InfoCamp is an “un-conference” that encourages conversations about anything information related. Its supposed to be democratic, unstructured, and low-cost. Its in its 3^rd year (my 1^st year attending and volunteering), and had a great turnout:  350 people!

There seemed to be a good mix of professionals and graduate students, and topics ranged from UX to content development. I met lots of interesting people (which only added to my week of networking after attending Web Analytics Wednesday). The way it works is that people can prepare presentations ahead of time, or on the fly, and sign up to present and discuss an idea. The organizers want InfoCamps to happen in other cities eventually, and so do I.

On day 1 my former interaction design professor Axel Roesler gave a keynote on IXD, and design in general. There was one quote that resonated with me, but I forgot to note who originally said it:

“Design is the reconciliation of seemingly irreconcilable constraints.”

I also saw great presentations on user-centered design and information visualization from Noah Iliinsky, and on user-centered design, optimization, and kittens by Jason Carmel from ZAAZ. I live blogged from day 2 of InfoCamp (sadly I missed Vanessa Fox speaking) below.

Information Architecture and SharePoint

This one was presented by Microsofties, so I was a bit skeptical. I also typically hate dealing with SharePoint, and I’ve done an  IA project with it; maybe I’m just completely biased.

Someone asked about people who want to tag things with more terms than you’ve allowed, or conversely, don’t want to tag things. The answer was “I don’t think that’s a technology problem, that’s a people problem.” Not sure I agree with that. Yes, you need to establish a process that works for your users, but not allowing flexibility and user error recovery in the information system is poor usability practice.

In terms of metadata for SharePoint, their argument is that authors will automatically see the value in assigning metadata to documents and fill in metadata.  I believe unless people are educated in the value of metadata and there is some kind of control applied to what kinds of metadata terms should be used, SharePoint is not as effective.

Hm..and now he’s admitted “[Microsoft SharePoint is] not the best wiki, we’re not the best document and records management system…but we try really hard to make all of these things work together.” Fair enough.

How to start your own InfoCamp

Recommendations from the organizers, Aaron Louie and Rachel Elkington from ZAAZ. There’s tons more info on the wiki.

**NO FEAR**

1. community
2. $ – sponsorship
3. venue
4. publicity
5. logistics
6. personnel
7. social media (see the #infocamp hashtag on Twitter)

Came about from Rachel and Aaron attending IA Summit, and thinking it was good for theory, boring for practitioners.

“The best discussions happened in the hallways and afterparties.” –Rachel Elkington on typical conference experiences

Wanted to bring in the local community and reinvigorate the local ASIST chapter.  They also didn’t like that conference attendance is limited by cost and structure. Both of them wanted to imitate a bar camp format in Seattle and have it be be a movement–a viral form of conference.  The key was finding like-minded people and keeping the conversation going.

As you may have noticed, I’ve talked about the new beta from WebTrends before, but I wasn’t able to really talk about it until today now that its been publicly released! I’m posting the press release below for those who are interested, as well as screenshots.

I spent a loooong time playing with the beta and overall I was really pleased with the user experience. Its leaps and bounds beyond what it used to be, and is employing lots of the things I like most about Google Analytics in terms of ease of use and flexibility.  My initial impressions are mainly focused on the UI and UX, and some things might be nitpicky, but I automatically do heuristic evaluations. Blame the iSchool. So in no particular order:

