Interesting study on ‘why people share online’ from the New York Times Customer Insights Group.
The study uncovers six sharing personas and their motivations:
>> Download the study: http://nytmarketing.whsites.net/mediakit/pos/
Interesting study on ‘why people share online’ from the New York Times Customer Insights Group.
The study uncovers six sharing personas and their motivations:
>> Download the study: http://nytmarketing.whsites.net/mediakit/pos/
For a long time we have been repeating the mantra “Content is King” but how much of our UX work actually has impact on content? User research is excellent at identifying user needs and information seeking, sharing and consumption behaviour however clients, stakeholders and development teams (and even UX professionals) tend to concentrate on testing and recommending solutions to design, navigation, interaction, and technology problems. Even after user research has discovered content “opportunities” what is the transition or deliverable that needs to occur for the research to activate a content strategy. How many of us actually test “content prototypes” with users or have sophisticated content measurement tools? How influential can we be with our clients “the content experts”? In this presentation Scott Bryant of News Digital Media (NDM) will explain how the NDM USiT team are trying to understand and test content consumption. He’ll share some insights gained from interviewing the people “who make content” happen in both news and product focused contexts and the practicalities they face when considering content strategy and using user research inputs. He’ll also discuss approaches to being influential with the content experts and ask you to share some of your content strategy tips.
A user research method I've used many times, and talked and written about several times too, is the cultural probe (also known as a 'diary study' or simply 'user research diary').
Briefly, the purpose of a cultural probe is to conduct user research from a distance. So rather than having to literally follow the user around for two weeks, they contribute to the probe, either explicitly by writing 'diary' entries, or implicitly by leaving 'digital footprints' of their online activity. One might label the former as a reflective diary probe and the latter as a 'lifestream' log probe. Both types are useful, the lifestream log as evidence akin to analytics of what they actually do, and the reflective diaries in terms of exploring the motivations behind what they think and do.
In years gone by, diary studies have ridden both peaks and troughs in popularity with social and market research practitioners, but these days there are now many ways to conduct a probe online, for little or no cost (aside from recruiting users and compensating them for their time). For example, you can easily setup a blog to act as an online diary—I've done this using Wordpress on a number of occasions—but if you're less technically inclined or want the convenience of using an "off the shelf" tool, then there are things like Tumblr and Posterous.
“While 22% may seem low at first, it is actually quite high as many page-views are repeat views where the visitors have previously scrolled all the way to the page bottom and are already familiar with the page.”Ok, well how long was the page? Further more, when digging deeper, Clicktale did not find that longer pages performed worse than shorter ones. The graph below shows the percentage of users who scrolled more than 90% of the page relative to the page length.
We missed last week, so this week is a bumper issue!
(contributed by Pat)
Over on Greenbook, the folks from AMP Agency write Unraveling Her Shopping DNA: Four Lifelong Shopping Mind-Sets about their research into women and shopping behaviour which...
...uncovered four distinct and separate shopping mind-sets that stay with a woman throughout the entire course of her life. In fact, despite whatever life throws at these women, their approach to shopping does not change.
(contributed by Manuel)
Luke Wroblewski has written this "unique set of resources for software designers and developers working on touch-based user interfaces":
The guide contains:
- an overview of the core gestures used for most touch commands
- how to utilize these gestures to support major user actions
- visual representations of each gesture to use in design documentation and deliverables
- an outline of how popular software platforms support core touch gestures
No waffle, just links.
You will have noticed we missed another weekly blog post last week. Take it as a sign that we are really busy :)
(contributed by Melissa)
You've seen popurls.com but now there's UXurls.com. It's an aggregation of everything UX from the last 24 hours, created by Harry Brignull, who says:
It’s a really simple popurls clone, intended for people who are too busy to set themselves up with their own RSS reader, or just fancy a quick glance at the sites I’m reading.
This blog is not one of the 130 sites Harry has included, so you'll still need to come back and visit us :)
(contributed by Chris)
On UXmatters, Michael Hawley shares a case study where his team used the Product Reaction Cards developed by Microsoft Research to assess the "desirability" of design alternatives, from the user's point of view:
To test which approach would best align with our intended goals, we conducted a desirability test using product reaction cards. Starting with the full Microsoft list of cards, we revised the list to include only the adjectives we felt were important for this brand, after assessing our early user research. We narrowed the final list to 60 adjectives, but kept the 60/40 split between positive and negative terms Benedek and Miner had suggested.
