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Editor’s note: Periodically, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. We’ve either just launched or are about to launch a number of big projects lately, so we’ve been doing a significant amount of quality assurance. As a result, we wondered: What is one QA tip everyone should be aware of?

Mark, Functional Consultant: Start QA with a complete, well thought-out and usable test plan.

Jennifer, Project Manager: Always compare the deliverable against the original specs, and any subsequent change orders. Always.

Lynn, Principal Consultant: Include people on the QA that know nothing about the application or tool. They’ll be sure to interact with the tool in ways you never thought of (which is what your users are bound to do!)

Kristin, Project Manager: After our QA is done, make sure everyone is clear about acceptance of the final product.

Brad, Functional Consultant:

• The people that design the test plan should have been involved in gathering requirements. The people who conduct the testing should not have.
• When testing, TRY to break the interaction. Simply reproducing the “right” steps doesn’t prove anything.
• Writing bug tickets is an art. You should always include the page/action that produces the error, and what the expected result should have been. If possible, include the relevant spec. Bugs written in the form of “submitting the form didn’t work” are incredibly common, but not useful.

Marissa, Functional Consultant: Every day, all day, I keep as many different browsers open as the memory on my computer allow. I try to bounce through all of them equally throughout the day (although Firefox is my favorite). That keeps me constantly aware of what my work is doing in the whole slew of browsers, minimizing bugs once we get to the formalized QA process.

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: Before an email goes out, we like to run it through deliverability monitoring software to make sure major ESPs don’t see any red flags. It’s also helpful to have someone completely uninvolved in the process read the email to make sure there are no comments left in like “[Find out if this is true before we send!]”

Beaconfire includes a rigorous QA process in every project, to make sure everything works as intended before going public. Look for more posts on this topic in the future!

Last week, I received a Facebook update from a true American (some say MegaAmerican) hero: Stephen Colbert. Colbert, of whose show I am one of 10,757 Facebook fans, sent out an update to let his supporters know that he was listed as a finalist for Time’s Most Influential Person award. While he lost out in 2006 to Korean pop sensation Rain, this year’s online to online strategy should net better dividends.

Stephen has a history of using his show to rig these contests. In 2006, he deployed the Colbert Nation to make him the winner of a Hungarian contest to name a bridge, and he’s doomed multiple wikipedia articles to a variety of protected statuses by mentioning them.

But his bids have always been launched from his show, requiring viewers to watch the show, go to their computers, find the contest page, and vote. We’ve always known that there was a significant dropoff in offline to online actions, such as direct mail asks (though asks to make a donation online are often successful because it’s less effort to donate using a web site than it is to go through the myriad of steps it takes to mail a check).

Using a Facebook update to encourage fans to vote him up may not pay dividends this year. With only 10,000 fans, Colbert may not get the bump he needs to win, especially since his closest current competitor for the number one spot, Shigeru Miyamoto has already received 805,000+ votes. But in future years as his online fan base grows, Stephen may be able to use this high concentration of online to online users to push him over the top.

And that’s the word.

One of the great challenges of being an IA is that it’s not nearly as much fun as design. It is for me, of course, but not for most clients. Even clients who understand the value of the work we do prior to design are prone to the dazzle factor once the comps show up. Conversation inevitably turns towards “can we make it blue? What if we move that over there?” To the chagrin of any number of designers, the design process invites participation and often falls to matters of (the client’s) taste.

As an IA, though, we need to pull the client away from judging and manipulating a design on the basis of “prettiness” (although that is certainly a valid component of a design’s success) and reintroduce the purpose: can the user identify the purpose and mission of the site, find what they need easily, and do what you/they need?

There’s a magic bullet for this, two little words that pull the client out of their design reverie and back into the world of design for function: Visual Heirarchy.