1. The main dashboard for profiles within accounts is great because a) it has a bunch of commonly used metrics (pageviews, visits, BOUNCE RATE (finally!!), avg. time on site), and b) you can easily compare across profiles for these metrics, which is immensely useful!
2. My one complaint about the account profiles dashboard is that the columns have a fixed width, and a lot of the profiles I work with have longer names, which makes it slightly difficult to scan for the correct profile. Maybe I’m just getting a Web 2.0-ish feel and wanting everything to have dragging capabilities?
3. I really liked the default graph for viewing a particular profile (with the same common metrics); being able to see data for any date in the selected time period at a glance is a nice feature. Sadly, you can’t use the same visualization for the secondary metrics.
4. The user can choose between the default line graph, RSS overlay (which I don’t entirely understand yet), table view, and “story” view. I like that there are more choices for data output within WebTrends, and I think the “story” part was intended to make data more accessible, but some people I spoke with worried that the “story” could become an excuse for lazy analysis.
5. Overall, navigation is easy to figure out and to switch between modes/options. In an interesting IA choice, the rest of the metrics are listed below the main div in a flat navigation, but still in a secondary location to the more common metrics. It might be because the less prominent metrics need more space because they involve less numbers and more words?
6. Minor detail, but when looking at a report in detail, or when there is pagination, things look clickable when they should not be, i.e. being able to click on “previous” when viewing the 1st page in a series.
7. I think I was happiest when I could export a report in 2 clicks in either CSV or REST URI. I am always getting errors normally when exporting in the current version of WebTrends, so this was refreshing. I wasn’t clear on why you would use REST URIs (even after looking up what that is) or why you would choose Excel vs. XML vs. JSON?
8. My biggest complaint is with the bugs (expected in a beta) that led to numerous error pages, and no real help for explaining how to do things or why errors were happening. This feels like the bane of my existence the past couple days, but in a new system it seems so necessary to have help documentation easily accessible versus just a brief overview of the tool.

Despite the minor complaints, I think WebTrends is becoming more of a happy medium between the power of enterprise analytics tools and great UX in tools like GA. You can tell that they have spent a lot of time thinking about how web analysts (and non-web analysts) will be using their tool, and I think it has paid off in a great product. I look forward to seeing the beta work out its kinks. Apologies for the lengthy post, but its probably an easier read if you can try out the beta!

Official Screenshots

*I’m too lazy right now to make these photos align correctly. Sorry.

RSS Overlay: Add external RSS feeds and items will group by date snapping to any of the key metrics, providing unique correlation opportunities.

profile dashboard rss

Share to Web Services: Easily generate web service URI’s to embed in applications, widgets, and Excel (for live dashboards).

profile dashboard story

Story View: View data in a whole new way with story view.  This narrative flow with embedded metrics allows for quick comprehension and with a quick copy and paste, a user can embed these descriptions right into an email, presentation, or document.

exporting files

WT Press release

Webtrends Analytics 9 Sets New Standard in Enterprise Customer Intelligence

New On Demand version simply, powerfully uncovers customer insight with a click-to-crunch interface, data-in/data-out API and the industry’s most powerful core analytics

PORTLAND, Ore., – Aug. 4, 2009 – Webtrends, the enterprise customer intelligence company that started the web analytics industry, today introduced its most significant advances in user experience and data integration in its 15+ year history.

Webtrends Analytics 9 makes data the interface. Uncovering customer trends is as simple as clicking on numbers on the screen.  Cross-channel insight emerges from RSS-enabled overlays of company news, sales and other business data on top of trended web metrics.  Key web metrics are automatically translated to plain English text, shared throughout an organization and viewed in any interface.

“Webtrends has created an entirely new user experience that makes it remarkably easy for us to quickly retrieve and provide key decision makers with necessary web analytics data. This sleek new design will provide better top-line perspective while allowing us to think about and leverage this data more effectively,” said Kate Johnson, Digital Relationship Marketing Manager, Kimberly-Clark. “Many analytic providers are lacking in this need so we’re very excited to see the direction Webtrends is going with this powerful new visual interface.”

Webtrends Analytics 9 is comprised of three primary components:

Insight Interface: No Instructions Necessary

The new Analytics 9 Insight interface offers breakthroughs in data exploration and visualization, including:

· RSS Overlays. Quickly determine how other marketing investments are influencing your  web site by visually overlaying data from any RSS feed on top of trending web metrics.  Overlays from Webtrends Social Measurement, for example, provide direct insight into the relationships between web site traffic and activity on enthusiast blogs, video channels and other interactive media.

