Opinion: A study by the Catalyst Group finds that users couldn't figure out what the blog was or how they should react to it.If you're honest about blogs and you pay close attention, there isn't very much in a blog-usability study that's going to surprise you. If, however, you've signed up, been drawn in, drank the Kool-Aid or have merely gone simple, the Catalyst Group's new report is a must-read.
Or maybe it's just that you've never thought about blogs, in which case this report is an excellent introduction to some of the problems blog users face.
I will start with the study's limitations: Catalyst tested only nine users and looked at only one blog, a BusinessWeek blog called "Well Spent."
If you haven't already followed the link, this is a fairly typical blog in which the magazine's writers contribute short items from their beats. If you understand what a blog is, this is pretty straightforward.
The big problem is that the nine people Catalyst "tested" couldn't figure out what the blog was or how they should react to it. These were not computer illiterates who tested, but people who said they felt quite comfortable finding information on the Web. All of the subjects used the Internet for at least 10 hours a week in addition to e-mail time, and each had at least two years of Internet experience.
The executive summary of the report, titled "Net Rage" from one of the participant's comments about using the blog, is available for download here (PDF form). Here are the major findings as I see them:
1) The participants looked at the site and were surprised to find out they were on a blog. Whatever "fuzzy ideas" the participants had about what blogs are, they didn't match what they found.
2) Nearly all of the participants said there was no clear distinction between the blog and BusinessWeek's online magazine. The blog pages didn't identify themselves as such, and the style of writing (short items) and format (categories, archives) didn't communicate "blog" to the subjects tested.
3) Participants didn't understand what would happen when they posted a comment, whether all posts appear or just an edited selection. It was not clear why the subjects might want to post.
4) The concept and mechanics of RSS "failed utterly with test participants," the executive summary said. While frequent blog users see RSS feeds as a central part of a blog's value, the test participants didn't understand that at all.
5) XML and RSS buttons, even brightly colored ones, didn't attract the subjects' interest. Terms more common to newsletters and e-mail (subscribe, update, etc.) would be more easily understood.
6) You cannot underestimate users' privacy and security concerns.
7) None of the participants understood trackbacks or trackback pings, which makes me feel better since I've never paid any attention to them.
The summary report runs to 19 pages, so I can't cover it here in its entirety. The bottom line for the testers was that, once they received some education, most said blogs were a good or interesting development. But almost all of them felt there wasn't nearly enough help available for new users.
The fact that users didn't immediately recognize blogs and RSS feeds as something special goes to my argument that blogs are an evolutionary development, not a revolution. The value of blog technology isn't immediately obvious and is easily assumed to be something else—the subjects called the postings "articles"—and RSS/XML merely gets a bewildered look.
While blogs clearly have value for authors—easy posting if nothing else—users don't immediately understand why they should get set up for RSS. This is hardly surprising since blogs generally don't explain RSS very well. Adding help screens and pop-ups for new users seems to get in the way of blogs' free-form nature, however necessary they might be.
I am not sure there is any significance that the testing was done on a commercial blog site and not a personal or hobby blog, as the typical blog elements are common to all. The BusinessWeek blog is just a tad more complex than what anyone can set up for themselves on one of the blog-hosting sites.
I am likely to start blogging again soon, in earnest this time. So, to the extent that I can, I'll take the Catalyst Group's observations into account. But by testing only brand-new users, the study left many questions unanswered.
For example, I'd like to know what users expect from blogs. Lots of short items? Fewer, longer posts? How should blogs be organized and how much intellectual breadth of topic can they cover? That is, how wide can the topic be before you start losing people? Should we count on RSS feeds or blog visitors for the bulk of page views, and how do the needs of the two groups differ?
I can imagine that the home page of a blog might present information quite differently (more like articles) than the chronological flow of an RSS feed. I'd like to know more about the value of comments, specifically how tightly comments should be edited.
Comments should pass by a human editor before going "live" on a site. Some blogs won't have trouble with off-topic, nonsubstantive or altogether inappropriate posts, but some most definitely will. Comments should be held to the same "quality standards" as the posts themselves if they are to hold reader interest.
Blogs are a new medium, though not as different as many people suppose. We are all in a learning-by-doing stage, and don't feel bad if you don't understand what blogging as all about. You're not alone. As the Catalyst report shows, readers are just as confused.
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