In this edition of Web Enlightenment we'll be talking about my favorite 6 year old, who is of course slightly fictional.

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My favorite 6 year old kid

I have a confession to make - I am really uncomfortable with human children. They make me nervous, I don't really relate to them, and I'm just not quite sure how to talk to them.

My wife says that the major reason for this is that I didn't spend much time as a "child" when I was one in the way that most other folks did - and I have to admit I don't meet a lot of 4 year olds that enjoy chess or building computers from spare parts, so that's probably quite true.

There is one kid I love to pieces though - my favorite website usability tester - that usually fictional but sometimes not 6 year old kid that can read.

Recently lots of folks have been talking with me about website usability - literally a way we can measure the ease with which people can employ a website.

The "King" of usability - no question - is Jakob Nielsen. This is a brilliant guy who holds 79 patents and as you would expect he has a really ugly, but incredibly usable, web site called useit.com.

Usability is a fascinating science and it can be broken down into 5 key areas, they are:

• Learnability
• Efficiency
• Memorability
• Errors
• Satisfaction

Each one of these components has some things to consider - learnability is a measure of what it takes to do things the first time, efficiency is a measure of how quickly people can do things when they have learned them, memorability is how well folks can reestablish proficiency when they have been gone awhile, errors is about them clicking on the wrong stuff and what it takes to recover, and satisfaction is about how much they liked the whole experience.

Eyes rolling back in your head yet? Are you imagining a bottomless graph or spreadsheet that charts and measures each of these components in excruciating detail? Are you the kind of person that would rather have a root canal than do this?

Fear not - all we need to do one of the simplest and most effective initial usability tests on planet earth is a 6 year old kid - unlike me, you might even know a real one that you can talk to.

What you do is take the kid and put them in front of a computer with your website displayed on the screen. Now here is the hard part (especially for me) - you have to shut your mouth and say nothing to the kid at all. Before you get to the machine simply say you want them to look at something for you - and provide no other instruction of any kind.

It is very likely that the kid will click on the "wrong" thing, that they will get confused about what things mean, and they'll be really attracted to any visual cue about what they are supposed to do. Perfect - keep your mouth shut and take lots of notes. For some kids it is important to explain that there is no "right" or "wrong" answer to looking at this website for you - that can be important so they don't try and look to you to figure out what they "should" do.

I would also recommend using a half pound of jelly beans or some other appropriate candy based inducement for this test. I may not know much about children but all the ones I have met seem to like candy - at long last perhaps I have found my common ground with them.

I'd love to hear from anyone that does this simple usability test, please just drop me an email to let me know how it all went.

Press Coverage: Biggest Paper in Maine? Check.

I was pleased as punch that the Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram featured my article on Broadband Stimulus this past Sunday - on the front page of the Business/Insight section no less. The Portland Press Herald and their Sunday Edition (Maine Sunday Telegram) is sold statewide, the circulation is more than 100,000. I totally loved the custom graphic they did....

Click here to check out my name in lights
I'm sure the article is actually useful and says some good things but I just keep reading the byline over and over.

My dearest relatives: your original copies are in the mail and on the way to you.

At long last, a New Look and Feel

We all know the story of how the cobblers kid has no shoes but things were getting a bit ridiculous with my old website - it was a bit tough to give people advice on their website when I had spent so long ignoring my own design.

Click here to check out the new digs

Please feel free to hit reply and let me know what you think, your feedback is most welcome. Like most new designs I think I have achieved three steps forward, and two steps back. By this I mean I still need to a decent bit of work on my content and fitting it into my new framework, I also need to produce a speaker demo so folks crazy enough to want to do so can actually hear me talk at my site.