Posts in User Experience
Using Remote Research to Get Actionable Insights
By Nick Leggett | Sep 20, 2010 3:32:29 PM
Imagine—the economy is in recession, budgets are t-i-g-h-t, yet you still need to provide recommendations that are based on more than a hunch. What’s a digital agency to do? Thank goodness for that word, “digital,” as the advent of new technologies has made it possible to get actionable insights at a lower cost, often with even better data quality. This will be the first of several posts on how ZAAZ is using Remote Research methods to get great insight and ensure that the Voice of the Customer informs our recommendations.
Would the Best Performing Label Please Stand Up
In this post we’ll look at a project we did for our long-time client, and one of the largest Credit Unions the nation, BECU (Boeing Employees’ Credit Union).
The project was designed to answer just one important question, “What is the best navigation label for people who are looking for Internet and mobile banking options?”
We created five different designs of the BECU homepage, each with a different label or label placement, and hosted them on a staging server. The alternative labels were:
- Remote Account Access
- Mobile & Online Banking in the primary and global navigation
- Remote Banking
- Online Banking
We then asked five groups of 30 people per group to accomplish the same task, each using a different version of the label on the home page. The task was:
“Use the site to find how to view your banking information using your Internet-enabled cell phone.”
Four follow-up questions were asked. They were:
- How difficult was it to complete this task?
- How certain did you feel that the name of the section would take you to the information you were looking for?
- What specific information would you expect to see when you click on the name of the section?
- What, if anything, would be a better name or label for this information?
After only 48 hours, the results showed that ALL the suggested labels performed better than the original label (“Account Access”). And the study suggested a winning label, “Mobile & Online Banking”, as well.
Remote Research helped answer a key navigation question using more than an educated guess or emotionlly-driven opinions. And because it was an unmoderated study (e.g., participants completed the study without a researcher present), and the tool did most of the analysis, we were able to find the best solution very quickly.
Look for more posts on how we employ Remote Research to ensure that the Voice of the Customer is heard, coming soon.
Creating Compelling iPad Apps
By Anders Rosenquist | May 7, 2010 4:06:16 PM
Apple's iPad has only been on the market for two months, but already it is changing how we engage with content. The iPad is poised
to
change the landscape of magazine publishing—both in how readers consume
their
favorite editorial content, and in how magazines, struggling with the
decline
of print readership and advertising, can grow their revenue streams in
new and
immersive ways.
After
Steve Jobs announced the coming of the
iPad in January 2010, the editors and publishers of Entertainment Weekly
magazine wanted to create an iPad app to coincide with the launch of the
new
product.
The app
takes a simple and very popular
feature of the magazine, "The Must List"— featuring the Top 10 pop
culture phenomena of the moment—and presents it in a playful,
interactive set
of panels that makes excellent use of the iPad’s scale, touch interface
and
visual punch. (free download from iTunes)
I recently sat down with ZAAZ's Jon McVey, Executive Creative Director, and Tim Klauda, Creative Director, to talk about their strategic and creative work on EW's ipad app..
This is the first iPad app for Entertainment Weekly magazine. Why was EW interested in creating an iPad app?
Jon: I'd say their motivation was
similar to what we are seeing across the publishing world: The iPad is a second
chance. Publishers first tried to bring their print content to the Web, but
they didn't do it right. You don't have to look far to find examples of high-profile
failures in the magazine world. Established publications like Gourmet magazine
are gone.
What excites you most about creating
experiences on the iPad?
Jon: It represents a whole new way of thinking about things. I'm a big magazine lover, and with an iPad app, I’m able to check articles out, have them on hand, with no big piles of print magazines. Now I can read an article, get more information and buy related items, all in one intimate experience. It allows for richer storytelling.
The iPad is more of a lifestyle object, and the apps are mainly about your lifestyle. Because you can choose them, they’re an extension of you. A laptop represents work, but it’s fun time when you are on the iPad.
What was different about creating for Web vs. for the iPad? What can you do for the iPad that you couldn't do when creating a website?
Jon: The Web is clunky. But the iPad is fast and responsive. You get to the content pretty quick. You don't have to put as much on a page.
Tim: You don't have Web conventions. … You don't need a site map for an app. It’s refreshing to design for something very specific. It allows you to hone in on the relationship between the content and the person engaging with it.
How did you decide on what features to include in the app?
Tim: We didn't really talk about it in
terms of features. We talked about the content that makes up the Must List, and
how we'd enhance it.
