Psychobserver » User Experience

Your brand spans multiple touchpoints

Nicolas — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:35:04 +0000

During one of my Fora.tv lunch breaks, I came across this talk that discusses how the creators of the “Heroes” series managed to develop such a strong community around the show, and most importantly how this community spans over a large number of touchpoints. There are many lessons that brands can learn from such a case study. I will try to summarize a few here that I find key.

The Talk: Digital, Life, Design 2010: Audience Sourcing
Speakers: Tim Kring (”Heroes”) and Peter Hirshberg (The Conversation Group)
Duration: 27 minutes

Build around a strong message

Remember that one liner summarizing your vision that some consultant or trainer asked you to come up with. Well, that’s really useful to have. Heroes was created around the message: “Save the world”. This message was not only used in the series, but also in communications and activities organized around the series, with ultimately a game developed to get people to do good. Whether it is internally with your employees or externally with your customers, this message will help unite everyone and give a personality to the experience people have with your company.

Whether there exist a written version of this vision or not, all companies have one. Companies communicates this vision or identity through all its channels and making a conscious effort to phrase it and work with it makes a real big difference. As such this vision should be realistic in the sense that it reflects the nature of the organization. If it does not, it won’t resonate with employees and customers.

A strong vision is necessary so that innovation can happen. Many companies around are afraid to set a vision as it is seen as reducing the scope of possible ideas generated, but the truth is that not all ideas are good for a company. There is a crucial difference between ideas and innovation. For the “right” ideas to be uncovered, employees and customers have to be helped to the right path. The vision helps innovation.

Surrender some control to your customers

The vision set for a company has to be specific enough to inspire people, but it has to be opened enough as well to leave space for innovation and idea generation. This vision is not there to ensure the company will keep 100% control over its identity, it’s here to ensure the brand evolves in the right direction.

And this is the second important point. Now, branding as mentioned in the talk is not a one-way street. It is definitely a two way street and companies need to adjust their strategies to this environment. Allowing your customers to participate in the brand is scary, but by turning them into brand ambassadors it is also a huge opportunity. For Heroes, the community is encouraged to come up with artwork around the series, and pirating of TV episodes although not encouraged of course, is tolerated as a reality of life. In this second instance, the multi-channel approach helps monetizing these customers using different means instead of getting stuck on one dysfunctional touchpoint.

Stay close to your customer

That’s where user experience or design thinking comes in. In order to implement such an approach, it is necessary to stay as close as possible to your customers. To do so, a community was key to Heroes and their series, but in case of a company in general other tools should be used to keep this strong connection. An open channel for front-line staff to report their observations of customers is always a very important component of this strategy. Other tools like ethnographic research, testing or other qualitative and quantitative techniques come in handy.

In the end, the approach to user experience should be a holistic one instead of one that is driven by individual projects. True innovation does not happen on demand. The right environment has to be cultivated for it to happen.

Engineers vs. Businessmen

Bulk Order of Smashing Book

Nicolas — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:00:42 +0000

Smashing Book by Smashing Magazine

You live in Hong Kong and you are into Web Design, you may be interested in buying Smashing Book. The book is a compilation of articles from Smashing Magazine that covers graphic design, programming, but also user experience and web strategy. It looks like a very nice reference book to have by your side.

We are organizing to bulk buy a number of copies in order to enjoy some discount on the price. The more people we can gather, the better the price can be. So, if you are interested, please drop me a message below and I will add you to our list of people interested. If we can reach at least 20 people, we will order the book.

No related posts.

Do people like clutter and content overload?

Nicolas — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:19:20 +0000

I remember a few meetings trying to sell usability and UCD to clients in Hong Kong. The same discussion would come back again and again. The client would ask:

“Aren’t people in Hong Kong and China different from the rest of the world? Don’t they like clutter and pages full of content and links? All the sites are currently designed in this way, it must mean that people like it.”

Below is a prime example of a very popular site that just overwhelms users with content and flashy stuff:

Notice how much space the navigation area takes and how many links it includes. Also note this is the gaming area of the site, but the main content inthe middle at the very top is a news digest. See it live at http://games.sina.com.cn.

So, in this article I decided to use two examples from real life to try to show that industry standards and the status quo are not always there because they are best and that with a bit of faith in the concept focusing on really pleasing the user/customer can help you make a difference.

