Vidari is a large and bulbous root that grows in Northern India with a distinctively sweet taste; it originates from the same family as the sweet potato and is a creeping plant. The flowers of this plant are often very large and distinctive and have been known to attract hummingbirds.
The roots are used in the traditional Ayurvedic formula for Mahanarayan Oil that we have made a version of in Active Oil.


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Present for this recording were DeWayne Purdy, Kyle Pero, Lyle Kantrovich, Rashmi Sinha, and Nate Bolt.
What can we learn from the new Brown University web site?
What does it mean to be usable?
Why is MySpace so successful?
Which is better designed, the new Brown Web Site or Craigslist?
You can meet the crew here.
Josh Porter couldn't join us for this inaugural episode, as he was in a secret government hospital having alien implants removed from a recent abduction.
After we recorded the session, Brown University went ahead and launched their new site, which you can see here. DeWayne shared us some user feedback to the beta: here, here, and here.
We also talked about the UPA Body of Knowledge project and the DUX 2005 conference that happened late last year.
Jared Spool: So, welcome to the first, and possibly only recording of SpoolCast, and I want to thank Nate for that excellent suggestion for a name.
Nate Bolt: It was Mike's, yeah, it was Mike's idea.
Jared: Oh cool. Who do we have here? We have DeWayne Purdy.
Jared: And Josh Porter was going to join us, but, apparently he is close to death, according to his wife, on, with some sort of feverish dementia that he's suffering from.
DeWayne: He hasn't been brewing his own beer again, has he?
DeWayne: Usually that can't be fatal, just make you sick.
Jared: Yeah. I don't know what he's been up to. He went to Water Country last week. I'm wondering if he stepped into the wrong pool there or something. Apparently, his new little one has been under the weather too, I believe. So, apparently, it's a family trait, to have this problem. Why don't we go around the room, and have everybody briefly introduce themselves, and talk about what's interesting to them, and we'll find something to talk about. DeWayne, why don't you go first.
DeWayne: Ok, for those that aren't aware, I work at the University of Iowa. I work in marketing and PR here, but my main job is electronic communications, taking care of the university's main website. Electronic communications, like e-newsletters. We use the Lyris email system to do newsletters. Do a number of web developments for a number of the departments on campus, as well as the main site. Although we are typically University in it, we have a lot of different web developers, doing a lot of different looking sites, although it's getting better. One of the things, a couple of the things that interest me are, kind of, the different aspects of social networking on University sites. We keep an eye on Facebook, but by our observations and discussions with students, there's not much inclination on our part to try and create our own Facebook community, because they're so heavily invested in already in Facebook itself, that I don't know how we would pry them away. Plus, there's interactions that they can have with friends at other universities with Facebook, that they wouldn't necessarily have if we created something, but how to take advantage of social networking in the university atmosphere. Another thing's just come up, and I emailed Jared, I should maybe send the email to all of you, I kind of thought of where does innovation take place. Jared, you've talked about this a number of times, in different talks, where somebody throws a total, you have one client in particular that's done a total redesign of their website, and sales went down.
Jared: Yeah, I'm not sure we can count that as innovation.
DeWayne: Well, I'm kind of going back to the Brown University website I sent you.
Jared: Right. Yeah, I saw that email.
DeWayne: And we talked a lot of the discussion, Brown University, and I will pull up the URL, and send it to all of you. Brown University is redoing their website, and they have quite a different design then they currently have. They're catching a lot of flack for it. It's in beta right now, public beta. They're catching a lot of flack for it on campus, and getting different reactions from people in the web development community as well. Some of the discussion has been it's quite different. It's good that they're trying something, and one person, from one university commented, "Well, ok, now they're trying something, but we tried something a few years ago, too, and our admissions went down, and, you know, everything went down, you know, so we went back to doing things the same way everybody else does. the colleges and universities. Some kind of, but you know if we did, we'd change and evolve over time, then our websites would still look like they did back in 1996, and I really don't want to go back to that. So, I guess we're at that tipping point of, so, when do you go out on a limb and try something, versus the, you know, the weighing the consequences of, you know, what happens to your university and your inquiries or admissions go down, or your a e-commerce site sales go down. How do you, how do you judge how far to go?
Jared: Ok. That sounds good. We'll come back to that. Why don't we go to Nate. What are you doing?
Nate: All right. Well, the first thing that I'm interested in today is I just found out that SpoolCast is trademarked.
Nate: By Data Trade Conversion Services.
Jared: It has to be trademarked within a context.
Jared: The trademark has to have a likelihood of confusion. That's the test of a trademark.
Nate: All right. That's good. Glad to hear that.
Jared: Hell, I grew up with lawyers.
Nate: Let's see. So, other than that, I'm out here in San Francisco, mostly do remote usability stuff, and remote ethnography to the extent that is possible. We've got a little small service company out here, and then we've also just started working on a product.
Nate: And we've just started working on an actual tool, called FDO, in the last couple of years, and let's see. That's the background. I think the other thing I've been interested in is how, I was just reading an article on how 'Snakes on a Plane' is the first movie that completely shot new scenes, rescripted and made major changes in the movie before it was ever released just based on internet feedback. I thought that was kind of interesting. That, sort of, like, intensely direct feedback with, sort of, users or moviegoers before the thing had ever been even seen by anybody.
Jared: Have you seen it?
Nate: We did. We went in D.C. to the premier, the midnight premier.
Jared: I saw it. I inadvertently saw it with my children.
Jared: My son went to the theater with five of his friends, only to find out that it was rated-r and the theater wasn't going to let him in. He called me from his cell, and I had to go back, with the intentions of just buying their tickets and letting them go in, and the guy behind the counter said, "Well, you know, sir, you'll have to go in with them." So, I thought about it, and I really didn't want to go, but I ended up going, and it was an enjoyable evening. I ended up getting 25 teenagers in that particular movie.
Jared: My son's phone kept ringing, and he said can you help another four people get in?
DeWayne: How much did you charge per kid?
Jared: You know I should of.
Jared: But, I got to tell you, if your going to see "Snake on a Plane", seeing it with 25 sixteen year olds is probably the best way to see it.
Nate: Yes, I'd say that.
Jared: That's very cool. Kyle Pero tells us about yourself and what you're interested in.
Kyle: Ok. I am a company called Useable Interface, offering consulting services in usability and interface designs. I'm currently located in Philadelphia, where I'm the chair at SIGCHI. And SIGCHI is the Philadelphia chapter of the ACM SIGCHI. I've been in the UX industry for about six years. My background was originally in web development, but I quickly gravitated to the dark side of usability after the dot com bubble burst. I'd have to say that the main thing that I'm, probably, interested in now-a-days is, it changes very frequently, probably has to be, better way that graphic artists designers can work better together with user experience professionals. Basically, I'm really looking at collaboration methods tools, anything you've got, anything that's out there. It's something that, actually, our SIGCHI group is hooking up with the local AIGA chapter to work better together at. I really believe, it's something that we can definitely work on, let the two camps get together and share their frustrations with each other. I know that when I get on to a new job, being a consultant, sometimes, I'm welcome with open arms from the design team, other times it's your treading on my territory, and it's meant with a lot of fear by us and worry. I think there's a lot we can dispel, if we just learned more about each other and what we do. Respect what we do. Understand where our boundaries are and how we can help each other out. So, that's probably the main thing that I'm interested in now.
Jared: Cool. Ok. Lyle, you up for this?
Lyle: Sure. I'll give it a go. My voice isn't 100 percent today, but it's been like non-existent for like three weeks, and there's a few moments of lucidity today, but we'll give it a shot. I'm a project director with Human Projects International. We're a consulting company that does human factors, usability and interface design work. Previously, led a user experience team in a large private company. Also, have a blog at www.crocolyle.com. That's once in a blue moon, I'll actual put something up in, and I've been very up with UPA, previously. Then, currently, I'm on the board of directors for UPA. So, that's kind of my background. Right now, things that are interesting to me, I guess, something I've noticed lately, I've been, sort of, a long time to realize is, I think, companies are starting to realize that personalization on the web is failure. Unless you're a major portal, personalization is usually overkill. So, we're hearing, I think, less people who are launching portals, versus really talking about doing the personalization, and now they're just talking about maybe the ability to do some light customization. Hopefully, they've given up the ghost on that. Also, I'm pretty interested in some of the things that UPA is doing with the usability body of knowledge, which is really an effort to codify, not so much codify, but document what we know as a field, and get it out there so people can share best practices and newcomers to the field can learn about how you do methods, and what methods are out there. You know, what roles are there in this field, those kind of things. So, I'm keeping an eye on that.
Rashmi: So, I'm Rashmi Sinha, and I'm based in Mountain View, California. I work for a small user research company called Uzanto and the word "uzanto" means "user" in Esperanto. It comes from a childhood fascination with Esperanto. We recently launched a product for doing remote user research called MindCanvas and the best way to describe MindCanvas is think online games meet online surveys. So that's kind of what I do. Aside from that I, also, am Co-Program Chair for BayCHI and I spend some time like trying to line up speakers for that; I really enjoy that. In terms of what I am interested in currently, first I would look like to follow up on that problem with the website redesign thing. I actually went to Brown, got my Ph.D. there, so that's fascinating.
Jared: That didn't stop them from doing that.
Spool: You doing your Ph.D. there didn't stop them from building it.
DeWayne: I'll send you from some of the message boards what they're saying there.
