Usability Sense: Navigation hierarchy February 28, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Usability, User Experience.add a comment
DISCLAIMER: I meant this post to be quite short… and I just realized I am writing more and more. As a result, the post covers stuff like information architecture as well… but maybe not in a way that is a thorough as it should be. I hope the result is still comprehensive enough…
The navigation is arguably the most important area in a website. From the navigation, the user should be able at a glance to create a mental model (definition on Wikipedia) of what the website is about and what it has to offer (be it content, services or products).
That’s where Information Architecture comes in. Information Architecture is basically two things: labeling and grouping information.
Labeling
Labeling seems straight-forward at first, but is a quite political issue. Good labeling should be clear and intuitive, meaning that when the user reads the name of a section, he or she should be able to guess what kind of content is included in it. The usual conflict when it comes to labeling is with the marketing department. In terms of branding and “sounding cool” many marketers come up with fancy names for sections they want on the website. Problem is,… these names require more effort on the user’s side to learn and thus affect usability. Not that they are always bad. If a “label” is consistently used throughout an organization regardless of the channel (online or offline), then it could work. As usual, the answer to that problem is: it depends on the context of use (like most usability problems).
An example with unclear naming… good or bad?!
Grouping
Grouping is the second aspect of information architecture. Grouping relates to how the content is put together to form sections, sub-sections, etc. Grouping is really key in supporting users in building their mental model of the website. A good grouping is hierarchical by nature and this hierarchy should be reflected in the navigation of the website. It is usually good to have a primary grouping where each piece of content resides in a single group and then if needed build multiple ways to navigate that information from different angles. Below screenshot shows this. On the International Herald Tribune, content is organized by topics first, but then it is also possible to browse according to location as well.
But that’s where the problems start (and where the actual blog post I meant to write start as well). The way the grouping on IHT is displayed really does not do a good job at helping users build a clear mental model. The design of the navigation creates the impression that regions (americas, europe,…) are subsections of the main iht.com section (that appears selected). That could work, but let’s look at what happens when we decide to look at business articles…
As the user is interacting with the navigation area, this same area should provide a feedback of the action that took place. Unfortunately at this stage, nothing happened. The homepage (iht.com) still looks selected, what looked like sub-sections (americas, europe,…) did not change. The mental model that users had build based the homepage does not hold anymore. Of course, the content below changed, and the page has a title “Business with Reuters”, but the job is not done. Users are also not given the opportunity to drill down more into sub-sections under business (possible at the bottom of the page), which I would say is a pretty important features.
Anyway. My post is pretty long already. To sum up: A navigation should support users in building a mental model of the website. That mental model should be reinforced as they browse to different pages. Easier said than done…
Concept Models - Dan Brown’s presentation at Interaction 08 February 26, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in IxDA, Tools, User Experience.add a comment
Experientia has posted a list of all the presentations made at the IxDA Interaction 08 conference with synopsis and videos. That’s a nice little source to spend rainy week-ends…
The first video I wanted to highlight is the one by Dan Brown about concept models (watch it on Brightcove or get the slides on Slideshare). That video had a big impact on me, as it made me basically put a name and reserve a space for an activity I was already performing in my projects. Without really making it formal I have been drawing concept models for most of my projects somewhere in between research (when we can actually perform any) and wireframing… or after… or at the same time…
That was the problem. Concept models had no timeframe and resources allocated to them, but somehow where necessary in order to formalize the solution that was being developed. From now on, I will dedicate specific time after research to working on these concept models whenever appropriate. I feel like a gap in my work process has been addressed here!
I have also started to read the book “Communicating Design” by Dan Brown. Although a bit too basic in some respect, it does a good job as a checklist to use during projects when you want to make sure you are on the right track and want to manage your project efficiently.
Agile User Research February 20, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Customer Experience, Ethnographic Research, Hong Kong, Research, Trends, User Experience.1 comment so far
On February 5th, Hong Kong had the chance of having Martin Fowler speak about Agile Methodology. I have to admit that I was actually dragged to the talk by my developer colleagues… I did not really feel like going to a very technical presentation where I would be totally lost. I was really wrong not to want to go. After I actually understood that XP did not mean Windows XP, but eXtreme Programming (he he… embarrassed smile) I really enjoyed the talk.
There are two main points that made me think about how Agile methodology could have an impact on my work: user experience / user research.
1. How can we make research more agile?
The Agile concept is to break down every project in small fully functional modules that can be delivered in a very short period of time (could be 2 weeks for a development project). This helps focusing on the core features of the project, while leaving the rest for later. This also helps starting the design even without knowing all the business requirements and actually supports better defining business requirements along the way as the client sees the system build itself from scratch.
