Joseph Hsu

Lessons from Market Research / Consumer Product Research

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:29:25 -0400

I concluded my internship at Ruth Diamond Market Research, a company run by one of my professors Rhonda Ried, and thought I would share some lessons learned about administrating surveys.

Conducting the Survey

For general in-mall surveys, one of the hardest parts is getting people to stop for surveys, aka The Pitch. On location surveys are a lot easier to get response because you’re there as the person is interacting with the product/service.

In any situation, there is a process to the approach, the same one from advertising: AIDA

Attention - First, you need to be noticed
Interest - A product/service they are interested in, something they use
Desire - The preson needs to feel some sort of need (for a fix to a problem)
Action - Provide a solution for the problem

1. The Approach

Angle. Approach at a 45 degree angle, it’s less intimidating than straight and you don’t want to scare them from behind.

Simply smile. Put happy thoughts in their mind, make them feel good about the survey you want them to take.

Groups. Asking someone in a group is hard. Even if you are trying to directly ask one person, someone else may think you are asking the entire group and answer for everyone. This is why a directed opener can help.

2. Opening Your Mouth

Greet. First you need to get their attention, don’t simply ask if they could take the survey because their mind might be elsewhere and they’ll look at you with that ‘huh??’ face.

Be direct. Be direct in who you are asking. Make eye contact and

Ask for a favor. I found that a great way to ask someone to take a survey is to ask for help or a favor.

3. The Survey

Short - If you need in-depth information, ask for a follow-up or maybe in-person cold-approach is not right for this survey.
Consistent - keep the format consistent and readable throughout the survey. Learn from other surveys, maybe simply do some A/B testing on what’s best.

Observations

Make your scales decipherable, which number means what.

Make sure to…

disclose payment
termination questions early in the screener (don’t waste people’s time), independent market research groups need to maintain a brand also, don’t risk their relationship with people
re-evaluate early
be reachable in case of emergencies
better online surveys (be able to handle errors or disconnects)

Congrats to Dr. Lim (@brainopera). Made this little graphic to...

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 08:49:00 -0400

Congrats to Dr. Lim (@brainopera).

Made this little graphic to congratulate him on obtaining his Ph.D and for his hard work paying off. Kevin has been a huge influence to me. I remember first stumbling upon his blog and thinking “Wow, there’s someone this awesome in Buffalo?” I’ve learned a lot from him and met a lot of great people through him.

So, congratulations and good luck in the future!

Local Social Media Application #PRSATalk

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:00:55 -0400

From left to right: Liz (@urbanhipster), Me (@jhsu), and Kevin (@brainiopera)

There were two great talks at the #PRSATalk Sunrise Seminar Session 3: Social Media Applications: Local Case Studies given by Heidi Ofinowicz (@RoswellPark), marketing communications manager at Roswell, and Mike Schuler (@schoebdoo), promotions manager at Darien Lake. It’s always good to see application of social media engagement strategies, especially locally. Since social media is relatively new in their organizations, they had to experiment and had some misses and some surprising hits. The following points are my takeaways that I interpreted from the two talks.

Some Key takeaways

Heidi Ofinowicz (@RoswellPark), Roswell Park

In use: Twitter, Facebook (along with Facebook Connect), Youtube and Ning (Ride Roswell). Some use cases include live twittering at the Ride for Roswell where people could tweet out their reason for riding at this event, many were cancer survivors or knew someone who has/had cancer which led to very touching stories that the community members could share with each other. They also video taped some of these people.

When Tweeting, Heidi uses a 25/25/40/10 rule (Roswell news / Roswell research news / engaging / retweeting).

Multi-purpose content. The videos were not created specifically for Youtube, but were put together by the creative department for multiple uses and Youtube was a channel to share. This is a great way to share great stuff with content that is already being generated by the organization.
Integrate. Add widgets to current site, link between sites, so that your current efforts aid each other and allow users to find where they’re comfortable.
Set rules and policies. It’s social media, deleting commentary can have a negative impact, effecting a person’s freedom of speech, but also set rules (disclose them).

