XD

nomee Usability Review

Executive Summary
nomee is a social stream aggregator that promises to enhance
the user experience of the social web through a focus on
people not networks. The present review is a preliminary
study focusing on the usability of the nomee application
within the context of the expanding online social landscape.
The review was conducted by a user researcher external to
nomee.

The goal of this research is to help product managers,

engineers, and, of course, designers, to design products and
services that are fit for purpose.

2010-Apr-04

Miles Bacon // miles@intellinautic.com // 408.596.4537

Intellinautic, LLC // ux@intellinautic.com

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-

Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
United States License.
To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
 Overview

Background
nomee 2.5.01 is an early release of a redesigned UI and comes to the desktop as a Flex built Air client.
The new design uses desktop real estate less judiciously than 1.2 in favor of an experience more web
sized than before. In the present state, new nomee users will have already been actively participating in
the social web for the product to be accessible.

The usability of nomee depends on factors beyond just interface design and engineering. nomee's
usability rests upon the delivery of an elegant and transparent social interaction tool that surpasses the
native interfaces of the social services it aggregates.

Contextual Analysis
In matters of usability and user experience, social software is much more complicated than non-social
software. The task of conventional software is to provide successful interactions and to inform the user
that his actions worked. Social interaction design (SxD) differs in that there is not just one user. Users
differ by their communication and interaction styles, their ways of being social, their understanding of
what they are doing and of what others are doing. Unlike a single user experience, social interactions
take place over time.

Further sophisticating the landscape, social users may interact natively via mobile or web or via a 3rd-
party client or aggregator such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Threadsy. The usability of each method
depends on the task at hand. The particular challenge nomee faces in this rapidly evolving landscape is
in surpassing the benefits realized by users interacting on services’ native interface.

Social Interaction Design

Design begins with the question:
“Who is the user and what user centric problem are we trying to solve?”

One user segmentation approach categorizes social users according to three types of interest: Self
Interest, Other Interest, and Relational Interest. This comes from contemporary sociology and
psychology, and goes (very) roughly like this:

Self-interested users act from a position of Self

Other-interested users react to an Other (user)
Relationally-interested users interact through social activity

To provide a few examples, there are Facebook users whose activity centers on their own profile, which
is a representation of their Self and an extension of it (into the mediated social world that is Facebook).
These users may not even visit their friends’ profiles. They interact around their own status updates,
wall posts, profile page elements, and so on. Then there are Facebook users who spend more time
browsing their friends’ profiles, posting to their walls, reading their friends’ updates. They do not begin
communication on their own pages, talking about themselves, but begin by responding to a friend’s post
or update. There are then those in the third group, the socializers if you will, who play the numerous
Facebook social apps. Drawn to social activity, they go where the action is.

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Usability Theory and SxD
Standard UI theory comes up short in social software because the UI is not only a representation of
software features and functions, but is a medium through which users engage with other users. Using
the segmentation model from above, we may consider the interface as a screen of interaction with three
modes. It may be a mirror, and you see yourself reflected. Or it is a surface, and you see what your friend
has posted on it. Or it is a window, and you can talk through it with your friend.

Design requirements are different for each mode. In the mirror mode, the interface should present an
engaging and compelling reflection. In the surface mode, it should organize and structure content and
navigation. And in the window mode, it should become transparent and unobtrusive.

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 Method

Objective
The objective of this usability inspection is to provide designers with valuable talkback in the form
of usability related implications of design choices. Hopefully, the feedback will be helpful to nomee
product managers and engineers as well.

As nomee is a social tool, the evaluator attempts to transcend issues related to atomic, low-level
interactions between user and the UI in a snapshot of time by considering systemic usability and
identifying issues related to how these individual interface moments interact over time and space.

Expert Review
Usability of nomee 2.5 was evaluated by an expert with a walkthrough method using a think-aloud
protocol. The evaluation was conducted in two sessions and the raw data is provided in Appendix A
along with evaluator profile and biases.

The evaluator established a generic task for the first session:

Discover the features of nomee.

The focus of the second session, while still quite generic, was more specific than the first:
Explore nomee cards.

An alternative to these generic tasks would have been to enumerate a set of detailed tasks to be
performed during the walkthrough before starting. Instead, the present review approach allows for an
inspection of how the interface guided discovery of features by a new user. If needed, an enumerated
task list for future protocols could be reflectively generated by further analyzing the present raw data.

