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Eye tracking has been around since the 1990s, but it holds a science fiction-like fascination for many people (it certainly does for me). The concept is incredibly cool; the results are striking and visual; and the studies make clever use of technology. The idea behind eye tracking as part of usability testing is to determine where users actually look when they use a website. Using specially designed technology (sometimes mounted on a helmet worn by the user, sometimes embedded in the computer screen), testers can produce a “heat map” showing where the user’s eyes travel, and how much time they spend there. Just as telling, the heat map leaves dark any area that the user doesn’t even see; if these blind spots contain information that you need your users to see, it may be time to rethink your design. These are the sort of concrete-looking test results that anyone would love to plug into a PowerPoint presentation; they appear to speak for themselves.

A sample eye tracking “heat map” (www.useit.com)

Like any usability test, however, eye tracking doesn’t tell you much on its own; it is most effective when the tester asks good questions and interprets the results in context. Task-oriented tests are especially helpful because the heat map suggests how the user went about completing the task, and may reveal unexpected barriers. For example, one study asked participants to find the current U.S. population on the Census Bureau website. Though the number appeared in large text on the homepage, only about 14% of participants saw and recognized it, due to design choices on the page - perhaps because the information was formatted like an ad.
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Call me a Luddite or a libertarian nut, I only share my cell number with those deep in the “inner circle.” Until recently, I had never shared it with a Web property. Until Epicurious.com convinced me the value of sharing was greater than my privacy concerns.

The quick backstory: Our home Internet connection went down. 10 guests coming for dinner in 3 hours. Printed recipe for seared scallops had gone missing. Panic.

A quick search on my Treo yielded dozens of recipes. And every one of the first 7 taps took me to Web sites that were a usability nightmare on my Treo. Even my favorite - Cooks Illustrated - failed my “this is too much of a hassle on my Treo test.” (Ok you iPhone users, no need to comment on that one, I know your gadget is superior!)

Then enter Epicurious. I tap their link on Google, they detect I’m on my mobile, reroute to a WAP version of their site and serve up a simple login screen that fits my window:

Please enter your mobile to unlock your recipes, create a shopping list, search and more.

Hmm. Why do I need to enter my phone number? (more…)

Editor’s  note: Each week, 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. With NTC next week, many of our readers will be browsing from mobile devices like phones and blackberries. So this week, we asked the Beaconfire staff: What website do you most wish had a mobile version?

Jeff, Principal Consultant: Most of the staff already know and ridicule my ability to check the metro “next train” information from my phone. This simple WAP enabled application on the WMATA metro site is by far the most useful mobile site I use.

Other must haves include fantasy football sites where you can check the score of your matchup while at the game or at your favorite watering hole without dragging around your computer.

Lastly, there is a mobile site for zipcar, my other must have transportation option. However this app is less necessary since the easiest way to access when not in front of a computer is through the automated phone system. Sweet.

Milo, Marketing Consultant: Central Desktop.  Bringing their online project management software to the next level of seamlessness will require making their tools more accessible on mobile browsers.  As of now, it’s not even possible for users to login from Blazer (the mobile browser I currently use).  

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: LogMeIn, or other remote desktop apps. I sometimes need more power than I could get from my iPod or phone, and would like to be able to enlist my desktop to help out.

I’d also like to see blogging software use a mobile version; updating Wordpress from an iPod was painful.

Taylor, Software Engineer: Google, particularly the maps and yellow pages. If I can look up locations, I can generally get the other information I need.

Kristin, Project Manager: I’d say sites that I need to access when I’m out and about. Like mapquest or google maps when I’m driving around and lost. Or like Jeff said, the metro arrival/departure info.

David, Software Engineer: Restaurant finders and gas station finders.

Eric, Senior Consultant: I’d like to see a good mobile feedreader. Email as well, of course; I find that Yahoo mail is barely passable. If I was going to tinker with my phone, though I think of it not as much as a substitute for the internet, instead I wish that there was better hardware. A better camera and a camcorder, as well as the applications to blog mobile. I’d like to see a way to upload video to Wordpress.

With the mobile revolution, web design firms like Beaconfire are paying more and more attention to making sites look good on mobile devices. Make sure you check back for more on this, and keep reading the Beaconfire Wire on your mobile device next week as we blog from NTC.

In 1975, the Metric Conversion Act designated the metric system as the preferred system for use in the United States. Sixteen years later, the President signed Executive Order 12770, directing the federal government to make primary use of the metric system. Yet we still follow mile markers on freeways today, and with the exception of soft drink bottling, most consumers still think in Imperial units. It’s a function of the market determining the standard, despite the best intentions of governing bodies to make use of a more efficient standard.

Last week, Tim linked to a story about how Opera is suing Microsoft to make Internet Explorer standards compliant. He makes several good points on how it can be difficult to code for IE, because it lacks standards compliance. I would argue, however, that given its roughly 80% market share, web users have decided that Internet Explorer is the standard.

I know that this argument tends to make purists unhappy. Yes, in theory, if everyone designed their browsers to meet W3C specs, and everyone wrote their pages to follow the same, we’d all live in a happily cross-browsable world. But in reality, for whatever reason (and this explanation seems to be a logical one), the Powers That Be in Redmond have decided that Internet Explorer doesn’t need to be fully standards complaint.

