Online worlds have attracted big business. Marketing and advertising inside virtual worlds has taken on new and innovative strategies, as more and more companies are establishing an interactive presence “in world.”  The Engauge Digital Behavioral Research Department loves to conduct research in a range of worlds - so I thought it would be a fun idea to explore Webkinz.

If you aren’t already familiar, Webkinz is an online world created by Ganz for kids ages 5-13. Webkinz has an estimated 530,733 in world visitors everyday. In terms of US visitors, Webkinz has seen tremendous traffic and growth in comparison to other virtual worlds.

Ask any child you know if they have heard of Webkinz and you will most likely get an earful about their specific Webkinz avatar: born from a real-life stuffed animal that translates into a digital avatar with its own personality and hobbies. The avatars – whose stuffed counterparts are purchased in stores by parents – have the ability to chat, make friends, get jobs, build homes, and play games with others, all in the comfort of a supervised and secure environment that caters to parental concerns.  And of course the in-store purchasing power is not limited to only stuffed animals – parents and their children can dress their stuffed avatars in clothes or give them Ganz brand lip balm, and all have digital codes to convert the real life products into interactive versions for their pet. Webkinz and Webkinz related products are well sought after gifts for children.

So in researching this whole Webkinz world as opportunity space for our clients, I naturally have my own avatar – a friendly, opportunistic, sunglass wearing chicken.  He’s got his own place, complete with a bed, couch and a couple of cacti and it turns out that he apparently really wants a toy cell phone.  He’s got several friends and even has a job where he earns his Kinzcash (Webkinz currency) to buy things like smoking hot sunglasses or furniture for his room.

It appears that with so many visitors to this online world, that Webkinz and the Webkinz generation will be the future of other online worlds. It will be interesting to see how the world grows and evolves as the “Webkinz generation” grows into adults. Will this generation transform the way we look at virtual worlds in the future?

As many Engaugers are aware, here in the Behavioral Research Department we have been up to our ears in research work lately. Early mornings, late evenings, lots of coffee, approaching deadlines, and no end of billable hours in sight. All this Discovery has sort of forced our Behavioral Research Manager, Josh, to have to crack the whip to the BR ladies. In fact, the amount of research to be done had reached the point where the team had even discussed working over the holiday weekend (working on Monday?!?!).

Not surprisingly, this idea was met with despair and objection as we all watched our fantasies of beaches, road trips, and barbecues vanish. So today, when Josh announced to the BR Team that we had successfully completed all of the tasks, projects and assignments in time for our client deadlines, the Behavioral Research team let our hair down. Josh told us that we could have our extra day over the weekend, and instructed us not to even think about online behavioral research over the holiday. We have always appreciated and celebrated Josh’s methods for project allocation and his mad skills for facilitating task completion by deadlines, but today we girls got to celebrate a three-day weekend. Okay, so we did more than celebrate … it turns out that behavioral researchers know how to get down (Sayonara Josh!).

To check us out as we celebrate, click on the image below:

I’m not sure a usability researcher could imagine a world where there was no heavy (and expensive) testing equipment that had to be lugged around from different testing locations. Well the folks over at Clearleft may have up come with some new software that will make all that a far and distant memory. Researchers may soon enjoy a world where they can just grab their Mac and run to a testing location with no extra equipment. With the Silverback Application, faulty equipment and canceled or postponed testing sessions may be eliminated, which could be a huge savings of time…and we all know that time is money.

What is the Silverback Application?

The Silverback Application is a usability testing application for web designers, developed by the UK-based design team. It has the capability of turning any location into a user testing site by utilizing the hardware on a Mac. The application is in semi-private beta testing as of yet, but is expected to revolutionize the world of usability testing.

What does the Silverback Application do?

The Silverback application eliminates the need for researchers to have multiple set up steps when conducting usability testing. It utilizes the Mac’s built in camera and microphone during testing. The application simply records while a user is testing your interface. When finished testing, the Siverback application produces a handy picture-in-picture Quicktime video, allowing the researcher to see the entire interface being tested, the reactions of the user being tested, as well as audio recorded on the microphone. The Silverback application also records every click the user makes with little circles overlaid on the Quicktime video.

