AVI/Psych 358/IE 340: Human Factors

Web 2.0

November 14-17

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WWW (Web 1.0)

• Traditional web: post-1990, news websites, e-commerce, University websites etc.

• Content: mostly generated by experts (e.g., news websites)

• Changing content meant re-design by web administrators

• Use of WWW as an “information source”

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Traditional Web

• Mostly read-only• Mostly institutions • Client-server architectures• Web forms• Portals (e.g., Yahoo)• Mostly dial up users (so, all

text/html pages)

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Key Players

• Content producers– News websites (e.g.,journalists) – Company websites

• Web marketing– E-commerce websites (e.g.,amazon, ebay)– Pre Y2K era had several .com sites from

grocery stores to flower shops

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Yahoo!

• In 1995, Yahoo! was formed (Jerry Yang & David Filo)

• Created their own content, mostly IT related information

• Model was based on web 1.0, create content and provide portal services

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Advent of Google

Google changed the way WWW was being used

Focus on information gathering, aggregation and

dissemination (e.g., Google search, Google News)

They created no content themselves but

intelligently used content produced by others

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Influence of Google

Economic model of the web changed with Google

Keywords to make your website be the top hit

Advertisement as the main source of web revenue

Competition to Google has not yet caught up

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What is Web 2.0?

Coined by Tim O’Reilly (the publisher)

Focus on user-created content rather than expert

created content

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Web 2.0

• Mostly user input• Mostly about communities• Peer to peer networks• Web applications (and API’s)• RSS• Sharing content • Broadband

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The make of Web 2.0

• Trusted individuals are once again the source of news in a society (bloggers)

• Word of mouth is once again how news spreads (viral marketing)• People once again hunt and gather in a group (del.icio.us)• People once again group things using words like small, big, happy,

sad, funny, food rather than detailed hierarchical structures (tags)

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Web 2.0 Video

• http://youtube.com/watch?v=0LzQIUANnHc&feature=related

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Other Characteristics of Web 2.0 (1/3)

• Extended Navigation (also see tag based navigation on citeulike, del.icio.us etc)

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Other Characteristics of Web 2.0 (2/3)

• User trails

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Other Characteristics of Web 2.0 (3/3)

• Composition & Structure– Capabilities to organize content

(e.g., see flickr uses the folder metaphor)

– Time based organization of content(digg spy)

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Web 2.0 Technologies

• User created content [e.g. Youtube, Wikipedia, Blogs]

• Social Tagging [Flickr, CiteUlike, Del.icio.us etc]

• Social Networking [Facebook, MySpace, Orkut etc]

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O’Reilly’s classification (1/2)

• Level 0: the application is online but would work offline if a database contained all the information (e.g. Map based tools)

• Level 1: application can and does exist offline, but more powerful by being online (e.g. Writely, now Google docs)

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O’Reilly’s classification (2/2)

• Level 2: application could exist offline, but uniquely benefits by being online (e.g. Flickr vs. iPhoto)

• Level 3: application can only exist online (e.g., ebay, craigslist, wikipedia)

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/07/levels_of_the_game.html

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Web 2.0 and HCI

• Role of HCI and usability in the world of Web 2.0– Social experience (User experiences is the key)– User is the designer (ability of configure web tools)– End-user programming

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Social experience

• Social experiences afforded by social networking sites sometimes overcome the functional issues– e.g., Facebook does not afford video chat

features, but helps you connect with lots of friends

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User as designer

• User is the designer– Configurable tools (e.g., Facebook

API/applications)– User requires some technical knowledge for

configuring the pages– Issue: How to inform the users about the

usability of their websites?

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User Created Content

• Blogs or weBlogs– Internet journals of users or communities– Easy to create with several tools (blogspot,

wordpress etc)– Also photo blogs and video blogs (vlogs)

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Twitter

• Text messaging based interaction

• “Micro-blogging”• Simple service to let others

know current activity– User sets description of

current activity– Text message is broadcast

to each of his or her friends– Like Facebook’s status

service with added text message broadcasting

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You Tube

• “Broadcast Yourself”

• Sharing of video content

• Categories of content (by the use of tags and pre-set categories)

• Easy to add/delete/change content

• Issues of copyright protection

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Challenges

• Setting up and customization requires some technical skills

• Accuracy of blogs (if you are looking for some information)

• Privacy issues

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Discussion

• What are possible reasons of the popularity of blogs?

• What user experience aspects do blogs have?

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Social Tagging

• Users assign short “tags” to pictures, documents, videos, news etc

• Helps other users to search for what they are looking for

• Popular tagging websites: del.icio.us (bookmarks); Flickr (photos), citeulike (research papers)

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Class Discussion

• What are some of the issues of social tagging?

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News aggregators and social news• RSS Feeds• www.digg.com• www.reddit.com• Both work on a simple principle

– Users submit news stories (and they are categorized)

– Users vote on the importance of the story/news item