Posts in User Experience
How to Design the Best Variants for an Optimization Test
By Rachel Elkington | Jul 1, 2009 9:44:08 AM
Variant design in Optimization is important, and it deserves more care and attention from Optimization test designers. In the current practice of test design, much attention is paid to analytics numbers when deciding the hypothesis and direction of a test. However, numbers by themselves only tell you where the problem is, they do not tell you what alternatives to try. At ZAAZ, we have been combining User Research methods with our Optimization practice and have found a new piece to this puzzle: User Research in the process of variant design.
So, how can you incorporate UR to design the best variants you can? You need to…
Stop, collaborate, and listen. There are several ways to use your friendly local usability/UR practitioner to help generate a hypothesis and variants to test that hypothesis. Which method is best in which case depends on the nature of the page, problem, and budget in question. The rule of thumb here is something is always much better than nothing.
Heuristic Review: When budget and timelines are mercilessly tight, as they often are, a heuristic review can turn up a lot of insight in a little time. These employ the best practices in user experience as a template to which the site is compared. The findings from an heuristic review can do two things for a test designer:
1) Identify which usability best practices are being compromised on under-performing pages. This lends itself easily to hypothesis creation. Test variants can then be alternate ways to implement the best practice on the page.
2) Uncover places to test on the site that are not immediately obvious through an analytics lens, but that need to be improved.
Usability Test: This is my best-practice recommendation when deciding what to test. In concert with analytics data, usability tests become invaluable. Usability tests are best introduced when a test designer sees analytics data he or she cannot explain. For example:
Recently, we at ZAAZ had created a test that was meant to increase the number of purchases of an add-on offer in a purchase path. We created our variants carefully and lovingly - even bringing UX in for a consult - remaking the underperforming page into a clear, concise, value-communicating standout. And yet, the ultimate conversion rate for users who saw ANY of our variants was much lower than the control. We thought: What gives? So, we conducted a usability test on the control and on the variants. In the course of the usability test we found that the promise made by the page we were testing was not clearly reflected further down the purchase path. Our variants that made the initial promise more explicit led to confusion and abandonment further down the line. This lack of continuity was subtle – but it was affecting user confidence in the process. Introducing a usability test was key to getting in touch with our user’s qualitative impressions, which were driving their ultimate decisions in the purchase path. Put another way, usability tests uncover the root cause of a problem. Root cause understanding can show you both where you really should be testing, and what your hypothesis should be.
Usability studies can also be used to vet variants before they are launched. This is a particular advantage with high-traffic tests where any underperforming variant can be costly.
Eye Tracking: Eye tracking is a great tool, if used wisely. It can be used both to define hypotheses and to evaluate variants that have already been made. That is because eye tracking shows you what users actually notice on the page – where their eyes go. As a method of inquiry, eye tracking can satisfy what can otherwise be exhausting and unproductive internal debates about what the user is actually noticing on the page, or what is easily ‘discoverable.’ If the name of the game in a particular test is to get the user to notice a key piece of content, eye tracking is your new best friend.
Other: The most exciting thing about the intersection of UX and Optimization is that it is new. We are still discovering new ways to put these disciplines together.
Rachel Elkington is an Online Test Designer in the Optimization group at ZAAZ. Previously, she worked in ZAAZ’s User Experience Group. This combination of disciplines means she gets to have lots of fun scheming up new ways to put qualitative and quantitative methods of inquiry together. In her spare time she heads up the Pacific Northwest chapter of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, and co-produces InfoCamp – an annual unconference for the user-centered information industry. She has an MS in Information Management from the University of Washington, and a BA in a liberal arts discipline that people told her wouldn’t get her a real job.
Straw Horse: An Enterprise Social Media Platform Feature List
By Ryan Turner | Apr 14, 2009 3:12:45 PM
(Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.)
We did an internal exercise recently that produced a list of the advanced features we think are crucial for a successful enterprise social media platform. The idea is that functionality for user participation across every owned venue should draw upon a central system, enabling a multifaceted approach to CRM, data analysis, reporting—and ultimately leveraging distributed corporate efforts to generate enterprise business intelligence.
I’ll share the results of that exercise here, with the caveat that this is undoubtedly a partial list only. Your comments and suggestions are welcome, of course!
