Back in 2005, Yahoo! Search announced a “vision statement”.

Enable people to find, use, share and expand all human knowledge.

Somewhat ambitious, sure. A little grand, perhaps. But what a great way to think, not only about search, but also about everything we make on the web.

And it happens to form a handy mnemonic in the shape of the acronym FUSE.

At the time I was working on learning technology and intranet projects at the BBC, and found it was a really useful way to think about everything we designed, built and put out there.

If we design this site, template or widget, if we publish this content, if we make this web app, will people be able to find it, use it (more recently I’ve started using ‘understand’ as well), share it and extend it (which I prefer to ‘expand’)? FUSE?

And on every project I’ve worked in the five years since, it has still come in useful. Whatever becomes of Yahoo!, I for one, have a lot to thank them for.

[For more on FUSE, see this blog post by Tom Coates, not a fan of the acronym! In 2006, the BBC came up with its own version of FUSE - in Find, Play Share (BBC press release, Guardian article) - as its approach to all audience-facing digital output. Both work, but I find FUSE really gets people thinking.]

These days we can all carry our loved ones around in our pocket or handbag using the various social networking features of the Blackberry – including using it as a phone, presumably.

On several web projects recently, I’ve been conducting user research and usability testing with people in different locations (including other continents) using screen-sharing tools like WebEx and LiveMeeting. So even though we may be several thousand miles apart, we’re both looking at the same screen.

An important aspect of a user research session is building initial trust between the researcher and the respondent, so that the respondent feels comfortable and not too self-conscious. This involves an opening conversation, where I’ll introduce myself and explain the purpose of the research. I’ll then ask the respondent to tell me a bit about themselves, and gradually ask questions which narrow down towards the subject matter of the research session.

In person, you can pick up on all the cues available to you, and adjust your tone, proximity, style etc. to find a good mode for putting the other person at ease.

Using software such as LiveMeeting and talking over the telephone (or VOIP) you lose a lot of those cues.

So to try to help put the respondent more at ease, the first thing I’ll do during the introductions is share my web browser via LiveMeeting (or WebEx etc.) and show my profile page. This could be on the respondent’s company’s intranet, or my LinkedIn profile, or whichever seems the most appropriate.

Then I’ll encourage the respondent to do the same, or I’ll have a browser tab available with their profile page available to share if I can access it.

I find this really helps put people at ease and feel more able to “think out loud” when we move on to usability testing the prototype, web app or intranet site in question.

It’s never quite the same as being there in person, but it’s definitely an improvement to just being a disembodied voice at the end of the line.

• Underground efforts yield big results. Companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, and then sanctioning them within the enterprise.
• Frontline workers are driving the vision. Often, senior managers aren’t open to the possibilities for enterprise 2.0 innovation because they’re not actively using these tools outside of work. Indeed, many senior managers still consider such tools as something their kids do. One of the dirty secrets of enterprise 2.0 is that you don’t have to teach or convince younger workers to use these tools; they expect them and integrate them as easily into their work lives as they do in their personal lives.
• Communities are self-policing. When left to their own devices, communities police themselves, leaving very little need for tight organizational control. And such peer-to-peer policing is often more effective than a big brother approach. Companies that we studied said abuse was rare in their communities.
• Business need is the big driver. Although our report discusses specific tools (blogs, wikis, and such), enterprise 2.0′s power is not about tools, it’s about the communication shift that those tools enable.
• Organizations must cede power. Using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with customers has taught many companies that they can no longer control the message. This also rings true when using Web 2.0 tools for internal communication. Companies that once held to a command-and-control paradigm for corporate messaging are finding it hard to maintain that stance.

Nielsen talks a lot about integrating the social networking tools in to the rest of the intranet, where useful and possible. My team did a lot of work in this area a few years ago at the BBC.

Each scenario has its own starting page, each of which we put in a different tab in Firefox.

This means setting up all the tabs and start pages for each research session.

To save time, we set these up once.

We then select Bookmarks > Bookmark All Tabs… > {name the folder}. [Keyboard shortcut for this is Ctrl+Shift+D]

These are then all available for each session via Bookmarks > {folder name} > Open All in Tabs.

Handy.

If you’re using tabs in Internet Explorer, the same functionality is available via Favorites > Add Tab Group to Favorites > {name the tab group}

The Tab Groups are then available via the “Favorites Center” [Alt+C on the keyboard].

The dreaded “Skip Intro”.

The picture of the boss on the homepage obscuring any useful content or functionality.

I was just discussing this with a friend and came up with a new name for an old problem “Bonus-centred design”

Here’s how it works:

• Take direct orders from the boss. Do not ask questions
• Do not clarify purpose
• Remember the boss knows what good design is – it must be interactive have things you can click to make other things move around
• Do not under any circumstances talk to potential users of the site
• You only need one person to test with. The boss
• Do tell the boss how many hits the site will get. Forget about task completion
• Do your best to get a video of the boss on the homepage welcoming people to this amazing online experience
• Reinforce the design with company branding at every opportunity. The more suited to busines cards and company stationery the better
• Make it all about the company and not about the people who use your products and services
• Do not worry about accessibility. It takes time and costs money. And anyway the software supplier assures their product will have an accessibility patch very soon

I’m sure there are more…

The Times came out on top, even though it makes no use of an on-screen text-resizing widget, nor of accesskeys as shortcuts for keyboard users.

Overall my conclusion has to be that only a couple of newspapers are taking seriously any obligation to make their services accessible. I was particularly concerned by The Sun and the Daily Mail using CAPTCHA technology with no alternative for users with accessibility issues, but the general pattern for most papers was quite poor. Many are putting completely unneccessary barriers in the way of people reaching their content by making simple decisions like using fixed font sizes, and not including ‘skip navigation’ links.
[source: currybetdotnet]

The results are worrying but not surprising. And as Martin says, he’s still really only “scratching the surface” in his tests.

Sadly all too few website managers understand their obligations as far as accessibility and the law is concerned. Webcredible have a useful summary here, but in a nutshell you can be sued if you do not make reasonable adjustments to provide equal access to your content to everyone.

The RNIB has approached two large companies with regard to their websites. When they raised the accessibility issues of the websites under the DDA, both companies made the necessary changes, rather than facing the prospect of legal action (in exchange for anonymity).
[source: webcredible]

People really shouldn’t need convincing. I wonder if it would make any difference if they realised that by improving the accessibility of their websites, they will also make them more usable and more “readable”. And when it comes to the big internet search engines, being readable means being findable.