This is NOT the Facebook Login
Every day, software testers must put themselves in the shoes of their users. Testers should always think about how their users – their customers, actually – are going to use their product. Is the application workflow clear? Does a particular bug interfere with the overall experience of the product? Could the UI be more standards compliant or intuitive?
Good usability testing is both an art and a challenge. ReadWriteWeb, a popular web startup blog, learned that fact the hard way this week after writing a post titled Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login. The post was about the partnership between Facebook and AOL to integrate AIM and Facebook chat. Pretty standard Internet news stuff.
But take a look at that headline – it uses both the words “Facebook” and “Login”. For Google that was enough to make this ReadWriteWeb article the number two link for those search terms, and after that all hell broke loose.
It turns out a lot of people don’t use the URL bar in the web browsers. Instead, they set their homepage to Google and search for whatever they want to find. For example, they type “facebook login” to visit Facebook and click on the first thing that appears – or the second by accident.
What happened next is even more astonishing. A large number of people completely ignored the fact that ReadWriteWeb is a blog, uses a red color scheme, contains a logo that is both spelled and pronounced differently than “Facebook,” and does not actually feature a Facebook login. Instead, they scrolled to the bottom of the page, found the Facebook connect icon, and tried to login there. When they couldn’t, they posted comments and complained – loudly.
This is a software testing corner case, but an informative one. What are the chances that a random blog post could appear in the number two Google spot for “facebook login?” (Note: if you are visiting from Google, the Facebook login is here.)
After the dust settled, ReadWriteWeb posted some awesome thoughts about this experience. All of their points are excellent, but I think #4 is particularly important for software testers:
4. Users rule the Internet.
Finally, this is the reason we’ve stopped mocking the poor folks who left those comments long enough to write this post.
400 million people now use Facebook, and they don’t all have CS Master’s degrees from Stanford. But if you work in the IT/tech/Internet/online media industries, they do manage to pay your bills. They’re the ones who open emails, click ads, make purchases, sign up for subscriptions and generally take the majority of actions that make our whole ecosystem work.
And most of them have no idea what a web browser is or how it differs from a search engine or a social network. They’ve chosen to be smart about other things, like building cars or making art or raising families. I’ll bet some of them are terrific dancers. We have to build the Web for them, too.
As testers, you play a critical role in building the web for the average person. What kind of usability testing experiences have you faced?
“And most of them have no idea what a web browser is or how it differs from a search engine or a social network. They’ve chosen to be smart about other things, like building cars or making art or raising families. I’ll bet some of them are terrific dancers. We have to build the Web for them, too.”
This should be tatooed on the forehead of every system administrator, in backwards text, so they see it every time they look in the mirror.
RR
[...] it is to acclimate new users, and even today people struggle with tasks as simple as finding the Facebook login. While Bob’s room metaphor didn’t work out, it’s still critical for developers [...]