For years I have been preaching the strategy of Click/Reward. The idea is simple, every time someone clicks within a digital experience something pleasant should happen. This idea, while perhaps intuitive, flows from a number of observations. First we live in an instant gratification society, and, of course, we are all pleasure hounds. But more importantly it comes from mapping buyer psychology to the sales process.

Understanding the Buyer

How the unique dynamics of digital media connect with the psychology of a buyer, on the path to purchase, is the key to creating successful digital experiences. This path today is often presented as a wonderfully busy chart with a myriad of touch points and influences. But in the end we all go through the same simple process: first we are unaware of a specific need, then we recognize it as a potential need, then we explore its value. Then, if we continue, we evaluate our options, finally make a choice and buy.

Yes there are many factors and forces that influence this along the way, but block out all that noise for a minute and focus on the buyer’s basic motivations. Through this process our motivation shifts from passive in the early stages, and not willing to invest much effort, to active in the later stages once our intention starts to crystallize.

Creating the User Path

Our earliest attempts at IQ to codify these psycho-dynamics, and create experiences that enable the buying process, were expressed in the UX principles of Directed Choice and Incremental Engagement. Directed Choice essentially holds that unknown visitors to a brand site should be assumed to be in marketing exploration mode; passive and without formed motivation. At this stage it is the brand’s responsibility to make choice very easy and intuitive, to reduce or eliminate work, analysis and choices. Of course someone with a task to accomplish can always self identify at anytime.

Next comes Incremental Engagement. Incremental Engagement breaks complex value propositions into steps where each step requires a choice that takes the user closer to personal relevance. This UX principle recognizes that most value propositions are complex and require a time commitment from the prospect in order to receive the whole story. The problem is that before prospects are sufficiently motivated they won’t commit to much so each step is a small commitment. Incremental Engagement also recognizes that the more personally relevant something is for the prospect, the more compelling it will be. Every salesman knows this. If you looking for a truck and the sales guy shows you cars…well, you get the idea, and that brings us back to click/reward.

Rewarding the Click

So far we have learned that we should make things really easy for prospects at first, we should make commitments small and get them to what’s personally relevant as quickly as possible. But this is all pretty analytical. It assumes that people are pursuing their interest analytically. Actually evidence suggests that people explore and make decisions more emotionally than we think. As Charles Hannon, professor of Computing and Information Studies at Washington & Jefferson College, discusses in this excellent post, the dopamine reward system produces good or bad feelings based on what we do in the world.

The implication of this, as Jonah Lehrer explains in his book How We Decide, is that rational decision making, thought to trump the emotions since Plato, is actually not how we do it. Recent neuroscience has reversed this age old model of how human beings make decisions by showing that indeed emotions, some stimulated by the dopamine reward system, are core to the process. It seems that we follow patterns instinctively and when patterns are supported, and sometimes even when not, dopamine is triggered that reinforces our decision-making.

That means every time we make a successful click or get rewarded on our path to purchase we get a shot of dopamine, which reinforces what we are doing. This clearly tells us that we should be designing interactions to follow the emotional journey a buyer makes on the way to a sale, and recognizing where on the emotional/analytical continuum to focus our experience design so that we re-enforce our prospect’s natural process rather than block it.

Better yet if you have followed the controversy over the TechCrunch redesign here you hear us say that the "TechCrunch Redesign is Like Paris Hilton Doing a Sex Tape"

And back by popular demand, both Aure Gimon and the Sink Or Swim segment are back in the studio!. During this segment we review websites sent it by users and vote whether they "Sink" or "Swim".

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more This Week in Web Design go to:

http://www.youtube.com/show/thisweekinwebdesign

If you have been following the "LIVE Redesign" of the This Week in network on my weekly show This Week in Webdesign this is a must watch. But even if you have not been watching you should carve out some time during you lunch break and watch us work.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more This Week in Web Design go to:

http://www.youtube.com/show/thisweekinwebdesign

In this episode of my weekly show This Week in Web Design we continue doing a "LIVE Redesign" of the This Week in Network and allow our audience to watch us work live.
I encourage ad agencies that are not familiar with the user experience process to watch. It is a great exercise that can be used for websites and for campaigns.

Enjoy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let me set the scene. The billboard is located on the second floor of a suburban shopping mall and faces a floor-through opening. If you enlarge the image and look close enough, in the upper right hand corner of the yellow section, you'll find a QR Code. Why or how the company that placed this ad believes that they are going to get a significant number of scans, if any, is beyond me. Have they ever heard of the user experience or thought about media placement in relation to the created ad or vice versa?

Regardless of how great the scan resolve may or may not be, in reality, it's virtually meaningless, because not enough thought was given to one simple, but very important, element of the campaign...the user experience.