Rashmi: Yea. I'm fascinated by what their reactions are. Another trend I'm really interested in the social sites and their popularity. One recent person who has become very popular in Europe is this seventy-nine year-old man from the UK, and he's been boxing just about all his life. I think it just optimizes a lot of issues about people using research. People think, "Oh, you know, these are the nonsense type people, we have to cater to them". To me, it's something like a phenomenon like in Europe and the people who participate in it epitomizes that maybe our thinking is sometimes limited. I find that very fascinating the kind of people that participate and the extent of participating, and how to think about creating innovative services like that. That's me.
Jared: Cool. For the two people on the planet that for some reason don't know I'm Jared Spool. I run a small think-tank out here in the middle of North Andover Massachusetts. We've thinking of usability related stuff for eighteen years. Right now, I'm interested in a variety of things. One of the things that has interested me lately is I've got this sort of fascination with Google since I went out there to visit, I found it to be an absolutely surreal experience. I'm wondering what's going to happen with that. I'm not sure I can see what's up with them, if they're anything more than one-trick ponies. That's one thing of interest to me. I'm interested in lot of the other topics that we've been talking about so we can touch on some of those.
Jared: Why don't we start by talking about the Brown site? For our audience at home the Brown site is http://brown.edu/home2 is this brand-new re-designed version of the Brown site. It's an interesting thing. From what I've been able to piece together it was designed by the folks at Pentagram, which is a design firm that doesn't do just online stuff. They do libraries, buildings, and things like that. So, they're sort of this multi-talented very sort of high-end, a lot of people would refer to them to be one of the premier design firms out there. They're a cache organization, and it's interesting they've come up with this design which I guess it's flash-based? It's not flashed-based.
Lyle: My first question is they may know the story behind how it was designed, we know who did it, but what was the process they used? How did they arrive at this and validate it?
Lyle: I guess usability testing is one thing, but, but, I'll suggest even like grand perception is, is this huge amount of the color brown, which I would think is not a real happy color. So, if you are a new student looking for a college, how is that going to be engaging to you? What's your brand perception of brown, before you even click on a link?
DeWayne: That's one of the comments I've seen a lot of is the brown, which is probably the most disturbing aspect to me. We're kind of following on this. The color theme, with universities, of course, is very big. There's a University near us that orange is one of their signature colors and "Be Orange" is their mantra. Brown's is "Boldly Brown." And I'd guess you'd have to say that this is boldly brown, but there is a lot of reaction, adverse reaction to it. The color is one, the interface is another. The sliding windows confusing people, a lot of concern about that. Even concern, at least among the web developer community, about the heavy use of Java, and what happens if you have Java Script turned off?
Kyle: This is Kyle. I was just curious. Are these links going to the current website that currently exists? Is there a reason for the inconsistencies between the sub pages and home page navigation and all that?
DeWayne: I assume because it's a beta at this point.
DeWayne: And they have some sub pages done and some not. The site is actually scheduled to go live right after Labor Day.
Jared: Well, one thing I was curious about too is, I think, Dewayne, you were mentioning earlier, like, when do you decide to take a bold risk.
Jared: You know, and what are the tradeoffs and that, and I was thinking, the larger the organization, the stake, you know, the bigger the stakes and the more, you know, infrequent these kind of risks are. And, I always like to see bigger organizations, whether it's a foundation or a company or a whatever, take risks, even if it comes out as a failure, because nobody wants to do it. You know, there's too much, when small companies take risks all the time, because there's nothing to lose. But these big organizations, it seems like it's always a feat to get somebody to try something new.
Lyle: I was just thinking it's lucky their name is not Chartreuse University.
DeWayne: I just found a page on the site. Apparently, if you click on the "About Brown," there's a guy on a horse, and there's a link that says "A new window into Brown." And when you click on that, in the middle of the page, it says "nearly sixty departmental sites also have a new look and feel and updated content" named click on that link then. Apparently, like, Egyptology is completely redone but they're not brown. Egyptology is this sort of sandstone background.
Lyle: Yeah sure. I just, I just think it's an interesting color to welcome people with.
DeWayne: But didn't UPS have a campaign, you know, what has brown done for you, or something like that?
Lyle: Yeah, but they, but they, you know they use a lot of brown, but it's still a lot of brown and white.
DeWayne: Yeah. Their website has only a small amount of brown in it.
Kyle: There seems to a lacking of, like, a global navigation to link them all together, too. Like when you go to this sublevels, you know, how do you get back to the main brown and, and the, you know, the main hierarchy?
Jared: Welcome to the world of universities!
Lyle: Not unlike most large corporations.
Lyle: You know the VP-based navigation scheme has not left us yet.
Kyle: I have done some work on some university sites and it's amazing how much they really want to just redesign certain areas. It seems, least from my experience. The graduate said he wants to be separate from undergrad and they want to handle their navigation separately. Nobody wants to tie it all together. Nobody's looking at the entire picture. They're all worried about their own little camp.
Lyle: Kyle, I want to bring you in to the whole social networking thing. So you're, you're a eighteen-something teenager and you're used to using MySpace and you come to Brown.edu. You know, is this going to engage you? Is it going to entice you to want to go to Brown?
Jared: And what percentage are they targeting of undergraduates as graduates?
Jared: And how many kids decide on a school based on a home page on the website?
Jared: I currently got a sixteen-year-old who is thinking about college. And he doesn't know how he's going start to tackle this. So, I can pretty much guarantee to you that home pages on a website are the least contributor to whatever decision he'll end up making.
Nate: Is he online now, Jared?
Nate: Is he big online?
Jared: Oh, yeah! You have to use a crowbar to get him away.
DeWayne: He would do a lot of research with our students here at UNI and with prospective students thinking about coming to UNI or orientation when students are getting ready to come. Really the big thing is they oftentimes will not go directly to the admissions site. They will go to the "About UNI" or to the "Student Life" section to a virtual tour. They want to see what it's like there. They want to get a feel for "does this seem right for me?" Then they'll go to the admissions' site when they're ready to do things like do an inquiry when they're ready to apply for admission and things like that. One trend that the web is, we're seeing more in universities on the web, impacting the web rather, is admissions offices are seeing more students applying for admission that they've never had an inquiry from before. Usually, it starts with an inquiry: "send us some information." We send you information, we send you some more information, we send you some more information, and then you decide to apply. They're seeing more students just doing that research behind the scenes, on the web, and then deciding to apply without ever having contacted the university before, which of course scares the admissions offices a great deal.
Lyle: But I think that maps to what's going on in large corporations. There are many, many senior executives who do a lot of their research of potential suppliers online. And since the suppliers are getting contacts from people who weren't on their target list, if you will, that just found them online, and did basic research online, and then contacted them and said, "I think I need more information now or I'd like to talk to someone in your department for sales." And so, I think it's a rough reflection of the online research being a more of a regular thing in business and life.
Jared: One of the things that's interesting to me, you know, to talk about, sort of that question you had about innovation, is that why innovate with the home page? I mean, it's a very high-risk place to do something. Why not pick some page, let's say the athletics calendar, though at Brown that may not be the place to do that because I think their best team is their chess team.
Jared: But find some place, one of the research things or maybe undergraduate academics or something, and innovate there where you have less personas that you're dealing with and less stakeholders you're dealing with, and less risk. It feels to me that choosing a portion of the site to do something novel with that really, if it turns out to be a bad idea, you can sort of unwind it a lot easier and you don't have the visibility, but you still learn as much as you would if you do something that's exceptionally high visibility like the home page.
Lyle: But what's the benefit of that is where it usually shakes out, right? Is it really working or is it a neat theory that's hard to execute?
DeWayne: Well, when we developed the site that we thought we were going to use to try to capture those names, we took the opposite approach from a lot of colleges and universities. A lot of them have these personalized sites that you can go into and find information and then save the information in your account about the college, whether it's the major you're interested in, things like that. And a lot of them require you to log in first, and give your information first, then you can go in and look at what is supposedly going to be a cool site and give you all the information you need. We felt less comfortable with that. We felt "let's give them information," and hopefully the information will compel them to fill out an inquiry form and let us get in touch with them further. We didn't want the personalization to be a barrier to them looking at the information we had to offer.
Nate: Is there a difference?
Nate: Yeah, it's kind of like what drives us. Like, for marketing stuff, it seems like innovation can come from so many different places. Like, somebody has a cool aesthetic idea, and all of a sudden, 900 humongous organizations copy, just because it's sort of cool or looks good or resonates with people from a marketing perspective. But the functional innovations seem to come from a different place. Like MySpace, I mean, what the heck? It's not really usable at all, but it's innovative, I guess, for its audience.
Lyle: Well, it's obviously usable, people use it all the time.
Rashmi: I wouldn't say it's not usable, I would say that you've never actually a lot of people use it, and, it has it's quirks, but, the ability to just, I have watched people just embed videos in comments, and, I really feel like it's quite usable. It's just, not the kind of think that, people consider it a well-designed, well-done site. But it's usable in it's own way.
Lyle: How to make friends!
Jared: And as so soon as that happened, they went on this sort of "OK, embedding is bad" type thing, but then the people got upset because they couldn't embed their favorite movies or music. So ever since then, they have been walking this very tight line of giving users enough embedding capabilities to put the stuff in that they want, but at the same time preventing this aggressive anti-social behavior.