I helped think through this some of this stuff, but the bulk of the credit (including for the writing) goes to my ZAAZ colleague Ariel van Spronsen. We also got some help from another longtime friend and colleague of mine, Gary Carlson, an expert on enterprise metadata management. Enjoy:
Reputation (authority systems)
When properly implemented, reputation systems are excellent for creating trust and motivating users to participate at greater and greater levels of engagement. When implemented poorly, High volume of participation or seniority are rewarded—the key to getting reputation right is to focus on the quality of the contribution, not the amount of it.
In implementations where credibility matters, reputation is critical. See this great presentation from Bryce Glass of Yahoo for more detail.
User management
The platform provides the opportunity for centralized management of user data and permissions, including authentication, account management, personalization, segmentation, and behavioral targeting.
User data can provide the connective link among multiple social networking implementations (personal, business group). Content owned by a user can be shared among these via permissions or syndication.
Identity services
A unified data repository means an individual user can centrally manage her public-facing identity, and also create a more robust data picture for the business .
Interfaces from the platform access custom degrees of information contained in the central identity.
Quality algorithms
User-generated ratings have important utility, but translating them directly to measure “quality” is fallible. Ratings are opinion-driven and the ability to control input is minimal. However, combined with analytics data using weighted algorithms quality becomes a more stable and useful metric that both users and business can trust.
Recommendation engine
An important use for user-generated data and analytics is the ability to enrich experiences with recommendations, prompting discovery and deeper engagement. A centralized social networking platform is primed to leverage this functionality.
Taxonomy-driven folksonomy
Tags are a powerful way to augment search and increase information “find-ability”. They also give the business a powerful view into how people are thinking about the tagged content.
A purely user-generated tag set (a “folksonomy “) has issues such as misspellings, tense shifts, and count (singular vs.. plural). A taxonomy-driven folksonomy maps user tags to a controlled vocabulary authority to allow for specific schema analysis.
Video, audio, and photo streams
A significant part of the communication among social networks will be in multimedia forms. Easy uploading, tagging, and sharing features will create a robust social media environment, greater user satisfaction, and increased engagement.
Mobile
The demand for social media in the mobile space is undeniable. Application development for a new breed of smartphones is rapidly increasing as the ability to manage social networking functions becomes a key differentiator for users. The platform should provide for mobile implementation as well as web and API calls, and it should support both content consumption and content production via mobile.
Custom syndication
Custom syndication allows users to filter and process feeds in ways that are meaningful to their specific information needs. Yahoo! Pipes is an example of a custom syndication mechanism.
Custom syndication can augment other elements of a social networking system, especially for a user group that is highly specialized in goal and purpose.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking functions promote the development of shared information collections among networked groups.
Collaborative filtration
Collaborative filtration gives users the ability to vote submissions (bookmarks, feeds, entries, etc.) up or down. A popular feed-based example of this is Digg. In the marketing realm, Dell’s IdeaStorm lets users identify the best ideas for product development.
Private groups
Ad hoc, user-created groups for sharing or collaboration can support communities of practice and leverage user data management features.
Microblogging
Twitter is perhaps the most ubiquitous example of microblogging, which invites low-threshold, stream-of-thought information sharing and ambient connection among networked groups. Link sharing, whether to photos or other assets, is pervasive in microblogging, creating connections that can be used in many ways.
Marketplace
A social networking platform could provide functionality for connecting people to products or services, offered by the company or by one another. Examples are Craigslist, eBay, and Xbox Live Marketplace. Marketplace connections give a strong view into communities’ product needs, and they also support, to varying degrees, the purchase process itself.
Chat
Instant communication among community members creates a synchronous communication layer that can be particularly useful within a collaborative environment for communities of practice.
Moderation Tools
Property owners need tools to support management of their users and communities, along with the structures to support governance and workflow at distributed and global levels.
I’m sure there are other ideas out there. and for that matter lots of ways to slice and dice what constitutes a “feature.” For example, is blogging a feature, or is discussion? Or are those both high-order uses supported by features like WYSIWYG publishing, commenting, etc?
I don’t really want to get into an argument about that stuff, but I am very interested in what kind of emerging capabilities corporations need to support in order to realize the full promise of engaging with their constituencies online.
Do share!
Analytics spawned yawning among analysts?...is that possible?
