I was reading Danah Boyd's response to the Google+ real-name enforcement policy. I was going to put out a tweet or two, but it turned into something more than a couple of 140 character comments; you'll notice my statements getting longer and longer...
So here are my thoughts on the matter:
I agree people shouldn't be forced to use their real names online, but why should we insist that all social sites accommodate them?
How can Google's efforts to enforce real names on + be oppressive when they're providing a free service that people can use (or not use)?
Not every site needs to have the same policy, and even within a site, authenticated vs. non-authenticated users can be given different privileges.
Danah Boyd couches the issue of pseudonyms from the standpoint of user safety, but I believe her argument hinges on the assumption that people are forced to use Facebook and/or Google+ as opposed to some other competing social network. After all, there are plenty of places to express yourself online where your real name is not necessary; the market (and the internet) can accommodate many competing solutions.
Right now, it's not always obvious why real name enforcement is more than just huge software corporations asserting their will just because they can (e.g. "it's authoritarianism plain and simple, and authoritarianism is bad!"). After all, we just want to get online and have fun and socialize inconsequentially, right. It's not like we're getting money out of the bank, right?
For now, perhaps, but hopefully not forever. As our online interactions increasingly mean more in our daily lives (and carry over into the "real world"), and as what we do online becomes an important measure of our reputation and credibility (see Klout and Peerindex, or even one's eBay reputation score), then it makes sense that we need more places online where authentication, trust, and accountability are required. As someone who is online all day long, I want more (not fewer) places where my words and actions on the internet have an impact on the rest of my life.
Formalized systems of online reputation are just starting to take off. I think it's safe to assume that Google is interested in that space (especially given that PageRank is all about website reputation). For those of us who want safe places where we can congregate and communicate anonymously (or using pseudonyms) online without people stalking us, those exist and nothing is (currently) stopping anyone from making more.
I'm a fan of diversity and choices online, and being angry about a company's decision and choosing not to use their product is something I completely sympathize with, but that's not the same as saying a company's policy regarding a product--that is completely opt-in--is forcing people to be victimized. (For the record, I'm much more concerned about companies adopting initiatives that are opt-out only).
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Pursuing new challenges
This post is just an update on what I've been up to:
First of all, I'm happy to report that I found a new full-time job! In May 2011, two months after my previous post, I started as the Online Community Manager for ServiceNow, a small but rapidly growing company here in San Diego. To quote our marketing material:
So far, it's been an outstanding place to work. Since our product is more for businesses as opposed to consumers, I don't plan to write about it very much here, but in my new role, I've been blogging regularly on the ServiceNow community.
In general terms, it feels really good to be doing full-time online community, user research, and user experience-related work again. I get to use so much of what I've learned over the years about fan communities, information technology, and how knowledge is shared and transferred (in both formal and informal settings). I also enjoy working in a proper office environment with a lot of people around, which is different from the small Opera office we had here in SD, and hugely different from all the months I spent working at home.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I'll always be a fan of Opera (and I'm still doing part-time consulting work for Opera until my contract runs out). That said, I'm super excited about the challenges and opportunities I have at ServiceNow. Three months in, I know there's nowhere else I'd rather be!
Finding a new job, staying fit, and taking care of my kids has kept me more than occupied, but I did manage to do a couple of things related to anime and fandom. Anime Punch invited me back as a guest yet again (which they've done every year since 2006).
I also attended Anime Expo and had the honor of presenting the closing remarks at the convention's first ever Anime and Manga Studies Symposium. My talk was entitled "Writing about otaku: Lessons from fandom, academia, and beyond". In the future and if there's demand, I might publish that here.
Thanks to everyone who attended either con and came to see me speak! (and special thanks to Mikhail Koulikov for organizing the symposium and inviting me to participate)
This summer, I also attended San Diego Comic-Con, which I've been going to for the last several years (though my first SDCC was in 1998). Anime con exhibit halls have gotten a bit repetitive (and therefore boring) for me over the years, so Comic-Con with its sheer size and variety lets me get my geek shopping fix. In future posts, I might share some of the stuff I picked up.