Lyle: Well, I think that was an interesting little debate that we just had there, which is, is it usable? It's a foundational question, what is usable? To me, I think it's important to understand that usability is really a spectrum. Something is more or less usable, and there's a point at which it's usable enough for a given user, a given context, a given purpose. So, it's hard for us to say whether MySpace is really usable, without having a little more information, but obviously, there are a lot of people who use it.
Jared: There are a lot of repetitive… We have two definitions for usability that we work with our clients with. The first is what we call the black and white definition, which is "Can someone actually accomplish their objective?" and MySpace obviously does that every day for millions of people, so from that definition, it is definitively usable. The second definition we call the shades of gray definition, which is "Is it as usable as it could be? Could you make it more usable?" And my guess is that MySpace could be made more usable, but tell me what couldn't.
Nate: Well, it's true, but, you see, it's kind of like these things where you see that it's exciting and it's useful to people, so they're willing to put up with it, but I think a lot of kids figured it out with no problem, but I've seen a lot of people, like teenagers, banging their head against their computer because it's slow, or because they can't do something, or something doesn't work right, there's also a lot of frustration, but it doesn't matter because they'd rather use that than anything else. It's always interesting to me, how much of it is these web-apps as nightclubs metaphor, so once it gets popular, it almost doesn't matter what they do, to a certain point, and then once it has the stink of uncoolness around it, like Friendster or something, forget it, they can be as usable as they want, it doesn't really matter.
Kyle: Isn't it interesting that the perception people have, when they're looking at something that, in our definition, is very unsophisticated-looking, it lacks any kind of clear design, or some sort of prettiness, that we immediately think it's unusable, where as if you're looking at something has very clean lines and has obviously had a lot of thought put into the design, it seems like people immediately come off with the impression that it's not usable because it looks like a mess on the screen, in terms of just how pretty it is.
Lyle: Yeah, my office isn't very usable to other people.
Kyle: But it is to you, right?
Lyle: And my house isn't, either.
Jared: MySpace, in my mind, is sort of like a high-school locker. It's these things that people decorate, or like a dorm room or something. Things that people decorate out the wazoo, bring their own personality in, blast their own music, and all this stuff. It's their, each individual page, is their own personality and their own thing, and it's not hard to find pages that don't jive with my aesthetic is the way things should go. We all know Don Norman.
DeWayne: There is kind of a geographic element to MySpace as well. We see around here in the Midwest, Facebook is huge among the college students. MySpace is kind of the high school and now even sliding down into the junior high. Even the high school kids are kind of like going, "Ehhh, MySpace, ehhhh" because Facebook is coming out for high schools now. But once they get to college, Facebook is the big thing.
Nate: How is the interface of Facebook? I've never even seen it.
Jared: Well, you can't see it; you're not in college.
Nate: Did they change that?
Jared: I even signed up for it.
Nate: I thought they opened it up.
DeWayne: I think it's open if you have a dot edu or if you get an invitation, I believe. I've looked at it; we talked about it with our students, especially with the photos that they posted on there. Because we're seeing some, it's hard to tell if it's widespread or not, but we've seen some indication of some employers who are using alums to login to Facebook to check out prospective employees to see what they might be like. It's usable but it's different than MySpace. It has less of a blogger-type of feel to it, but more posting messages from friends and heavy on the photos.
Kyle: I can see that being really helpful for prospective students. For the university that I did testing for, when we talked to prospective students, they seemed most interested after finding out that the program was whatever, they really wanted to see that they could fit into this university culture. What do the other students look like, what were the other programs like? They wanted pictures and they really wanted stories from the students. But they didn't want marketing fluff. They were specific in definitely requesting that they wanted the words from the students. They wanted contact with the students in some way to know that this was where they were going to choose to maybe live for the next four years.
Lyle: Going back to MySpace, I think, what's the ultimate result here? It's really a space for people to put up their thoughts and what not. A lot of it is just really a personal exercise in making your own thing. It's not so much as, "Is it going to be read by anyone else?" There's plenty of that as well. But it's not like a business application site, it's not like we're talking about medical software or something that has to be very usable and there's a lot of risk and business ROI that we're talking about.
Jared: Kids are not loyal at all. My daughter would not use MySpace just because everybody uses MySpace.
Nate: And we did a remote study for one of these large social networking sites and what we found over and over and over again, above everything, all that people cared about was what the activity of the people they knew or wanted to know was like. If there was an activity from their friends or people they were interested in meeting or dating or whatever, then they wouldn't log on. But if there was activity from other people, they were all over it. So it's like sort of this momentum-based.
Rashmi: Yes, these are all social sites and I think the ultimate determinant is really who else is saying it. It's like the nightclub thing. Who else is there, what are they doing, how can we connect with them? I also noticed what somebody else mentioned, that Facebook, when you get to college, you become a little bit more private about what your doing and your connections and then there's a trend towards Facebook. Before that, there's MySpace.
Jared: There was a New York Times article a little while back about somebody who was applying for a job in a law firm and people were doing Google searches and turning up old blog posts and MySpace stuff and pictures of them at some party that really wasn't helping them with their job search.
DeWayne: We've seen our students with their Facebook accounts, the students who work in my office, are more and more considering turning off access to anybody except their friends in Facebook. As they get closer to graduation especially they want to limit access so that prospective employers can't go in and look at what they've got, so that they don't have to take off their Bahamas spring break picture or whatever they've got on there.
Rashmi: So coming back to what we started off with, when you have these college applicants, does the Brown home page really matter? Or are they just going to go through looking on their Facebook contacts and MySpace and finding out through their friends? So, you know, Brown could do this huge redesign but at least in terms of applicants, maybe it matters in terms of donors and in terms of graduate students and in terms of other groups. But, maybe for the applicants, it doesn't matter so much.
Jared: We tell clients that their home page is the least important page on their site. That of all the pages on their site, it is the one that matters the most. The one that matters the most is the one the user needs to accomplish their goal. That's almost never the home page. I've done these lectures where I have a thousand people in the audience and I'll ask for people to hold up their hands if they've ever purchased anything because they saw it on the Amazon home page, and virtually nobody will raise their hand. Nut then I'll ask how many people have purchased something because on a particular book page it had 'customers who bought this book have also bought', and clicking on that link and buying that book. And almost everybody raises their hand.
DeWayne: Well, I think it depends on what kind of site you're talking about. I think in any commerce situation, that's true. If you're talking about, say, a personal page and a potential employer looking at it. You know, you're applying for a job, someone goes to Jared Spool dot com, and that first page is their first impression. And now, that only tells them a bit about what's on the site, so it is pretty critical in that situation.
Rashmi: The least important. I mean, you can't really say that the home page is not important. The home page is very important.
Jared: I didn't say it was not important, I said that it was least important.
Jared: What page is less important then?
Lyle: Well, I dunno. Your site map, there's a whole bunch. But you look at most sites and there's thousand of pages, there's a lot of other ones they'd pick.
Jared: Well, on Microsoft.com, in a study that we were involved in a few years back, we discovered that there were eight hundred thousand pages that had never been retrieved from the server.
Lyle: So all of those of you less important there.
Jared: I would think that those would be them.
Nate: Well, at least they're there. Someday.
Rashmi: I mean the home page is there, you enter, like it's like a house. You enter the space, and even if you don't stop there, it kind of leaves an impression in your mind.
Lyle: Right, like I might say that the entryway to my house is like the least important room, but functionally, in respect to the house and people's impression of it and access to it, it's highly important.
Jared: So why are things we measure as brand engagement, we can measure how people feel about a common brand, we can pick any brand you want, and we can measure their perception of it and what we call how engaged they are, which is – it goes from a scale of not caring about the brand – which means they may or may not buy from it – to being really upset if that brand has vanished from the earth tomorrow. And when we look at brand engagement and we look at how people perceive brands based on what they do within a website, what we've found is the home page has almost no impact on brand engagement. A really crappy home page will not have any more effect on how people perceive the brand than a really great home page. However, completing the task, whatever that task is, has a huge effect on brand engagement. So whatever the role of the home page is, completing the task is very important. But beyond that, it turns out we can't find any evidence that it's important at all.
Rashmi: I would need to see the data for that to buy that, Jared. I just would not buy that. Because, I mean, if I think about my impression of I don't know how many sites, the home page definitely is something I often remember. And, I'd have to see the specific data for that.
Jared: But, you know, let's play that out, right. So if you have a page that is really beautifully designed, like go to Amtrak.com, for example, a very beautifully designed page, but you can't make a reservation on the site, like three quarters of the people who go to Amtrak.com have trouble completing a reservation without calling the 800 number, right? What we've found is that, even though it's a beautifully designed page, it really sort of tees people off. But then you go to a page like Craigslist, where people have no trouble completing their task, but the page is not beautifully designed, it's considered cluttered by a lot of people, it obviously hasn't had the touch of a visual designer in any sort of way. And yet the brand engagement on that is really strong, and again, your impression of the home page is really – people go to a page not just to check it out, right, few people. The only people I know who go to websites to check it out are site designers.
Lyle: No, I disagree with that. Well, okay, maybe just to check the site out, but let's talk about people coming from a search page like Google, where, I know I'm looking.
Jared: They come first to the home page if they're coming from a search page, they're going straight into the site. They dive deep in.
Lyle: Let's say, let's say I'm looking for new enterprise database software, and I do a search for that on Google. I'm going to get Oracle.com and you know, a bunch of other links to large corporations. That home page tells me whether or not this smells right, you know, it's that information scent concept, and the home page should communicate to me what's there and where to go. And you're right, maybe I'll land on a landing page or product page, but not always.