Why do companies do this? Why do companies choose to undermine or jeopardize the customer/user experience, by making some of the decisions they do? Are companies even aware that they do this? Probably not, because some companies never take the time to view matters from the customer's/user's perspective.

So, how does this story about a slice of pizza and a plastic knife relate to 2D barcodes? Here's how: When a company uses 2D barcodes in an advertisement, it puts in motion a certain set of expectations in the mind of the person who reads the advertisement and decides to scan the code. Whether the reader of the advertisement is a first-time user of 2D barcodes or an experienced veteran, expectations are formed and set to be judged against. This being the case, why do companies undermine or jeopardize the reader's experience by delivering a less than optimal 2D/mobile advertising experience? Why do they push out desktop content and/or formats on a mobile platform and believe they can get away with this? Does the company really believe the reader of the ad is going to have a great experience, an experience worth sharing which, in part, is the ultimate goal?

In certain situations, companies need to realize that some aspects of their business need to be viewed as investments, not expenses. In the case with the pizzeria, the plastic utensils offered to diners should be viewed as items which have the potential to enhance the dining experience; there is no room for a poorly made plastic knife that won't cut. Same with 2D barcodes. The development and maintenance of a mobile website and mobile content should be viewed as items which have the potential to enhance the 2D/mobile advertising experience, there is no room for desktop content or formatting on a mobile platform. Companies need to stop thinking of the mobile space as an expense, or even as an experiment. Smartphone (read: pocket computer) use will only continue to rise and, as it does, consumers will turn to their phones first, and often only, to access the Internet. It's that simple. Do companies need to build out their mobile website to the nth degree? Perhaps not, but they do need or should have some sort of mobile presence.

In addition to a mobile website, companies interested in using 2D technology should be aware that there are a number of marketing and technology best practices that can and should be deployed, which serve to ensure an ideal or optimal 2D customer/user experience, as well as drive a positive ROI. Additionally, instead of a company asking itself how can we save money, the real question to ask is: How can we deliver a remarkable customer/user experience? Create and implement a remarkable customer/user experience and the dollars will take care of themselves.

Fast forward a hundred years. Now the office has better lighting, and those vast ledgers have been replaced by vast stacks of computer printouts. And business leaders could now make their decisions in a matter of hours, simply by scouring reams of spreadsheets.

Today, our quest for knowledge and for speed has brought us to the dashboard, where the very essence of the facts we need is presented in an easy-to-access and easy-to-understand format. Just the information we need, at a glance.

My manifesto for 2010 is simple – evolve these things we call 'dashboards'.  Why?  Because the time is right for this revolution/evolution.  A recent Gartner prediction/study said that one third of dashboards will be "mashups" with heavy analytics overlaid into the graphical user interface (GUI).

This is awesome news, as the more information that is available for folks, the more informed decisions that can be made.  But wait, stop the presses!  We all know about "analysis paralysis", now you're telling me we're shooting for complete paralysis?  Oh no, no, no.  User Experience Architects such as myself must take on the mantra of "no dashboard can ever be built if it is not intelligent and easy to use".

So how can we accomplish such a lofty objective?  Here are my six commandments to adhere to:

1. Understand the user's needs and desired end results
Who will be using this dashboard – CEO or a sales rep? What information needs to be displayed – metrics, insights, heat maps? What action needs to be accomplished – yearly budgeting across departments, timing of distribution, record of YTD sales? Planning up front with all stakeholders will help the developers and designers create not only the backend but also a usable interface to access the data. It is important to understand the limitations of the data/content and the comfort level of the users with input devices and report displays.

2. Give the user control and flexibility
Condense visual presence of data whether it is with drop down selections, JavaScript effects and even light box style popovers to reduce overwhelming elements and provide sense of control. Place options for accelerators to help the user speed up interactions. For example, give the ability for the user to save and schedule queries. With only having to input the filters once this provides a great efficiency for the user.

3. Marry the system with the real world
Data for some is already another language. Adding system jargon on top of that only makes the tool more intimidating. Structure the dashboard with familiar organization. For example, are they used to tabs or folders as opposed to clouds? Use their language. If this dashboard is for a sales client, don't speak to them as if they were in higher analytics with modeling equations; provide a simple chart with the relevant pieces of data to tell the story they need visually and verbally.

4. Provide consistency and stay in tune with standards
It's all about the user's comfort zone. Casting a net out to never before seen or used features to input or display data may make toes curl. Keep it along the lines of other tools and experiences they have been introduced to. You can still make something original, but following their sense of predictability will help the user to progress further and quick within the tool. The aesthetic design of the tool should be kept simple in effort to not distract the user but rather to improve the UI. This means the inputs and results focused tools, like dials and gages, may be more distracting than a simple text box. Being consistent with look and feel and displaying only relevant and logically prioritized information helps the user's focus and increases comfort level with the tool.

