Robert Hoekman’s books are inline with Steve Krug’sDon’t Make Me Think. They are quick reads that take a simplistic, straightforward, and humorous approach to explaining usability principles.
Designing the Obvious focuses on Robert’s 7 qualities of great web-based software. Explaining how to use each quality to perform ‘Interface Surgery’, as well as changes to the overall usability process, and principles such as kaizen and poka-yoke, the book is great for anyone tasked with creating a pleasant user experience.
Designing the Moment takes a micro-look at different phases of a user experience from searching to sign off and how to make improvements every step of the way. By focusing on each ‘moment’ of the user experience, Robert puts many standard elements of a web experience under inspection and makes some great recommendations.
If you’re looking to give some time to a ‘professional’ book, consider giving one or both of these a shot.
As a new visitor to the Engauge Digital Blog, I decided to start by reading the existing posts in an effort to avoid duplicate discussions. With numerous articles and limited time, my experience consisted of multiple visits where I would read a few articles before having to leave to focus my attention elsewhere. I began each return visit by asking, “Where did I leave off?” The answer would be found after scanning several posts and pages requiring a growing amount of time and effort. I don’t spend much time on blogs, but I have had similar frustrations and thought I would post to see if my experience is common.
THE QUESTION: Has anyone seen a blog that easily allows users to indicate what posts have been read, easily locate unread posts, and search within the posted content?
Indicating where the user is and where they have been in a web experience is a basic best practice, but in my experience it’s commonly void within blogs. The fact that users do not have to select every post prior to viewing does make the typical visited link identification difficult. However the presence of a “Read” check box with every post, an “Unread” filter or category option, and a search field could help answer “Where did I leave off?”
In a recent alert on Jakob Nielsen’s site, the “guru of usability” helps us understand the really important website analytics and how to interpret them better. He then helps us understand the ways in which to improve our analytics, particularly the dreaded Bounce Rate.
The bounce rate of a site is measured by calculating those who enter through any page and leave from the same page versus those who enter through any page and click-through to another page.
Recent research has shown that an increasing number of people are entering sites not though the home page, but through some deeper, interior page. This can be due to the increase of social bookmark sites like Digg and Del.icio.us, which points the web user to particular content. As a result, the bounce rate of most sites is going up.
To better understand one’s own bounce rate and how to reduce it, Nielsen recommends understanding the bounce rates of particular visitors. Alas, not all bounce rates are equal, just as not all visitors are equal.
There are basically 4 categories of visitors:
1. Those entering from the likes of Digg. These are the least important to you because they are a fickle bunch and will have unusually high bounce rates.
2. Those who enter from direct links from other websites. These visitors are in essence receiving a recommendation from some other site. People who follow these recommendations may not have been looking for your site or product directly. They have some degree of interest, but if the usability of the site is poor or does not match their expectation, the bounce rate will be high.
3. Those entering from search engine traffic (whether it be SEO or paid links) will have a specific interest in your brand and your product. They are actively searching and wanting to engage with your company. Nielsen state, “If they leave immediately, there is something wrong with your landing pages.” Check your usability, your copywriting, and don’t forget to modify keywords.
4. Loyal users are those that return repeatedly to your site. This is your core consumer audience. If they return repeatedly, they may only be checking for new content on the site. Upon finding it, they will engage longer with your site than many other visitors. As long as they keep coming back, it’s okay if this user has a low page count.
All in all, Nielsen recommends shifting your attention from the “unique visitor” as the gold standard for a site’s success. Because the majority of unique visitors will be of the #1 and #2 variety above. Instead, count loyal customers and convert them with new content, new products, new special offers just for them. And try your best to convert the unique visitor into a repeat visitor.
Make sure the site doesn’t have confusing navaigation and is light on the copywriting. Insure that there is a clear path for the visitor to follow and provide them with next steps. Don’t force them to guess where the special product or offer is, expose it.
An agency out of Vancouver, BC designed a beautiful website - DesignCanChange.org - aimed at educating and uniting the design community to use their influence and purchasing power to combat climate change.
Straight from the website: “Design Can Change works with the notion that we can collectively encourage substantial change. By utilizing our ability to effectively communicate and build interest, we can generate awareness and further the cause to end global warming.”
The site is successful in portraying dismal facts in such a beautiful manner (with a little help from their sponsor, Getty Images), with the underlying hope that we can all make a difference and that we are all responsible for change.
