Demystifying Usability

How relying on 'user education' is a failed strategy

Maybe you have heard the saying "we'll take care of that in user training". The notion that problems users have can be resolved by user training is severely flawed. Yet entire departments rally around this belief and worse many companies seem to wrap product management around it.

The idea that you can educate users about how to use a user interface is misguided. The goal of usability is to create intuitive user interfaces. Intuitive means the design does not require understanding. Help and "user education" presupposes that both of these goals are possible.

My personal and professional experience tells me they are not. Maybe I am not typical: I don't read user manuals, I struggle with help systems and I go for defaults over configuring options. In fact those three behaviors are very typical of the "average user".

At Experience Dynamics I occasionally worked with clients who have structured their entire user experience efforts around a User Education department. This type of department writes documentation and help manuals and systems in order to "clean up" on confusion created by complex software, Web applications and Web sites. The idea is that with a little help, a user can be trained.

As someone who spends a lot of time with end users observing them interact with these same interfaces and help systems created by those same user education departments, I can tell you categorically that the intention does not match the reality. If it's not intuitive, you're in trouble...help or not.

Should you design help systems if they don't help?

Last week in Seattle there was a User Assistance (UA) conference, a regular conference for professionals in this area. Even usability thought leader Jared Spool spoke at the conference...

If 'help doesn't' then what are UA professionals such as those at last week's conference doing wasting their time? What is a company doing wasting time putting a help system in a design? 

UA seems to be a 'necessary evil' in interface design. While user "training" can help ease the burden of disorientation, it is ineffective as a method for increasing the important usability metrics of ease of use, ease of learning or ease of understanding.

Don't get me wrong, you still need to build help systems-- just don't rely on them as a mechanism that will realistically save your design. What I object to is not the existence of UA, but rather the reliance on it by developers, designers and product managers as a way to brush away usability requirements. I have been in too many meetings where everyone nods their head to the sound of "that's just a user training issue" or "the user can just hit help or click here for help".

User Error, Lazy and Stupid Users and What to do about Them

While preparing this post, I mentioned to a colleague the premise of this article and he said:

Please tell that to my current project team. Man, they get so angry at the users' "incompetence" and "laziness" because they struggle and don't read the massive bibles of "User Assistance" for our web application...

Stupid and lazy users are often found in the same mental space as user education. I once talked to a manager of users using a system who told me the problem with the users was that they were lazy. There were no usability issues with the application, it was their laziness and stupidity that were to blame. In the next moment she told me that she was having terrible issues with the app's ease of use and that a competitor's application was so much easier to use!

Humans are extremely intelligent but it's a different intelligence than the linear intelligence of a machine. As a result humans will commit errors. Errors are actually inherent to how we learn. You remember "trial and error" right?

Since you can't adjust your users but you can your design, how about this for a new belief: "There are no user errors, only designer errors"?

Helping Users as a business model?

If your belief about users is that help does, or that a sprinkle of training is the answer, then you probably need to spend more time with your users. Even technical users, business users, scientific expert users, PhD users and others you would expect to master an interface, show the same pattern as average users in our studies at Experience Dynamics.

Virgin Atlantic airways took a user assistance approach to designing their first-generation of their in-flight entertainment system. The last few Virgin flights I took to London last year had that system in them. Tired and ready to view the great British TV content they have on those flights, I experienced the "business model" first hand:

• Virgin forced a repetitive start screen asking if you had read the directions before continuing.
• Console controls were so confusing (simultaneous criss-cross left and right thumb navigation) they often triggered the friendly help video (forced watching).
• The in-flight media guide had a cartoon character proclaiming "the system is EASY TO USE!" explaining why it was easy to use and offering pages of instructions on how to use it.

Needless to say, on every Virgin flight I struggled to figure out how to use the system. Instead of interacting with the content, I was forced to interact with the belief system used to design the experience: That user education and help was the answer to leveraging potential usability issues.

Virgin's redesign of the system, called RED, (pictured top of this page) looks remarkably more pleasant and usable. Designed by Charles Ogilvy, you can see some images of it here. The new system is a complete rework, and it looks like they made user experience the driver and gave user assistance more of a back seat.

Virgin learned a difficult lesson that many designers and developers make: make it intuitive to begin with, design to accommodate human error and leave user assistance as the safety net, knowing that it might catch falling users (or more probably it will not).

In summary: User education and assistance is a supplement that users might access in a frenzied state of helplessness, confusion or anger. It rarely helps to save a design that has failed to support a user. Help should be there as an 'FYI' not as a substitute for a non-intuitive design.

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

Competitor designs: The danger of borrowing across contexts

The Internet is great for taking a rapid look at what your competitors might be doing as you design a user interface. While this is a valuable learning opportunity, it can also be dangerous and inappropriate for your design.

The biggest problem I have found, is that user interface approaches or design elements do not carry neatly across contexts. Each design context is unique. By design context I mean a few things:

• Brand experience: Each company has a unique set of emotions, memories, triggers that set the mood for interacting with a user's goal or task.
  
• Metaphor: How you represent or communicate functionality or concepts a user needs to interact with, is often unique to your site. It is rare to have an exact match even between competitor applications.
• User focus: The user's attention, concentration and expectation for completing a task on your site, or with your software, is inherently different to the user focus on that of others.
• Task flow: What users need to do to be successful is very particular from one site to the next. Take something as common as e-commerce for example: Shopping for high heel shoes and hiking boots require differences in decision-making criteria. Design widgets may differ to cater to this unique task flow.
• Page layout: Features and functionality will dictate a different need for the design to flex toward a user's needs, that is hard to force-fit between designs. 

Look at Microsoft's Live search compared to Google. Live has gotten closer to Google's look and feel over the years but is still strikingly different. Same task, same functionality, but totally different search experiences.

Why is this such a big issue?

Competitor or third party design ideas are often used as a justification for "why or how we should do it" by program or product managers, designers and even developers. Just because it exists means it's valid. Designs can quickly turn "me too" in a meeting, just by someone demonstrating and explaining the merits of a design idea.

Over the last year (in my usability consulting with Experience Dynamics) I've run into a few situations where either design metaphors or AJAX implementations were borrowed from leading applications like Google calendar. In almost every instance where either I or my client tried to borrow from another application (e.g. iTunes, Google Apps, Kayak or any other design you like or consider best practice) we found the "fit" was imperfect. Something was lost in translation, and I believe that something was design context. For example, when we usability tested the design element, it did not quite work for the particular user experience we were designing.

This is particularly a big issue these days with so many new and exciting AJAX usability design elements being developed and not yet standardized.

When it makes sense to "borrow"

Competitor or third party websites or applications can serve as a great inspiration or discussion piece. Often times in design meetings, I will review a competitor site or best practice application as a way to explore, educate, contrast or break a design meeting log-jam.

I am reminded over and over that borrowing design ideas is not a clean art. You must be careful or you could end up with an ear on top of your head, as in the kids game Mr. Potato Head...

Here are some guidelines I have found helpful:

1. If you borrow you need to carefully assess the context. Does it work for your unique design context? 
2. How translatable, cross-over-able, inter-operable is the idea, metaphor, widget or design paradigm?
3. What do we know about the design element or implementation based on current and past Human Computer Interaction knowledge?
4. Are you ignoring the context you borrowed it from and retro-fitting it into your design context, hence damaging its adaptability and adopt-ability?
5. Is the design element something you have uncertainties about? Can you usability test it or have a usability expert review it for flaws or structural weaknesses?

Paying attention to the dangers of borrowing across contexts is an important and delicate skill. If you say "well I don't have this problem because I don't borrow- all my designs are original" then you probably are fairly unique. Worse this still applies to you because every design best practice, design standard or user interface style guide you have studied or seen has patterned you, one way or another.

The most obvious example of this is the Mac or iTunes user who tries to "export" the iTunes search box, bottom left plus sign Add widget, or the horizontal 'select-sub category' menus (design elements only familiar inside the iTunes interface). Remember not everyone loves or uses iTunes!

At some level we are all tainted by the pre-cognitive processing we bring to a new design, based on our past, mainly unconscious generalizations of how things should be. My point here has been that if you do this consciously as in "let's see how X does it", be careful what and how you borrow!

Having learned my lesson, my tendency now is to look and learn and then go do something that works for your unique user experience.

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

President Obama: Vision for Usability?

Usability awareness back in the White House?

Obama is already being described as the Internet President. Will his Internet savvy include an agenda for usability? If so, what might that agenda include? In this post I explore these questions, connect some dots and present some potential solutions for how Obama's technology goals are linked deeply to harnessing usability best practices.

Tech innovators get excited

Late in the election season, Silicon Valley expressed its joy that a pro-technology President is back, as witnessed by Google's CEO promoting Obama in the weeks before the election, as well as former CEO's of eBay and HP and Microsoft also backing Obama in the run up to the election.

Al Gore was the closest the US has been to a pro-IT cabinet level politician. In 1998, Al Gore had this to say about usability:

"The benefits of usable technology include reduced training costs, limited user risk and enhanced performance ... American industry and government will become even more productive if they take advantage of usability engineering techniques". Vice President Al Gore 1998

While Al Gore promoted usability as Vice President, it is unclear what actions were taken if any. Ironically, it was usability of the voting experience, underscored by voter fraud and the infamous butterfly ballot, that helped get Gore un-elected in 2000. (The Usability Professionals Association made this one of their civic projects).

Not since Al Gore was Vice President did usability receive any attention at the national level. Where are Obama's views on IT and usability engineering? How strong of an agenda will usability play in Obama's IT plans?

Obama: more likely to understand the importance of usability

Obama's weighs heavily on the value of Information Technology (IT) investment and innovation, including staffing the nation's first office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Obama's vision for IT is to invest in it to further social change. This is distinctly different to Bush's IT agenda which seemed to extend only as far as military and Homeland Security.

Obama has demonstrated that he gets technology. His campaign is a major case study in using IT to redefine grassroots canvassing and organizing. His advances in social networking for political gains were underscored by gigantic followings and views on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr and others. Obama's age and tech-savvy combined with his recognizing how to use this stage of the Internet's maturity give him an unprecedented quality as tech champion:

"Some have dubbed him the first Blackberry President, as he can often be seen checking his mobile email device as soon as he gets off a plane.He is an iPod-tuned, Facebook-friendly, Twittering politician who fits right into the digital age and makes other leaders look analogue. Hecan communicate directly with the public via profiles on Facebook and MySpace, photographs on Flickr, videos on YouTube, text message feeds on Twitter and meetings on his own social network myBarackObama.com. 'I must say how excited we all have been to elect a President who at least carries a mobile device,' said Chris Sacca, an internet start-up investor". The Guardian

Obama's tech-savviness was further underscored by change.gov, a forum for voicing citizen concerns and ideas (like Dell's Idea Storm), set up to help bridge the Nov 4th- Jan 20th gap. The Obama team even migrated their opt-in mailing list when closing down the site on Jan 20th with a permission opt-in and redirect welcome message and blog post from the Director of New Media at the White House. The Obama agenda says Phillips, the new Director, is participation, communication and transparency. The transparency initiative was re-enforced by a memo Obama sent a few days later requiring government agencies to "harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public".

Where will Obama take technology?

President Obama has articulated a strong desire to preserve and support several important issues: Net Neutrality and broadband access to undeserved communities. His IT plan is to bolster social change by harnessing technology and enabling access to the new opportunities afforded by technology. To do this, Obama and his CTO will need to understand and utilize usability engineering best practices.  

"Addressing usability of technology and its relevance to some adults are different kinds of challenges. The technology industry is the main actor here. On the one hand, the industry has ample incentives to improve usability and enhance the relevance of digital content to people's everyday lives. Yet the fact remains that the nature of modern gadgetry is daunting to many people, especially older ones.⁶Many respondents to our surveys tell us they would appreciate a hand in mastering technology and the Obama tech team might decide that government can play a catalytic role in nudging industry to improve usability and relevance through procurement". Pew Research

The Pew study underscores the need for human mastery of technology. Usability is instrumental for social change efforts with technology. Just because you have access does not mean you can use the technology effectively, efficiently, productively, joyfully etc. Usability is an enabler to the goal of empowering humans to use technology.

There are lots of things Obama could do with technology to enhance learning, education and community. For example giving primary schoolchildren laptops (like a project piloted in Northern England in the 1990's) or a neighborhood strengthening online community (piloted in the 1990's in London when I lived in the UK). Alexandra Samuel provides an intriguing list of 50 ways Obama can use the Internet to govern, many of which have already been acted upon by Obama.

But, what should Obama do to ensure that the people getting the technology can use it?

5 Things the Obama Administration should do to improve technology ease of use

1. Understand that a strong usability focus will be needed to achieve social goals.

Today we see usability slowly creeping into regulations and standards. For example, the FDA is mandating usability in medical device development; the government is backing standardization of enterprise software architecture (the FEA framework PDF); or that there are a few existing low-profile initiatives for promoting usability best practices as well as encouraging the importance of usability in government website development. A more coordinated and higher profile effort for "humanizing technology" will be needed. Industry understands that usability creates profitability. Having federal backing can help bootstrap organizations, non-profits and businesses who don't have access to usability methods and expertise.

2. Ensure the new CTO learns from and understands the past 10 years of Web and Software usability best practices.

It is vital that the new federal CTO understands and helps promote usability within the new government. It would be tragic to make the classic mistake of 'technology for technology's sake'. The Obama Web team has demonstrated their skill. For the rest of the government and the older Clinton years politicians, there is a need to educate and champion usable IT. Obama's CTO must be familiar with corporate usability lessons and mistakes in deploying buggy, useless, unsatisfying, unintuitive and user-hostile software and web services over the past decade. Usability is a documented science, this needs to be understood.

3. Realize that the Web 2.0 and Social Media efforts of the campaign and change.gov effort so far tie to a national usability agenda.

People have been able to access Obama's message because he has made it so accessible. If this is accidental then good for you! However there is a science behind this and many more non-savvy companies, organizations and non-profits are light years behind the success that has been pioneered with the Obama campaign.

Any initiative or effort to empower the citizenry with technology needs to be tempered with human-centered design (another name for user-centered design) standards and guidelines.

4.Redefine usability as not just another technical standard or guidelines but an approach to empowering humans with technology.

What Apple has been doing with their products is needed at the national level. Take a vision, base it in known usability best practices and make it work passionately. We need stronger regulations, better initiatives and closer ties with government and industry to promote cross-pollination of best practices.

Usability needs to be understood as not just another technical item (as Accessibility has been treated), but the entire purpose of the product. We need new thinking and leadership within our own usability community to communicate this, and likewise we need an executive federal level understanding that usability is a mandatory requirement and approach for technology initiatives.

5. Technology should be rewarded (funded) when innovated for social good.

What types of innovations can be developed by industry and individuals that support the nations goals for social good? Let's do what Bush did with the Homeland Security innovation dollars but make the innovations we fund have a social improvement backbone, instead of a military and security one.

The Obama government should open up technology innovation (Web and product) to social entrepreneurism. For example, for emergency relief, mash-ups created during Hurricane Katrina helped dislocated persons find shelter...or for health, for example, the Wii Fit is a technology with tangible health benefits (or so I'm told) ;-).

To start, having a conversation about how to get technology to work for the people it's destined for is the first step. It's great we can have this conversation! I would love to hear your thoughts, comments.

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

p.s. Issues with Typepad have caused a re-write of some of these paragraphs. So I will call out an interesting news item about Obama's staff digging the White House Out of the Dark Ages for starters (hat tip to Matt Schoolfield).

Intro to Emotion Design- Pleasurability and Emotional Design

Here is a recording from a live usability seminar I gave a few weeks ago on the topic of emotion design and pleasurability. (Sign up at the bottom of that page to our usability research newsletter to be alerted to upcoming free usability seminars like this)...

In the age of the iPhone, emotion in design is heating up as a competitive differentiator. Products that deliver a compelling and elegant user experience are characterized by their ability to evoke and sustain emotion from the user.

This 40 minute seminar explores these key questions: What is emotion design?; How does it differ from usability?; and What aspects of emotion or pleasurability can be measured?

The seminar also covers the following questions:

How does emotion factor into user experience?; What is the impact of emotion on product user experience?; How can websites and web applications benefit from the latest insights in emotion design?; Is emotion a separate metric or related to usability?; How are emotional responses best measured?

Intro To Emotion Design- Pleasurability and Emotional Design- Experience Dynamics Web Seminar

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

Usability 2.0?

I gave a two day workshop on User Experience best practices in Web 2.0 at Gallup (yes, the polling organization) in Omaha last week.

Here's a slide from the seminar I thought you might find interesting capturing Usability 2.0 (whatever that is). It is a take on the infamous O'Reilly diagram capturing Web 2.0 concepts. My favorite is"iphone like magic" because I have had clients asking for web applications with that description.

BTW, my definition of Web 2.0 for the Gallup seminar audience was:

• The ambitious adoption and application of emerging technologies (eg. Asynchronous JavaScript; REST/SOAP API) in the post dot-com “hurry up and innovate” period.
• Driven by a community of “hipsters” (eg. The Bay Area) internalizing and absorbing usability and User Centered Design methodology with the deliberate goal of creating cool, useful and usable aka ‘elegant user experiences’.
• A movement backed by movers and shakers (eg. Google and O’Reilly press) that has supported an open-source ethos (free; share; contribute), community and infrastructure.
• As of December 2008, no longer hype (e.g Ajax hype satire is still a running joke in corporate teams)…”Web 2.0” = core architecture that can be valuable (if applied sensibly).

Here's a definition from Wikipedia, which I think is right on:

According to Best, the characteristics of Web 2.0 are: rich user experience, user participation, dynamic content, metadata, web standards and scalability. Further characteristics, such as openness, freedom and collective intelligence by way of user participation, can also be viewed as essential attributes of Web 2.0.

What does Web 2.0 mean to you? Do you even use that word anymore to describe a desired web user experience strategy? (I don't).

p.s. I sent a client an email a few months ago and mentioned keeping current with Web 2.0 best practices and he nearly threw a shoe at me by email ;-) And this is a VP I have successfully worked with on some great 2.0 sites for his company. Anybody had similar experiences?

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

8 Things you need to know about improving online experience- new study

A new study (July 2008) entitled 'Factors that Improve online experience' by Sathish Menon and Michael Douma from the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement offers key insights on the current state of online user experience.

The study reinforces known usability truths, sheds light on user perceptions but more interestingly points to disconnects between designers and users. The study surveyed perceptions, expectations and practices across various audiences and contrasted the results.

The key findings and what they mean:

1) Designers underestimate the thresholds for an effective site. Respondents consider a site “effective” when visitors are satisfied with respect to enjoyment, can find information somewhat easily, and never get lost in the site. By at least one point on a five-point scale, visitors have higher expectations for effectiveness than do designers. Nonprofit organizations believe that effective sites do not have “information gaps between what visitors want and what the site provides” and that visitors are at least “somewhat satisfied” with their sites. Designers should give greater consideration to overall effectiveness, thereby reducing the chance of failure for a user to find the information they seek.

Comment: Designers rely too much on a "they'll figure it out" approach and underestimate that users need transparent designs that support intuitiveness over flair.

2) Easy access to complete information is key to visitor enjoyment. All three survey groups believe that the ease with which visitors can find information and the ability to maintain orientation is critical to enjoyment. Both organizations and visitors believe that reducing the gap between what web sites provide and what visitors seek is critical to enjoyment. These variables explain 25% to 30% of the variance in visitor enjoyment; hence, ease of finding information is an important foundation for most sites.

Comment: The feeling of satisfaction is highly relevant to how well a visitor found the information they were looking for.  

3) Good visual design and up-to-date information are critical. Over 80% of designers and organizations believe that good visual design is important. A healthy 50% of the visitors agree. Fully 80% of visitors and organizations believe that up-to-date information is very important. Only 60% of designers believe that to be the case. When budgeting for your project, don’t be overly seduced by fancy graphics and multimedia. Invest in strong, clear design and simple methods to quickly deliver current information to your visitors.

Comment: Of course, "fancy graphics" is open to interpretation as is "strong, clear design"; as is multimedia. For example, video or a flash demo may be exactly what you need to communicate your product or process.

4) Visitors want information fast. Web site visitors are looking for simple, accurate, fast, and easy to navigate web sites - preferably with links to information they seek. A significant number of comments revolved around the need for speedy access, including but not limited to download speed, in order to find the information visitors are looking for. Even in a broadband age, visitors value fast sites, both those that are fast loading and those that quickly deliver sought-after information.

Comment: This is why popular e-commerce site Zappos.com Director of Development views a key user experience challenge as delivering load times in 1 second or less (view video).

5) Visitors want a broad range of topics. Relative to designers and organizations, visitors more strongly believe that a broad range of topics is important. Visitors believe sites can be more effective by helping visitors find interesting information - even if they are not looking for it. Designers and content developers can provide ample sidebars that link to other recommended pages, and extensively cross-link to other pages based on keywords.

Comment: Visitors want to go to one place with links to many more places, versus navigate to many places for content. the study findings advise: Designers and content developers can provide ample sidebars that link to other recommended pages, and extensively cross-link to other pages based on keywords.

6) Designers are overly optimistic about visitors' ability to maintain orientation. In the survey, the ability to maintain orientation was defined as visitors' ability to know "where they are, where they can go next, and which pages are related." About 70% of designers believe that visitors are almost always able to maintain orientation. That drops to about 30% when non-profit organizations express their view. In contrast, only about 10% of visitors report being able to almost always maintain their orientation. Fewer than 5% report that they tend to get lost frequently. Said another way, your visitors don't know your site as well as you do, so make sure it is obvious how to find information through meaningful menus, prompts, and not too much clutter.

Comment: Usable navigation is classically over-looked by designers and web agencies. I've seen this disconnect between how designers think about navigation and how end-users actually interact with sites consistently for the past eight years. The home link on a top navigation bar is a good example. Users want it there, designers and design boutiques are convinced it is "old school" and every dummy knows to click the logo. A survey we did of a high tech audience (employees who worked for the company) found only 20% knew that the logo meant "home"!

7)  Visitors still need hand-holding. The study asked about hypothetically providing visitors with personal assistance using a site. About 70% of organizations and visitors believe that a personal guide would increase the effectiveness of a web site. Only about 50% of designers believe the same. Designers tend to overestimate the clarity of their designs.

 

Comment: The problem here I think is those of us working in this industry get too familiar with the Web. We take for granted that everyone else knows what has become implicit knowledge for us. This is also true of usability consultants. I'm frequently called in after another usability consultant has been working on a project to bail out the project. Usability "people" often underestimate their users, it's a classic (and yes shameful)  common mistake- it's not just designers!

8) Visitors point to the lack of breadth and depth of site content as causing an "Information Gap." Although over 90% of visitors say that they are able to find the information they are looking for, over 50% report that there is a gap between what they are looking for and what typical web sites provide, and 60% think that a personal guide would help them navigate web sites. The reported gap is negatively correlated to visitors' ability to find information, and positively correlated to the need for a local search engine. This indicates that most web sites are unable to provide the breadth of information that visitors seek. Visitors often request broader and deeper information, when in fact they need to find existing information more easily.

 

Comment: This is a tricky problem because it's so context dependent. Typically usability best practice says solve the users immediate task or problem first, then give them options to explore, expand and enhance the discovery, search or experience.

There are specific interaction design techniques that can help with this problem. I discuss a few here: progressive disclosure (giving users what they need, then offering more) and forcing functions (limiting choices to help users get what they need).

Download a copy of the study here

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

What color do you like? The usability of look and feel (strategy with icons, images, branding elements)

The graphical or visual aspects of an interface are the most easily recognizable. They require no methodology (Graphic design vs usability) or design distinctions, (What is design?).

Everyone from CEO to programmer can understand an interface by it's visual treatment. For some the interface is "eye-candy" and for others representative of organized emotional response and visual perception.

Oftentimes, the confusion over who dictates the design can lead to confusion and often a gratuitous use of graphics. This problem can be compounded by an interface being dictated entirely by a designer (where usability resources are absent, underfunded or ignored entirely from a development process).

The question we'll explore in this post is: Does the user experience team dictate what happens to the visual design or do they back off and let designers do their job?

The role User Experience plays

The trained user experience practitioner sees the graphic or visual design as an important element of the interface, finalizing the underlying screen behaviors (interaction design) and adding emotional appeal and queues to the interface.

Most usability people I know don't touch the visual layer. Once a design 'wireframe' is finalized, the design falls entirely in the hands of the graphic designer (aka designer). Sometimes the freedom of articulating the user interface is left in the hands of the designer. For example, one usability consultant I worked with put lines and words at the top of his web application wireframe and explained that "the designer can decide whether it's a tab or a button..." In my experience, it is best to avoid this and guide as much of the visual metaphor as possible.

The job of the graphic designer (when a user interface has been designed based on usability research) is to add emphasis and enhance areas of the design that need more visibility, branding, emotional appeal etc. Whether it's a tab or a button is as much a UI issue as a graphic design issue.

The more specific a user interface specification can be, the more usability will be retained when designers or developers work on it.

How creativity can destroy functional design

In the case where usability has occurred (usability testing or user research), a user interface direction is strongly open to influence from the user experience team. Choice of metaphors, layout, and design decisions in general are more clear due to the user advocacy and understanding of feature and task priority that takes place within the design research context.

Still, when a user interface is specified, it can be undermined unintentionally by a graphic design team, often from a different department or company (e.g. agency). A graphic designer, without sensitivity for the usability research that informed the design wireframe, can re-interpret the design and purge all the goodness out of the design.

Let's be clear that this is less by intention and more likely due to what naturally happens when one human brain picks up and digest a design passed to it from another brain. Creativity is integral to perception in general, whether its artistic (design) or technical (development). This makes it imperative that user experience folks specify and comment on the visual design as it evolves.

If you are a user experience practitioner and you don't like to get your hands dirty in creative issues, get over it. The notion that cognition and emotion are separate is a mute point according to findings in the field of neuroscience from the past 15 years (Ratner 2000). It is important to maintain a holistic approach and see the visual design as *part of the user experience* not something you just hope the graphic design team gets because that's their area.

See Design and Emotion discussion on the link between emotion and cognition.

So, since graphic design is so subjective (e.g. What color do you like?), what is there to say from a usability standpoint? After all, usability requirements come out of behavioral observation not opinions about color. (For example in usability testing we never say "do you like this home page?", instead we ask users to interact with it and then notice if they find features, buttons, navigation and promotional elements). 

Usability Guidelines for Graphic Elements:

Here are some guidelines based on a decade of practical and empirical study of this issue.

1) Use of graphical elements generally: Generally graphical elements should help draw attention to content or functionality. The should not be used without a justifiable purpose. i.e.  Never gratuitously use images or graphical elements unless they aid or reinforce the usability goals of the page. Use color to add context, to reinforce action areas and to call attention to important task-oriented features.

2) Images: Images should have a connection with the audience (theme, target audience, match values and emotional impact). For example, our client, a luxury hotel chain trying to impact an emotional connection with luxury property ownership showed a couple with their backs turned holding a wine glass. Instead we suggested having the models face the camera. Another client, a health insurance provider showed a picture of an older woman who looked ill, with poor make-up and fading color in her hair (lesson: Choose healthy models if you are in the health business!).

3) Avoid clip-art: Images and icons should not look stock or clip-art (based on how competitors and new sites do "tight" look and feel). Never use grainy or 1980's or 1990's looking icons or images. Note: This is very subjective and if you don't know what I am talking about, find someone who does to help point out the distinctions. Well trained graphic designers will smell clip-art from a mile away, though I have clients now who still use clip art in leading edge applications, blessed by internal graphic design teams!

4) Icon intuitiveness: If using icons they should be intuitive, crisp and used strategically (not randomly). If an icon needs to be interpreted for more than a few seconds, either don't use it or create an intuitive icon. Icon usability is important. This issue is so important, for the past few years we (Experience Dynamics) have been offering icon design services through our Russian design group.

5) Logos and branding elements: Branding elements should be clear and distinct (with clear taglines) and follow company branding guidelines. Avoid placement of branding items next to functional elements like buttons. Users get "branding blindness" on a page (like "banner blindness") if logos etc. are too close to task based graphical elements.

6) Use graphic design to enhance visual appeal: A good graphic design treatment for a website or web application is subtle and looks great, without weighing the page down. If you think graphic design is "fluff" you are missing the point. If you think it is dangerous to usability, you are missing the fact that graphic design can enhance and accent the user interface making it more intuitive. A great example in this area comes from the work of Yahoo! visual designer LukeW, who incidentally has written a book on this topic, though I must confess I haven't read it yet.

7) Be sensible about minimalism: If balanced with usability, there is nothing wrong with graphic design. I am seeing, the more mature the Web becomes, the less relevant the issue of minimalism becomes. Many Web 2.0 sites combine a nice balance of visual treatment and sensible minimalism. Few are bare and sparse. Instead of condemning graphics or running from them, as is the common reaction, use guidelines such as the ones outlined about as well as any patterns you start to see from observing users as they interact with your site, application or product.

Balancing good visual design with usability is challenging, though not impossible. I have found it's more a group dynamics issue, process issue or personal belief influence than an issue with color, color perception or graphic design.  In my work, my agenda is not to fight for less graphic design or more, but to appropriately balance usability with visual flair. A dinner table needs to be functional and steady, but also needs to look nice and inviting...or as the great inventor Bucky Fuller most eloquently put it: 

"When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong".  -R. Buckminster Fuller

Warmest wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

Design Like You Give a Damn!- Sustainable Design

Design Like You Give a Damn is the name of a really great book on architectural responses to humanitarian crises. The book details design projects around the world from the ecologically dry toilet to the hippo water roller.

Sustainable design is also the theme of an aerial dance and acrobatics show my daughter plays a part in that's premiering in Portland this month, called ¡Entusiasmo!, a true story of Gaviotas, Columbia. The show is written by Do Jump's Robin Lane, based on Alan Weisman's book Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the world.

Gaviotas, located in a remote area in eastern Columbia (Vichada in Los LLanos region), is one of the world's most fascinating case studies in sustainable and renewable design technologies. For 40 years, this experimental community has pioneered sustainable technologies now used in over half of the developing world.   

"Built from scratch in a treeless corner of the country, this community of scientists, tinkerers, and refugees - now numbering more than 200 - has created a verdant rainforest where once there was nothing but scrub grass. It has also devised and deployed dozens of inventions with a frequency and success rate that puts some of America's most storied technology companies to shame.

Its products include a hydroelectric microturbine that generates 30 kilowatts and thousands of RPMs from a mere 1-meter drop in a low-fall dam; a system of solar panels, spherical boilers, and tanks that can provide hot water for housing projects as large as 30,000 units; and a remote-controlled zeppelin that uses videocameras to spot forest fires.

Unlike the startups that dot Silicon Valley, Gaviotas has done all this and more with virtually no funding, no well-endowed university backing, no incubators or venture capitalists, and no access to a national power grid, airport, or freeway system. In fact, Gaviotas lies 15 hours east of Bogotá, the nearest city of note, by a two-lane road that traverses the estates of narcotics traffickers and disappears occasionally into sloughs of mud..."

Source: CNN Money / Business 2.0 The Village that could save the Planet (Sept. 27 2007)

In 2007, the founder of Gaviotas, Paulo Lugari, was awarded an honorary PhD in Science in Technology from Carnegie Melon University for his commitment to sustainability. Also last year the United Nations named the village a model of sustainable development. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called Paolo Lugari the "inventor of the world."

If you haven't seen the Do Jump theater production ¡Entusiasmo!, which tells the story of Gaviotas in aerial theater/acrobatics and humor it is playing now in Portland (Oregon, USA) at the Portland Center for Performing Arts and this weekend (May 31st 2008) the show will be attended by Paulo Lugari, who will answer questions afterwards.

What Gaviotas teaches us about Sustainable Design

• It is possible to design and maintain complex technology with almost no resources (no capital investment) in an inhospitable environment with low environmental impact.
• There is no failure, only feedback: Around 58 types of windmill were tried and tested before Gaviotans determined that the distinctive ‘sunflower’ design functioned best in the arid plains of Los Llanos.
• A user interface can be created to positively conceal the underlying intention of a device: a sleeve pump designed in Gaviotas incorporated school children's suggestions to add a sea-saw, hence providing an interface to power the pump seamlessly.
• Poverty reduction and 'green' technology go hand in hand: Gaviotas developed their own fully solar-powered hospital (solar kitchen and solar kettle inventions using heated cottonseed oil); the hospital serves anyone in the area in need. The solar technology developed in Gaviotas also powers a number of Bogata's buildings including the US Embassy and the Government Palace.
• Designs do not always have to be tethered to electricity (e.g. Gaviotan hand-pumps for micro-aqueducts or hand-cranking radios originally developed for remote areas of Africa). "Power-free" is a valid design constraint when you consider 1.6 billion people — a quarter of earth's population — live without electricity.  [Millennium Development Goals Report 2007]

Why Sustainable Design?

The world is in dire need of innovations that address real economic,  social and environmental crises. Consider the implications of the 'design problem':

• Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two US dollars a day [2007 United Nations Human Development Report]
• One in two of the world's child population live in poverty [UNICEF 2005]
• For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment. [World Bank, accessed March 2008]
• Annually, more than 60 percent of global industrial carbon dioxide emissions originate in industrialized countries, where only about 20 percent of the world’s population resides. [World Resources Institute 2007]

The division between developed and developing, rich and poor nations is only growing. China and India's emerging middle class are modeling Western consumption patterns, a trend that can have serious implications on environmental, social and economic standards inside these countries and the larger eco-system. At the same time, interaction and industrial designers, architects and innovators are largely focused on creating user experiences that support the design problems of the privileged lifestyles we lead in North America, European and certain Asian economies.

Design Innovation in high demand

Bridging the gap between design innovation for Western/Northern hemisphere audiences and the estimated untapped market potential among the 4 billion people who make less than $2 a day is one of the key challenges in the 21st century. The challenge should be approached with the same imagination, creativity, boldness and humanity that Lugari used to establish a working protoype in Gaviotas... and recently with Gaviotas II - the megaproject that is poised to put Gaviotas on the world stage.

Considering that nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names, [UNICEF 1999] what does this mean for manufacturers who's products currently reach global audiences? Nokia is blazing the trail in this area, lead by Jan Chipchase (Nokia Research Center) who conducts field studies in 'emerging markets' in order to discover the mobile phone needs of non-literate users (see Jan's Illiteracy research PPT).

As the economy is "greening" (marketers seem to be wearing their green hats like it's Saint Patrick's Day), and Web 2.0 realizing it's social computing potential (eg. 'the Social Web', 'Social Media' etc), so too are organizations gaining ground called Social Capitalists or Social Entrepreneurs. The popular magazine Fast Company even holds an annual award for the earned title. Let's face it: no auto manufacturer would be caught dead without alternative green engineering in their design rooms, and industry as a whole is beginning to catch on driven by necessity and consumer demand.

Social venture capital firms like The Acumen Fund seed initiatives around the world connecting ideas and social needs to capital and fruition. Several of their projects are featured in the book Design Like You Give a Damn.

"It's all about innovation," says CEO Tim Brown of IDEO, who advises Acumen. "The money is there, but the solutions aren't. Designers can contribute. We're pretty good at taking a bunch of disparate components and figuring out the solution."

Source: Business Week Designing Change March 12 2007

Efforts like the non-profit $100 laptop (One Laptop Per Child) project are a huge step in the direction of extending humanitarian "aid" into areas of low literacy and cognitive development. The laptop embodies sustainable design by providing a water/sand proof keyboard and screen; a built in wireless and mesh-network (forms ad-hoc peer to peer connections across geography to strengthen the wi-fi cloud); a hand-crank for energy; a full sunlight back light screen and more. MIT's Nicholas Negroponte started the project as a humanitarian effort, but later ran into the politics of distribution and market turf-battles from Intel in 2007. (Intel ran a competing product against the project; tried to strangle the project then partnered with OLPC; were kicked off the project and finally went back to competing with the project in a for-profit capacity).

Changing how we think about audiences we don't design for

Jakob Nielsen recently took fire (as well he should) from bloggers for blasting the OLPC project, with his main criticism that the $100 laptop was not user tested (though the laptop has been in field use in Cambodia and elsewhere for several years). Nielsen also criticized the operating system- a new user interface paradigm called Sugar OS (see a demo of Sugar OS). Did Jakob Nielsen completely miss the point???

The guru of usable technology should be supporting the humanitarian effort behind the interface. This CBS video piece called "What if Every Child Had a Laptop?" illustrates the social, emotional and community transformation the laptop "beta" had in its Cambodian village trials (children started loving school, families were delighted to use the lighting emitted from the laptops screen in their electricity-lacking home etc) and provides more inspiration than Nielsen was able to offer in his shameful nitpicking comments for Business Week.

If the $100 laptop with it's lack of usability testing and non-standard interface can give a poor child hope in the future and an interest in education, then it's achieved it's goal as far as I'm concerned.  However, it's clear that as we expand our conversations in sustainable design, the armchair analyzing (read: lack of empathy; lack of context; lack of awareness) mindset will need a new design solution as well. It's too easy to sit and judge a Gaviotas or a $100 laptop for Third World kids from the comfort of a North American interface, running water, electricity etc. context without realizing that whatever you give a child in the South (having personally grown up in Africa) will be deeply appreciated and may even have a lasting impact on their life.


Guidelines for Sustainable Design

So as sustainable design becomes more important in our lives and how we think about our future, here are some guidelines that capture the best practice of Gaviotas (though you'll want to refer to Weisman's book to get the depth of technique applied by Lugari). Also many of these links on these sites are broken, ironically.

• Guiding Principles for Sustainable Design
• Green Development Guiding Principles
• Engineering for Sustainable Development: Guiding Principles (PDF)

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

"Forcing functions"- interaction design technique, used but not widely understood

What is a forcing function?

A forcing function is a constraint where the user "is forced" to complete a task based on a limited, paired down set of features or controls.

Forcing functions help streamline, simplify or minimize how a user interacts with a design. Designers benefit from this interaction design technique by reducing navigation redundancy, task effort and the complexity caused by "feature frenzy" (see my previous article on feature creep).

Not all forcing functions are based on good design decisions. Successful designs that make use of the forcing function interaction design technique are based on an empirical understanding of user default behavior, task expectations, error and failure analysis and context of use observations. 

When should you use "forcing functions" in your design?

When you want to: 

1. Constrain a user interaction
2. Speed up or re-direct a task
3. Limit an interaction   
4. Eliminate confusion
5. Simplify a design
6. Protect users from danger or hazards
      

 When forcing functions go wrong

Feature-forcing (making users interact with features they don't want) tends to be the end result of inappropriate use of the forcing-function technique. A forcing function is a disciplined use of force, the way a mother would give her child what they need, not what they want.

In general, products that lack good usability are characterized by designs where users are more error-prone, where defaults are inexact, where layout or instinctive behaviors don't feel right. In general designs that  include error handling and/or error recovery as a component of the user experience, are lacking a forcing-function. This isn't to say error-handling is bad, it's just that many times error prevention should be the focus not error recovery.

Making a user do something an elegant way is far better than making a user do something a mediocre way and then offering them support as they fail and recover from the error.

The two extremes of forcing functions are too much force, and too little force. An example of too much force, is like making a user interact with implicit rules, hidden actions or metaphors that are unnatural. An example of too little force is making a user 'hunt around' to make something important happen (also a potentially inappropriate use of the progressive disclosure interaction design technique). DVD remote controls are a hideous example of "design minus forcing functions". Too many options get you in to trouble quickly.

Getting the right balance of force is important. Force can be a powerful design tool, but it can also be oppressive: poor user adoption is often the result of force that is difficult for the end user to get used to. When designing a forcing-function, there needs to be a good reason (user-validated) to justify the use of the technique.

Why do we use forcing functions?

Forcing functions are the mothering instinct of user-centered design. A forcing function should feel natural and transparent to the user. Users should never question why there is no "choice" in completing their task. The "dead-end" or directive action required should seem natural and protective either by way of the product experience or by way of the interface that limits all other options in that momentary task.

A razor blade company, after watching women shave their legs in the shower (wearing swimming costumes), realized that a design flaw would potentially cause the razor to slip, leading to dangerous cuts (and lawsuits). The razor handle and blade were constrained for wet hand use to prevent cuts or mistakes holding the razor.

An automotive manufacturer, after observing truck drivers driving on the highway, realized that an incoming email, while driving--could only display two sentences of text, before resulting in driver distraction and an accident. The messaging system was constrained to show no more than a short two sentence summary of the message- the rest of the message available when the vehicle was stopped.

The forcing function allows a design to follow user intuitions based on their expectations, derived from studying their behavior, environment and context of use.

However, designers should take precautions against imposing this powerful interaction design technique without first understanding the user task flow, context of use and error scenarios involved.

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

Warning: Third-party Usability is Bad for your Health

There is a huge problem in the software and web services industry: 3rd party applications, widgets, dashboards or site add-ons can kill your usability efforts.

Poor user experiences with 3rd-party applications can undermine or make your usability efforts look bad. 

Vendors such as PeopleSoft, Vignette and many others are notorious for providing "clunk-ware", "vapor-ware" or "sneaker-ware" as one of our clients at Experience Dynamics put it.   

Let's explore why this is a major problem that you need to confront head on, or be a victim of 3rd-party usability issues.

First, a 3rd-party application, content feature or widget is something that adds-value to your site and potentially to the user experience. It might be an entire account management dashboard, content management system, a 3D model of the human body, a mortgage calculator, a job board or a web service like an ecommerce shopping cart or secure service solution.

Configuration Nutritional Deficiency

In my article "Configuration Hell" I discussed how users don't do configuration behavior very well. In the case of software vendors, they provide already pre-configured applications or web services. In many cases software is developed fully loaded with features, and configuration entails "turning off" nonsensical screen elements and elements of functionality.

Open source software suffers from the same lack of understanding of defaults; poor or badly organized content and features; functionality lacking a task-oriented design.

Software vendors regularly ship products with poor usability, that are poorly configured. Worse, the practice of shipping unusable web applications or web services seems to be a business model.

"Oh, you want us to configure it so it's usable...?"

The idea is that you get a baseline package (largely un-configured) and if you want it to reflect a coherent user experience (like the rest of your site), you will need to pay more.

For me, this business model lacks integrity. Up-selling should be used for adding powerful features, not for gaining access to basic usability. The reality is that most Fortune 1000 companies will typically pay for the baseline product, ending up with a shoddy or inferior user experience.

Another reality of 3rd-party usability is that project, program or product managers are not able to do anything about 'locked down' third-party applications, widgets or re-directs to outside applications.

Herein lies the problem: users don't know when they are entering 3rd-party country. To users, it's all one big swirling experience. Poor user experiences with 3rd-party applications can undermine or make your usability efforts look bad. 

How to minimize third-party usability problems

1. Negotiate for usability standards maintenance when signing agreements.

What many companies are doing is writing usability guarantees into the contracts so that vendors are forced to adhere to your standards before they win the contract. This is the most direct and legally binding way to leverage usability in the vendor relationship and with the solution they deliver. Sound drastic? Many of our clients are doing this, having been burned by third party usability issues year after year.

I encourage the practice, and I think vendors need to recalibrate the business model of selling unusable systems. Offering usability from the get-go is core value, it's not a value-add that you should dangle as a carrot in your customer's face for up-sell purposes.

2. Mandate your usability standards as a necessary requirement to integrating a third-party application.

Vendors often will beta their next release for a negotiated price. Be careful if you choose to be a beta guinea-pig:

A ruined user experience reputation could cost you more in long term customer retention and satisfaction than buying clunky functionality that doesn't work as users expect, and integrates poorly into your development environment, causing you to write countless API's to patch the problems, for example.

3. Work with your vendor over the course of your relationship to encourage usability as a requirement in their development process.

As a customer you have tremendous influence over vendor development directions. Demand usability as a requirement and encourage specific usability enhancements, maybe not in this release, but in next year's for sure.

I don't think it's wise to even ignore usability in your software purchasing evaluation process. Apparently, neither do 70% of software buyers in a recent study by the Sand Hill Group & Neochange (2008) who rate user adoption (usability issue) as more important then features or functionality in software purchasing.

 

Your senior usability lead should be on hand to provide concrete input if not "gut feel" input. If you don't have a senior usability person, hire a usability consultant and have them do an informal or formal usability audit on the intended product. This is a perfect use for usability consulting firms. If you're going to spend money on usability later, why not bake it into your due diligence as one of the risks you need to manage up-front? 

In my ten years of experience with usability consulting, I have heard many attempts to have me evaluate a 3rd party product before purchase- even with an existing client- but somehow that criteria gets overlooked or minimized in importance. Rarely is the usability due diligence conducted. As a result I run into a lot of clients who are "stuck" with 3rd party usability issues.

Demand a change in direction from your software vendors and partners and you'll avoid or greatly minimize the inherited usability problems that often come with 3rd party applications and web services and tools. That way you won't be a victim of 3rd party usability and neither will your users.

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

AJAX Usability Checklist (Free holiday bonus for our readers)

This Ajax Usability Checklist is a bonus guide that accompanies my AJAX Usability Seminar, I am offering it in the  form of this post as a bonus for readers- thanks for your support!

The Web is changing fast. New standards are emerging, new approaches to coding such as Scriptaculous, AJAX, Ruby, Flash/Flex, Silverlight and others are creating a leap-frog situation where many new websites, web apps and portals are implementing next year's User Interface elements.

Yet, when it comes to implementing the new interface techniques AJAX offers, we need to be mindful of how AJAX can improve the specifics of the user experience.

Two simple guidelines for AJAX Usability:

1)    If the user has to ”play” with the interface control too much it is probably used inappropriately.

2)    If the interface control does not follow the user’s task, it is probably used gratuitously.

1. When and where to use AJAX

    a) When presenting complex features or functionality

    b) When building a data set for the user

    c) When presenting depth of information

    d) To correct or intelligently help the user

a) When presenting complex features or functionality

EXAMPLE: Bluenile.com offers a complex ring configurator with advanced filtering and sorting functionality.

An AJAX interface allows users to hover over ring specifications.

Sliders help narrow the selection.

Note: Top to bottom sliders are novel and should be tested since they are less familiar UI elements on the Web.

b) When building a data set for the user…

EXAMPLE: Google Analytics offers Save to Dashboard and hidden report control features to give users more control over the analytics reporting experience.

c) When presenting depth of information

EXAMPLE: Finance.google.com offers pull sliders and instant click in their finance application to give users immediate data overlay feedback.

The end result is a quicker, more robust sense of interactivity with the market data.

d) To correct or intelligently help the user

EXAMPLE: Kayak.com uses a “just in time” help system to walk uses through AJAX filter features. The format is a contextual dynamic help system that utilizes a wizard metaphor (next/back).

This is a best practice and should be modeled. 

2.    Key Lessons: Google style AJAX; Yahoo! Style AJAX

• Create transparency with complex functionality
• Reinvent old experiences with AJAX elegance
• Leapfrog the competition
• Get known by your user experience
• Improve performance
• Revitalize the presentation layer

Create transparency with complex functionality
Example: Yahoo! expanded the “social web” with a portal social networking approach. Yahoo!’s MyWeb for example, allows users to save search results, as well as share and discover bookmarks and interests. Yahoo! extends the search experience by adding social networking and social browsing with simple AJAX interactions and features.

Reinvent old experiences with AJAX elegance
Example: Google Maps redefined the mapping user experience with AJAX. Characteristics included full screen, direct manipulation maps, with the ability to search listing or make a VoIP call from inside a floating dialog.

Leapfrog the competition
Example: Google Docs has entered a new category of software as live service competing directly with Microsoft. Zoho.com has taken Google Docs a step further and is offering a full AJAX suite of productivity applications online.

Get known by your user experience
Example: Yahoo! assumed industry leadership in photo sharing with its Flickr acquisition and is now a leader in AJAX user interface best practice.  Flickr took the lead as a Web 2.0 best practice example (though Bubbleshare.com has a better experience it was not first to market).

Improve performance
Example: Google’s Gmail improved the email user experience by creating an AJAX friendly email client. User experience improvements with AJAX included integrated presence (IM), threaded conversations and search among others.

Revitalize the presentation layer
Example: Yahoo!’s email client made email and junk mail management easier by introducing desktop-like functionality with its new release of Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! Travel has also revitalized travel planning with its AJAX powered social networking Trip Planner site.

3.    How to design for progressive disclosure* contexts using AJAX.

a) Extend discoverability
b) Provide dynamic “smart” help
c) Give the user less “drill down”,  more shallow navigation
d) Show related details or content

*Progressive disclosure is an interaction design technique that sequences information and actions across several screens in order to reduce feelings of overwhelm for the user. By disclosing information progressively, you reveal only the essentials and help the user manage the complexity of feature-rich sites or applications.

a) Extend discoverability >> make it ease for users to find stuff.

 

EXAMPLE: tripadvisor.com gives users a progressive disclosure of links contained in a category with an opaque “click to expand” window. The interface feature appears only once and gives way to an ‘accordion’ menu of the other 4 categories.

This is a novel, but potentially valuable device to orient users to further discover the contents of a page section.

 

 

b) Provide dynamic “smart” help >> give users better contextual help that provides in-line tutorial type information.

EXAMPLE: Kayak.com uses a “just in time” help system to walk users through AJAX filter features. The format is a contextual dynamic help system that utilizes a wizard metaphor (next/back).

This is a best practice and should be modeled.

c) Give the user less “drill down”, more shallow navigation >> make it easier to get to and from search results and the home page.

EXAMPLE: Patagonia.com lets users view contents of a product from the search results page in an AJAX dialog.

The move to viewing product details and acting from a pop-up window is not new, it is just back from having disappeared with html pop-ups a few years ago.

Extending the pop-up, AJAX offers more direct features from the page without page load/reload such as favorite, add to cart etc.

d) Show related details or content >> give users “just in time” content, controls and features .

EXAMPLE: CNN.com offers an accordion style menu selection with in-line tabs that users can change views (without page reload).

Note: Page tabs should not require page reloading. For a bad example see priceline.com search results “Sort by” tabs (pages reload and reposition users on the page).

4.    Five questions you should ask when considering AJAX

Question 1: Will using AJAX greatly improve the user experience with my site or web application?

Do not use AJAX if it does not enhance a strategic aspect of your user experience.  AJAX pitfalls (browser incompatibility) can create technical and usability headaches for your JavaScript developers and your users. Be sure to test, refine code and re-test. Just because the AJAX element works on your browser, does not necessarily mean it will work on your users.

Question 2: What is the user experience strategy that compliments the AJAX deployment?

AJAX can be used to add sizzle but you should think of AJAX as a collective strategy used to improve a users ability to complete his or her tasks more effectively. AJAX is not the answer to every design problem and often times is inappropriate or irrelevant.

The excitement in a design is on “how can this improve the user’s task?” not “how can we Ajaxify this page to make it cool?”

Question 3: Will JavaScript gracefully degrade in browsers and is there an alternate if users browsers get stuck?

Support graceful degradation using JavaScript detect scripts and support JavaScript-free and mobile friendly versions. Try to keep AJAX to user interface elements that add value throughout the experience, but do not primarily require the technology to get through a website for example.

Question 4: Is there a real need to use AJAX or is it “just because”?

The technical pitfalls associated with AJAX require a disciplined use of JavaScript and AJAX. Think strategically about how AJAX can help the user on this page or that page. Do not take AJAX for granted as a user interface technique!

Assume users will not be familiar with the interface tricks AJAX offers, instead try to make everything transparent. For example, a plus button that opens up should have a “Details…” link beside it.

Question 5: Are you inventing completely new or reinventing problematic designs and how will you know if they work?

Good AJAX usability comes from testing your design with your target audience. Users rarely drink the cool-aid of new “whiz-bang” technologies or interface enhancements.

AJAX should be used in context of a users task and it should help remove the “work” traditionally associated with a browser fetching pages and handshaking with a database.

AJAX usability means that a user can do something on the screen that changes the display without waiting, with minimal effort and with a responsive and “just in time” interface.

Download this AJAX Usability Checklist:

Download ajax_usability_checklist_bonus_guide.pdf

Subscribe to Experience Dynamics usability Research Newsletter to be informed of seminars and research alerts.

Note: This AJAX Usability Checklist accompanies the AJAX Usability seminar with Frank Spillers, MS. Please refer to that presentation and recording for additional examples, guidelines and for more context on designing for AJAX Usability.

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers

 

 

What is Design? (Yes, all 10 definitions!)

When the term design is used it can mean many things, depending on who you are and which conversation you are having. Rarely do people stop to compare 'mental maps' and clarify which type of design they are talking about!

I believe this has to do with the multiple definitions of design and the lack of awareness of each specific type of design, its function and timing in a process. The other factor being how familiar you are with "design" based on your past experiences with different design roles.

Here are some examples of conversations I have and hear frequently that cause to stop and ask "What type of design are we talking here?":

• "We'll take care of that when we get to design"
• "That's something the designer will have to figure out..."
• "We're starting design now..."
• "We're bringing in a designer..."
• "Here are some early design concepts..."
• "This will be decided by the designer"
• "Have you started design yet?"
• "Why are these designs in Latin?"
• "The design looks great!"
• "This isn't the final design, we'll get to that later..."

Since the word "design" means many things to many people, let's define design as seen from a usability consultant's perspective.

Design for the Mind

Design that impacts cognitive processes (fit to the mind) including interpreting and understanding the experience.

#1 User Interface Design: Screen layout and design that focuses on user interactions and screen behaviors. User Interface (UI) design is an important component of user-centered and task-oriented design. The focus of UI Design is to improve the “user experience” or usability of the design. Since the mid 1980's, UI design has refined an understanding of human behavior and screen design. Also called "GUI" design, often confused for combined design and programming (see this post). UI Design is often seen as symbolic of green-screen era interfaces or coding, since developers used to be UI Designers before it was recognized that this was a special skill set...   

#2 Information Architecture: Skeleton mock-ups or "wireframes" of screen interactions, layout, navigation and features. Used to review, concept and test initial functionality.  Information Architecture (IA) is officially unrecognized by academic institutions, because it overlaps too closely with the already existing field of UI Design above. Few realize that IA was invented for commercial purposes originally by Argus Associates in the late 90's, (Rosenfeld & Morville, yes, the polar bear book guys) to promote consulting and book sales, as revealed by former employee Keith Instone at his 'alphabet soup' talk a few years ago in Portland, Oregon.

#3 Interaction Design: Focuses on how the user interacts with a page, application or product. Interaction design follows a task centered design approach ensuring the flow of the interaction as the central goal. Interaction design predates the Web world, and finds its roots in the wider field of Human Computer Interaction. Interaction design is a more general umbrella that many working on Web 2.0 interfaces and web applications prefer, since IA appears stuck in web-page centric paradigms.

Sanity check: Are the three design disciplines above different? Not really, their goals are all the same.

Design for the Heart

Design that impacts sensory processes (fit to the emotions) including the feelings and emotional or affective qualities of the experience.

#4 Graphic Design: The "eye-candy or look and feel". Graphic design is widely known and it's similarity to UI Design in what is often called "visual design" by people like Luke W at Yahoo! (Luke is a graphic design by background but does great UI design and visual design today).

In a usability process, once wire-frames are finalized, they are graphically treated to enhance the interaction design with aesthetic flavor. Graphic design focuses on enhancing layout, buttons, colors, icons and branding elements. The focus of graphic design is to improve the “look and feel” or stylistic aspects of the design. Because graphic designers operate from the heart, they are often accused of producing "fluff". If you give a graphic designer user interface specifications, however, their results can be outstanding. I see it every day at Experience Dynamics in Portland.

#5 Interactive Design: This Art college degree type is largely a hybrid discipline that captures a little of everything. An Interactive Designer produces good Flash pieces, animation, graphic design and some database programming or HTML. At the heart an Interactive Designer is great at graphic design and has a sensitivity and sensibility for usability. I taught Interactive Designers at the Art Institute of Portland (Oregon USA) and I kept telling the school the course should be called "Interaction Design" not "Interactive Design" but they wouldn't listen! My mistake.

#6 Emotion Design: Emotion design comes from the field of usability and product design. Emotion design is concerned with the specific social, environmental, personal and intimate qualities of user experience. Emotion design is a fringe discipline within the usability and user research communities that is gaining an "I told you so" voice with products like Apple's iPhone creating so many "ooooh, ahhhhs" from customers. Emotion design is an approach that can inform the outcome of any of the design types. e.g. "This user is influenced by this perception, expectation, color, shape, feeling..."

Design for the Body

Design that impacts anthropomorphic processes (fit to the human body) including the social and physical contexts of the experience.

#7 Industrial Design: Physical products that we can all relate to...the most obvious-- a mobile device. Like graphic design, industrial design is easy to spot in everyday experience. Physical product design has origins that can be found at any local history museum. Since the dawn of time, human civilization's has been defined by its tool or artifact creation abilities. Physical products with "good design" are intuitive: they feel, sound, look and work elegantly. Good industrial designers have, for much of the 20th century, mastered physically many of the design types described above, creating an impressive history of design for the human body, senses, environment and mind in a way that transcends, evokes and transforms experiences the user performs with the product.

The final group below are methodologies and approaches encompassing the design techniques above. Let's take a quick look at some of these approaches or methodologies that cross into the blurry line of "design".

Holistic approaches/ methodologies

#8 User Centered Design: The overall industry and ISO standard methodology and set of techniques that places the user at the center of the design. User-centered design (UCD) involves three key activities: User research; UI prototyping and Usability Testing. UCD is iterative by nature and has the most impact if conducted early on in a software, product or web development process. Its methods and techniques and general approach to design are proven from an ROI perspective and are widely accepted in industry, academia and in government sectors.

#9 User Experience Design: A relatively new term that updates the term and discipline of UCD or "usability engineering". User experience adding a more holistic element to the technique of designing the user experience (on web sites or web applications). User Experience or UX design I consider more an approach or umbrella of techniques or a general approach. It is not a type of design per say, as its practitioners will inevitably conduct UI design, IA or interaction design as the deliverable of the UX design approach.

#10 Experience Design: Experience design is often used as a short hand for User Experience Design, but is largely considered with what I call Environmental Design, or the design of the experience in retail or open space environments. Again, Experience Design is a general umbrella approach or methodology that penetrates all design decisions but with an experiential agenda.

"What will the customer experience as the do X?", must have been what the Starbucks experience designers were thinking...

Retail and public spaces can greatly benefit from improved loyalty (attachment feelings, comfort and personalization) and productivity (learning, exploring, browsing) studies have found. Experience Design makes use of the context, social and environmental phenomenon as well as the feelings, perceptions and intuitions of the user in that context.

In Summary: Perhaps at this point you can understand why understanding "design" can be so ambiguous at times. Now that we're on the same page, if you hear "design" and you haven't already had the "what design do you mean?" discussion with the person you are talking to, take a few minutes to level set and get on the same "design page".

Okay, I have to go, there's an email from my designer that I am giving some designs to, based on our client review of designs that we are redesigning...;-)

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

Multi-modal design: Gesture, Touch and Mobile devices...next big thing?

It's great to see excitement building for the Apple iPhone (launch expected late June '07). Korea's LG Prada, an iPhone competitor product,  launched a few months ago in the UK.

Just this week a new touch screen device- Taiwan's HTC Touch was announced for release immediately in the UK and later this year in the US. 

The hot attraction of course with the iPhone, the Prada and the Touch is that they offer touch and gesture-only user interaction. Clarification: Only the Apple iPhone offers gesture-like pinching interaction (eg. open-close; zoom in-out).

What's great about the excitement around these new phones is that they set a new precedent in communication device design for 2008-2010. They are, if you will, a generation up from the slide cover keyboard phones. These devices are hip, keyboard-free, MP3 and mobile Web-friendly.

Watch these demos if you are not familiar with how these new mobile devices work:

• YouTube Demo of the LG Prada touch-only phone interface
• YouTube Demo of the Apple iPhone- touch and gestural interface
• YouTube Demo of the HTC Touch- touch and button interface

Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini offered an early usability review of iPhone features, worth a read, but as one of our consultants pointed out- "how can you do a usability review of a device only using a demo from Apple's website? Is that a real usability evaluation?".

What is Multi-modal interaction?

Multi-modal interaction is an area of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) that has a long history of usability research and empirical study. The virtual reality and game design research community have been studying this commercially since the early 1980's with pioneering researchers such as Brenda Laurel at Atari.

Today researchers like Jeff Han, see images left, are meshing with industrial efforts to bring multi-modal interaction to life. Last week, Microsoft announced Surface- an interactive coffee-table surface that responds to touch and gesture. Users can explore information linked to objects placed on the desktop (TMobile will use it in stores to encourage handset purchase decision support).

The scenario videos on the Microsoft Surface website are worth a look. Very well presented.

Also, if you haven't seen Jeff Han's TED conference presentation, it's an amazing must see demo of his Surface-type work-space.

Why multi-modal interaction design?

Multi-modal design brings the spirit of HCI to life by harnessing the rich sensory input afforded by the human body-mind (touch, gesture, sight, sound, voice...smell, well not yet, but it's in the works).

As interface designers, we have really had to compromise with the flat and lifeless limitations of desktop PC's (windows, icons, menus) compared to the original vision of how humans should use computers advocated in the late 1960's:

Computer graphics and interface pioneer Ivan Sutherland told us our computers should not be mere 2D screens that provide information, but instead they should be 'windows upon which we look into a virtual world...where we can see, hear and feel' multi-sensory information.

I began studying multi-modal interaction ten years ago as part of my early virtual reality research. It's an area of interface design that is truly fascinating for it's potential. It's also an area of interface design that is challenging due to the context in which the user is interacting. As a designer the questions become:

"Which sensory pathway does the user have available to complete this goal in that context?"

"Which sensory system is the lead, which is the secondary?"

"How much sensory over-lap is available, tangible, appropriate?"

"How do users back out or recover from a screen event- in a dynamically changing physical environment?"

Does gesture and touch interaction work in other contexts...like cars?

For the past five years I have closely followed the emerging 'Internet in your car' trends in the automotive industry (aka telematics usability). A practical example I can share, which I've written about and spoken about at telematics automotive conferences, is the case of GM's OnStar. Several years ago, GM provided me with a fully loaded Cadillac CTS for a week that I used to evaluate the OnStar, a speech system for help, navigation, communication and additional information.

OnStar weighted it's user interface toward "voice" or speech interaction over a multi-modal interface. The result was a clunky system with a history of poor user adoption and satisfaction. In 2001, 60% of Onstar systems were switched off in the owner's vehicles. BMW on the other hand, weighted it's iDrive telematics solution to a knob-like control (tactile interaction) with 700 features in menus at the turn of a dial.

The result: eroded brand loyalty, confused and frustrated customers (including usability guru and BMW customer, Jakob Nielsen). Jakob Nielsen's wife said at the time she would never buy another BMW again...

The pattern in the design flaws for telematics human factors engineers?

Don't put all your "eggs in one basket" with regard to one modality.

It appears that neither GM nor BMW provided adequate multi-modal support, opting for a "lead" sensory system (speech, touch) over a mixed system.

I believe multi-modal is generally always better than singular modality (as an interaction design technique). But you must be careful if you are designing for multi-modal interfaces, as Oregon Graduate Institute Professor Sharon Oviatt reminds us in her Ten Myths of Multi-modal Interaction (PDF).

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

Is Google's business model Progressive Disclosure??

Quick Google user, you need to look up a measurement; phone numer; UPS tracking code; address; mathematical formula ..."Didn't you know Google had a tool for that?"

Yes, Google has a tool for everything these days it seems, but it's not a consistent tool kit. Sometimes you get it and oftentimes you don't.

Is that why Google doesn't promote what I call their "world of widgets" (WoW's)? How is it some people know the secret handshake and many more don't?

This article focuses on why that is and speculates on whether Google may have taken a popular interaction design technique known to the usability community as "progressive disclosure" to heart, when deciding to roll out all those wonderful "WoW's" to you.

What's Google's problem with Hiding Information?

Well we know Google is very careful with their presentation layer (read user interface). Google's army of usability engineers must be under a lot of pressure. You don't win search out of Stanford because of your "I'm Feeling Lucky" button...

Side-note: So how do you win your market category? From my perspective it's no accident that you have a recipe in a few easy steps:  1) Your founders develop some solid technology; 2) Your founders respect and value usability and make sure it's entrenched in core infrastructure; 3) You get a usability leader on your technical board of advisory panel (Jakob Nielsen has been on Google's board for years); 4) You have some market conditions where everyone else thinks the average user configures interfaces. Instead, you decide simplicity is not just an Eastern philosophy, but a technology leadership imperative. 

Google has come under a lot of criticism in the past few years for keeping that home page so simple that users don't know 90% of the features and widgets (tools) they offer even exist. Is that stupid or is it part of the plan?

If you look at how Google works, it only serves you up a tool when you "need" it. To your surprise (sometimes), "BAM!" an instant search result with some lightly-branded Google add-on.

Simplicity is sacred at Google

Google knows this is a problem, I think they just don't know what to do about it. How do I know? Look at how Gmail is being promoted on their home page: "Free email with 2.8GB storage and less spam. Try Gmail today." It seems to have become a common fixture with their "official" launch (Feb 07). With Desktop search Google started to add it to the bottom of each search results page, then other major products started to appear as contextual promotions for the new products.

Simplicity has become an imprint of their brand experience. Clutter that search page and you're likely to soil Google's virginity. The equivalent of putting words next to Nike's swoosh- you just don't do it ;-) (the swoosh stays a symbol without words, a testament to it's universality).

Is Google ignoring its early adopter "base"?

IT professionals who helped Google build the "base" in the late 1990's are starting to feel left in the cold by Google's simplicity (in a bad kind of way). Why?  Because Google is like a box of chocolates that you have to explore to find the macadamia nut, because the little "contents map" is missing. User centered design pioneer Don Norman explains:

"Look, I like Google. It's a great search engine. But I am sick and tired of hearing people praise its clean, elegant look. Hell, all search engines have that clean elegant part to them: type your search terms into the box and hit "Enter."

"Oh," people rush to object, "the Google search page is so spare, clean, elegant, not crowded with other stuff."

True, but that's because you can only do one thing from their home page: search. Anybody can make a simple-looking interface if the system only does one thing. If you want to do one of the many other things Google is able to do, oops, first you have to figure out how to find it, then you have to figure out which of the many offerings to use, then you have to figure out how to use it. And because all those other things are not on the home page but, instead, are hidden away in various mysterious places, extra clicks and operations are required for even simple tasks — if you can remember how to get to them". from The truth about Google's so-called "simplicity" by Donald Norman, PhD

Norman speculates that this is reflective of the organizational culture. Matt at Signal vs. Noise agrees and further speculates that this un-tidyness is the "price you pay for innovation".

Progressive Disclosure as Business Model?

My guess is that Google is taking "progressive disclosure" too literally- from a business standpoint. Look at the problem: they are hiding what you don't need until you do need it. That is the spirit of progressive disclosure.

Reminder of the definition of progressive disclosure:

Progressive disclosure is an interaction design technique that sequences information and actions across several screens in order to reduce feelings of overwhelm for the user. By disclosing information progressively, you reveal only the essentials and help the user manage the complexity of feature-rich sites or applications.

The problem is, as a business- you don't know what Google has for you. Is this why Google Answers was shut down?? Google Answers was a great service for asking a question, answered by an expert. Just as Google announced it's shut-down, Yahoo! announced a re-launched "Web 2.0" style Yahoo! Answers with community features, intuitive user interfaces and more...

Google hides what it thinks you don't need until you, say, type in 'Vietnamese food portland', then you get enhanced results with Google Maps.

"BAM!"-- progressive disclosure to Google Maps... Any usability engineer would be proud. Except the surprise of it all is sometimes annoying (especially to IT professionals). And worse, the hidden WoW's are not consistent.

Even Google's 2-3 year private beta (wink, wink) release of Gmail (just officially launched last week) is a form of progressive disclosure. "It's here- let's get the tool out to your friends and colleagues, and if you really want it, they can disclose it to you". I would call this more of a clever marketing tactic but it seems to echo my analysis of progressive disclosure as a business model. I also use Google AdWords, Google Analytics and a few others and they do the same thing- for logging in to each- none are connected- each log-in progressively discloses another log-in...it can be really annoying.

Ironically, Jakob Nielsen is on Google's technical advisory board and he is a big proponent of progressive disclosure. Did Google misinterpret Jakob Nielsen?

I don't know, what do you think?

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

"Feature frenzy"- 10 tips to getting feature creep under control

Why the (feature) frenzy?

Historically, marketing says "software sells with more features" (or perceived features). There is a psychology (especially true in the United States) that the more you get when you buy something, the better the purchase decision.

Unfortunately, added 'bells and whistles' might feel like a better deal, but can turn into a nightmare when you (or your user) sit down with the software and use it.

A few words about features

Features. We love them and we hate them. Features you need, enhance your ability to complete tasks, and are easy to love. Features that get in your way or add extra effort, interpretation or exploration, can be a pain.

The field of Usability Engineering has proven that features if integrated tightly into a user's task flow can be powerful. Features born out of marketing or engineering ideas, not validated with user behavior, can end up being adoption blockers.

Oh, sure you need features to market and sell your product. That's where all this feature frenzy stuff started. Software marketers perfected the art of feature-worship back in the 1980's (starting with Apple's Guy Kawasaki, the guy who decided to ship the Apple IIx without a key feature--a floppy disk drive!). Microsoft, has relied on features to market products for years, but with XP shifted to more task-centered marketing strategies (Windows XP stood for x-perience at one time; for the first time menu features took on "task language" in XP). Windows Vista promises better task focus, but the jury is out on whether the new "task grouping" UI in Office 2007 is good or bad.

10 tips to getting feature-creep under control

The best way to tame feature frenzy (before it turns into the dreaded disease "featuritis") is to identify and understand your user's task flow. Here are ten steps that I use regularly to bring some discipline to feature creep when identifying user experience strategy and defining user interfaces.

1. Get task-focused. Conduct field studies, or Task Analysis, where you can get a bird's eye view of what your users are doing. What problems are they trying to solve and what is the context of the task environment (conditions and constraints in which tasks are performed)?

2. Map business requirements to user tasks. Business requirements are only as good as the relevancy features end up having for users. Focus groups and informal requirements gathering is not sufficient for an optimal user experience. Business Analysts need to take the lead from real world user data. If the business wants the user to do XYZ, how does that match to the reality of the tasks currently performed by the user?

3. Talk about user tasks not features.  A common mistake teams make is to get caught up in proposed features and functionality. Keep your language in your meetings task-oriented. When feature discussions are dominating the conversation, can you find a way to turn the conversation toward user tasks?

4. Design for probability not possibility. Engineering requires the mind to think of infinite possibilities in search for "what could go wrong?" or "what is missing?". The reality for the average user, is that what they will probably end up using is a fraction of what you are offering. Now when you use Microsoft Word (or other program), do you use 90% of the features that are available? Did you even know half of them were there?

5. Validate features with user tasks. Features need to be tamed by validating them with real world user input. When you create personas, don't create them in a vacuum- make sure the fake characters are from the real world. Persona research will help identify tasks. How many features are you currently managing in your web application that haven't been validated against user tasks?

6. Map features to tasks. Introducing balance (equal representation of user needs) is the end goal of usability efforts. Once you have your features defined, you will want to do your due diligence and map them to user tasks. When prioritizing your features, do features come first, or tasks?

7. Create a feature-task matrix. Sorting out the features from the tasks can be helpful with a matrix. The more you can transform your features into tasks, the closer your design will reflect true ease of use.  What percentage of your features match the tasks users will most likely perform?

8. Think scenarios first, use cases next. Use cases are good and fine, but they are a deliverable of best practices in programming (UML). Use cases describe system driven scenarios. Task scenarios describe probabilities of user behavior as validated through user observation. Have you ever made the mistake of referring to user tasks as "use cases"?

Footnote: They're not the same thing, but few people realize this- I'll cover this in an upcoming post.

9. Use tasks to test features, and features to test tasks. Having identified your user's tasks, you can use these tasks in your usability tests. Usability testing is essentially a feature audit with the primary question: Is it working the way the user expects it to?

10. Use diary studies to evaluate feature adoption over time. Giving users diaries that they can record their thoughts and experiences can help you capture data easily missed in shorter visits. These diaries or "cultural probes" can be extremely valuable for reporting problems with features or "wish list" items- features users want that are not quite there or not presented in a way that makes sense to them. If you've given your users a survey, what's stopping you from sending them home with a diary that can give you an eye into how your features get actually used over time? 

Conclusion

Task-oriented designs containing task-oriented features make users feel more successful. Take the simple example of playing video on the web...

Case study:

Why is YouTube so popular? For one, they make playing the actual video easy (by using Flash as a platform). Both Microsoft and Apple continue to degrade the user experience with the politics of media player choice: Windows Media Files are annoying to play in Windows Media Player; likewise Apple Quick Time files are annoying to play on a PC (note: I am both a Windows and Mac user). YouTube fills the vacuum in media player politics by playing with Flash (and making the play button a huge arrow over the start of the video file). File format compatibility and interoperability is a huge win for the user experience.

Note: If you are offering video on your site, look to YouTube for emerging standards in user interface design and display. If you are not using Flash for video, you need to provide options- don't assume QuickTime files will play smoothly on a PC- as MarketingSherpa recently did-they don't always. (Link to conference video promo page with video in QuickTime only format!)

Remember how you deploy features in an application must be guided by real world understanding of users and their tasks. Without task validation and prioritization, you can easily fall into "feature frenzy".

Feature creep as a business and development model has outlived it's usefulness with numerous examples in the graveyard of software history. Thankfully, new Web 2.0 designs are inherently trying to be be mindful of the Importance of User Experience (poster).

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

Is Usability a Public Relations problem?

It will be if you don't do something about it.

At Experience Dynamics, (a Portland, Oregon usability consultancy) we recently helped one of our Fortune 10 clients with some usability testing on a product that was actively being improved for usability.

The client pointed us to a blog entitled "Worst Experience Ever" where the blogger recited his experience with the actual process the program manager was interested in usability testing. This blogger's posting had drawn the attention of the entire product team (yes, they are listening- keep writing). So, we tracked down the blogger and invited him to participate in our usability test. Needless to say, our client and the blogger were both delighted! As it turned out the blogger and other users were experiencing the same problems- he just had the wherewithal to write about it. The outcome was positive for both the end-user (a customer and fan) and the program manager who was able to directly include this user in the usability testing.

This is an interesting case of how the web can put you in touch with your users directly.

Bottom Line: Look to bulletin boards, forums, blogs, private and analyst reviews (and user comments on both) for input and feedback about weak areas with your product, brand, website or feature offerings. User researchers are now studying these information sources for leads into user thoughts, opinions and perceptions relating to product usability-- what is now dubbed "virtual ethnography".

A positive and sustained User Experience is the ultimate public relations

Think Google. In 1998, Google began providing a consistent and simplified search user experience (search box interface as well as search results). Popularity with the search engine grew in the dot com sector and with IT pros initially (many of whom still use it like they did from those early days). Google created a great public relations campaign by directly sustaining and nurturing a positive user experience.

Experiential Public Relations

The web is looking for democratization of content, because arrogance either accidental or inherent is not an option anymore. Word of mouth is now a highly legitimate concern of online marketers everywhere. For more see WOMMA the word of mouth association set up to promote awareness in this area. Experience shapes and influences perceptions, loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals.

Sustaining Criticism from Usability People

When a usability person (self-taught or classically trained) rants, they usually drop the roof on you. Usability is powerful and allows for multiple vantage points into an issue- you see business, you see technology, you see marketing rules and pitfalls wrapped around the user interface.

I have this theory that the more you learn about usability, the more elegant your bitching about poorly executed technology becomes. Does this explain Jakob Nielsen's "problem"? (opens How Usable is Jakob Nielsen? article)

The simple rule for sustaining the attack of a usability person is this: if your application or product has caused a usability evangelist to bark, you had better fix or address the problem, today. Of course, this advice comes to you from a usability consultant. Read more to see what happens if you don't heed this advise.

Another personal example from our recent deployment of a custom shopping cart. Due to the large number of international orders we had to deploy an international shipping cart for our Importance of User Experience poster. On a late night deployment of the cart our developer kicked a switch on the way out and disabled a form error checking element. A few days later we were alerted to a post by former Blogger CEO (now Odeo) Evan Williams. Thankfully Evan accepted our gratitude for waking us up to the Experience Irony and was kind enough to repost It Pays to Blog.

Here's an Interesting Line up of User Experience Offenders (flogged in cyberspace)

1) Apple- from usability guru  Bruce Tognazzini with "Top Ten (Nine) Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks". Tog's conclusion: "Keep the Dock as long as it helps close sales, but provide the real tools needed by people with serious work"

2) Adobe- from usability guru Jakob Nielsen with "PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption". Jakob's conclusion: "For online reading, however, PDF is the monster from the Black Lagoon. It puts its clammy hands all over people with a cruel grip that doesn't let go".

3) Macromedia (now Adobe)- from usability guru Jakob Nielsen with "Flash 99% bad". Jakob's conclusion: "About 99% of the time, the presence of Flash on a website constitutes a usability disease". Note: read the bottom of the article for more kind use of words about Adobe since they became Nielsen's client- which for the record, was Adobe's reverse-PR coup used to turn around the negative Flash publicity.

4) Microsoft- from CNET with "Five things you love and hate about Vista (Beta 2)"- June 19th 2006. CNET's take: "But based on what I've seen after living with Windows Vista beta 2 for a week, here are five things I think you'll like about the new operating system--some of which might persuade certain fence-sitters to upgrade--and five things that may convince others to stick with Windows XP for a few more years". Note: during the summer months, I saw more caustic analyst reviews of Vista Beta than praise. The top ones included error message handling SNAFU's like this one...(Flickr image) or this one.

5) MySpace- from Wired magazine with "Web 2.0 Winners and Losers". Wired's conclusion: MySpace is a loser; "The user interface is clunky and counterintuitive".

6) Sharp- another personal example. When I wrote this review of the Sharp Zaurus PDA for NewsFactor Network, I concluded (after doing some usability testing with the device first): "Enterprise deployment of the Zaurus may be another story, but from a productivity and technical standpoint, the Zaurus fails to meet the usability standard that has been set by other popular PDAs, such as Palm, iPaq, Treo or BlackBerry. In a highly competitive PDA market, ease of use is a distinct differentiator. On a scale of 1 to 5, users in our study gave the Zaurus a 2.0 rating". It's interesting to note that when my review came out, the first call I had the next morning was from the Public Relations firm that was handling the "Zaurus account" who insisted it was not a PDA but a "data terminal"... <sigh>.

How to avoid bad public relations due to poor user experience

1) Fix the problem and let your users know you are doing something about it if possible. When this angry blogger complained about Salesforce.com's poor performance, the Salesforce CEO replied to users (and blogged about it- now removed). See how Salesforce handled it here. If this can't be done, see #4 below with examples.

2) Use usability testing to flush out problems with mismatched tasks and expectations. Users want to be successful and bring expectations to your user interface. If their brain wants to go one way and your design has them go the other, you'll likely create "cognitive dissonance". Usability testing early and often throughout a release will help remove many of the embarrasing problems that are often structural and difficult to fix later on. These are far worse than technical issues or bugs that can be squashed quickly typically.

3) Let analysts and the media know what is happening if possible. If your users are having issues, analysts will be having them too and will write about them. For example, earlier last year I noticed Firefox performance and crashing (Feb-March time period). I asked a colleague and sure enough the same issues were reported. A few weeks later, this Business Week post appeared with similar complaints.

An interesting side note with this Firefox VP interview (and others in the past), when user experience is touted, users in the comments redirect the conversation to the huge memory bleed that is core to Firefox's architecture. To my knowledge FFX acts like it's not there but it's users don't ;-) As one users said, "stop focusing on usability and fix the huge memory leak!".

4) Be tactful with your users no matter how cheesed-off they are. I need to tell you there are a myriad of usability issues with Typepad (the blog software used for this blog), some small- some major. Half of my support tickets are pleas to Typepad to improve known usability issues. And it turns out many Typepad users are also frustrated. One user blogged about the less than perfect Typepad experience and after hearing Typepad's response concluded: "Typepad doesn't suck. In fact it's pretty sweet". Typepad then artfully followed up with a We Heard You message.

Contrast this to the way project management software Basecamp (also has it's share of unintuitive functionality) handled their angry users recently:

"Jason Fried: JWright, thanks for the advice on how we should develop our products, but we feel like we have it under control. We know what we're doing." (posted on this blog)

Interestingly this handling is not an isolated incident for Basecamp who experienced a lot of success last year with increased subscriptions. In one Basecamp forum thread, Fried implied that a disgruntled user should go create a rival product. Several users have abreacted to Basecamp's rough handling and even set up a Basecamp Sux site.

Parting thought: Is Web 2.0's "perpetual beta" philosophy a way of inoculating against the responsibility of dealing with online PR from poor user experience?

Web 2.0 promises us a fancy user experience (aka Rich Internet Applications) driven by ease of use. However, remember that usability is not just an idea (it's research that needs to be done properly). We now have over 20 years of documented and applicable usability guidelines and standards (UI Style Guidelines) we can learn from. Great user experiences grounded in matching features to user tasks and expectations produce deep seated loyalty and trust. And in terms of communicating our usability flaws, bugs or blunders, we need to remember to communicate with elegance, courtesy, and grace....

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

Personas LIVE! Transcript- Interview with Frank Spillers, Tamara Adlin and John Pruitt

The following is a transcript of a live interview with Persona book authors John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin, conducted by Frank Spillers in October 2006.

This seminar is available with the slides and audio presentation here (requires brief registration, privacy protected).

Transcript of Personas LIVE!: 

This interview follows the publication of Adlin and Pruitt's personas book, "The Persona Lifecycle : Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design"- published earlier this year...

Frank Spillers     Welcome... For those of you who have joined us today for Personas Live – an interview with Personas book authors John Pruitt Pruitt and Tamara Adlin Adlin who we have live on the phone here. I’m Frank Spillers Spillers. This presentation, or seminar, is aimed at understanding a little bit more about what went into the publication and writing of the book. It’s a unique opportunity to hear from the author’s themselves, John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin. We’ve got something exciting stuff for you here, so let’s look at the agenda for today. So first up is the Persona Lifecycle which is one of the major methodologies or themes that the book wraps itself around. We’re going to look at a couple of case studies. Then we are going to look at some Persona best practices and discuss the issue of using personas in a way that maximizes the organizational return on investment. And then we are going to open it up for some questions and answers with the authors. Before we begin let’s do a little brief introduction. Tamara Adlin Adlin is formerly the Customer Experience Manager at Amazon.com and John Pruitt Pruitt is currently with a Senior User Experience Lead at Microsoft with Vista,  Tablet and other projects. Tamara Adlin, would you like to tell us a little bit more about yourself?

 
Tamara Adlin  Yes. About a year ago I left Amazon after helping to set up their customer experience group for their Platform services, allowing lots of other online retailers to use the Amazon technology behind their site. I then started my own consulting company called Adlin Inc. I do a lot of customer experience consulting for online retailers, other online businesses and also traditional product design.

Frank Spillers   Okay thanks. John Pruitt, give us a little bio.

John Pruitt  Yes. I’ve been at Microsoft for a little over eight years now, mostly with the Windows team but I’ve been about three years with MSN, working on MSN Explore and a variety of other web products over there. I’ve been with the tablet and, mobile PC division for a little over a year and a half, closing in on two years now. We are working on getting the mobility side of Windows Vista out the door as well as some new products like ultra mobile PC’s and some new stuff that’s coming down the pipe.

Frank Spillers  And I’m Frank Spillers Spillers and I help run the user experience and usability consultancy firm Experience Dynamics. I’ve been working with Personas for about 9 years now. It’s a pleasure to have you both with us today and thank you so much for joining us. I just wanted to let our audience know, that this is actually a re-run and we are recording this session of the quick release we did of a similar presentation. And there is a little bit more content in today’s session. That had an overwhelming response so we decided to re-it again here today. Just a few weeks after the original publication is where this session first came together. The reason that we wanted to bring the authors on and talk about this book is because I think it is a major landmark in the usability and user experience community. For the first time we now have one place that we can refer to that is really interesting and solid and useful information. If this book isn’t on everyone’s bookshelf in the next few months then I really would wonder what they were doing, because I think this is just a valuable asset. So, thank you so much for putting this book together. Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about the structure of the book. How is it laid out and why?

Tamara Adlin  Well, the first thing I want to say is thanks for saying that. When we originally started off to do this book, our idea was to put together a quick practical bag that was going to be a couple of hundred pages and our intent was certainly to do that. The when we started diving in we realized that there was so much to say and so many stories to get from so many practitioners – that’s a big part of the book by the way – stories from practitioners who are inserted all the way through as case studies. And the whole thing just grew and grew till eventually it became the heavy book that it is today. But it was also our purpose to make it a rich report, a book that you could thumb through and find ideas, no matter where you are in the persona process.

John Pruitt  As Tamara Adlin said, our book really started with case studies. We had organized a couple of workshops at the UPA (Usability Professionals Association) back in 2001 and 2002. At those workshops we had brought together persona practitioners from around the industry. And at the end of those full day workshops the general consensus was that we need a book on personas about the methodology, on how to do it well, and how to use them right, with case studies and best practices. So Tamara Adlin and I and another contributor Holly Jamieson decided we should do a book. But we thought it should be a really small book, about a hundred pages.

Tamara Adlin And we thought we could do it in nine months…..

John Pruitt   Yeah we thought it would take about nine months, but it just grew and grew.

Frank Spillers  So it turned out to have around 725 pages or so of content in here. Why should someone buy this book, and put another 700 or so pages on their reading list?

Tamara Adlin   Well, that’s actually a big challenge and I’m glad you brought that up. This isn’t a book that we intend for you to sit down and read cover to cover. The Lifecycle, which you’ll hear a little bit more about in a minute, came out of the original workshop which we already talked about. We had a lot of practitioners there, and we looked at a lot of their methodologies and we talked about it. And after the first workshop we realized that personas seem to have a lifecycle just like regular people. And they go through a fairly predictable set of phases, when you try to create them and integrate them into a company. And when you look it at through a persona lifecycle model, you notice that personas tend to run into snags or failures at a fairly predictable time too. So we created the book around a lifecycle approach so that could we could talk about how to integrate personas in with other methodologies that are out there. We certainly don’t think they replace other methods but rather they augment it. Also, so that we could talk about how this process integrates with other development lifecycles. So, like this slide says, we give the intro and overview and the background on where the personas idea came from and how our lifecycle is structured. Chapters 3 through 7 are each on one of the phases of the persona lifecycle. Chapters 8 through 12 are invited chapters that we thought would introduce interesting ideas, research and also methods to the body of the book. So it is designed to flip through, get a sense of what’s going on, and maybe read a chapter at a time as you hit each stage in the lifecycle. And as you hit any snags, as you most likely will, because everyone does, you can flip through and get ideas, find out how other people have gotten through it, get inspiration and get tools because we really wanted it to be practical. And really the only way to practically handle a 700 page book is to use the pieces as necessary and that’s hopefully what you’ll do.

Frank Spillers    And you also have these sidebars which are really interesting. I had the privilege of contributing three or four of these sidebars to your book, Why the practitioner involvement? Was that just to pad it out? Why are there so many stories? Practically every page you turn over there are stories from the field. What’s the purpose of that?   

John Pruitt    I think that came out of the fact that we started with workshops and with other practitioners. The more we talked to other practitioners we realized that the persona method isn’t and probably couldn’t be just a single approach. Like user centered design generally, you really have got to fit the method to your organization, your particular product space, or service space, like what are you creating, building or selling. We personally found a lot of value in the stories and best practices, and the case studies that people were bringing to us, and we wanted to bring those out in the book as well and really highlight them. I think that’s really the value of the book. To in and read these, in some cases really detailed case studies about how they applied personas, how they conceived of personas and what they did for their group. I mean they literally are almost one per page. We have hundreds of little side bars through the book.

Frank Spillers   So the book almost reflects the state of the practitioner community in terms of how everybody is trying to work together to try and figure out how best to utilize personas and the user research in their user centered design and their usability efforts. I need to say I think they are absolutely fantastic and if you haven’t looked at these sidebars and looked at the book – it’s a really nice design and a really nicely organization that compliments the state of the other practitioner community. I just want to say for those of you who are listening or are just joining us, we are speaking with John Pruitt Pruitt and Tamara Adlin Adlin the authors of the “Persona Lifecycle Handbook” just released a few months ago. If you are interested in asking a question go ahead and “chat it” in the left-hand window. Those of you who pick up the recording won’t be able to do that obviously. But for those who are live on the call now, go ahead and chat that in there and I’ll pick up those questions and field them as we go along. So let’s look at this lifecycle. You know the more I think about this, this is more of a book that’s about helping you and your organization use personas strategically and operationally. It’s not really about writing a persona,  although that is in there, the use of the actual tactical technique. But the beauty of the book which I think was deliberate on your part, was to have that organizational perspective and of how to use it in your company of where your at.

Tamara Adlin   Absolutely. We just found that there was so much information about persona projects hitting these huge snags. We were in this lucky position of having an overview of so many stories from other practitioners that we could start to see a pattern. And that’s really how we started to organize the book. Everybody has become really excited about personas, since Alan Cooper wrote “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum” back in 1999. And the problem with that book, in the sense that everybody got excited about it, but nobody knew how to do this method. And that’s fine, no critique of Cooper on that. But people did get excited about it, but nobody knew how to do it. And when they tried it they would run into problems. And I think that is because personas are asking an entire organization to change in some fairly significant ways. They are asking organizations to look more closely and more carefully at user data way earlier in the process than most organizations are used to. They are asking for customer focus that’s really walking the walk and not just talking the talk. They are asking them to think about users every single time we have a meeting about this product. And if you don’t address the way that you are asking for change, then the effort is going to fail because the inertia of old methods and the typical lifecycles are just too strong.   

Frank Spillers    Sure, that makes a lot of sense. I actually brought a slide up here since you mentioned the book “The Inmates are Running the Asylum”. And a lot of people attribute personas to Cooper here, in terms of the starting point in the modern use of personas in 1998 and 1999. So people were left hanging, and that was one of the criticisms of the book. Your book fills the gap, which people have been hungry for over the last four or five years it seems.

Tamara Adlin   We were certainly hoping so, yes.

Frank Spillers  Let’s talk about that lifecycle then. What is the persona lifecycle?

John Pruitt    Well, the persona lifecycle is five stages that we related to the human procreation process. The initial stage, which we call “Family planning”, is really about organizational introspection. It is doing what we do as user-centered design people, kind of turned on our own organization. What do we do as a process? How do we push users into the center of our design effort? Do we already do that? Do we do user testing? What other kind of user research do we do? How do we design our products and decide on features and that sort of thing? So, it’s looking at ourselves and then doing some analysis of “Does this persona methodology fit, and how can I best make it fit” So, it’s a planning process. The second part of it is also going out, and collecting the data that we sometimes already have, or generating a new data collection effort to inform what personas we need to create. That is to really provide the meat of persona creation. The second stage is conception and gestation and that is exactly what it sounds like. It is the phase where you create your personas out of data, and in some cases you create them out of educated guesses and assumptions. And then you go through a process of maturing those initial personas into something that’s really substantial and substantiated. The third stage is called birth and maturation and that’s really about getting your personas out and into your team, so that they become alive and your team recognizes who they are. It’s also introducing the persona methodology as well as kicking off a communication campaign that focuses on your personas as a progressive disclosure of information and regular updated basis so that personas don’t just get introduced and then die on the vine. The fourth stage is called adulthood and that’s really when the personas themselves are mature. They are beginning to be known on the team, and they have got to have a job to do. They are adults now, and they need to contribute to your organizational society. So it’s about getting personas to help you to design activities and product decision making, and through the development stage. So it’s in the planning part at the beginning and the part in the middle as well as at the release part. So that when your product is going out to market, your personas have something to do there as well for you.

Frank Spillers    So are we talking at a project level that all this is happening? Or are we talking at an organizational level over a period of years. So, is this months or years, or is it both?

John Pruitt   It’s actually both. Initially you need to think about the project that you are doing personas for. Is it a product or service, a software product, a hard product or a goods product. In some cases as in web products, that may be a six month process. For Windows Vista that was a five year development cycle. So adulthood is about applying personas through that entire development process. If you are fortunate enough to do it, and have the bandwidth and or support from your upper management to think about personas and user-centered design across your entire organization, so not just a specific project or a single product but groups, suites or families of products. This applies to that as well. The final stage is called lifetime achievement and retirement and that it really about when your product has gone to market and you want to recognize what the personas have done for you, if anything. It’s about ROI – return on investment. It’s about really being accountable. We invested time and effort into personas. Did they deliver something? And if so, what is that? So that chapter of the book really talks about different kinds of ROI and how do you measure what personas have done for you. And then the retirement phase is about starting the cycle all over. So if you were going to do the next version of your product, or if you were going to go into a related project area or starting something entirely new, do your personas live on, do you retire them, do you reincarnate them, or do you reuse some of the data. If you look at the persona lifecycle diagram it is kind of circular, but it’s actually spiral in shape. That’s because the persona lifecycle doesn’t always turn a full circle. It actually continues to grow and change and your personas will evolve over time. That’s how you think about your target customers.

Frank Spillers   I wanted to ask Tamara Adlin what is the deal with these fears and these circles – can you clarify that for us?

Tamara Adlin  Sure. I want to add one quick comment. I think that two of the places that practitioners will find the most initial value especially those who have tried personas already, are in the conception and gestation phase and the adulthood phase. There are lots of new ideas in all of these phases but the thing we’ve gotten the most positive feedback on is conception and gestation which shows really talks in practical ways, step by step,  how to get from raw data to personas. And adulthood, where I would say 90% of the personas efforts fail, people put posters up on the wall, and then expect them to magically work. But in adulthood, again, it’s very practical and it tells you how to actually use them in an everyday environments. Going back to the spiral, we thought long and hard about this graphic. We wanted each of the circles to give you a sense of how much time and effort, relatively speaking, you are going to spend in each phase and a sense of how they morph into each other through the transparency. And the cyclical nature of it. We wanted something that was very eye-catching and sort of captured the idea in an unusual way. And that’s how we came up with this. And you should have seen all the drawings we went through to get here. So, that’s where that came from.

Frank Spillers     Okay. I want to ask you a question about retirement and lifetime achievement. That’s the one that when I first saw it I wasn’t sure what that meant. I thought of the beanie baby, where it gets retired or thrown away. Do you take your user profiles and put them up on the shelf when you are done with them? Or pull the poster down, or whatever the case may be. How does that play out with a product that has a product for say one target customer that they are working with over a number of years, say five or ten years. Do you just keep refreshing the persona data or do you literally throw them away and start all over again and then its time for another product to be launched at that target audience?

Tamara Adlin   I love the analogy to beanie babies. No one has ever said that before and I think it’s great. Let’s pull that analogy a little further. Maybe you grow out of your little lion beanie baby. Maybe your company has launched a particular product and now they are moving on to something new, which is related to the old product, but it’s not exactly the same. Or maybe they have been working on the same products for many years. Or maybe they are working on B2 of a product. And so that’s analogous to maybe you grow out of loving your beanie baby by just putting it on a shelf. Or maybe you just stay in love with it like the Velveteen Rabbit so it becomes real. So anyway, to get more concrete about this – its retirement, reuse or reincarnation. Either you are moving on to a product that’s not related to the first product that you created or you if you have made the personas come alive in the minds of your team you have to figure out how to undo that to be ready for the next set of personas. On the other hand, maybe you are going to do V2 or V3 or Version X of your product and you find that the persona has evolved a little bit. You’ve released the first version and now Mary didn’t know anything about online banking, and now maybe she knows a little bit about online banking and so now you are going to have to look a little bit at the data and how the world had changed and maybe she might have evolved a little bit . Reincarnate means well maybe it’s not Mary anymore, but maybe the data you used to create Mary might go into Meredith. So, every single time, what we suggest is to figure out what you need out of personas for the next round, how much you are going to have to introduce, new or revived personas. But at the heart of the effort you have to go through and look back at your raw data again and determine if it’s still relevant and how you are going to use that in the persona effort 

Frank Spillers   Okay. Let’s talk about the idea of personas. If you are not using the word personas you might be using user profiles or something else. Is that okay? There’s been a lot of buzz and what seems like a lot of hype over the last few years, less so now – but around 2002-2004 it seemed like everybody had personas, and everybody had a profile of their customers. Tell us a little more about the terminology of using personas.

John Pruitt   Sure. The concept of personas has been around for a long time. Longer than Cooper’s book which came out in 1999. Cooper re-conceptualized what personas were and also coined the term “personas” which popularized the idea. But abstractions of user’s representations of individuals that are related to groups of people but are caricatures of them have been around for a number of years. But really it began way back in industrial design with a book by Henry Dreyfuss (I believe). And this has gone on and been captured by various marketing folks in terms of representations of user segments and market profiles, user profiles, customer profiles in that regard. The flavor of what’s included in those representations differs. So for marketing purposes, not all of these include photos and try to make the customer feel extremely real, or realistic and have a personality. But they all capture essential information about who your target audience is, so that you can do a better job of decision-making with those users in mind.

Frank Spillers   So how about data-sources then. This is something in my side-bar that I felt was a very important issue in terms of differentiating where your data comes from when you fill the persona or user profile. Is it enough to take your marketing demographics for example this is Charlie, he makes $70-75K, he is 30 years old and likes to play with gadgets. Is that enough? Or does that have to come from ethnographic studies, such as a day in the life, two weeks, five week, five month studies with the target audience and getting deep into their behavior.

Tamara Adlin      We had really rich conversations about this over the years that we worked together on this project. In fact, one of the first debates that John Pruitt and I had was what data you actually needed for personas. So the way I would answer this is that it’s always best to start to create your personas out of richly varied data. In the best case scenario you have ethnographic research, you have market research. You have research from the US government on the behaviors of people similar to the people that you are targeting. You have a huge range of information. However, what I think we found is that the focus that personas can give you is so valuable in an organization that even if you base your personas on raw assumptions, or create what Don Norman effectively called “ad-hoc personas”. Which at the very least get everybody aligned in their assumptions about the users. If you asked around in your organizations right now, for people to describe the user that you are targeting, you would be surprised at how much variety you would get. So even if you just align the assumptions in your organization, personas can be incredibly effective because the focus outweighs any of the risks of them not being “correct”. However, the more data you can use, certainly the better. Certainly for buy in, and certainly for comfort in the entire organization in focusing on the personas.

John Pruitt     I want to add something, going back to your original question there as well. Part of what Alan Cooper really added to the notion of customer representations, is making them real and giving them personality and substance. And in Alan’s case in particular, there’s a big focus on making sure the personas have goals, aspirations and motivations behind why they would be using your product, and what do they do in life, and what matters to them. And I think it’s that human-ness that personas have, that take them way far beyond other representations like market segmentation and user classes of those kind of thing. There become very powerful proxies for our customer targets.

Frank Spillers    So for example, the agency “Organic” has what they call a “Persona Room” and they have developed a scenario of the person. They had a stage designer come in and build a living room. I don’t know what they are trying to test or trying to create, but the idea is to bring the design team in to empathize and build out. What Levis (the jeans company) does is conducts studies and recreates the closets of people. From their ethnographic fields they will come back and rebuild the teenagers’ closet in their offices, and use that as a tool. The criticism that some bloggers have made about Organics personas room is that they never mention that their persona recreations are built on real data. They are not gathered from any type of user intercepts or interviews. Is it enough to emphasis like that, to just say we are going to emphasize and we know our customers. Or do people actually need to budget for field studies and spend the money to go out there and touch base and make contact with their customers and really get to know them and their goals and so forth?

Tamara Adlin    It depends on how advanced the organization is. You’d be surprised how many organizations out there are still doing very self-centered design. They are just thinking about what they would want. If that’s the case, then anything that could bounce you out of that self-centered design, at least to have a little bit of empathy with your target user group is better than what you were doing before. If a company really does say that they are doing user centered design, they may or may not actually be doing what we call tree user centered design where you really go out there and gather a lot of data. The purpose of personas with respect to data: one way to start thinking about that is to make the data useable itself within the organization. The job of developers is not to analyze customer data. The job of developers is to develop. Our job as customer centered design folks or user researchers is to do that research, and get it to those developers in a way that will actually enhance their daily work and inform it with data. That’s one way to look at personas. As a communication technique. And of course, to your point: in some cases in some organizations you really have to be able to say, hey, here is the raw data. You want to go take a look at it, take a look at it, you’re more than welcome to. And we suggest that you make the raw data available within your organization, say on an intranet site. Once people do that once or twice, they tend to start trusting the personas a lot more. They don’t really want to read all of the raw data. They just want to know that you’ve read all the raw data and interpreted it wisely in the persona.

Frank Spillers    Is there a credibility issue there John Pruitt, with regard to where the data comes from say for example in a Microsoft type environment?

John Pruitt     Absolutely. So, when you create assumption personas, which we think are extremely useful and powerful, we also think you need to make sure it’s clear that these are assumption personas. So, you always want to maintain a sense of credibility, in terms of how far can we push these things and have our assumptions been validated in any way. So, credibility for the personas is something that does come up and we have a slide later on in this deck where we talk about some of the issues with personas and maybe we’ll come back to that in a minute. One thing I do want to add related to going out and visiting customers. A really powerful thing that we have seen happen with personas is that once you have the personas in place and the team starts to become familiar with them, then part of the communication plan we think, should be going and finding out real representatives of those personas. So if you have the Abby persona or the Patrick persona then you recruit some of those for either field studies or lab studies. You bring them in or you go out and visit them and you bring your team along with you tell them “Okay today we are going to go and see two different Abby’s. And one of the Abby’s is a man, surprisingly enough”. And they see these instances of the persona in real life. Every time I have seen this happen your team mates go away thinking “Man, that guy was such an Abby, I can’t believe it”. It brings the persona all that much more into focus and really helps people understand who the persona is, and what the essence of this persona is.

Frank Spillers    So, it’s a little bit like a usability test where if you bring in your team or your executives and have them see, hear and feel the user struggle and succeed its much more powerful than a report or a graph.

John Pruitt       Absolutely. And in fact what I’m suggesting here is that on top of that you call your participants by the persona name that they represent. So we do that as we bring people into lab studies. We say “Today we’ve got two Patricks’ and a Sandra and an Abby”. And when we report our findings back we say things like “The Sandra’s had these kinds of issues or reacted to the prototype in this way”. And it really is a powerful thing.

Frank Spillers     So let’s talk about why personas work. With reference to the naming of them, how effective have you found that in your own experience. I want to share an anecdote before I do. On a recent blog posting the former Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble on his Scobelizer blog was talking about the ditching of the name whatever it was. The blog post was called “Ethically Bankrupt Personas”. If you follow the interaction of the developer and Scoble, basically they are getting hung up partly on the name and the naming of it. They say “Let’s get rid of Eric or Bobby” or whoever it was. Do you find that people get attached to names, faces and races? There was an issue with Cooper that came up a few years ago and someone was asking “Should we include different races?” What’s your personal experience around the effectiveness or the confusion around that?

Tamara Adlin   I think that’s actually really funny. Because all of the people on that blogpost I looked at are using the name which means that the persona is actually working. But the fact that they are saying “Let’s get rid of Mike” or whoever, means that they all realize there’s a Mike and they know who he is. If they want to get rid of him that’s one thing. And they know about Mike versus Saundra versus Abby or whatever, but the alternative would then be saying “the administrator” or the user.

John Pruitt     Or not talking about users at all.

Tamara Adlin That’s right. So I love that. So if they don’t like the name, if they don’t resonate with the details of the persona that’s one thing. But that’s a very different level of conversation, much more detailed in terms of users and goals, than it would have been if they had said “I don’t want to talk about the user” which never would have happened. That kind of debate with developers is delicious.

Frank Spillers     Is that one of the outcomes of persona process is to get that dialogue going about the users

Tamara Adlin   Right. All of a sudden you are having that discussion about the users. I just think that blog is one of the best arguments for personas that I have ever seen. The fact that developers are saying lets get rid of this one. And there is a big debate about stereotypes and about racial equity or gender equity in personas. But I think the key is to remember that you’re trying to capture real human goals, needs and behaviors. And if those goals, needs and behaviors vary according to gender or race, I mean when you are talking about a system for people to enter their password into a US immigration server, then yes. I think ethnicity, background and language totally matter. If you are talking about some other type of software or some other website, maybe they don’t matter at all, right? So, online banking, a US online banking system, does gender really matter? I don’t know. I would doubt it.

Frank Spillers   So since personas are grounded in behavior, they typically tend to generalize based on behavioral attributes. And in the book there is that separation. In fact early on in the book, one of the sidebars that I contributed to was the distinction between a marketing persona and a design persona.

Tamara Adlin    That’s right. Marketing personas are for targeting. They are asking things like what magazines does this person read? Where should we advertise? How should we let them know about this new product? Which is very different than saying what goals do people have when they actually use the product? And if you are doing marketing then you need to know the age range, the gender, in many cases perhaps ethnic background, depending on the product. That’s why marketing and product design are two different animals. It’s a different set of needs.

Frank Spillers    When I get asked that question in persona trainings the way I usually answer it around should we use races and different genders is that generally personas are descriptions of behaviors that are extrapolated hopefully out of real and concrete user observation in their settings. It’s the general practice to have diversity and to have awareness of different races and genders and abilities and to include those. I’ll even do that just as a way to remember who I’m serving. One of my users is an international user for example. So I’ll include someone who is not North American just as a reminder so that when I am presenting the data, so that I can say “Oh yes and by the way the user in this country, in  China or in India, struggles particularly with these localization issues for example".

Tamara Adlin    Yes. And in that case it doesn’t matter.

Frank Spillers    I think we have a question. Let’s take our question now. Then we are going to move into case studies. I have just been putting up a few slides there with a quote from Alan Cooper about designing for one person or audience. There have been some really interesting questions on the Internet related to “BaseCamp” the project management tool. Should you design your user needs or should you just design to a general audience. Too much to get into in this discussion though. So here’s a question: “Have personas been proven to be the best design and/or marketing strategy tool versus more standard design techniques which view the customer base as being more diverse than a single persona and thus segmented accordingly?”. This is segmentation versus behavioral slicing issue: “Are there concrete measurements of the success ROI for implementing personas versus traditional design marketing approaches?” This is a great question.

John Pruitt   Yes, great question. So the answer is – are personas the best method? There is no data out there that says they are the best method. In a certain way I wouldn’t ask a question that way. The reason is because what personas are is a way of getting your team focused on end users. I really think the best approach is to think of them in a supplemental way to other user centered design work and other proven market research efforts. We really believe that the best personas, start with good market research and segmentation data. You then build personas from a variety of additional data sources including qualitative field research and the graphic type research to really get a good rounded view of what your end user is. So, describing personas in that way is supplemental. They are not just a single method. Because they can also be applied to a lot of different aspects of your development process including early on decision making, some aspects of product design including visual design and styling. They can influence and be a part of the marketing and messaging. They can be part of documentation. So, because of their multiple applications, it means their ROI can be measured in different ways as a part of the product. So can they affect your bottom line in improving sales of your product, or decrease support costs for your product and calls to the product support line and those kinds of thing? Yes. And there are case studies that have shown personas influencing bottom line dollar, support cost, ease of use, and those kinds of things. They also have broader effects which are harder to measure. Personas can act as a lever to get our catalysts to get more user centered design activities into your organization overall. So it’s like a foot in the door technique. You get personas in, and people resonate with them, and they start discussing customers. They kind of like what they bring. And then this gives you the leverage to say “Hey, let’s do some further research or do some user testing. We’ve never done that before. Or let’s do a focus group, or let’s do some user survey stuff”. We’ve seen lots of cases where personas actually influence your entire organization towards a more user centered design approach. 

Frank Spillers    Yes. I suppose you have had a lot of people writing in as well with all the contributions you’ve got in the book. There are literally dozens of examples of that shared where you can see people are using them. I think that point was really important and thanks for the clarification and expanding on that John Pruitt. I get asked that question a lot myself. People confuse my enthusiasm for personas for a trumping of market research. Its not that personas are better. What you are seeing in the marketing world in the last five years or so, is marketers exhausting their traditional market research design techniques because we are trying to achieve standards of usability, ease of use and user centered design that require usability and behavioral research methods such as personas. And that’s really the point. If you want usability, then don’t use marketing techniques like focus groups and surveys alone. Add to those and expand on those. That’s where a lot of marketers are getting very interested in persona methodologies and behavioral research. This is a good point to talk about case studies, so let’s talk about case studies for a minute. Can you talk about some of the more interesting ones?

Tamara Adlin   One other quick point before we move onto that. Part of that last question should also be about are they (personas) better for design. And I would say this real quickly. It’s almost impossible to design a product for 35 – 55 year old women. I mean what design decisions are you going to make that really have to do with navigation and clarity and consistency across the user interface for a range. But for a specific person, if everybody in the organizations with the thousands of tiny decisions that get made every day are all focusing on the same person, then you are more likely to come out with a product that makes sense from end to end and is internally consistent. The value of that is enormous and it can not be achieved with ranges. So traditional market data does not help with that kind of consistency.

Frank Spillers    Let’s talk about bottom line stuff then and persona lifetime achievement or ROI. Can you lead us into a couple of the case studies that are in the book that are most interesting – the Medco and the Best Buy studies.  As you put this book put together, what have you heard and seen in terms of companies profiting from and the evidence of ROI coming straight from the efforts of personas? Tell us a little more about that……

Tamara Adlin  Well, like the slide says, the ROI should be measured in terms of improvement to your bottom line. More people should buy the product and use it and like it should cost less to support. But there are also improvements that are worth an awful lot of money. That can happen in terms of your team and your company and you internal process. So what we recommend is that during family planning you identify what the problems are that you want to solve with your persona effort. These could vary from organization to organization. And then during the ROI phase you actually measure those and see what kinds of results you have gotten. And now I can turn it over to John Pruitt to talk about the Medco Health case study.

John Pruitt    So with Medco it was actually with a website that they had applied personas to www.medcohealth.com  What they did with personas was redesign their main site to navigation. What they found was a 33% increase in transactions, they had less abandonment. They also had more prescriptions being ordered online which is pretty incredible. Those are really solid numbers. Moving on to the next slide. I like this example here as well because in this case it wasn’t about building a software product, which is what I think about most of the time. It wasn’t about websites but it was really about the physical layout of a store. The fact that these guys did some really good market research and then did some good ethnographic research and then built personas and then took them really seriously and went out and redesigned a fairly good number of their stores. And then they looked across these test stores compared to the rest of their stores and compared what was happening with sales. The test stores were showing an average of 7% more in sales. Those are some great numbers. It’s not a 100% clean experimental design, but both of these case studies are good examples of showing improvement in the bottom line of your product in places where it impacts your dollars. We’ve got other cases outlined in the book and I’ll just name a few that are interesting: The dish maker “Pfaltzgraff” did some really great work with personas, not only redesigning their website but also rethinking about their actual plate ware and what they were doing as products. And also how they are presenting the website, how they are presenting the catalogue and how they go about selling those products. So that’s a really great case study.

There’s a good one in the book about a game maker company in that went from redesigning their website using personas from which they basically went from having zero sales of their game products through their own website. When they did the redesign, they discovered through their customer data, that who they thought their real customers were, was in fact way-off. They discovered that their real customers were mostly women who were playing these casual games.  So they redesigned with those personas in mind. They created two personas with the redesign in mind and saw an incredible rise in the magnitude of downloads of their product and eventual sales of their games to these customers. This is a really powerful example of putting your user first and really thinking about why would they come here, what are they going to do, what do they get out of it, and positioning and designing your product in that way.

Frank Spillers      We eluded to some of the best practices throughout about how personas can be used and evangelized and so forth. And whether they are hype or helpful, used or misused in an organization. And we talked about assumption personas. Let’s turn to best practices here. Do you document cases in the book about efforts that didn’t work?