5. Error prevention and recovery
Not only should error prevention be done during the design stage to combat any issues, it also needs to be incorporated within the UI to reduce user error. For example, applying logic to user selection options to help narrow possible combinations to those that will likely return a positive output. If the user selects a region, having a state or DMA selection narrowed down based on that state selection not only helps the user be more efficient by reducing the chances of insufficient combinations. Helping users recover from errors means making your error messages work a little harder and be focused to the user. So less scripting language speak and more links and suggestions of how to get back on track.

6. Help and documentation
Regardless of the plan for training or the christening of super users, providing a support location for users to access while in the tool helps keep usability optimal. A help or FAQ section that provides details for glossary terms and even steps of a process give the user a nudge while allowing them to keep a sense of control. Contextual help such as (?) icons give instant feedback.

So here we are, at the dawn of the Dashboard Age. We have the opportunity — and the responsibility — to help the information seeker by creating UIs that are truly user-friendly, that can visualize large amounts of data in an accurate but highly accessible way. Let's mobilize all the skills of the information architect, the programmer, the graphic designer, the UX specialist and others. Let's shoulder our responsibility and create the very best, most informative dashboards that we can. After all, we've come a long way from Dickens and the quill pen, right?

Check out a short list of inspirational dashboard and data visualizations and let me know what you think.  Rachel DeFriend is User Experience Architect for Javelin.
 

1. They are bound to the Force
Like Jedi, UXDs use their powers to gain greater knowledge in order to get inside the mind of the user. They find a balance between the needs of the user and your business objectives. And when they are true to the Force, they are able to motivate and persuade the user to take the actions you want — be it opting into your email program, making a purchase, providing feedback, etc. 

2. They harness the Force
UXDs come armed to projects, ready to defend the user and promote their needs. And they usually do so with sharpies and scrap paper in hand. Starting with paper prototyping, UXDs create quick user-interface sketches that let the team evaluate usability early on with little expense.

Wireframe and prototyping software also play a big part in your UXD's process. Usually created after paper sketches, these more finished versions communicate required elements to clients and the creative team. Here's a quick list of some of the most popular programs:• Visio
• OmniGraffle
• iPlotz
• Axure
• Gliffy

Just as the Jedi have the Jedi Council, UXDs seek guidance from one another through blogs, books, conferences and meet-up groups. These are a few of my favorite resources:
• IxDA
• Boxes and Arrows
• Adaptive Path
• Seth Godin's blog
• inspireUX

3. They sense disturbances in the Force
Because UXDs keep their focus on the user, they can often identify problems before they become problems. By evaluating usability against the user's needs from the earliest stages of interface design, they recognize and reduce inefficiencies in the user flow before too much time — or money — is invested.

UXDs also look for signals that the dark side of the Force is gaining ground. If metrics show users are bailing and not converting, chances are something is standing in their way. In a previous post about Return On User Experience (ROUX), I discussed how to recognize friction in the user's flow and how to improve the effectiveness of your user experience.

Internal disturbances can be a little more complicated for UXDs to overcome. When user-centric thinking seems to conflict with business goals or an internal process, UXDs call on best practices backed by results to build a case for more user-centric design and strategy. Balance is key for Jedis and UXDs — balance and knowing when to fight for the benefit of the user.

In UX terms, the true master is the one who understands the user's needs and goals, and then designs the path of least resistance to obtain them. Keep this in mind when working with your UXD. Trust in them and their idiosyncrasies. When you let them harness the Force, you'll get a much better — and much more successful — user experience.

In the end, if you're looking for a website or app that's just wicked cool — and killer effective — you'd better make sure you, or your partners, have a UXD on the team. And if you, or they, don't have one, you'd better Obi-Wan yourself.

What do you do to create better user experiences? Let me know in the comments section. Rachel DeFriend is User Experience Architect for Javelin Direct.
 

In the culinary world, roux is a mixture of flour and fat used as a thickening agent in soup, sauces and stews. (For those of you who take things literally and like to eat while you think, here's a great recipe for Cajun roux.)

In the interactive world, ROUX is Return on User Experience and has nothing whatsoever to do with pots and pans let alone the art of sauce making, which is good because I am not a cook (although my mouth is watering right now for a heaping bowl of gumbo). Let's exit the kitchen now and enter the interwebs.

So, here's my recipe for improving the return on your user's experience. You won't end up with a tasty roux, but you will end up with a better ROUX.

Ingredients you'll need:

Site metrics
An understanding of your users
An open mind
Defined goals for improvement

Step 1: Prepare. Start with your site metrics. Focus on conversion rates. Of the peeps visiting your site and engaging, are they finding success completing forms and purchases? Where are they falling off? Yup, start there.

Remove barriers for completion.
Eliminate unnecessary fields. You may feel like knowing their pet's name is important for personalization, but unless you are a pet store, you probably don't need this level of data. Make a form as concise as possible — once you've got their core info, hit them up again later for additional pieces. Plus, this gives you an excuse to contact them to further build that relationship.

Don't require registration to purchase. The fear of commitment is universal with users, so make registration optional if at all and help streamline their purchase process.       

Clarify the language of where they are in the process, instructions and benefits. It isn't uncommon for a user to think they have completed a process based on layout of the page alone. It may be a confirm-this-info-is-right-then-purchase page that they interpreted as a you-rock-and-have-successfully-completed-purchase-confirmation page. Make it a point to use familiar language and clearly point out instructions and next steps.       

Add cues to help users stay focused on task.Be it a location cue like a breadcrumb or a step number within a process, users need to know where they are and how much further they may need to go. This helps reduce the "are we there yet" syndrome and builds expectations so they don't bail. 

Step 2: Mix. Understanding how users actually use your site, plus going after a few quick usability wins, will enhance the user's experience. If users can't find you when they search for relevant keywords or can't find the content they need within your site, you are quickly loosing potential revenue and a relationship connection.

Improve search engine optimization.
To start, users first need to find your site! Radical I know. But we often put so much sweat and tears into appeasing all stakeholders and making the site fit the brand that we often save natural search strategies until the last minute instead of within the design phase.

Make sure your page titles, any meta tags and page descriptions all include the main idea of the page and keywords in the user's language. This gives both Google and users a better chance of finding what they need when searching.       

Take a content inventory. Using your site metrics as a guide, see what content is barely used and either eliminate it or see if you can clarify the context or even the navigation to this content. Not only can you likely help the user's experience, it will save content maintenance time and money in the long run.       

Include important functionality on the home page.If you are in the business to book reservations, quote a price or have highly used advanced keyword search, and put the functionality on the home page. Don't be shy. Giving them an opportunity to start even a few fields of the process on the home page reduces steps and will help speed up process to completion.      

Make sure all text is legible. Common practice is at least 10-point size, but know your users and what size font will best fit their needs. If they can't read it, they won't complete it.

Step 3: Test. Once you have made a few necessary tweaks to make the content more accessible, added quick cues and conveniently positioned functionality to speed up the process, test it and then roll it out. As the traffic builds, pull your metrics again and see if your conversion rate has increased as well as your customer satisfaction feedback.         

Tips
By improving the usability of your site, you not only improve your customer's experiences (and in turn your revenue), but you will likely be successful in shifting customers online and saving dollars compared to other customer-service support channels. Moving users to a less-expensive medium will improve not only your website's ROUX, but also your overall marketing ROI.  

Both roux-making and ROUX-boosting have a rap for being overly complicated and somewhat mysterious. But if you have a clear taste for what you want in the end, ensure the quality of your ingredients, don't rush your preparation and keep practicing with the recipe. You're bound to end up with a ROUX you can be proud of.

Now mix, serve up and enjoy!   

Rachel DeFriend is User Experience Architect for Javelin Direct.

One of the tried and true methods of creating flow state for audiences in broadcast is the use of contrast to create meaning and subtext between shots in a sequence. This concept was first articulated by filmmaker Sergei Eistenstein when he went to the circus. He found that the more rings a circus added, the more meaning and interest the performances took on.

For example, watching a juggling act alone is entertaining. Adding a fire-eater who performs in a ring next to the juggling ring creates a new experience of watching both acts, but also adds meaning between the two acts. When you have three rings of acts performing at once, the viewer takes even more meaning, gets even more entertainment, and simply can't take their eyes off the action for a moment.

Today, this approach is so pervasive it's cliche. Think of the shot sequence for almost any product in a television commercial: a master shot that sets the scene, pleasant expressions of people who can relate to the target audience, and product shot. Juxtaposing smiling faces and products along with light/dark color values engages audiences and sells products.

Applying this idea to the user experience through social networking platforms draws some interesting parallels. People are spending exponentially more time on social media sites. If you think of the visual elements of these sites, there is a ton of contrast and meaning built through the typical browsing experience. Lots of faces of people you know, set against each other in various combinations. Between pages, each of the big three social networks also offer varying degrees of contrast between page states in design choices available to the creator of that profile: both in user interface control placement and color.

MySpace: Overwhelming Contrast

MySpace offers users the highest degree of customization: users can affect not only the colors, fonts, and sounds as part of their page presentation, but also rearrange the user interface controls. To tweens and teens, this is appealing as a creator: you can build, tear down, and rebuild your online persona as it relates to your peer group online and off. It also presents a browsing experience akin to what MTV was to television when it first began: rapid-fire, high contrast, and unexpected pairings of visual elements to keep kids engaged.

The problem is when this contrast extends itself to the interface controls. TV takes you through the experience. On the Web, you need to have consistency in the way you control the experience, so the user can effortlessly gain value from the entire experience and not get stuck on confused on any particular page.

This has led to is what I call the "hollowing out" of MySpace as a social experience. It's just difficult to visit multiple users in one sitting. It gets tiresome, annoying, and overwhelming. To me, this inconsistency will ultimately lead MySpace to fulfill the destiny of Yahoo's recently defunct Geocities. When the collection of pages becomes an array of mini-sites each with it's own rules on how to shape a one-page experience, what you end up with is ultimately valueless to any audience. The value is only in the vanity and satisfaction of the individual creator.

Facebook: low contrast, high structure

On the opposite extreme is the freight train of Facebook. Here, the user controls are completely locked down from one page state to the other. Going from one page to the next, the majority of the visual contrast and meaning come from pictures of people. Here we are back to the meaning inherent in collections of faces of people you know. The most dominant visual aspects in the experience are the Facebook logo, and pictures of people.

As applications became popular, they started to create a lot of the visual noise, and meaning that MySpace is (in)famous for. Recent redesigns of the user experience have buried the 15-ring circus of the old mini-feed. I think this is what has vaulted applications like Living Social to be most popular: it provides the feed with a short burst of five contrasting images next to the profile avatar: adding color and meaning to the individual and the page without overwhelming the experience. The same goes for how many photos are posted. The way Facebook presents these photos in the stream is similar to Living Social, and draws the attention of the viewer because it stands out with contrasting color and size, without dominating.

It's also interesting to me that Facebook's tight control over contrast and UI control finds a great affinity with suburban people here in the US, versus the mostly urban and artistic members of MySpace. Is social media a reflection of the contrasts in the daily life of its users?

Twitter: finding the balance

What's interesting about Twitter is how it has found a visual balance between MySpace and Facebook in terms of the browsing experience. Users can express themselves within a range of color settings: image backgrounds, font colors, and avatar pictures. Where information and controls are presented, however, never changes.

What results is contrast and subtextual meaning through the experience between page states, but the controls from page to page are always in the same place, using the same hierarchy (organization in the order of the main functions of the site) and with the same font. So even when someone goes as far as to make their type a color that is virtually unreadable, users can continue down the path of discovery without getting stuck. It keeps the experience moving and interesting without bogging someone down in the blaring auto-play sounds of MySpace, or boring them over a few browsed pages outside of the photo books of Facebook.

This is also the same principal currently driving Tumblr: the quick-blogging platform that resides somewhere between Twitter and blog platforms. Whether Tumblr will ultimately become a major player is still up for debate, but using a similar user experience template to Twitter seems a good bet for the future of Web-based social networks that need to find a balance between personal expression and engaging user experiences.

How much of this will bleed into brand sites?

Also interesting is how corporate and promotional hubs take these lessons of visual contrast and engagement back to their own online presences. As part of my own practice when helping develop strategy to redesign or create a new presence for brands, it's a valuable lesson to understand: much of a brand's equity is in the controls and context of the experience. Contrasting image and color choices can help make a brand's presence more meaningful, engaging, and ultimately valuable to the people who mean the most to that company's bottom line.

What do you think? Add your perspective in the comment section below, or continue the conversation on Twitter @mleis.

As a User Experience Architect, my job is to simplify (from the perspective of the user, anyway). What is it we're really trying to show with ROUX? Is there a way to pinpoint a value to the user's experience? Let's start with a comparable concept we all know and love: ROI.

Return on investment is used to evaluate the efficiency of return on any expenditure of money. To calculate ROI, you divide the benefit (return) of an investment by the cost of the investment. The result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

What might a similar ratio look like for ROUX?

 Value means money
The benefit or return that interests us is based on the action taken by the user during or after interacting with our website. To be worth anything, improved user experience should result in greater monetary value from user action. (We are, after all, in this for the money.)

We therefore need to know three things to be able to calculate ROUX:

1.    The value of user actions taken before a site has been optimized for UX (this is the business-as-usual response we're trying to improve).
2.    The value of user actions taken after UX design (UXD) has been applied.
3.    The cost of the UXD.

Let's say 100 people visit your site in any given week, and 20 of them buy something worth $10 each to you. That means their actions are worth $200 to you each week.

Now let's say we apply UXD and discover that 20 percent of your visitors seem to be abandoning your site because they're frustrated. We fix that frustration, and, sure enough, 40 of every 100 visitors start buying something. So now their actions are worth $400 to you.

Finally, we need to know how much the UXD work cost you. Just to keep it simple, let's say it was $100 (you got a deal, man!).

