Final thoughts and not good-bye!

For my final blog post for Comm 534, I thought I would simply let everyone know how much I have enjoyed being in this class.  I can see what a wonderful thing it is to have a cohort of students to share classes with for an entire year.  You are such a great group of people I think I will honestly miss seeing you every week.  I hope when you are on campus you will feel free to stop by my office and say hello (ASC 301A). 

 

I have learned a lot in this class and am very happy I took it.  Sadly, I have to confess I will not miss the weekly blog postings!  I may keep my blog for a while to see if I get the urge.  I may find I enjoy it a lot more without the pressure of having to post something when I am not in the mood.  My greatest struggle was always WHAT to write about?!

 

And – no surprise here I bet – I will actually continue to enjoy my second life in Second Life.  Actually, I may even create a third life for those times when I want to be completely anonymous – LOL.

 

My next technology adventure will be the purchase of an Iphone, which I am really looking forward to.  In doing my final paper, I found a great video called “Connected” that is a marketing tool for a small private college in Texas who is handing out Iphones to all incoming freshman.  It is a great example of how the phone can be used both in and out of the classroom.  In case you are curious, the link for the website is http://www.acu.edu/technology/mobilelearning/index.html.  Right now I am torn between splurging on a Nikon D80 Digital SLR camera or the Iphone.  Both require $$ so I will have to budget for whatever I choose.

 

Now I am off to pack for my trip to NYC while my avatar, Debbie Rubble dances in SL at the Dogglounge.  At least one of us is having a good time.

 

Again, I look forward to seeing everyone around campus!  Don’t be a stranger.

 

Usability on the 2008 Campaign Trail

After reading “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug and “Prioritizing Web Usability” by Jakob Neilsen, I became inspired.  I thought it might be fun to do a little user testing of my own on this year’s campaign trail.  Since usability is concerned with how easy, effective and efficient a user’s interaction is with a particular website, I thought I’d see which candidate (in my view) had the most user-friendly website.  In creating a usability test for this exercise, I tried to think about what tasks most voters in America might be interested in doing while visiting the websites.  Here are the 3 tasks I finally decided to try on each site:

 

1)    Find out the latest news on campaign’s progress

2)    Find out how to join or contribute to the campaign

3)    Find out the candidates policy on the economy

 

Then I scored each site (5 points possible) on the following:

 

1)    Overall design

2)    Content

3)    Structure

4)    Navigation

 

Here are my results:

 

John McCain

http://www.johnmccain.com

User is greeted by an opening screen asking for your email address, but the site does provide a click thru to the main homepage if you do not choose to share your email info.  The main homepage is nicely laid out, with a good text/background contrast making the site easy to read.  Page is divided into clear sections and joining the campaign and donating are both clearly indicated on the top right.  There is a news box on the main page with links to John McCain’s most recent statements as well as links to press releases, news and speeches.  His position on the economy was easily found on a dropdown menu at the top of the main page which allowed a voter to click through and read his stance on various tax and economic issues.  Overall a nice site with all information easy to find at a glance.  Overall score – 24/25

 

Barack Obama

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

Like McCain’s site, you are met with an opening screen asking you to join the movement and provide your email address.  A “skip signup” button is provided to click on through.  Once inside, Obama’s homepage evokes heavenly blues and whites with touches of red on key buttons such as “donate now” or “apply now.”  The color scheme is really quite nice.  The main page contains several boxes although they are not clearly labeled.  It is necessary to scroll down to find the news and events boxes which I didn’t like.  It was easy to find his position on the economy thanks to a drop down menu labeled “Issues.”  I expected to find Obama’s site the best of the three and in looking for information quickly; his site did not live up to my expectations.  It took me longer to find what I was looking for on this site.  Another annoyance was the back button was disabled forcing me to close the window rather than to click back out.  Overall score – 22/25

 

Hillary Clinton

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/

Surprise, surprise!  Another annoying opening screen asking for me to give out my email address.  However once inside at the main homepage, the structure and layout of the site is nice and straightforward.  The main page is divided into clear definable sections making information easy to locate.  Buttons to join and contribute are easy to see and clearly clickable.  Like Obama she also had “Issues” as part of a drop down menu located across the top of the page.  The labels on the drop down menu should be more succinct like Obama’s who only lists one word (i.e., economy, war, etc) – which I think is better.  News was also found on the main page and did not require any scrolling.  Overall score – 23/25

 

Despite the fact that I am a Democrat, I honestly (and surprisingly) liked John McCain’s site the best.  Obama’s was more pleasing to look at than Hillary’s but Hillary’s site had a more straightforward and clearly defined layout making information quicker to access.  Hillary only gained a point over Obama due to his site’s disabling of my back button, otherwise it would have been a tie.  Isn’t it odd that the findings in this usability test have an uncanny resemblance to the current state of affairs on the campaign trail?