We've used this technique, or a very similar approach, on many occasions. The Product Reaction Cards are quite versatile and can be used in many other situations also. For example, for producing a view of the desired future state of a system, which can be very interesting in comparison/contrast with that group of people's view of the current system.
In another recent project, users were asked to liken the website concepts to an image of a person. The images personified a variety of emotional responses, for instance a cool, young woman or an older, corporate gentleman. Overall, users felt one of the designs was quite young and feminine, which is what the project aimed to achieve.
(contributed by Angus)
We really like Gene Smith's experience maps, produced for a recent project:
[...] the research was much richer than anything we could capture in an alignment model. Hardcore gamers invest a lot of time--on forums, in stores, with friends--before buying a game. We wanted to show how these different experiences shaped their behaviour.
The solution we came up with was an experience map--a diagram that combines a persona with an abstracted story about the gamer's journey from researching games to purchasing, playing to sharing experiences about that game. The story includes the details on the different channels where gamers get their information along with supporting quotes form our research.
They are great diagrams, I imagine most UX practitioners would be very envious of such high quality deliverables!
(contributed by Pat)
In what might help to improve website accessibility, the E-Access Bulletin reports that a new UK academic research network aims to enable computers to describe visual content on web pages:
The network is aiming to develop a web browser plug-in which would be able to analyse an image and describe it to a visually impaired user. It is one of a number of projects exploring computer vision and computer language programming to be undertaken by the new V&L Net – the Vision and Language Network of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Welcome to 2010! This is our first first weekly blog post for the new year, hopefully to be followed by many more, as well as individual posts by USiT team members. Stay tuned, and please send any feedback to blog[at]usit.com.au
(contributed by Pat)
John Williams gives a good example of why we need to look beyond demographics...
This [...] highlights what researchers refer to as psychographics - emotions, beliefs, attitudes that explore why people do what they do. It adds an important dimension, giving you much deeper insight into consumer motivation - it helps you understand what makes shoppers open their wallets...
A nice overview that you should show clients who fail to look deeper than age, sex and income to see the real people they are describing with market segmentation. Hat tip to the Next Gen Market Research group on LinkedIn for this and lots of other useful research tidbits.
(contributed by Pat)
A new report from One to One Interactive on user generated content (video and flash animation) gives a good glimpse of the more sophisticated research methods being employed across market research and user research today.
Some of the findings in the report are quite interesting (such as "57% of Internet video viewers intentionally watch Internet videos to change their current emotional state" and "Supporting viewers in the creation of the right expectations for your digital media may be more important than simply getting them to watch your material") but it is the approach used to study engagement with UGC media that is most intriguing...
While watching their media, participants were connected to OTOinsight’s Quantemo™ neuromarketing research system. Quantemo™ simultaneously records multiple biophysical signals (breath rate, galvanic skin response, heart rate, body temperature) in addition to eye and click tracking information. After recording the biophysical measures, Quantemo™ combines the measures into a single representative measure of physiological engagement. The Quantemo™ Physiological Index or QPI serves as a single point of reference of the overall level of physical engagement (or disengagement) exhibited by a research participant. Positive QPI scores represent stronger physiological engagement while negative QPI scores represent weaker physiological engagement.
A thinly disguised piece of PR for their product it might be, but very interesting nonetheless.
(contributed by Pat)
There have been many reactions, rebukes and arguments generated by Don Norman's blog post Technology First, Needs Last (which we mentioned a few weeks ago) but one quite prominent response came from Bruce Nussbaum at Business Week...
Norman tells designers to get over themselves. It is science and technology that drive truly disruptive innovation, not Design’s focus on the needs and wants of people. Ethnographic research, Norman says, can generate small, incremental innovations but the blockbuster game-changing stuff, comes from the lab, not the village or the mall.
Don Norman himself appears in the comments, in an attempt to clarify his position (which I happen to agree with)...