Chinese Restaurants in Hong Kong

Hygiene has been a ubiquitous problem in Hong Kong for ages. Tales of food poisoning pop up in the newspapers regularly. Yet hygiene inspectors and the government seem totally useless in trying to solve the issue. As a result, the norm now in Hong Kong when people go to their local “Dim Sum” restaurant is to start by washing bowls, spoons and chopsticks with tea before they are deemed safe enough to eat with.

Some might point to this habit as part of the local folklore, but as a user experience practitioner I cannot help but being revolted by a situation like this. Restaurant hygiene everywhere in the world is taken for granted, so why would Hong Kong people have to be worried about it and take matter in their own hands. Is that the best solution to this problem? Will we soon have to bring our own chopsticks to restaurants because of hygiene reasons?

In Hong Kong the traditional "Dim Sum" starts with a cleaning session

Yet, everyone around is just used to this situation and now this cleaning process is part of the going to a Chinese restaurant experience, deeply embedded into people’s habits. Does it mean new restaurants should not care about hygiene in their kitchen because of the current status quo?

Real Estate practices

Hong Kong people spend a large amount of their time hunting for flats. In a sense you would think that something so important for Hong Kong people would have long been optimized so that anyone could take part in it with very little learning required. On the contrary, many rules and ways have to be learned first before hunting for a flat in Hong Kong.

One such rule concerns square footage. Simply looking at square footage on a advertisement for a flat is useless in Hong Kong. The information is only meaningful when looking at the combination of the square footage with the building where the flat is located. That’s because the advertised square footage is gross (it includes walls, public areas and lots of other things), so depending on the building where you want to purchase your flat, the net square footage might be actually somwhere between 70% and 90% of the gross one.

Knowing the real size of a flat requires learning the utilization rate in all buildings in Hong Kong. Great to train memory, but...

So, it is impossible to go out and shop for say a 800 sq. ft. apartment and just look for this number on advertisements. You have to look at flats with a higher square footage and calculate yourself depending on the utilization rate of the building what is the actual usable size of a flat. This is the standard in the industry and people who took the time to learn the rule take pride in having mastered this trick. Still, this obscure rule makes it very hard for many people to actually know the size of their apartment. Not very user friendly.

Conclusions

I see two conclusions to draw from the above two examples. First, standards are not right just because they exist. Historical factors, bad regulations or bad designers may be the reason for such standards to have appeared. If nothing is there to challenge the status quo things remain and the end user suffers, while company fail to differentiate and offer better services.

The second conclusion, very important in Asia, is that the culture here is one of adaptability. People are used to made do with what they are given, instead of rebelling against it and trying to change things. As a result (and because of many more cultural traits) it is naive to think that users or customers in general are going to openly criticize an existing situation or design. As mention above, it takes a leap of faith, but focusing on users and their needs is bound to pay off here, as everywhere else.

Two videos about the future of reading

Nicolas — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:45:51 +0000

A quick post with two videos, one not so serious (Thanks to Steve Portigal for Twitting that one – very funny) and one more inline with what things may soon be for us readers.

The “Kindle 3″

Time Inc. Tablet Demo for Sports illustrated

These videos can make us wonder whether reading, watching, listening will soon be all merged into one seamless experience around content consumption. Great sources of inspiration.

Reading Ahead: A Research by Portigal Consulting

Kindle Lover? – The eReading Experience

Nicolas — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:09:48 +0000

Reading on the Kindle

In a world of ever greater device integration, ebook readers seem to be anachronisms. iPhones enable phone calls, taking pictures, web browsing, gaming, reading and much more… all in one device!

What do ebook Readers do? Well, they allow their users to … read books. So, what is so special about ebook readers that makes them an item of choice for many? And how can the ebook experience be pushed further to lure more people into purchasing them? These are the two questions I’ll focus on in this first post.

In a second post, I will focus more specifically on the Kindle interface design with its goods and bads.

Why ebook readers?

I remember two specific conversations I had after purchasing my Kindle. In one over MSN, a friend of mine showed his total incomprehension when I said I had bought a device entirely dedicated to reading books. His iPhone could be used to read documents and books. Why would anyone buy an ebook reader? And in another instance, another friend as we were discussing the Kindle with other IxDA members took out the book she was carrying and said that she could never switch from physical books to electronic ones. She mentioned the much wider array of sensory stimuli she felt as she was reading her book – its smell, the coffee stains on it, etc. (More on this in my previous post about Steve Portigal’s research)

Good for any book?

As I was trying to justify my purchase to these two friends it appeared clearly to me that ebook readers are not for everyone, and are not for every book as well. It does not make any sense at this point to purchase a design book or say a book relying heavily on visuals on the Kindle. The technology with the black and white screen is just too limited for that. But I would argue that it only takes a try to realize that for more or less any other kinds of books, an e-version is a very good option.