Mike Schuler (@schoebdoo), Darien Lake

Mike talked about his efforts using Facebook to promote and share news about Darien Lake. What he likes is the ability for people to ‘like’ a post and essentially share it with their network where it has potential to go viral (or atleast gain reach) and how people can leave comments and be notified of further comments thus sparking conversations.

Devotion. Mike takes an average about 1-1.5 hours throughout the day to mange various social media tools, while also wearing several different hats at Darien Lake.

Research before diving in. Your brand may already be visible out there. Do a search, take some notes and see how users are interacting and using your brand. Mike found lots of interesting groups about Darien Lake.
Develope a content schedule. This helps you be prepared and continuously broadcast content.
Track and Analyze. Having a content schedule allows you to review analytics (in this case Facebook Insights) and compare with your schedule to see what may have led to increase in returns (whether it’s higher rebroadcasting/sharing, interacting or becoming a fan).
Set rules and policies. Think of your organization (family business means family safe language). Dissenters are often quelled by devotees/supporters (once again, communities are self-regulated, given you have a developed & devoted community).
Find what works. A early promotion for young teens at the start of their Facebook page creation which included Facebook Ads in the campaign tactics led to high number becoming fans, but would not have worked without a promotion or event.
Be a person. Stay away from PR talk. Especially since Darien Lake’s audience (on Facebook) tends to be younger teen girls, he has to be down to Earth and talk like someone they can and should trust.
Monitor, and take action. Being there in the conversation when it happens allows you to get your side in to prevent misinformation. This is the power of social media, everyone can be part of the conversation, even your organization.

Here are the tweets that were tweeted during the talks:

@brainopera: Local social media stories: Heidi Ofinowicz at Roswell Park Cancer Institute + Mike Schuler (@schoebdoo) at Six Flags Darien Lake #PRSAtalk #
@brainopera: Heidi responds to comments on their Roswell Park Cancer Institute Youtube channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/rpcicreative #PRSAtalk #
@jhsu: Checking how Roswell Park in #Buffalo is using social media in different platforms. A lot of integration. #PRSAtalk #
@brainopera: Cancer survivors gather at http://myroswellpark.com. Powered by WordPressMU and BuddyPress, integrates Facebook, Youtube efforts. #PRSAtalk #
@jhsu: #PRSAtalk set your own rules based on your organization’s efforts, Roswell uses 40/25/25/10 engage, cancer info, research + news, and events #
@brainopera: How @RoswellPark tweets = 25% cancer news/retweets, 25% Roswell-specific news, 40% engagement/DMs, 10% tweetcasts/Roswell events #PRSAtalk #
@k3v2: Good presentation by Heidi Ofinowicz @RoswellPark about their social media efforts - much integration and good strategy #prsatalk #
@k3v2: Up next, @schoebdoo discusses social media strategy for Darien Lake theme park. #prsatalk #
@brainopera: RT @k3v2: Up next, @schoebdoo discusses social media strategy for Darien Lake theme park. {Mike focuses on their Facebook effort} #prsatalk #
@jhsu: #PRSAtalk Mike Schuler @schoebdoo from Darien lake: have a content schedule plan to be prepared, ie countdown to Darien Lake opening #
@k3v2: RT @jhsu #PRSAtalk Mike Schuler @schoebdoo from Darien lake: have a content schedule plan to be prepared, ie countdown to opening day #
@jhsu: #PRSAtalk having a content schedule really helps when looking back for analytics ( @schoebdoo uses facebook insight for thei page ) #
@BNPartnership: Check out how local organizations in #Buffalo have been using social media. Search Term #PRSAtalk #
@schoebdoo: Thanks for all who attended the #PRSATalk at Daemen College today! Good to talk to everyone. #
@jhsu: Hello from #PRSAtalk RT @brainopera: Quick picture of @urbanhipster @jhsu and me at #PRSA http://yfrog.com/0jey5dj #

Delicious Changes, Better? Or Deviating From Its Core Value

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:37:08 -0400

So Delicious has had some pretty drastic changes. I’m a heavy user of Delicious so I thought I would comment on it.