John Pruitt      To talk about that, could we move to the slide. It’s the one where there’s a clown on it and it says “Personas are Powerful”. We found over the years, particularly early on when things were just catching on, though it still happens today, that persona efforts are not always met with success. You go out and create them and they just sort of die. There were four main themes that came out of us looking across a lot of case studies and working with companies that had done them, and talking to practitioners. Those four things are: firstly, lots of personas are done as a grass roots effort. So a few people on the team get fired up about the process. They have read Cooper’s book, or they might have read our book and they then start to do it. And unless you get good support, not just from upper management, VP’s and the like, but really I mean support from the influential people on your team. And a lot of time the influential people are just your peers. And so, picking out the peers are really key to having a really successful user centered design effort and getting them bought into personas is a key thing to overcome.

The second thing is that in a lot of cases the persona characters themselves were just not believable. In some cases they are designed by assumptions, by groups of people, who create them. And in other cases, they were based on data but the links to the data is not clear. So, we outline ways to combat this in our book. The essence of this is that you do have to care about credibility. And you do have to make sure that your personas, when they are based on data, that it is clear. And you should always go back to data. Once you create them, we believe that you are not done. You have to validate them and continue to update your understanding of them. The third reason why personas fail is simply that they are not communicated well. We have seen lots of cases where personas are created and a little poster is made. It’s put on the wall, or a few of them are scattered around the walls of your building. And then you’re done. We found that your really have to treat personas as a communication campaign that you launched and then you launch them with the notion of progressive disclosure of information that can’t learn about every aspect of your personas immediately. It’s just like getting to know a real person. When you first meet someone you are lucky if you remember their real name. You hopefully remember their face, and maybe what they do a little bit. But you get to know them over time and then you start to develop a relationship, trust them and ultimately good friendships have lots of influence on you when you really know somebody. And that’s really the way personas need to work. When you communicate them in very explicit ways over a period of time during your development cycle.

Frank Spillers     We are getting really close to the end of our time here. Just to say, the book, that we are discussing here, the issues and themes of the 725 page “Bible” as I would call it, can be picked up at www.amazon.com . It is a Morgan-Kaufman publication. It runs around $55-$60 and you can search Google for “Persona Lifecycle Book” and you should get a number of links directly to the book. Its definitely worth the money, and it probably pays for itself through results over and over again in terms of keeping you on track. Even if you are as seasoned practitioner or if you are new to personas this book will come as a breath of fresh air. I have definitely been recommending it on my trainings as well. As we wrap up here in the theme of the lifecycle tell us a few things to consider regarding the lifecycle framework. What are some of the things that people should keep in mind?

Tamara Adlin       Well I think its everything that it says on here. It’s just another method. Our book is long partially because we want to talk about how you integrate this with other methods that you are doing. And a big take away from all this is – doctor heal thyself. Think a lot about yourself as a user centered designer and think about how you are making your own work usable within your organization. It’s not a one size fits all process. There is benefit even if you just do a little bit. And you should be systematic and strategic in your approach. That’s really what it is all about: making yourself and your own work usable to the people who are consuming the customer data that you are bringing in.

Frank Spillers   Okay, great. And just here as we are wrapping up a few questions. We have already taken a few as we have gone through, but here’s one. “How many personas are needed” one person is asking?

Tamara Adlin   Short answer is it depends…..which is always the short answer. Basically, we talk about looking either at major roles, or major goals or segments in your product. And typically a lot of companies have a way that they are thinking about this. Maybe they are thinking about the audience or the presenter. Or maybe they are talking about the person who plays it economically safe, versus the risk-taker. You are really looking for the key differences that make a difference. So you are looking at prioritizing anywhere between one, two, three or four personas in typical projects. The rest of it really depends on the data you have on the product that you are creating.

Frank Spillers     Okay, another quick question here. Have you ever seen a design team use a real persona to represent, act and think like the persona.

Tamara Adlin   Hire an actor I guess!

John Pruitt     Or we have also seen some cases where companies have identified a target user and said “This is a great example of our key customer”. In that case they keep going back to that same person. It’s a dangerous thing to do. There was also one company that we worked with where there was an individual in the company that served as the persona. That person did a lot of user research and their job was to “be Bill” or whoever that persona was.

Tamara Adlin      Part of our validation process is going back to the users at the end of the project and seeing if they really start acting like the personas. That’s what you hope will happen, that you were right, and that these are the goals and this is how the product will satisfy those goals.

Frank Spillers    Great. Well we are actually up on our time here. I want to thank you both very much. This has been a most interesting and valuable session here. Thank you John Pruitt Pruitt and Tamara Adlin Adlin, authors of “The Persona Lifecycle Handbook” that is definitely worth the $50-$60 that I think it’s going for out there. This seminar will be available for archive playback and in addition to that John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin will be presenting a workshop on personas at the Neilson-Norman event in October in the US and London in November.

Tamara Adlin   People can get in touch with us anytime. Just email us and we’ll be happy to talk to you.

Frank Spillers    Email is up there on the screen right now. John Pruitt’s email is jpruitt <a> microsoft <.> com and Tamara Adlin’s is tamara <a> adlininc <.> com. Finally, I want to thank you guys so much for your time and you insights. This has been really great and we look forward to hearing more from the stories that you gather as you interact with more practitioners. And hopefully there will be a follow-up book in a couple of years. For those of you who may be interested, we may have John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin on our regular web seminar courses coming up so stay tuned to www.experiencedynamics.com or hop on  the email list there and we’ll keep you posted. Thanks a lot and enjoy the rest of your day. 

End of interview.

This seminar is available with the slides and audio presentation here (requires brief registration, privacy protected).

Best Regards,
Frank Spillers, MS

Usability Testing methods- What are we observing and why? (World Usability Day 2006 Event)

Next week is World Usability Day, a day when the usability community gets out to raise awareness and visibility about the field and goals of usability engineering and user centered design.

"World Usability Day 2006 promotes the value of usability engineering and user-centered design and the belief that every user has the responsibility to ask for things that work better". (from the WUD site)

Here are a couple of items related to World Usability Day that we are doing at Experience Dynamics, a leading usability and user centered design consultancy.

1. Special Event-Usability Testing methods- What are we observing and why? 

Nov 14th 2006 12pm (Americas and Europe) and 6pm (Asia)

When conducting usability testing, what do you measure and why? How do you capture metrics and what you should be measuring?

In this World Usability Day exclusive web seminar, we will discuss usability testing observation metrics and best practices.

Agenda:

1. Usability Testing metrics: What are the things you should be measuring? How to measure qualitative vs. quantitative data (e.g. satisfaction vs. effort).

2. Usability testing observation best practices: Do you measure time on task every time? What do you need to do a good job capturing metrics if you are doing "quick and dirty" discount usability or "guerilla" testing, without undermining your own efforts?

3. New tool for usability testing logging: LiveLogger. Just released this week, we will review a new  usability test logging application. We will review the new LiveLogger interface and discuss what the tool does, how it captures and reports on usability testing metrics.

Summary: In this 1 hour live web seminar (held twice on World Usability Day), we will review usability testing observation best practices.

Length: 60 minutes

Who should attend: People new to usability testing or want to conduct rapid usability testing; usability managers; user experience team; anyone responsible for user advocacy or usability testing.

Learn more about this exclusive web seminar

Register by simply sending an email (limited seating)

2. Multi-language Translations of The Importance of User Experience (poster).

The poster now translated into 20 languages and being presented at numerous locations by usability consultants and practitioners around the globe (so I'm told) ;-)

The poster is available for download in: (or for purchase in English here)

French, Dutch; Spanish; Bulgarian; Swedish; Portuguese (Brazilian); Chinese (Mandarin); Danish; Arabic; Greek; German; Hebrew; Portuguese; Italian; Norwegian; Finnish

Coming soon: Turkish, Polish, Russian, Icelandic.

The poster has also appeared on UX Mag as picked up from Angie McKaig's site, where she said:

"Great little visual overview of UX and why it's important. If I still worked in an office, I'd totally want this for my cubicle. And my boss's. And his boss's". (thanks Angie ;-)

Read more about the science behind the poster here

Find out how to buy a printed poster for your wall (English)

Thanks and Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers

p.s. Also check out The Importance of User Experience in B2B Enterprise Environments(JPEG, altered version)

What is Emotion Design? (A practical definition)

Two years ago, after returning from the Design and Emotion conference, I shared an extensive post on Emotion Design, a topic that has a lot of potential to open up new conversations about user experience and usability.  This week, the fifth conference, Design and Emotion 2006 takes place in Göteborg, Sweden. Since I wanted to attend the conference this year but couldn't, here is a practical definition of design and emotion that I hope you will enjoy.

So, what is emotion design?

1. The recognition that a sterile focus on function is not enough anymore in usability (emotion needs to be addressed as well). Here's more on Graphic Design vs. Usability...

2. The advances in neuro-science that keep showing us how emotion plays a crucial role in decision making. This research paper shows "proof" that emotion influences all things cognitive: Integration of emotion and cognition in the lateral prefrontal cortex  [technical PDF]

3. The usability community waking up to emotion as something we can use to design better products, not just an "interesting" data point. We are finally developing a framework to channel emotion based data into the construction and definition of new *user experiences*...

Practical Definitions of Emotion Design:

As a Designer:

Emotion Design is when you take the feelings of delight (satisfaction, gratification, contentment, pleasure) you get from interacting with a design and apply it to your own product! By the way, I think that's what all the new Web 2.0 energy/hype is all about...

Designers (graphic, visual) are very good at getting into the "feel" of a design- that's why we call it the "look and feel". However, emotion design is not about advocating for your own preferences. It's about merging the empathy you have for users (user centered design teaches us to advocate for our user's feelings not our own), and applying those feelings to design decisions.

Some of the greatest designs have been created from doing "deep empathy". I have been seeing a lot of writing (including lately about how they made a girl cry) about Apple's design arrogance and apparently, they do a lot of this internal "deep explore" stuff, over user-centered design. The new i-pod shuffle (little box with wearable clip) seems to have been designed from studying the criticism of this highly insightful analysis (What's wrong with the ipod?).

As a Marketer:

Emotion Design is when you find the core of your product's value proposition, and what differentiates your product from an experiential perspective, and then align everything in your marketing efforts around feelings that help propel the product toward a good user experience (poster with research insights).

In fact, marketers, brand strategists and advertisers probably have a long history of valuing consumer emotional responses to product design or product experiences. Focus groups have been used since the 1950's to elicit and understand product appeal.

As a Developer:

Emotion design is when you help develop something that works for the user as they expect it to, and that makes no sense to you.

Developers tend to organize the world differently to end-users. Typically, a good developer will over-ride emotions (after all, coding is the science of "applied abstraction", or mathematics that produces tangible results).

Error messages (error handling is currently cited as in the top 2 user experience problems by Forrester Research) are typically an area where you can see that developers and end-users are from different planets!

A recent set of error messages at Flickr and YouTube utilize "on the fly" emotion design. Beats a lousy 404 error or SQL server DB crash!

View Flickr error message: Download Flickr.jpg (this is real)
 

View YouTube error message: Download youtubedown_1.jpg (this is real too!)

Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is a subtle example of emotion design- or it may just be a developers joke...

As a CEO, VC or Innovator:

Emotion design is when you understand the marketing and business value of positioning a product around the emotional-based elements of product interaction and then empower your marketers, designers and developers to properly research and design for the user experience.

I have been hearing a lot of executives in the US saying "we want to be the Starbucks or Google of...". New innovations require changing unconscious behavior. Unconscious behaviour requires understanding that behavior. In order for a design to have emotional qualities, elicit emotional reactions and utilize the emotions a user has during and with a product interaction (See this technical paper with some thoughts from my five years of deep thinking and research in this area), you need to follow the principles of experiential bonding (free poster with the concepts).

Download Experiential_Bonding.jpg

Emotion adds greater context to the term "User Experience"

Remember, the term "user experience" was coined by Dr. Don Norman at Apple in the early 1990's for the chief reason of expanding awareness and scope of the usability of a thing. He wanted to define usability beyond the functional questions of "Is it easy?; Is it intuitive?". Norman understood that usability touched so many different areas, Sales, Marketing, Business team decision making, cross-channel impressions and events including but not limited to post-product and out-of-box experiences (for tangible products). "User experience" was the term that stuck. (Also called "Customer Experience, evangelized by Mark Hurst but first coined by Lewis Carbone in the 1980's).

Did Don Norman know that his hunch to look beyond ("It works! It's easy to use!") would be the quest that led him to the revelation that:

“Up to recently, however, I could not make the connection between usability and aesthetics - they were distinct spheres of my life. Now, however, I have figured out the relationship” -Don Norman around the time of writing the book Emotional Design.

If you haven't already had it, I think you need to add this epiphany to your to-do list.

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers

The Importance of User Experience- the Poster!

The Importance of User Experience

Here's a poster that reflects some thoughts about user experience...all of the bottom row items (outcomes of positive user experiences) in the poster are based on empirical research. Let's review some of that research, a brief glimpse at the science behind what the poster is communicating...

About the poster project and translations into many languages below all these quotes (bottom of the post)...

Elements that contribute to a positive user experience: (the bottom row of the poster)

Loyalty >   Trust  >  Perceived Credibility >   Profitability  >  Intent to Return >  Intent to Purchase > User Satisfaction  > Word of Mouth

A few quotes that I think summarize the research nicely:

Loyalty

• "We discovered that visitors will return to websites to which they have no loyalty simply because they're familiar with the interface. As soon as someone directs the individual to a competitor's website and the individual determines the competitor's website is less painful to navigate, they're gone". Usability Studies 101: Brand Loyalty by Joseph Carrabis
• "Research findings point out that it takes more effort to develop new markets than to keep existing customers, and that existing customers tend to spend more money than new customers do. Repeat purchase behaviors occur after products are used. Hence, how to manage customer loyalty by means of product design becomes a critical issue to product designers and a key for company prosperity".A Preliminary Research on Product Design Strategies for Managing Customer Loyalty (PDF) Dr. Ding-Bang Luh, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Trust

• "In short, it appears, as many suspect, that distrust of the Internet undermines e-commerce. Specifically, those who perceive greater risks on the Internet are less likely to shop online. In turn, perceptions of risks are associated with bad experiences online". Trust in the Internet: The Social Dynamics of an Experience Technology. (PDF) by William Dutton and Adrian Shepherd, Oxford University
• "The key finding is that trust is a long-term proposition that builds slowly as people use a site, get good results, and don't feel let down or cheated. In other words, true trust comes from a company's actual behavior towards customers experienced over an extended set of encounters. It's hard to build and easy to lose: a single violation of trust can destroy years of slowly accumulated credibility". "Trust or Bust: Communicating trustworthiness in web design" by Jakob Nielsen

Perceived Credibility

• "Guideline #7: Make your site easy to use -- and useful". Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility, Stanford University 

Profitability

• "The rule of thumb in many usability-aware organizations is that the cost-benefit ratio for usability is $1:$10-$100. Once a system is in development, correcting a problem costs 10 times as much as fixing the same problem in design. If the system has been released, it costs 100 times as much relative to fixing in design." (Gilb, 1988)
• "The average UI has some 40 flaws. Correcting the easiest 20 of these yields an average improvement in usability of 50%. The big win, however, occurs when usability is factored in from the beginning. This can yield  efficiency improvements of over 700%." (Landauer, 1995)
• "IBM's Web presence has traditionally been made up of a difficult-to-navigate labyrinth of disparate subsites, but a redesign made it more cohesive and user-friendly. According to IBM, the massive redesign effort quickly paid dividends. The company said in the month after the February 1999 re-launch that traffic to the Shop IBM online store increased 120 percent, and sales went up 400 percent." (Battey, 1999) Selected quotes from:  The ROI of Usability from UPA

• "In our first year we didn't spend a single dollar on advertising... the best dollars spent are those we use to improve the customer experience."- Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
• "Improving user experience can increase both revenue and customer satisfaction while lowering costs." - "Get ROI from Design", Forrester Research, June 2001

Intention to Purchase, Intention to Return

In my experience, it is wise to measure this from a web analytics AND usability research perspective. Usability tests are a great way to expose a design to all measurements (ease of use, ease of understanding, user satisfaction, perceived pleasure, purchase intention and intent to return). Contact with users provides that *context* that pure web analytics measurements do not.

• "On the web, customer retention can be defined as whether or not a customer decides to return to a website. In terms of metrics, this can be quantified as the number of customers who a) intend to return and b) intend to purchase again from the website".

• "Understanding "intention of return and return purchase"hedges on one action: the decision the user makes based on their experience with the site, during and immediately after the session". How exactly is website usability, customer retention and brand perception linked? by Frank Spillers

 User Satisfaction (or the measurability of it)

User satisfaction is often not studied in detail. It is usually just referred to in a paper or article. I am guilty of that, as is Jakob Nielsen in his writings.

• "Two important aspects of the overall consumer satisfaction are: (i) the level of satisfaction associated with the final chosen product (e.g., Day, 1984; Spreng et al., 1996), and (ii) the level of satisfaction associated with the purchasing process (e.g., Arnould and Price, 1993; Oliver, 1993). The former has been referred to as the product satisfaction and the latter has been referred to as the process satisfaction. The product satisfaction can be measured in two aspects: (i) a holistic satisfaction towards a chosen product (Spreng et al., 1996) and (ii) the specific levels of satisfaction towards the product attributes (Oliver, 1993). A typical means to evaluate product satisfaction is to measure rated consumers’ affective responses to the selected products (Cole and Balasubramanian, 1993; Westbrook, 1987; Mano and Oliver, 1993; Westbrook and Oliver, 1991)".

• Another excellent study that shows the link of user satisfaction to perception of pleasure and emotional aspects of a design (aka Emotion Design- my earlier post), too long to quote... "A systematic approach for coupling user satisfaction with product design" by Han, Sung and Hong, Sang in Ergonomics (2003) v 46. no 13/14.

Word of Mouth

• "Jupiter Communications reports that word-of-mouth is second
  only to a strong offline brand in building consumer trust.
  Almost half of consumers surveyed by Jupiter, cite word-of-
  mouth as a key influence in their online shopping habits...

The average U.S. adult online shopper now tells about 12
other people including family, friends, relatives and
co-workers about their online shopping experiences.Contrast this to the average of nine people who hear rave movie reviews or six who are told about great restaurants".
Reported May 27, 1999, Iconocast

• "Word-of-Mouth expands the purchase cycle. Word-of-Mouth impacts customer value. Post-purchase actions drive evangelism. Advertising vs. Word-of-Moth "When Consumers Control the Message: When Real People are the Biggest Advertisers". Dave Evans et. Al. 2005, Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference slides. More info at the Word of Mouth organization:  WOMMA

• "A recent survey by Opinion Research discovered that online shopping escapades start more tongues wagging than either movies or restaurants".   Latest research (2006) on Word of Mouth impact: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/sun.html

 

About the Poster Project

I am really happy how the poster turned out! Bryce Glass and I collaborated on this together. I was impressed by his earlier efforts to illustrate a "Flickr user model". Bryce's mastery of Illustrator is note-worthy, even if you think the poster is cluttered (If you do, take your time with it and don't take it too seriously- it's an inspiration piece).

How the poster was made

Users were interviewed, Bryce's earlier design was analyzed for what works and what doesn't work. We learned a lot from each other about visual design and the usability of flows... and the result is what you see above.

We have had some interesting feedback from users on Flickr:

• "Great work, printed it out and it's up in the hallway of our UX group!" (fotografik)
• "Suitable for poster-size printing and hanging in our development team area!" (Greg Bernhardt)
• "I can only say: "WOW!" :-)" (szymonw)

This lead me to have the poster printed out to help teams evangelize usability! (production and design costs were paid for by my company, Experience Dynamics).

The point of the poster is to provide a learning piece (currently used by over a dozen universities throughout the world) and inspiration to design and development teams. Having this type of collateral on your wall might cause someone to actually pay closer attention to your efforts ;-)

This poster is an upgrade, if you will, to the UPA poster that hung on walls in team areas where I worked in the past and also the little IBM posters that you see around people's cubes.

Translations of the Poster

If you are interested in translating this poster, I will send you a free printed English version;-)  (Inquire about poster translation). Since putting this shout out a few weeks ago, many people have expressed interest in translation- the result is below.

Download a free translation of this poster in the following languages: (see bottom left for latest additions)

• French
• Dutch
• Spanish
• Bulgarian
• Swedish
• Portuguese (Brazilian)
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Danish
• Arabic
• Greek
• German

Coming soon: Turkish, Polish, Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian.

Buy a Poster!

Buy a poster, and support the poster project.

Thanks and Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers

p.s. Is there a usability topic or theme that you would like to see clarified with a visual like this?

Designing for the "Average User"

User advocacy is one of the central goals of usability. User advocacy can be defined as the process an IT professional (with an interest in user experience) goes through in re-sensitizing herself to the world of the "average user".

Usability expert reviews are largely an exercise in user advocacy, in addition to an analysis of known usability issues and problems based on knowledge of User Interface Style Guide abnormalities.

So. why do we forget about the "average user" so fast?

We all were average users at one point. We still are when it comes to working with a new program, product or website. The difference between us (IT professionals) and the average user is that we have learned sophisticated coping strategies for figuring out software and the web.

Average users don't care how a program works anymore than you care about how a radio transmits signal while you listen to it or how plants metabolize sunshine to remain green when you look at them.

Average users don't stop to think about how the programmer may have designed a system, how the database is working (as they wait for the round-trip of data back to user interface) or what an icon or screen behavior means. The average user doesn't know, doesn't want to know and has expectations that technology will work "as advertised" and "as expected".

Defining the "average user"

Average User:

• 1.1  A relative: someone in your family (mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, spouse, partner etc.) or what is often called "general population".
• 1.2  A person in a developing country: someone with no IT background and/ or no PC exposure in school.
• 1.3  A literacy-challenged person: someone who is new to or intimidated by a keyboard, mouse or to reading and writing in general.
• 1.4 A non-IT exposed person: a person who has not spent a lot of time with technology due to circumstance (an elderly person; a young child; a disabled person)
• 1.5 You? (Do you know all the ins and outs of every program you use?). Please note if you are reading this, "you are not the average user".

The "average user test" (can be performed on any family member that often asks you for help with technology).

1. Ask the person to open an attachment, edit it and then send it back to you. (Average users don't understand that this requires selecting a non-system file area of your hard-drive first; saving it and then replying with the document as an attachment).

2. Ask the person to take a picture (with a digital camera). Depending on the usability of the hardware manufacturer, the user might fail to get past transferring the images to the computer. If they figure this out, where they store images on the computer may be the show-stopper (Average users don't understand that a custom location needs to be defined and a novel name needs to be given to this "set of photos").

3. Ask the person to reduce the size or lighten the image and send it to you. Image editing is not layperson-friendly. The Mac OS 10 makes this a little easier than Windows XP but the average user is not using a Mac generally, so we're talking Windows XP. Also the average user is not installing all sorts of photo editing programs to find the "best one". By chance they have installed what was provided with the camera, the printer, or something a friend or relative gave them- or all three. The average user did not install the software on their system with volition.

Rules for playing nicely with your "Average User"
or the Alternative User's Bill of Rights (as originally proposed by  IBM's Dr. Clare-Marie Karat)

1. Interaction with system level functions ain't going to happen. This means set-up, installation and all other "Out of Box Experience" (OOBE) aspects need to be considered carefully for average users. Decisions about what and how much of the "back end" administrator functions need to be made with caution. Where possible shelter the average user from "Preferences, Settings, Options" or at least centralize access to and from this area.

2. Customization and personalization behaviors are limited. Instead study default behaviors and spend time getting default functions right (this can not be over-emphasized).

3. Configuration is your average user's worst nightmare. See my article "Configuration Hell- The Case for the Plug and Play User Experience"

4. Anything not apparent, transparent, obvious, intuitive and explained may be problematic. Anything requiring understanding is not intuitive. Intuitive means it does not require understanding.

To simulate the cognition of the "average user" consume one alcoholic beverage and then try to focus on work (if you don't drink, sit at your desk for four hours straight and then try focusing on a new task). That state of distraction, de-focusing and inhibited response is close to how the average user processes your design. Conduct a usability test using the "think aloud protocol" and you'll quickly realize how true (and I hope, funny) this is!

5. Get sober about your technology- on purpose. It's easy to get pulled into the cool value of a technology, harder as a designer to step back and see the bigger business picture or user needs (gained from real  observed user behavior). Usability and user advocacy techniques are not designed to under-value technology, but rather to make technology or specifically user interfaces -subordinate to user interests. User-centered designs historically have out-performed system-centered design.

6. Ignoring the average user can lead to self-fulfilling prophesies. I often hear product managers say "our users are power users" or "if they don't get this, they are not our users". These assumptions are largely self-preserving and seem to counter the usability attitude of "user advocacy". Promote a culture within your team of "Outside-In" design. Stop defending the merits of features and functionality without some independent outside verification from your users.

Remember user advocacy is as much realizing how technology or system-centric your own professional attitudes or behaviours are as much as those of your users.

Best wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

Web 2.0: A glimpse into the future?

What is Web 2.0? (as of Dec. 2005)

A new approach to web and web application development that is characterized by:

• Web sites offering free (cool) web services and tools (examples below);
• Open source code (open API's)- software code becomes a viral marketing tool;
• An enhanced user experience afforded by new approaches to information sharing and use of existing/new web scripting technologies;
• Giving users the ability to share their opinions, media or to offer back to the community aka "The Architecture of Participation" (see Wikipedia's Web 2.0 definition) or peer-to-peer goes mainstream.

Web 2.0 seems to have taken flight in the last 10 months related to:

• The rising popularity of social networking websites (like MySpace); online dating sites (like Match.com) and social networking sites (like LinkedIn) that create more emphasis on the "Social Web".
• Google's rising influence and use of new ways to present a map interface (Google Maps; Gmail; Google Suggest). And Amazon, Microsoft and other big players are working on what will be central to the "Web 2.0" user experience (i.e. Tagging in Amazon and RSS web feeds in IE 7).
• Yahoo's positioning as a stakeholder in Web 2.0 with it's acquisition of Flickr photo sharing and del.icio.us social bookmarking services and hiring of key "Social Media" executives to spearhead the new effort. "Sharing will be everywhere," said Jeff Weiner, a Yahoo senior vice president in charge of the company's search services. "It's the next chapter of the World Wide Web". FYI: Fortune magazine ranks Yahoo! as #1 in 100 Fastest Growing Companies with a 78% revenue growth rate.
• The shift in the one-way broadcast or publish model to a two-way flow of information where consumers are active creators in content aka User-Contributed Content (Experience Dynamics web seminar)....or what former US Vice President Al Gore calls "We Media" (see We Media 2005 Conference website).
• A new momentum largely coming out of San Francisco; largely made up of former dot-com enthusiasts (sober but dreamy)- and a significant amount of Venture Capital dollars financing  Web 2.0 infrastructure.
• An annual conference called "Web 2.0"(in it's second year) sponsored by O'Reilly Media (see Tim O'Reilly's What is Web 2.0?).

A word about hype

Is Web 2.0 just hype? Many large organization including Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft are investing heavily in the technologies and projects that are driving Web 2.0. If you loathe hype (as I do), perhaps you should see it for what it is: Hype seems to be an expression of the excitement generated by something new; it is often careless, clumsy and poorly thought out- but it's real purpose is to excite and ignite the feeling of change, progress and newness.

Having said that, I think this interesting article by Russell Shaw at ZDnet, is refreshing in terms of putting the Web 2.0 "hype" into context:

"Web 2.0 is bunk. Not that the elements of this rebirth aren't there. I write about some of them, and Richard has them nailed. It's just that they cannot be classified under a common umbrella. They are forward lurches of various standards and technologies, some compatible, some not. Some revolutionary, some evolutionary, some impractical. Some are collaborative, others are highly competitive with each other".

What's New with Web 2.0 as a technology shift?

What's different about this technology curve is that this time, user experience is on the agenda, despite the fact that Amazon's Jeff Bezos sees Web 2.0 as "about making the Internet useful for computers". (Amazon's focus is on creating viral API's with Amazon Web Services). To give Bezos credit, he also has said,though not in his Web 2.0 related interviews,...

If there's one reason we have done better than most of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business.