· Story View. Automatically convert data and metrics into non-technical narratives that offer  written context that graphs and charts can’t. The text can be downloaded and shared as PowerPoint, Word, and other formats.

Data-in, No Restrictions. Data-out, No Fees

Webtrends’ industry leading application programming interface (API) provides self-service access and integration of online and offline data without any added charges:

· Live spreadsheets. Review web site metrics throughout the day in live spreadsheets that anyone can access. Create Excel dashboards with live data in three easy steps.

· Data collection. Uncover cross-channel trends and business opportunities by programmatically sending data from mobile applications, devices and any other standards-based source to Webtrends hosted collection service for processing and analysis alongside your web site traffic and other data.

· Data Extraction. Populate widgets, dashboards and other applications with Webtrends data using reliable, no-cost Webtrends Web Services, built with Representational State Transfer (REST) URLs and other web standards. Or  combine data from Webtrends and other business intelligence tools to create best-of-breeds solutions catered to your business.

Powerful to the Core

Analytics 9 provides all of the core analytics features customers depend on with Webtrends On Demand, including:

· Unlimited scale, capacity. Distinct and fully redundant data collection, analysis and rendering help absorb even the largest spikes in traffic without system outages or lost data.

· Unmatched data flexibility. Unlimited dimensions and measures based on any attribute or parameter let you explore your data without restrictions or incurring extra charges.

Analytics 9 is available for purchase beginning today. Current Webtrends On Demand customers have access to Analytics 9 at http://Insight.Webtrends.com.

“I am enormously proud of this release.  It represents a commitment we made to our customers just last April at our Engage conference —we are the most Powerful, we are the most Open and we will be the most Elegant solution in the market.” said Alex Yoder, CEO of Webtrends.  “Analytics 9 turns the page for an entire industry that has just been focused on reporting and brings the depth of the data that Webtrends uniquely collects to life for the entire enterprise to analyze and take action with.”

Learn more about the breakthrough features of Analytics 9 (including screenshots)

About Webtrends Inc.

Webtrends is an enterprise customer intelligence company that turns online and offline data into understanding. Webtrends delivers the industry’s most recognized search engine marketing, visitor intelligence, and analytics solutions to enable companies to understand their customers, drive engagement, and enhance marketing and brand awareness. Thousands of global organizations, including Microsoft, Reuters, General Mills and Ticketmaster have chosen Webtrends business solutions and client services expertise to optimize their customers’ online experiences. You can learn more about Webtrends products and services at http://www.webtrends.com/ or call 1.877.932.8736.

It’s time to pimp out events that I am a fan of again.

1. Monthly IA Meet-up at a new location, Rendezvous! It’s the 2nd Tuesday of each month (in Seattle), and usually has lots of cool/interesting people in attendance like librarians, iSchool peeps, and UX/IA professionals.
2. Its Web Analytics Wednesday again! This time I hope to not have an epic fail again, and will stay the whole time. Hopefully I can put faces to handles for some followers on Twitter! Once again, POP is generously hosting.
3. And Houghton Market in Kirkland is having a beer sale for 20% off as they are going out of business. Sad times, but beneficial to beer lovers.

GA Rant

OK, I hope that Google Analytics was having some random, never-will-happen-ever-ever-again technical issues going on today, because I was really annoyed. First, I kept getting compiler errors for the graphs that are automatically generated. Then, GA had all these horrible error messages that were not informative and did not assist in user recovery. The first error message I got was: “There was an error fetching data for this view.”  So, you know, I didn’t know what to do other than refresh the page. Next, I got another error message on a different metric that read “An Error Has Been Detected. Please try again. Thank you for your patience.”

Besides the fact that they used incorrect capitalization on the 2nd error message, it clearly violates one of Jakob Nielsen’s 10 heuristics for interface design:

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors. Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

I generally really like the UI and UX of the Google Analytics tool, I think its easily manipulable and employs clear, simple design. However, the errors were frustrating, and I didn’t know how to fix any of them. I still don’t know what went wrong! #UXFail.

