Let’s not forget those of us that like to prototype in Omnigraffle. A pretty sizable collection of Facebook related elements to use in creating wireframes for Facebook applications.

Some of the elements are a little older but a good springboard. Know that if you are designing tabs, the size will be changing sometime in 2010. Here is the roadmap:

Application tab roadmap: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Roadmap_Profile

Facebook styles: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Facebook_Styles

Facebook GUI (.psd): http://surgeworks.com/blog/design/facebook-gui-free-psd-resource

Facebook Application (Omnigraffle): http://www.graffletopia.com/stencils/410

Here’s a look at the available sources:

After you search, you can personalize your results dashboard by moving around the source boxes. When you’re done, bookmark the page and keep coming back to your personalized results dashboard for that search.

Visit Addictomatic

This is certainly not a new idea by any stretch. Dell found popular success with their own “Idea Storm” website which basically allowed customers to vote for features and products that they wanted. One of the results was the development and release of the linux community driven UBUNTO box.

Starbucks is another with their My Starbucks Idea website. They ask customers to help shape the future of their company through ideas. Both Starbucks and Dell used the Salesforce.com platform “Ideas”.

What is exciting about this new era of brand building is the possibilities. And how much faster product and service innovation can occur as well as allowing companies to react quicker to issues. But I think it is important to point out that it is one thing for a company to be open to these possibilities, including the spearheading the communities of thought and voices. It is another to be able to support it from an infrastructure standpoint.

It is obvious in the case of both of these companies, they were ready to deliver from a service and product engineering standpoint. They put their ideas into action and they show it. Starbucks shares through their Ideas In Action blog. Dell has an Ideas In Action community portal as well.

So let’s take it a step further. In a 2000 article titled “IDEAS INTO ACTION; Dell, It Turns Out, Has a Better Idea Than Ford” published by the NY Times, Fred Andrews noted “Dell made its name by selling directly to customers and allowing them to specify the features they wanted their personal computer to include.” This was an article about supply chain management and not about “IdeaStorming”. But it is interesting to say the least, that this was a flag raised.

It is almost a decade since this article was published. Dell continues to live their mission by embracing their customers, listening and acting – they continue to move forward. Is it possible that if others had looked, listened and acted differently almost 10 years ago, the outcome would have been different today?

Here are some links to idea storming / crowd sourcing / idea management players in this space.

• http://getsatisfaction.com/ – “People Powered Customer Service”
• http://ideascale.com/ – “Innovation, Crowdsourcing, Idea Management”
• http://uservoice.com/ – “Harness the Ideas of Your Customers…”
• http://www.fevote.com/ – “Suggestion Boards for Social Suggestions”
• http://www.brightidea.com/webstorm.bix – “WebStorm by Brightidea, Inc. is an Idea Collection and Ranking Portal”
• http://www.feedback20.com/ – “Engage With Your Community”
• http://www.ideatorrent.org/ – Open Source, “Open Invitation Software”

Reference:
“Build your own “IdeaStorm” with UserVoice « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing.” Web Strategy By Jeremiah Owyang: Web Marketing, Social Media. Web. 30 Aug. 2009. <http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/05/02/build-your-own-ideastorm-with-uservoice/>.

But this post isn’t about a particular misstep. It is about asking the question – should we execute user research every time we design?

Jackob Neilson writes in his Alertbox – Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design, #10 – “Not Answering Users’ Questions – Users are highly goal-driven on the Web. They visit sites because there’s something they want to accomplish — maybe even buy your product. The ultimate failure of a website is to fail to provide the information users are looking for.”

To understand what the user is asking, it makes sense that we must first understand the user. And that isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Take for instance a low-budget project or one that has rapid turn-around. There isn’t always the time or money to execute research. I’ve been in client meetings where they have clearly no idea who their user or audience is. Or believe that their audience is everybody. But I have found success in asking the right questions and being a little resourceful.

1. For the limited budget project, ask to look at their customer database. It would be outstanding to dive into an advanced CRM system and segment. Many companies completely forget about their own database. Perhaps it’s a simple Excel or one that could be exported as a tab delimited file then opened in Excel. Do a little sorting and soon you can begin gleaning common titles or companies in a B2B situation, maybe there are a lot more males or female names, take a look at their email addresses (this is helpful in email design trying to assist in finding target email clients, etc. Taking this list to a mail house or analyst could also prove invaluable (depending on the complexity) if they can assist in segmentation.
2. For a decent size project with little or no budget for 3rd party research, use the above mentioned method along with some open-source research tools like Quantcast. Let’s say your clients URL is nestle.com. Just enter it in and it pulls from a variety of resources to provide you with demographics and lifestyle information like this:
   
   
3. If you are working on high priority projects and there is a success matrix in place for performance, using a 3rd party is invaluable. If you are the IA or UX designer, you should be provided insight detailing the outcomes of the research and information you can act on to design quality into the product. This will ensure you are correctly communicating and provide benchmark data for testing. I shared more on forms of this in my post titled: Automatic Usability Evaluation Applications.