I hope someone from Delicious reads this because I have a few suggestions.

You can read about the changes in the Delicious blog post, but here’s a quick rundown:

Twitter integration
Time filter
Trends graph
Tag filter
Enhanced search results
Search suggestions
URL shortener? (maybe, seen in tweet by @delicious)

Search

Great job. The UI for search is great. I can easily select multiple tags (include tag in search or even exclude it from search, three states total) for the search. The recommendations are helpful to find more specifics like phrases the word was used in. Trends are nifty to see the change in popularity of a word in links that people have saved.

Twitter integration

Wow. This reminds me a lot of Breaking Tweets where some item is given and relevant tweets about it are shown. This is awesome to see what this link means to others. I really like this part of the Twitter integration.

Bookmark Sending/Sharing

Delicoius has always had the ability to send bookmarks through Delicious by putting a tag ‘for:username’. Now in addition, you can send through email or broadcast on your Twitter. This is nifty, but I think it’s more fluff. There needs to be more work on sharing inside Delicious, because by sharing out via the other methods the reciprocation isn’t really trackable.

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter commented on a tweet that he hates the twitter integration.

Some say Delicious is not about sharing but about “…information collection and quick reference.” I say Delicious is a social bookmarking site. It’s all about sharing, but Delicious’ archiving and referencing usage has been strong that this stands out the most.

How I’ve been using Delicious

I’ve been a fan since who knows when, well at least before Yahoo! bought Delicious and when the URL was still Del.icio.us) and found easy ways to find relevant bookmarks besides the search form.

There’s lots you can do besides the typical delicious.com page and delicious.com/popular pages.

Simple URL Manipulation

Finding popular bookmarks with a tag is easy:

http://delicoius.com/popular/gtd

You can easily search and filter by tags by using this URL and putting tags together using the ‘+’ sign. This gives you recent bookmarks with those tags (or use one tag):

http://delicious.com/tag/ruby+bdd

I’m sure there’s more out there like filter by dates and such (but would probably be through the API).

What I Would Like

Have a permalink to a single bookmark on delicious (similar to how on Twitter you can click the date to view one tweet). This is so I can share bookmarks on delicious so others can read my comments or save the bookmark right there.
Better view for network bookmarks. I actually use the Delicious network page as my homepage so I would like to be able to navigate my network’s bookmarks more easily and distinguish between users (besides just text). Maybe have a profile picture, except be unique and have users use a favicon, that would be sweet and relevant!
Commenting via Twitter integration. Show tweets about links, but only from people in my Delicious or Twitter networks! This could be the “commenting” feature that people have been asking for. Well, it wouldn’t be commenting with threading per say, but it would definitely be a conversation starter.
Outbox. The inbox parrallel to emails is great, work with it. Maybe have an outbox too? An outbox to view the links I’ve shared with my network and with whom I’ve shared them with.

Conclusion

I don’t think that Delicious is really deviating, I’d say the changes are exploring different ways to search. I just wish they would concentrate on sharing between users on delicious and making things more social within delicious.

How I'm Staying Afloat (and Alive) Through College

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:59:39 -0400

Looking back, I’m amazed at how I’ve made it here and still alive.

I’ve changed my major twice, got dismissed, took courses at a community college and got re-accepted back to UB. My GPA has been terrible (on a comeback).

Academic tips:

go to class. Even if you think you can ace the class without being there, go. By being there, you can really absorb the course material and interesting tidbits from the professor and other students. Learn from others. The diversity of your class gives you the opportunity to hear what others are thinking and learn from them. You also get to meet really interesting people.

be open, talk. Put on a smile and at least say ‘hi’. When class gets hard, it’s always nice to have someone to work it out with.

take notes & learn to take notes. I find taking notes on paper better because you aren’t limited to the strict formatting of digital documents and you can position and align however you need to. Also, taking notes on paper allows for quick sketches and diagrams.

track progress & have goals. At UB, we have something called a DARS report. This report lets me know what the requirements are for my degree and gives the different courses I can take to fulfill the requirements. This report can be easily put together yourself if your college doesn’t have something like this. Don’t just depend on your advisers, they may only give you a suggested path instead of one you’d be most happy or successful with.