Lastly, I'm involved in a new book coming out in early 2012 called Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected Age. In that book, I have two chapters: "Strategies of Engagement: Discovering, Defining, and Describing Otaku Culture in the United States" and "Anime and Manga Fandom as Networked Culture". My contribution is adapted from my 2006 doctoral dissertation, but there's some new material as well.
The process of getting a book into print is very long one, so my discussion of otaku in America refers to anime & manga fandom that has already changed quite a bit since the time I conducted my PhD research (and the industry has seen even more drastic changes). With that in mind, I like to think my work offers up an interesting snapshot and analysis of otaku culture within a particular context. I expect some people will disagree with my portrayal of otaku culture and what it all means, but I also hope others will be inspired by my vision of otaku (as an ideal to be achieved). When 2012 rolls around, I hope you'll order the book and let me know what you think!
First of all, I'm happy to report that I found a new full-time job! In May 2011, two months after my previous post, I started as the Online Community Manager for ServiceNow, a small but rapidly growing company here in San Diego. To quote our marketing material:
ServiceNow is modern SaaS for IT service management. It is a new IT service desk application that just works. Visit www.service-now.com for more info.
So far, it's been an outstanding place to work. Since our product is more for businesses as opposed to consumers, I don't plan to write about it very much here, but in my new role, I've been blogging regularly on the ServiceNow community.
In general terms, it feels really good to be doing full-time online community, user research, and user experience-related work again. I get to use so much of what I've learned over the years about fan communities, information technology, and how knowledge is shared and transferred (in both formal and informal settings). I also enjoy working in a proper office environment with a lot of people around, which is different from the small Opera office we had here in SD, and hugely different from all the months I spent working at home.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I'll always be a fan of Opera (and I'm still doing part-time consulting work for Opera until my contract runs out). That said, I'm super excited about the challenges and opportunities I have at ServiceNow. Three months in, I know there's nowhere else I'd rather be!
Otaku Studies revisited
Finding a new job, staying fit, and taking care of my kids has kept me more than occupied, but I did manage to do a couple of things related to anime and fandom. Anime Punch invited me back as a guest yet again (which they've done every year since 2006).
I also attended Anime Expo and had the honor of presenting the closing remarks at the convention's first ever Anime and Manga Studies Symposium. My talk was entitled "Writing about otaku: Lessons from fandom, academia, and beyond". In the future and if there's demand, I might publish that here.
Thanks to everyone who attended either con and came to see me speak! (and special thanks to Mikhail Koulikov for organizing the symposium and inviting me to participate)
This summer, I also attended San Diego Comic-Con, which I've been going to for the last several years (though my first SDCC was in 1998). Anime con exhibit halls have gotten a bit repetitive (and therefore boring) for me over the years, so Comic-Con with its sheer size and variety lets me get my geek shopping fix. In future posts, I might share some of the stuff I picked up.
Lastly, I'm involved in a new book coming out in early 2012 called Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected Age. In that book, I have two chapters: "Strategies of Engagement: Discovering, Defining, and Describing Otaku Culture in the United States" and "Anime and Manga Fandom as Networked Culture". My contribution is adapted from my 2006 doctoral dissertation, but there's some new material as well.
The process of getting a book into print is very long one, so my discussion of otaku in America refers to anime & manga fandom that has already changed quite a bit since the time I conducted my PhD research (and the industry has seen even more drastic changes). With that in mind, I like to think my work offers up an interesting snapshot and analysis of otaku culture within a particular context. I expect some people will disagree with my portrayal of otaku culture and what it all means, but I also hope others will be inspired by my vision of otaku (as an ideal to be achieved). When 2012 rolls around, I hope you'll order the book and let me know what you think!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Looking back and moving forward. The things I learned while working for Opera.
For the past four and a half years, Opera Software has been at the center of my professional life. It's also been nearly a year since I stopped working for Opera full-time. In April 2010, I shifted from a full-time role at Opera to a part-time role (as an independent contractor/consultant), focusing on Opera's once-a-month State of the Mobile Web report.