I believe that user research should be engaged in every project.  Minimal information is better then no information at all to act on. And as protectors of creating positive online experiences, it is our missive to make sure this is always a part of the process.

Do you agree or have any examples of arguments against this position?

Instructional documentation is an extremely important part of product support. But it could also prove to be mind-numbing to create. Especially if you are part of a team that prides itself on getting your client up and running while building solutions that are self-sustaining from an administration standpoint. But not all teams are staffed with technical writers or have the budget to create robust user documentation for products that they might have built on a tightened budget.

Here is where a little resourcefulness can payoff big dividends. Screen capture has been around for quite some time but usually at the price of costly programs and programs that consume time for learning. Not anymore. A short time ago a friend of mine shared Jing with me. Jing is a free application, with a minimal feature set that allows you to record or capture your screen. And just when you thought FREE was the best part – it is not. It’s easily compatible on both the MAC and PC. Enough said?

To give you an example of just how easy it is, I’ve put together a quick tutorial on how to use my own website through Jing. It took about 5 minutes.

The end value of something as simple as virtual documentation to the client outweighs the time it takes to produce. For larger teams that do provide technical documentation, consider this as a way to augment traditional written documentation. And it looks prettier.

Have any screen capturing / documentation options that you want to share?

We have most certainly come a long, long way in anticipating the responses based on proven theories in design, form, function, typography, color theory, etc. But no tool can absolutely identify what the human mind will do in all conditions. Consider the process behind how humans learn from childhood. Thinking/learning through doing is the way we learned how to walk, talk and ride a bicycle. General understanding of the environment around us is a product of previous interactions.

In this respect, one might say that even another human may not be the best form of evaluating a human. We’re too unique.

To a certain degree, this is where having the assistance of tools like:

• Clickdensity
• Crazyegg
• Clicktale
• loop11

may be advantageous. While it would depend on the application at hand, most are built for a critical mass in mind. If your product is built within usability standards and an understanding of your audience in mind, you can use these tools to assist in your evaluations – alongside humans not in place of.
—————
Your best results are going to come from garnering a blend of qualitative and quantitative data. Ania Rodriguez, Customer Experience Expert, President Key Lime Interactive recommends to “clients that they start with a remote moderated study to uncover site critical opportunities and then run an automated study with a large N to get statistically significant data to support their decisions. The patterns that emerge from the remote moderated test are very insightful, but without the statistical validity of the data, the findings are just not as powerful.”

Ania also shared her insight for the real players in the automated usability evaluation space that offer much more then just observing what the users did. They offer more powerful evaluation through asking pre and post task questions. These tools include:

• UserZoom
• Keynote WebEffective
• SirValUse LeoTrace
• Relevant View

Bottom line. Understand the strengths of the tools. Understand they are to be used to compliment research uncovered from live methods such as focus groups and not as a replacement method.

All while having a Twitter overlay in the center that you can work around. Here is one I put together quick for mine in Free Twitter Designer that matches my website a little more:

When you’re done compositing, simply choose “Generate Image” and the application strips off the Twitter interface and allows you to save the background image to your computer. From there, simply login to your Twitter account, click on “Settings” from the links on the top right. Click on the “Design” tab. Then click on “Change Image Background” link in the lower left.

And simply browse and find the file you created in the background designer then upload.

That’s it. I did bring mine into Photoshop to do some touch up but it is a nice tool that is easy to use.

Here are additional resources I found along the way that you might find helpful.

Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices
(You can download a handy dandy PSD to start from and tutorialize along)

Create A Twitter Background Using PowerPoint

Prettytweet – Twitter Background with their Visual Designer

I thought it would be interesting to list some of the sites I stumbled on out there.

iconlook.com
Icon search engine

iconfinder.net
Another icon search engine

veryicon.com
And another icon search engine

iconfactory.com
Icon Design, software, stock..

Smashing Mags Freebie Roundup
Smashing Magazine posts tons of free icons and resources

Side note – they are the creators of one of my favorite Sony Bravia spots “Play-Doh:

It even gives the readability level by grade level for your press release. They also offer a video tutorial that explains in more detail how to use this service.