Read on below the fold for thoughts on how to make sure your site isn’t a casualty of the browser wars…

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The other day, I was browsing Digg and came upon WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com. This site blocks Firefox users because of the prevalence of the AdBlock plugin, which, as the name implies, blocks ads and deprives sites of revenue, either directly in pay-per-click or pay-per-conversion arrangements or indirectly by lowering hit counts in pay-per-impression situations.

The site raised strong reactions from Digg users, who were almost universally opposed and had angry words (many of them misspelled) for the site’s creator. In a way, they ironically confirmed many of the arguments that the author makes in his article "Firefox - a New Religion."

The site raised the ethical question in my mind of who’s really at fault here: people depriving content creators from ad revenue, webmasters who monotize every pixel of screen space to the detriment of their content, or advertisers who create more and more obnoxious ads in an arms race for eyeballs?

I’ll explore each below the fold…

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Beaconfire welcomes INFORMS and the American Federation of Teachers as two of our newest clients both of whom were looking for Beaconfire to gather user input to guide improvements to their respective sites.

We began work with INFORMS in the past week to prepare for interviews with their members as they begin the process of improving their Website. User research is an important step in any project and for INFORMS offers an opportunity to explore user needs, validate findings from market research and begin to prioritize areas for improvement. As the association for Operations Research professionals, INFORMS knows the value of research and is wisely leveraging it to guide their Website improvements.

Just last week, we learned we had been selected by AFT to conduct a usability audit of their intranet/extranet tool for local union leaders, not surprisingly called LeaderNet. This project will include user interviews which provide a change for key stakeholders to share perspective, feedback and desired changes. We will combine this input with our Expert Review of the site to identify specific areas for improvement and recommendations. The idea is to identify fixes that AFT can implement quickly as well as make a case for longer term changes. Once those changes have been further flushed out, we’ve recommended user testing to validate and refine.

We’re excited to get started with both clients.

I wrote back in March about how to decide what width your website design should be. The decision usually comes down to what we know about the audience in question, and what size monitor and resolution they are likely to use. In the best cases, we have actual data for the specific audience in question to go on, but that data can be sometimes be hard to come by.

Adding a wrinkle to the question is that, as more and more people start using larger monitors, they are not all necessarily going to maximize their browser to fill the entire screen. Some people will be resizing their browsers to either make more room for other windows, or to exercise more control over the width of pages that they read.

While I continue to hunt for a more reliable reporting of these numbers, I found this article from Roger Johansson following up an informal survey of visitors to his blog 456Breast.com in which he found some interesting data about how his readers browse the web.

Thomas Baekdal conducted a similar experiment, but used javascript to collect the information from three different sites rather than a survey. His numbers are a bit different, but the trend seems to hold pretty solid that Mac users are more likely than Windows users to reduce the size of their browsers from the maximum, and that as monitor sizes (and resolutions) get higher, people become more likely to do so.

• Poll results: 50.4% of respondents maximise windows
• Actual Browser Sizes

Like everything, branding evolves. It’s generally an improvement, but it does mean some pretty big changes for the organization’s marketing. In ancient times (10 years ago), the website’s rebranding could largely be an afterthought to print materials.

But today, consider how many of your constituents view your website versus how many will see your business card. How many will get an email from or you, and how often, versus how many times they see your letterhead?

A lot of Beaconfire’s work is done concurrently with branding firms. Sometimes, we’re given a completed branding document, other times, we’re doing our work at the same time as the organization is being rebranded. In any case, there are some common issues we run often run into on branding guidelines that branding firms should be aware of:

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There was an AP piece out recently, discussing the problems and challenges of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart - yeah, it’s a stretch, but most of the good acronyms were taken), and proposing, as a possible solution, a webcam that continually takes pictures of a variety of subjects and asks users to identify them. It’s rooted in the problem that unless you have a truly gigantic database, spammers will eventually just add your pics to their library and be able to break through. By using a webcam of, as the article suggested, a kitten bouncing around a room, there would be a continual stream of new photos for users to identify - presumably, you could have multiple kittens and ask how many were in a shot or what color the one currently on screen is or something that would change but be easily identifiable by people.

While this is an innovative, not to mention fun, approach to CAPTCHA, it brings up a chance to discuss the merits of using it at all. Let’s take a look at three areas where CAPTCHA is causing debate online: blogs, webforms and email.
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With the launch of the iPhone tomorrow, being heralded by Apple aficionados as the greatest thing since, well, the last thing Apple came out with, devotees are lining up to buy the device designed to replace your phone, music player, toaster over, PDA, PSP, portable video player, Tamagotchi, and perhaps car (teleportation rumored to be available on the $600 version only). At this point, you, the non-profit web professional, might be thinking, “What will my site look like on an iPhone?” Sure, the NY Times looks great in those ads they’re running (personally, I liked the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ones better, but that’s just me), but you’ve got to assume that they picked nytimes.com for a reason. What about your site?

For Mac users, there’s a tool that gives you at least some perspective. It’s called iPhoney, and it’s only available for Mac OS X, but it’s designed to actually just be a miniature version of the Safari viewer. The app is designed by Marketcircle, and it’s free - if you’re on a Mac, go pick it up. It won’t be an exact interpretation, due to the different rules for CSS, Java, Flash and Javascript that iPhones follow, but at the very least, it should help you realize what the lower resolution does to your site.

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