Do Samsung slavishly copy Apple?

Much has been said about the phones and tablets but here's a comparison of the websites (click image to expand).

The site of Samsung appears to be paint and brand on top of the same wireframe.

C'mon Samsung, try harder. "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." Matsuo Basho.

Aussies online

Good Aussie stats are rare indeed, particularly unbiassed ones.

ACMA has recently published "The internet services market and Australians in the online environment" which offers good local data with no hidden agenda and a strong sample size.

Some highlights from my own notes:

10.4 million active internet subscribers in Aus (up 17% for year)
8.2 million mobile handsets (up 21%)
83% of Aussies online, of which 74% daily
$143 billion in online orders last year (up 15%)
3.5 million Aussies interested in Internet TV
2.5 million interested in video call by TV
2.3 million went online to do a VOIP call in month of Dec 2010
8. Data downloaded over mobile up some 462% last year but still 91% of overall data is downloaded by fixed line

On blaming the client

In our industry a poor workman can't really blame his tools so the client is (all too) often framed. Client bagging is tiring to hear and in the long run it can only paint UX in a bad light.
Jordan Julien from UX Magazine offers some well presented strategies for getting the most from different types of client.

You're not a UX designer if you can't work well with your client. UX is not just about the user it's about internal relationships and doing good business too. As Paul Boag rightly points out;

"The truth is that business objectives should trump users’ needs every time. Generating a return on investment is more important for a website than keeping users happy". Paul Boag.

Read more in his excellent, flame-inviting Smashing Magazine article reminding some in UX to look beyond their monitor and yes, even the user from time to time.

Yes, Facebook was designed by Monkeys

Having earlier questioned this based on behaviour of the status update box I can now confirm that Facebook WAS designed by monkeys, having looked at the behaviour of Friends functions.

FOUR links to friends with FIVE different behaviours and no indication of which behaviour to expect.
So:

1. Status updates = mess,
2. Messages = mess,
3. Friends links = mess.

What goes up must come down and I have a hunch that Facebook has peaked.

Persuasive design toolkit

This Design with Intent research by Dan Lockton is outstanding.

101 patterns for influencing behaviour through design http://www.danlockton.com/dwi/Main_Page

Was Facebook designed by Monkeys?

A nice simple thought for the day. "Which monkey designed the most popular site in the known universe?"

It's part of our daily lives and we get used to its numerous flaws but here I have 4 different input fields, from the same interface, on the same day, and they each behave differently. Worse still they are core to the experience, being on status updates and messaging.
In some, enter does an old fashioned carriage-return (Gen Y pls see typewriter) and on others it sends your message. I got caught out and sent half written messages and status updates twice this very day.

Presumably they must pay peanuts.

User Centred Design Gold. For FREE

The gold we pan for in User Centred Design is good user input.

The finest gold is that which is genuine and passionate, from the widest range of users and pure (no influence from test conditions). Better still if it was free, ongoing and took little or no effort to obtain then it would leave more time to focus on design.

The rise in popularity of Twitter prior to the launch of T-Hub provided an unprecedented opportunity to observe what real users were thinking about the product.

Previously when you released a product you pushed it out and hoped it was well received. The lucky projects benefited from some user testing but it would be limited in scope, time and the impact of test environment/conditions.

Product release was akin to putting a bottled SOS message into the ocean. From the shore you can anticipate what the journey might involve and prepare the bottle & message appropriately. Then you can wait for the right tide and weather conditions for success, but without ongoing monitoring and adjustment you have no influence on whether it will reach a target.

With a simple Twitter search and something like Tweetdeck you can see the genuine and unsolicited shouts of hundreds of users in real-time. As tweets are naturally skewed towards the very positive or very negative they are naturally the most useful to act upon. These passionate comments provide a general sense of what people find good or bad as well as pinpoint feedback. Our project has used these to change direction and focus, sometimes quite dramatically. The entire resources of the project has been shifted more than once in direct response to such customer feedback. Like putting a punctured inner tube into water, it is easier to fix a problem if you can pinpoint its location and see how big the leak is.