In this post, I will just focus on the research part of user experience. Indeed, the interaction design part can be incorporated quite easily in an Agile methodology, but the preliminary research appears more tricky to me. Indeed, when we start a project we first want to know what the customers or users want. We have an array of tools to address this from quantitative ones like surveys to qualitative ones like usability testing or ethnographic research. Studies like this can actually last for quite a long time and from the client’s point of view it is hard to visualize what they will get out of it. What if we could break down any research into small items that would last maybe under a week and deliver clear conclusions at the end of each week. Being new to Agile stuff, I still need to think about that some more… the first problem I see is how to perform a relevant study (in terms of sample size for example) in such a short time… But with this in mind, making research more iterative helps design a better research in the end by fine-tuning the study objectives bit-by-bit.
2. Should I work towards not having a job?
From Martin’s point of view and following Agile concepts, the developer and the client should be in direct contact. This makes the role of the Business Analyst on such projects redundant. Of course he mentioned that on most projects Business Analyst are actually key in creating a bond between the different parties, but that made me think… Are researchers like business analysts?… In an ideal case, if my client (I mean, the operational teams) could talk directly to his or her customers, everything should be better. What if instead of designing punctual studies, researchers should all strive to design systems that allow their clients to stay in touch with their customers on a continuous basis, making our role as researchers redundant.
That’s pretty much the concept of customer experience. Stay in touch with your customers on a continuous basis so that you can better design your products and services depending on their changing needs. Still maybe more could be done to integrate advanced qualitative methods into the operations of a company. We see more and more ethnographic research within companies… but my feeling is that more is possible.
Just some unfinished thoughts…
Web Wednesday Hong Kong February 14, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Hong Kong, Web 2.0, Web Wednesday.2 comments
Yesterday night was another edition of Web Wednesday Hong Kong. The interview this time was of Argha Sen who is Head of Marketing for Toys R Us in Asia. It was quite amusing to witness the difference between the talk yesterday and the talk from the last event. Last event was about EditGrid, a Hong Kong online spreadsheet start-up, and it mostly revolved around getting excited about Web 2.0 and getting investment (even though you have no idea how to make money with your company).
In contrast yesterday Argha was on the total opposite side of the spectrum. His approach was show me the money, show me the numbers that supports me getting into that Web stuff and then I will think about it. Obviously the audience at Web Wednesday was not expecting this, and it did not make for a very entertaining discussion, but reality checks are always good. Doing something without thinking about the money and a sound business model first is like entirely relying on luck! It might work, you might get bought by some big guys… but the drains are full of the “hidden” majority of these company who tried to follow that path.
… just my take away from yesterday’s talk…
Update: Listen to the podcast of the Interview on Web Wednesday Blog
Forced opt-in by the French government January 29, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Customer Experience, France, Hong Kong, newsletters.add a comment
Yesterday, quietly minding my own things, I received a strange email in my personal inbox:
From: Nicolas_lassus@yahoo.com (That’s me! … usually a sign of a spam email or virus)
Subject: (French Consulate in Hong Kong and Macau) Confirmation (in French of course)
Seeing the subject line I thought that the consulate was reminding me that my new passport I requested was sitting in their drawers waiting for me to pick it up… but wrong I was! Although I cannot recall ticking a box saying I want to receive anything from my dear Consulate when I applied for a passport a month ago (my last interaction with the consulate), here I get a “confirmation” for my subscription to the Consulate information newsletter.
Luckily there is a link for me to modify my subscription in the email. This leads to a page where I can choose between HTML and text format, and where I can unsubscribe. Note though how the link says “modify your subscription” and not “if you want to unsubscribe bla bla bla”. But then I stop… would unsubscribing from this newsletter make me a bad citizen? Will the government flag me and check my tax receipts for omissions (I actually never worked in my own country, and thus never had a tax declaration done there)? Anyway. I decided that it was safer for me to at least pick up my passport before removing my name from the distribution list… or at least see what the first newsletter will look like.
It is funny how governments in the UK and Canada seem to be at the forefront of user experience and accessibility… and how the French government still does not get the concept of letting users opt-in to a newsletter… scary!
Airgini launches private Alpha… January 23, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Airgini, Hong Kong, Innovation, Mobile, Social Networking.add a comment
Airgini has just launched its private alpha version. Airgini is a Hong Kong born mobile social networking application. It is great to see product innovation and development in Hong Kong. There are too few of those.
So, all the best to the Airgini team!
The web auditory experience January 22, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Innovation, Trends, User Experience.add a comment
For a long time, the Web has been about having a visual experience. But now, there are signs that it is changing. With more and more videos on the Web, with Skype causing (or maybe causes are elsewhere) people to wear headsets in office and with music being added to websites, the Web now has the opportunity to deliver a richer experience using both visual and auditory cues.