If you feel lost, make sure you keep doing things, don’t let your self stay idle or you’ll stay stuck, or do things that will lead to action like planning a project (with tasks broken down to smaller tasks).

some things that helped jump start my life

reading good content ( via RSS reader )
clean inbox
GTD
- Reading on GTD, Lifehacks and a bunch of DIY guides. These really put actions in your hands
- segment time, break down tasks
joining groups
writing a blog (several xangas, blogger, custom blog, and a ton of other blogging platforms)
find groups/clubs/meetups to join to help gain new experiences, both in and out of school:
Performed in AASU night at UB (1, 2), won an advertising campaign proposal in class.
I’ve attended Tweetups, Ruby meetups and BarCamp

Microapp: HDhours

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:20:00 -0400

I got tired of manually inputting my work schedule every week for work so I created this mini app that basically parses my work schedule and puts it into google calendar. It still needs some work, but it works for now.

HD Hours ( http://hdhours.heroku.com )

Paste in your schedule and enter your initials along with google account information
prevents duplication (by saving the last shift, probably should use a better method)

Facebook Username

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:14:56 -0400

Awesome, just grabbed my Facebook username: http://facebook.com/josephhsu

FYI: just discovered that you can add/remove periods anywhere in the username so http://facebook.com/….joseph.hsu would work.

Easily view site stats that use Clicky

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:58:36 -0400

I just noticed that on Kevin Lim’s blog there is a tab that says ‘stats’ which links to a public Clicky page.

I never realized before that Clicky had a public stat page for every user! What this means is if you know a website’s site id, you can view their stat page.

How to find a sites Clicky ID

If the site has the GetClicky button

if the site has the button, it will usually have the image (like mine in the footer):

if they do, just copy the the url, extract the number (that’s the site_id) and append it to:

http://www.getclicky.com/stats/home?site_id=

If the site doesn’t have the image

A quick way to check if the site is even using get click is to view the page source (in Firefox, right-click, then select ‘view page source’), then do a search (ctrl + f in firefox) and search for ‘getclicky.com’. You will most likely see a line that looks like:

‘site_id’ above will be a number. Take taht number and append it to

http://www.getclicky.com/stats/home?site_id=

and you’ll be able to view their stats page!

I hope this has been useful for you. Happy stats hunting!

Checked out Palm Pre here in Boulevard Mall Buffalo

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:40:51 -0400

Palm Pre, quick glimpse

So today I went to check out the Sprint Palm Pre at the Boulevard Mall here in Buffalo, NY. First off, I saw a glimpse inside their cabinet and they definitely have more than just three (don’t know exact number though). There was no line when I went and very few checking out the Palm Pre.

Observation: After checking Twitter, you see that ‘Palm Pre’ and ‘AT&T’ are in the list of trending topics. AT&T is on there because of an opera in SF. Though, no sign of ‘Sprint’.

Web OS

The web OS was amazing. Everything felt nice while using. The card system works amazing for switching apps.

My only gripe is viewing your different apps and navigating them felt weird, I think it’s because the ribbon menu at the bottom takes up a lot of space and look like they’re part of the apps listing. You can scroll up and down and swipe left and right (reall nice indicators of how many screens of apps you have to either side). The multi-directional navigation of apps kind of makes things confusing.

Performance

I was told there is a maximum of 15 cards that could be open at a time. That’s pretty decent compared to the iphone’s one (though I’m sure Apple will do something about multi-apps).

While playing around, switching cards was very smooth, though opening menus was delayed and gave no indication that it was loading the menu (this resulted in closing menus by accident).

Sharp Edge

You may have seen the video of the Pre cutting cheese. (see embed if you haven’t)

After playing with the Pre, it indeed has a sharp edge, but at most irritates the skin on your hand. Maybe take some sandpaper to it? I don’t see this as much of a big deal unless you have sensitive hands.

