Involving Stakeholders in User Testing

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for May 24 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/utest-observers.html
		
Summary:
Besides usability specialists, all design team members should observe
usability. It's also good to invite executives. Although biased
conclusions are possible, they're far outweighed by the benefits of
increased buy-in and empathy.
				
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Usability Week 2010 conference

  * San Francisco, CA: June 14-19
  * Toronto, Canada: August 9-14

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

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INTRANETS NEEDED

We're looking for organizations to participate in our Intranet Design
Annual Competition and our Intranet Research Study. You can submit your
company's intranet for either or both of these. Please follow the
submission guidelines for each.

** Design Annual

We're looking for the world's 10 best intranets. Winners will be featured
in an in-depth case study in NN/g's Intranet Design Annual 2011. Past
winners have received recognition and PR for their intranets.

Think you have a good intranet design? Enter it for the award!

Deadline: July 1, 2010

  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/2011

** Research Study: Free intranet usability test

We're looking for intranets to be a part of our next round of intranet
research. Experts from NN/g will conduct a usability test of your intranet
at your offices and give you the results in a post-test meeting with your
team, for no fee.

We will use your screenshots and stories to update our report series and
our seminars. You'll receive a free copy of the report when research is
completed and three complimentary conference registrations to attend our
Las Vegas conference in December 2010.
	
Deadline: August 13, 2010

  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/freetest

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MOBILE PHONES: EUROPE'S NEXT MINITEL?

There's an interesting difference in the projects worked on by people
who attend our Mobile Usability seminar in the United States vs.
in Europe:

  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/mobile.html

At last week's Usability Week conference in London, many people still
worked on design for "feature phones", which is the industry's odd term
for old-fashioned mobile phones with a small screen and nothing but a
numeric keypad.

In contrast, at our US mobile seminars, almost nobody develops for
feature phones; almost everybody focuses on touch phones
(e.g., iPhone and Android) and smartphones (e.g., BlackBerry).

Feature phones still account for 82% of worldwide mobile phone sales:

  > http://bit.ly/MobileStats

With this huge market share, you might think that it's obvious to focus
on feature phone development. However, our usability studies show that
feature phones provide a horribly impoverished user experience where
it's almost impossible for users to perform any interesting tasks: 
	
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

Yes, if you have a site or service that is extraordinarily suited for
mobile use, then do make a scaled-down version for feature phones.
But for most people it's better to look to the future and develop
solutions with the better user interfaces possible on smart/touch phones.

This difference between our US and European conference audience
reminded me of an article UI wrote 9 years ago with the title
"Mobile Phones: Europe's Next Minitel?":

  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010107.html 

In this article, I predicted that regular telephones with numeric
keypads would not be the road ahead, but that we needed mobile devices
to dedicate their entire surface to the screen. Now that we have
the empirical data, I stand by this position.

I also predicted that Europe's strong position in traditional mobile
telephony might turn out to be an Achilles' heel. It's natural to focus
where you're strong. But in a classic case of the innovator's dilemma,
this focus on the older platform may make you miss the boat on the next
generation.

The Financial Times provides additional data in support of the
observation from my recent conference, claiming that there's very
little European work on iPad apps:

  > http://bit.ly/iPadEurope