Just looking it over, we know we earned $200 more dollars (in just one week!), and that it cost us $100. So our ROUX for that week alone is 2:1. If you figure that one UXD fix will have the same improved results for the year, then you've gotten a humongous annual return on your investment — better than 100:1!

In equation form for you Einstein-heads, it looks like this:

ROUX=[(value after UXD improvements)–(value before UXD improvements)]/(UXD costs)

Okay, my brain's starting to ache again. The real lesson we're trying to learn here is how to value user experience.

 The cost of poor user experience
It helps to look at it from the opposite direction as well. What causes value to go down?

Jared Spool has a great approach to ROUX that he calls the Cost of Frustration. His idea focuses on the user's "friction" when interacting with a site or device. The more friction a user encounters, the more frustration they have. And the cost of that frustration increases expenses, reduces revenues and productivity, and wastes development time.

For example, if a user can't find what he is looking for, he's experiencing friction, which leads to frustration and ultimately abandonment. This user could bail from your service altogether or switch to another customer service channel (such as the call center). This increases costs to the call center and means development of the online channel was at least partially wasted.

Friction isn't just limited to external customers; it also pertains to the tools your company has built for employees as well. If it takes an employee longer than needed to find critical pieces of information or complete a task, this costs the company in inefficiencies and lack of productivity.

Okay, enough of this. We've defined it already. Einstein can have his equations back, and I'll go put an icepack on my poor brain. Now that we know what it is and how to measure it, the fun part begins — actually cooking up the improved ROUX. I'll have a lot more to say on that. With no equations. I promise.

Rachel DeFriend is User Experience Architect for Javelin Direct.

UX of yesterday

Looking back through history, we see that experience design is woven through every era helping us continually evolve, learn and be delighted. From ancient Romans to recent Harvard grads, user experience designers have no mold. They just have one common practice — figure out the user, his needs and a way to satisfy them.

Here are some classics:

When: 300 B.C.

Need: Area for large audiences to watch sporting events, theatrical performances and other “entertainment” (when the gladiators loose the hungry lions, users like me flee to the bazaar out-front for some shopping).

Solution: Amphitheaters, with bazaars out-front

When: 1564

Need: A utensil that leaves a dark mark for scribing.

Solution: The graphite pencil

Update to solution: Grip Stix pencils by Pentech came up with a user-centered design back in the late ’80s for a better grip. Since then user experience engineers are still trying to design the perfect grip.

When: 1993

Need: Way to search the World Wide Web for URLs/pages with specific information.

Solution: After several approaches, algorithms and analysis of word relationships, a search engine was born — Excite.

Update to solution: It seems there are updates to search technology ever nanosecond. But it’s interesting to note that Excite was a verb that became a search engine, while Google is a search engine that became a verb, which highlights the core of experience design — the need to do something.

UX today?

More and more companies are beginning to adopt the philosophy of customer centricity. Most have a long way to go before they’ll master this focus, if ever. But we have seen some major improvements — it’s like they are finally listening to their customers (Pardon me, but, duh! Even cavemen figured that out, or the wheel never would have made it.).

A few examples of note from recent years that prove the value of good experience design:

· Flight check-in kiosks. Simple and quick to use with big-button touch screens for easy checking in, upgrading and even changing seats. Beats waiting in line for an agent.

· The obvious iPhone. Not only does it scream cool, hitting on the user’s need for uniqueness, but has many features of convenience (no bulky keyboard) and makes great use of mobility (full view of Web pages, 3G, new apps and iTunes™).

· Our state highways. From the big signs that show the next exit’s gas stations and restaurants to the wake-up! ridges along the edges of lanes.

· Snuggies. They were a huge hit this Christmas — why? It’s not the commercial, but the pure usability of the product. It’s genius.

UX of tomorrow

We see where UX has been, what is currently under its spell, but where do we see it going? As our world becomes more and more digital, it will be imperative to understand how the user interacts with digital products and in the online space. Already marketers are scrambling to make sense of social media. It will inevitably soon become a more transactional platform where the user can book a flight, post to a friend’s wall, upload video and schedule their DVR all on Facebook!

Also on watch is how the U.S. will take on mCommerce. Just as we found out with eCommerce, the shopping experience has to be carefully thought through — especially with so much less screen real estate on mobile devices. UX will play a huge role in defining how customers use mobile and the best ways to design, organize and develop interactions across several devices and platforms. Standardization will eventually make its way to the platform and marketers will then be able to truly capitalize efficiently across devices with QR codes and the like.

Already, we have seen our paper world convert to a more green approach — virtual maps, eBills, eTickets and eCoupons are becoming common, and the idea of a digital portable library, like Amazon’s Kindle, is only continuing to grow.

