USEworthy January 2003
The monthly Newsletter from The Usability Company
Happy New Year and welcome to the first issue of USEworthy for 2003.
At this festive time of year when we have spent a fortune and had fortunes spent on us, we turn our thoughts toward the less well off and consider the performance of charitable websites and the experience of donating online. We also provide an update on news and events at The Usability Company that this month includes a preview of the Technology For Marketing conference where we will be exhibiting.
We also take a look at SMS messaging and the evolution that took place through 2002. And we take a somewhat tongue in cheek look at Microsoft Updates for dial up users.
Finally Arlene Kline adds the third part to our four part series on accessibility, this month covering the technical issues.
Company News
Here is a round up of news and announcements within The Usability Company during the past month.
LG Electronics win
The Usability Company has signed a contract with Korean electronics group LG Electronics. The contract was won by Senior Account Manager Mark Blunden, following many months of discussions.
Technology For Marketing 2003
The Usability Company has signed up for a stand at the TFM conference and exhibition that will take place at Olympia 11th & 12th February 2003. We will be demonstrating the very latest in online research technologies that enable organisations to significantly enhance their online market and usability research capability.
We will be located on stand D95 and will have both Usability Specialists and Business Development people available throughout the show. Why not come and see us?
Recruitment
We have just completed recruitment for an additional Usability Specialist and our new recruit will be joining the team 1st February 2003. The identity of our new recruit will be revealed next month.
In the meantime we are also recruiting for an experienced Marketing Manager to join our team and add to the ongoing development and growth of our business. If you know someone who might be interested ask him or her to get in contact via or call Paul Blunden on .
and Finally...
December 2002 was a record month for The Usability Company and we would like to thank all our clients for their contribution to our success and we hope to see you again in 2003!
2002 the year SMS grew up
Looking back through 2002 it may well become referred to as the year that SMS grew up. At the start of the year there was much hype surrounding the UK Governments decision to test electronic voting via SMS. The announcement was made on the 5 February 2002, with the Government saying that it would test electronic voting in local elections in May 2002. The tests cost approximately £3.5 million and included voting by text messages from mobile phones using SMS.
Gartner raised a number of issues with SMS voting including usability problems, and summarised that "Whether SMS can become sufficiently secure, usable and anonymous for critical applications such as political elections remains uncertain".
Among the key reasons was usability with Gartner explaining that making mistakes with SMS is easy and that users may be unsure whether they have voted correctly. Given the problems and the publicity over voting in Florida for the US elections it may be that error rates and usability issues ultimately make the problem of SMS too large to overcome. There are also issues over anonymity and one solution of adding ID numbers could in fact increase the risk of usability issues.
Despite the apparent usability issues SMS text messages are sent in their millions. In March 2002 approximately 1.3 billion person to person SMS messages were sent according to figures captured by The Mobile Data Association. And not only is SMS popular with users it is also hugely popular with marketers. A recent survey by Enpocket published October 2002 identified that permission based mobile media is on average 50% more successful at building brand awareness than TV and 130% more successful than radio. Enpocket conclude that the success is attributable to the mobile phone being "such a personal and direct medium - the strength of an individual's relationship with their mobile phone is unique. It is an uncluttered medium in which the marketer's message can be tightly targeted by time of day/week, location and demographics to optimise relevance."
The summer brought with it a huge advertising campaign by Vodafone that suggested users get their flirting done before they arrive home. Maybe this campaign understood better than most the reason SMS is so popular with users in that it is perceived as a quick, personal, silent and ultimately private form of communication.
But maybe the bubble is about to burst. Massive security issues were raised late in the year by a court case surrounding Philip Nourse, a university student in England, who was sentenced to five months in prison for obtaining personal data, performing unauthorized modification of a computer program and harassment.
Among other activities, he posted highly personal information to his ex-girlfriend's Web space on the "Friends Reunited" site, and persuaded two friends at the mobile phone operator mmO2 to send him copies of her SMS communications. mmO2 dismissed the two employees but the issue of access to personal messages has now been clarified.
Although it has long been considered highly complicated for potential hackers to get into personal SMS messages it would seem that pressurising individuals into providing the relevant information is no longer beyond the bounds of reason. Gartner is suggesting that companies put out an immediate mandate that business users no longer transmit potentially confidential information via SMS. Maybe private users will also think twice before pressing the send button.