Jared: Okay. Well, sure enough, yeah. The top listing for enterprise database software is Oracle.com. But here's the deal, right. You go to Oracle.com, and in the middle is this huge thing that says "Security is huge in middleware. Helps lock down your site". It doesn't have anything to do with what I'm looking for.
Jared: But my guess is that because there's a link on the left that says "database" or "products," those links that are on the left of that page are going to play a much bigger role on whether people feel the site is working for them. It's not because those links look great or don't look great. It's whether or not those links have what you're looking for. So if, in fact, you're clicking on that page and you're going there, it's going to be the next three clicks that make all the difference. It's not going to be this page at all. The fact that there's a big Toyota logo, at least on my page, customer spotlight is "Toyota Finance Adds Value and Reduces Cost with Kaizen and Oracle's PeopleSoft," which has nothing to do with their database, nothing to do with what you're looking for. The fact that that's there or not there is irrelevant. The fact that they may or may not have a link that's good, that's the key thing. When we want people come to sites, when we want people do certain searches on Google, we watch people do all this stuff, that's what we're seeing. The home page plays are really small role in what is happening with that experience. It's only when you can figure out where to go from this page that people get upset and start blaming the page.
Kyle: Right. I mean you do agree that it at least sets the tone for the experience. It's going to start you off on either the right foot or the wrong foot. It's the first hurdle you have to overcome.
Jared: Absolutely but of all the hurdles you have to overcome, it is the least important.
Kyle: As long as you overcome that hurdle.
Jared: Really? That's an assumption, right? My opinion of Brown University as a university hasn't changed because of that home page and I'm betting my son's perception, he is considering going to Brown only because he has friends there, and I'm sure that his perception probably wouldn't change because the friends still go there.
Jared: That it is a usability problem.
Jared: If it had a great home page but a really sucky description of the doctoral program in the Psych Department, would you still think Brown was a great school? I think that the page that talked about the program that you were interested in far outweighs the importance of the home page.
Rashmi: Definitely. No doubt about that but at the same time I was looking in a bunch of schools and I was forming an impression about them. Brown, especially, I remember having a little bit of doubt with because it's a smaller school and I didn't really know much about it. There were other schools I knew about. You are forming an impression there of the overall thing even if your focus is on a specific department and how much money they are giving you and all that stuff.
Jared: In terms of graduate stuff, I'm sure that the graduate program, the professors that were there, the nature of the program, all that stuff must play a big role. In terms of undergraduate stuff, just watching it through my children's eyes, when they look at colleges they could care less about the collateral material, whether it was the print stuff or the books. My son took the PSATs and now he's on the mailing list to get every college brochure that's out there so every day we get five or six college brochures. He doesn't even open them up. The other day, one came in from Clarkson, which is where his mom went to school, and I handed in the envelope. I said, "This is where Mom went to school" and he put it in the trash. I said, "Well, aren't you interested?" "He said, "It's a good school but I'll figure it out later or you'll tell me or something." He was not at all interested in their collateral. He said, "All these envelopes that we get all say the same thing, our school is great. They don't say anything else." He is just chucking every single one of them. He has no interest in looking at these materials. I'm betting that when he finally starts looking at schools for programs. His interest right now is in computer science and a little bit in theater. He gets that from his mom. It seems he's going to be more interested in those pages that talk about the computer science programs and the theater programs than what he's going to see. Look up computer science in Google or computer science degree or computer science undergraduate degree and click on some of the links, and the pages that they bring you to are horrible, absolutely horrible. We were looking at exactly that example and one of them brings you to the Carnegie Mellon page about the computer science program there. Carnegie Mellon has one of the best computer science programs in the world, yet the page that describes it is this awful, awful thing written up by the administrator of the curriculum, who basically describes all the prerequisites you need and all this and all that and it is a very logistical page. There is nothing on there that is compelling to convince somebody that they should attend this school and go to this program.
Lyle: It is funny that the university site would be too academic.
Jared: Aren't all of your students above average?
DeWayne: Oh, I certainly think so.
DeWayne: We have to accept by state law anyone that graduates from the top 50% of their class. So we have a wide variety of students, we have some excellent students and we have some average students. We try to be committed to giving them all a good education, but first we have to get them here. Because they can go to Iowa, Iowa State, they can go to a lot of private colleges around here or they can go out of state.
Jared: Now just one quick thought. MIT since February of 2003 has had a different home page every day.
Jared: Yeah, they put up a whole new home page every day. In fact, if you go to mit.edu, at the bottom of the page you will see an "About this site," and then on that page there is a link which is this past spotlights, as they call each home page a spotlight. And you can go through it you can see the home page for every day since February 2003.
DeWayne: The common, the nice thing about that and maybe it is just the fact that MIT is synonymous with innovation that they can get away with that, but the key part of getting away with that and it working for them, I think, is that the name plate is there, the global navigation is there, it stays consistent. It may move around, but it is still the same global navigation links, so it is more of a background redesign and where is the menu going to be placed today than a total redesign.
Jared: Right. My point is that it is a different home page every day and, of course, some home pages are better than other home pages, and I am betting that it doesn't impact anybody's perception on the university. There is when they have a bad home page, it doesn't matter because they will come back the next day and it will be a good home page, and it just doesn't matter. I think their home pages are all done by students. I think people submit designs. And interestingly enough it says here the MIT web site was designed by Pentagram, the same people who did the Brown site.
Rashmi: So I mean with Jared, the example that you are bringing up are ones which already have a very strong public perception and impression, and people already know about the institution. I agree with what you're saying. What you're saying is that what you say about this very marketing manner has less impact than what the functional areas and the aspects of the site and what others might say about you or even your own members say about you in a more open manner, in blogs, social networking, etc. Correct? Is that kind of the overall…?
Jared: Yes, sure. Let's take a vote, okay. Is the Brown site better or worse designed than Craigslist? Rashmi what do you think?
Rashmi: I would say worse.
Jared: What do you think it's worse than Craigslist?
Rashmi: Because Craigslist is a good service that millions of people use with a lot of success. I mean it's kind of comparing apples to oranges. It's a little bit difficult but, I mean, Craigslist is all about its home page and the service it provides for so many people. Brown's site is a very small part of what Brown is.
Jared: Okay, Nate, what's your vote?
Nate: See I'm going to go with Brown is better just because that Craigslist redesign that they did which takes up the exact same weight of the current Craigslist home page but at least just has some graphical treatment that made me so happy and I love Craigslist but I hate how it's undersigned on purpose.
Nate: Yes, that's like South by Southwest, they had a redesign Craigslist panel or something. I forget the name of the shop that did this but….
Jared: I'm going to guess thebignoob.com.
Nate: Maybe, that's a good guess. But you know, it's stuff like that you can do that has zero impact on page weight that you can at least do some basic formatting to make it… and that I just what frustrates me about Craigslist so I'm going with Brown for that.
Kyle: Can I ask a clarification on the question? When you say design, are you saying is it more esthetically pleasing or do we think it's easier to….
Jared: I don't know we're just talking about setting impressions here. So do you think the current design of Craigslist sets a better or worst impression for someone coming to Craigslist who may or may not know much about it then the new proposed design for the Brown site?
Kyle: I would say impression wise, ease of use wise I would say Craigslist. Impression wise I would have to say Brown. Only because….
Kyle: Brown is better in terms of impression. In terms of brand impression. I mean my mother took at look at Craigslist and she's like, "I wouldn't trust that to save my life. I can't believe you actually buy and sell on there." Because it does, it does look very hacky. It looks like someone just threw it up there. For her it was very important, I mean if she saw something like what Nate just put up, the redesign of Craigslist, I mean she would probably trust it more, just on overall just look and feel gives her a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.
Jared: Lyle, where are you at? Lyle Kantrovich.
Lyle: You know, I haven't looked at Craigslist recently but….
Kyle: It hasn't changed much.
Lyle: It's like what's the lesser of two evils, you know? So, I don't think either one is particularly good.
DeWayne: Well, I kind of on the fence there's some elements about Brown that I think don't make it a great design because I don't think it appeals visually to a student coming there. They have to dig too much just to figure out if they belong there. Hopefully, they can find the information that they need but, getting that personal touch is really important. There's a few other little usability features that I think are maybe a problem at this point yet as well, but, so….
Jared: Okay, which way do you go though?
DeWayne: I'm going to say at this point, given the importance of hooking perspective students as soon as they get there that I'd go with Craigslist just by….
Jared: You think that Craigslist will hook people better than Brown will?
DeWayne: It has not as well done, but not an un-eBay like interface where you see a lot of lists of a lot of different categories and you can find what you want. So, you know, no the design isn't impressive at all but, you know. I'm concerned that the Brown design doesn't convey a friendly enough feel, doesn't convey a welcoming feel to perspective students. They're very proud of their African exhibits in the museum, as is I'm sure they should be but when my students looked at it and under the Academics tab when the African masks popped up there, they were like, "what's up with that?" You know, they wanted to see something more directly related to academics; students in labs and stuff like that.