By Judith Pascual | Dec 22, 2008 2:50:00 PM
I never thought I'd see the day that I would yawn during an analytics discussion. But it happened. I always thought it was my job to motivate people, show them the value and they will move forward. I get little butterflies as I pull and integrate numbers and find a story to share. I often feel like the journalist, breaking news. But this time, I felt like I had been transported to 2004 and I though that was a good year for me, I was not pleased.
The lack of analytics mobility is starting to get boring. Apparently, I am not alone. After so many years, let's move on folks! I keep hearing things like, 'analytics is our focus, we need to act'...okay so why do you shy away from tracking based on your goals, not just the 'data' you are able to get at this time? Why when you are given insights you don't act on them. Segmenting is a bad word and you still find geography 'views' valuable. This is just all very lame.
Now, during this economic turmoil, more than ever we need to stop making excuses for why analytics funding is not a priority and why you cannot act on customer requests. Don't get me wrong, we have worked with so many clients that have grown and are now data driven businesses. But far too many are stagnant. Ensure that you are not on that list.
For 2009, you have already asked yourself, what am I spending money on? Now, ask yourself what are you spending time on? What are key stakeholders focusing on? How is that growing or even maintaining your business? Look at your analytics maturity level and if you see yourself having the same discussion you had in 2004. Stop. Start the roadmap on moving forward and monetizing your business so you can optimize.
Of course I know you are still thinking about costs so...put together a cost benefit worksheet (yes, it takes time and you do need to understand what you are doing) and among the obvious ensure to include:
1. Speed - what customer driven projects can we quickly turnaround that is going to influence return?
2. Better Results - improvements in results because actions were taken - savings included -
3. Shorten the meetings and discussions on items you have action plans for or documented a roadmap...and use them already...you'll be surprised how much time and money you'll save.
You can adjust things as you go...but take the step.
Remember that yawning is contagious. Don't put yourself in a position where your analyst' yawn, de-motivate your stakeholders and it all transcends to consumer behavior.
Site Optimization: Lipstick on a Pig?, Or, Bacon and the Theory of Local Maximum
By Ryan Turner | Dec 5, 2008 12:34:33 PM
Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.
Jason Carmel is a colleague of mine I learn a ton from. His expertise is in web site optimization--running experiments where he tests versions of web pages against each other to see which performs best. (Not to be confused with search engine optimization, improving a site's visibillity in search engines.)
Jason is a fairly unflappable guy. Nonetheless I recently started making an effort to get his goat. He gives me just enough encouragement that I keep going. The gist of my teasing is that optimization is nothing but a mechanical exercise to determine whether a red button works better than a blue button. "Glad to hear that red button worked out better by 2.84 percent Jason. The sum of your creative energy has produced yet another quarter million in revenue. You must really love your life, man. Hey, have you thought of trying one of those animated GIFs instead of a regular button?"
Fortunately, Jason is twice as nice as me, as well as twice as smart. He takes my ribbing well--and responds thoughtfully to the serious question underlying my teasing: We know optimization can move big numbers in terms of revenue, but can it do more than simply tweak pages to bump up conversion? Can it vet creative concepts? Can it maximize the creation of mutual value between businesses and customers? Can it help create more engaging experiences?
(image credit, found via Lee)
The short answer here, according to Jason, is that it depends, partly on what you're trying to achieve. If all you're focused on is moving business value measures, you're probably putting lipstick on a pig. But testing against value creation has the potential to uncover game-changing opportunities.
Here's an email exchange between Jason and me, in which he explains in a little more detail:
RYAN:
That whole web site optimization thing—isn’t it really just putting lipstick on a pig?
JASON:
I think “I hate you so much” might be a succinct way of responding, but I'll provide a little more detail:
Web Site Optimization is exactly like putting lipstick on a pig, but only if you start out with a pig. And if you are starting out with a pig, your opportunities for improving things are limited, and you’d be using the wrong tool to fix the problem. We are talking here about the concept of a “local maximum” which is a fancy, math term applied to mean “the best something can be within a limited dynamic.” Consider the aforementioned pig’s ability to fly, which, metaphorically speaking, is not particularly developed. We could take a pig and genetically modify it to be more aerodynamic. We could investigate building pig hang-gliders and attempt to train the smartest pigs to use them. But even in the best case, with the most aerodynamic pig, benefiting from the best training, and using the best pig flying technology, it will never fly as well as a bird. The best case flying scenario for a pig (the pig’s local maximum as far as flight is concerned) is nowhere near as effective as a bird’s. In that scenario, you’d be better off exchanging the pig for a bird at the start, rather than waste any time or effort teaching a pig to fly better.
