PlanetEye

May 22nd, 2008

The Nuances of Discovery

Mark Evans

Director, Community

This a guest post by Matt MacGillivray, our lead developer:

I attended the “Does Location Matter” panel, hosted by Nora Young with special guest Bill Buxton at mesh on Tuesday. It was a different discussion than I was expecting, but in a good way. While the conversation focused on the concept of ‘telepresence‘ , it was an interesting usability discussion.

At the heart of the conversation, Bill, a usability researcher, drove home the idea of building systems that adhere to existing social protocols. What does this mean? Let’s try to understand this by way of an example Bill used.

If I wanted to speak to someone who was already having a conversation, I would approach them in a way that they could see me in their periphery. I would generally wait for a visual cue that would indicate whether they wanted to engage in a conversation, wait or to come back later.

Within the online world, we have chatting and video conferencing. When a conversation is initiated, a high contrast window generally appears on your desktop immediately. Imagine someone putting their face 6″ from yours, while waiting to engage in a conversation. It’s very distracting, and doesn’t allow you to easily ignore, acknowledge or reschedule a conversation.

Does it make sense to ignore the social protocols that have already been established? Is it easier for users to understand, or interact with a particular application if it extends or builds on existing social nuances?

What nuances exist within the discovery, planning and taking of a trip? How can we leverage these nuances to make the experience more compelling?

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