blogs & usability

I’ve had this one furled since it was published in July (pdf): “”Net rage”: A Study of Blogs and Usability”, by Catalyst Group Design. I just got around to reading it. The methodology is a bit problematic, for example, the study only reviewed reactions to one blog, and the participant pool was way too small (9); still, there is a lot of interesting fodder here for libraries that already have a blog, or those considering one. As with many such studies, the participants’ reactions and comments are usually the most telling. Here are a few (on blogs & RSS):

• I would not know at all [that I could do that with RSS]. I think it’s targeted at someone who knows computer programming or website design. I wouldn’t see a lot of people knowing about this. It looks like a technical thing. (p.10)
• [As] my first encounter with RSS, I would not know what to do with it…somewhere I would need an education. (p.10)
• Some people have road rage. I have ‘net rage.’ I would just have gone someplace else, without having explored this, because I don’t know what’s going on. (p.12)
• It’s not well explained at all. This is the thing with a lot of these Internet trends: people assume you have the knowledge already, because why otherwise would you be looking at blogs? That can be alienating to prospective users. (p.12)

Of course, this all means more education is needed from us, but it also means that we have a long way to go to implementing design best practices for better blog usability. If this interests you at all, it would be worth your while to give the report a read-through.