Two Hex and a User

I wanted to post two related hex graphs that give us some good mind food to munch on while we work. The first is more general and tells us seven points of User Experience Design. Take a step back and ask yourself:

• Useful - Is the software even useful?
• Usable - What it does is useful, but is it usable?
• Findable - Can the user find what they need to use?
• Accessible - Can all the users access it?
• Desirable - Do the users want your ¹ software?
• Valuable - Is your software valuable enough for the user to retain?
• Credible - Does the software look fake or are you trusted?
  

Up second, adapted from the original for social software purposes. We're beginning to see more and more social software, and the seven elements given here fit nicely into all the services I use.

• Twitter - Presence and sharing (of presence) and conversations (about presence).
• Blogger - Conversations, reputation (comment count), sharing (ideas), groups and relationships (informal; by linking).
• MySpace - I hate MySpace, but I use it anyway. Relationships and groups are obviously the focus.

I take this in and consider how we break up these elements into different services, and the focus of each service on one or a few elements benefits us. Twitter does great at what it does, etc. But the separation also harms us. The little widgets we can put on different places to connect the services together only go so far. I have too many feeds, but obviously I can't send all my "tweets" through this feed, as is. So we're getting good at breaking things up, but I'm really waiting for how we'll bring it all back together.



¹: Two separate emphasis given.