Article | Miller, C. (2009). “Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens.” The New York Times. Retrieved 22 Octover, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html Summary | Traditional early-adopter models assume that the youth – teens, tweens, and children – are core to the success of new technologies. However, recent products (e.g., iPhone, GPS devices, Kindle) have proven this to be largely myth. The notable example chosen by Claire Cain Miller is the exponential growth of Twitter over the last couple years. While many factors have contributed to the success of twitter among adults, core among them are the nature of the different groups’ social structures/interactions, existing application ecosystem, and (not discussed) Twitter’s design. Whereas a child’s (and even young adults’) main interactions occur within their core social group, an adult’s interactions often include a much wider and more loosely defined sphere of individuals. Twitter, with its “one-to many network”, is much more suited to this collective experience. Additionally, the nature of their online social interactions is not dictated by “the music [they] listen to and the quizzes [they] take”, but participation in an ongoing social dialogue. Twitter’s ability to facilitate diverse conversation on many topics with an audience far beyond one’s social circle differentiates…
Users
Attention, Conceptual Design, Contributor, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Perception, Users
Web Site Design: Are We Doing It Right?
by Naho •
Article: Cliff, A. (2000). “Web Site Design: Are We Doing It Right?” Retrieved 23 May, 2000. http://www.clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/en/pm/pm.html?article=1757 In order to understand how people see and obtain information from websites, the Poynter Institute conducted an eye-tracking study that measured in which order people see the elements on a page, how long the eyes stayed focused on each element and how text and graphics links were used to navigate through the site. The study was conducted using news websites and the results were surprising. The findings showed that the readers were more attracted to text than graphics, images and photos. This is contrary to the findings from the study conducted before on newspapers where the readers were first attracted to the photos on a page, then headlines, then text. Web designers have taken the approach to create sites that would look similar to print materials for brand consistency, however, this tells us that the process of obtaining information from the web is different than that of reading print materials, and applying the same techniques as creating print materials in creating websites should be reconsidered. The results also showed that since the graphics were not getting much attention, the banner ads would also…