Applied to the web: if a site sucks so much- if the goals and purpose are unclear, if the information architecture looks like my desk (at the moment), if the navigation is counterintuitive and the messaging has absolutely no intersect with the audience, then no amount of optimization in the world will make it right. The local maximum of that crappy site is too low for any optimization to matter. Or (even worse) you’d need the infinite number of monkeys to stop typing Shakespeare and to start applying experiments to your site to get the right combination where testing would make a real difference. Neither is very efficient. If your site is the pixilated equivalent of a pig, you need much more elemental help from a user experience expert first (know any?). Until you fix the fatal flaw(s) in a site, anything else you do will be throwing good money after bad.
Site Side Optimization works well in circumstances where the local maximum is high, but for some reason, the site is not achieving it. This can be due to single points of failure on the site, like a specific conversion path or page underperforming, or because the audience needs to be targeted more specifically, or because the existing content is stale/irrelevant. In each of these cases, experimental testing can make a huge difference. Optimization also works exceptionally well (and this is far more interesting to me) when applied as a method of trying out a new (and potentially risky) idea that could radically change and significantly improve an experience. In both of these examples, the basic site is healthy, and the optimization program serves as a tool to reach its fullest potential.
RYAN:
But what I keep looking for is the way to test birds against pigs, not in the sense of which flies better, because as a user experience expert I do have the capability to predict the winner of that contest—but when I don’t have a clear sense of the best conceptual solution. For example, maybe I just can’t decide between eggs and bacon. Can optimization help design a better breakfast, or only decide between pulp and no-pulp in the OJ?
JASON:
Optimization can test more conceptual ideas, but it will be really hard to unpack the WHY after we determine which one wins. Most sites aren’t deciding between bacon and eggs, but rather between the bacon, eggs and hashbrowns with coffee or the granola, fruit and yogurt with yerba matte. If the former wins in a test, I don’t know whether it’s because of the bacon (which will usually win over everything) or the coffee, or because the person deciding had granola for the past three days, and would have taken ANYTHING other than more granola.
The other trick about testing high concepts in a website format is that you would have to build each solution to test them, which is usually more expensive than testing out wireframes or front-end prototypes in front of a more controlled audience.
RYAN:
First, you seem to be suggesting that a test win for the bacon breakfast might not imply extensibility for bacon breakfasts in general: That because, lacking control, the results might be idiosyncratic, they might not therefore apply broadly. Next week you might get a different result. My question is, why does that matter? And why does “knowing why” the bacon breakfast worked matter, as long as you know it worked.
JASON:
It is definitely a question I get from clients a lot. Why do I care about the individual elements of a variant- if the variant as a whole makes us more money, let’s just launch it and move on. I can’t fault the sentiment, but knowing why the bacon worked could lead to better tests, more focused messaging and (even more) cash money. I want to know that it’s the bacon by itself that is the motivating factor outside of all the other influences. Let’s say that we ran a test breakfast against a bowl of Total cereal and we tested bacon with powdered eggs as the experimental variant. Now let’s assume that bacon and powdered eggs lost to the control by 1%. You could take the position that we would do better to serve Total because we want to avoid losing that 1%, and you would be right. But what if you knew that the bacon by itself actually improved the breakfast by 15%, but the powdered eggs were so crappy that they hurt the breakfast by 16%, so you netted the 1% loss? If I controlled for all the variables in my breakfast, that knowledge would a) help me make a better breakfast overall (just serve bacon), and b) will also prevent me from throwing away a positive variable simply because it was paired with a really negative one.
I imagine you run into that a lot with prototyping and wonder how you deal with it in the UX world. If a subject totally fails at a task, are you ever afraid of overcorrecting a prototype to account for it? Do you ever throw the baby out with the bathwater? How do you control for that?
RYAN:
A great question. One of the answers is that in usability testing, you're looking for usability problems. So as long as your test participants are representative of your users as a whole, major failures are, practically speaking, never anomalous. If your user population is one million, and one of the eight people participating in your test has trouble understanding some aspect of the interface, what are the odds they're the only person who's going to have that problem?
The other thing I wonder about is what happens when what you’re trying to accomplish is harder to measure than conversion (e.g. brand lift) or if you want to measure it over time (e.g. engagement). Especially in social media, it’s quality that matters, not quantity. You want to know how valuable your user-generated videos are more than you want to know how many of them you have. Can web site optimization help you get to answers?
JASON:
Ah, you and your social media. When are you going to come to terms with the fact that this whole thing is a fad? The future is in email, Ryan, and lots of ‘em. Mark my words.
Absent a more qualitative tie-in with optimization (surveys, satisfaction scores, etc.) you will be hard-pressed to get good data about branding or the impact of social media. But I’m not saying you shouldn’t optimize for branding or social media. I’m saying you need to get that qualitative kicker. I’ve done a few branding tests, and I think they provide some interesting feedback. But I’ve never optimized where a KPI has to be judged on quality (e.g., good comments vs. troll comments) or off the site entirely (e.g., buzz in the blogosphere). Sounds fun.
Site Optimization: Lipstick on a Pig?, Or, Bacon and the Theory of Local Maximum
By Ryan Turner | Dec 1, 2008 8:01:09 AM
(Cross-Posted from Web Social Architecture.)
Jason Carmel is a colleague of mine I learn a ton from. His expertise is in web site optimization--running experiments where he tests versions of web pages against each other to see which performs best. (Not to be confused with search engine optimization, improving a site's visibility in search engines.)
Jason is a fairly unflappable guy. Nonetheless I recently started making an effort to get his goat. He gives me just enough encouragement that I keep going. The gist of my teasing is that optimization is nothing but a mechanical exercise to determine whether a red button works better than a blue button. "Glad to hear that red button worked out better by 2.84 percent Jason. The sum of your creative energy has produced yet another quarter million in revenue. You must really love your life, man. Hey, have you thought of trying one of those animated GIFs instead of a regular button?"
Fortunately, Jason is twice as nice as me, as well as twice as smart. He takes my ribbing well--and responds thoughtfully to the serious question underlying my teasing: We know optimization can move big numbers in terms of revenue, but can it do more than simply tweak pages to bump up conversion? Can it vet creative concepts? Can it maximize the creation of mutual value between businesses and customers? Can it help create more engaging experiences?
(image credit, found via Lee)
The short answer here, according to Jason, is that it depends, partly on what you're trying to achieve. If all you're focused on is moving business value measures, you're probably putting lipstick on a pig. But testing against value creation has the potential to uncover game-changing opportunities.
Here's an email exchange between Jason and me, in which he explains in a little more detail:
RYAN:
That whole web site optimization thing—isn’t it really just putting lipstick on a pig?
JASON:
I think “I hate you so much” might be a succinct way of responding, but I'll provide a little more detail:
Web Site Optimization is exactly like putting lipstick on a pig, but only if you start out with a pig. And if you are starting out with a pig, your opportunities for improving things are limited, and you’d be using the wrong tool to fix the problem. We are talking here about the concept of a “local maximum” which is a fancy, math term applied to mean “the best something can be within a limited dynamic.” Consider the aforementioned pig’s ability to fly, which, metaphorically speaking, is not particularly developed. We could take a pig and genetically modify it to be more aerodynamic. We could investigate building pig hang-gliders and attempt to train the smartest pigs to use them. But even in the best case, with the most aerodynamic pig, benefiting from the best training, and using the best pig flying technology, it will never fly as well as a bird. The best case flying scenario for a pig (the pig’s local maximum as far as flight is concerned) is nowhere near as effective as a bird’s. In that scenario, you’d be better off exchanging the pig for a bird at the start, rather than waste any time or effort teaching a pig to fly better.
Applied to the web: if a site sucks so much- if the goals and purpose are unclear, if the information architecture looks like my desk (at the moment), if the navigation is counterintuitive and the messaging has absolutely no intersect with the audience, then no amount of optimization in the world will make it right. The local maximum of that crappy site is too low for any optimization to matter. Or (even worse) you’d need the infinite number of monkeys to stop typing Shakespeare and to start applying experiments to your site to get the right combination where testing would make a real difference. Neither is very efficient. If your site is the pixilated equivalent of a pig, you need much more elemental help from a user experience expert first (know any?). Until you fix the fatal flaw(s) in a site, anything else you do will be throwing good money after bad.