For an app, the content is the
feature. You start with how the content can be relevant to someone and how it affects
that persons lifestyle, then we extended that experience. For the Must List, we
have 10 things. Some are books, some are movies—and then we help the user act
on them.
Will you adapt the iPad app
for mobile phones?
Tim: The Entertainment Weekly app will come out on the iPhone as well. It will have the same content and a similar experience, but we had to rethink the UI a little bit. For example, it’s easier to use on the go with one thumb. The experience needs to fits the device. The iPhone is about lists and getting there, rather than interacting with the list before getting there. The iPad requires more of an investment in the experience.
Tim: They need to look at all the
mobile devices – iPad, iPhone, Windows, Android. They need to see where
their audience is, and look at what their brand has to offer each device.
How is the app doing in the Apple App
Store?
Tim: The EW app was featured in the New
and Noteworthy section in the app store, and that brought it up into the store’s
Top 20 free apps.
The iPad is just a big iPhone. Isn’t it?
By Anders Rosenquist | Apr 1, 2010 9:28:41 PM
When Apple officially introduced the iPad in January after months (years?) of speculation of a tablet-based computer, I heard and read more complaints about what it couldn't do than what it could. "Where is the file system?" "I can't have multiple windows open at once?" "It doesn't multitask?" Clearly Apple blew it by not providing a standard operating system on this new device. A laptop replacement seemed to have been assumed. And most of the arguments about the limitations of the iPad are true - it doesn't run a full OS, and it's not a replacement for your laptop. So isn't the iPad just a big iPhone?
In January it was. At its unveiling we only had glimpses into what the iPad could do, including demonstrations of a handful of new apps and the ability to run all your favorite iPhone apps. But it didn't seem to do anything really new, anything different from what the iPhone could already do. And it was bigger and more expensive, and it couldn't even make calls. Even the shape of the device looked like an iPhone. But when the iPad is released in two days, it will stop being compared to an iPhone or a tablet computer or a laptop - it will stand on its own. Here's why:
Over the holidays my dad said he wanted to buy his wife a netbook so she could browse the web and share pictures with her friends and listen to music. He saw an inexpensive one at Costco - a cheap option for the handful of tasks she needed to do. "Don't worry," my dad reassured me, "I have a friend at the office that will help install software and help with any issues." And last month my wife's dad, a farmer in Central Oregon, recently decided it was finally time to dust off the used mac we gave him a few years back and give it another go. He was looking into taking a class at the local JC so he could learn (as he calls it) the "basics", and then teach his wife how to use it. These are not uncommon scenarios I've encountered over the years as the family IT guy. In many cases what they often needed was something that could do what they needed simply and easily, without the overhead, the viruses, or the steep learning curve.
I think the iPad ushers in a new way for us to think about computing, pushing us past the mental model of the file system, window and memory management, and other administrative elements. A recent post by Steven Frank sums this up well. For the majority of us that have grown up with computers, how we think about a computer now seems hardwired. But what about the new generation - the kids under say 7 or 8 - that have played with a touch-based device like the iPhone and simply "got it". What is a computer to them? What is their model of how it works? Similarly, how about the many people, my dad's wife and father-in-law included, that have never taken an interest in computers or have decided the effort to learn and maintain them is often too great - what is a computer to them?
I'd argue that Apple's big statement with the iPad, aside from it being lightweight and multitouch, it that they've pushed the OS further into the background and brought the content front and center. In many ways they established this with the iPhone, but now they are taking it to a much bigger device, one that falls somewhere between a phone and a laptop. They have effectively hidden much of the OS from the user - users interact directly with the content - so that the majority of people that use it will never think about what is missing.
At ZAAZ, as we've been building for the iPhone and iPad, content as the interface has been a guiding principle. When the iPhone came out, Tufte underscored the importance of removing administrative debris from the screen. On a mobile device, you don't have the freedom to include multiple persistent navigation elements, controls, and menus. You focus on the content and you act on the content as directly as possible. This holds true for larger-screen touch devices like the iPad.
A recent Computerworld article speculates on the high interest in the iPad by the under-12 demographic. The post was written more from a "will you get your kids one?" angle, but I think it points to a much larger fact - kids are going to grow up using more and more of these types of devices. They already gravitate to the iPhone and it's touch interface. They are naturally going to jump to the iPad and other similar interfaces. Again, kids don't care about multitasking or file systems. What they care about is content. And ultimately, that's what we all care about too.