Donating Online
In December 2002 The Usability Company CEO Catriona Campbell carried out a Usability Evaluation on four charity websites. The company funded the research (including the donations that were actually made) and the findings will be made available to the charities in question. The research was necessarily high level as it involved comparing the donation experience across four different charitable websites. Our sample of Internet sites examined included; Oxfam, Barnardos, Save the Children and Cancer Research UK.
Catriona explains the reason for carrying out this research. "It seemed so easy when I was a child in the 70's; Barnardos gave our school boxes in the shape of a Barnardos orphanage, so that the children could collect for orphanages. As the world has modernised we were interested to find out whether the charities had recreated this experience in the online world and whether it was still as simple to donate as dropping coins into a box."
We gave a sample of users the following tasks:
- You would like to make a donation of £5, using the card details on the separate sheet, please do so.
- Find out ways to volunteer.
- Find out the latest charity news on this site.
Summary of Findings
Out of the four charities tested for ease of use, none had an "easy" donation facility, and certainly none cross-sold to donors at the point of donation e.g. volunteer plans etc.
Users wanted to feel good about the donation experience but this was not provided online, and in one case the process actually made participants resentful and unwilling to give at all.
Three key points were uncovered:
- Charity Internet site managers have a big job to do to satisfy web users, and are currently getting it wrong!
- The navigation and labelling of the sites in question all lacked ease of use.
- Users do not "feel good" about using any of the sites we tested
Online Donation
Attempting to donate online, is a very difficult process, and only the most stalwart would go through with the transaction more than once. The results of this piece of research show that 80% of the first time online donors tested in December 2002 were dissatisfied, and 20% found the experience so frustrating that they would not donate online again.
This is disappointing, especially when you consider that the days when charities were staffed by dreamers and do-gooders are long gone. Just like ordinary businesses run for profit, charities now have to rely on commercial skills to survive and thrive in a competitive sector. Andrew Watt, Head of Policy at the Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers, says; charities have long relied on marketing to get their message across - and in the information age, an organisation that is backward in coming forward risks missing out on donations.
"Fundraising is about creating a one-on-one relationship with a donor - you are trying to speak to them as an individual". "And that's a relationship where good marketing plays a crucial role."
It is therefore truly disappointing to realise that each of Oxfam, Barnardos, Save the Children and Cancer Research UK do not ensure the online donation process is simple and gratifying.
Give directly' if you want to help.
But its not that easy online! In fact the Oxfam site leaves the donor at a page of the site they have never been to before, with no link back to the Home Page. This leaves the users with the option of re-inserting the URL once more….if they can remember it!
Where does the money go?
The British public has become more generous in the past three years. However unless charities take the opportunity to explain where the money goes - and why - we could become a nation of non-believers. This is not an option on the sites we tested…in fact you have no idea where the money goes, and what percentage goes on admin. etc.
Tax?
Charities last year welcomed a move to allow donors to offset donations against a previous year's income tax liability through the Gift Aid. However not one of our users understood this concept, and it was poorly explained on the sites we tested. In fact one user was so concerned with the fact that they did not know whether or not to tick "Gift Aid" that they did not wish to proceed with the donation. The user had concerns over their personal tax liability – would they now have to pay more tax…or declare the gift on their Self Assessment tax form?
Thanks
It may seem unreasonable to the charities in question, but nearly 75% of the users tested wanted to be served with a personalised thank you message from the charity. The philanthropic gesture of giving was not fulfilled at all by the charities, yet this would be a relatively straightforward exercise to accomplish.
News
It was relatively straight forward finding the latest news on each of the sites, even though one site in particular, Cancer Research UK titled this section "Press Office", and Barnardos had the words "Sagging" and "Boobs" in the title of the leading article – and users queried the relevance on a children's charity site.
Volunteering
Many of the sites tested confused users with poor content labelling. This was particularly prevalent in the search for volunteering positions where frequently they were located under an employment related heading. For example the Barnardos site expected users to be able to navigate to a section on the site entitled "Work With Us" for volunteer positions.
Festive attraction
We were also surprised by such a limited number of festive advertisements from donations or volunteers on each of the sites.