Jared: Am I allowed to abstain I guess? I would say that I think the Brown site is from an impression standpoint probably a little better than the Craigslist site. But I would agree with DeWayne, that I think that the links on the Brown site are missing what users need and I think that's where the problem is. I think if you redesign the page so that you had all of the likely set done that people think that they are looking for that it really doesn't matter what you're doing with the Java on the page. Now I think that one of the things you'll find is that if you start to do that redesign is that by just doing that, what you'll find is that you'll end up getting rid of a lot of the sort of crap that is there. But I don't think the color brown makes a difference. I mean it's not a particularly friendly color but it's not the worst color I've ever seen on a website.
Nate: What's the worst color you've ever seen on a website?
Jared: There was some site I saw the other day that had this sort of like neon pink on my monitor.
Jared: You know, you just want to say, "Can you turn that color off for a minute so I can look at it?" But I don't remember what the site was.
DeWayne: It's kind of the Universal rule in University web design that you get really sick of whatever your school colors are. I have to design a lot of purple and gold. I'm really tired of it. But I also thank heavens that I don't work up the road about 10-15 miles at Wartburg College, which is a very fine college whose signature color is orange and they are currently in a "Be Orange" campaign so everything is bathed in orange. I don't think I'd like to design in orange and black everyday. So that makes designing in purple and gold easier.
Jared: When I was in high school I had a friend who painted their bedroom completely black, with the exception of the ceiling, which they painted bright orange. It was the most striking thing, but I wouldn't want to have to sleep there every night. Lyle, you mentioned the UPA Body of Knowledge. Is that process really happening? Steven Wright has an old joke which is "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" I mean what is the process? How does someone decide what knowledge is worth putting in the body of knowledge or not?
Lyle: Well that's one of the questions that that group that is working on that is struggling I wouldn't say struggling but has had to deal with is "What do we put here?" I think they did a pretty good job with that. There's a preview up, you go to usabilitybok.org where they started is to talk about methods, talk about design principles and best practices. Things about organizations, usability teams, how do you integrate into software development those kind of things.
Jared: I know a web 2.0 site that has rounded corners.
Lyle: So it's subject areas are a professional development in related fields and a glossary. So those are kind of foundational things, and the plan is over time to kind of build this out. So the idea is to start with things where, as a field we have the most agreement and the most interesting knowledge.
Rashmi: Why not something like a wikipedia type approach where you know where everybody can add and then some kind of social structure for figuring out what remains?
Lyle: You know, interestingly enough they put up this preview and they an easier way to getting a lot of feedback and one of the things that has come up is that question: What about a wiki, can we work that in here? That's one of the things they are looking at currently, should they do that? It's a site where want a certain amount of editorial work going on to say "Yeah this is stuff that we see a lot of agreement on and maybe the wiki area is where it's more discussion and certain things from the field coming in that can migrate into the more definitive knowledge.
Jared: How is this project different than the Wikipedia project? Why not just do this as pages in Wikipedia? I guess who gets to decide if something is official?
Lyle: Well there's an editorial process for that and it really is based on multiple facets probably getting a little beyond my knowledge of how this all works but I'll give you my impression. There's a team that's looking at sort of research support for things. "How do we know this is the case?" or "Okay how long has this method been around and is there pretty good agreement on how it's done?" Therefore what can we say about that? And then documenting that based on things that are already existing. Did I answer your question?
Jared: Yeah, I guess Wikipedia has a way of policing things. They do have an editorial team that seems to police things. People who, as far as I can tell have no other activities in their lives who do nothing but make sure that only accurate things are put into it. But no one was appointed, right? It's all volunteer. This seems like it's all volunteer.
Lyle: It's volunteer but it's supported by the UPA. Really what that brings to it is a level of being official. This is an organization that's about usability and usability professionals and therefore if they say this is what we know as a professional association, that's sort of a definitive reference for people. A wiki entrance, who knows who put that in so what's the credibility of that over time? I think Wikipedia's a great thing, but I know they did have discussions about how might that work in. But it's really hard to present something under Wikipedia as being credentialed. Does that make sense?
Jared: It does. It does.
Rashmi: I guess when you read a book and it's by an individual author, you know whose voice and whose ideas (they are.) If I read a book by Jared, I would know that this is Jared's perspective on home pages.
Lyle: But then you'd know it's not worth its weight in paper.
Rashmi: But then you have something like this, which is more diffused. Who is this really coming from? It's coming from more of an organizational process than anything else. The knowledge is a bunch of people, but it's very much mired in the social process. To me, in some sense, the methods are fast moving. They're always changing. There are always new techniques developing. There are new things that are coming up, and it just seems like Wikipedia, would become outdated repeatedly, and you need this constant updating, Whereas if you really worked hard to get a community of people to contribute to a Wikipedia section on usability and I don't even know what Wikipedia has in usability it seems to me that it would be a more sustainable effort. And I know Wikipedia's thinking of some pages where you know, "a bunch of work has been done on this, and these are more credible" or something. Some of the others, it seems to me that would have more impact, and it would be more sustainable as an effort. A lot of times when these professional organizations start a big effort, it's a lot of work. And often it gets dropped because it's just too much work to keep up.
Lyle: I think that is one of the reasons a Wikipedia reference can only go just so far. Because you can only get masses of people to go just so deep. Whereas, if you have a dedicated team that's getting financial support and organizational support from an association, you can go a lot deeper and carry it a lot longer.
Jared: So UPA is paying people to work on this project?
Lyle: Well, no. They are a volunteer effort, but there's cost in running that volunteer effort, and publishing the body of knowledge and other things.
Jared: Okay. But the big resource is the human labor force, right?
Jared: Wikipedia is also always looking for donations and, to some extent, they have some economies of scale. So I think it's very interesting. One of the things that is intriguing is that the description of a focus group as I see it under methods is shorter than heuristic evaluation. Yet, I guarantee you there's been more research done on focus groups than there have been on heuristic evaluation.
Lyle: Sure. Well, keep in mind, this is the preview, and it's still being worked on. It's not like these are done. And the idea is that it evolves over time.
Lyle: But I guess a trite way of responding is, no one's done it on Wikipedia, and I think it's great that UPA's doing this. I think it's going to be a great reference for people, so I don't know what's bad about that.
Jared: Well, I can't say that there's anything bad about it.
Lyle: And I think, back to the fact that having it coming from an authoritative source has a lot of value to people. If you're running a usability team at a large company and your manager's asking you how you should build your team or what are other companies doing in the space, what's a typical budget, those kinds of things, having an authoritative reference from an organization like UPA is going to carry more weight inside a company than to say, "Well, I got this off Wikipedia." I've seen that first hand.
Rashmi: I would have to agree with that. That definitely in a context of a company that we were trying to get a source that's credible, UPA would have more credibility. Especially for things like this, organizational structure, the budget and all those things, I would really agree that the UPA is probably in a better position. But in terms of information which is more like methods, et cetera, I really feel that having a broader base of knowledge, gathering from a larger base of knowledge would make more sense. The UPA effort is great, and there's no reason why somebody shouldn't take it into their head to start making entries about usability in Wikipedia and contributing to it.
Rashmi: So, those can be parallel initiatives.
Lyle: It doesn't preclude anybody from doing anything on Wikipedia. I've actually edited some pages on there myself under the usability section but I would encourage anybody who wants to contribute to the blog to do that. The team is very much open to and actually is inviting as many contributors as want to contribute. There's plenty of work to be done in this area. When you think about a field that's been around for 25 plus years, there's a lot of knowledge to distill and, clearly, we're learning new things as we go. They are looking for a way, as I said, to make I don't know if I'd call it a sandbox but a way to talk about what we are learning right now, what are the new concepts, the things that people have tried it seem to be working but maybe aren't proven yet so we can start tracking those things. Clearly, there are other ways to get input: conference proceedings, publications, and those kinds of things. To me, this is a landmark kind of development to get this sort of a reference. In the past, the most definitive references have been things like mailing lists or books that are out there.
Kyle: I agree. I think it's a good idea and I think there's value in the fact that you can trust the source. You know who the source is. But I'm curious, you sound overly concerned about this.
Jared: Well, I think it's going to have a very UPA viewpoint on things and I'm sure that the UPA viewpoint on things isn't the only viewpoint. I'm just curious as to how they decide that something gets declared good or something gets declared bad or even recommended for use or not recommended for use and things like that. I'm curious as to where that's coming from. The other thing that struck me recently that is very interesting is that I've been spending a lot of time hanging out with magicians.
Jared: Very cool. In particular, a group called The Society of Youth Magicians. My 16-year-old is very much into magic and he's gotten very good at it. He goes to these professional meetings and we went to one of the best conferences I've ever been to, the Society of American Magicians Annual Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. What was intriguing about this is, when you watch these kids talk to each other, they teach each other tricks. That's the basic piece of magic, that they're always sharing. I hate to break it to you, but it's not actually magic. They share their stuff with each other and they show each other these various tricks. What's really interesting is when a 15-year-old shares a trick with a 16-year-old. They don't just say, "Hey, let me show you this cool trick." They talk about it in a very specific way. They say, "Oh, let me show you the Anderson tear and restore." The Anderson tear and restore was created in 1965 by a guy named Gene Anderson who basically perfected the modern technique of the tear and restore. There's this real sort of oral history that happened with this stuff and high contrast that with the DUCS conference that I went to last November or October. At the DUCS conference there was a woman on the panel who was saying how one day they accidentally had a scheduling problem with their usability test. They had two users show up at the same time and they decided, "Oh gosh, why don't we have two users in the room at the same time? We did this and it was really cool and you all should do this." I wanted to say, "Well, that's co-discovery and it was actually done in usability studies for the first time by Nortel in 1983. In fact, it's an old psychological testing technique that goes back 20 years before that." There's no sense of history.