[Cross posted at mobileux.net]
Mobile UX and the Google Phone
By Anders Rosenquist | Dec 12, 2009 11:48:32 PM
[cross posted from mobileux.net] My colleague Chris Kerns gave a shout out earlier today about Techcrunch's reported existence of an Android-powered device that will be offered directly from Google. There have been rumors for months about a Google Phone (even hints back when Android itself was first announced many moons ago.) Now this device from Google hasn't been officially announced - just tweets from some Google employees who have be using the device, and some rumors at this point. The early impressions are very positive and the specs do look impressive: thinner than the iPhone, 1Ghz+ Snapdragon processor, unlocked, OLED display, great camera, sound-canceling technology. This all sounds good, but good specs don't necessarily make for a good mobile user experience. However, there are a few "features" of this device that stand out and stand to make the Google Phone a game-changer. Here's why.
First, this is Google's first hardware entry into the mass market. This puts Google in the position of owning both the software and the hardware, and being able to optimize the user experience. They of course have to get it right - tight integration of all aspects of the device - but this puts them much more in the Apple and RIM (Blackberry) camp of being able to call the shots on all aspects of the device and how the user interacts with it. The fast processor will help as well. My experience from owning a G1, and more recently a Motorola Cliq, is that Android needs something fast under the hood to make the screens and interactions move fluidly. Both of my Android devices get bogged down easily from background processes, screen refreshes, and network activity, which make for a painful experience at times. I'm particularly not very fond of the unregistered screen presses and choppy scrolling.
The second "feature" worth noting is that the device is rumored to be sold unlocked by Google itself. What is this a big deal, considering you can already buy many unlocked devices? Several reasons:
- Google will most likely offer an attractive and competitive price point. Google will want to get these devices into many hands, and may be willing to cover the subsidization costs (that the carriers normally absorb). If any of the free (read: company subsidized) products that Google currently offers is any indication, the Google Phone may carry stong price appeal in the market.
- The device-network balance will shift. By buying an unlocked device, you get to choose the device first and then shop for the carrier. This flips the model we are used to in the U.S. where carriers tend to have "exclusives" on mobile devices - subsidized devices in exchange or 1- or 2-year contracts - thus locking the user onto a particular network if they want a particular device. Want an iPhone? You're stuck with AT&T. How about a Palm Pre? Hello Sprint. By putting the device first, you are able to select a carrier that meets your particular needs, be that best nationwide coverage, lowest-cost plans, discounted international calling, etc.
- Carrier contracts may change or (hopefully) go away. If you buy an unlocked phone and can go to any carrier, what will the carrier be locking you into a contract for? If you are not getting the device subsidized by the carrier, they are really acting as your ISP and providing the data pipe. Aside from startup costs to joining a new carrier like porting your number or activating an account, the whole idea of the Early Termination Fee will become irrelevant.
Oh, and the Google Phone is rumored to have Google Voice included, which allows you to make VoIP calls and bypass many of the services offered by carriers such as visual voicemail, low-cost international rates, and built in SMS messaging - all additional charges by the carriers. Another thorn-in-the-carrier-side and disruptive (did AT&T Apple ever get around to approving Google Voice for the iPhone?) I haven't heard (beyond speculation) about ad integration. It would seem that a phone built by Google would naturally integrate advertising (and they did just buy the mobile ad network AdMob.) Perhaps the device will be free, but will have banner ads in your calendar and music player. Who knows - we will hopefully see soon.
With the Google Phone, I see several potential wins for users here - the user experience win that comes from tight hardware and software integration, and the consumer win that comes from changing established models in the wireless industry. These aren't a given, but we've seen boundaries pushed by the introduction of the iPhone - perhaps Google can push them even further.
Anders Rosenquist is a Senior User Experience Researcher at ZAAZ and works on a variety of usability and UX issues. Anders is particularly interested in the multiple faces of mobile, including UX design, usability testing, strategy, and the mobile ecosystem/devices.
Creating Solid Mobile UX
By Anders Rosenquist | Aug 14, 2009 12:15:18 PM
[Cross-posted from MobileUX]
The momentum of mobile application development has accelerated over the past year. Apps have increased the functionality of mobile devices, and the success of Apple's iPhone app store has lead the charge in the introduction of app stores on other platforms such as Android, Palm, Nokia, and soon Windows Mobile. A key element in the adoption of mobile apps is a focus the user experience. There are lots of good apps out there, but many more bad ones.