I don’t know why (no, really, I don’t). But for whatever reason, this phrase has amazing resonance. Incredibly easy to understand, it immediately puts the client back into the mindset of identifying what is important about their website, and deciding whether this is well represented. Once they are anchored back to this way of thinking, the rest becomes smooth sailing — the changes afterwards stop being about what the design is, and start accounting for what the design does.

We here at Beaconfire have used the Flickr online photo sharing website as a cost effective (ok, free) way to manage the back end of photo-based applications for clients. Flickr has allowed us do things that previously would have required a completely custom build and cost considerably more money. In these projects, we use the Flickr API to allow us to interact with photos stored in Flickr.

Flickr just launched a new site that collects all of the information needed for this kind of stuff together in one place. code.flickr includes a Developer Blog, ticket tracker and public SVN repository (for browsing the source code), and a forum with groups dedicated to the API and to the uploader.

Most of this information has been around for some time, but it’s nice to have it all in one place.

Anyone else remember Calvinball? It was the game that Calvin and Hobbes played whose rules changed constantly, with players changing them on fly as the game went on (look: here’s a wikipedia entry!). That’s pretty much how business and non-profit users relationship with Facebook has been over the last few months.

I should start by saying that I remain a big fan of Facebook. I think it is to social networks what the 1970’s Apple was to the personal computer: a critical mature player in an evolving space once only restricted to hobbyists that bridges the gap to bring technology to the masses. It balances the desire to connect with friends with the desire for privacy, and has maintained a core identity, a space for real-life friends to connect on the web, despite business pressures to sell out.

That said, recent choices made by Facebook have convinced me that there really aren’t any solid structures or expectations with regard to the user/company relationship, just a floating set of rules that morph daily.

Examples, and what it means for non-profits, below the fold…

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We’re very excited to announce the addition of three new staff members within the last two weeks.

Joanna Miles joins us as a Production Specialist in the Online Campaigns and Marketing group.  Joanna is responsible for ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of email campaigns and Web pages, statistical analysis, and a thorough knonwledge of the online tools used by our clients.  In other words, she’s all about the details.  Joanna’s background in research, analysis, and Web site management for Abt Associates, plus her majors in Mathematics and English with a minor in Computer Science from Oberlin College make her well equiped to take on this important position.  Joanna also worked as Head Cook for a consensus-based vegetarian food cooperative.

Kesah Schmitt joins us as a Client Manager for ongoing client relationships.  In this position, Kesah will be the primary point of contact for many of our ongoing clients, providing a mix of internet consulting, project management and hands-on execution.  Kesah was formerly a Technical Liaison for Soundpath Conferencing, where she provided customer service, Web site development, research and training.  Kesah holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Tulane University. Kesah recently returned from a six week trip to Brazil, where she traveled all around the country and was even able to be in Rio for Carnivale.

Adebowale Adeyiga becomes the newest member of our technical team as a Software Engineer.  With a strong background in software engineering, programming and analysis, Adebowale will be able to put his skills in .NET and php to immediate use developing content mangement systems, integrating back-end systems, and developing Web 2.0 applications.  Adebowale is a fan of almost every sports genre, although he spends less time playing these days now that he has a young son and another child on the way.

Joanna, Kesah and Adebowale have jumped into their roles very quickly and we look forward to you having the opportunity to meet each of them.

In case there was any doubt, here’s further evidence that blogs have truly arrived as a widespread mode of communication: even the government is getting on board. A number of federal agencies now use blogs to share news, both within the agency and with the general public. The most notable blogs: the Environmental Protection Agency and, surprisingly, the Transportation Security Administration. (more…)

Recently, a charity called Living Streets dedicated to making cities more pedestrian-friendly, wrapped London’s Brick Lane lamp posts in football-esque bumpers to protect texting pedestrians from injury. Though the publicity stunt lasted a mere 24 hours, the effort highlighted what most of us already know: that people are addicted to being connected, even while walking.

