Watching the Cutting Edge for Usability: An Interview With Brian Benzinger

Brian Benzinger writes Solution Watch, a popular blog reviewing new Web 2.0 products and services. Though he is a programmer himself, his reviews are selective, thorough and he prioritizes being accesible to less technical readers. His high quality and prolific blogging got him into the Web2.0 Working Group, a network of some of the best bloggers covering emerging web tools and the industry around them.

Marshall

You put in an incredible amount of time reviewing lots of cutting edge products and services. What are the key things you look for when reviewing something?

Brian

There are many key factors that I look for when reviewing a service. I first test it thoroughly and determine if it is beneficial to my visitors. I try not to write too much about services that are very
similar to others that I have already written about, unless there are noticeable differences. When I decide on a service to write up, I look for special techniques being used, important features, browser compatibilities and so on. Feature wise, I usually look for tools that make life easier, advanced use in new technologies, and social orcollaborative functionality, to name a few.

As I look over a service, I take around a page or so of notes and then look over the notes determining if I feel I should write about it or not. I play with certain features, sometimes get friends involved to help out the testing, and just try to use the service I am testing as if anyone would use it. If I feel that the service is decent or lacks certain features that I think are important, I will send an email to the developer of the service with my notes and feedback in private. If I
love the service all around, or if I find the service can use some minor adjustments, then I may end up reviewing it on Solution Watch. It's a time intensive process, but seems to work for me.

Marshall

What do you think are the most promising or exciting types of tools you've been seeing for a. internal communication and b. communication with online readers?

Brian

Collaborative document sharing seems to be a big one lately for internal communications with services such as Writely (Brian's review), JotSpot Live (review), and Rallypoint (review). Organizations can send documents securely to other employees, they can work on them together, add comments, and even set permissions.

I have also seen some email related services, such as Mailroom from Sproutit (review), that could help save valuable time for companies and employees. Other then that, basic email, Instant Messaging, and project management systems seem to still be popular with internal communication.

When it comes to tools for communication with online readers, you see a wide range of services. Social bookmarking, photo sharing, blog tools, online Instant Messaging and the list can go on and on. It really is exciting to see all these new tools being released every day and seeing how a simple service can really change the way someone manages their everyday life. Just the other day, I reviewed a service for Bloggers, called coComment (review), that actually allows you to track comments from any blog so you can easily keep track of the discussion. The way we use computers just keeps getting more and more interesting as each day goes by, and definitely for the better!

Marshall

Are there things that you feel are being forgotten or done in a way that impairs usability of these news services? Is there anything you'd like to see becoming a more widespread practice amongst software writers for the sake of maximizing usability?

Brian

There definitely are many services out there that need improvement when it comes to usability. Many of them get too caught up in the new technologies, want to get their cool product out, and not realize some usability hazards as they make it. The main one that drives me crazy is when Ajax (definition) is used incorrectly or when it is not needed. We don't need sections of a site loaded in whole by an Ajax call, just the little important things that you don't feel require a whole new document and page refresh to handle, like adding tags, marking an item with a star, and things of that nature. Otherwise, it makes navigating for the user harder, takes away some browser functionality, and a lot of times causing Javascript issues with browsers. Some need to learn to take it easy, in my opinion.

Marshall

So the pace of innovation is pretty fast and furious right now. Is this a bubble, are a large number of these services going to collapse or cease providing support a year from now? Can you offer any advice for organizations considering using one of them? Are there technical considerations that people should be aware of that might mitigate the viability of some of these services once they are more widely adopted?

Brian

Innovation is certainly in the fast lane right now, but I don't believe that it is a full grown bubble just yet. I do think we are in the beginning stages of one though. It's just how life works. Not every company is going to be a success and a lot of them will fail. There are many, many factors that come into play to become a success. You may think it's strong enough, but you always will, it's your service.

I feel that a lot of services fail because they aren't prepared enough. They need to plan for the best. They need to build an infrastructure as if they were a huge success because if they don't, what happens if they get a much larger audience then expected? I also think that a lot of companies create a service with one goal, to be acquired. Yes, we all want to be successful, become rich, and all that jazz, but don't make a service with that being the only goal. If you want to be successful, don't make the benefit of yourself high priority, make the benefit of your users high priority. Pop.

Marshall

How would you advise organizations to discern whether a vendor has users as a high priority? What are some tell-tale signs that a vendor is trustworthy and responsive in that department?

Brian

Sometimes it is a dead give away, other times you have to research, and sometimes you may just never know. There is not too much you can do to find out, but I always start off by researching about the service, mostly using blog search engines. [For example, see Technorati, Google Blogsearch or Icerocket.] I search blogs because they usually include more commentary and user experiences.

You also want to check if the service has a blog of their own. Get to know the people behind the service and watch how they respond to users, problems, feature requests, updates, etc.

Another method that I try sometimes is simply sending an email to the vendor. I say that I feel their service sounds helpful, thanks for this and that, ask a few questions, and send. Preferably, you'd get a response back in around a week. You'd want to look to see if they answered all your questions and if they were happy to receive an email from you or not. I've had companies never respond, respond with an email that just says "Thanks", and some that seem to just not care much. Those are just some ways to see if a vendor sees their users as high priority or not, but there are of course more methods. I find emailing the vendor usually works out best.

Marshall

What's going to big in 3 months, 6 months, 2 years? Any guesses? I'm thinking either in terms of software or - are there going to be new roles for people to play in their organizations as this new information landscape emerges?

Brian

It's really hard to say. Personally, the concept of social news has really blown me away with services like Newsvine (review) being unleashed. To me, it's big now, but once it hits mainstream news, I think it will be huge! I also see syndication growing into something bigger then it is already. With all these services being released with RSS support and Internet Explorer 7, a lot more users will become aware of syndication. I'm excited to see concepts like Reading Lists with OPML (definition) becoming more of a reality.

I also feel that folksonomy (tagging) will be even bigger then ever. Not in the sense that we are at now where we categorize the web how we feel, but in the sense of searching and finding information easily online. I touched about about this when I wrote a review about a new social bookmarking service using tagging called, Ma.gnolia (review). Their slogan says, "Found is the New Search." I really hope so and find that I am already using tagging as an alternative to my usual searching with Google.

As for your second question about there being new roles for people to play in the emerging information landscape, I would hope so. This emerging information landscape is all about presenting information in a personal (or group) view, the way we want it, and the way that works best for us. Tagging, opinion, and collaboration are a few methods, and I would hope to see these methods used more often in upcoming developments. But are these really new roles? Yes. Maybe not so much for the web savvy, but there is still a large percentage of end users that aren't aware of the concept of tagging yet. It is just the beginning and companies like Yahoo seem to be heading in the correct direction by providing services that utilize these concepts the most to their large audience of users.

Brian Benzinger is the author of Solution Watch. You can use the following OPML file (definition) to subscribe to: