Slicecast

Thanks to @dhinchcliffe I discovered Wordle this morning, a text visualization tool that takes text and renders them in a wonderful cloud. I thought it would be fun to visualize my del.icio.us links which rendered:

I am looking at that thinking, that's pretty interesting – that's the world I work in. Well done Wordle, this is a great service you've built!

On a more practical note I think that the word cloud is a great was to visualize text data, so an application like this could be used for example to:

• Present concepts to a client
• Visualise copy decks
• Analyze social network memberships and groups

Good stuff!

Have been playing with Clicktale recently, and have been very impressed with their video-playback feature that allows us to look at how users interact on your site. While I've only been testing the tool on my site, which is perhaps not truly reflective of real user interaction, but playing back my video (shared below) gave me real insight into how visitors are struggling with content on the blog. The video below is only a sample, but I've not got a few optimsation options for the blog.

Am looking forward to testing this out on a 'real' client site now that I have validated the core functionality. 

Watch the Clicktale Video here

Found an interesting slideshow from Realeyes in the UK via Usableworld that presents the importance of the correct sample size when conducting Eyetracking studies.

| View | Upload your own

Eyetracking I have found to be an interesting topic; largely because it has provided some very interesting things but also because I have found that many studies have failed in the eyes of a client - to coin a phrase "this study points out the bleedin' obvious, tell me something I don't know". True. The value of Eyetracking, alongside the newer mouse based heatmaps need to be one more weapon (albeit at a sizable investment) in the UX / Usability / Optimisation toolkit, is that it provides that insight into the decision making process of site visitors.

The presentation makes it quite clear that selection of the correct sample size can have a big impact on the outcome of the test; and therefore on the conclusions that you ould draw from the test. It illustrates one of the principle laws of statistics - "The Central Limit Theorum" - that essentially states you can take any dataset and if you take enough random samples from it, you can plot out a near perfect bell curve. In other words, under normal circumstances, everything regresses to the mean.

The example to the left shows the theorum in a simple way, the higher the sample size the higher the probability the distribution will be normal. The same basic rules apply in the methodologies used to determine correct sample sizes for A/B and Multivariate tests.

Interesting stuff, and the lesson is - make sure your sample sizes for your Eyetracking study are large enough to get you close to the mean result; too little (if for example your budget does not permit the study of more than 4 or 5 people) and you will end up with semi-directional heuristic analysis at best. 

• Bazaarvoice - Industry Stats
  There have been a number of studies spotlighting the latest in word of mouth, here are a few notable highlights
  (tags: research wom bazaarvoice stats collaboration community wordofmouth)
• goosh.org - the unofficial google shell.
  This google-interface behaves similar to a unix-shell.You type commands and the results are shown on this page.
  (tags: google shell unix hacks application search)
• Silverlight + Web Analytics - Windows Live SkyDrive
  Three documents for downloading that outline the web analytics implementation process for Silverlight applications - a geneal deck and one each for Omniture and Webtrends
  (tags: silverlight microsoft webanalytics implementation omniture webtrends)

• Shopping Cart Abandonment Rises - eMarketer
  Consumers were slightly more likely to abandon shopping carts in Q1 2008 than they were a year ago, according to recently released data from MarketLive.
  (tags: emarketer ecommerce report research facts benchmarks)
• TheBrain.com - PersonalBrain
  PersonalBrain helps you organize all your Web pages, contacts, documents, emails and files in one place so that you can always find them - just like you think of them.
  (tags: mindmap software productivity mindmapping collaboration freeware brainstorming)

• FusionCharts v3 - Interactive Flash Charts & Graphs
  FusionCharts is a flash charting component that can be used to render data-driven & animated charts for your web applications and presentations.
  (tags: flash chart visualization dashboards)

• Twitter Charts
  An elegant solution based on the Twitter API using Yahoo Pipes and Google Charts to visualise the data. This example shows the Techcrunch feed
  (tags: twitter visualization data)
• Google Docs - Create your own form
  A nifty feature within Google Spreadsheets that allows you to create web registration / feedback forms and online surveys that populate data into a spreadsheet
  (tags: spreadsheet forms tool googledocs onlinesurvey free tools google form)

• MAXAMINE TagMAX Validates Web Analytics Implementations
  MAXAMINE's Site Analytics solution provides verification and ongoing management of tag implementations; note - now owned by Accenture.
  (tags: tagging qa audit validation omniture maxamine)
• Goal Copy Extension Update | Lunametrics
  A very useful Firefox extension that allows you to copy and paste Google Analytics goals from one profile to another. Will save a lot of time in future...
  (tags: googleanalytics tools lunametrics firefox)

• Split Test (A/B Test) Calculator | User Effect
  A nice online A/B test calculator using a chi-sq approach to give you easy to share language for proving the outcome of a simple champion - challenger test
  (tags: statistics marketing abtesting testing calculator tools free)

It has been far too long since I actively did anything on this blog, mostly because real-work is taking over. Because of this I am looking into new publishing processes, and emabrrassing or not my first choice of publishing tool is Microsoft Word 2007. Let's hope their XML-RPC stuff works out and I can start getting back into things....