Over the last year, I've also been pursuing personal projects, helping my wife launch a successful style blog, celebrating milestones like my daughter's first birthday and my son going to kindergarten, and getting fitter than I've ever been (which will be the topic of my next post).
I've been plenty busy and moving forward. Eventually, my contract work with Opera will come to an end, and I'll be sad to leave, but I'm proud of what I achieved with the company and thankful for the lessons I learned. In this post, I thought I would reflect a bit upon my years at Opera and discuss what I learned.
Some of you already know the story of how I got my job at Opera. Long story short, I was supposed to be working on my doctoral dissertation (on otaku culture in America), but I found myself procrastinating instead, thinking heavily about how certain browsers became popular while others did not (independent of technological superiority on one side or another).
To address such questions, I wrote an article in early 2005--Better branding for Opera—and shared it with the My Opera user community. Shortly thereafter, I was contacted by Opera, and when I completed my degree in late 2006, I started to work for Opera (in San Diego, CA).
I started my professional journey with Opera as a member of the Desktop Marketing team. I joined the company to help Opera understand its users better--especially in the United States--in order to improve how we communicated with them. As part of that task, I had the wonderful privilege of interacting with a lot of Opera users (and non-users) both online and in person. I got to meet people at conferences such as SXSW and numerous Barcamps, helped to create Opera's outreach program (Choose Opera), and wrote articles for My Opera, Opera Watch, Opera Labs, and other Opera-related blogs.
Learning what people cared about regarding the Web and the browsers they used was a lot of fun, and I really loved being a bridge between Opera (the company) and its vibrant user community. Even though I came from an academic background, I learned a lot about internet marketing and online community building. In 2008, however, I moved from Marketing to Consumer Product Management and Developer Relations (later the Products group) at Opera, and it's there that I really stepped up my research efforts.
As I mentioned above, I didn't have a traditional marketing, business, HCI, or UX background. I was a social scientist, fresh from the world of academia where I used ethnography as the main tool to understand social phenomena (e.g. media fandom's use of technology). As part of the Marketing team, my initial concern at Opera was how to improve communication between the company and the users (and potential users), with the secondary task of compiling and making sense of user feedback.
In 2008 however, user feedback became my primary concern when I moved onto Opera's Product Management team. Suddenly, it became my job to understand how people use and respond to the Opera browser itself (and not just the marketing). Based on my research, I made recommendations to the designers and engineers working on the product.
This was both exciting and scary. I now had some say (albeit small) regarding the direction of a software product used by millions of people all over the world, and I had to make sure that everything I recommended was based on factual evidence and stayed in line with the ideals of the company, not just my own biases regarding what a browser should be.
Here are some of the guiding principles I followed and some of the lessons I learned in my role as a user researcher for Opera:
1. For a product with so many diverse users, making the right decision regarding who to study is absolutely critical.
For many years, before I started working for the company, I was a die-hard fan of Opera--interacting regularly with other Opera fans and even Opera employees on the My Opera community. Like my fellow Opera fans, I had no shortage of things that I wished Opera could do, or things that I thought had to be changed. When I started to study Opera's user base (as a researcher), my first instinct was to look at the fan community I belonged to, but I also knew that I had to look much farther beyond that. After all, there is a larger world of Opera users who are not part of (or represented by) the fan community on My Opera, and an even larger population of non-Opera users who are completely different from the core community of Opera fans.
2. Browsers are used in many different ways by all kinds of people.
It's important not to overgeneralize users. When researching users of a multi-faceted product like a web browser, it pays to be particular and precise. Specifics count.
To be most effective, I needed to study users (and their behaviors ) across many different contexts. For example, I had to carefully decide who I would interview among all the different groups of people using the browser, and come up with recommendations that best served as many users and potential users as possible.
Even when conducting survey research, I had to make sure that the results I compiled were organized properly and representative of the groups I was interested in (existing Opera users, new Opera users, users in different countries, non-users, users who were uninstalling the browser, mobile users, etc).