Also tomorrow is ZAAZ kickball and I’m on Team Tom Selleck. I hope to represent well.

Last week I kept saving links on del.icio.us to different tools, so I thought I would post something about some of the ones that looked interesting.

Sorting terms on WebSort

1. WebSort is an online card sorting tool that is free (for up to 10 participants) and very intuitive. You create a list of the words that would typically be on cards for figuring out a taxonomy, and then the user drags and drops to sort the words into categories. You can view the results in Excel or see them as a tree chart or broken down by participant. I think its really useful if you don’t have the money to pay participants, or you can work remotely.
2. Pixlr has been around for awhile, but I never tried it until recently when I was on a computer *gasp* without Illustrator or Fireworks or Photoshop on it and I needed to make a heatmap. It took me probably 5 minutes or less to take a screenshot, crop the image and save as a PNG; which was much faster than it usually takes for some of the Adobe programs to open. I vote yes.
3. Notable is an application that helps people give direct asynchronous feedback on websites by taking screenshots and annotating them with comments. It stores and organizes the feedback online, and looks like a great way to get quick feedback from people on a team. The only drawback might be having less of a dialogue because its remote, but overall I think its a good way to involve busy people. Right now you have to sign up to get an invite and it looks like its fee-based.


Color Hunter

4. Color Hunter allows you to upload images and see exactly what colors are in those images, and then you can create new palettes based on that. I wish I had known about this a couple years ago; it would have made my life a lot easier.
5. If you’re a Google Analytics user, take advantage of Erik Vold’s Better GA Firefox Extension, which compiles other GA extensions into one package. You need to a) use Firefox (duh), b) install Greasemonkey, and c) install the extension.  Some things are small but nice features, like skipping that stupid “Access Analytics” button that GA makes you click for entry. It also lets you export into GoogleDocs, includes social media metrics and content searching in the nav bar, and has easier sorting on tables.

Also I really enjoyed the Oregon coast, good weather, and food, and I had to overhear the most ridiculous conversation between a couple from NYC. This was the best quote by far:

Godzilla is full of stoicism. You know, Godzilla was a stoic and noble creature….I think that’s why the Japanese like baseball so much, because its this sport with an aura of solitude.

And sometime soon I’ll be posting again on event tracking/page tagging ideas swirling around in my head at the moment. Until then I’m getting a haircut! w00t!

Man. The past couple of days have felt like those days where you keep JUST missing the bus (which I did both mornings). Though I did get to go to the Good Fries Place on Monday, which made me feel better.

WebTrends Update

I was kindly informed that WebTrends has a new beta version that should have a much improved user experience and features.  While I don’t have access to the beta to test it out, based on the mock-ups and callouts it does seem pretty cool. Or at least like there’s more Design behind it. Some things, like added breadcrumb navigation, are small changes but immensely helpful I think. It also sounds useful to be able to compare across profiles by metric, and see the percent changes for metrics when comparing. Basically it just looks cool, and I think the beta goes public in August? I want to try it out for sure.

WebTrends Report Screenshot

YWA

I really need to stop following Yahoo Web Analytics on Twitter, because they keep posting about all their cool features, and like the WebTrends beta, its available to a limited audience.

“Yahoo! Web Analytics is currently offered for free to all Yahoo! Small Business Merchant Standard, Merchant Professional and Store merchants, and all Advertisers that are supported by a Yahoo! Account Manager.”

Lame.com. They claim to have an advantage by using raw data and delivering in real-time. I was interested in seeing how including Twitter in their search results would play out, but I guess I’ll just have to become a Yahoo! Small Business Merchant or wait.

Epic Fails

I fully intended to go to the entire Web Analytics Wednesday event yesterday and then I was sucked into staying late at ZAAZ. I didn’t realize the structure of the event so I thought it was just mingling most of the time, but I walked into a discussion of the talk on integrating social media into web analytics. Then I had to leave early to see Harry Potter and I didn’t even get to meet anyone. What I did hear of the discussion was interesting, with people unsure about the influence and impact of social media and Twitter especially, where one person can impact exponentially more people through followers and retweets. I’m sad I missed any talk of good tools to use though.

