Eyetracking research

I found interesting research involving eyetracking the other day at PoynterOnline. When I went to the home page,I wasn’t quite sure what a site about journalism had to do with eyetracking for websites…until I realized the research is specific to news sites. Nonetheless,where a user’s eyes focus on a web page is useful information to designers regardless of the type of site it is.

Worth checking out,there’s very detailed graphs,etc showing the movement of a user’s eyes as they scan a page from top to bottom,highlighting where they spend the most amounts of time. They also spend a good deal of time discussing navigation location,advertising,paragraph length,writing style,image size (dimension),headline format,type size,and more. An interesting read to say the least.

2006

Everybody is making predictions for trends in 2006. Of particular interest to me of course are the predictions involving hot technologies,design trends,etc. While I’ve read recent posts by Andy Budd and Cameron Molla,I’d like to draw your attention to a comment about those posts made by Roger Johansson at 456 berea street and a response to that by Chris Heilmann. Chris is known for writing great articles over at A List Apart and his own personal site http://www.icant.co.uk/.

Chris thinks there is too much concentration on the new hot thing,ruby,ajax,etc and not enough focus on what those technologies can do,ie: using technology for its own sake rather than to accomplish something. I agree. The focus should be on the end result rather than pieces in the middle. Does a client really care if you’re using bleeding edge X if the end product meets their needs? From a project management and ongoing maintenance standpoint,they should probably understand the technology but realistically,end users most likely won’t,so what does it matter?

He also mentions he’d like to see more focus cleaning up the functions of CMS to better use and write cleaner CSS. This was of particular interest to me because of my recent research of the Sitecore CMS.

I think CMS is a great tool for businesses. We had this discussion many many many many times in my old position when it came to visibility on the web and search engine results. We just didn’t have it because we didn’t have fresh content on a regular basis. It shouldn’t be a web developers job to generate content for a web site about skin care or financial products and you wouldn’t expect an aesthetician or banker to be writing their own HTML and publishing content. CMS is a happy medium. The web developer sets it up and gets some templates in place for the general site layout and then writes some CSS rules to enforce branding guidelines. If you’ve chosen the right CMS,for the content authors,it’s as easy as using MS Word to publish. Do you think I’d write here as often as I do if I had to start a new HTML page from scratch? And upload it? And go into my old pages and create links to the new material? Fat chance.

A lot of the mundane details of my current position could be alleviated if we used a CMS. thankfully it’s a small portion but does anybody really want to pay an experienced developer to copy and paste from a Word document into HTML when the document’s author can write it directly in the CMS? Probably not. This would be a huge help in freeing me up to do more productive things.

So,for 2006,let’s concentrate on solving problems not technologies.

Watch Out TiVo Watchers

Laurie Sullivan from TechWeb says in the latest InformationWeek that a recent patent application filed by TiVo suggests that they plan on allowing the units to take advantage of RFID technology. With companies from all sorts of industries talking about inserting RFID chips into all sorts of products,TiVo could pick up on these in a household and customize media content on an individual basis.

Remember the RFID-equipped gallon of 2% you brought home last week? TiVo says it’s within a day of expiring. Get ready to see some very specific ads. Got Milk?

Stream of Consciousness

It was cold and clear when I stepped outside to get something out of the car. Maybe it was the crunching of my boots on the snow or the crisp air or the stars in the sky or the darkness or being alone and surrounded by trees but it made me think of the Battle of the Bulge. How cold were those guys sitting outside with ill-fitting coats and boots (if they had them at all) waiting to fight. It was about 5° here yesterday. How cold was it there? What was that like?

That made me think of the HBO series “Band of Brothers” which follows Easy Company from the first days of the war through the very end. I’ve heard rumors that HBO plans to make another series following another company,possibly one that served in the Pacific Theater. When? I’ve watched those ten episodes from the boxed set about five times each since getting them a year ago. It definitely ties with Lord of the Rings for title of my favorite epic.