Who wants to use the Silverback Application?

The Silverback Application is great for anyone who wants to know the habits of users on their website. It’s is also excellent for on-the-go testing, since testing locations will now be available wherever your Mac can go.

The question now turns to who will be on the leading edge of this new technology. Maybe someday in the near future, the days of lugging around bags full of easy-to-malfunction test equipment could be a thing of the past. If that’s the case, user experience testing should become even more efficient, making clients, researchers and participants very happy.

I find it fascinating that there’s so little information available out there on the value of taxonomy as a founding principle in Web design strategy.

Taxonomy - the study of the general principles of scientific classification - has been around for hundreds of years. In Web work, it’s generally the organization of contexts into logical groupings and hierarchies.

It’s those groupings that, in turn, help IAs determine navigation structures, metadata, even the very nomenclatures that are the foundation of Web usability best practices.

If you’ve ever been approached to help a client correct a truly horrific Web site, you’ve no doubt found that some (possibly much) of their pain points can be traced back to a poorly designed – or altogether missing – taxonomy.

Maybe it’s that those of us who build Web strategies have just come to see taxonomy as a “given” within the Information Architect’s toolset — something IAs employ but needn’t share with the rest of the creative team or [forbid!] the client.

Maybe people think taxonomy is just an issue for larger, content rich KM sites.

Maybe I’m not finding a lot out there because whoever is writing tomes on taxonomy best practices just isn’t remembering to add metadata to their articles.

Ok. That was a cheap shot. But where IS the supporting data in Taxonomy’s defense? I’m disappointed by just how little taxonomy information is out there on the Web. Do a search on your own and you’ll see examples for “Taxonomy best-practices” and rationales are few and far between.

As a creative body, IAs all too often struggle with clients who “just want to see the comps.” Client’s don’t realize how much of their bottom line rides on the contextual storylines inherent in the usability of the site.

The process of taxonomy creation is really much easier and effective than the name might imply. Yet, I’m amazed at how few IAs are given [or is it take?] the time to apply it. And I’ve [almost] never seen nor heard of a client demand a content outline as a deliverable.

I recall a previous colleague who was asked to design wireframes as the initial deliverable for a large eCommerce client. He produced very innovative wires complete with auxiliary navigations, functional buttons, web 2.0 components… the whole nine yards. The client was delighted with the results. After all, they were the pre-cursors to some beautiful graphics.

The site, however, was completely useless. By not first establishing a contextual format for the linear plots and subplots of the user experience, the navigation “buckets” we’re little more than a sloppy hodgepodge of disparate functions and features. The site’s organization lacked cohesion and the end users simply couldn’t build a mental storyline around its intended purpose.

That’s why, whether creating a new site or performing an audit on an existing one, I find reviewing the site’s taxonomics an invaluable starting point.

I begin with a literary outline based on the site’s overarching goals. Sound too old school for today’s hyper-connected world? You’d be amazed at how much mileage you can get by FIRST establishing the value of those straight pathways. It helps the client visualize those important “subplots” that will eventually become the site’s use cases. It also points out where there are potential holes or disparages in the client’s existing content sets and expectations. It also grounds them in reality that these areas of the site will need to be created AND maintained by someone in order to be successful.

More important, we’re helping rationalize and strengthen their business requirements – an important pre-visual practice before going to the expense of designing (and redesigning) wireframes or comps.

After all, isn’t the role of a good taxonomy advisor to SAVE the client some money?

Spunlogic’s Vice President of Research and Innovation, Dr. Melissa Read, appears in 1to1 Magazine’s March/April issue, in the article “Can You Hear Me Now?,” which discusses how to capitalize on customer insights from research in order to build loyalty and customer satisfaction.

Dr. Read emphasizes the importance of setting expectations with customers, such as “letting customers know when asking for input that their feedback will be used to benefit customers like them - not necessarily just themselves individually - and that changes will most likely be made based on common issues that many customers experience.”

She also stresses the importance of collecting some open-ended, verbatim comments, since when leadership “sees customer problems brought to life in their own words, they often act quickly.”