3. It's not a good idea to assume that users, even the technical ones, are very knowledgeable about your product.
It's an understatement to say that Opera is "full-featured" (right out of the box, without having to download any extra extensions, widgets, etc.). For the most part, even "power users" are not completely well-versed in everything Opera can do. A person who knows how to use one advanced feature in Opera might be completely clueless regarding a different feature, even one that is considered "basic" by most people. In other words, almost all Opera users are like novices in one way or another. Even most "browser geeks" (like myself) are normal, everyday users most of the time, so it's not a bad idea to treat everyone as novices regarding most things in the browser.
4. Helping people learn about your product is difficult but worthwhile.
When I first started using Opera, I liked the fact that it held all sorts of secrets for geeks like myself to uncover and share with everyone. Eventually, however, I started to care more about the browser as something that could immediately help more people overall, not just hardcore browser tinkerers.
It's not that I wanted to see the browser simplified to the point that it contained nothing interesting to be discovered. Instead, I thought it was important that we should help all people who use Opera to learn about the things that make it unique. Instead of Opera being a browser strictly for "power users", I've come to believe that Opera should help out anyone who wants to become more effective at browsing the Web. In my mind, Opera should be the program for inquisitive (but not necessarily techie) people who enjoy exploring their technology and what it can do for them, beyond what they're used to.
In that sense, Opera might be considered "the browser that makes you smarter". In my opinion, Opera is the one browser that has the biggest potential to show everyday people (who aren't already browser geeks) all the amazing things you can do with a browser that will help you save time, organize your data, search for information, and communicate with others.
5. Mechanisms to educate people about your product should be subtle, elegant, non-intrusive, relevant, and fun.
There are many ways to help users understand your product, but not all of them are equally effective:
On the other hand, many agree that some of the best and most empowering products make sure that:
Although I haven't been part of the team working on Opera Desktop for over a year now, Opera 11 came out in December (and Opera 11.10 beta debuts at SXSW this week). I've been thrilled to see that some of the research I did made an impact on Opera 11 (and hopefully future versions of the browser).
Specifically, I was involved in conducting research that informed Opera's decision to implement things like:
With a renewed focus on usability and the overall user experience, along with a continued emphasis on pushing the envelope with cutting edge features, I think that Opera is evolving nicely. Before I was an Opera employee, I started as a fan of the browser, and when I finally hand in my keycard, I'll be leaving as an even bigger fan. If all goes well, I'll be using Opera until there's no more Web to browse.
I hope you've found this retrospective interesting, or maybe even useful. When I was in grad school--studying anime fans to earn my degree in Science and Technology Studies--I never imagined I'd have the privilege of working in such an exciting industry.
Post-Opera, I look forward to taking on fresh challenges and exploring new opportunities (either consulting or full-time), so if your company or small business is in need of user research insight, please don't hesitate to contact me. My CV can be found here (and my resume is available upon request): http://www.cjas.org/~leng/cv.htm
Finally, I just want to thank all the amazing members of the My Opera community and other Opera fans I've had the chance to meet and interact with over the years. Together, we were always part of something bigger than ourselves, and I hope to see you again soon!
PS: My heart goes out to my friends and colleagues in Japan, and anyone else affected by the tragedy.
Over the last year, I've also been pursuing personal projects, helping my wife launch a successful style blog, celebrating milestones like my daughter's first birthday and my son going to kindergarten, and getting fitter than I've ever been (which will be the topic of my next post).
I've been plenty busy and moving forward. Eventually, my contract work with Opera will come to an end, and I'll be sad to leave, but I'm proud of what I achieved with the company and thankful for the lessons I learned. In this post, I thought I would reflect a bit upon my years at Opera and discuss what I learned.
My first two years at Opera
Some of you already know the story of how I got my job at Opera. Long story short, I was supposed to be working on my doctoral dissertation (on otaku culture in America), but I found myself procrastinating instead, thinking heavily about how certain browsers became popular while others did not (independent of technological superiority on one side or another).