So how do you ensure creating a great
mobile experience for users? There are two key ingredients: One is focus, the
other is testing. "Focus" actually has multiple parts, including
simplicity, consistency, and great performance. Taken together, these parts
help pinpoint the core elements to meets users' needs. Focus is especially
important for clients that have existing sites or applications - there is often
a strong push to include much of the functionality that a user would encounter
on a desktop. But because mobile has many different interactions than the
desktop - frequency and duration of use, context (e.g. riding the bus, walking
downtown), and input methods - it important to focus on core elements that be
engaged with during common “mobile” usage.
Edward Tufte nicely describes all the extra
screen stuff as the "computer administration debris" - on mobile the
content is the interface.
Amazon has effectively minimized this debris and focused on content in their mobile app. By
providing the core elements, mobile users can quickly and easily engage with Amazon's extensive
range of products and purchase them. Their mobile app is
highly focused.
The other ingredient in ensuring your
mobile app hits its mark is usability testing. Here the key is to have users
engage with the app on the actual device and to have them complete authentic
tasks. We like to have users sit or stand in the lab while interacting with the
device. We record the device
interface (either directly or using an emulator that runs on the observer's
computer) along with the user's voice and facial expressions. Here we capture
interaction issues as well as affective elements - how the user engages with
the app, what gets them excited, etc.
This provides a great opportunity to test out what features to include,
along with highlighting issues that need to be addressed.
I've quickly described two core pieces in mobile app creation - focus and testing. It is important to note that there is a ton of thinking and decision making that goes into this process. But doing so helps ensure the best mobile experience possible.
Anders Rosenquist is a Senior User Experience Researcher at ZAAZ and works on a variety of usability and UX issues. Anders is particularly interested in the multiple faces of mobile, including interface design, testing, strategy, and the mobile ecosystem.
Social Media Teams: Different on the Agency Side than Internal
By Ryan Turner | Aug 10, 2009 7:27:51 PM
[Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.]
One of the things I've been saying a lot lately is that over the next couple years, we can expect to see corporations adding dedicated internal social media teams. Does this sound like a statement of the obvious? Then maybe the corollary is more interesting: I think agencies should do the opposite.
I've seen a similar pattern in a dozen or more corporations in the past year: Responsibility for social media falls to the person or people who get interested and raise their hands. They come from PR, customer service, marketing--and sometimes just out of the woodwork. Good!
In other words, responsibility for social media tends to happen in an ad hoc way--and I actually suspect ad hoc is a perfect way to staff an emerging discipline. And staff it you must.
Social media requires a new combination of skill sets, traversing all the disciplines I just mentioned, but also including strong writing skills, a thick skin, and the social savvy to interact with customers through online media in ways that are on-brand, authentic, human, and bounded by corporate guidelines, policy, and politics. It's hard, but for the right people it's super fun.
For the corporate social media team, representing the brand is a full-time job, with its own discrete challenges and rewards. They need to focus on developing the skills and experience to do it well.
But on the agency side, the whole thing is different. Agencies need to bring to bear their full range of capabilities to support clients' social media efforts, and that includes all the "traditional" digital disciplines--at the agency where I work, we have a 10-person social media team that includes people from development, analytics, search, optimization, user experience, creative, and client services. It's a witchy brew. Our goal is to implode the whole idea of "social media" in the next 2 years.
So my message to agencies is: Adapt, or specialize yourself into an oblivion-vortex!
To be sure, social media specialty agencies (I have friends at several of them) provide a tremendously valuable service with their depth of expertise in social media. But my prediction is, as web marketing evolves further, the breath of expertise brought to bear by "traditional digital" agencies will pose a grave threat to the specialists. They simply won't match digital agencies' capabilities in development, analytics, creative, usability, planning, and optimization.
Seven years ago, we were explaining the idea of online community. Three years ago, we were selling the importance of Web 2.0. Today, we're answering ubiquitous demand from clients that "social media" be included as a component in all our web work. Give it another 2 years and clients will see "web" and "social" as synonymous--data, content, service, identity, content objects, and relationships as integral to a holistic web strategy.
So on the agency side, there should ultimately be no such thing as a "Social Media Team," only a company made of web-savvy, passion-driven professionals who can support all aspects of corporate social media efforts--from concept through implementation. The nuts and bolts, and rubber meeting the road, and the delivery of the service belong on the client side; and the vision, concept, and creative / conceptual infrastructure are where agencies can help. All in all, I have to admit, it ends up looking a lot like Mad Men, which my 90 year old Grandmother, true story, described as "the most realistic show yet about the '50's."
"It shows," she says, "exactly how we lived."
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.