Keyboard Haptics

photo by whatleydude

Compared to other Palm phones, they keyboard buttons are flatter and bigger. Noticed that I mistyped very often and the small spell checker database. Words went uncorrected.

App Catalog (the app store)

The App Catalog is still in Beta, so stability is questionable. There a very few apps currently available. Tweed (by pivitollabs) twitter client is very nice.

Discounts

Sprint has some really awesome discounts off monthly bills. I found out since I go to UB, I get a discount of 10%, but then since I get paid by UB also (part-time at CIT Helpdesk) I get a total of 19%!

Here are some discounts I found out:

10% for students at UB
19% for working at UB
25% for Tops employees (insane!!)

Conclusion

I’m really tempted to get it, but I think I’ll wait for WWDC to see what Apple has to offer.

Buffalo Police + CrimeReports.com

Fri, 29 May 2009 16:08:37 -0400

Awesome. Buffalo Police team up with CrimeReports.com. This partnership makes police reports transparent in order to get the data out there and hopefully result in residents providing information to solve crimes.

The city has hired CrimeReports.com, a company that uses computer technology to make law enforcement reports more transparent.
— via Buffalo News

the Five Eras of the Social Web

Wed, 06 May 2009 10:12:00 -0400

Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester senior analyst, gives a look back and a future prediction on how consumers, companies, media and social networks have gone through changes that change the way they engage and will continue to do so. He presents this as “the Five Eras of the Social Web.”

The report was based on both quantitative by Cynthia Pflaum (@cpflaum), and quantitive through interviewing 24 companies.

Picture: the Five Eras of the Social Web

DestinationCRM.com has a great summary of the report.

Event Planning with Social Media

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:32:47 -0400

A look at “HOW TO: Plan and Promote Events With Social Media” by Mashable, from a student’s perspective.

The tips given by that article are good for planning large events, but what about an organization that plans multiple events, and often?

A few things to consider:

Is the event open to the public? What is the scope of the network?
Does it reoccur?

Notifying

Facebook is a great and easy way to promote events. But it only gets easy when you already have a group, sending invites to individuals is no fun. Do not use this to promote weekly meetings, it gets annoying. Also, make sure you have a general group and send invites for events, don’t use groups for events (unless it’s for people organizing the event).

Meetup.com is great for monthly meetups, usually open meets where anyone is welcome, but can be limited to private for only members.

Provide a Calendar

Google Calendars lets you share calendars with others, so they can view events however they want. This is great for people who don’t want to have to check for events. You can even get Facebook events to your Google Calendar.

Photos

Photos should go to Flickr and Facebook. Both are useful. Flickr allows higher quality photos and is better for sharing. Facebook lets you tag people and makes it more social with your relevant network. On Flickr, create a pool and let people know what tag to use so they can be searchable.

Still Growing

For students, the best way right now to get an event out is via Facebook invite, because it’s easier to reach students. The main problem being how do you get the invite out to people you don’t send invites to? The only way to see what events others are going to is via the Events page.

Advertising Proposal for Tonawandas

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:45:49 -0400

Last week my group presented a proposal in class, our professor is Rhonda Ried, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Tonawandas here in NY. This campaign was meant to build a consistent brand between the cities of Tonawanda and North Tonawanda.

*Apology for some missing ‘s’s or any other errors in the presentation. As you can tell, I like using 280slides.

On slide 7, we were stuck between “home, canal home” and “canal, sweet canal”. I was leaning towards the latter because it would emphasize the canal = home and seems more grammatically correct.

Mentioned the Ithaca Commons Cam that was done by AWP and @sursly was kind enough to respond to some questions I had regarding the cam.

After the presentation, Rhonda and I talked via email and brought up a volunteer position that I may take for the Tech Committee for the chamber of commerce.

What was learned

I noticed a lot of things watching the other groups present, both good and bad.

I disliked that several groups followed their marketing plan write-up so closely. I believe the presentation should concentrate on the broader concept of the campaign. It seemed some groups took their marketing plan and split it up into slides.