Dimensions of Inspection
In order to produce a summary list of issues, the evaluator considered the following during the
walkthrough:

• Will the way that information is represented show relevant progress by the current or other users
towards accomplishing the task?
• Will the way that information is represented provide all knowledge required to carry out the task?
• Will the way that information is represented provide resources that relieve the user from having to
figure out or calculate anything in his or her head while carrying out the task?
• If the current task is accomplished, will the way that information is represented show the result of
the task in a way that is accessible by the current or other users at a later time or a different place?

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 Results

Visibility of System Status

At several points throughout the walkthrough, nomee fetched friend lists and status updates from
Facebook. With one exception, nomee failed to make the expected behavior known while the
application was waiting for a response from Facebook. The exception was the “Browse for nomee cards,”
dialog container which uses an animation plus the text, “Loading Friends.”

At startup the problem was further emphasized by the lengthy (up to 2 minutes) callback response time
from Facebook which left the user wondering what to do next. This is a major usability problem.

Cache
Whether the inbound status updates will be cached locally, remotely, or at all by nomee is not made
visible.

Response Time
When considered within the context of a single interaction, users are forgiving of less than immediate
system response. However, response time creates residual interaction effects that build over time to
create a systemic usability problem.

The Card
The user’s card is a central metaphor of the nomee platform but the concept and associated vocabulary
is not easily grasped by the new user. Does the object represent a new account on the service? Is nomee
providing something akin to a global LDAP service? The established metaphor for creating connections
in the social space is “Send friend request. Accept friend request.” nomee does not effectively build a
bridge from this paradigm of creating connections.

In the present review, the user never attempted to add a new friend who was not already a nomee user.
The expected action of doing so was unknown and carried the additional risk of being a social unknown.

Use Hierarchy and User Stories

The premise of nomee is clear: people first, networks second. However, nomee places initial visual
emphasis on the Facebook status feed by default. A subtle implication that the primary nomee use case
is viewing live feeds and thereby being subject to direct comparison to the native networks’ home page.
The evaluator hypothesizes that usability will be improved by strongly guiding the user to add friends,
helping them understand the implications of adding friends on both sides of the social interaction, and
to then organize these friends into groups whereby nomee can then deliver a superior, aggregate stream
experience.

Naturally, this case assumes that “now” is the most important time frame. Usability will be substantially
improved in all cases if the system design gave greater consideration to the dimension of time in social
interactions.

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Conclusion
The current design leaves the use hierarchy unclear. Is nomee my rolodex to be used in a coordinated
way with my mobile and web experience or is it an aggregator that will likely replace many of the visits
on the web? To be sure, history has demonstrated that users will employ social networks in unexpected
ways. Fortunately, the networks aggregated by nomee now have established history and the design of
the major platforms themselves has stabilized somewhat.

The greatest usability risk when designing in a context as fluid as society is the under consideration of
actual user stories. An expansive technology landscape provides no real design constraints. Designers
must be able to inform their design instead with an extensible, but finite, set of user stories that reflect
how people use the social web with each other.

Who is the user and what user centric problem are we trying to solve?

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 Further Research

The Purpose of Research

User researchers help product managers, engineers, and, of course, designers, to design products and
services that are fit for purpose.

Ethnography
Ethnography in practice emphasizes field work and direct observation. In the field of user research, the
goal is to understand user needs and influences on behavior. To observe, interpret, look for patters, and
theorize. To spark creativity and help designers with new ideas.

Ethnography is used in the realm of usability to generate hypothesis for further testing in larger samples
which then can be used to inform decisions about strategy.

Usability Investigation
A variety of usability investigation techniques exist. The present review used a casual approach based
on the Distributed Cognitive Walkthrough first proposed by Joel Eden at Drexel in May 2008. The
approach, which uses the four questions previously presented in the Method section, was found to
successfully discover between 50%-90% of known usability issues.1 Normally, a tester will run through
a set list of tasks and the investigator will measure how well the system scores for each of the four
questions. Because nomee’s tasks were unknown to the evaluator at the outset, the questions were used
as heuristics.

Many light-weight usability research methods are easy to do. For example, the development team could
create a storyboard for a few representative user stories. Then designers could create paper prototypes of
their interface based on the storyboards that can then be used for further testing.

Since the current review represents only one view, another inspection technique may be to identify
another user and perspective from which we reproduce the current study to see if any new issues appear.

Remote Research
Online recruiting and remote usability studies are fast becoming a popular way for designers to test
their design assumptions in larger samples. The sustainable approach reduces travel and lab costs while
delivering improved accuracy by testing the participant in their native context.

1 Aggregated results of between 5-10 evaluators of 4 interfaces identified 55%-90% of usability

problems for those interfaces. (Eden, 2008)

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 Appendix : Raw Data

<Evaluator bias / user profile >

31 y/o male. First e-mail from AOL sent in 1995.