Some Dominant Web 2.0 Themes

1. "Mash-Ups"- using others code (e.g. many are using Google Maps) and sharing your own code (e.g. Amazon is trying to provide code) to create a new application or web service such as: London Terrorist Attack map; eBay Motors & Google Maps; Zvents events site; Trulia real estate search;

2. "Tagging"- letting users create categorization on the fly with "tags". The goal is to help create more personalized, context rich search and categorization. Encouraging users to tag, like Amazon is doing currently, helps create better search. Some sites that tag or promote tagging: TagWorld; Tag Cloud; Technorati; 43 Things, del.icio.us (Yahoo!).

3. "User-Contributed Content"- letting users comment, rate, add content or media such as photos, videos etc. Becoming a standard in online newspapers and blogs. Some sites that promote user-contributed content: Judy's Book, Insider Pages; PriceGrabber; IRV2; BBC News, TripAdvisor.

Even conversations are occurring with regard to using the social web to make advertising more relevant.

How Users and User Experience Will Benefit from Web 2.0

1. More Competition Will Improve the Overall Web. Free services and an open source model that is going mainstream will mean more improvements aimed at remaining competitive. Google Maps and Google GMail (two "Web 2.0" applications) have pushed mapping and free email services into over-drive, not to mention desktop search.

2. Better Web User Interfaces Will Improve Subjective Satisfaction. Potentially being able to do more natural interaction (such as drag and drop or zoom) will give users a more intuitive way to interact with data. A focus on sharing will make the web seem more close to home or to a social circle (existing or created). Tagging will potentially create a user-centered "information architecture" that relies on context, semantics and personal labeling systems or so-called "folksonomies" rather than hierarchies or taxonomies.

3. More Trust and Credibility from Institutional Sources. Allowing self-publish or two-way publishing will give users more control, power and choice of data and opinions, views and decision-making resources. Blogs and ways to better integrate or share text, video and audio blogging will change what it means to be informed about a purchase decision or a visit to a destination.

Bottom Line: Web 2.0 seems to be reflecting the changes in the world and the way the current generation of web innovators interpret and re-purpose existing and newly used technologies. Web 2.0 or whatever you call it, is already here. For example Public Relations and Marketing savvy people use del.icio.us to monitor buzz; Technorati to track blog feeds and Epinions to monitor customer criticism, wants and needs. Pay attention to what is happening in Web 2.0, because it represents change at a micro and a macro level and whether you notice or not, change will affect your site whether you like it or not.

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers

Good Follow Up Reads:

Web 2.0 and the Long Tail (Chris Anderson- Editor in Chief WIRED magazine)

Relax, Everything is Deeply Intertwingled (Adam Rifkin)

Are you ready for Web 2.0? (BayCHI panel -Audio program)

Configuration Hell- The Case for the Plug and Play User Experience

You know the drill: You download or install a new piece of software or open a new piece of technology (e.g. PDA, mobile phone, laptop) and you have to "configure it" to get something to work or work the way you want it to...

Summary: Users are not usually successful at configuring software, websites or devices and the configuration experience can be a major source of frustration. Instead we need to move toward a world where everything is auto-configured and user experiences are "plug and play".

Defining Configuration: I refer to configuration in it's broadest sense: A user must perform some advanced action in order to get some desired result from software, a web site or a product experience. Typically the term configuration means to adjust or change settings- hiding, activating or altering useful features and system behaviors.

Basic Examples: You want to change your desktop picture?- You need to find that right click menu and select your new choice. You want to use flash on your digital camera at night?- You have to scroll through the menus and select that option- (don't forget to turn it off!) You want to re-connect to a new wi-fi (wireless) network or a secure network, you need to view available networks, choose one or add an encrypted key. Need to watch a video online?- You need to know your connection speed and choose your player.

Note: If these examples are no-brainer tasks for you, then you are probably deep in the forest of configuration and configuration is second nature to you. This article explains why you might not be able to relate to why configuration is such a major usability issue for average users (Average users = people who don't work with computers for a living).  

Symptoms of "Configuration Hell"

1. On the web. A shopping cart is a type of configuration experience. When you remove an item and forget to update the cart, your cart will be inaccurate. Playing with a poor shopping cart is a symptom of configuration hell. Navigation usability issues can be seen as a type of configuration SNAFU in the sense that users are trying to steer a website in a particular direction to serve up the desired pages or functionality.

Changing an interface from current state to desired state is the basic unit of the task of configuration.

2. Updating Your Account. Amazon's lousy Account Management user experience (which never seems to get any better) is another example. Ever notice how hard it has been over the years to get  information on an order at Amazon? So difficult, they put an "animated demo" of the Account section in there to "help" (see this article about how Help, Never Does).

3. Mobile Devices. Tried setting up email on your mobile phone (smartphone or PDA) lately? It can be a total nightmare depending on your phone brand/model.

4. Operating Systems. No finer example. The entire Operating System user experience (Windows, Mac and Linux) is a big configuration love fest. Installation and in particular driver installation are artifacts of the legacy of software configuration (Yes, configuration for end-users is part of the past, and not part of the future, I believe. The big shift in Windows came with auto-detection of Media devices and Wireless networks in Windows XP in 2001). Ever tried going online with a Windows 2000 laptop and your wireless card? It will boil your blood.

Lindows has tried to address the OS software installation experience (an aspect of configuration) with near instant installation of the entire Operating System  ("seven minutes" in a recent Extreme Tech review). Another innovation is the streamlining of software installation for the OS with the Click-N-Run functionality (same review next page):

"Click-N-Run - slick, slick, slick!
One of the most annoying things for newbies about installing software in Linux is that most apps don't even give you an icon to click to start them after installation - and it's hard to find those applications in the first place. Experienced Linux users know where to go, and can easily create their own icons, or use the command prompt to start new applications. But Linux newbies aren't used to that and sometimes can't figure out how to find or easily start the application they just installed.

[FS: It's not just a Linux phenomenon! If you need evidence of this, visit a relative and ask them if they are using their printers/scanners/digital cameras etc. You're sure to find issues with driver installation or configuration literacy.]

Thus Lindows has a Click-N-Run feature that makes it simple to find a new application, then download, install and run that application. It all happens with a simple click of the mouse. We've got to give the Lindows people credit; Click-N-Run is well designed and easy to use. It's pretty much a no-brainer to navigate the Click-N-Run store to choose software. And after installation Click-N-Run gives you the option of starting the software, adding a link to it on your desktop or adding it to Auto-start. While this might seem like an unimportant detail - it's not. In fact it's very important".

The Mac has a similar function with regard to installation where .exe files (or .dmg files as they are called) are sometimes drag-able to the Applications folder causing them to be instantly "installed".

5. Browsers. Managed your cookies or Java settings lately? Okay, how about 5 years ago? Spyware these days has more people clearing cookies and cache files- but remember how your co-workers didn't even know how to do that a few years back?

Configuration usability issues leave a trail behind: see this user's helpful tips. The Firefox browser made some leaps and bounds with "browser switching", a technique borrowed from a new trend in banking- the "we'll help you defect" switch kit...

When installing Firefox, it pulls all your Internet Explorer settings over, including bookmarks and cookies to the browser. It's fairly slick and worth noting. The Firefox folks at Mozilla also seem to be aware (article: Realities of Users) of the truths inherent in this posting you are reading now ;-)

6. Blogging software. (Typepad, Moveable Type). Need to show your bio? Add an XML feed? Change your design template? All configuration tasks. Typepad has won an award for making it easier, but still managing these important configuration settings can be a little confusing.

7. Search Engines. Google eliminated the search configuration paradigm, removing the need for users to pre-select the Boolean filters AND/OR/NOT (drop-down menus and radio buttons). Simplicity of search interface was a raging battle at search engine companies for years until Google cleared the noise. However, many website search interfaces are obssesed with letting user's fail with Boolean filtering. (See this related post on Site Search usability for more detail).

8. The List is Endless: Home Theater Systems, Camcorders, Cameras, Web Analytics software, Content Management Systems, Email Marketing Software, Document Management Systems, Spyware Remover software, Firewall software, Anti-Virus software, Instant Messaging Clients, Telematics (Automotive) systems...the list goes on...

Towards Universal Configuration in Design

Why do we have configuration in the first place? The configuration mentality comes to us by way of legacy computer systems and legacy engineering-centered designs.

Configuration is the design decision that says:

• "We don't know what the perfect default should really be".
• "We want to let our users be the final judge".
• "Users can go into these advanced settings to change things".
• "To begin with or to add additional power to the functionality- configuration must occur".

I believe that user experiences that force configuration will become unpopular over time. Rather than exposing users to DIY interface engineering, we need to give them transparency, seamlessness, elegance. Your users should walk up to it and synch! Your users should open it up and be greeted warmly before being transported to their destination. Your system should auto-detect, auto-configure, auto-respond, auto-heal.

Don't let your users play with your brilliance, just let them experience the value they seek.

Why is universal configuration imperative? It relates to appropriately using the interaction design technique of progressive disclosure and also the importance of selecting defaults carefully (the topic of a future post).

Also there is the reality of user behavior. Here's how non-technical users relate to configuration:

1. "Stop it, I don't want to Configure Anything!"

2. "What is configuration?"

3. "Why do I have to configure it?"

4. "What is the best way to configure it?"

5. "What is the fastest way to configure it?"

6. "I didn't know I had to do that".

7. "Why isn't it already set up for me?"

 Universal Configuration is Coming!

Rather than giving users the bitter taste of choosing options and making choices about display views, system settings and feature access-- many manufacturers and application developers are giving users a plug and play user experience. I recently purchased a Toshiba notebook that boasted hasstle-Free "Config-Free" Connectivity on the outside box.
                                                                 

I need to tell you, my expectations were racing- was I about to be embraced by a flesh and blood example of what I call Universal Configuration (auto-configuration everywhere on every thing)? No! The Toshiba laptop was not config-free. It had more configuration gymnastics associated with it than any other laptop I have set up in the last five years. It's problems started with the never mentioned and unique hard key wireless lock switch (defaulted to "lock" or wireless "off" mode). To simply go online with Windows XP, I had to involve technical support and it took several hours of trouble-shooting!

Bottom line: We need the mentality of Universal Plug and Play and Universal Configuration in design and development, period. You should open a new laptop in the future and have simultaneous config-free access to wireless, ethernet LAN and dial-up connectivity without any need to manually configure. Windows XP wireless network auto-detection and configuration is a great leap forward. However, have you ever tried configuring a dial-up connection from a hotel lately? If you haven't done it in a while, be prepared for a "configuration hell" experience.

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

The Politics of Pop-Ups, Pop-Up Blockers and the Pop-Up Error Message

Pop ups are dead- so what?

First of all, let me just get this out in the open: there is nothing wrong with pop-ups per say.

Next, let me qualify what I just said: Pop-ups are ineffective as an advertising tool and are not recommended on the web since pop-up blockers are ubiquitous. E.g. Every browser and search engine tool these days has a pop-up blocker: AOL pop-up blocker, Google Toolbar pop-up blocker, Yahoo Toolbar pop-up blocker, Firefox built in pop-up blocker, third party free pop-up blocker tools...etc.

Google Killed the Pop-Up

From the late 90's to the early 00's Google quietly used it's simple and easy to use design (read great user experience) to hijack the pop-up as a form of web advertising. If you remember every credible large and small website used pop-up windows for advertising and more. Google's text advertising (right column block short phrase with a link) wiped out the pop-up since the click through rates (CTR) for text based advertising (or contextual advertising) were higher: under .5% CTR for pop-ups to 2-3% CTR for text ads.

Back to "There is Nothing Wrong with Pop-ups"

Pop-ups are not the problem. It is the forcing of them on your users without telling them, which also violates the permission-based marketing model. This issue is rarely understood I find due to the culture of pop-up hating. Yeah, I hate them too.

However, if it is appropriate to provide more detail such as help text, or larger images or diagrams- then by all means use a pop-up dialog! Just be sure that it is self-selected. In other words the user clicks to activate. Remember, pop-ups became hated because they forced themselves on users, got in their face, redirected their attention and cluttered up their train of thought.

The Pop-Up Blocker Error Message

Alas, with so many pop-up blockers (thank you to all the pop-up blocker tools) there is a need for a new kind of error message to help users orient to that which is supposed to be happening which isn't happening.

You've done it right? Clicked on a link, page, image and then...(nothing). What happened? Oh it's the pop-up blocker that ate it. So while you figured that out, the average user who is not savvy to browser features and functionality (such as pop-up blocking) will probably blink and miss the hidden "aha"...and then move on.

(Click image above to see an example of a good pop-up blocker error message)

The American Automobile Association website has a great example of a user-friendly pop-up blocker error message. Bottom line- anyone using pop-ups on their site needs one. Leaving the recovery from a pop-up blocker's work to chance is not enough.

Usability Guidelines for Using Pop-ups?

So if you must use on of those pesky pop-ups (either self-selected or forced) be sure to follow the following usability guidelines for pop up dialog windows:

1. No intensive scrolling. Pop-up information (tables, images, text) should be short and sweet. e.g. 150-200 words max.

2. No left to right (horizontal) scrolling! Pop-ups are a limited attention adjunct to information. They serve the purpose on the web of the ellipse (...). We have seen pop-ups used that have long scrolling tables, buttons down, left, right, outside of easy reach. Our usability testing experience shows that users hate to scroll your pop-ups.

3. Tabs work well with Help Pop-Ups. A few tabs to help organize HELP information seems to work well. Again be careful the length of content. If you have that much to say, say it on a web page.

4. Use the pop-up blocker error message (above). No brain-er, but rarely used. Nice work AAA!

5. Let the user self-select a pop-up always. Unless you are doing some kind of intercept (for a survey or exit email capture offer).

So, next time someone says "I hate pop-ups" and everyone grumbles and says "yeah, me to" you can smile and say to yourself "yeah, but..."

Now, let me go close some of those pop-ups ;-)

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

How to avoid being blinded by your own design: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Whom this applies to: Designers, Marketers, Developers, CEO's

If you design something for your company, organization or department, or help influence the direction of a design, it regularly can become very difficult for you to separate yourself from the design. And chances are, you are not even aware of it most of the time!

This entry looks at why this seems to happen and what you can do about it (if anything at all).

Identifying the problem

One possible answer as to why we loose objectivity when we create or contribute to a design is rooted in the Gestalt Psychology phenomenon of figure and ground:

The phenomenon of figure and ground in perception has been explored extensively by gestalt psychologists. A classic example is that of a picture that either appears to be a light colored chalice on a dark background, or two dark faces against a light background, depending on what aspect of the picture is focused on as ‘figure’ and what is perceived as ‘ground’. (see Figure 1)

                               

Figure 1: The "Vase Faces" illustrating the "Figure-Ground" phenomenon. Is it a face or a vase?

The closer you get to an object (figure) the more blurred it becomes (ground). Figure/ground remind us that perception is relative and not absolute.  Or the more time you spend in internal company meetings discussing a design, the more blurred your objectivity becomes.

It's a symptom that is probably responsible possibly for 95% of poor usability design choices.

Let's call it Heisenberg's Rule of Design: The closer you are to a design the less objective you become.

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. --Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927

When knowing "too much" can blind you

Every designer goes through this process of becoming consumed by his or her design ideas and assumptions dictated by style, taste or personal preference when creating the look and feel of an application.

Every developer experiences this when he or she tries to "skin the UI", code the GUI or add the User Interface to an application after a long day of coding.

Every marketer experiences this when he or she tries to map new features, new ideas, new ways to engage the customer to the functionality requirements.

Every business analyst experiences this when he or she tries to specify requirements based on business processes, system responses and user/group work flow.

Every VP or CEO experiences this when he or she drops in on the design team and projects the original vision, strategic direction, or business needs onto the design (mixed in with a little personal preference or as Jeroen van Erp put it at last year's Design and Emotion conference, design can be directed by "the CEO's wife").

To figure out how our perception blinds us, let's look at the stages of this "Forest for the Trees Syndrome"...

The Stages of "Forest for the Trees" Syndrome

Translation for International Readers: "Forest for the Trees" means you loose sight of seeing the "big picture" in something, because you are too close to the details.

Stage 1: Attached to the design

During this stage you become attached to your design. This is typically caused by spending too much time with the design and refinements. In a sense the design becomes a part of you and you necessarily feel like defending it because it makes sense to you.

Motto: "I don't see anything wrong with it".
Action: Argue for the design.

Stage 2: Blinded by the design

During this stage you are so exposed to the design (company objectives, brand, issues, constraints, history) that you can't even see that you are biased. Having argued for the design, you are now completely bought into it and are completely blinded from any other information.

Motto: "This is the only way to go".
Action: Fight for the design.

Stage 3: Hypnotized by the design

During this stage, you are so far gone the design has become second nature- like the furniture in your office. You don't question, you don't even think about it or feel that anything is wrong. You can't look at the design with a fresh set of eyes either because you are too patterned from over exposure or by now it seems perfectly fine or justified.

Motto: "This way seems normal".
Action: See any criticism as unfounded and unfair.

Is there a light at the end of this tunnel or are we stuck with tunnel vision?

The field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) where Usability, Information Architecture and User Centered Design fall out of- represents a way out. User-centered Design (aka UCD), combines a set of methods, techniques and approaches that creates more objectivity in design by leveraging user data, user needs, user issues, user insights and user advocacy. User-centered design is a methodology (popularized by Donald Norman e.g. see his early book User Centered System Design) that triangulates technology (systems) and marketing (features) centered approaches with an outside look at what the user wants and needs, expectations, desires and requirements.

The User Centered Design approach (an industry standard usability methodology) provides several techniques to help "see the forest for the trees". From a usability standpoint, the forest is the  user group. The trees are the features that sit between the application architecture and the user.

What does User Centered Design do that helps bring more objectivity to a design: (or at least ways we have found to help our clients at Experience Dynamics at leading user centered design firm based in Portland, Oregon):

Usability reviews: Analyzing a design from the perspective of users and their tasks with best practices (research based)
Outcome: Advocate for user needs around confusing, annoying, frustrating or difficult to use design elements in order to make better decisions about the direction of the user experience.

Usability testing: Having customers assess a design to detect confusion points and uncover areas of the design that mismatch their expectations.
Oucome: Bring user verbatim feedback from usability testing data direct to the design room.

Field Studies: Going to the user's natural environment and observing their world: seeing, hearing and feeling what they think, want, need...and learning how they construct and prioritize experiences.
Outcome: Incorporate research-based customer personas into the interaction design by seeing how Persona "X" or Persona "Y" will use the design.

Is User Centered Design a sure fired way to prevent seeing the forest for the trees?

No. Especially not with your own design. That is what motivated me to share this with you. Every time I work on a design for my own company (Experience Dynamics) I run into "Heisenberg's Rule of Design" or "Forest for the Trees Syndrome". At this point I know it's:

• Time for a second opinion
• Time to get user feedback
• Time for a break
• Time to advocate for the user
• Time to stop seeing trees and get back to the forest
  

Which reminds me to ask, is the glass half full or half empty?

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

How many users should you test with in usability testing? (Latest Research)

Question: How many users do you need to test with for a usability test?

Answer 1: = 5 users (Jakob Nielsen and Thomas Landauer, 1993).

Answer 2: = 15 users (Laurie Faulkner, 2004), PDF file.

So, which is it, 5 or 15? And why are we arguing about an extra 10 users, doesn't one need to test with at least 100 or more users for statistical significance, accuracy and validity?

Statistical Validity in Usability Testing

Usability research is largely qual-itative, or driven by insight (why users don't understand or why they are confused). Qual-itative research follows different research rules to quant-itative research and it is typical that sample size is low (i.e. 15 or 20 participants).

The end result of usability testing is not statistical validity per say (the outcome of quant-itative research) but verification of insights and assumptions based on behavioral observation (the outcome of qual-itative research).

Why don't we do large numbers in usability testing?

1. We are looking for behavioral based insight (what they do).
2. Statistics tell half the story and often are devoid of context (e.g. Why did they fail?)- Also one of the major problems with gaining insight from web analytics (website traffic statistics).
3. Our objective is to apply findings to fix design problems in a corporate setting (not academic analysis).
4. Research shows that even with low numbers, you can gain valid data.
5. Usability testing is being used industry-wide and has been for past 25 years. Experts, authors and academics put their reputations and credentials behind the methodology.

Behavior vs. Opinion

Usability research is behavior-driven: You observe what people do, not what they say.

In contrast, market research is largely opinion-driven: You ask people what they think and what they think they think. You need big samples for market research because of this (though focus groups bend this because they are somewhat qualitative). This is why phone or web surveys require hundreds or thousands of responses. Behavior-driven research is more predictable. Basically, if 10/15 users are confused you can assume that many more will also be confused as well.

Example: If you ask someone "what do you think of this homepage?", you will need several hundred responses to gain statistical validity in order to validate what will be opinion-driven data. Asking someone their opinion does not constitute usability requirements, since usability testing is about isolating "how they will actually use" the design not just "what they think" of the design.

If you give a small set of users a scenario that forces them to interact with home page elements and observe their behavior, and listen to their unsolicited reactions, you will get a better idea of what they think and need. The driver here is expectation (governed by cognitive factors) vs. opinion which can be driven solely by emotional, social or personal factors.

Suggested Sample Sizes for Research

Corporate Usability Research:

• Surveys (phone and web) = ~240-~1,000 +
• Focus Groups = 15-20 (depends on audience segments involved and goals of study)
• Usability Testing = 10-15 participants
  
• Field Studies = 15-40 participants
  
• Card Sorting = 15-30 (higher is better since card sorting uses the statistical method of cluster analysis)

Academic Usability Research:
Samples are usually larger depending on size and scope and research objectives (e.g. 15 users per segment or 40-100 users in a usability test).

Jakob Nielsen's "test with 5 users" assumption

I think it is important to understand that Jakob Nielsen was trying to promote usability testing as a regular usability research activity in corporate environments. I believe he conducted this research (using a call center software application in the early 90's, rumor has it) in order to demystify the perceived complexity of setting up and running a usability test.

Remember in the early 1990's, only the hard core research and development labs at Apple, Bell Labs, Microsoft, IBM and Sun were doing usability testing. In Nielsen's much respected and equally criticized article "Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users" (written in 2000) he recommends (based on the early 1990's analysis) that instead of opting for higher accuracy, you go for the "fast and dirty" approach of conducing three tests instead of one "elaborate" study.

Later on in the article Nielsen says that the rule only applies if your users are comparable. If you have other segments or user types, you will need to test more users.

Translation: 5 users per audience segment or target user group, or for a website with 3 diverse segments you will need 15 users for the one test.

Magic Number 15 for Usability Testing...or Why 5 Users is Not Enough

Laurie Faulkner ( PDF: 2004) has conducted new empirical research showing benefits from increased sample size.  In her study, "Beyond the five-user assumption: Benefits of increased sample sizes in usability testing", she wrote:

It is widely assumed that 5 participants suffice for usability testing. In this study, 60 users were tested and random sets of 5 or more were sampled from the whole, to demonstrate the risks of using only 5 participants and the benefits of using more. Some of the randomly selected sets of 5 participants found 99% of the problems; other sets found only 55%. With 10 users, the lowest percentage of problems revealed by any one set was increased to 80%, and with 20 users, to 95%.

At Experience Dynamics, (usability consultancy) we have found that the cost savings of using fewer users is negligible. In other words, after you spend the time and money to set up, facilitate and report on the test, adding a few more users does not add "that much" time and money to the overall project.

The benefit you get from adding a few more users to the total (or in the case of 5 users, doubling the amount) is far greater than the small test that gives you "quick and dirty" results. In the case of running a series of usability tests or iterating your testing process (recommended for refinements based on evolving design decisions), you may want to choose a smaller number of users: I recommend no less than 8 users.

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers, MS

Eye-Tracking studies- Usability holy grail?

Eye-Tracking- following user eye patterns

Eye-tracking studies are a type of usability test where user gaze concentrations are recorded in thermal-like "heat zone maps". The heat zone maps track user eye movements. Eye tracking tests make usability testing look really interesting, sophisticated, high-tech and scientific. Eye tracking usability data appears to be more valuable or empirical since it is recorded using technology and gaze capture instruments.

The reality is that eye-tracking, while valuable, doesn't make usability testing any more powerful. It's what you do with the observations and the usability test data that counts.

Bottom line: If you are using eye-tracking, to make it meaningful, you must:

1. Have a trained observer or usability professional observing. Eye tracking vendors are not necessarily experts in interpreting usability research. So users looked over there, who cares? What is motivating their gazing activity?

2. Focus on what it is you are trying to learn. What aspect of user behavior are you trying to understand? What will eye-tracking offer that other methods won't?

3. Match what users are actually doing and feeling with the eye-tracking data reports. Data is just data unless it is meaningful and informative.

4. Be aware what eye-tracking is, what types of technologies exist and how your tests should be set up for maximum effectiveness. See the Problems Reported... section of this article below for discussion of this issue.

What Eye Tracking tells us about website usability

One of the recent and big studies to come out this year was the Poynter Institute's "EyeTrack III" 2004 Eye Tracking Study. This is the third eye track study conducted by Poynter since 1991.

Here's what Poynter has found from their eyetracking studies relating to website content usability, page layout, navigation and design: (my comment below finding)

1. Users spend a good deal of time initially looking at the top left of the page and upper portion of the page before moving down and right-ward.
Comment: Another thing to think about is how this user behavior mirrors search engine traffic (i.e. Google Bot visiting your site). Search engines read starting at the top left, and then downward in a left to right column fashion.

2. Normal initial eye movement around the page focuses on the upper left portion of the screen.
Comment: Not surprising when you consider that users are patterned by all the other software and websites that they use which have a standard menu start point (e.g. File, Edit, View...). Note: For Japanese or Arabic it would be the mirror reverse.

3. Ads perform better in the left hand column over the right column of a page.
Comment: The right column is treated by users as an "after-thought" area and should be designed with that in mind.

4. Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior.
Comment: This is especially true in older or elderly users. For the rest of your users, stick with 9-12 point Sans Serif (Arial, Helvetica, Verdana) with an average of 10-11. FYI: Only developers appreciate miniature fonts!

5. Larger type promotes lighter scanning.
Comment: Most reading behavior consists of skimming and scanning. If you want to slow your users down- use smaller fonts in the body of your content. Use larger fonts to help them cover more territory.

6. Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page- especially upper left of the page.
Comment: Remember, Poynter's focus was a newspaper website. However, bear this in mind for portal type design and intranet design.

7. Users only look at a sub headline if it engages them.
Comment: So make sub-headlines relevant and of course make them the keyword phrases users and search engines use.

8. Navigation placed at the top of a homepage performed best.
Comment: Again, if you understand how users are patterned by other tools they use (Word, IE, Outlook Express)- the goodies are at the top of the page.

9. People's eyes typically scan lower portions of a page seeking something to grab their attention.
Comment: This seems consistent with "Information Foraging Theory" where users are said to hunt for information by "scent" or navigation and content of the highest value to them.

10. Shorter paragraphs performed better than longer ones.
Comment: Attention is clipped on the Internet. Short bursts of attention are the environment you are designing for at all times. Note: Longer product descriptions do better than shorter ones in ecommerce situations. As with all usability findings, context is key.

11. The standard one-column format performed better in terms of number of eye fixations.
Comment: Most users are overwhelmed by the average web page that they try to deflect information as a coping strategy. It is the same phenomenon that occurs at a party when you focus on one conversation and ignore the other conversations around you by categorizing them as "noise".

12. Ads in the top and left portions of a homepage received the most eye fixations.
Comment: Interesting, but I wouldn't recommend putting ads there. *Just because they receive eye fixations doesn't mean they put a smile on the user's face*. This is one of the main points of this article!

13. Close proximity to popular editorial content really helped ads get seen.
Comment: One of the golden "rules" of usability is that anytime you satisfy the user's task (interest, goal, objective), you increase the likelihood or create the conditions that they will be open to other stimuli (advertising, cross-selling etc.)

14. Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested.
Comment: Text ads are popular because they are less distracting, camouflage well with the page and are often not known to be ads and therefore annoyances to the user. Oh, and since Google "pioneered" them- they are the de facto standard in effective web advertising.