Good for anyone?

Then, are ebook readers for everyone? Well, in Hong Kong especially where there is very little reading culture, an ebook reader is just not going to be appealing to the mass market. People read very short articles or reports. And for that a mobile phone and a computer are very good reading tools. The great contrast and clarity of eink may not represent a huge plus. The advantages of ebook readers appear more clearly for people who read a lot of books. In my case, I have no significant bookshelf space in my small Hong Kong flat, every book I buy lies around somewhere and ends up being a burden after I finished reading it. Only books that I really enjoy and would read again find their permanent place in my home (this may actually still make me buy real books after I enjoyed reading them on the Kindle).

Giving more choice?

Another major problem – also pretty specific to Hong Kong – is that the choice of books in bookstore is very limited. Many times, Amazon.com is the only channel available to get books here and the Kindle seemed a good solution to alleviate this problem. Unfortunately, a few searches for books in the Kindle store after my purchase revealed that the Kindle’s range of choice was actually pretty limited as well, thus not solving this problem in the end.

Real-time Connectivity

Finally, and for me one of the most important feature of ebook readers is their real-time connectivity, arguably not an ebook feature, but more the fact that they have wireless connection. Now watching a show on TV, reading an article and simply walking in the street, if I see a book mentioned, I can just go on the Kindle store and download a sample of that book to see if I am interested. This really has changed the way I purchase and consider books. I now have around 10 samples on my ebook reader and one of them will be my next read. No more aimless trips to the local bookstore not knowing what to buy anymore.

So, can ebook readers get better?

My feeling since I purchased a Kindle is that this is not a mature product yet. It has great features and changes the reading experience, but it could be much more than what it is right now. There are two main points I’d like to highlight here. The first one has to do with publishers and the other one with social media.

Wake up publishers!
Since BusinessWeek stopped the Asian edition of its printed magazine to refocus on the web, I canceled my subscription. A very high price and articles less relevant to me were the main reasons. I now have resubscribed to BusinessWeek on the Kindle. The price is much more affordable and I do not have to carry any magazine around to read the articles. Still, I wish I could get my Asian version of the magazine back. If printing cost is the main issue why printed magazine are refocusing their activities, aren’t devices like the Kindle opening up a brand new low-cost store front for them? Plus, the ease of purchasing content on the Kindle, the trial periods and the scary lack of realization users have when spending money (better have great self control if you buy a Kindle) really make the Kindle a very attractive platform to sell content. Somehow, I am very ready to pay to get a magazine delivered to my Kindle rather than pay a subscription on a website to get roughly the same thing. There is a huge difference having content “delivered” to you instead of having to “go and get” it yourself.

The new paradigm of sharing
The world is changing and reading has evolve with the times. One of the biggest paradigm shift to me in recent years is the fact that doing is not enough anymore. We don’t do things for the sake of doing them anymore. The end result of what we do needs to have a “resell” value, it has to be shareable and broadcastable, it has to help us build our personal brands. Blogs, like this one, are great example of course. But the change is more profound. Kids are now publishing videos on YouTube explaining others how to use the software or game they just purchased. If nobody knows what you are doing, it seems that the value of doing that thing drops tremendously.

The same shift applies to reading and I personally see great opportunities in this space. What if reading became something we shared with everyone else? What if highlighting content in a book meant it was posted to Twitter? What if we could easily create blog posts out of the notes we took? What if we could create discussions for example on Yahoo Answers around specific aspects or paragraph of a book? What if each book would automatically have its own Ning-like social network? ebook readers and their connectivity really have the power to integrate very well into the existing ecosystem of user-generated content. It looks like Amazon’s competitors and Amazon itself are gearing up to offer more of these. Amazon just released the Kindle for PC for example which could be a great enabler for this kind of additional features.

To conclude

In terms of reading experience, I love my Kindle. I wish it would do more and I feel right now it doesn’t offer a complete experience like the iPhone does for example… but I am confident very soon it will do more and when it does I’m sure I will always keep this device close to me. And Amazon’s latest software release allowing us to read pdfs on the Kindle is a great move in the right direction.

The GoAnimate song

Nicolas — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:30:09 +0000

It’s my first time blogging about something directly related to my current job as product manager at GoAnimate.com. I am not sure why I did not do it earlier… Working at GoAnimate allowed me to switch from being an uninvolved consultant advising people to being in the “pit” fighting to make the website a success not only in terms of user experience and interaction design, but also more generally as a company.