The way our group put our slides together was in this fashion:

Present results from primary research. Explain what stood out from the research and how we used this for the campaign.
The concept/theme that is behind the campaign. This is the big idea. This is where we introduced the logo.
Application. How this would be executed. This included our creative.
Consequences. What would this require of the client. This is the cost estimation.

One thing that we really missed was not including/emphasizing our objective. We were really pushing to build a brand, since the main issue was awareness of the Tonawandas. A lot of groups were trying to set up events, which I thought may not be the best tactic in this situation.

Another thing that several groups did was insult the client. One group said that they are good with clients who have gone ‘stale’.

On the first day of presentations, many groups did not use the primary research that was given to us. They quoted stats from their own secondary research which was limited to our own efforts (~30 people surveyed) and the results differed. The survey actually stated that around 60% rated the Tonawandas a 4 or 5 (out of 5).

Results

We won (well our professor picked two groups out of ~10)! They said they liked a lot of our creative, use of research and social media implementations. Got a Tonawandas Gateway Harbor t-shirt, confidence booster and a volunteer opportunity out of it! Presentations are always a learning experience for me. I’m able to keep it together, but I still need to slow down and be clear. I think I may take a public speaking course.

Marketing for Results: Tour of Entercom

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:38:00 -0400

For my advanced advertising course at UB, we went to Entercom for a tour (second time, first was last semester) on March 31, 2009. Once in the lobby, we were greeted by Don Tomasulo, Director of Results at Entercom. He recently had his title changed from Director of Marketing (I believe). Also got to meet DJ Anthony, very cool guy. He recorded each person in the class introducing themselves and mashed it together and put it on the air in about an hours time while DJing! He’s a really awesome guy funny, full of energy (even his boss Don compliments him on his hard work) and crazy multitasker.

Here’s my notes from the presentation and tour.

be good first

Need good business. Good advertising puts a bad business out fast.

marketing bridge

product fair price placement people / branding advertising (never stop)

Tim Horton’s lovers

Don presented an interesting theory on why Tim Horton’s has such devote fans.

Tim Horton’s = hot brew thin cup = coffee feel
Dunkin Donuts uses Styrofoam cups, insulates too well

advertise, continuously

McDonald’s stopped advertising for 2 weeks, sales dropped

Minds resist change => takes time

experience + expectation + exposure = share of mind = share of market

Radio is still relevant

power of sound: - iconic vs echoic, retention & recall - sound is tied to memory recall

Radio brings social (local feel)

creative is what makes a difference. Radio is the channel for messages + creative, vessel to brains.

book recommendations

“Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout
“Wizard of Ads” by Roy Williams. In the book, Roy Williams talks about 12 reasons why advertisements fail.

Company Brands Really Becoming Identities

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:50:00 -0400

photo by G3K

Brands

Companies have already been building brands with personalities. Now companies are giving identities via various social media tools such as social networking sites, blogs and twitter (eg. comcastcares).

Brand identity is the intended unified characteristics that form the brand.

Social networks giving brands identities

Myspace & Facebook

Bands have been embracing social networking through myspace for a while now. Some bands even use Myspace as their main website. Fans dream of getting in touch with the stars they admire. That’s why they go to concerts, try to get a signiture or a photo and try to get as close to the front as possible.

With Facebook’s recent redesign they have made the pages consistent with user pages, full with tabs and their own streams. This gives companies the ability to appear and act like a normal user.

Pages not only appear like profile pages, they function exactly like them. Instead of ‘friends’, they have fans, which is sort of one-way as they can’t become a fan of users. Once someone becomes a fan, a thumbnail and link appear in the user’s info tab in their profile. They even have a wall where you can view the page’s stream and people can leave comments. Luckily you can change the settings for the default view to only show page updates.

Twitter, the chit-chat

Companies have also been migrating over to Twitter, whether just to stream their content (@nytimes) or to get involved in the community (@JetBlue). This allows brands to be at the same level as other users and converse with them.

Twitter provides a place to not only broadcast but also as a customer-relations tool. Building real relationships with the customers and getting the word out through multilogue.