While the site has great tools and resources on what kind of steps to take to “greenify” your ways, it seems to have fallen short in generating conversation and action within their site - there is a blog that seems to have gone unnoticed.
On the positive side, you can “Take the Pledge” which garners you a spot within their worldwide directory that is accessible to any visitor. Hopefully being featured in Time Magazine’s 2008 “Design 100″ issue helped to direct more attention to the site and make use of the seemingly under-utilized tools.
Ever have that moment when you’re in the middle of some inane conversation and the thought flashes – this could be a Dilbert strip! Well rejoice, for the newly launched Dilbert website offers you the chance to make just that happen. Oh the opportunities that this new world offers. Write your own ending, write the dialogue for an entire strip or start the strip and pass it along to friends to add their dialogue.
For a comic strip, this is pretty huge. Enabling user generated content or feedback to filter into a brand is something that companies struggle with on a daily basis. The fear, and reasonably so, is that if you give people the chance to talk about your brand they’ll say mean things.
Dilbert’s creators understand that people are already saying, and doing, much of what this new website offers and have made the decision to become a part of that conversation. Good for them. I wish more companies embraced this type of user feedback because an essential part of a product or service lifecycle is hearing what customers want and making the offering better. I know, it takes time and a lot of convincing to even get an audience to start the conversation, but it’s not going away anytime soon.
So what do users think about this 2.0 version of the Dilbert site? They think it sucks. Yep, that’s right, after all that hard work to add more features they want the old site back. Why? Loss of functionality and compatibility. Apparently the old site made it easier to view daily strips and find old ones. Site creators have apparently been monitoring this feedback and added a blog post saying that they’re looking to make some changes in the next few weeks. User feedback rocks!
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?
It may be a Dutch website, but they have the same great taste in music (less the awkward skew towards the still popular Journey, Asia and Air Supply). The microsite showcases 5 generations of VWs alongside the music of their era. The gaming portion of the site quizzes the user to pick which VW and era belongs with the song and the results are an engaging advergame that delivers some great music and memories.
So what were my findings?
VW sure has changed from the 5os, and still has yet to bring back the Karmann Ghia.
Quiz shows and advergames mix very well.
I have an odd skew towards 50s and 80s music.
Take the quiz and see how VW has changed over 60 years. Just click on “speel het spel” and enjoy the music. (It takes a while to load, please be patient!)
Whoever said scrolling for content was bad? Maybe our entire User Experience Department…
So why can’t scrolling be part of the experience, part of the concept… well it can be and Orange does a great job with the dreaded “page down” action.
Orange, a mobile provider out of the UK, recently launched the microsite around the concept of unlimited mobile usage. It’s a clever play on unlimited and scrolling lets the user interact with various flash experiences and conveys the feeling of a single page that never ends. The micro-experiences give quick interaction points and continuously drive the user deeper down the page to an abyss of rainbows, birds, bunnies and monkeys.
All said and done, it is a smart site and if it does not crash your browser, I hope you enjoy the lengthy experience.
Are you confused by the hundreds of printers that fax, copy, print, talk, beep and jam? I know I am.
Enter Epson’s new website that simplifies your decision process while giving you a few “chuckles” along the way. There are some great aspects to this site that make it viral and also sales focused. Epson understands that the viewer/user might not be the purchaser and also might not be ready to buy the product this instant. So, they have given the user some tools to share their findings with others and even themselves for future Epson purchase decisions. See below in the “Wish” page and a great example of a “Dear Me” reminder email.
So with an understanding of the user and the buying cycle, we might say that Epson has built an amusing site that guides us through a normally frustrating process. Well, before we jump to high praises, I would like to talk about some other key points that I would have wanted out of this decision engine:
1.) If they are talking about the quality of prints, show me the quality. I would have loved to have seen side by side examples of the same image to weigh the print resolution.
2.) If I am given options to compare the product, give me the ability to select from other manufacturers. The site is fun, but it will not stop me from going to a better comparison site like cnet to get unbiased reviews and user generated comments.
3.) As we all know UGC (user generated content) is a great feature to add validity to your products, why wasn’t a dialog started with consumers on the site that already owned these products?
All in all, Epson and their agencies have built a very creative way to choose “your” peripheral device, but they have left out some key features that could really make it more than an engaging microsite and make it a great tool.
At Spunlogic, we have a lot of great experience and unique ideas to share. From work with clients to new approaches and trends, in this award winning blog you'll find Spunlogic experts sharing their opinions and ideas on all aspects of interactive marketing.