To address such questions, I wrote an article in early 2005--Better branding for Opera—and shared it with the My Opera user community. Shortly thereafter, I was contacted by Opera, and when I completed my degree in late 2006, I started to work for Opera (in San Diego, CA).
I started my professional journey with Opera as a member of the Desktop Marketing team. I joined the company to help Opera understand its users better--especially in the United States--in order to improve how we communicated with them. As part of that task, I had the wonderful privilege of interacting with a lot of Opera users (and non-users) both online and in person. I got to meet people at conferences such as SXSW and numerous Barcamps, helped to create Opera's outreach program (Choose Opera), and wrote articles for My Opera, Opera Watch, Opera Labs, and other Opera-related blogs.
Learning what people cared about regarding the Web and the browsers they used was a lot of fun, and I really loved being a bridge between Opera (the company) and its vibrant user community. Even though I came from an academic background, I learned a lot about internet marketing and online community building. In 2008, however, I moved from Marketing to Consumer Product Management and Developer Relations (later the Products group) at Opera, and it's there that I really stepped up my research efforts.
Product and user research at Opera
As I mentioned above, I didn't have a traditional marketing, business, HCI, or UX background. I was a social scientist, fresh from the world of academia where I used ethnography as the main tool to understand social phenomena (e.g. media fandom's use of technology). As part of the Marketing team, my initial concern at Opera was how to improve communication between the company and the users (and potential users), with the secondary task of compiling and making sense of user feedback.
In 2008 however, user feedback became my primary concern when I moved onto Opera's Product Management team. Suddenly, it became my job to understand how people use and respond to the Opera browser itself (and not just the marketing). Based on my research, I made recommendations to the designers and engineers working on the product.
This was both exciting and scary. I now had some say (albeit small) regarding the direction of a software product used by millions of people all over the world, and I had to make sure that everything I recommended was based on factual evidence and stayed in line with the ideals of the company, not just my own biases regarding what a browser should be.
What I learned
Here are some of the guiding principles I followed and some of the lessons I learned in my role as a user researcher for Opera:
1. For a product with so many diverse users, making the right decision regarding who to study is absolutely critical.
For many years, before I started working for the company, I was a die-hard fan of Opera--interacting regularly with other Opera fans and even Opera employees on the My Opera community. Like my fellow Opera fans, I had no shortage of things that I wished Opera could do, or things that I thought had to be changed. When I started to study Opera's user base (as a researcher), my first instinct was to look at the fan community I belonged to, but I also knew that I had to look much farther beyond that. After all, there is a larger world of Opera users who are not part of (or represented by) the fan community on My Opera, and an even larger population of non-Opera users who are completely different from the core community of Opera fans.
2. Browsers are used in many different ways by all kinds of people.
It's important not to overgeneralize users. When researching users of a multi-faceted product like a web browser, it pays to be particular and precise. Specifics count.
To be most effective, I needed to study users (and their behaviors ) across many different contexts. For example, I had to carefully decide who I would interview among all the different groups of people using the browser, and come up with recommendations that best served as many users and potential users as possible.
Even when conducting survey research, I had to make sure that the results I compiled were organized properly and representative of the groups I was interested in (existing Opera users, new Opera users, users in different countries, non-users, users who were uninstalling the browser, mobile users, etc).
3. It's not a good idea to assume that users, even the technical ones, are very knowledgeable about your product.
It's an understatement to say that Opera is "full-featured" (right out of the box, without having to download any extra extensions, widgets, etc.). For the most part, even "power users" are not completely well-versed in everything Opera can do. A person who knows how to use one advanced feature in Opera might be completely clueless regarding a different feature, even one that is considered "basic" by most people. In other words, almost all Opera users are like novices in one way or another. Even most "browser geeks" (like myself) are normal, everyday users most of the time, so it's not a bad idea to treat everyone as novices regarding most things in the browser.