Site Side Optimization works well in circumstances where the local maximum is high, but for some reason, the site is not achieving it. This can be due to single points of failure on the site, like a specific conversion path or page underperforming, or because the audience needs to be targeted more specifically, or because the existing content is stale/irrelevant. In each of these cases, experimental testing can make a huge difference. Optimization also works exceptionally well (and this is far more interesting to me) when applied as a method of trying out a new (and potentially risky) idea that could radically change and significantly improve an experience. In both of these examples, the basic site is healthy, and the optimization program serves as a tool to reach its fullest potential.
RYAN:
But what I keep looking for is the way to test birds against pigs, not in the sense of which flies better, because as a user experience expert I do have the capability to predict the winner of that contest—but when I don’t have a clear sense of the best conceptual solution. For example, maybe I just can’t decide between eggs and bacon. Can optimization help design a better breakfast, or only decide between pulp and no-pulp in the OJ?
JASON:
Optimization can test more conceptual ideas, but it will be really hard to unpack the WHY after we determine which one wins. Most sites aren’t deciding between bacon and eggs, but rather between the bacon, eggs and hashbrowns with coffee or the granola, fruit and yogurt with yerba matte. If the former wins in a test, I don’t know whether it’s because of the bacon (which will usually win over everything) or the coffee, or because the person deciding had granola for the past three days, and would have taken ANYTHING other than more granola.
The other trick about testing high concepts in a website format is that you would have to build each solution to test them, which is usually more expensive than testing out wireframes or front-end prototypes in front of a more controlled audience.
RYAN:
First, you seem to be suggesting that a test win for the bacon breakfast might not imply extensibility for bacon breakfasts in general: That because, lacking control, the results might be idiosyncratic, they might not therefore apply broadly. Next week you might get a different result. My question is, why does that matter? And why does “knowing why” the bacon breakfast worked matter, as long as you know it worked.
JASON:
It is definitely a question I get from clients a lot. Why do I care about the individual elements of a variant- if the variant as a whole makes us more money, let’s just launch it and move on. I can’t fault the sentiment, but knowing why the bacon worked could lead to better tests, more focused messaging and (even more) cash money. I want to know that it’s the bacon by itself that is the motivating factor outside of all the other influences. Let’s say that we ran a test breakfast against a bowl of Total cereal and we tested bacon with powdered eggs as the experimental variant. Now let’s assume that bacon and powdered eggs lost to the control by 1%. You could take the position that we would do better to serve Total because we want to avoid losing that 1%, and you would be right. But what if you knew that the bacon by itself actually improved the breakfast by 15%, but the powdered eggs were so crappy that they hurt the breakfast by 16%, so you netted the 1% loss? If I controlled for all the variables in my breakfast, that knowledge would a) help me make a better breakfast overall (just serve bacon), and b) will also prevent me from throwing away a positive variable simply because it was paired with a really negative one.
I imagine you run into that a lot with prototyping and wonder how you deal with it in the UX world. If a subject totally fails at a task, are you ever afraid of overcorrecting a prototype to account for it? Do you ever throw the baby out with the bathwater? How do you control for that?
RYAN:
A great question. One of the answers is that in usability testing, you're looking for usability problems. So as long as your test participants are representative of your users as a whole, major failures are, practically speaking, never anomalous. If your user population is one million, and one of the eight people participating in your test has trouble understanding some aspect of the interface, what are the odds they're the only person who's going to have that problem?
The other thing I wonder about is what happens when what you’re trying to accomplish is harder to measure than conversion (e.g. brand lift) or if you want to measure it over time (e.g. engagement). Especially in social media, it’s quality that matters, not quantity. You want to know how valuable your user-generated videos are more than you want to know how many of them you have. Can web site optimization help you get to answers?
JASON:
Ah, you and your social media. When are you going to come to terms with the fact that this whole thing is a fad? The future is in email, Ryan, and lots of ‘em. Mark my words.
Absent a more qualitative tie-in with optimization (surveys, satisfaction scores, etc.) you will be hard-pressed to get good data about branding or the impact of social media. But I’m not saying you shouldn’t optimize for branding or social media. I’m saying you need to get that qualitative kicker. I’ve done a few branding tests, and I think they provide some interesting feedback. But I’ve never optimized where a KPI has to be judged on quality (e.g., good comments vs. troll comments) or off the site entirely (e.g., buzz in the blogosphere). Sounds fun.
Twitter: Trivial. Beautifully So.