Lyle: Actually, I think that's one of the things that the blog notes can help with, just documenting methods that have been around that newcomers to the field aren't aware about.
Jared: But I'm wondering if it's going to do it in such a way that people actually start sharing this as they talk about things. I'm just wondering who's usability testing is the body of knowledge, I guess. How do we know it's going to work?
Kyle: Why don't you try submitting something and see if they let you add anything to it?
Jared: They won't let me add to it.
Lyle: Jared, we would welcome your input. I would say that if you take a look at, for instance, the methods, it's pretty basic stuff. It's a high-level description of the method, how do you do it, references, other resources to refer to, and those kinds of things. It's not like here were going to tell you everything you need to know right here. It's to give people a certain level of knowledge and to provide them additional resources they can go refer to whether its research, whether it's books, those kinds of things.
Kyle: You know Jared, you brought up DUCS, which was interesting. I thought that was one of the worst conferences I've ever gone to. I'm curious if anybody else went to it.
Rashmi: I went to it and I did not learn much.
Nate: We tried to go. We waited too long to register because we figured it was in San Francisco, we were in San Francisco. But we went on a studio tour, which was cool, just around the different design shops.
Kyle: The hype was just ridiculous over it and I was just so let down. I mean, the format of it, everything, the five-minute talks. It was just ridiculous.
Jared: Well, my theory of DUCS this year was that they used basically the same format in 2005 as they used in 2003, the previous conference. I've seen this happen before with other organizations, UPA being one of them, the IA Summit being another, which is that organizations mature and, as they mature, the people, whether it's a conference or a group, have to change how they serve those folks because they're volunteer run and people aren't really thinking about this full-time in any sort of way. They don't realize that things are changing out from under them. Back in 2003, DUCS was intended to be, in essence, and interaction designer event. As an interaction designer event, people didn't realize there were other people out there doing the same sort of thing. It was a gathering of a whole bunch of people who were discovering that there are other people out there just like them. They have this presentation format which is basically, "I'm going to spend five minutes talking about something cool I've done and then we're going to move on to the next person." When you come into a group and you realize that there's a whole bunch of people out there like you that you didn't know it existed, hearing a five-minute description of what they're doing is a very cool thing. But two years later, interaction design has really come into its own. People understand what it is, people are trying to get really deep into things, and the five-minute format doesn't solve that anymore. I think that that was the big problem with that conference in terms of the presentation style in the way they put it together. They didn't tell anybody this. I submitted a paper and they said, "Your paper is limited to 22 pages." I'm thinking, "OK, that's a fairly long paper" and I filled up 22 pages. Then they came back and said, "OK, you're going to have five minutes to present." What? I have to get 22 pages into five minutes? So that I think was the issue with that particular conference.
Lyle: You know what's funny; I think conference design is really hard. I stay as far away from it as I can because, frankly, it's hard to prototype and test it. You just have to run it and see how it goes, get your feedback, and try and do better next time. Of course, then it's a whole different timeframe and location and all that.
Rashmi: One observation, I been going to a lot of these camp type events, the BAR camps etc., and DUCS was the most extreme in contrast to any of those events that I've ever been to. That isn't necessarily negative. DUCS was like a craft event. Even in the breaks they had this comedian come out. Everything was very much down to the last detail. It was kind of planned for you and you just kind of stayed in the space and you laughed at a certain time and you just kind of went along with it. It was a very designed experience, the way that design folks tend to do. In contrast, you have these BAR camp type events which are really much more spontaneous and there is much less structure and it's a lot about hanging out in the hallway and talking to people. I enjoy both experiences but in different ways but it was a real study in contrasts in event design, so to speak.
Lyle: So what you're saying is that a conference entitled Designing User Experiences had the experience too designed?
Rashmi: I don't think it was too designed but it was very designed. I was told when I mentioned this to a few people that there are other conferences that are much more designed than even DUCS.
Lyle: Oh, yeah, I mean TED, right?
Rashmi: I think TED was brought up as an example but I don't know exactly how TED works. What's it like there?
Jared: I've actually never been there. Has anyone actually been to TED?
Nate: I heard about it.
Jared: I'm not cool enough to get invited.
Kyle: The whole idea of having an MC do the whole entire event for DUCS was just ridiculous. It wasn't needed and it was really lame. The person really didn't understand our field. She really was trying to and to relate with us and it was a really lame attempt at trying to keep a laugh in between sessions or whatever it was. I don't really know what's the point of it was but, whatever it was, I think they failed.
Jared: Well, MC-ing is a real art form. I've seen it done well and I've seen it done poorly. I think that you don't need a lot of MC support for a professional event. I think that MCs are something to do for a variety act. All these magic shows I've been going to lately all have MCs. But, in fact, one of the things I've learned about the MC is the purpose of the MC is actually to fill these gaping holes in time, because when a magician performs, they often make a mess – they put confetti all over the stage and stuff – and you have to clean all that up and set up for the next magician, and that just takes time. So, an MC is sort of an inexpensive way to choreograph the time between acts. But I don't think it's necessary in a technical conference to have an MC, per se. In many ways it plays down the intelligence of the audience to have to say, "OK, now I'm going to explain to you what you're about to see in this next session." I think you should just let people talk to themselves and do stuff. We are running out of time on our little experiment here, which was not a designed experience, I don't think. Why don't we go around just once, and everybody share what their big ending thought is, in terms of what we talked about. Then we can say good night and put this thing to bed. Nate, why don't you go first?
Nate: My biggest revelation is that Jared's least favorite color is pink.
Jared: Yes, but I'm not saying it's not a favorite color. [laughter] It's my least favorite color.
Nate: And, other than that, it's kind of cool to see the BOK thing. I was disappointed that it was only 31 percent Web 2.0 compliance. I'll keep thinking.
Jared: How compliant is Bolt Theater stuff?
Nate: Oh, we're like 21.
Nate: Actually, Ethnio like 53, though.
Jared: OK. You're not jiggy with the corner theme.
Nate: We're not. I think it might be a good thing, though.
Kyle: I thought you weren't going to use that word.
Jared: Oh, damn it. Lyle Kantrovich?
Lyle: I think it's been a good start. I think we talked about a bunch of different interesting things. I'm trying to think about what I think was interesting. We had a cool discussion about what does it mean to be useable, and I think that's an important thing to cover. And as you talk about, if that's useable or non-useable, but to clarify what you mean. I'm just glad that my voice held up through this, and that Jared got this thing started off.
Jared: I'm very impressed that your voice held up through all of this.
Lyle: You know how impressed I am. [laughter] It's been nonexistent for three weeks.
Jared: Trying to do charades through the Internet is really hard.
Lyle: Yeah. I have X-rays that I can show, and I'm going to see a specialist, so still not out of the woods.
Jared: Did you get them wallet-sized?
Lyle: No, these are big ones.
DeWayne: Are they on your MySpace account?
Lyle: Yeah, I can put them up for you guys.
Jared: Actually, put your X-rays up on Flickr.
Kyle: There's a lot of things. This is my first look at the Brown redesign beta site. I really want to look at it some more. It's pretty interesting. I'm curious to see what they go live with and what the response is. So that was pretty cool. The discussion about the home page being the least important page – something to think about, or something to argue about some more.
Jared: I will now spend the rest of my life thinking about this.
Kyle: [laughs] I thought that was interesting. It was cool to see DeWayne doing some of the same research with the universities that I had done in the past, with the social networking. Students wanting to seek out other students, or prospective students wanting to seek out current students. That was pretty interesting. Very good so far.
DeWayne: I'm interested in the reactions to the Brown site and, out of that, some of the discussions about what makes a site useable. I'd like to have gotten more into, before we ran out of time, some of the personalization and portal type of discussions. We ventured a little bit into that, but there were some comments about that early on that made me think that that might be an interesting discussion as well. All and all, it was a lot of fun.
Rashmi: I enjoyed the bit toward the end where we were talking about the "designed" and the "undesigned" experiences and how do you really design them. I hope that, in future, we will talk about how you design the experience that feels undesigned. I enjoyed the discussion about conferences, too, and I cannot wait to hear Jared go on about Kyle.
Jared: Oh yeah, you can. [laughs] I just found out yesterday that courses are due on the first. Did you see anything about that?
Rashmi: Yeah, I'd seen it but I realized that I can not make any of those deadlines this year.
Jared: I'm just resubmitting what I did last year. Apparently it has to go through review again.
Rashmi: See, I told you. Yeah, I look forward to discussing that.
Jared: I very much thought this was a very good session. I enjoyed the discussion about the Brown site and talking about all that. We touched on personalization and the role of home pages and finding usability. It's all very cool and I think this was a very interesting conversation. I want to thank you everybody. I think we'll try to do another one in a few weeks.
Nate: All right, thanks for putting it together, Jared.
Jared: Oh, no problem. Take care.


WHY IS A PRIVATE CORPORATION CASHING YOUR TAX CHECK ????????
Because they are not lawfully collecting tax, they are illegally enforcing debt, and illegally using the income tax to repay the debt to the private Reserve bank, and simultaneously removing excess paper money (your wealth) from circulation so that they (the gov't) can borrow (print) hundreds of billions more dollars every year (for the government and banking system to spend, and for you to repay with interest), without having the paper currency being recognized and exposed as the complete fraud it is, and inflating into total fiat worthlessness within a few years.