In addition, she suggests that following through with those individual comments is something that should not be overlooked, for the benefit of the company as whole. As Dr. Read said, “Set up a system where feedback that is not relevant to your problem of interest is forwarded to the appropriate group in your organization. Don’t let somebody else’s valuable findings slip through the cracks or be discarded because they aren’t relevant to you.”

Read the entire article online. Registration is required.

MarketingVox just pointed me to a survey conducted by the Luxury Institute. Called the “WealthSurvey”, it uncovered that wealthy consumer membership in online social networks has reached 60% already this year.

This is interesting, but not as surprising to me as it was intended to be. I guess I would have thought that the wealthy - with their financial access to technology and desire to connect - would make them early adopters in social networks. But check this out: “consumer participation is up from 27% in 2007.”

That’s a pretty significant increase. This rise in participation among the wealthy set could represent a lot of opportunities for luxury marketers. The article suggests that luxury marketers should invest time and money in creating their own communities. However, I might suggest that existing communities - Facebook, MySpace, etc. - are equally if not more important, with communities like Facebook already leveraging the “influence” factor in their marketing programs.

In fact, the entire study appears to be based on existing communities: “Participation levels in leading social networks are: 16% for MySpace, 13% for LinkedIn, and 11% for Facebook. The wealthy average membership in 2.8 social networks, with an average of 110 connections.”

The article goes on to say “We are pleasantly surprised at the rapid acceleration in the over 55-year-old wealthy consumers whose participation increased five-fold, to 49%.” Now this is interesting and makes me wonder how much of this age group - wealthy or otherwise - is participating more heavily in social networks.

I’d like to get my hands on the full study, but perhaps this is only for the wealthy - hm, maybe somebody on A Small World can hook me up?

Here’s a quick snapshot of the study’s methodology:
I’m sure our Behavioral Research department would love this part (and be interested in knowing more details)

A national sample of 805 wealthy American consumers, with an average income of $287K and average net worth of $2.1 million, was surveyed online. Survey results are weighted to match demographic and net worth profiles of the same audience according to the latest Survey of Consumer Finances from The Federal Reserve.

The Behavioral Research Department is happy to announce the creation of our very own Virtual Worlds Research Team! The team, headed by DrRead Voom, consists of several avatars created by Spunlogic researchers and interns. Due to increasing popularity of utilizing online virtual worlds as marketing tools, the team was formed to help uncover many unique possibilities waiting for businesses in virtual worlds. The team has specific interest in how psychological principles can be leveraged to enhance in-world customer service as well as the overall experience.

So far, our researchers have conducted in-world interviews and surveys for our clients and for our own scientific pursuits. Using our understanding of human behavior in real and virtual world scenarios, the team has been able to identify the most effective testing locations, procedures and avatar qualities for several research studies.

While much of our research happens in virtual worlds, some happens in the real world too. Recently, we developed an online survey to assess the perceptions of infidelity in online and virtual world environments. News articles surrounding a real life divorce prompted by a Second Life relationship led researchers to question human assessments of fidelity with respect to technology. Findings from that study suggested that there is a relationship between social perceptions of infidelity and the mode of technology used to mediate communication. When communication is mediated by technologies like virtual worlds, people are far more tolerant of unfaithful behavior.

So, next time you decide to escape reality in favor of some virtual fun in Second Life, be on the lookout for our team! We’re often easy to spot as we sometimes wear our lab coats—as seen in the pictures below. And stay tuned to our blog because you just never know what the virtual worlds team might stumble upon next…

In Behavioral Research, we love conducting User Experience tests. At times, we don’t even have to ask questions to understand user reactions. Sometimes, facial expressions tell you everything you need to know.

In Behavioral Research, we do a lot of interviews - and virtual worlds are no exception.

“In-world” interviews are an amazing way to uncover avatar needs, preferences, and expectations in virtual worlds. In the last few months, we’ve used this method to produce some really intriguing findings.

Take a quick look at what an in-world interview looks like:

Spun friends…

If your cell phone surprisingly disappears, this video may explain where it went. Our Behavioral Research Department just loves conducting user experience tests on cell phones, PDAs, and touch screen iPhones. Check it out!

P.S. We promise to take good care of your devices! =)