15. Bigger ads had a better chance of being seen.
Comment: Also repeat advertising on a page by the same company is being used on many sites to reinforce exposure.

16. The bigger the image, the more time people took to look at it.
Comment: Using larger images (file sizes) is easier these days since 20% or more (USA) are on high speed connections, but using thumbnails with large images is always a safer bet.

17. Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixations on homepages.
Comment: Humans are wired to recognize patterns and hard wired to other human faces.

18. Higher recall of facts, names, and places occurred when people were presented with that information in text format.
Comment: Good recall depends on the level of relevancy, good copy-writing and content usability (structure and display).

19. New, unfamiliar, conceptual information was more accurately recalled when participants received it in a multimedia graphic format.
Comment: It is known in the field of cognitive science that the more emotion involved in a learning transaction, the higher the retention and recall.

20. Story information about processes or procedures seemed to be comprehended well when presented using animation and text.
Comment: And the animation or text must be clear, easy to understand and in the language or conceptual world of the audience.

Types of Eye Tracking Technologies

1. Head-mounted tracker: Head mounted tracking devices as pictured at the start of this article (image from Poynter's earlier study) consist of a wire frame helmet that is mounted on the user's head in order to stabilize head and eye-movement.

2. Gaze-detection: This technique in addition to head mounted tracking has been around since the mid-1990's and featured as an interface device in virtual reality research. What's new with gaze detection are technological improvements.

In the Poynter III eye-track study, Stanford University derived  www.EyeTools.com used the new eye-gaze technology developed by Sweden's www.Tobii.se. In this system, the computer screen itself detects, captures and tracks the user's eye gaze patterns. Other vendors like Australia's www.SeeingMachines.com, Germany's www.Eye-Square.com or American www.EyeTracking.com offer headset and headset-free kits. 

Measuring more sophisticated variables...

I expect the next 15 years will see an increase in physiological measurements being used in consumer and usability research. Not because so called "traditional usability" techniques are inadequate, but rather because the field itself will help prove itself with the "hard proof" offered by the new technology. Already Eye-Square offers an additional skin-conductivity sensor to help detect such factors as shifts in sweat, temperature and heart-rate. Eye Tracking Inc. offers pupal diameter measurement as another way to gauge/track emotional response.

Further movements can been seen in  physiological research in Harvard University's lab run by Gerald Zaltman (author of the amazing book How Customers Think), where fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) is being used to determine where data is being processed in specific regions of the brain. Now we're talking "hard proof". It's not what they see but what they think about what they see!

Problems reported with using eye-tracking for Usability Testing

Many eye-tracking firms (and the original companies that were founded) emerged from academic settings and moved toward selling commercial research services. The use of eye-tracking in usability research is fairly new and is recognized to lack empirical evidence regarding its effectiveness.

Eye-tracking technology changes every few years. However, most of the vendor websites do not offer detailed information about their specific technologies or approach (scientific basis, trials or double blind studies with their technology). The attitude seems to be, "eye-tracking is cool, so just do it"!

Take a quick look at the research literature on eye-tracking and a different story emerges.

Schnipke and Todd (2000) at George Mason University reported extensive problems in properly collecting eye tracking data, despite vendor training and one year's experience. They identified a host of obstacles such as ease of use of the system, calibration stability, pupil fluctuations and pupil condition quality as well as the issue of omitting users who wear glasses. The authors used a remote eye-gaze system.

Goldberg et.al (2002) at Stanford University and Oracle Corporation identified two styles of eye tracking studies: top-down (task oriented) and bottom-up (behavioral inferences). The researchers found that both styles of eye tracking studies must be adopted if eye-tracking is to become a routine usability methodology.

Pan et. al (2004) at Columbia University confirmed previous work by Rayner (1998), finding that individual characteristics of the viewer as well as the stimuli both contribute to viewer's eye movement behavior.

Eye-tracking seems to have a promising future. As the technology improves, so too will the research application, methods and action-ability of eye-tracking data. However, eye-tracking does not seem to be the holy grail of usability testing. The two biggest practical problems are calibration and complex reporting and analysis. In corporate usability settings, easy test set-up and quick design insight, guidance and recommendation are the most valuable elements of the usability research activity. If eye-tracking jeopardizes those elements then it looses some appeal.

Scrutinizing the quality and end results of new eye-tracking technology developments and methods will become a bigger problem as traditional academic spin-offs compete for eye-tracking services in a commercial capacity. As with any new technology it is important to remember why you are using it and what it can do for you. The Poynter research like many eye-tracking studies, provides another data point to validate or challenge your existing assumptions about user behavior. As Poynter's Howard Finberg put it, "Eyetrack III is a tool, not a solution".

The reality is that eye-tracking, while valuable, doesn't make usability testing any more powerful. It's what you do with the observations and the usability test data that counts.

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

Electoral Ethnography

The British newspaper, The Guardian, is offering an interesting way for British readers to gain an insight into the electoral experience currently sweeping the United States. 

In a unique photography diary project Guardian Unlimited and Documentography have teamed up to capture the lives of American families in the run-up to the US election. Five photographers from the Documentography collective are living for a week with five very different families in California, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Texas. Each day we will publish 10 photographs of each family and brief audio clips documenting their daily lives. The project runs from Tuesday October 26 until election day

The content feature, sponsored by Olympus, strongly resembles a primary activity of usability research: the ethnographic study. Ethnography is a technique developed largely by anthropologist Margaret Mead. It involves behavioral observation, contextual interviewing and analysis of users in their work, home or play spaces. The key strength to ethnography is context. Context provides insight into not only who users are (demographics) but what is important to them and what causes them to act and make decisions (psychographics). It's no surprise then that the Guardian employs the technique to offer rare, candid views of the American voter- especially this year in what is being dubbed the "most important election in our lifetimes".

Ethnography goes by a few different names. The most common include: Contextual Interviewing, Field Studies and Task Analysis.  My personal contribution to the field, called "Cognitive Archeology"(PDF) involves an analysis of user behavior and environment with an emphasis on understanding decision-making, problem-solving and the interaction of tasks, values and beliefs.

What is Ethnography?
Essentially, ethnography involves a "walk in their shoes" or a "day in the life" study. It is a method of observing human interactions in their social, physical and cognitive environments.

Leonard and Rayport note: "(Ethnography) is a relatively low-cost way to identify potentially critical customer needs. It's an important source of new product ideas, and it has the potential to redirect a company's technological capabilities toward entirely new businesses."

Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey F. Rayport, co-authors of "Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design".

Core Ethnography Techniques

Contextual Interviewing: Visit users in the environment where they perform the tasks your website or application help solve. Why? Meeting users in a focus group room or conference room removes an important aspect of contextual inquiry- user behavior is triggered by environmental, social and emotional cues. Analysis of user tasks and goals can only be properly accomplished by going to user workplaces and conducting observation and open-ended interviews there.

Task Analysis: Observing users as they perform their "tasks" in the current state. This may included identifying coping strategies, shortcuts or gaining insight into the conditions, variables and contexts behind a user need or behavior.

Diary Studies (Pagers, Disposable Cameras): Giving users a diary to record their thoughts and experiences in conjunction with a pager and a disposable camera can elicit important information that might normally be overlooked in the presence of a researcher. These types of studies are valuable for gaining intimacy and probing matters of personal or emotional relevancy. This technique is best used in conjunction with contextual interviews, using the photos or entries as a way to trigger discussions, values or everyday routines that may normally be out of your user's awareness.

Some Data Analysis Methods

Affinity Diagrams: a method for brainstorming and determining relationship or "clustering" between information.

Task Flows: a method for organizing the flow of user actions, issues and system responses based on how users want the system to work (note: Use Cases are based on how the system will act- the subject of another post...)

Scenarios: a method for synthesizing observations in a scenario that provides meaningful insight into user intentions, expectations and actions with the new system.

Who would Margaret Mead Vote for?
The famous anthropologist Margaret Mead is credited with founding the area of ethnography within the field of Anthropology. In this year's election, Mead would probably vote for understanding the other side, its culture, what motivates it, what organizes its world (value and belief systems) and what causes it to act ;-)

On that note, here is an early offering from the upcoming Experience Dynamics research newsletter. Download the poster for your office cube. CubeArt: Do you practice these aspects of Margaret Mead's "user research"? (print it Landscape).

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers

Design and Emotion

This is a late post relating to my paper presentation at Design and Emotion 2004 (conference in Ankara, Turkey). The entry contains some new writing cut from the paper due to size constraints.

Related paper: "Emotion as a Cognitive Artifact and the Implications for Products that are Perceived as Pleasurable" by Frank Spillers in the Publish Works section on the Experience Dynamics website.

So, what does emotion have to do with design?

Emotion is one of the strongest differentiators in user experience namely because it triggers unconscious responses to a product, website, environment or interface. Our feelings strongly influence our perceptions and often frame how we think about or refer to our experiences at a later date.

When we think about emotion design and usability, we typically think of it as "keeping the user happy". This includes designing to minimize the common emotions related to poor usability such as frustration, annoyance, anger and confusion.

What emotions are you designing for?

Let's take a quick look at a few different design contexts and research that supports emotional design as we begin to understand how emotion is an essential design requirement.

1. On the web: A well organized website with a professional, "clean look and feel", with intuitive navigation and task-oriented functionality influences the following emotional reactions:

-Perception of credibility
-Trust
-Perception of security
-Overall perceived ease of use(PDF)

(See my previous post on how important graphic design is to a website)

2. For a software application: A software application that is task-centric, contains "just in time" features and performs robustly influences the following emotional reactions:

-Improved user satisfaction(PDF)
-Perceived software quality (user-perceived quality) PDF
-Subjective judgment or product "appealingness" (hedonic quality)

3. With a product or device: A product that carries aesthetic value and performs elegantly can influence the following emotional reactions:

-Deep attachment or bonding with the product (PDF)
-Perception of improved performance (attractive things work better)
-Perception of pleasure(PDF)

4. In a physical environment: Environments that facilitate the needs of social, physical and group dynamics with aesthetic considerations can have the following emotional reactions:

-Increased loyalty behavior
-Productivity increases

Is Emotion the Holy Grail?
Emotion is not an exclusive factor in defining a successful user experience.  Hekkert et. al. (2003) found that every product feature affects the experience, which can be complex and multi-faceted. Further, emotions are culturally specific and variable (Ratner, 2000), which may explain anomalies Desmet (2002) found in responses to the emotions of ‘desire’ and ‘disappointment’ when testing emotion in Japan, compared to responses found in the USA, Netherlands and Finland.

Intensity of emotional expression in product design is also highly dependent on the personal goals, attitudes and expectations the user brings to the product (Van Hout, 2004).

Time for a Paradigm Shift: Integrating Emotion and Cognition in Human Information Processing
Emotion plays a powerful role in our lives (Golman, 1997) and has gained significant attention as a priority area of study in interaction design (Jordan, 2002). Get Pat Jordan's book- previous link goes to Amazon- if you are interested in this topic or area of the field :-)

Traditionally, the field of Human Computer Interaction has distanced usability research from emotion. This practice is reflected by the field of Cognitive Science which, until recently, studied emotion as a separate, distinct facet of human cognition. Ratner (2000) noted that emotions and thinking seem so different, that we classify them as different kinds of phenomena:

“Emotions appear so antithetical to thinking that they are said to interfere with it. Clear thinking supposedly requires eliminating emotions”.

Cognitive research has tended to emphasize humans as problem solvers using the paradigm of a computer to describe human information processing. The notion that typical cognitive functions, such as thinking, rise above emotional processing, is a historic relic of the research practice of separating emotion from cognition. The current equivalent in usability research is the practice of separating aesthetics from interaction. For example, it is typical for usability practitioners to delay aesthetics until later and present “wire-frame” user interface specifications to clients without graphical treatment and to use “Latin” or “Greek” as placeholder content for prototypes.

Vygotsky (1962) and LeDoux (1996) believed that separating affect from cognition was a major weakness in the field of psychology and cognitive science. According to Davidson (2003), the perception that affect and cognition are independent, separate information processing systems is flawed. New breakthroughs in neuroscience using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) have validated the assertions that cognition and emotion are a unified process. Gray et. al (2002) found that emotion and cognition ‘conjointly and equally contribute to the control of thought and behavior’. Not only does emotion contribute to the regulation of thought and behavior, but also cognition contributes to the regulation of emotion.

Contemporary views in Artificial Intelligence, are also embracing an integrated view of emotion and cognition. In discussing his book the Emotion Machine, Minsky (Steinert-Threlkeld, 2001) stated:

“Our traditional idea is that there is something called 'thinking' and that it is contaminated, modulated or affected by emotions. What I am saying is that emotions aren't separate".

What does all this mean?
For those practicing usability engineering, or responsible for ensuring a successful user experience, it means that you have probably trained yourself to focus on the critical, functional flaws of a design while underplaying the role of emotion. After all, usability is about the functional aspects of a design: Does it work?; Is it easy to use?; Is it easy to understand?; Is it intuitive?

Jakob Nielsen rarely celebrates the aesthetic value of design. On the other hand, his business partner Donald Norman, has transformed his tone to be less critical and more balanced in terms of recognizing emotional factors in design. In a reference to his article (2002) on his website (www.jnd.org), Norman stated:

“Up to recently, however, I could not make the connection between usability and aesthetics - they were distinct spheres of my life. Now, however, I have figured out the relationship”.

Keep the Emotional Data in your Design Decisions
Separating emotion from cognitive functions does not seem helpful from a research or design perspective. Instead, an integrated view of emotion and cognition appears to be taking hold, not only in neuroscience and artificial intelligence but also in interaction design corridors as well. I recently gave a small talk on the subject of Emotion Design at the Art Institute of Portland (Oregon, USA) where I teach a class on usability strategy, that was attended by 40 people from some of the largest corporations in the United States.

Take-away: 1) Create designs that look cool (aesthetic factor) and make your customers look cool (social factor) as well as usable,  2) Just because emotion does not seem quantifiable does not mean that it isn't (see research links in the first section of this article); 3)  Emotion design is a bottom line issue because, after all, customers make decisions based on feelings, perceptions, values and reflections that usual come from gut feelings (not logical, rational arguments).

Best Wishes,
Frank Spillers

Telematics Usability-Coming to a Car Near You

I recently returned from Detroit 2004 where I moderated several keynote expert panels on consumer needs, usability and the future of vehicle telematics. The conference is an annual event held in Detroit and attracts automotive companies, suppliers and analysts who are all focused on the bleeding edge of the "wired car" a la integrated communications, vehicle diagnostics, entertainment, real-time information and high-speed internet or satellite driven data "piped" to the vehicle.

What is telematics and what does it have to do with usability?
Telematics refers to in-car technology that helps improve the driving or passenger experience. This can include such things as automatic airbag deployment notification, vehicle tracking, personalized driving features, real-time traffic data, emergency aid, satellite radio or video, high speed internet and a variety of other vehicle monitoring systems, entertainment and "location based services".

Users interact with innovative features including Internet access, voice activation, and the ability to control audio and climate from the steering wheel, for instance, or with visual displays and/or buttons on the rear view mirror (as in GM’s Onstar).

Usability becomes important really fast in the automotive interiors environment. Distractions, errors and accidents can cause drivers to veer out of lane, collide or crash. The stakes are high, making driver distraction a core issue in the telematics industry.

If telematics usability is so crucial, why don't OEM auto manufacturers saturate the driving experience with intuitive and pleasurable interfaces? After four years of observing the ups and downs of the emerging Telematics industry with my company Experience Dynamics, I believe these to be the main obstacles:

1) Automotive manufacturing lifecycles surpass consumer trends. A key issue is how to deliver telematics solutions that do not outlive the automobile manufacturing lifespan. Several companies like Daimler Chrysler (U-Connect) and Nokia (Bluetooth) have turned to plug and play telematics that are automobile architecture independent.

2) Usability is not understood as a strategic business resource. The position of a human factors engineer (HFE) in the large automotive company is often technical and not strategic. For example, most of the work being done in the United States by the government and by industry/academia involves safety and driver distraction research.

HFE's have traditionally worked on the Human Machine Interface (HMI) inside the automotive cockpit to improve automotive interiors. Human Factors has always been seen, it seems, as an instrument, not a marketing and business aid. Worse, HFE's are often so "in the trenches" they do not know how to put the imperative telematics user experience into business terms.

3)  Driver behavior and emotion is the killer application. OEM's and Tier One's have been missing the point: Customer experience including behavior, social interaction and emotional response to and interaction with new telematics devices are key requirements for next generation telematics. Understanding the granular details of how customers currently behave with regard to navigation, problem-solving, group and individual communication, entertainment and other factors will define which companies use telematics to strengthen brand loyalty, while accelerating location based service adoption in the post-purchase period.

Consumers Adoption is a Critical issue in Telematics
Experiences with the telematics user experience are difficult for consumers to visualize, understand or imagine. In my keynote at the conference I told a story that resonated with many audience members:

A user once related his experience of telematics to me. He said that after purchasing a new vehicle he was given a survey regarding his preferences for telematics. After about twelve questions, the man ripped up the survey in frustration. He said he didn't know how to answer the questions: Did he want a screen display on the dashboard, where the radio sits, in between the seats or as a heads up display? He didn't know how he would like Mars, so to speak, because he had never been there yet.

A recent study by Frost and Sullivan echoes the finding:

"Basic navigation systems were given top ratings by respondents, with traffic information in particular being regarded as a value enhancer. However, a continuing lack of product knowledge appeared to be hampering the customers' ability to assess the benefits provided by advanced navigation systems".

Only in the last few years have we been exposed to navigation systems, advanced diagnostics and other early signs of telematics. Luxury car owners for six or seven years have been the guinea pigs for new telematics products. The mass market is slowly being introduced to telematics through rental cars, satellite radio and hands-free after-market kits.

Today, according to analysts Frost and Sullivan, 70% of vehicle fleets in Europe are aware of or use telematics, yet "More than half the respondents were uninformed about telematics' ability to improve customer relationship management (CRM) and substantially reduce the insurance premium" reports Telematics Valley.

Top of the Agenda: The Driving User Experience
Many Tier One suppliers that create automotive interiors, such as Johnson Controls, expressed concern for usability and user experience issues at the Telematics conference. This is a quantum leap from several years ago when telematics usability was secondary or absent in conversations. The real challenge now is for human factors telematics researchers to get out of the usability trenches and go for a drive (with the users). Only by transforming the tactical "safety and situation awareness" characteristics of human factors into the strategic "desirability and experiential-based" requirements will usability be able to produce results with a profound effect on business objectives and consumer adoption.

P.S. For more telematics issues, see the telematics usability articles and product reviews I have written for Telematics Update magazine.

Best Wishes,
FS

Graphic Design vs. Usability

The GUI Olympics (Graphical User Interface, pronounced "goo-ey") is an annual event where top graphic designers converge to design the latest and greatest "skins" for the Winamp media player, Windows themes and Icons.

The event is in its final week, and while it's wrapping up it might be useful to reflect on a couple of note-worthy items that relate to popular misconceptions of usability and graphic design...

The Logic of a "Skin"

The GUI Olympics are about designing interfaces that some graphic designers refer to as "skins". The idea comes from the habit of developing software and website code first and then adding the interface last ("the skin"). The concept is that many users prefer different interfaces, so provide a variety of skins and please more users!

There is nothing wrong with that concept as long as it is clear that it only works with highly specialized applications such as Winamp. It is even culturally expected in the Winamp community that skins will be created and made available.

When the philosophy of the 'skin interface' is applied to other applications, it becomes problematic. Here's why:

1. Interfaces in general are not "skinnable". A skin is an external dressing to some underlying functionality. The skin interface implies an "after the fact" make-over. Thinking about how users will interact with an interface at the end of the development lifecycle is too late.

Take-away: Interfaces represent the interactions, intentions, goals and tasks of your users. Greater success is gained from putting usability (architecture) before graphic design (dressing) early on in the process.

2. Skins are often dictated by visual appearance and not priority of user actions. Some skins look really cool. But since looking cool is the main objective of a skin, the underlying grouping of user actions, features or display of functionality is often lost.

Take-away: Looking cool for the sake of art is great if you can get away with it. However, in the business world where large scale websites or complex applications need to be intuitive and sensible, users want cool to be balanced with functional (usable).

What does the research say about Graphic Design?

Graphic design plays a significant role in the perception of trust of a website. You wouldn't know this from speaking to most usability professionals who spend their days arguing for usability not aesthetics. Worse, many usability consultants (you know who you are), personally do not favor aesthetics or beauty. I have worked with people who think that a table should be easy to sit at and still look like a park bench, as if a nice tablecloth and a big bouquet of fresh flowers didn't add anything to the seating experience...

1st Research Item: Website aesthetics influence feelings of trust (Karvonen 2000) PDF

2nd Research Item: Website aesthetics influence users' satisfaction, pleasure and perceived usability (Lavie and Tractinsky 2003) PDF

3rd Research Item: Website aesthetics influence perception of credibility (Fogg 2002) link see #6 in the tips list

Would you like a more usable "skin" with that user interface?
On the GUI Olympics site, if you search for a Winamp skin, it gives the choice to search filter for "Useable" interface skins. This seems hilarious to me, but might be a whole new business model for certain Operating System manufacturers. Imagine if you could buy the "usable" version of software or pay to have features or functionality removed from your current software packages? Hmmmm.

It seems GUI Olympics has created that filter since some of the skins go over the edge with graphic elements that it becomes difficult to find the play button! One interface I tested looked great to me, but when I started using it there was no progress meter (the bar you pull across to skip forward in a track). This is exactly the phenomenon I have found in my usability testing of hundreds of interfaces over the years:

Users will be attracted to great looking software, applications or websites with great excitement...but if the functionality does not act according to their expectations, feelings of abandonment or disatisfaction set in.

Bottom line: Functionality that does not deliver usability undermines aesthetic benefits.

Why and when users will favor cool over usable
The paradox, however, is that if users want to use the graphically pleasing (but un-usable) product due to some other stronger reason such as social influence or scarcity of content, they will. The Winamp skin interface is an example. Websites that have rare content but that are hard to use will still be used if the content is perceived to be exclusive to that site. This phenomenon was demonstrated by Lindgaard and Dudek (2002) who found that:

"Using a site with high appeal but very low in perceived usability yielded very high satisfaction, but low perceived usability scores, suggesting that what is `beautiful' need not also be perceived to be usable. The results suggest that web designers may need to pay attention to both visual appeal and usability".

Bridging the Usability and Graphic Design Gap

Usability engineers ought to live next door to graphic designers, not upstairs or downstairs from them. I believe that graphic design is extremely important, if applied with a sensitivity to usability. Typically usability engineers will hand "wireframe" prototype designs to graphic designers, who often will alter the information architecture in order to enhance the look and feel.

Usability professionals need to wake up to the fact that aesthetics are not a trivial afterthought, but an integral part of the user experience. We need to understand the value of graphic design and visual designers need to understand the value of usability. I had to learn this the hard way. In a previous job as a User Centered Design specialist, we spent $30,000 perfecting the usability, interaction design and functionality of a new website with several rounds of usability testing. Our client handed our user interface design specification over to an agency (who now mysteriously claims to be a user centered design agency). The agency added their graphic design to the website and completely changed the navigation system in order to add a logo and a branding element.

The lesson: Graphic Design can "hijack" usability efforts if the graphic design team is not "on board" with usability. This is probably why these days more and more graphic artists (like the students at the Art Institute of Portland where I am currently teaching a class) are learning about usability and have a sensitivity for its user-centered intentions. Here's an interesting paper that discusses balancing usability and graphic design on Yahoo!

I believe that closer collaboration and more respect between usability and graphic design is inevitable, as is the overlap between usability and marketing. More on that in another post...

Best Wishes,
FS

How Usable is Jakob Nielsen?

In an earlier posting, I said: "Jakob Nielsen has an unhealthy monopoly on Usability Consciousness. He promotes best practices, he preaches obedience to his guidelines and when he postulates opinions they are interpreted as instructions".

So what's the big deal? Jakob is an internationally recognized usability "celebrity". His books sell many copies and his website gets lots and lots of traffic.

Who is Jakob Nielsen?

Jakob Nielsen has become a hot item over the last five years with regard to website usability. Jakob Nielsen has a computer science PhD and is Danish by origin. See his bio for more... The Danish part is significant I think, because some of his prophesies get lost in translation.

For instance, Nielsen said:

"In the future, first of all, websites will be designed by my guidelines ... for the simple reason that if they don't, they are dead." - Jakob Nielsen.

Some colleagues of mine at a former company said "Look at that, Nielsen says if you don't do what he says you're dead [meat] (American slang for a threat)". If you re-read the quote, I believe the implication Nielsen was making was "you will disappear- become extinct" not "if you don't listen to me you are toast".

So what's the problem with Jakob Nielsen?

Jakob Nielsen is still very popular outside the usability community. Amongst his colleagues however, his popularity has been eroding steadily. Why? There are a couple of reasons for this.

1) Guru role. Nielsen plays up the guru role and gloats in the press coverage of being called a "king" a "guru" and "almost as big as Elvis". Gurus seem to fall into two categories: the silent and humble type  or the boisterous and arrogant type. Nielsen has been perceived by many as falling into the later category. However, I think the real gurus are his public relations firm, the Antenna Group, who are responsible for his glamorous international media coverage.

2) Professional ethics. A few years ago (circa 2000), Nielsen posted on his home page that his fees were roughly $35,000 for a half day high level strategy consulting session. This is where the credibility started to erode for me. If anybody thought usability was expensive, Nielsen certainly contributed to that perception (despite his current claims that usability is cheap: "Usability for $200" and "ROI for Usability").

Around the same time, Nielsen failed to disclose his personal conflicts of interest in several articles.  Before 2000, he always disclosed where he had a conflict of interest (i.e. serving on the Board of Directors) with regard to pitching a vendor product or service in his column. For example, he wrote an article advocating use of Google Adwords and didn't mention he was on the Technical Advisory Board. After doing that several times and being criticized by his peers, he came clean and apologized for not disclosing his conflicts of interest.

3) Useit.com. Nielsen's personal website defiantly retains its 1997 look and feel. Nielsen's justification for his site seems ridiculous (he says he is "not a visual designer and didn't want to spend money to hire an artist"). Reading between the lines, like many usability engineers, Nielsen does not seem to personally value aesthetics and that shows in his work. His site is also full of double-standards. A check of dead links on his site with the free tool he recommends (Xenu) in his article "Fighting Linkrot" produced approximately 458 dead links (including images, links, spacers and outgoing links).

Bitching like Elvis

One of the things I have noticed about people who take Nielsen's teachings at face value is that they end up communicating like him. The blaming, critical and self-righteous tones that characterize Nielsen's articles and interviews are not to be confused with how a professional usability consultant ought to communicate. Of the hundreds of people I have trained in the past few years, I have noticed the "Critical Jakob" in their findings. The danger is that armed with Jakob's influence, we can assume that we have a hammer large enough to break anything. A reader comment to Jakob's partner Tog a few years ago raised this issue. Tog's response was that this communication style was for marketing purposes only and that it was not the way he and his colleagues speak to their clients.

It's rich to criticize something as if no other dependencies exist. Even better to pretend like you have all the answers and that no humans (with feelings) were ever involved in the design. By taking the National Enquirer (a supermarket tabloid newspaper) approach to communication, Nielsen is doing a disservice to the usability practitioner community by not imparting best practices in communicating usability insights. Is it asking too much to have usable communication?

Jakob Nielsen has done a good job of inflaming the people he is supposed to be enlightening. Some examples of the things Nielsen has said that have inflamed people include:

* "Flash is 99% bad"
* "These companies are narrow-mindedly insular, and populated with lifers.." (referring to companies in industries who don't get usability)
* “Here are just few examples of the BMW 745i’s clueless interaction design” (See the Open Letter to Jakob Nielsen this one provoked)
* "PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption" See the rebutal from Adobe ePaper staffer...

The Backlash to Jakob Nielsen

While the tabloid marketing approach might get read attention, it also produces its share of criticism. There have been many attacks on Jakob Nielsen, some of them humorous, hysterical and some more serious.

1. Example from Marketing Profs, Jim Kukral "Being Jakob Nielsen"(member login required)

Why wouldn’t the King of Usability want to tackle the greatest challenge of them all: Designing a beautiful AND usable Web site?