 

 

 

Disconnect Between Online Activities and Voting

In my last post I found myself obsessing over the current Presidential campaign and lamenting the fact that Obama and his campaign appear to be doing a much better job at harnessing technology to gain support. I shared the Obama Girl link with others and wondered about the future of “Hillary Tube” and whether her campaign (or at the very least, some crazy Hillary fan like me) could generate a Hillary Boy to counteract the power of the all mighty Obama Girl.

Well, imagine my delight upon hearing the news –repeated incessantly by the “if it bleeds, it leads” media pundits – that our viral icon poster girl failed to vote! Oh happy day. Poor thing was too sick to get to the polls, but did manage to find her way to the Svedka Fembot Election Returns PARTY in New York City that night. Mmmnn.This begs the question of how much of the online hype about Obama is actually real? Yes, Obama won the MySpace poll, but was that poll made up of 15 year old girls with a crush? Was Obama Girl just in this for her 5 minutes of fame? If so, it looks like she just upped her fame factor another 5 minutes by NOT voting.

Seems to me that there is still a bit of a disconnect between online activity and what actually drives voters physically to the polls. Could it be that while people may enjoy participating in the online chats, blogs and townhall discussions taking place in cyberspace, they are not as motivated to push themselves away from their computers and leave the house to go vote? Or is it simply a matter of age demographics?

Since online activity favors the youth vote, we will have to wait and see. Several things I’ve stumbled across in the last few days that gave me pause for thought:

1) Hillary garnered the bulk of the votes in the technology capital of Silicon Valley
2) Hillary split the youth vote in CA and won the youth vote in AR and NY
3) In Second Life, the members signed up for Obama and Clinton groups are representative of the mainstream Democratic population – split 50/50.

Sure, Obama won big this weekend, and I won’t pretend I’m uneasy about what’s ahead for the Hillary campaign but (lest you think Obama has a lock on hope and inspiration) I’m still HOPEful.

Hill-Ar-Y! Hill-Ar-Y! Hill-Ar-Y!

I don’t know about anyone else, but I have become obsessed with the current presidential campaign.  I have turned into a political junkie hooked on ALL of the political talk shows and a regular listener of POTUS 08, the XM Radio channel dedicated to election coverage.  After 8 years of George Bush, I’ve had enough and this election seems more crucial than ever.

Last week I shared the link to “YouBama” that was covered on Techcrunch.com.  As a Hillary supporter, I’d like to know why there is no HillaryTube?!  In another post on Techcruch this week, http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/01/googles-gathers-social-graph-information-from-the-web-launches-api/ entitled “In Time for Super Tuesday, It’s Super Obama Girl,” Eric Schonfeld discusses viral videos as endorsements for political candidates –even getting Craig Newmark of Craigslist into the discussion after calling him “no Obama Girl.” 

If I had the skill set, I’d have created HillaryTube myself, but unfortunately it’s beyond my technical capability — for now.  But perhaps that’s the point.  Hillary’s supporters tend to be older and not the type who sit at the computer pouring over You Tube videos, whereas Obama’s supporters are younger and more tech savvy.  It’s really a shame that someone on Hillary’s team was not focused on using the Web in a way that could reach a younger audience.  When I searched YouTube for Hillary videos, the top video’s were all negative rather than positive.  This can’t be a good thing. 

 In addition, in analyzing the videos posted about Obama, I noticed that many were coming from once source (barackobamadotcom) and they were entitled things like: Meet Barack Obama, Obama Family Holiday Greeting, Victory Speech (Iowa), My Plans for 2008, and Barack Obama’s Response to Bush’s State of the Union Address.  It’s clear that his campaign is taking advantage of technology in a way that Hillary Clinton’s is not.  However, his smart use of YouTube is not enough to change my mind about her ability to lead the nation.

I still feel experience counts for a lot.  I like Barack Obama and will happily throw my support his way if necessary.  But I’d rather do all I can to see that Hillary gets the nomination FIRST.  Frankly, I find her just as inspiring as Barack.  He does not have a lock on hope and inspiration.  She is a strong woman who has been through great adversity which she handled with dignity.  In short, she’s battle-tested.  She has a direct and candid manner that I find very appealing and wouldn’t that be a nice change in the Oval Office!

So with only two days left before Super Tuesday, how do I plan to help the campaign?  I’ll be making phone calls on her behalf urging fellow Democrats to join me in voting for Hillary on February 5th.  And if all goes well, maybe the next thing to tackle might be a YouTube video starring a Super Hillary Boy!