Updates Facebook status multiple times a day from mobile and web. Twitter updates Facebook status automatically. Uses multiple
machines. Does not often use desktop clients for social tasks. Uploads pictures from mobile. Has a YouTube account and updates
Facebook with favorites. Time spent viewing live social feeds fluctuates with mood and time. Played FarmVille to level 14 and
dropped out. Thinks Twitter lists are a perfect design solution but hasn’t yet made time to make the lists and has subsequently
grown fatigued with watching Twitter altogether but instead follows interesting people, then feeds Twitter via RSS to Google Reader
where he browses and then searches when looking for something. An archivists at heart. Digital hoarder. Accidentally forgot about
Google Reader until just now because he found Evernote a month ago. Liked TweetDeck alot but he’s sort of picky about his
system resources and wishes Adobe would make an Air engine that just really screamed. He would also gladly trade this research for
an iPad and, in fact, stopped using Facebook altogether today when he saw his friend Scooter was posting pictures of his.

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<Session 1 / DCW / Talk-aloud protocol>

First Login Already have an account but don’t remember login information. Using Facebook Connect.
Initial View My attention is drawn to the dominant (large/bright) tabbed display, showing Facebook (active) and Twitter. I expect to see my FB friend’s status but the display is
blank. I’m unsure if I need to take some further action now or wait for the list to populate. I take a phone call.
List Population After 2 minutes, I’m surprised when the list populates. I scroll down but encounter a troublesome lag that subsides within 20 seconds. “179 new items since your
last refresh,” message leaves me wondering if I should click to update or if the application will automatically refresh.
Refresh Click the Refresh symbol. The change from Users(19) to Users (128) is the primary feedback indicating that the refresh occurred.
Twitter login Clicking the Twitter tab reveals a Twitter login. Upon successful login the list appears but provides no feedback for 3 minutes, when the list populates.
Accept Pending Card I notice a Pending Card(1). A click on the icon and a new window opens with the nomee icon on the left and 7 icons in the middle, each representing a known social
service, except 1, which is a picture. Hovered over to see the popup hint, the icon represents a webpage, nomee/alden. A dialog prompts me to accept or decline
the pending contact. When I click on Personal Info, the tray element is partially obscured by the dialog box. I click Accept. In the left column, the icon now appears
in a box near the word “unassigned,” which I interpret to mean that I have not assigned this card to a group. I notice an “open” button, but its purpose is unclear.
The hover help speaks of the “group aggregator” but the vocab convention is yet unfamiliar and I decide that this is an advanced task to be learned later.
Add Friends With my attention on the left hand column, I notice the big green “Add Friends” button and while I’m unsure to what I’ll be adding friends or the purpose of adding
friends, I boldly click. Presented with page 1 of 4 of newsmaker cards. The banner at the top invites me at add all IZOD Indycar Series cards. I am not a Nascar buff,
so I choose to click “Facebook Friends.” The application provides feedback, “Loading Friends,” after which all of my Facebook friends are available for selection.
I’m reluctant to select any friends because I’m unsure how the social interaction is designed. What will my friend see? Will they be prompted to download and use
nomee? I know that Mitchell uses nomee, so I type “Mitchell” in the search box. I hover over the Add button which displays the help tag, “Add this card to your
desktop.” My desktop? I’m not totally sure what my desktop is (I genuinely wonder if an icon will be placed on my OS desktop). The dialog box is titled “Browse for
nomee Cards,” which I find confusing because I know that not all my Facebook friends have a nomee card although they are available for selection here. I wish I
could tell who the nomee users are among my friends in this dialog. I’m also unsure if finding Mitchell using Facebook Friends has the same result as finding him
in Twitter Friends.

After clicking “Add” the button changes to grayed-out “Added.” I also click the help box in the upper right which introduces me to the phrase “nomee desktop
dashboard” and also explains that once I’ve added my Facebook friends, I can use nomee to search for their username on more than 100 sites across the web. Will
try this later.
Create and Share I click on the Share button on the left column to discover what this means. The app displays “You haven’t created a card to share,” followed immediately by
a Card clickable text that opens a New Card titled dialog box.

I easily add a phone number and two different email addresses. It seems strange that I can deselect items to share. My Facebook and Twitter accounts are listed in
the “Share the following sites,” but I don’t know what that means. I feel like I should select them, so I select all and then click the big green “Share” button.

I choose to send the card to Mitchell Savage.