Lord of the Rings,what a great trilogy. Peter Jackson did an amazing job. What does he have planned for King Kong? I hear it’s long. The reviewer on NPR last night said 3 hours 7 minutes. He also said Jackson probably could have shortened it to 3 hours 5 minutes if he took out all the unnecessary boring stuff. That sounds like a glowing endorsement.

Then I went back inside. It’s funny how the mind works.

Extraordinary Measures

Larry Beinhart,the author of the novel that was the basis for the movie “Wag the Dog” was a guest of Diane Rehm this afternoon talking about media spin. He has a new book out called “Fog Facts” in which he turns his attention to spin on real world events. A fog fact is a fact that has been published or could be easily known that has disappeared from the public consciousness. He uses the events of September 11^th as an example and backs up that assertion throughout the rest of the interview using examples of facts that seem to have been forgotten.

While I don’t intend to use this space to push any political beliefs or spout conspiracy theories,I think it’s important to sometimes examine things from an objective point of view. Critical thinking,especially when applied to subjects that are slightly uncomfortable produce the greatest results. I digress…

According to Mr. Beinhart,the media and government would have us believe that no one could have predicted that terrorists would use hijacked airplanes to attack the United States and that there was no way the hijackers could have been detected and stopped. It’s important to note that in order for this to feasible,then:

1. Ultimately no one can be held responsible for failure to stop events that were truly unbelievable.
2. Events that cannot be imagined cannot be stopped by normal means.

The events of September were truly unimaginable

The pilot episode of “The Lone Gunman”,a Fox spin-off of the X-Files,from March 2001 involves a terrorist plot using hijacked airplanes. Somebody made a television show whose plot was similar to an unimaginable event that wouldn’t occur for another six months,huh? Beinhart also mentions activities at a 2001 G-8 conference in Genoa that were temporarily suspended because of a suspected threat of attack by air. In fact,George W. Bush stayed on an aircraft carrier at that time rather than accomodations in Genoa. On December 24^th 1994,terrorists hijacked an Air France flight and threatened to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. This plot was ultimately stopped after a raid on the plane by French commandos.

These events aren’t madeup. They can easily be verified with a little research. If events so close to those of September 11^th have been attempted in the past,suspected in the past,or even fictionalized on television,then how can they be unimaginable?

Events that cannot be imagined cannot be stopped by normal means

On April 21^st 2001,one of the hijackers,Nawaf al-Hamzi,was stopped by an Oklohoma State Trooper for speeding. Al-Hamzi had been photographed at Al Qaeda meetings and the CIA knew he was a terrorist conspiring against the United States and suspected he was in the country. If the CIA shared any of this information with other agencies,Al-Hamzi would have been arrested on the spot. If I get stopped by the police,they can tell whether the car I’m driving is stolen or whether I wear contact lenses or not. Given that,why is it extraordinary that a man wanted by the CIA,FBI,and everybody else should get stopped by the cops and drive off with a fine? Zacarias Moussaoui,the suspected 20^th was arrested in Minnesota in August 2001 on immigration charges after flight school instructors became suspicious and called the FBI. Moussaoui’s name had been on the CIA’s radar since April when they were tipped off by an informant who met him at extremist gatherings in 1997. This association is confirmed by French intelligence in mid-August.

These guys weren’ master criminals. They made mistakes. At least two were in the custody of the police at some point after entering the United States. Al-Hamzi obtained credit cards and a social security using his real name. He also had a listed number while living in San Diego. How come nobody that knew who they were could find them? Who come no agencies that came into contact with them knew who they were?

According to Beinhart,government spin tells us we need to take extraordinary action (possibly including tortue) to protect our safety; that we that we needed to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and/or that we should suspend people’s rights in order to stay safe. The facts are,these guys were right under our noses for many months. Some agencies knew their backgrounds and were looking for them,some agencies had contact with them but had no reason to suspect they were anything other than ordinary. Nobody put two and two together. That doesn’t sound extraordinary to me.

Again,it’s not my intention to espouse any particular political beliefs but just to get people to think. These examples are all real news items that were published and probably widely talked about at the time. What happened? Is it true that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it?