A recent study by PEW found that more than roughly 6 in 10 American cell phone users text message. It’s no wonder that everyone from Presidential campaigns to police officers to WalMart to nonprofit causes (highlighted by MobileActive.org) seek to leverage the popularity of text messaging.

1. The mobile audience is wide and deep: Worldwide, more people have access to and use of mobile phones than the Internet. As Ethan Zuckerman of TechSoup points out, “The only technology that compares to the mobile phone in terms of pervasiveness and accessibility in the developing world is the radio.” Given the penetration, personalization and simplicity of mobile devices, there is no better tool to reach both wealthy individuals and underserved populations. In addition, you can activate young, tech savvy people using the communications channel that makes the most sense to them.
2. Simple is superior: I may be biased given my blog style is list format, but people like byte-sized - and actionable - information. In an information economy, it’s easy to be overwhelmed with the breadth of accessible knowledge. Communicating with individuals via the limited 160 characters in a text message requires the messenger to cut the window dressing and deliver messages that are simple, clear and clever to make an impact. To educate and motivate, it’s all about the words themselves (which is great since haikus are so cool).
3. Reach people where and when they matter: All politics are local and all advocacy is timely. When someone is checking email at 10pm after a long day of work, sending a letter to an elected official may be overdue. With text messaging, you can give people a specific address of a place to be, a direct action to take or short talking points while they are in a meeting or at an event so they can act on it when it actually matters. However, this means the action must be real and serious not just a faux-urgent engagement effort. The technique also allows you to reach people when their emotional senses are heightened before they lose their enthusiasm (or anger) about an issue.
4. Penetrate the “Circle of Trust”: While studies show that people will offer up their email address for almost anything, cell phone numbers remain relatively protected, both by the individual and the mobile service providers. Therefore, if your supporters give you their cell to reach them on their most personal device, you can assume you’re in the circle of trust and that your message will be read. The key is to maintain that level of trust through infrequent, authentic and relevant subsequent messages. Mobile communications elevates the level of accountability for all campaigns and requires listening to what supporters want.
5. Another spoke on the wheel of integration: Continuing to blur the lines of offline and online, text messaging allows marketers to both capture and measure the success of offline events and print advertising like never before. Supporters can text from an ad they’ve seen or post on a website a photo or podcast they record from an event. A mobile strategy is another tool to use in conjunction with traditional advertising and media, online marketing and in-person events but should not just replicate what’s being said through other channels.
6. Experimentation is expected: Because it’s still a relatively new channel, text messaging campaigns leave a lot of room for trial and error and users expect it. Advocacy organizations and corporations alike can promote their “products” in innovative ways that push the interactive brand experience envelope. Successful campaigns will think about marketing as two-way conversation and not just another medium to push an agenda.

I love Hip-hop. Almost as much as I love Standards-compliant XHTML/CSS and its intersection with Search Engine Optimization. Mix the two together and you just can’t stop my head from bobbing. Enter The Poetic Prophet with “Design Coding”:

I blogged last year about Microsoft Surface and hadn’t really heard much about it since then. Back then I was imagining how different interfaces, like Surface, might impact the way we view web sites and the ways data could be shared between Web sites, or between Web sites and personal devices like cell phones or other hand held computers.

So, now engadget reports that Microsoft has announced the first public unveiling of Surface. They are teaming up with ATT to put out what looks like some sort of interactive kiosk where you can place AT&T phones on the “Surface” to learn more about the products. It’s not surprising that the first use is retail, considering how expensive these things probably still are. Nor is it surprising that Microsoft has partnered with another ginormous company to lessen any adverse financial impact to either of them. I just wish it was something a little cooler than comparing cell phone features. Like maybe something involving food. It’s a table, after all. I see it and just can’t help but think “food.” Are you listening TGI Fridays?

Beaconfire Wire: Will “Surface” Computing Change Everything (May 2007)
Engadget Report: Microsoft Surface launching April 17th… with AT&T