Sorry folks, but I think you miss the point. I too bristled at Norman's conclusion -- and I happen to be Norman. I have long argued that we should seek out the fundamental needs and afterwards build the relevant technologies and products. But as a scientist, I rely upon data, and the data have convinced me that this is simply not the way things happen. I resisted this conclusion for a long time, but the more i examined the evidence, the more I decided that I had no alternative but to embrace this controversial position.
One of the issues at the heart of this debate is ambiguous terminology. For example "design research", "ethnography", "design" and "innovation" are some of the most widely misused and abused terms, so much so that many of the (quite often heated) discussions concerning Norman's post are based on a straightforward misunderstanding. There are many cases of people being "outraged" and disagreeing with Norman, but if you read further it seems they actually agree with him but are reacting to what they think he was saying based on their interpretation of the terminology used.
(contributed by Pat)
The folks over at trendwatching.com have given us their predictions for 2010, with consumer-centricity playing a big part:
It is always important to know where consumers are headed, as that is what business is all about - serving changing consumer needs. It is extra-important in 2010 because consumers are insecure and thus any brand that can help them solve their worries, any brand that shows they understand their situation, will be remembered when times are good again.
There's some great stuff to be found over on webnographers.org for anyone interested in virtual ethnography. Here's their blurb...
Cyberanthropology is but a fetal field, far from defined. This website was developed in the interest of providing a central hub for those interested in ethnography of the internet. Created by and for webnographers, its success in contingent on your participation.
Ethnography is not constrained solely to anthropologists, and indeed the barriers that divide the various social sciences are at once arbitrary and collapsible. Any individual interested in the complex social, cultural, and psychological facets of humans relating with and through the internet is encouraged to join in this nascent community. Webnographers unite!
This is a very interesting area of research, and an area in which our team is expanding with each and every project.
(forwarded by Pat)
Over on the FatDUX blog, Eric Reiss shares his top 10 list for management:
[...] the web has become more important than ever as a means of communicating with customers/clients/membership. But I have yet to meet a CEO who likes website development. It makes business leaders uncomfortable. The web experts speak in a cryptic language – CMS, KM, XML, CSS. The site seems to take forever to build, costs more than expected, and invariably provides less value than the organization had hoped.
No one likes signing a big check without some idea as to what they’re getting. So if you’re a business leader, here are a few basic, non-technical tips that will significantly increase your chances for online success. And they let you do what you do best – lead.
There are some good points in there, and the central point of reminding business leaders to not get caught up in the detail, but rather to be leaders is excellent. These tips were obviously learned and refined over many, many client engagements!
(forwarded by Pat)
Over on Gizmodo, John Herrman discusses Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Designs Them...
Designing a fake dashboard for an imagined supercomputer or a hovering control panel for a worldwide surveillance system is a different process than creating a genuinely usable UI. Your goal is to imply things: that a machine is powerful; that a villain is formidable; that the software is intuitive, but that the breadth of its powers borders on unknowable. At no point does real-world usability factor in, and nor should it—this is pure fantasy, for an audience raised on Start Buttons, desktop icons and tree menus
He forgets to mention the "Unix system" from Jurassic Park, possibly the most ridiculous of all of these movie UIs :)
(forwarded by Angus)
Adam Greenfield talks about looking beyond the obvious sources of insight and inspiration, including those who have come before us...
Let’s face it: brighter and more sensitive people than us have been thinking about issues like public versus private realms, or which elements of a system are hard to reconfigure and which more open to user specification, for many hundreds of years. Medieval Islamic urbanism, for example, had some notions about how to demarcate transitional spaces between public and fully private that might still usefully inform the design of digital applications and services. By contrast, the level of sophistication with which those of us engaged in such design generally handle these issues is risible (and here I’m pointing a finger at just about the entire UX “community” and the technology industry that supports it).
Even if you don’t like Adam’s writing style, this is a thought provoking piece. Especially interesting was the introductory quote from the book Responsive Environments: A Manual for Designers which outlines how design can actually make people do things – as suggested by Jon Kolko and argued against in the recent Sydney UX book club.
(forwarded by Angus)
Delphine Hirasuna writes about the typically unique way in which Disney went about things, in this case the humble org chart...
