunes. Check the ones you wish to add, highlight to select them and drag them to whichever home screen you desire. Selecting multiple apps is a cinch and moving them between home screens is equally easy.

Syncing Apps

Everything Else

Upon a user’s first visit to a section, such as creating a new Playlist, or visiting the Podcast area, they are greeted with a new UI that discusses how that particular concept works.

iTunes 9 New Playlist

While this overview is fairly exhaustive, there are likely many other features that users will continue to discover. If there’s one we’ve missed, please use the comments to let us know!

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Do you ever want to peek over the shoulder of your web site visitors to see how they move about and navigate? As site owners, we often make assumptions as to how people are getting to particular pages or using particular functionality. Armed with pages and pages of analytics statistics we focus on what people are viewing or searching for.

Sometimes, though, there is no substitute for just watching how people interact and use your site to really understand your users’ behavior. Usability and testing tool Clixpy hopes to make that possible.

Clixpy is a web tool that tracks and records everything that a visitor does while interacting with your web site. Every scroll, click, text entry and hover is captured in a video for you to view at a later time.

A convenient dashboard displays all of your captured videos.

Installation is fairly straightforward. A short piece of JavaScript is provided for you to place into the HTML of your site. The code is tied to your account and is independent of a particular web site, which is nice. This allows you to monitor multiple sites or pool your captures using just one account.

Clixpy captures are purchased in groups. Your first 100 captures cost $5, with discounts being available for larger buys. You maintain a credit pool and each capture just pulls from your available credits.

You do have some control of how and when your captures are taken, though. When turning on captures you are given the opportunity to set some parameters to limit how many or how long they will run. This allows you to target particular times of day or new feature releases.

The Clixpy folks provided me with a pool of credits for review purposes and I doled them out over the course of a couple of days on one of my sites. It really was informative to watch the recordings that Clixpy gathered. Seeing real users clicking around is interesting and challenged some assumptions I had about how people interacted with my site.

Since each capture pulls a credit, I was sort of irritated when I would get single page view recordings. My initial thinking was that these captures wouldn’t tell me much, but I now realize that careful examination of these sessions could help identify issues and offer insight as to how to make my site more “sticky” and reduce its bounce rate.

Clixpy generally works just as advertised but I did run into some issues. For example, a capture should include every page view by a user but I can clearly identify many instances in which the same user session is split among multiple Clixpy captures. As each capture session has a cost, it would be nice to not have them wasted like this. There were also a couple of instances where it seemed that the clicking through of pages didn’t quite match up properly and the timing of the recording was inconsistent.

Also, while not a function of the application or service, one irksome thing I noticed is that you need to register on the site before you are given any information on cost. Clear pricing information should always be provided before any user data is gathered or a sign-up is processed.

I also have some concerns about the privacy implications of Clixpy but, in general, it is just presenting the same type of information gathered by an analytics package in a visual format. Password fields are ignored and other form fields can also be disabled. For long-term usage I would be sure to include information in my own privacy policy alerting users that it is in place. Users can opt out of being tracked by any site using Clixpy by visiting the Clixpy disable page.

Clixpy isn’t a substitute for proper focus group or usability testing but a small investment could provide useful information that can be difficult to gather otherwise. Check out a demo of Clixpy or register for an account to get started.

How do you feel about “spying” on your site visitors with Clixpy?

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Jacob

Nobody looks at picture advertising.

Nielsen, in a keynote address at the inaugural Web Experience Forum in Boston, Mass., said web design is doomed to failure unless we learn from end users. And one major lesson is that other than paid search, ads don’t work.

“We call this banner blindness — people won’t see ads at all,” said Nielsen. “Ads might as well not exist as far as users are concerned, except for search ads.” The number of web users that so much as glance at banner ads, he added, is too small to even quantify.

The findings are no secret to web usability professionals gathered here, who obsess over how consumers use the web. But they’re often ignored by ad buyers.

“For the longest time, the web has been in collective denial of this phenomenon,” said Nielsen. “People still have this old media thinking: They think of the web being similar to TV because it’s on the screen and visual. The main distinction is whether it’s active or passive, not whether it’s on a screen or not.”

Advertising revenues, which pay for much of the web, are having a rough year, with some analysts cutting their estimates for the entire sector.

Nielsen pointed out that paid search still works — partly because it’s relevant, and partly because users aren’t tuning ads out. “We thought we’d find [paid search] box blindness the way we did banner blindness, but that’s not the case. Users are interested in search ads and actually look at them.”

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