Error The dialog closes but the application displays a modal, “Facebook friends load error,” which I think was caused when the Sharing dialog was fetching my friend list.
Clicking “OK” appears to return the app to a normal state.
New Pending Card Accept a Pending Card from Mitchell Savage.
“Share” someone On “Mitchell Savage” card, I click the “Share” link, which opens a dialog to select a service, or copy and paste the HTML. The use is unclear.
else’s card.
Edit my card I notice in the left column that my card is titled “New Card.” I’m unable to discover a way to change the card name. I create a new card, which is also named “New
Card.” I now have two cards, both named “New Card.”
“Open” I click the Open button on my group, unassigned, which opens a new tab. I close the tab.
New Group I hover over “New Group” button on the left column, “Categorize cards by groups, Family, Friends, coworkers, ect.” Clicking the button causes the application to
freeze and my computer seems unhappy. nomee processor and memory utilization begins to climb, reaching a working set of 410 Mb and a steady CPU % 29-50
before I end the process.
Card Preview I’m curious how others see my card. I click on my card and then preview. “This is New Card card as others see it.” Still confused about the name on the card. In
my newstream, the first entry is a wall post made by my friend Ryan Wheeler on my facebook page. I am surprised to see Ryan’s post in my newstream that I’m
publishing to other people. A new entry has appeared in my list of sites to share, it is a Facebook icon. Hovering over the icon displays my Facebook profile URL. It is
the same URL as the first Facebook icon in the list.

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<Session 2 / DCW / Talk-aloud protocol>

Login Successful via FB connect

Adding Cards Added Climate Change, button changed to ‘Added’ – also, Anderson Cooper, Dallas Twestival, Velvet Revolver
Search Wondering if anyone named Jonah has a card, Searched “Jonah” – 1 result. Cleared the search box and hit enter, expecting a refresh of all cards. Notice an “X” next
to “Found 1 results for ‘jonah’. Clicked the X. Browse box reset as expected. 
View desktop After closing the browse window, new icons appeared in Unassigned group. Anderson, Climate Change, and Velvet Revolver each had the red update count
displayed. I’m unsure what the update count actually signifies. (Today, since last week, since ever?)
View card Started with “Climate Change” First notice, the 16 icons. I glance down at the Service container in the newstream and see only 4: blog, newyorktimes, sciencedaily,
Twitter. I noticed that the Twitter(163) is an aggregate count of the 4 different twitter icons above. I notice the “Mark all items as read” checkbox and wonder how
things get marked as “read” if I don’t check the box. I scroll down the newstream and expect to see the counts on either the icons or in the Service container. They
don’t. I uncheck the box and decide to click on an the icon for Science Daily. The red bubble disappears and a browser window opens taking me to http://www.
sciencedaily.com/articles/earth_climate.

Opening Velvet Revolver and I the two icons with updates are google searches, blog and news. I think this is clever and wonder if I could attach google searches of
my own to someone else’s card.
Groups I have two groups so far. Unassigned and untitled. I think I’ll put Anderson into a group of his own. Setting out on this task: Change the “untitled” group title to
“Journalists.” I right mouse click on the group name and discover a contextual menu for the first time. Click “rename” and successfully rename the group. changes
appear after a short lag. I drag Andreson’s icon to the Journalists group.
Viewing Twitter Feed I decide to view my Twitter tab and see who has mentioned me lately. My friend Gina has mentioned me, my harmonica, and my new nieces. I want to see all of
Gina’s posts now, so I click on her name. Unfortunately, the posts have disappeared and refresh doesn’t work. I find myself slightly annoyed that I have to stare at
the Adobe bg instead of the posts. I click around a few times randomly and return to see if the list will ever refresh.

So, somehow Gina’s post with my mention reappears. I notice that my cursor changes to a hand when I hover over her name. I click, but nothing happens. Right
click, same deal. I find myself wishing that I had an icon for her and I know that she will never use nomee. I feel sad.

I go back to Home on my Twitter tab trying to discover a way to see all of Gina’s recent posts, which I frequently do but conclude that I will have to search by typing
in her twitter handle in the Look for box. I type “bellagina” in the search box and nothing happens for 10 seconds, which is now my tolerance threshold for nomee.

Last thoughts: nomee is a long way from fitting my own current use cases for connecting with people on social networks. I like the idea of “following people, not websites/networks/
etc.” but the ideal case requires that all of my contacts be available for management in the same way that nomee users who’ve shared their card with me are.
Differences in the way that nomee users vs. non-users in my social network are represented in the nomee paradigm are problematic. My social connections count
approaches 1000, which is a lot of inbound information. nomee users currently represent less than a tenth of one percent of my network and the nomee user
experience is inferior to those of the native network’s presence.

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