A few people felt "bumper issue" was possibly overstating things a bit last week. Well try this on for size!

Video diaries help improve customer service

(contributed by Pat) On Quirks.com, Joseph Rydholm describes how Insights from video diaries help Midas in its drive for better customer service...
Securing buy-in from influential franchisees was just one of the benefits that Midas researcher Garry Rosenfeldt reaped when he turned to qualitative research to develop a new service model.
It's a great tale of how using video ethnography can avoid some of the issues with running traditional qualitative research activities such as focus groups. Unfortunately, you need to register (for free) on Quirks to read the article. It is worth it, but just in case you want more of an incentive...

Kitchen ethnography

(contributed by Pat) Also on Quirks.com, Maren Elwood talks about Ethnography tracks the migration of technology into the American kitchen ...
For many Americans, a kitchen is no longer just a place for making meals. The author’s ongoing study has seen it morph into a HIVE, a highly interactive virtual environment that incorporates food preparation along with checking e-mail, surfing the Web and a host of other tech-related activities.
I can't imagine anything better than jumping in an RV and hitting the road to do research with real people!

Evolution of the BBC Homepage

(contributed by Sophie) It's a bit old now, but Jo Wickremasinghe's post on the evolution of the BBC homepage is quite interesting:
Last week we launched a new version of the BBC homepage at http://beta.bbc.co.uk. At first you might think the beta homepage seems pretty familiar, with its modular customisable layout. But take a closer look and you'll notice we've made a number of significant improvements.
The main changes are:
  • The introduction of a new navigation bar across the top of the page which will eventually be rolled out across the whole site
  • New promotional area they have dubbed the ‘media zone’ which showcases a wide range of content in a small screen area
  • Focus on ‘finer grained’ personalisation of content – their research suggests users place more value in being able to tune the content of widgets over the ability to remove/add/rearrange the widgets on the page
  • Focus on the ‘Now’ with the introduction of several features to give a better sense of what’s happening across the BBC right now: Spotlight module, ‘Just in’ on the iPlayer widget, Topic Tracker providing the ability to keep up to date with over 11000 topics of interest across the BBC
After two months in beta, the new design has been launched, Jo reports. Robert Andrews gives an external perspective in his post about the choice of horizontal navigation.

The Google Redesign: A Closer Look

(contributed by Sophie) Whilst on the subject of home page redesigns, Tyler Tate has written a good summary of Google’s search results redesign:

What’s Changed

  • The Google logo is about 30% larger.
  • There is now a permanent sidebar left of the results that allows filtering by news, blogs, images, etc., as well as time range filters and options for changing how search results are displayed.
  • The searchbox is now the full width of the results column, slightly taller, and has a slight drop shadow rather than the previous inner shadow.
  • No more top vertical bar. The result count now sits just below the searchbox and is much smaller than before. The filter for searching locally moved from under the searchbox to the sidebar.
  • Search results are now 55 pixels higher on the page and have have a higher density overall (there’s slightly less vertical space between results, and indented results have only one third of their previous margin).
  • Cached, Similar, Show more, and Related links all changed from a muted purple to a brighter light blue and now only have an underline on hover.
  • Pagination is about 30% larger, and there is still a searchbox below the pagination, though the blue background has been removed.
  • Related searches are now displayed much more compactly.
And he goes on to explore some of the elements such as the sidebar, related search suggestions and wonder wheel in a bit more detail.

The history of Facebook's default privacy settings

(contributed by Manuel) This great infographic shows how Facebook have changed their privacy settings over time. The current state is shown below.
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Journalists and metadata

(contributed by Angus) How do we make sure journalists understand the value of entering and maintaining metadata (so they want to do it)? Perhaps the answer lies in this series of posts by Wired editor Ben Hammersley: E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part One of Three E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part Two of Three E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part Two Point Five of Three E-Books – The Bigger Problem, Part Two Point Five Point One of Three He gives the following explanations of the value of metadata. They might sound good to a UX person, but how important would they be to a journalist on deadline?
The necessity above all else of keeping your metadata might seem like a geeky affectation – something that is really only of interest to librarians (itself not a bad reason) or trainspotterish data-completists – but it is in fact the simplest and cheapest route for a publisher to future-proof their business…So why do everything you can to keep metadata intact? Because it’s from this information that new products can be automatically created, at a scale and rapidity that would be impossible otherwise. With every piece of metadata that you don’t throw away, you gain a factor more potential ways of slicing through your content and delivering it as a separate product, simply as a result of a database lookup. He’s working on a CMS that will somehow ensure/mandate the capture of metadata as the story is created, and also permit easy cross-platform publishing.

The Quick List

No waffle, just links.