10,000 Tweets for Human Rights
Today marks my 10,000th semi-random thought on Twitter, but this post isn't really about Twitter. Suffice it to say that I've gotten a lot from my time on social media, both personally and professionally, and have been constantly amazed at the generosity of my peers. Today, I'd like to give something back, so I'm using my 10,000th tweet to raise $10,000 for human rights.First, a bit of history. Back in graduate school (in the early 90s), I decided I needed to get more "involved". Like most people, I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but I had always felt some connection to human rights causes, and so a friend and I decided to check out the university chapter of Amnesty International.
Most of the chapter members were undergrads and they were clearly itching to be activists. To be honest, I've never been very comfortable as an activist, at least not in the shouting, sign-toting sense. Maybe it's because I came of age in the 80s, or maybe it's just the incurable introvert in me. So, I decided to do my part by writing letters for Amnesty's Urgent Action Network.
At first, this was mostly cathartic. Writing letters, especially the act of putting pen to paper (which I didn't do much even 15 years ago), made me feel like I was doing something. Still, they were just letters.
Two months later, my definition of "just letters" changed forever. I was reading Amnesty's monthly updates and a name on the list of released political prisoners sounded familiar. I shuffled through my letters, and there it was. I had written a letter for a young woman, a wrongfully-accused dissident, and now she was free. I'm not saying I did it, but I was a part of it. This was real.
I'm not a religious man, in the way most people use the word, but I do believe that there is evil in this world. Power twists and corrupts, and those who hold that power will torture and kill to keep it. This is not a conspiracy theory. It happens every day.
Across thousands of miles, one letter can shine a light in a dark corner. Somehow, despite their power, evil men are cowards. The flickering flame of one letter can send them scattering back into the darkness. The torch of a thousand letters can shame them into a veneer of decency.
In this time of recession and fear, it can be hard to feel charitable. You may wake up tomorrow wondering if you'll still have a job, the money to pay your rent, or the means to provide for your family. These are very real and very human fears. Somewhere, though, there is a fear that most of us, thankfully, can barely comprehend. Somewhere, an innocent man or woman will wake up tomorrow wondering if this will be the day that they are finally murdered by their captors.
Tomorrow morning, a man will wake up wondering if this is the day he will be executed for the crime of peacefully protesting against his government. Tomorrow morning, the family of a university professor will wake up wondering if they'll ever see him alive again. Tomorrow morning, a group of farmers will wonder if this is the day their homes will be burned to the ground by mercenaries. These are only three stories of hundreds, all of them happening right now.
Please join me in helping Amnesty International and protecting the lives and liberties of our fellow human beings around the world. The following link goes to Change.org, which is helping me track this 10,000 Tweets campaign:
Thank you for anything you can do to help, and please re-tweet this post.
Users Don't Read - The Ride
When working with new clients, I sometimes find it useful to strip the text off of a site and see what's left. Where is my eye drawn? Can I spot the call to action? What can I really tell, just at a glance?So, I thought it might be fun to create a simulator (sorry, it's not really a ride) that does just that. Just enter any website URL into the form below, and you'll see what it might look like if users couldn't (or wouldn't) read. Letters are replaced with "X" or "x" and numbers with "0":
Consider it a thought exercise. Here are a few tips for how to use the simulator:
- See where your eyes are naturally drawn without text
- If you couldn't read anything, where would you click?
- Are you overwhelmed by colors, emphasis, or links?
This is just a beta for now. If people like it, I'll consider beefing up the code.
How to Solve Any Problem
I like to solve problems, which is convenient, because that's also my job. My first love was coding, and it taught me to think about problems in a logical way. In the 30 years since then, I've been amazed at how often that approach has applied to the rest of my professional life (and frequently my personal life).Here are four things I've learned about solving just about any problem:
1. Replicate It
That's fancy programmer talk for "make it happen again," or, as they might say where I grew up in Illinois farm country: "If it ain't broke, break it." You know this story: one morning, your car starts making some noise like a rabid woodland creature. It's about to drive you insane, you take it to the mechanic, and poof! - no noise. The mechanic can't fix a problem he can't find. Some problems are always evident, but others have a way of hiding. Try turning on the lights to find a chirping cricket, and you'll see what I mean.Tony Hsieh created Zappos' reputation for customer service by requiring all of his employees (even the top brass) to go through a month-long boot camp, starting with call-center duty. If you really want to solve a problem, you have to experience it firsthand.
