Web Directions 2007

Ben BaileyUsability ConsultantStamford Interactive

November 2007

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48 hour geek fest

Web design conference, Sydney late Sept Local and international speakers 600 attendees

– Designers– Developers– Content– Managers– Private/public/large/small/freelance

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Topics

Mobile Usability Accessibility eMarketing Analytics Community driven content Technology/programming Software Design/development techniques Philosophy - sort of

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Successful Community Collaboration using Wikis – Angela Beesley The founder of Wikia, the community-focused

wiki hosting site which is developing over 2500 wikis.

Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organisation responsible for Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, and the other Wikimedia projects.

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Wikipedia

Founded in 2001 9th most visited site on the Web Created and operated by volunteers Openly editable (once logged in) 5,400,000 registered users Open source software 230 languages (English has the lion’s share) Non-profit

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Can you trust user generated content?

Open to correction and improvement Everything is reversible Changes are transparent

– User, date, time, IP Poor content is flagged

– Bots run to highlight questionable edits Articles that are subject to debate are

“tagged”

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Wiki communities

Welcome newcomers Rewards old-timers Well documented dispute resolution process

– Avoidance– Discussion– Disengage– Third party opinions– Informal mediation– Formal mediation– Arbitration

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Wiki text

Markup language Simplified version of HTML No standards

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Example Wiki text

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A successful wiki is…

community owned openly editable freely licensed full of members with a shared goal and

common vision

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How can Stamford use a Wiki?

Knowledge management tool (SZ) Alternative to email Drafting proposals Project management

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Social media and Government 2.0 – Sebastian Chan (Powerhouse Museum) “More than ever before there is an enormous

amount of publicly held data about our community, our culture, and citizens. How can government respond to the opportunities of Web 2.0?

How can government websites and databases become more citizen-centric, and more responsive by leveraging social media?”

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How popular are Govt websites?

2% of all websites visited by the Australian public– Up to 6% if you include health and edu (Hitwise Aug

07) BOM 17% ATO 3.7% Centrelink 2.25% Ourbrisbane.com 1.15% Medicare 1.1% ABN lookup 0.7%

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Early experiments – Electronic swatchbook A digitised collection of fabrics and patterns

over 300 years www.powerhousemuseum.com/electronicswat

chbook/s/

Used by designers and students Public domain Offers print resolution downloads 10,000 users and gigabytes of downloads per

month

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Electronic swatchbook tagging

Cataloging this much content would be too time consuming with traditional models

Invites users to “tag” swatches with simple descriptions– Patters– Colours– Moods

Users will tag without incentives

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Powerhouse collection search

Most of the collection is in storage Want to allow unskilled users access to the

collection via simple search– Use filters, tags to increase accuracy– 95% of all objects views at least once in first 10

weeks– 17 million objects views– Most popular object only viewed 28,000 times

The most viewed object is…

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Delta Goodrem’s evening dress

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Enhanced serendipity and browsability

Object name, subject and type taxonomy added/created by trained staff– Has been applied to 90% of collection

User keywords/tags (folksonomy)– Anonymous– No incentive– Badwords filter– 8000 user tags– 5000 unique tags

Tags compliment existing records and taxonomies Used for discovery not descriptive purposes “Bridge the semantic gap”

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Learning more about the collection

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Moving the web forward – Chris Wilson

Internet Explorer Platform Architect at Microsoft. He’s worked on web browsers since 1993, when he co-authored the first version of NCSA Mosaic for Windows.

Since 1995, he’s worked on Microsoft’s web platform.

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So when’s the next version of IE?

Won’t discuss the features, date or name of the next version of IE

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Chris’s Web 1993

Content should be simple to create and serve Everyone should be a content producer Change was driven by the need to connect –

hyperlink referencing, not folder structures

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Chris’s definition of “Web 2.0”

Caring about the quality of the UI/UX Rich social experiences to make the web

immersive Portable across platforms, devices, languages,

cultures

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3 types of people on the Web

Web Developers – Painful Browser vendors – Painful and a constant

target Everybody else – experience getting better

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IE and security

Not a good history IE has the most users therefore the most

amount of attacks Every time a new technology is invented it has

implications for the security of IE and Windows

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IE, web standards and not “breaking the Web” IE has over 500,000,000 users Compatibility with IE6 prevents easy browser

upgrades– Users expect sites to work in IE7 like they did in IE6– If a page works in Browser X, Version Y then it must

still work in Version Y+1 “How do we support standards without

breaking the Web for millions of users?”

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Mob rules - Mark Pesce

Shortly somebody will become the three billionth mobile phone subscriber.

The people are the network! We can get in front of this spree of self-

organisation - or get run over by it. Either way, mob rules are the new laws of business, politics, and culture.

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Where there’s a will…

TV shows and movies end up on BitTorret before they are released. (Oink)

Open source movement “ever so slowly eating Microsoft”

Ricardo’s iPhone Radiohead – In Rainbows

– Cliff Richard “Encyclopedia Britannica is a ‘walled garden’

and is made obsolete by Wikipedia”

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Mobiles in the developing world

Cheap mobile handsets help fishermen earn a better living

Initiatives in Bangladesh place mobile phones into the hands of the poor– “Helping the poor to communicate is one of the best

ways to help them improve their economic status”

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You can’t censor the Mob

“The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” – Gilmore’s law (1993)– Great Firewall of China

Net Alert– 16 y/o boy 30 mins to crack the filters and after an

upgrade it took him an additional 40 mins

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Is Web Directions an opportunity for Stamford? Yes What do you think?