One major realization I had while working is the power of the community. I have been humbled by what and how users have been using the platform. We first designed it for people to create short funny stories, and we now realize that quite a number of users are now using the platform to create whole animated episodes that sometimes last more than 10 minutes. We also see amazing thing happening in terms of users sharing their creations and the content they upload to the platform. Overall it is amazing to see the dedication and passion of the users on the platform.

Passion that sometimes expresses itself in some strange ways, as the following video shows:

There is no question the Internet is magical in the ways it empowers people to express themselves in such diverse ways… for better and for worse. ;o)

Black Swans and Web Start-ups

Nicolas — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:33:50 +0000

The Black Swan

I have just finished reading The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book is a great read. I already found Fooled by Randomness by the same author very interesting and this one goes further by applying similar ideas to fields outside of finance. Black Swans are basically very improbable events that are impossible to predict and that have major consequences on their environment. There is no need to look very far to find a Black Swan, as we are in the middle of one with this financial crisis (although some could argue it is a “Gray” Swan as it might have been predictable).

For me, the main lesson I get from the book is that we need to face uncertainty as it is (unpredictable) and should not let unsound theories or stories (especially success stories) fool ourselves in making wrong or too risky decisions. Most articles out there try to rationalize things with checklists, qualities of the successful entrepreneurs… stories that transform successful entrepreneurs into semi-gods who somehow possess a magical potion to make any idea successful. One of the last such article I read had: “The product does not matter” in its checklist for a successful social network. After a short state of intense anger reading this few words, I came to wonder. Is that true? Does the product really matter? Or maybe not…

As a guy focusing on user experience and being a product manager right now, I am in a totally biased position. But I will anyway try to give my personal vision of the start-up world, focusing on the people in this world. There are two main types of actors for web start-ups. The investors (Venture Capital, Angels,…) and the actual entrepreneurs (I am lucky enough to be an employee in the start-up where I work, so I may have a clear vision on entrepreneurs). Both of these parties are aware of the role of Black Swans in their business. They somehow know that only a very small portion of companies make it big.

But which one of the two has the better position? Which one is the fool in the relationship? (after reading Mr. Taleb’s book I feel that there must be fools everywhere…)

When I look at all these articles and all the press only talking about the winners in the start-up world, I definitely see a massive survivor bias (the fact that you never hear about failures) phenomenon. Talking to entrepreneurs it also appears to me that only a few are aware of the real probability (or more accurately the total uncertainty) of their business being successful. While this is good to ensure entrepreneurs have the drive and put as much energy as possible in their business, it makes them the fools in this relationship. Investors know of failures. Most of their investment are failures and that knowledge makes them better equipped to not be fools.

So, what do investors do?! Well. They are looking for Black Swans. They invest in many companies and push these companies to put themselves in a position where they have a chance of being hit by a Black Swan. Usually, this results in a total reluctance to look at cash flow and profits and only focus on expanding the community and promoting the site (the product does not matter).

What is the result of that?! Well, many companies die as a result of this, but the investors still do okay as in the lot of companies they invest in, they only need one successful one to reap a lot of return and erase all their losses. They increase their chance of facing a Black Swan by having many companies under their umbrella and pushing them into the right direction.

But, what about entrepreneurs?! For that entrepreneur who hit it big, that’s great. But for all the ones facing failure (the immense majority), not good. Their companies could have done great by taking a more product centric approach with slower development but producing returns. Their growth would have been slower, their return (in case of success) would have been smaller, but they could have built a lasting business.

So the conclusion is: As an entrepreneur, it is important to know which group you want to belong to. Being a fool can be good, but only if you knowingly put yourself in this situation. For all the entrepreneurs who prefer not to be fools… the road is longer and tougher, but it may provide more chances of success in the end. And on that road, the product does matter.

Alrite. That was my 2 cents on the issue. I am sure that all over the web it is possible to find much better articles about this (I am just an employee after all). I just felt like putting some thoughts down as I was reading “The Black Swan”.

The GoAnimate song

Requesting downloads on SlideShare

Nicolas — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 03:51:18 +0000

A week ago, I received a request from a user on SlideShare to download my presentation on “Hong Kong NowTV Shop“. I am not sure why I did not allow everyone to download the presentation in the first place, but now it allowed me to take a look at this specific process on SlideShare, a very useful type of interaction for social networks.

There are two actors in this interaction: The reader and the author.