Isn’t that what all Web professionals should strive to do? Why does there have to be a barbed-wire fence between designing a usable site and designing a graphically pleasing site?

There doesn’t, and to Mr. Nielsen’s credit, he doesn’t believe there has to be, either, even though his Web site shows me otherwise.

So what’s the hold up, Jakob?

2004 is upon us. Perhaps you have a Web site redesign in the works. Or maybe you’re finally going to build that company intranet you’ve been dreaming of.

Are you going to spend the money for a good designer and usability person, or go the way of Jakob Nielson and forgo the design part?

Obviously, your budget may have something to say about spending extra money on a designer, but don’t worry about it.

Just say, “Jakob Nielsen doesn’t feel it’s necessary, why should we?”

2. Example from Usability News, George Olsen "Response: The Backlash against Jakob Nielsen and What it Teaches Us"

Nielsen has had a bad habit of presenting personal opinions as research fact. The latest example is his rather bizarre claim 90% of (his proprietary and not-disclosed) usability guidelines will likely be achieved by 2017 (see Improving Usability Guideline Compliance).

A personal thorn in my side his been his insistence that blue is - and will forever be - the only appropriate colour for links. Now I have a background in graphic design and I know numerous ways to make clear something's a link. No, I don't have academic research to prove this, but I've got many a successful site. But yet, I still have to deal with business decision-makers who believe Nielsen has "proved" this point.

3. Example from Clay Shirky's "An Open Letter to Jakob Nielsen"

(Nielsen suggests enforcing his usability guidelines on the web as a way to improve usability)

Let me quickly address the least interesting objection to your idea: it is unworkable. Your plan requires both centralization and force of a sort it is impossible to achieve on the Internet. You say

  "...to ensure interaction consistency across all sites it will be
  necessary to promote a single set of design conventions."

and

  "...the main problem lies in getting Web sites to actually obey any usability rules."

but you never address who you are proposing to put in the driver's seat - "it will be necessary" for whom? "[T]he main problem" is a problem for whom? Not for me - I am relieved that there is no authority who can make web site designers "obey" anything other httpd header validity.

Breaking the Monopoly on Usability Consciousness

Usability is about understanding human behavior. For one person to dictate how customers behave and how a field should apply best practices seems counter-productive. There are many wonderful "thought leaders" in the Usability and Human Computer Interaction world that many outside of the practitioner community rarely hear about. Jakob's colleague Donald Norman is just as influential, if not more, but his contributions seem more palatable perhaps because they help you learn instead of making you feel inferior. Or people like Brenda Laurel (a pioneer in User Interface Design and 3D interaction) who for a short stint was with Nielsen-Norman group. And there are many more who have contributed to the field...

Nielsen's famous "heuristics" (guidelines for web usability) are another area that shows that his popularity is more public relations than credit of invention. For instance, few people realize that Nielsen co-authored the original publication on heuristics with Danish colleauge Ralph Molich and then later with Robert Mack and others. Yet you rarely hear usability folks saying "Nielsen-Molich heuristics", it's "Jakob Nielsen's heuristics".

Contributions to developments in the field are compromised if practitioners must tip-toe around the shadow of what Jakob Nielsen said. For example, Nielsen is very vocal about 3D and virtual reality interfaces. He claims that evolution did not intend humans to navigate in 3D space. Since I did my masters research in the usability of virtual environments, it appears to me that Nielsen has never looked at any of the research in 3D usability that has come out of British universities or the Human Interface Technology lab at the University of Washington, for example.

Reforming with Research Based Usability Guidelines

What we need is a reform of how usability is "trickled down" to the masses. As awareness grows to commercial bias or self-serving interests in usability research, we will see a greater emergence of independent research-based usability guidelines such as these from the National Insitute of Health.

Follow up: Read Jakob's Ladder for a very comprehensive profile of Jakob Nielsen.

Best Wishes,
FS

Progressive Disclosure- the best interaction design technique?

What is "progressive disclosure"?

Progressive disclosure is an interaction design technique that sequences information and actions across several screens in order to reduce feelings of overwhelm for the user. By disclosing information progressively, you reveal only the essentials and help the user manage the complexity of feature-rich sites or applications. Progressive disclosure follows the typical notion of moving from "abstract to specific"; only it may mean sequencing interactions and not necessarily level of detail (information). In other words, progressive disclosure is not just about displaying abstract then specific information, but rather about 'ramping up' the user from simple to more complex actions.

In its most formal definition, progressive disclosure means "to move complex and less frequently used options out of the main user interface and into secondary screens".

A few familiar examples of progressive disclosure

An example of progressive disclosure is an online news article that is spread across four screens (with a Next Page link at the bottom). This use of progressive disclosure serves advertising objectives (showing banners on each page) and not the user's task. Another example would be a site that explains a product by making the user click through 4-5 pages of overview/benefits information before revealing the price of the product. The idea here is that if the user reads the product information, they will accept the price more easily. The problem with that approach is that it does not accommodate free-form exploration, a typical behavior on the web.

In its purest format, progressive disclosure is about offering a good teaser. A good teaser can include the following:

* A sample of what is next
* An introductory task that is most common
* A high level view of what is expected
* A wizard that walks the user through the task
* A button that leads to more advanced functions (such as editing)

Progressive disclosure says: "Make more information available within reach, but don't overwhelm the user with all the features and possibilities".

Short History of Progressive Disclosure

Progressive disclosure is a concept that has been around since at least the early 1980's.  The technique caught the attention of user interface specialists with Jack Carroll's lab work at IBM (1983), where he found that hiding advanced functionality early on led to an increased success of its use later on. The approach dubbed "training wheels" is one of the only references validating the technique. Carroll and Rosson (1997) pointed out that no empirical evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of progressive disclosure and that the training wheels approach only studied a "single computer application (word processor) and a single interface style (menu based control)". While independent usability studies and consultancy research (including our own) has shown that appropriate usage of the technique is valuable, more empirical research is clearly required.

The software vs. web design environment

Historically, progressive disclosure is a concept that came from the software usability experience. It is clearly easier to apply to software than it is on the web, which is probably why you don't hear all that much about how to do it effectively on the web. In software, the interaction is between dialogues and 'fixed state' interactions. On the web, interactions are chaotic, randomized and dynamic due to the fact that hypertext is a non-linear media.

In the software world the audience is predictable and targeted, making learning styles more predictable. On the web, it's anybody's guess who might be using the site. The website visitor might be a particle physicist, a teen or a grandma. Learning styles, comfort levels and expectations differ greatly. This is perhaps why you hear a lot of references to progressive disclosure in conversations and interviews, but rarely any ideas about how to apply it effectively.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen mentions progressive disclosure regularly, but has never explored the subject in great length to my knowledge. Nielsen has stated:

"Good usability includes ideas like progressive disclosure where you show a small number of features to the less experienced user to lower the hurdle of getting started and yet have a larger number of features available for the expert to call up". Sitepoint interview with Jakob Nielsen

"Progressive disclosure is the best tool so far: show people the basics first, and once they understand that, allow them to get to the expert features. But don't show everything all at once or you will only confuse people and they will waste endless time messing with features that they don't need yet". Slashdot interview with Jakob Nielsen

There are dozens of references on the web (at least the first 7 pages of a Google search) of people saying progressive disclosure is valuable and recommended. Guidelines include it as an error control device and colleagues mention it often in corporate design rooms I personally frequent. The common notion is that it's good, everyone knows it, so just do it! I have yet to see anyone provide evidence of how to use it effectively on the web...

Using progressive disclosure effectively on the web

The marketing approach to progressive disclosure is to get excited about the features and force users to partake of the excitement by making them wade through them all. There's only one problem with that: if you want to get someone excited, creating a feeling of overwhelm does not strike me as a good way to get someone excited. Instead you want to roll a small snowball down a hill and hope it gets bigger and bigger leading to an avalanche! This is the goal of progressive disclosure from a marketing standpoint.

The best way to think about progressive disclosure on the web is: "Only show information that is relevant to the task the user wants to focus on, on any given page". Context sensitive advertising has finally figured this one out with regard to the text ads that Google pioneered.

Progressive disclosure is an interaction design technique that emerges out of the insights gained during Task Analysis (user observation of tasks). Observing users in the field, allows you to understand their workflow outside of your technology. This insight gives you the data you need to prioritize and sequence content functionality.

The main thing to remember about progressive disclosure is that it you will be able to use it correctly if you have conducted task analysis (behavioral observation) with your user base. Observing users in their native problem solving environment gives you the insight about how they interact with the information. By observing someone's eating habits, you'll know whether they typically look at the desert and drinks menu at the start, in the middle or at the end of the meal. You'll discover whether they like to eat the main course or their salad first and whether they drink before a meal or at the end of a meal.

Examples of progressive disclosure on the web:
* Learn more link
* Related topics link
* Overview of account information on the first screen
* View more details link
* Advanced search link

Why is progressive disclosure the most important interaction technique?

Progressive disclosure is powerful because it embraces several good design principles:
* Advocate for users with different needs (experienced and non-experienced users)
* Limit what you show on a screen
* Give access to the low hanging fruit and de-emphasize infrequent tasks
* Only show users what they need when they need it
* Focus the interface on making the user successful at the start

Benefits of Progressive Disclosure:
* Remove the need for the user to explore and examine the interface first
* Allow the user to chunk the task in a sequence that matches their expectation
* Reduce cognitive overload
* Increase the efficiency and ease of use of the site

Dangers of Progressive Disclosure:
* Users are forced to wait until you are ready to show them
* Repeat use may not require progressive disclosure (depends on the task)
* Over-constraining what users see (or dumbing it down too much)
* Assuming you understand what is the most popular, common or important task

Progressive disclosure has a good name as an interaction design technique and for good reason. The downside to it, is in its inappropriate usage. Microsoft Word, for example, is full of many inappropriate uses of progressive disclosure, such as the auto-hiding extra menus that you have to repeatedly activate even if you don't use the menu item (the down arrows that appear at the bottom of any menu).

Progressive disclosure can be powerful. It allows users to orient to a screen, figure out what they need to do, and do it in steps that reveal more complex information as they go along. As a design technique its fallacies can be prevented by basing the progressively disclosed tasks and information on actual observed user behavior. If you can realize that the technique is an outcome of data gathered in task analysis and not just a "design idea" you will get more mileage, more accuracy and you will be more successful using it as a tool.

Best Wishes,
FS

Quote this as: (2003) Spillers, Frank. Web Usability Best Practice Handbook. Experience Dynamics.

Methodology or Mythology?

Methodology Madness: or "caveat emptor" (buyer beware)

What you buy or "buy into" influences how you think about something and how you represent that information in your mind is what cognitive scientists refer to as an "internal representation". Whether you buy usability services or not, at some point along the way I am sure you will or have encountered "methodology madness", and maybe you don't even know it.

What is "methodology madness"?
Methodology madness in the usability services and products area refers to the espousing of convenient beliefs, "truths" and proclamations about the right way or new way to do things. The methodology is typically proprietary or masked and is typically part of some form of a sales pitch- either for a report or a "customer experience management" solution. The "right or new way" implies that the approach is more refined, more advanced or a best practice.

Methodology madness is not new to usability consulting; in fact it exists in many industries. In terms of the usability industry, the problem with proprietary methodologies is that they are often inaccurate or distorted versions of the truth. The other obvious problem is that proprietary usability methodology, techniques, or research serves that company's interests, with a clear commercial bias.

A fair degree of usability nonsense seems to be emerging as the industry grows, and it's main motive is sales and competitive differentiation. Further it is hard to tell what is nonsense and what is valid, witnessed by the fact that I have met many usability consultants who believed certain methodology myths. Like many of my colleagues, I have even fallen for some of the mythology because it sounds so convincing.

Let's face it: it's hard to think critically about something when it's packaged in a compelling way and important details are withheld in the name of confidentiality.

To help identify the madness, let's look at just a few common methodology myths still in circulation today:

Claim 1: "Usability testing must be conducted in the user's natural setting".

Source: This one comes from a leading provider of a semi-proprietary online customer experience solution that uses panels of users in their homes, traffic log data and analysts to generate reports.

Problem: There is no evidence of this claim in the Human Computer Interaction literature (the field where usability comes from). While the claim makes sense, it dissolves when you trace it to the usability technique where it was borrowed from: field studies. In field studies (aka Task Analysis, Ethnographic studies, contextual interviews) it is absolutely essential that the user's environment be observed and assessed. The point in field studies is to note interactions and influences of the environment. In usability testing, the point is to gauge if the website or software works to expectations. This has very little to do with the user's setting, or PC settings etc.

Claim 2:"You need to test your website with hundreds of users".

Source: Same as above.

Problem: This belief sells statistics, not usability insights. Since the majority of people are most comfortable with statistical data (quantitative), this claim again sounds convincing. The flaw however, is that usability testing is a qualitative research technique (observation is the metric not numbers). In qualitative research the research rules are different and it is normal to have small sample sizes e.g. 15-40 users. Usability testing is about observing actual user behavior and capturing expectations. Insight is the indicator, not statistical significance.

Claim 3: "If it takes more than three clicks, forget it".

Source: Unknown. Probably went around dozens of startups in Silicon Valley in the late Roaring 90's.

Problem: This "3 click rule" metric is e-commerce centric. Three clicks to the user destination is a metaphor for saying "don't take the user down the garden path to do something". The 3-click rule losses validity in other domains where users will naturally click 10 times to research an issue or purchase.

Claim 4: "Navigation is not important. Users don't care where they are in the website".

Source: A popular "customer experience" guru and evangelist.

Problem: This is a new one (Feb 16th 04) cycled back from something guru Jakob Nielsen said a few years back with the effect that navigation was "overdone" on many sites. In the new version, we are told "consistency is NOT necessary", and does not apply to websites. Outside of falling down on the floor with laughter, the problem here is that while users don't appear to be consciously concerned with navigation, their unconscious behavior indicates otherwise. A simple fact that every seasoned usability practitioner knows is that consistency increases ease of use (whatever the medium). Again, the prescription references the insights to "listening labs" (a reframed usability testing lab with questionable methodology of it's own).

Skilled observation by professionals that understand consumer cognition can go a long way to prevent sweeping generalizations about user behavior. For more on the topic of understanding unconscious customer behavior, see Gerald Zaltman's new book How Customer Think, where research shows physiological evidence of consumer behavior using brain scans.

Claim 5: "Website usability can be measured by proprietary software, agents or algorithms".

Source: a) a now defunct company and b) a new consultancy with a similar story.

Problem: Because usability involves the understanding of complex, dynamic, state dependent cognition it is virtually impossible to model user behavior with a bot, agent or algorithm. For example how can a machine model semantic interpretation? Machines can't.  I worked for a time with the company who claimed the had invented a "technique that models human perceptual, cognitive, and motor behavior, and is programmed with a set of characteristics and Web-browsing behavior that represents the way an average user sees, thinks, and moves through a Web site".

The claim is completely false and was disproved by a world authority at Xerox PARC. I even compared four automated tests to four equal real usability test and had consistent dramatic failure of results from the automated algorithm approach. I realized that it is impossible to model how a user makes sense of a website, how they interpret content and to predict their expectations and train of thought. Yet, a new usability consultancy (that refuses to provide basic details about their methodology) has "invented" a proprietary algorithm for assessing competitive usability performance capturing data such as scrolling, scanning, typing in data, reading text, clicking and annoyance. Sounds too good to be true. You don't get to find out unless you become their client the President told me...

What is the anti-dote to methodology madness? As the Latin term "caveat emptor" implies (let the buyer beware), the best thing you can do is think for yourself, do your homework, compare and contrast the information. Ask a seasoned practitioner if you are not sure.

For the usability consulting industry, the agenda ought to include the following:

1) Clarifying and providing rigorous detail about proprietary methodologies (including peer reviewing).

2) Promoting integrity by serving prospects and clients with non-biased and non-partisan information.

3) Building and expanding upon existing agenda-free techniques and methods that service the greater good of the community.

I personally don't believe that "new" usability methodologies should be kept proprietary under the auspices of commercial protocols. Best practice research is not like a new technology or invention. Usability is about understanding user behavior and there is nothing proprietary about human behavior.

I also don't think it serves the industry or the pursuit of integrity for that matter, to claim that a technique is the "secret sauce". That's like one lawyer saying they have a better methodology to practice law then another attorney. There are people and companies who are competent and skilled and there are those who are not.

Best Wishes,
FS

 

Are you hiring what you think you are hiring?

Part 1:Clarifying skill sets

This User Interface (UI) Designer position correctly states that UI designers create navigation maps, functional specifications and design requirement documents. Hint: They don’t code anything.

Yet a recent polling of my colleagues and clients shows that the common usage of “User Interface” person means someone who does "front end" (interface design) and the "back end" (programming). There are many UI Designers out there who design the usability and they have a background in the area. However, because programming is being conducted simultaneously, many people fall into the “split-mind problem”. It is hard to focus on the user's needs while thinking about the system's needs.

Years ago, before working exclusively in usability, I programmed in C++, C, HTML, Java and some virtual reality and artificial intelligence languages. I can verify that there is a huge mental leap between the "front end" (interface design) and the "back end" (programming). It is extremely difficult to do good usability if your focus is code.

Takeaway: Be careful to clarify your conversations with an agreed definition of UI Design skills. In the usability community, it means the above (see ad). In the programming community it means the job involves code. There is a difference. Make sure you know what you are hiring.

Part 2: Focusing on strategic insights

Fact: Usability is not Quality Assurance (QA) and can not be performed professionally by a Quality Assurance specialist. Would you have your plumber take care of legal problems?

People who hire “Usability Testers” and QA specialists to handle usability requirements, seem to think usability is purely functional. They, like the authors of the above (second job ad), contribute to a one-sided view of usability, namely that usability is purely a tactical step in good software development.

Usability is actually highly strategic. Design changes can impact: markets pursued, how audience segments are defined, whether marketing and business goals are altered, whether resources need to be allocated to change or add new functionality etc. Compare this to the outcome of QA where fixing a button, moving a link or adding an image might be the result.

Takeaway:If your usability requirements are going to be covered by QA, you may be missing the forest for the trees. Never substitute QA for usability in your web development lifecycle.

Best Wishes,
FS

The Future is Usable: New Communication devices

Consumers can feel poor usability with great intensity on a cell phone or with a new data enabled device-- unlike a website, software application or operating system that involves more relaxed cognitive states (sitting down and learning the system). When you need to make a call, send a text message or web browse on a handset it becomes obvious what ease of use is and isn't. A large part of the design problem in mobile user experience is user environment (mental, physical and social). Think about the difference between sitting down with a cup of coffee watching windows pop up, pages move around and your ability to close windows, back up with the browser etc. Now think of holding a communication device and interacting with 1.5 inch  screens while standing up, walking around or in the social presence of others.

A recent survey by MIT found that adults in the US rated cellphones the top of the list in technologies they hated but couldn't live without:

"An annual Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey, known as the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, found that among adults asked what invention they hate most but can't live without, 30 percent said the cell phone.

Alarm clocks were a close second, with 25 percent, followed by the television with 23 percent and razors with 14 percent. Microwave ovens, computers and answering machines also earned spots as detested technology".

John Quain at e-week believes the popularity problems wireless technologies have been having in the US in the past few years (compared to Europe and Japan for instance) have to do with desirability.

"Part of the reason again is the added expense in a competitive market, but the main reason is simply that consumers don't think they need it".

The need to target actual user behavior in design requirements. Field testing is essential for devices that are deeply embedded in the users physical and social context. New devices require vigorous and frequent usability tests and fluid user interface specifications that can morph to changes based on new user needs that emerge during your usability test(s). This is especially true for localization of services when introducing new products into new markets. 

Mobile devices also need to support "user-compatible" configuration.Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus Notes) explained his frustration with hitting a dead-end when trying to configure the email settings on his new Nokia 3650 cell phone. His story serves as an important reminder of the need to make settings configuration "user- compatible". More on Configuration Usability later...

Best Wishes,
FS

 

Ad conversion rate influenced by time (not click rate)

Time is an important design variable to understand. Your user experience is effected by it no matter what user experience you are serving up and the rules are different for every context. For example, the "three click rule" (users must get to their destination within three clicks) applies to e-commerce primarily but not to mortgage education, financial services usability or reading the New York Times online.

Time Usability 101: Design for asynchronous interaction. Asynchronous means users don't do it all in one setting. Environmental distraction is inherent to any user experience: the pasta is burning, the kids are screaming, the documents are being tracked down, printer cartridge is being changed, someone interrupts...

Here is some fascinating research about conversion rates and the influence of time:

Up to 85 percent of conversions occur after the day the most recent advertising impression was served, according to new research from Advertising.com. The results seem to show online ads can have an impact on buyers' purchasing decisions long after they view an ad.

For the five-day monitoring period, approximately one-third of all conversions happened on the same day that the impression was served, but only nine to 11 percent occurred within three hours of the impression being served. The longer periods of monitoring revealed that up to 85 percent of conversions occurred days after a user was served an impression.

"These findings show what a significant portion of conversion activity takes place well beyond the impression," said Scott Ferber, chief executive officer of Advertising.com. He said that the data shows that metrics such as per-click or per-action may not give marketers an accurate picture of campaign results. "It also reveals how lasting the effect of an impression can be," he said.

This data supports the theory that users' consumption of the Internet is often patterned and repeated on a daily basis.

If you know when your audience is going to be online or converting, there is some value to targeting by time of day."

The implications for web analytics analysis, advertising and content management are interesting:

1) Ad impressions go through a 48 hour or so window of decision making activity. Decision making being influenced by time and potentially access to external information, persons or environments.

2) Interpreting user behavior through a web analytics perspective ought to include a sensitivity for the impact of time (i.e. conversion rates are non-local meaning they aren't isolated to immediate on-page actions as is the current view of traffic log analysis).

3) Understand how you are supporting time usability. Do you offer good time-out messages, good error protection from browser instability (if serving a web based application)? Does your content support good decision making across time?

4) Consider your website usability strategy as a variety of ad impression. Already, independent studies show that website usability (ease of use) increases the likelihood of purchase. More on this later.

5) Get ahead of the competition and synchronize ad impressions with conversion behavior. In other words, throw out the purchase cycle across time and serve up product and service content that parallels return visitor activity. In some cases with high ticket software solutions, getting clear about this may lead to strategic leaps in revenue generation that otherwise was pegged as just low conversion.

If you'd like to check out the science of time usability, have a skim of this paper (PDF 196K) Daniel Loewus-Deitch and I (Frank Spillers) published at the workshop on the Temporal Aspects of Tasks in September at HCI 2003 in Bath, England.

Best Wishes,
FS

Patenting usability improvements- going over the top?

Summary: Questioning Jakob Nielsen’s recent advice about competitor data and his advice to patent usability best practices.

Slashdotters react to Jakob Nielsen’s recent column. And they raise some good points:

• "The reason this logic doesn't follow for many software engineers and software patents, is that the stuff that gets patented is sometimes simple, and a horrible waste of cycles and time happens globally as people work around the patents".

• "Usability is required on *all* sites, not just the ones that have the resources to patent everything".

• "So if I come up with a great usability enhancement, I should patent it? How does that increase the usability of the web overall? We live in a sea of unusable web sites and horribly designed programs.. now he's saying "hey, the goal is actually not to make web sites more usable. The goal is to come up with usability enhancements that one or two web sites will use. The other sites can go stuff themselves."

• "...is just going to be a directory of patents? Just swap out any point where there is actual usability advice with the relevant patent number and you're done".

The key issue here, I think, is that Jakob Nielsen has an unhealthy monopoly on Usability Consciousness. He promotes best practices, he preaches obedience to his guidelines and when he postulates opinions they are interpreted as instructions.

More later on how this has eroded Jakob Nielsen’s popularity within the usability community.

Best Wishes,
FS

Email Marketing- New Legislation

In case you missed the big news in the last few weeks, there is a new anti-spam law that was enacted on January 1st 2004. The rules for sending email have changed. Marketing Sherpa has a good summary:

Update Memo: CAN-SPAM Good News & Bad,
Bad, Bad, Bad News

SUMMARY: We just spent two and a half hours quizzing the FTC's attorney on exactly how the new law affects emailers. Here's a quick, handy round-up for you:

Good news: It's fairly easy to comply with message content.

Bad News #1: It's hard to comply with opt-out rules. Welcome to suppression file hell...

Bad News #2: The law applies to more types of organizations and email than you think.

Bad News #3: There's no "grace period."

Bad News #4: And, almost anyone can sue you.

Read on... and then forward to your legal department:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2576
(Open access = permanent)

I don't know about you, but my spam hasn't reduced since the start of the year :-(

Best Wishes,
FS

Site Search can be flattened by Usability

If you're using a search solution on your website (Ask Jeeves, EasyAsk, Google, Inktomi, Mercado, Verity etc) or simply offer a search interface that users can find products, information or documents with-- you may be missing the main feature that will make it work (and give you the return on investment you want): Search Interface and Search Results Usability.

The search interface runs into these typical problems that most people don't consider when shopping for a search solution:

1) Search Interface: how the database works typically defines how the search interface will look (see the "Boolean logic" and "Natural Language" issues below)

2) Search Results: how the user configures the search is going to determine how great the results are. Also how the search database works will determine how *robust* search results can be displayed. Displaying search results in a readable, understandable and helpful manner is instrumental to designing the user experience effectively.

Search appears to be perceived as a highly valuable resource by users and marketing managers as an essential "help" feature on a website. As many of my clients can attest to, finding a good search vendor is a bit of a headache. One of the big issues is the feature many search vendors sell called "Natural Language Search".

Question: What is Natural Language Search?

Answer: Natural Language Search (NLS) is a more robust version than standard "Boolean" searching. Boolean logic says "And this, Or that, Not that" such as with this search interface http://search.internet.com/ (Probably the worst search interface on the web?) In that example the interface exposes the *needs of the database* e.g. you must enter this and that but not that.... the problem with *exposing Boolean logic* parameters to the user is that if they get it wrong, they may end up with nothing or something off-topic.

NLS really is a back-end feature. NLS database matches "fuzzy" records in the database so users can type "What's for lunch?" and get intelligent results back (supposedly). Ask Jeeves is the classic example (though it is not that great to put it mildly). Google of course has perfected it and Amazon too...but those are very expensive databases used by those two companies.

The main usability question to ask when reviewing a search vendor or evaluating the user experience of your own search solution is, "Can you customize the results?" and "Can you simplify the search interface?". Those two things matter for ease of use and value to the user. Search Results are as important as the interface.

I noticed Amazon is "culling" search results more...so that if you search "Interaction Design" on Amazon they cut it to 2 top results and then "View 230 others". The search rule system is imposing something onto results to prioritize them by popularity (or other variables).

Question: Why is it that when I want to find a Starbucks in an unfamiliar place, Starbucks store locator search is useless?

Answer: Starbucks coffee shops occupy multiple addresses in the same area of town across the country. When a colleague you meet wants to have coffee and says: "Meet me at 1134 NW Glisan (Portland, OR) Starbucks" (more specific then meet me at the one Downtown on 3rd for example), when you type in the address it gives you: two in the area, and then, a list with details for 163 stores in the entire city. Even when reducing the default 5 mile radius to two miles, it acts the same way. The Glisan store is on one of the 20 pages of search results! (try it for yourself)

What is happening I think is that the database is not matching inputted data to the store details page but instead is serving up all results based on geographic data. Result: annoying and unhelpful. Possible solutions include filtering results to match address to actual store pages; adding semantic data to the result (e.g. "across from the Library"); allowing users to search with visual maps of the city and filtering stores based on simple user selection (as in the example below). Starbucks unhelpful search has caused me: to go to the wrong store; pick up the phone and call to confirm; trade 3-4 additional emails to confirm (with the business person I am usually just meeting for the first time). read: hasstle

Here's an example of a successful search implementation:
My client used a Boolean search interface before with a 94% search failure rate during usability testing, we changed it to this one, leading to a 44% increase in registrations, two months after the change in search interface and search results usability.

Best Wishes,
FS

Quote this as: (2003) Spillers, Frank. Web Usability Best Practice Handbook. Experience Dynamics.