It looks that the first focus of this evolution is to tackle one of the most critical problem with the Web, the fact that people don’t read. I was reading (… so people really don’t read?) an article today and next to the title was a button saying: “Click-2-Listen”.
Out of curiosity, I clicked on it and listened to the article being read to me. In the end, I missed most of it as my colleagues were talking to me and I could not be bothered to press Pause/Play all the time. The quality of the speech although impressive is nothing like a real human talking. In the end, I think I prefer by far reading.
I guess the nice thing with this text to speech service is that you can download the media file and play it later maybe on your mp3 player when you are on the way home. It seems to me that if we are in front of our screen, we’d rather read through an article which is a much more flexible task rather than listen to the article. The service could then be much more targeted towards people who download the file for later.
Two companies offering the service are:
- News Worthy Audio
- Odiogo (I really like the tagline: “Gives your text content voice … and legs!”, which plays much more on the listen later feature of the service)
Usability Sense: Remember users’ task January 21, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Docstoc, Usability.add a comment
The Web is a task-based medium. People go online with an objective in mind and a wish (not always granted) to complete that objective. For a website, users’ goals are the number one priority. If the user can complete his or her task, then they may be happy and come back. If the task cannot be completed, then it usually means a lost user.
For a long time, the registration process on websites has been a hindrance to letting users complete their task. Until Amazon came out, users could not do anything before they registered, resulting in many lost opportunities for websites. Indeed, without a teaser into what users can get, these usually do not want to create a profile. The rule is “show me what I get and maybe I will create a profile”. Creating a profile is a trade off, where the user is trading personal information against a (usually free) service.
So, Amazon came and now users could start looking for books online and only create a profile at the check out time. Everything got solved right?! Well, not really. Many websites still fail to integrate the registration (or login) process well. This usually means that users who did not register reach a stage where they have to register. Upon creating their profile, they have to restart their process from scratch or more often extra steps are added to their initial task.
There the simple usability concept is “remember the user’s task”. An example of a good experience I just had this morning (thus this post) is with DocStoc. I went there looking for a document. I found it and upon clicking the download button, I got sent to a registration page. At this stage, I pondered. Is what DocStoc offers enough for me to provide me personal information. I thought so at that time and went on to create my profile.
After two pages filling data, I saved my profile and the document I requested got downloaded automatically. Creating my profile, added a few steps to my task, but in this end did not affect my original task.
Common Sense many would say… yes, but oftentimes common sense is exactly what websites lack.
Steve Portigal’s Interactions column: Persona Non Grata January 16, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Ethnographic Research, Strategy, Tools, Trends.add a comment
Request a copy of Portigal Consulting new column: Persona Non Grata (link to ACM Interactions Publication). Check out their blog to see how.
A really good article on Personas… It is well written, entertaining and to the point; i.e. Personas are misused in most cases and a tool meant to “help companies actually get closer to their REAL customers” has been transformed into a tool used to “be perceived as close to real customers”.
Should personas be dumped altogether or should researchers educate marketing and design people about how to use them to actually make a difference in the product lifecycle (instead of just being as a marketing tool). I am for education… but how long will that process be?
Online World vs. Real World - An Increasingly Blurry Line January 14, 2008
Posted by psychobserver in Customer Experience, Innovation, Strategy, Trends, User Experience.add a comment
A great article featured on Experientia’s Putting People First: “Technology and the World of Consumption” from the blog apophenia. The article is interesting already and the discussion below is even more.
The whole idea can be summarized by the quote on the right. Up until now, the real and the online worlds have been considered as entirely separate, selling different products and services, and addressing the needs of different customers. But more and more these differences are disappearing. With the new generation growing accustomed to the online world, the distinction is less and less relevant. Consumers are learning how to adapt their shopping behavior to optimize their experience regardless of how retailers are thinking and planning their offering.
Thus behaviors like searching online and buying in the real world, or the reverse - searching in the real world and buying online - becoming common place. This transition is far from an easy one. If we look at the services industry for example, banks have been struggling for a long time to move their customer from branches to the ATM and then online. Only now are they seeing younger customers using cheaper channels. In the case of the banks, cost has been driving the transition and helped companies doing the necessary changes pro-actively (even before customers actually wanted those changes).
But what about retail? The cost component and the complementary of both worlds is not self-apparent. That could explain why companies are slower to react. But react they will have to. Both real and online worlds have their place. They both address different kinds of needs, but surely both will have to adapt to the changing habits of consumers. Personally I see this as one of the most interesting potential for innovation and changes in customer experience.