Shoot, users have become so fascinated with the minimum effort it takes to send a text message that the need for voice mail is in decline. Designing for quicker gratification and providing options for the user on how they want to interact with a company will become an ever-greater requirement. And when biometrics hit (and you know they will), it will be imperative to understand the user’s hesitations, security needs and type of transactions that will become more dispersed across more and more devices.

Who knows, one day we’ll likely be living in low gravity on the moon, which will require a whole new UX mindset we haven’t even imagined yet. As long as there’s a bazaar out-front somewhere, I’ll be fine, thank you.

Rachel DeFriend is User Experience Architect for Javelin Direct.

What can I do with it?

Think back to the story of Green Eggs and Ham. You’re asking someone no try a new idea, and then use that information in a variety of online and offline settings that make the most sense to them.

Merely presenting information is no longer enough. Your audience needs a clear, convenient way to do something with it. Can they use it on a plane? On a train? In a house? With a mouse?

This isn’t over-simplifying: it’s clarity. Your content is best used someplace else. Rhyming makes it more fun. Where is your content best suited? What kinds of content are most used in that place? This will take some investigation, trial and error. The best part about this investigation process is the incredibly valuable surprises you learn along the way. Making your content clean and passable will create its own sidewalks to audiences you never knew existed.

The relationship between Sam and his nay-saying nemesis became stronger once they shared the meal. Green Eggs and Ham is the tie that binds them. There’s no difference between that experience and sharing new content with friends in Flixster, MySpace, or YouTube. It’s the power of discovery.

Helping people share makes their own relationships stronger. We call these social objects today. Regardless of what term we apply, people will continue to look for these opportunities to show something new to a friend or colleague and make a stronger relationship with that content.

Don’t be afraid to show people how to use your content. Give examples. Sam demonstrates every conceivable way to eat green eggs and ham. So should you. Demonstrate the ways that other similar people have used your content. Today we call this social proof. It helps a lot when you can see people like yourself taking specific actions.

FriendConnect and Facebook are both great tools to show your content in the context of friends: making the mental leap of doing something new feel a lot smaller. Letting people share what they find, and putting it in their own terms is the most powerful marketing you’ll never have to buy. Green Eggs and Ham is just one of the stories that have lasted for generations by demonstrating the most entertaining, memorable ways of doing just that.

Let's continue the conversation: please leave your thoughts in the comment section below, or on Twitter @mleis

Thanks to Adam Kmiec for presenting this post on his blog first, and Steve “Doc” Baty (Meld Consulting) for his help on the post.

You guessed it — it’s old school, just with a little acronym spunk.
 
Experience design didn’t just evolve when the Internet was introduced into our lives. It’s been around for ages — from building products and creating services to putting on events and developing communities.
 
Each good experience is designed around who will be the end users and how they will interact. For every website, banner or app we create today, that same user-experience practice should be ingrained in our thinking and process. All we have to do is ask: “What would the customer think, say, do or not do?"
 
So why does user experience feel like a new way of thinking if it’s been around since cavemen?
 
Good question! I think it’s always been a struggle to put the end users’ needs and goals first. They aren’t the ones financing and building the product, and we all know that money talks. That means someone has to represent the user throughout the strategy, design and development process. That’s where user-experience experts enter.
 
UX experts are like lobbyists (though I’ve not met any who wear suits). They represent a community of people and work to get processes approved that will be in that community’s best interest. They have to campaign for users’ needs and balance proposals between the party lines of users, stakeholders and technology — all while maintaining a diplomatic rationale for their recommendations.
 
If you think that sounds like fun, then grab a UX badge and jump right in. The world needs many, many more of you.
 
If your team doesn’t have a dedicated user-experience lobbyist, any designer, planner, even a client service team member can step up and just ask the simple question: What would the customer think? Asking that question along the way will help refocus the team to the users’ perspective, which almost always means your team will make better decisions. It’s probably all that those cavemen did anyway.
 
From the wheel to the Dewey Decimal System to online banking, experience design is an integral part of the invention process. And at the rate of invention today in the digital world, forgetting about users’ online experience can be a fatal mistake for a business.
 
We need to take responsibility and ensure that what we produce is useable, useful and keeps the users’ needs front and center so they’ll keep coming back. Even the finance folks understand that logic.

UX is a (not so) clever way of saying user experience, and without a good one, we risk losing customers. No matter how awesome your product or flashy your website, without someone thinking about how users will find it, what they’ll do with it and the value they’ll get from it, the total sales of your product or service will not be as good as it could be.

Good Functionality + Good Design = Good User Experience

In the land of UX, the colonies are comprised of Interaction Designers (IxD), User Experience Architects (UXA), User Experience Designers (UXD), Information Architects (IA), User Interface Designers (UID), Usability Engineers (UE), Human Factor Engineers and, well, you get the picture. While talents and skills overlap, the focus of each should always put the user first. Because before X comes U. To truly design a good X, you must first embrace the U — the user.