So then I went to watch Dumbledore die, and I sat down in the front row of the theatre and realized “Oh no. This is a Harry Potter movie so its going to be at least 3 hours.” I barely stayed awake but it was enjoyable overall.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Oregon coast! Yay! Time for Tillamook ice cream, the beach, and good beer.

So much happened today, but I’m kind of too tired to write it all. In a nutshell:

1. ZAAZ is so so cool. The people, the building, the vibe, the work atmosphere…I really lucked out. I managed to lock myself in a stairwell somehow, and I snagged myself a copy of a book I’ve wanted to read for awhile: Web Analytics: an Hour a Day, by Avinash Kaushik.  I’m excited to start doing more things there.
2. I got treated to lunch and dinner by my mom. Very nice.
3. Got a job offer on a side job as a web metrics administrator for Microsoft. Part of the reason for #2.

I saw an interesting thing in the elevator that I thought would have fit in nicely with my HCI class, because it was an interesting design choice. I’m not sure if you even can press that button, or if it just lights up when help is coming. Also if you’re not a native English speaker you’re S.O.L.

Help is on the way button

UPDATE: I think the button can be pressed, or it affords pressing anyway. I will probably not press it to see what feedback I get.

I guess I was feeling too web analytically inclined lately because I have been only reading about IA/UX stuff now.  There was an interesting research posting by ClickTale, that studied how users scroll and whether or not they are actually reading things below the fold.  There are 2 parts to the study, but part 2 is where they give substantial conclusions and advice.

Turns out people do scroll. Go figure. Its relative to the position in the page though, and people’s attention span drops dramatically after the top until they get to the footer, which they pay close attention to. Here are the main recommendations:

• The most valuable web page real-estate is located near the page top, between 0 and 800 pixels. Visitor Attention and Page Exposure peak at about the 540 pixel-line.
• If you have a long web page,  add “stop points” such as headers and images to prevent your visitors from quickly scrolling down the page. It will prevent their attention from waning towards the end of the page.
• The footer of your page is important! Users do pay quite a bit of attention to that area of your page.

This is interesting to me because the primary argument of a person sitting in on a redesign meeting at the Burke was that no one will ever look below the fold, so they asked me to make a different mock-up reflecting that.  While I think the most important/engaging content should remain above the fold, it turned a content-rich page into something that does not have much content because of the design restrictions imposed. You can see an earlier mock-up in the portfolio section, but I was undecided on whether this was a better alternative or not. I would post the new mock-up but I don’t know if that’s allowed yet.

Uber complicated graph from ClickTale

And if anyone is in the market for an amazing smelling candle, I bought the Aloha Orchid one from Anthropologie. Very nice. And all the millions of people who decided to make identical Excel macro tutorials need to stop.

Bonnie, who I studied with in Scotland, is visiting with her friend Yael until Tuesday! We went to Cafe Besalu, the Ballard Farmers’ Market, and then got lost trying to get to the Mac and Jack’s brewery for the tour. So we saw parts of Redmond that are not worth seeing really.  Then we came back, ate at the Good Fries Place, and walked around the Locks and salmon ladder for a bit. Finally rounded things off with watching an episode of Real Housewives of New Jersey and deciding that one lady strongly resembles Jafar.

Real Housewife of New Jersey

Jafar from Aladdin

=

Today was my 2nd to last day at the Burke, and I got the final mock-up of new Ethnology landing pages done, as well as an analytics report on Mammals of Washington.  Ethnology curator & co. seemed to like the mock-ups, but they also seemed to forget that change is good. And the user is not like me. Etc. Hopefully it gets implemented in the near future but who knows. Tonight I finally visited Molly Moon’s ice cream in Wallingford, which I highly recommend now. Birthday cake flavored ice cream is the bomb.  Also The Grok is going to hopefully write a post about analytics for non-profits thanks to our Twitter messaging. Yay!