Microsoft Updates
Every year I buy myself a Christmas present and as this year I had been particularly good I put in my stocking a brand new HP external DVD re-writer drive. I unpacked it and followed the instructions for installation. Sadly all did not go well and two parts of the software supplied failed to install. The HP helpdesk suggested I download the software directly from their website and try again which I did but still with no success.
The helpdesk explained that they had never heard of the error code I had before and you might be tempted to believe that this is the cause of my problem. Not so! They helpfully suggested that I run Microsoft Update to make sure I had the latest versions of Windows 98 –my current operating system – and this is where my real problems began.
As a home user I avoid running Windows Updates like the plague, given that I operate using a dial up connection and at best achieve a 44 kbps connection speed. I also have the 'pleasure' of being a Freeserve subscriber whose lines seem to mimic the performance of the stock market being up just long enough to make sure I lose a lot.
Suffice to say that when I ran the Windows Update it was a nightmare. The first user-friendly step carried out a quick check of my system to establish whether I needed some new software just to go through the update process. I did and so was presented with a security warning after about 3 minutes that then began the process proper.
What happened next was a slow scan of my computer to identify what updates were required. 19 critical updates apparently in my case and I began to wonder how I had coped for the two years since buying the computer with such critical information absent. I clicked the install now button and it was explained that one of the items selected had to be installed separately from the other 18 and that if I accepted it would indeed install that one and leave the others until later.
The file size was immense and as the process began I got a feeling of watching paint dry. After 5 minutes with absolutely no movement I went and attended to other chores, such as separating my children. When I returned to the computer over an hour later the bar had moved two thirds of the way across the screen so I went away again. The next time I returned my phone line had been dropped and the process with it. I had to start again, from the beginning, including the scan of my system.
Well, I really wanted to use my new DVD drive so after two days of leaving Windows Update running day and night and restarting the process another 5 times (once it completed but a red alert explained it hadn't installed correctly and I would have to start again) I eventually managed to install the first of the 19 critical updates. Another 3 days passed and I managed to install the remaining files.
There was nothing in the system that enabled dial up users to restart mid way through the process if the line or install failed and as a result had I not been on a monthly unlimited time package there is no way I would have gone through with this. As it is there are still updates, thankfully non-critical, waiting for me, but I'm too scared to go back there!
Accessibility: Four Part Series
Part Three: Technical Issues
"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
- Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web
The Web Accessibility Initiative has set up a series of guidelines to ensure this 'universality' can be achieved.
The WAI Technical Activity addresses barriers to Web accessibility on several levels. First, it seeks to ensure that the core technologies of the Web are accessible, including HTML, CSS, XML, SMIL, SVG, and DOM. Barriers exist when these technologies lack features needed by users with visual, hearing, physical, or cognitive disabilities.
WAI works closely with other W3C Working Groups to ensure that Web technologies support accessibility. For example, WAI has worked closely with the HTML, SYMM, and SVG Working Groups so that those markup languages include features that promote the separation of structure and style, improved navigation, extended descriptions of complex graphics such as charts and diagrams, captions for multimedia, and device-independent user interface descriptions (e.g., to enable interaction with a page through mouse, keyboard, or voice input).
The WAI Technical Activity promotes implementation of accessibility improvements in core Web technologies through development of a set of three WAI guidelines: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; User Agent Accessibility Guidelines; and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines prioritize implementation of accessibility features needed to ensure accessibility, and include easy-to-use reference checklists as well as in-depth technical reference documents, which provide detailed implementation guidance. The WAI Technical Activity also coordinates the development of accessibility-checking and repair tools synchronized with WAI guidelines.
The WAI guidelines specify 3 priority ratings for the checkpoints: A, AA and AAA, so a website can conform to any one of these (level "A" being the minimum conformation. Conformance to WCAG 1.0 is defined in section 5 of the WAI specification - Conformance.
There are other 'seals of approval' such as Bobby and the RNIB's 'See It Right' accreditation. Unlike the See it Right, which is monitored and assessed by RNIB, the WAI and Bobby logos are self-assessed and maintained. Therefore the value of the 'See it Right' accreditation is that the verification is much more vigorous as it is done by an independent body. The Usability Company works closely with the RNIB to lead clients through the process of getting the 'See It Right' accreditation from the RNIB.
Click here for information about The Usability Company's accessibility services.
Next Month, Part Four: Moral Issues
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