By Ryan Turner | Nov 11, 2008 11:18:37 AM
I wrote a post a year and a half ago on Twitter in which I identified two types of use for it. This was at the height of the initial buzz about Twitter, and while some folks were really excited to finally see an HTML / SMS / IM social application, others worried aloud that Twitter, for the same reasons it offers such a low threshold of entry, would also tend to erode the quality of social relationships online. The thoughtful anti-Twitter point of view was that it encourages triviality, and the gist of my post was that while that may be true, there are times when trivialities are useful.
Since I wrote that post, I've become an avid Twitterer, and I have to say my perspective on Twitter, and indeed on triviality, has changed. I now see triviality as maybe the critical element of truly meaningful relationships, online and off, and Twitter has accordingly become one of the cornerstone services of my personal and professional social lives.
That sounds crazy, I know, and while it may be true that I am prone to crazy-sounding declaratives, I'm actually not kidding about this. I now use Twitter at work very frequently, mostly within my team, and it has improved our functioning and, dare I say it, made us closer, more personally connected.
Let me float an assertion: The deeper the relationship, the greater the proportion of it dedicated to triviality; and beyond, say, 90% triviality, the relationship isn't a relationship at all. And likewise with meaningful interactions--if everything is meaningful, it's not a relationship, it's therapy.
So here is my Bullseye Diagram of Love, illustrating the way I'm starting to envision online social systems supporting healthy relationships:
So I'm arguing for Twitter, or an analogous triviality service (ha!) as a supplement to existing relationships, not as a full-fledged social channel in and of itself. As a social network, I actually do think it's useless, or worse. And you can take that as a caveat.
But I am saying I think triviality in general and as supported by Twitter, in both personal and professional settings, is indispensable--that we can and should deliberately design it into social systems.
The Power of Doing it RITE
By Nick Legget | Jul 30, 2008 2:59:33 PM
Cross-posted from User Research Findings.
I was once again reminded of just how powerful user feedback can be. And this time it was a RITE Usability study that reopened my eyes.
If you're not familiar, RITE stands for Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation, a variation of traditional usability testing documented by researchers at Microsoft in 2002. In short, you test a design with five users on Day 1, improve the design based on feedback on Day 2, test again on Day 3, iterate on Day 4, and then test the final design on Day 5 with eight users. A RITE study is not always appropriate, such as when there are many tasks or if the design is quite fixed, but whenever possible I'd highly recommend it. Here's why.
Some benefits of the RITE Method:
Team collaboration: The development and design teams REALLY get into it. With traditional usability testing it's sometimes hard to get dev and design to attend even one session, but here it's a requirement. The user feedback quickly initiates intense collaboration sessions which are just plain fun. And it's very rewarding when changes to the designs resolve problems found earlier.
Client satisfaction: If the client attends any of the sessions they quickly see the value of user feedback, as well as the team's problem-solving skills and creativity in action. Usually this voodoo is behind the curtain, but putting it in plain sight actually demonstrates the value of the work.
Time savings: There's a reason "Rapid" is part of this method's name. The changes between the first and final designs were absolutely dramatic in our study. (Unfortunately we can't show the screens due to client restrictions.) We tested a Flash-based tool for narrowing down TVs of interest from a large number of choices.
Though it's not practical to go through all the changes, there were dozens of improvements based directly on user feedback. Most importantly, the most severe usability issues were completely resolved in the final iteration.
While there are challenges associated with the RITE Method such as perceived higher-costs (I say "perceived" because arguably it's actually less expensive but it buckets the costs more up-front) and a demanding schedule, I think the benefits easily tip the scale.
Taking a 9-Year-Old Out for a Beer
By Jason Carmel | Jul 22, 2008 3:49:33 PM
In exactly three days, my nine and seven year-old nieces will be visiting me and my wife in Seattle, and I'm terrified.
I should explain further that I'm not terrified of the girls themselves, who are about as fun-loving, well-mannered and adorable as you can get. This isn't the problem.
The problem is that I am expected to entertain said nieces for a period of several days and, after considerable reflection, I really have no idea how to do that. As an interesting point of contrast, I hosted a bachelor party for a friend last weekend and was able to pull that off without hesitation. The secret for the bachelor party was good food and lots and lots of beer. Since these map to my interests inherently and I was similar to the other attendees, I had a good chance of overlapping with the wants and needs of my guests. This is patently not the case with my nieces for whom (I'm told) beer is out of the question, and "good food" means, in all likelihood, a hot-dog and go-gurt. What do girls in elementary school like to do? How do I talk to one for longer than six minutes? I'm starting to panic here.