The reader, browsing SlideShare (or more probably searching on Google) for content related to his study or presentation, finally finds something on SlideShare inside a presentation. Too bad though, the author of the presentation decided he would not allow readers to download the presentation.

SlideShare has well addressed this need in their design. In case a presentation can be downloaded, the interface displays a clear “Download” button just on top of their slideshow, and if the presentation is not downloadable then the button is changed into a “Request Download” one.

SlideShare

That’s where unfortunately a nice dedicated feature breaks as the reader upon clicking on this link is thrown back into a generic messaging interface. The reader has his goal in mind already, so it is possible for him to refill the whole messaging form and explain his request. But wouldn’t have it been efficient to propose an already prepared message for him or her to use/customize?

SlideShare Messaging Form

Not only would it be more efficient, it would also add better control when the other actor in this interaction takes over. The author is informed that somebody sent him a message, but no mention is made regarding the fact that the reader wants to download his presentation, that is unless the reader took the time to write a clear message explaining exactly what is needed.

… And even if they do, the author is then faced with the task of turning the download option on for the presentation. As the original flow is related to “request download” one could expect that the option to turn this on would be clearly highlighted on the interface next to the message, but nothing like this is offered to the author who if he is not using SlideShare on a regular basis (like me) is left wandering around the options of the presentation and missing the little checkbox on that page several times before being able to complete the task.

SlideShare Private Message

To go a bit further, we may also consider that if the author made his presentation “non-downloadable” he or she may have had reasons for doing so. In that respect it may be useful to offer the possibility to the author to let another specific user to download the presentation rather than having to allow anyone to download the presentation.

Oh. No! It sounds like my entirely objective blog post became a rant… S … Sorry for that. The aim is just to point out that a flow has to be thought from beginning until the end in order to be successful (including all actors in that interaction). A button on an interface is not enough in most cases… And thus now I will look back at the feature we have been building on GoAnimate and see where we may have fell into this trap as well (which with daily turnarounds like in any start-ups is unavoidable)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

The end of User-Generated Content?

Nicolas — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:28:32 +0000

The end of user-generated content? Really?! With social networks, blogs, wikis and more new similar applications appearing every day, who would defend such an idea? It is at first glance what Newsweek seems to be doing with their article: “Revenge of the Experts” (found through Putting People First blog). But is it really what they are saying?

The debate is not really about whether user-generated content will disappear or not. People will continue to generate content. And with the increasing power of applications and tools we have within our grasp, we will continue to generate more and more content. But it is the role of this content that we generate that will be changing. With all the excitement brought by “Web 2.0″ (for lack of a better word) about common user doing the job of experts and companies using them to build a business model, we forgot that experts did not appear out of nowhere. Experts are here because, well, they are experts! They are much better at doing something than other people, and they should be rewarded for that. The tools that we now have available helped closing the gap between real expertise and perceived one, but the difference remains nevertheless.

The fact that blogs exist for example does not mean we can all be good reporters or journalists. It only means that we can all publish stuff. The fact that we can now comment on articles on most of the major magazines and newspapers, does not make us more expert than the person writing that article. And actually if we go beyond the facade of user-generated content, we discover that most content, as highlight in the article, is generated by a very small group of people. In the end, to create quality content to all can refer to, you need experts. Wikipedia just showed that an amazing tool could be created by offering a place where experts from a wide range of fields could aggregate all their knowledge, but it omitted to include a clear accountability review on the quality of each contributor.

In every such discussions I have these days everything boils down back to the word “good”. In the recent discussion on the use of personas, the conclusion basically is that if the person is “good” then personas are great. In this case it is the same. If a person is good, or an expert, then we can trust his or her judgment. This means that we need expertise, and we need ways to identify who has that expertise. After all the excitement, we could very well see more old fashioned business model that we thought were dead make a come back.

Open your mind… and dream: Nokia Morph

Nicolas — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:46:04 +0000

This is a concept video from Nokia. You can download it from Nokia’s website or watch it on YouTube (embedded below).

Concepts have been used a lot in the car industry to spur design ideas and creativity. I think this video does an amazing job at setting a vision for the future of mobile. It is crazy and … and a very long term vision. But it is also based on actual technology and actual constraints we have today with mobile devices (like features integration, screen size). Just like in the car industry where we don’t see concept cars in the street, there is very little chance we will see this concept out at all. Still, just like in the car industry, some of the features in these concepts can make it to the main stream products. I can’t wait personally how screen size limitations are addressed with new technologies… See Philips work… or Modu Mobile.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/IX-gTobCJHs]