To start, you should:

1.    Define your users. Users can be defined by data (the numbers never lie) from your targeted demographic or by the creation of personas derived from interviews with users.

2.    Understand their behaviors. How do they interact with your products or with your site? What is their purchase-decision process? What motivates them to use/purchase? What attitudes do they carry toward your brand and your competitors?

3.    Determine their needs. A great interactive experience cannot be built in a vacuum — so ask the users: Why do they use your product/site? What is their knowledge and proficiency in relation to your product/site? What value are they expecting in return?

4.    Define their goals. What transactions are they most determined to complete? What information do they need to make educated decisions? When and where do they perform these tasks?

Then you can start designing experiences for them. Without identifying and understanding the user, you are much less likely to be adept at creating meaningful interactive experiences.

So, back to pirate maps. When starting to design an interactive experience, you should ask these questions to help chart a reliable path:

• What is the purpose of the site? What do we want the user to do?
  
• How will your site/products/company be differentiated from competitors?
  
• Who will be using the site?
  
• How do we meet their needs?
  
• How do we help them accomplish their goals?
  
• What overall memory do we want them to take away?
  
• What type of design, content, interactivity and site structure will help support your brand and the user’s goal?

With these answers, you have a solid direction to start sketching out artifacts to put in front of key players in the strategy and conception phases. More questions will definitely arise and open up new routes to pursue — just make sure you keep steering out of the product-centric whirlpool.

To stay on course, here are a few tips to keep your timbers from shivering:

1.    Listen. To users, stakeholders and experts (but don’t overdo it).

2.    Balance. Creating customer-centric solutions doesn’t mean you let the business goals walk the plank. It’s a proper balance of needs between the user, the company and the technology.

3.    Simplify. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is a great acronym to keep on hand. You don’t want to get in the way of the user with complex processes or mismanaged feature priorities.

4.    Evangelize. UX isn’t just a step to check off. It is a philosophy that needs adoption on multiple levels throughout the project.

Above all, keeping true to U will help guide good design for X.

Aye, Maties!

Rachel DeFriend is Interactive Account Supervisor for Javelin Direct.

The support for user centric design has to come from the very top of the organization.   Senior stakeholders must understand and embrace the additional effort that the work entails, supporting rigorous user research and incorporating the findings into the design of a product.  While the upfront expense might be unsavory, down the road this work provides insight that increases the longevity and profitability of a product.  Moreover, managers must resist the temptation to swoop in at the last minute and make “one small change” to the information or visual design.  Ninety nine percent of  the time, that one small change has deep repercussions on the rest of the system, and not only mean a considerable amount of additional work for the team, but also can weaken the infrastructure of the application or campaign being created.  It’s like asking the architect to move the sink from one side of the kitchen to the other.  Sure, it seems easy, but don’t forget, there is a whole lot of plumbing that has to be moved around to accommodate the change.  User centric design does not have to be expensive, and it does not have to be overwhelmingly granular (though the more the better), but it does need to be supported from up high, and incorporated from the very beginning of a project.

Other members of the team must also remember the importance of the end user, and think of how their work impacts the finished product.  Brand managers should think beyond the results of their primary research.  Now more than ever, brand identity is in the hands of the consumer, and this new reality must be accounted for.  Think about the context in which users are encountering the brand, and adapt the message to the medium.  Research where the message is being found and the means by which it is being propagated.   Always remain focused on the user,  and ensure that wherever possible, interactions are captured, catalogued, and studied.  A rigorous metrics program will not only answer the “what”, but also talk to the “how” and “why”, providing incredibly useful data to drive decisions.  It is incumbent on marketers to ensure that they don’t just think about how they are projecting brand voice, but also research how the voice is heard.   Jet Blue, for example, has been spending considerable amounts of money on their “Jetting” campaign.  At the same time, consumer reports about the quality of the service are getting progressively worse.   This seems to be business centric process at its best – let’s make a great ad campaign, but not manage the actual customer interactions with the end product.  It’s ironic, as until recently, Jet Blue was cited as one of the best airlines to fly from a holistic customer experience standpoint.  Perhaps if they spent a little less on the campaign and a little more on hearing and responding to customer feedback, there would be less slipping.

Ultimately, it’s all about the end user.  If they don’t like what they’re getting, they will go somewhere else to find something similar.  It’s not rocket science; it simply involves some careful thought and pragmatic action.  Make sure that the entire team is always thinking of their core audience, and that everything they do can be justified in the context of how it improves user satisfaction.  Just because one’s job description does not focus on user centric design does not mean that they are any less dependent on the end user to succeed.