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Research since 1997 has indicated that the 'fold' in webpages (the bottom of the first visible screen of a webpage) is no longer a hard barrier for people.
However the myth of the fold still persists in many web designs.
Boxes and arrows has hosted an excellent article by Milissa Tarquini, Blasting the Myth of the Fold.
In the article Milissa provides a clear call to web designers to move beyond the fold-based design of the past and recognise that, provided the site's purpose is clear in the first visible screen, placing important content below the fold does not make it unfindable for web users.
She compares the clickthrough rates of items of a number of AOL pages, finding that in many cases links below the fold receive as many, and sometimes more, clicks than items at the top of the page that are supposedly more visible.
One of the interesting findings reported is that due to different browser resolutions and rendering engines, there is little consistency in where the fold occurs in web pages anyway. The most common fold line is experienced by only 10% of web users as variations in PC screens and browsers means that the fold appears differently to different site visitors.
Milissa's advice is to instead provide visual cues and compelling content to encourage users to scroll through your page, thereby no longer forcing designers to cram in all the important content into the first screen that appears.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Stop focusing on the fold | Tweet |
Friday, October 03, 2008
How secure is a password? | Tweet |
Following my security theme today, I've never seen much value in passwords as strong security measures - they need to be easy to remember for the user, and therefore rely on common letter and number patterns of relevance to the user, which inevitably become easier to break.
People need to remember passwords for many different services. I count at least 50 passwords I personally use on a monthly basis including phone, ATM and online.
This makes it tempting for people to,
A five second Google search threw up a large number of articles decrying the weakness of passwords as a security method.
One I found interesting was How I'd hack your weak passwords, which provides details on the mistakes people make when creating passwords, and points out that when people use the same password across multiple sites the password is only as good as the weakest site's security.
So what's the alternative?
Given that passwords are not a strong security measure as they rely on the user to select secure passwords, the only real alternatives are to,
Given that most people are unwilling to spend extra money on a PC attachment to allow biometrics scans (though, like seat belts in cars or fire alarms in houses, they could be mandated by government and rolled out with new PCs over time) and issuing physical tokens is a costly exercise (and prone to physical theft), the most viable short-term option is to improve how we communicate with our customers.
I think that we could do a better job of educating people on how to create and manage large numbers of secure passwords, and addressing this area would by itself save significant costs in terms of fraud prevention and personal loss - not to mention password reset calls to call centres.
In the longer-run, I see a strong case for mandating biometric scanners on PCs.
What do you think?
Recruitment in the age of Second Life | Tweet |
Missouri's state government is struggling to manage the need to competitively attract and hire IT professionals in the face of a wave of baby boomer retirements.
Their solution, as detailed in the NextGov article, Cat's in the Bag!, has been to explore new (and cheap) ways to reach young professionals - even when they come dressed as a cat with a red bowtie to the first job interview.
The CIO of Missouri has been holding virtual career fairs using Second Life.
As discussed in the article, it's important to seek new employees where they congregate and feel comfortable, rather than solely relying on techniques that worked in the past, but do not reflect the cultural bent of highly qualified applicants today.Seeking technologists and trolling for employees with disabilities in virtual worlds makes sense. Techies are well represented there due to their curiosity about new computer frontiers. And the disabled, especially those with physical handicaps, often are attracted to worlds where those problems no longer hinder them.
For an investment of only a few hundred dollars per year in virtual worlds his ROI is excellent - and the little cat with the red bowtie, the avatar of a recent computer engineering graduate, now has a job at Missouri's Department of Natural Resources.
The opportunity cost for other organisations not yet using digital aid recruitment tools is only likely to grow over time.
Biographical secret questions weakening as security measures | Tweet |
Due to the rise of online social networks and informational sites, secret questions based on biographical information are losing strength as a supplementary to password-based security.
As discussed in a Time article, Those Crazy Internet Security Questions, as more information on individuals becomes easily available - either provided by them directly or via government, corporate and collaborative online databases - the secureness of personal questions diminish.
The article provides a ten second case study on how easy it is to get the biographical information of a prominent person from their wikipedia entry and online postal database.
Speech transcripts, videos, blog posts, social network profiles, news sites and genealogical websites can also provide significantly more information quickly and cheaply.
It's slightly more difficult to get information on an 'unknown' person - but many are doing hackers the favour of providing their own biographical information online - as well as adding to the available information on their family and friends.
This raises a need to steer secret questions away from purely biographical information, or seek stronger alternatives.
So what was your mother's maiden name again?
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Building a better Vic whole-of-government intranet | Tweet |
Yesterday (Wednesday) I was privileged to attend a think tank in Melbourne discussing the future of the Victorian Government's whole-of-government intranet, CentralStation.
Being the only state government in Australia I am aware of with such a tool, I was surprised to learn that it had been originally created in 1996. To my knowledge that makes it one of the earliest whole-of-government initiatives in the world supporting public servants across state departments, authorities, local government and other public bodies to collaborate and share information more effectively for the benefit of citizens.
The intranet has been redeveloped several times and currently has a dual focus, providing both whole-of-government content and collaboration tools.
The event was attended by around 30 representatives from state agencies. It was also attended by an invited five person expert panel of experienced online professionals from the Vic private and educational sectors and from the non-Vic public sector (such as myself) to provide an external perspective on the initiatives Victoria is considering.
I think the event went well, with some excellent contributions from the group and several 'ah ha!' moments.
My views from the day on the approach were as follows,
A whole-of-government intranet,
From reflecting on the day, my impression is that whole-of-government intranets are useful tools for aggregating and distributing services and information across government bodies, such as,
I wish the CentralStation team at the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD) all the best in taking the outcomes of the think tank forward in the next generation of Victoria's whole-of-government intranet.
I would also suggest that other jurisdictions could learn a great deal from Victoria's experience in operating their whole-of-government intranet for the last 12 years.