You can't have a paper currency, and a Federal Reserve bank that prints paper money, unless you have an income tax to remove the excess paper money from circulation to stop inflation. This is, of course, all unconstitutional, and has been perpetrated intentionally by politicians desirous of ever more power over the lives of all individuals, all over the world at any cost, even the betrayal of the American people and our Constitution !!!
So far, they have been successful in keeping these secrets because people all over the world have been deceived into using and hoarding paper dollars as a storehouse of wealth, instead of the historically sound silver and gold !
But, is it really that difficult to understand that you can't continually print paper money unless you also remove it from circulation somewhere ??
DID YOU REALLY THINK IT WAS JUST A "HAPPY COINCIDENCE" THAT "INCOME TAX" AND THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK WERE BOTH CREATED IN 1913 and ARE BOTH PLANKS of the Communist Manifest (2nd and 5th Planks) !!!!!!!!!!!!! Or did you not know that ?
"REMOVED FROM CIRCULATION" again !
Remember the Federal Reserve Bank is the Fifth Plank of the Communist Manifesto, and is central and critical to the creation of the Global Village, One World Government, New World Order planned for you by the globalists.
I tried to find that in the Constitution, but it isn't there !


Here are some resources for learning to read a calendar in Japanese.
The trickiest part is learning to read the numbers correctly. Print-kids.net has an excellent printable that shows you how to read dates, with accompanying worksheets, HERE.
Some more printable calendars can be found at Happy Lilac.
After you've learned how to read a calendar, I thought this game, by Tatsushi FUKUNAGA, was a wonderful way to review.
Great to watch your methods.


1/ World trade in wheat and coarse grains is based on estimated imports delivered through 30 June of the July/June trade year. Some late-season purchases may be included in the next season if deliveries occur after 30 June. In general, exports and imports are calculated based on estimated shipments and deliveries during the July/June trade season and thus they may not be equal for any given year due to time lags between shipments and deliveries.
2/ The next marketing season for rice will start in January 2001.
FAO's first forecast for cereal trade in 2000/01 is 221 million tonnes, which would be around 4 million tonnes below the previous year's volume, reflecting a likely contraction in world trade of wheat and coarse grains. This tentative first forecast is based on the latest production indications and assumes that the volume of world trade in rice would remain close to this year 2/ .
Global wheat trade in 2000/01 is forecast to decline by over 2 million tonnes to 101.5 million tonnes after this season's relatively sharp increase. Nevertheless, at this level world trade would still be above the average of the past 5 years. The anticipated decline in next year's trade volume would be mostly on account of reduced imports by the Russian Federation and Pakistan, reflecting larger production, while imports by most other countries are likely to remain close to the estimated 1999/2000 levels. In Asia, imports by the Islamic Republic of Iran are likely to remain high due to persistent drought for the second consecutive year while purchases by China are forecast to increase. Wheat imports by China (mainland) could rise sharply, from 900 000 tonnes in 1999/2000 to 2.5 million tonnes, the highest since 1996/97, because of a likely reduction in domestic output. By contrast, good production prospects in Pakistan could result in a sharp cut in imports, while larger crops in India, combined with the continuation of the ban on imports, could eliminate commercial imports altogether. Imports by most other countries in South East Asia are forecast to remain close to this season, given the likely prospects for sustained economic recovery and relatively weak international prices.
Wheat imports are also likely to rise in Africa. As in the current season, production shortfalls in a number of countries in North Africa could result in sizeable imports. The largest increases are expected in Algeria and Morocco where the current drought has hit hardest. In the sub-Saharan region, aggregate imports could remain high as in this season, but it is difficult to make any realistic forecast at this early stage against the background of on-going civil conflicts in many parts. Elsewhere, most countries in Central and South America could import as much as in the current season. In Europe, imports by the Russian Federation may fall sharply with production rising, assuming no further food aid deliveries.
Regarding exports, the forecast for 2000/01 points to a somewhat similar picture as in this season in terms of aggregate shipments from the five largest wheat-exporting countries. Overall, sales from the EC and the United States are expected to rise, while exports from Canada could remain unchanged and those from Australia and Argentina could decline. Among other countries, exportable wheat supplies in most countries in Asia are likely to be more limited, in particular in Kazakhistan and Turkey. In Europe, apart from the EC, sales from Hungary are also forecast to increase.
FAO's first forecast for international trade in coarse grains in 2000/01 points to a decline of around 2 million tonnes to 97 million tonnes. This decline, the first in three years, would be mainly accounted for by smaller shipments of maize and barley. The projected reduction in world trade largely reflects the anticipated rise in coarse grains output in a few importing countries, especially in the Russian Federation, along with several countries in South America. However, as in the case for wheat, several countries in Asia and Africa would need to resort to more imports in order to cover their domestic requirements, primarily the Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
Export availabilties of coarse grains are expected to be sufficient to meet the forecast import demand although sales from some of the traditional exporters could be down from the previous year. Shipments from the major exporters are expected to rise or remain at least at the same level as in 1999/2000 except for Argentina. Maize exports from China are likely to decline as production is expected to be smaller and exceptionally strong sales during the current season have already resulted in smaller carryover stocks.
At 225 million tonnes, the current estimate for global cereal imports in 1999/2000 points to a notable gain of around 9 million tonnes, or 4 percent, over the previous year's reduced level. Much of this increase can be credited to robust trade in wheat and higher imports of maize and barley, whereas, trade in rice could dwindle somewhat from the high volumes registered in the previous two years. Based on the latest World Food Programme estimates, this year's total cereal shipments as food aid could reach 7.5 million tonnes, which would be some 3 million tonnes down from 1998/99. However, this sharp decrease mostly reflects the drop in food aid shipments to the Russian Federation. For the developing countries as a group, cereal imports are expected to rise to an all time high of around 162 million tonnes, up 2.6 percent from the previous year. Most of the increase would be in wheat and coarse grains.
Overall, the cereal import bill of the developing countries in 1999/2000 is expected to be close to US$21 billion, which is about US$600 million, or 3 percent, below the previous year's value in spite of a likely reduction in food aid deliveries from the previous year. Weak international cereal prices during the course of the 1999/2000 trade season largely compensated for the rise in import volume. For the Low Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDCs), the overall cereal import bill is seen to fall by at least 7 percent, to below US$9 billion, with imports at 70.5 million tonnes, down 1.5 million tonnes from last year's estimated volume. The decline in imports is due to reduced purchases by a few countries where production increased.
relatively large food aid imports, for the most part reflecting delayed shipments from 1998/99 commitments to the Russian Federation.
Aggregate wheat imports by the developing countries are now put at 79 million tonnes, up more than 2 million tonnes from the previous year. In value terms, this would be equivalent to US$9.7 billion. However, for the LIFDCs, wheat imports are likely to show a decline of around 600 000 tonnes to 39.7 million tonnes. This level of purchases would cost nearly US$4.6 billion, down US$300 million from 1998/99.
On the regional basis, Asia and Europe would account for most of the expansion in world wheat trade in 1999/2000. Wheat imports into Asia are currently put at almost 49 million tonnes, up 3.5 million tonnes from the previous year's reduced volume. However, the bulk of the increase reflects a sharp rise in imports by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which more than offset the reduced imports in several other countries, including Bangladesh and Pakistan. At the same time, due to another good crop in China, imports into the Mainland could remain under 1 million tonnes, which is trivial compared to annual imports of some 10 to 15 million tonnes in earlier years.
In Europe, total imports in 1999/2000 are seen to rise sharply, by over 60 percent, to 12 million tonnes. However, most of this expansion is attributed to higher imports by the Russian Federation, a third of which is accounted for by food aid shipped in the previous season but delivered in 1999/2000. In addition, Belarus, Romania and Slovakia are among the other countries in Europe where a notable increase in imports is likely, mostly in view of reduced domestic production.
In Africa, total imports in 1999/2000 could reach 23 million tonnes, down 1 million tonnes from the previous year despite continuing large purchases by several countries in North Africa, especially Algeria and Morocco due to drought-reduced harvests. By contrast, in Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer in most years, the irrigated wheat crop for 1999 was the highest on record, resulting in some decrease in its imports. At around 17 million tonnes, wheat imports by most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to remain close to the previous year's levels. However, imports by Brazil could decline by 1 million tonnes, given a rise in production and large carryover stocks. By contrast, Mexico is forecast to import slightly more than in 1998/99 due to a decline in domestic output.
Overall the forecast rise in world wheat imports in 1999/2000 is to be met mostly by larger exports from all major exporters with the exception of the United States (Table A.3). Larger sales from Argentina, Australia and Canada would reflect their ample exportable supplies. Exports from Canada could register the sharpest rise, 27 percent, a significant recovery from the previous year's reduced volume. Exports from the EC are also seen higher, in part due to the weaker Euro during the second half of the season. By contrast, wheat exports from the United States could fall by 1 million tonnes from the previous year to 28 million tonnes, given the decline in domestic production and large exportable supplies in other exporting countries. Among other wheat exporters, large production is expected to boost exports from Kazakhstan, mostly to countries outside the CIS. By contrast, faced with smaller crops, exports from Turkey are seen to fall sharply, while in Syria a severe drought greatly reduced that country's export potential as well. Total exports from several European countries outside the EC could be halved to around 5 million tonnes, mostly reflecting smaller supplies in Hungary, Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
Similar to wheat, world trade in coarse grains is expected to stage a sizeable expansion in 1999/2000 (July/June). This month's estimate for global trade in coarse grains has been raised further, to 99 million tonnes, up over 2 million tonnes from the previous report, mostly reflecting upward adjustments to imports into the Republic of Korea, Algeria, Kenya and Mexico. At the current forecast level, world trade in coarse grains is up 6 million tonnes from 1998/99. For maize, the most traded of the coarse grains, this year's imports are currently put at 70 million tonnes, up 5 percent from the previous year. For barley, the second-most traded coarse grain, imports are estimated to rise by 11 percent to 18 million tonnes. Imports of sorghum could also rise, by 5 percent to over 7 million tonnes.