The ironic thing is that I see websites confront this problem all the time, and one of the things in my job description is to help them deal with it. A website gets 10 visitors- half of them are attendees at a bachelor party and the other half are 9-year-old girls. Make sure each of them is happy...and...GO! There are many different ways to approach this challenge, but the one truism is that an experience that proposes to serve both simultaneously will almost certainly fail, unless you are basically a blank, purely transactional page.
My User Experience colleagues will (rightly) suggest that I do a bit of research to understand why my nieces are coming to Seattle in the first place before I attempt to design an experience for them. Based on feedback from their parents, I think my nieces are coming to hang out with us (primary goal) and to do cool things (as defined by young girls) in Seattle (secondary goal). This is decidedly different from my bachelor party colleagues who came to Seattle to do things that will embarrass and endanger the groom (primary goal) and to not get arrested (secondary goal).
So I am on the lookout for places in Seattle that are unique and kid-friendly, while allowing for the primary goal of spending quality time with us, and I am thankful that I don't have to cater to my bachelor party friends at the same time, as I fear it would have failed to meet their expectations. That being said, if you have any ideas about where to take my nieces, please comment below. Please. Seriously.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with an intellectual exercise: How many customer types do you think you have and who are they (then ask three of your co-workers to see if they agree)? And is the experience offered on your site targeted to each customer type? Or are you trying to take a 9-year-old out for beer?
Wish me luck this weekend.
Justin Marshall on Social Media Marketing
By Ryan Turner | Jul 16, 2008 4:21:03 PM
Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.
Here is the video of Justin Marshall's talk last week, titled Money, Media, and Your Mom's Peach Cobbler: Social Media Marketing Done Right. Justin is a colleague of mine at ZAAZ and a major contributor to our efforts in social media.
Justin's take on social media revolves around 3 critical points: Find your customer's shared passion, build value through community, and focus on strategic objectives. His talk includes some great stories and examples, including a sample concept for a social media campaign done right. (Are you listening, Whole Foods?)
Here's the 15-minute video:
And here are the slides, so you can follow along:
I'll be posting the other presentations from the event as I get them ready. Video processing, especially at my novice level, takes forever.
You're Invited: Social Media Event at ZAAZ Seattle July 8th
By Ryan Turner | Jun 30, 2008 10:58:45 AM
Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.
People keep asking me when we're going to host another event at the ZAAZ office's notorious Z-Bar in Seattle. Well...
I'm super excited about the lineup for this event, which includes industry leaders from corporate, agency, and independent circles who share passion and expertise in the human dimensions of social computing. Knowing most of these folks pretty well, I think I can guarantee an evening of thought-provoking conversation.
The format for this event will be similar to the previous one I organized, which seemed to go pretty well. We'll have short talks from each speaker followed by a panel discussion. Plus, snacks and beer.
Here's the rundown on the speakers:
Brian Fling of Flingmedia is a full-fledged mobile design geek and human Swiss Army knife. His talk, "Mobile 2.0: Design and Develop for the iPhone and Beyond" will explore some of the social dimensions of the emerging mobile world.
My colleague Justin Marshall is behind some of the most exciting work we've done in social media. His take on social media for marketers, titled "Money, Media, and Your Mom's Peach Cobbler: Social Media Marketing Done Right," offers guidance for marketers looking to engage with customers online.
Samantha Starmer is a highly-respected thought leader in the local information architecture community. In addition to her work at REI, she co-teaches the UW Information School's Summer IA Institute. Her talk, "Single Athletic Female seeking Single Slender Male: The Marriage of Social Media and Metadata," promises to reveal the secrets of better online living through metadata.
Nancy White of Full Circle Associates has been doing online community since WAY before it was cool. Her broadly-ranging expertise includes online learning and facilitation, communities of practice, technology in the developing world, and social technology in general. Her talk is titled "Slow Community."
Wendy Chisholm is a former co-editor of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and a passionate advocate for universally-accessible design online and off. She's currently working on what promises to become "THE book" on accessibility for the emerging Web.
We're really lucky in the Seattle area to have access to such quality thinkers and experts. I hope you'll join us, and if you do plan to attend, drop me a note at ryant (at) zaaz dot com so I can get a rough headcount.
The Facebook event is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=66791410200.
I hope to see you there!