Branding

Branding, a name or symbol associated with a company, is the physical appearance of a company, the face, that is judged based on reputation and appearance. It a gives physical body to the company.

Voice

Blogs have long been popular with companies as a way to broadcast. Social media has opened many more channels and easier ways to go to where their customers are, in the social networks. The difference now is that the customers can directly respond and converse with other customers. Information then becomes disseminated through multilogue.

Mix-in

Content from companies is now mixed in with the content of consumers, whether via Facebook stream or twitter updates. While they are taking on identities, they really must be an Identity by opening up a two-way channel if they want to really build relationships with customers.

Web Usability presentation

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:01:00 -0400

For my Communication Graphics course, we had to pick a book and topic to give a presentation. I chose the book “Don’t Make Me Think!” by Krug and the topic of Web UI design.

(See read the full post for presentation)

In the first half of the presentation, I go over some of the points made by Steve Krug. He takes the user’s perspective when visiting a website. Basically, you should be able to justify every element you use and make sure you are able provide information at a quick glance.

I’ve previously look in to Facebook’s homepage redesign before. In this presentation, I look at the design aspects of the changes and how it compares to Steve Krug’s homepage design guidelines.

The Elements of Social Architecture

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:48:00 -0400

The Elements of Social Architecture:

A great article about the elements social architecture by Christina Wodtke.

Posted at A List Apart on March 3, 2009.

Facebook Redesign

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:41:00 -0400

note: you may not have gotten the new design, I believe they are rolling it out google-style (some users at a time)

Changes

real-Time streaming

My favorite change to the homepage is real-time streaming of updates. This AJAX goodness now auto-updates the stream without us stalkers having to repeatedly press ‘refresh’. What real-time does is allows us to waste less time trying to fetch from our streams which breaks our workflow. I’ve presented about this at the last BarCamp Buffalo.

highlights

Re-vamped right column to show popular items from your network’s stream. Filters out the good stuff, saves the trouble of looking through your stream and I believe it also is determined by clicks (seen some photos there with no comments).

filter by group

Left side lets you see groups (of friends) that you may have created and allows you to view items only posted by those people. Time to organize out some of my network. Family group is a definite must.

filter by type

Another filter is the ability to filter by type. This allows you to filter the stream by things such as video, photos, links, notes and even by application. When you click on some of these, they change the publisher (check next section).

publisher box by context

The publisher, the box that allows you to post to wall, update your status, share a link and other things, has now been re-vamped to fit any context. In the homepage, try clicking on the video filter, now the publisher lets you record a video (through webcam) or post a video! How awesome is that? It’s now flexible to adjust to your context.

prediction: Since they have application filters, I wonder if they’ll open up API methods to allow applications to add features to publisher based on their own context.

rounded corners

A small change, purely eye candy, is that small profile pictures now have rounded corners, less dangers for the eyes.

Additional Reading

See the official Facebook homepage tour
look into the redesign by Eric Eldon at VentureBeat

Top Facebook Games Based on Player Reward

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:19:16 -0400

Here is the list of top social games based on rewards. I added the active monthly user numbers, rating and type of reward.

*note: some ratings weren’t available (probably due to not enough ratings) and the numbers are from March 9th, 2009.

It’s interesting to see that the top game according to Inside Social Games rewards money, but does not have even close to the number of users as the others (maybe due to length of release?). Are users looking for money or things that enhance the game (eg. virtual goods/currency)?

Read the original article “Super Rewards The Top 11 Player Rewards in Facebook Games” posted on March 9th, 2009.

Facebook Relationship Management: does it increase personal network size?

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:43:25 -0400

Facebook Data Team did some research on relationship management through Facebook, which was used in the article “Primates on Facebook” in the Economist.

The question being: is Facebook increasing the size of people’s personal networks?

Social networks provide a means of relationship management through passive engagement, a one-way communication of observing activity in their network. Facebook provides the News Feed as a way to monitor your network’s activity.

Here we can see that there is a one-way communication with half our total network.

Read “Maintained Relationships on Facebook”