2. Isolate It
Whether you've got a bug in your code, your website sales are dropping, or you're trying to stop a flu pandemic, you've got to track down the source of the problem. Dive in deep, narrow your focus, and segment, segment, segment (as my friend Avinash would say). Big problems become a lot smaller when you can finally break them down to their core. Solving small problems not only costs a lot less, but it prevents collateral damage. Unleashing Godzilla might solve your city's traffic problem, but adjusting the timing of a few lights is easier to clean up.3. Ask for Help
I once attended a lecture by the world's foremost authority on how pigeons open their beaks in response to food. After that lecture, I realized that I probably knew more than 99.9999% of the people on earth about the subject of pigeon-beak mechanics. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but the point is this: someone, somewhere will always know more than you about everything.Sure, it's hard to hear, but suck it up - these people hold your answers. Some problems are hard, and you're going to need an expert. In graduate school, I spent half my day walking through the halls talking to people and asking them questions, and every minute of it was time well spent. Thanks to the internet and social media, finding and befriending experts is easier than ever. All many of them ask in return is that you pay your own expertise forward.
4. Just Fix It
We've become a culture that spends most of our time looking for shortcuts. We think that, somewhere out there, there's a Web 2.0 tool or iPhone app to magically solve our problems. I once found a friend of mine working on an Excel spreadsheet to automate his class grading. He finally admitted that he spent the entire day on the spreadsheet and could have done the same thing in 30 minutes by hand. Sure, the right tool or automation at the right time can be a life-saver, but we've tipped to the opposite extreme, where we spend more time hunting for tools than actually using them. If we were cavemen, we'd have gone extinct looking for a wheel instead of just carrying our food home.Consider a couple of extreme examples. How did magician David Blaine make it look like he was holding his breath for 17 minutes? He held his breath for 17 minutes. How do Penn and Teller do the trick where it seems like they're eating handfuls of ants? They eat the ants. Our grandparents had this thing called "elbow grease" - you apply it to a problem and the problem goes away. Shut up and do it.
Guest Post on UXBooth
If you missed it, this is just a heads up that I wrote a post over on UXBooth called Selling UX to Small Business. We academics and techies often struggle with the business side of the equation, and this post is an attempt to pass along some of what I've learned during my years as an entrepreneur.I'd also like to thank the gang at UXBooth for the opportunity. Matthew, Andrew, and David have been doing a great job over there and are putting out excellent content. Their blogging schedule is also a bit more consistent than some of us (*cough*). Thanks to Rachel, too, for immortalizing my post in a comic strip.
Guide to Low-cost Usability Tools
As someone who works with start-ups and SMBs, finding low-cost, high-impact tools is an absolute necessity. Fortunately, the usability world has been blessed by dozens of new tools over the last couple of years. While many excellent blog posts have been written about these tools, I decided that it was time to take a deeper dive. Most importantly, I wanted to test these tools on User Effect and try to provide real data and screenshots.In the end, I decided that a blog post just wasn't going to cut it this time around, and so my second e-book was born. I'm happy to announce that I'm making that e-book available for free as of today. It's a guide to 20 online usability tools, all of which have free or low-cost versions.
What You'll Find Inside
The e-book is 48 pages, with 40 of those pages dedicated to the tools themselves. The tools are broken up into 4 sections: (1) Heat Mapping, (2) Screen Recording, (3) User Testing, and (4) User Feedback. Each tool has a nearly identical, 2-page spread that looks something like this:
Download The E-book
The e-book is absolutely free, and you can download it using the button below. It's in PDF format, and is about 1.5MB. If you plan on printing the document and don't want to waste all of your blue ink, here's a printer-friendly version.
48-page PDF (1.5MB)
Complete List of Tools
If you're just not an e-book sort of person or you're cursed with a slow internet connection, never fear - here's a list of all 20 tools (in alphabetical order) with links to where you can find them:- 4Q by iPerceptions
- AttentionWizard
- Chalkmark
- ClickDensity
- ClickTale
- Clixpy
- Crazy Egg
- Feedback Army
- Feng-GUI
- Fivesecondtest
- Get Satisfaction
- Kampyle
- Loop11
- OpenHallway
- Skribit
- Usabilla
- Userfly*
- UserTesting.com*
- UserVoice
- UserVue
Even More Usability Tools
As I mentioned, there have also been some excellent blog posts covering this and similar tools. Here are just a few of my favorites, for your reading pleasure:- 69 Free (or low cost) Tools to Improve Your Website
- My big list of 24 Web Site Usability Testing Tools
- Top 29 Free UX Tools and Extensions
- 10 Tools to Improve Your Site's Usability on a Low Budget
I hope you enjoy the e-book and all of these resources. As always, comments, criticisms, and crazed fans are welcome.
* Full disclosure: User Effect is a partner of UserTesting.com and an affiliate of Userfly.