4. Helping people learn about your product is difficult but worthwhile.
When I first started using Opera, I liked the fact that it held all sorts of secrets for geeks like myself to uncover and share with everyone. Eventually, however, I started to care more about the browser as something that could immediately help more people overall, not just hardcore browser tinkerers.
It's not that I wanted to see the browser simplified to the point that it contained nothing interesting to be discovered. Instead, I thought it was important that we should help all people who use Opera to learn about the things that make it unique. Instead of Opera being a browser strictly for "power users", I've come to believe that Opera should help out anyone who wants to become more effective at browsing the Web. In my mind, Opera should be the program for inquisitive (but not necessarily techie) people who enjoy exploring their technology and what it can do for them, beyond what they're used to.
In that sense, Opera might be considered "the browser that makes you smarter". In my opinion, Opera is the one browser that has the biggest potential to show everyday people (who aren't already browser geeks) all the amazing things you can do with a browser that will help you save time, organize your data, search for information, and communicate with others.
5. Mechanisms to educate people about your product should be subtle, elegant, non-intrusive, relevant, and fun.
There are many ways to help users understand your product, but not all of them are equally effective:
- You can rely solely on documentation provided to users (e.g. help files and tutorials), but many people don't like looking for or reading directions, and there's an unfortunate temptation to blame users for not reading the manual (or not searching forums and FAQs for previously answered questions).
- You can have things like the notorious Clippy, but that's the example everyone brings up when discussing intrusive help measures.
- You can show "tips of the day" within your software, but there's no guarantee that any given tip will be relevant to the user who's reading it at the moment.
On the other hand, many agree that some of the best and most empowering products make sure that:
- users understand the consequences of their actions (e.g. using clear visual cues to show cause and effect).
- users are presented with information in a contextual way, such that relevant information unfolds in front of them based upon their actions (as opposed to appearing arbitrarily).
- users are not afraid of (or otherwise prevented from) exploring the product. Trying out the capabilities of something you own, whether a car or a browser, should be fun and exciting. That's only possible if users can play around with the product without fear of accidentally breaking something that they don't know how to fix.
Parting gifts and fond farewells
Although I haven't been part of the team working on Opera Desktop for over a year now, Opera 11 came out in December (and Opera 11.10 beta debuts at SXSW this week). I've been thrilled to see that some of the research I did made an impact on Opera 11 (and hopefully future versions of the browser).
Specifically, I was involved in conducting research that informed Opera's decision to implement things like:
a) third-party extensions
b) a new way to manage and organize open tabs. (In my opinion, the specific implementation of that--which I had nothing to do with--is brilliant!)
c) visual mouse gestures (see video below). Reflecting upon the principles discussed in point #5 above, I daydreamed the idea and wrote up the initial set of requirements for visual mouse gestures while sitting all alone in Opera's now-closed San Diego office (US operations are now based in San Mateo). As such, I feel a little proud and somewhat nostalgic every time I use that feature.
With a renewed focus on usability and the overall user experience, along with a continued emphasis on pushing the envelope with cutting edge features, I think that Opera is evolving nicely. Before I was an Opera employee, I started as a fan of the browser, and when I finally hand in my keycard, I'll be leaving as an even bigger fan. If all goes well, I'll be using Opera until there's no more Web to browse.
I hope you've found this retrospective interesting, or maybe even useful. When I was in grad school--studying anime fans to earn my degree in Science and Technology Studies--I never imagined I'd have the privilege of working in such an exciting industry.
Post-Opera, I look forward to taking on fresh challenges and exploring new opportunities (either consulting or full-time), so if your company or small business is in need of user research insight, please don't hesitate to contact me. My CV can be found here (and my resume is available upon request): http://www.cjas.org/~leng/cv.htm
Finally, I just want to thank all the amazing members of the My Opera community and other Opera fans I've had the chance to meet and interact with over the years. Together, we were always part of something bigger than ourselves, and I hope to see you again soon!
PS: My heart goes out to my friends and colleagues in Japan, and anyone else affected by the tragedy.
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