The Disney org chart, on the other hand, is based on process, from the story idea through direction to the final release of the film. All of the staff positions are in the service of supporting this work flow. Perhaps the question now is what should the org chart of the future look like, given the global workforce, telecommuting personnel, virtual employees, outsourced jobs and contract workers who sometimes outnumber salaried staff? In an idea-based, rather than a manufacturing-based, economy, how should a business organize itself?
(forwarded by Angus)
On A List Apart, Erin Scime examines the role of curator in digital media...
When a site launches, your audience arrives to learn more about what you know most about. It’s critical to create a content experience with purpose, that is consistent and contextual. This helps to assert your brand’s authority, establishes relationships with your audience, and secures a return visit based on your content’s value. The content strategist-as-curator is the one who makes this happen. How?
(forwarded by Angus)
Jess Enders shares the results of her research on how to best format phone numbers...
The research findings: one long string is the clear winner. Like the mobile phone numbers, one long string of digits—including area code—was the most common method of data entry: out of 640 landline phone numbers provided by interested research participants, 39% were entered as one long string of 10 digits (i.e. no spaces and no chunking).
(forwarded by Angus)
Janko Roettgers reveals some interesting video-related user behaviour...
More than 81 percent of all online video viewers click away if they encounter a clip rebuffering, according to a new study by Tubemogul. The Emeryville-based video distribution and analytics startup took a close look at 192 million video streams over the course of 14 days to figure out how much rebuffers matter. The result: 6.81 percent of all streams rebuffer at some point, and around 2.5 percent rebuffer twice.
(forwarded by Angus)
David Farkas sets out a framework in which UCD and Agile can work together:
Diagrams are pretty, Gantt charts set expectations, but reality is far from perfect. At the end of the day, a project manager must own the project and there must be some sense of reporting. Depending on the project manager’s background and personal goals there will tend to be a focus towards the needs of UCD or Agile… Finally, friction exists from misaligned expectations from UCD practitioners forcing their methods too late in the game or agile practitioners trying to wean out hard requirements before purpose is fully understood.
(forwarded by Sophie)
(or, an alternate headline offered by one commenter, "HuffPo Sells Remaining Fraction of Soul for Ongoing Revenue Stream"?)
In Advertising Age, Nat Ives reports...
The Huffington Post has started offering marketers the ability to inject their own paid comments among reader comments and place paid Tweets among the live Twitter feeds the site assembles around news subjects and events.
Marketers haven't bought in yet, but they seem likely to be intrigued. The biggest question is whether marketers and the Huffington Post can execute the program without marring visitors' experience reading and interacting with the site.
(forwarded by Sophie)
And, on the subject of journalists tweeting, Mumbrella asks whether journalists should have their Twitter profiles taken from them if they change jobs:
There’s an argument both ways. You could view it in the same way as when a reporter changes newspaper, they’ll take their contacts book with them. I’ve now got business cards and contacts books stretching back 20 years. I’m not sure what use the private phone number for Farnborough ambulance station in the UK would be for me now, but I’ve still got it somewhere.
(forwarded by Sophie)
Don Norman stirs things up with...
I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs.
(forwarded by Angus)
Todd Warfel replies to Don Norman's post...
Technology didn’t drive these innovations, it was merely the road. The driver was an opportunity for invention and design research was right behind the wheel.
When both sides of a debate are highly respected experts, it makes for an interesting read!
(forwarded by Angus)
Jacob Nielsen reports ...
The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines are dictated by cognitive limitations
(forwarded by Angus)
Craig Tomlin shares his list...
In the past few years, there has been massive growth in new and exciting cheap or free web site usability testing tools, so here’s my list of 24 tools you may need to use from time to time.
(forwarded by Angus)
In the finest tradition of Spinal Tap comes this mock-metal song Make the logo bigger, sure to raise smile on the face of anyone who's had to deal with clients who want their logo...just that little bit bigger. (Warning: make sure you turn down your volume before playing the song)
(forwarded by Angus)
Over on Econsultancy, Graham Charlton reviews the latest newspaper website mobile app...
The Independent iPhone app is a departure from some other newspaper apps, as it is designed to allows readers to download all the articles while they have a decent 3G or wi-fi connection, and saves them for reading while offline.