Overall, total coarse grain imports by the developing countries are estimated to reach 65 million tonnes, an increase of some 5 million tonnes, or 8 percent, over the previous year. At this level, the developing countries would spend roughly US$7.3 billion on imports, or US$400 million more than the previous year. For the LIFDCs as a group, the cost of this year's coarse grain imports could reach US$2.2 billion, some US$250 million more than in the previous season, reflecting a higher import volume of some 2.2 million tonnes over the previous year.
continued weak prices, in part triggered by much higher than expected maize export sales from China, which encouraged some countries to expand their imports.
In Asia, this year's imports are now put at over 55 million tonnes, up 2.5 million tonnes from 1998/99. The most significant increase is in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which resorted to larger imports of barley and maize because of domestic production shortfalls. Imports by the Republic of Korea are also expected to show a sharp rise, mainly because of strong domestic feed demand. Despite the slowing pace of maize purchases in recent months as a result of the outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease, the overall coarse grain imports by that country could still show an increase of nearly 20 percent to 8.7 million tonnes. In Africa, imports into the northern region are estimated to remain close to the previous year's relatively high volume because of persistent poor harvests in several countries. In addition, imports into the sub-Saharan region are forecast to increase by about 1.3 million tonnes to nearly 5 million tonnes. The largest increases are in Kenya and the Republic of South Africa, mostly reflecting higher import demand for maize because of smaller domestic crops. Imports by most other countries in the sub-region could also increase, albeit only slightly despite the continuing food shortages.
Total imports into Latin America and the Caribbean also show a relatively strong increase. Among the countries in Central America, much larger imports are anticipated in Cuba, Haiti, Guatemala and Honduras. Purchases by Mexico, the region's largest importer, are estimated to reach 8.7 million tonnes, which would be close to the previous year's level. In South America, the expected 600 000 tonnes increase in imports by Brazil would more than offset slightly smaller purchases by most other countries in the sub-region. The strong growth in poultry industry in Brazil is the main driving force behind the rise in import demand for maize. Total coarse grain imports into Europe could rise by 23 percent over the previous year to almost 8 million tonnes, despite a small reduction in maize imports by the EC. An increase in maize imports by the Russian Federation would account for the bulk of the European increase, while imports of barley by Belarus and Romania are also estimated to increase, mainly due to lower domestic production.
Regarding exports of coarse grains, one the main features of the 1999/2000 season is a twofold increase in shipments from China, which are now put at almost 7 million tonnes. At this level, China would become the fourth largest coarse grain exporter. Large maize supplies in China and the resumption of stronger import demand by some of the nearby Asian countries provided an export advantage to China despite lower maize prices from the United States. In spite of the expansion in world trade, total coarse grain shipments (on July/June basis) from the United States and Argentina, respectively the world's first and second largest exporters, could show only a slight increase over the previous year. The growth in world import demand for barley could be met by larger exports from Canada and the EC, especially in view of reduced export supplies in Australia and Turkey due to smaller domestic production. Elsewhere, maize exports from the Republic of South Africa are also estimated to be down from the previous year because of sharply lower production. Sales from Hungary and Romania could rise given the more abundant supplies resulting from the rise in their domestic production.
The outlook for international rice trade for the rest of 2000 points to a weakening of global import demand for the second consecutive year, after an all-time high in 1998. Many of the major importing countries have harvested bumper crops, reducing their need for imports. As a result, FAO's forecast of world rice trade in 2000 has been revised downward by about 800 000 tonnes from the previous report to 22.2 million tonnes, down by 2.9 million tonnes from 1999. The contraction in the volume of rice trade combined with a weakening in international prices should result in a much lower value of world trade during the year 2000. In particular, imports by the developing countries are forecast to fall by 3 million tonnes to 18.3 million tonnes, a decline of US$660 million in value terms. As for the Low Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDC), their import bill is estimated at US$2.1 billion, down by US$700 million from last year. Similar to 1999, the brunt of the decline in this year's global rice trade will be concentrated in Asia where the large importers will likely take less either due to increased domestic production or policy regimes that are aimed at limiting imports.
The bulk of the downward revision in the 2000 world rice trade forecast since the last report stems from a 50 percent cut in Bangladesh's expected imports to 500 000 tonnes. Bangladesh harvested an exceptionally good paddy crop during the 1999/2000 season and has continued to cut imports. The forecast of purchases by the Philippines has been reduced by 200 000 tonnes to 600 000 tonnes, based on improved paddy output in 1999/2000 season and good production prospects for the current season. The forecast for Indonesia, the world's leading rice importer, has also been cut, by 200 000 tonnes, to 2.3 million tonnes, compared to an estimated 3.8 million tonnes in 1999. By contrast, imports into Iraq are now expected to reach 900 000 tonnes, 200 000 tonnes up from the earlier forecast, in response to the upward revision of the United Nations oil-for-food programme. Import forecasts for the Islamic Republic of Iran and Brazil, the other major importers, remain unchanged. In India, an import tariff rate of 80 percent on broken rice was introduced in April 2000 in reaction to a large inflow of broken rice from Pakistan. Import tariffs were also imposed on other agricultural commodities.
Faced with a much less buoyant import demand, compared with the last couple of years, the major exporting countries have taken steps this year to secure new customers. The contraction in the demand has affected some countries more than others depending on their relative competitiveness. Thus, the forecast of expected shipments by India has been cut by 300 000 tonnes from the previous report to 1.4 million tonnes, which would mean a 1.3 million tonnes drop from the 1999 estimate volume. Prices in the country have remained uncompetitive compared with rice from other origins, reflecting relatively high production costs. In addition, Bangladesh, a major destination for India's rice exports, is expected to import much less than in the previous two years owing to a bumper harvest. Within the context of a weaker global import demand, projected sales by Viet Nam were lowered by 300 000 tonnes from previous expectations, to 4 million tonnes. The country reached an agreement to increase its rice exports to Cuba thereby making Viet Nam the main rice supplier to that country. Government officials are also actively looking for new markets in Africa and the Middle East.
Given the bearish outlook for rice imports, the United States also lowered its export forecast by 150 000 tonnes to about 2.9 million tonnes. In an effort to try and find destinations for their record supplies, farmers in the US are backing a Bill that would lift the ban on the export of rice and other food commodities to Cuba. The export forecasts for Pakistan, Argentina and Uruguay have also been revised downward by a combined 100 000 tonnes. By contrast, the forecast for China's export shipments has been increased by 100 000 tonnes from the last report to 2.7 million tonnes. The Government's policy to reduce rice stocks, particularly of lower quality, has made it a very competitive source for countries looking for such grades. The country's exports during the first four months of 2000 were estimated at about 1.1 million tonnes or over 60 percent ahead of the pace for the same period in 1999. Expectations regarding export shipments from Thailand were unchanged from the previously reported volume. The pace for the country's exports during the first four months of the year was slightly ahead of the comparable period in 1999. A Thai trade delegation was in Africa in May to explore, among other things, opportunities for increased rice exports to the continent.


IGNOU OPENMAT XLIV Admit Card Jan 2019 Download Latest Announced Today and it is published on IGNOU Official website, IGNOU is conducting Entrance Tests for Management Programmes (Openmat-xliii), on Sunday, 24th Feb 2019 (10:00 AM to 1:00 PM). The Test is being organized at 67 Examination Centres, including one Jail centre at Ahmedabad accommodating 6930 candidates.
Applicants who have applied for OPENMAT XLIV Exam may download the IGNOU OPENMAT XLIV Admit Card through this page by hitting the below provided official link. To download IGNOU OPENMAT Hall Ticket, applicants must have Enrolment Number.
1.The open official web server which is http://ignou.ac.in.
2. Navigate to Student Zone, click on admit card of OPENMAT 2019 link and open it.
3. Now you can put down respective fields such as application/roll number, birth date, captcha code etc.
4. Verify all entered details and submit it without wasting time.
5. Your call letter will appear on the screen.
6. Save as PDF file and take print out for further process use.
IGNOU OPENMAT Subjects date and timing schedule conducted by IGNOU University. IGNOU OPENMAT is held for IGNOU MBA Courses admission who are already Graduate and seeking for the master degree that is MBA degree in IGNOU University.
IGNOU is government recognized university and IGNOU OPENMAT is only conducted by IGNOU all over India and its degree worth value all over India to take the job in any field all over India.
Am trying to download hall ticket for august 2015, but its redirecting to XXXVII hall tickets page. Please help me to get the correct link, as exam is very close.
The result for IGNOU OPENMAT is published. one can visit the link and get results https://studentservices.ignou.ac.in/Openmat/Open36/openmat36res.asp.
I am unable to download the hall ticket for mba entrance held on 21august 2016 .Please gel0 me.l will be highly obliged.