An interesting approach.
(forwarded by Sophie)
Ian Delaney laments the direction in which social media may be taking us...
Some of my early hopes for social media, that it represented, like Kevin Kelly reckons, some kind of renaissance for socialism in the western world, are starting to run dry.
Do we blindly accept "social media networks as empowering, democratic and all about spreading fresh ideas"? Delaney says "The reverse may be the case: any given information about ourselves donates some portion of control to another party". It's the "dark side of social networking" he says. An interesting philosophical read to break up the mountain of practical posts, articles and reports we read day in and day out.(forwarded by Chris)
Lastly, on his personal blog, our own Patrick Kennedy summarises a whole bunch of useful user research methods...
In this article I give a quick overview of the methods I commonly use, broken down in to main categories:
- Direct user contact—where the researcher does very much interact with users, or members of the audience as I prefer to call them
- Indirect user contact—where the researcher does not actually interact with members of the audience
The E-Access Bulletin reports...
Two American universities have rejected the market-leading Kindle DX electronic book reader as a textbook replacement due to its inaccessibility for blind students. Both Syracuse University in New York State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have chosen not to use the Kindle - manufactured by Amazon.com - as a teaching-aid, after their own trials found it was not fully accessible.
Interesting lessons for anyone else considering an e-reader device, and who wants to make it useful for as wide an audience as possible.
(forwarded by Pat)
Adweek recently published an article reporting...
Consumer research is ingrained in the cultures of many large corporations but relatively few are maximizing its use, according to a new study from The Boston Consulting Group [...] In fact, based on a four-stage scale of research development that BCG used to evaluate the 40 global companies it surveyed, nearly 90 percent were in the first or second stage, where research is generally tactical and applied in limited contexts.
This has generated quite a few comments, and criticism, although nobody seems to disagree with the basic sentiment of the report (that research could be more prevalent and better used). What do you think?
(forwarded by Pat)
Over on DesignAday, Jack Moffett shares a timeline visualisation of the major—mostly US—design disciplines created by one of his graduate students.
(forwarded by Angus)
Matt Hodgson shares his thoughts on storyboards...
Storyboards are a great way to describe a user’s journey, their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, capabilities, behaviours and expectations, throughout a single scenario. They’re light-weight, easy to do, and as a visual tool can be used in workshops or just by a couple of members of the team. They also work perfectly on agile projects because they’re visual and, therefore, an instant placeholder for a conversation.
(forwarded by Angus)
Whitney Hess shares her five guiding principles for working in UX...
I have collected a set of guiding principles for user experience designers, to encourage behaviors that I believe are necessary to being a successful practitioner, as well as a set of guiding principles for experience design — which I think anyone who touches a product used by humans should strive to follow.
(forwarded by Angus)
On Black&White, Thomas Petersen discusses solving the right problem at the right time...
What you are solving in the wireframe phase is problems inherent in the wireframe phase, not problems with the product. What you are solving when testing the prototype is problems inherent in the prototype not in the final product. There is only one true test and that is the final product. Not until then will you start to receive valuable feedback in combination with quantitative feedback. You will get it where it matters.
This is something we've talked about in our team on a number of occasions. It's an important aspect of the UX design process to get sorted out.
(forwarded by Angus)
Over on Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan tells us how Google is tackling its "UI jazz problem"...
“I don’t like jazz, because you never know what’s going to happen next,” Mayer said, continuing on to apply the musical style to Google’s search results. “I’ve been calling this problem ‘user interface jazz.’ This result looks this way, and that result looks that way [something much different], and it really does slow you down.”
(forwarded by Angus)
Tim Brown, of renowned design and innovation consulting firm, IDEO, shares with us seven principles as discussed at the recent World Economic Forum event in Dubai...
Design is an agent of change that enables us to understand complex changes and problems, and to turn them into something useful. Tackling today's global challenges will require radical thinking, creative solutions and collaborative action. Here is a set of principles identified by the Global Agenda Council on Design that could help your Council to develop ideas and strategies to address the complex problems facing us all.
(forwarded by Angus)
USiT is the user experience team within News Digital Media, based in Sydney, Australia. The team works on the design of a wide range of web, mobile and internal applications.
