Experience Planner

Form submissions are often a key performance measure to determine the overall success or failure of a brand website or marketing campaign. Registration forms, requests for more information, contest entry forms…these experiences are often the end goal of an entire campaign.

Experience Planning folks analyze forms particularly closely to ensure that the form is usable – logical flow, clear error messages, few distractions and a clear call to submit.  A simple, clean form with minimal design elements is often the preferred approach, but is this always the best solution?

John Broady from Omniture Digital recently performed a study to compare increase in ‘request more info’ form submissions for two universities. The universities tested two versions of the form: 1) a very simple version of the form without design detail and 2) a version of the form with stylized page design, hero shot, colorful submit button, and benefits messaging.

Results were very surprising. One university saw a large lift from the simple form but not the stylized form. The other university saw a large lift from the stylized form but not the simple one.  Did audiences randomly respond differently to the two formats?

Upon further analysis, Broady and his team found a clear distinction between the two options – the sources of referring traffic.  The university that showed a lift via the simple form had the majority of traffic originating from other pages within the university website.  The university that showed a lift via the stylized form had the majority of traffic coming directly from search engines.

Why is there such a large distinction? Users coming directly from search engines are likely clicking on links and determining within seconds whether to stay on the page or keep searching. Visual impact of a page is very important to capture their attention.  Users coming from other pages on the university site have typically ready to convert. They’ve investigated other content on the site and too many visuals or fluffy messaging can be a distraction for this user.

When designing an online form, it’s a good idea to consider 1) whether a form page is a primary landing page from search, 2) whether the majority of site traffic originates from a search engine or from other site pages, and 3) ultimately which user origination type is more valuable.

Hello World!

Today marks only my second day with Bridge but the boss wanted me to get a head start posting to this experience blog. I join the team, a graduate of the Digital Design discipline at the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP college, with a collection of past professional cooperative opportunities in the user-experience arena. I started off in web design and development and looked toward college to compliment those skills, fortunately what I found was exactly that; only not what I had expected at all.

Going into college I had a single talent and that was building websites. They were not the greatest websites and honestly they didn’t look very good either. However, DAAP introduced me to the right-side of my brain. In today’s work force the growing industries and explosive fields revolve around creative people, people who can connect with their clients and provide them exactly what they want. A now universal example of this is Apple and how they have reintroduced care for their users in their devices, software, and services. Experience planners live through this concept and they are committed to providing a service tuned to their clients’ needs. This is why I am here and this is exactly what I plan to do.

I have recently finished reading “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Daniel Pink, a book I highly recommend. Pink has dissected today’s business economy and argues that we are transitioning from a very left-brained society to a much more right-brained society. He does this tastefully by introducing six aptitudes as a framework for developing your skills in transition to the new model. My favorite of his six is “Empathy” and how we must live in other people’s shoes and understand and respect their needs and objectives. This book has really molded my perspective of my career and I have recognized the importance of having a multi-faceted skillset, being open to everything around me. To practice this I have started sketching and reading more, something I encourage everyone to do.

hello, nicely done
Wanted to give some recognition to the crew running CB2’s e-commerce site.

I’m obsessed with small design details that can help pull together a composition. And, I most definitely respect a crew that can bust those out under what I’d imagine were probably “tight timelines.”

a little background
CB2 is the cheapie sister of Crate & Barrel. Their prime prospect are those loft living, highly successful, aloof hottie 20somethings … and all of their peers out in the hinterland sub/exurbs that make up the 99.9% rest of CB2’s business. So, shake the net, and you get a design-friendly lot who may or may not subscribe to Ready Made.

so, i was saying
Knowing all of this, you can see how CB2’s background is a lovely little piece. I present to you the background via Zoom view:

CB2.com uses 5x5 graph paper as a background--equity win. Score!

stop me when i start to overanalyze
I’ve not done any research into CB2 as to how the website is put together. Likely it is inhouse, but it very well could have been put together by an agency.

Either way, the graph paper is a smart touch … it’s a simple little detail that can make a site seem like a cohesive piece.

Consider a semiotic analysis. A ruler, a pen, and graph paper are among the basic elements of design. Graph paper signifies design and design sensibility. High design, sure, sure. But it also connotes the act of design thinking and perhaps just plain thinking. Most of their consumers may never put pen or pencil to graph paper, but the background art gives them a little Moleskine Pocket Reporter of their own.

Last April, I joined Todd Zaki Warfel’s seminar on data-driven personas at the IA Summit. In his presentation, he showed some really excellent templates for presenting persona data, which I frantically copied down. In fact, I’ve already used a variation on his template for one of my own projects.

But now Todd has shared the source files for his templates, which I highly recommend that you download. It includes the page layout in an InDesign file and an Illustrator file with his graphs. I’ve found the graphs to be particularly useful, since they’re really easy for clients and team members to scan and digest.

One of the most interesting notes that I remember from Todd’s IA Summit presentation was the amount and variety of data that should go into a persona. He recommends at least 3 sources, including a mix of qualitative and quantitative research. (e.g. in-person interviews + survey + secondary research on your target demographic)

In my own experience, I have to agree that this range of data is invaluable. When you have a complete, data-driven persona in front of you, you feel much more empowered to say that a new feature or design decision will actually improve the user experience, or drive more ROI. This confidence is good for both the agency and the client.

There has been an interesting overlap of topics between two of my favorite reading materials:

1. Seth Godin wrote about three ways to think about your audience’s background.

2. Jared Spool posted to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) email list about his view of User Centered Design (UCD) and Activity Centered Design (ACD).

Seth is probably thinking about giving presentations, and knowing how much background knowledge your audience already has. (Should you explain what YouTube is? Does your audience already know what you said on this subject last year?) And here are his three options:

• Inquire. Ask some people in your target audience so you know what they do and do not already know.
• Assume. Make a reasonable guess about what they already know.
• Punt. Don’t ask or even guess. Just pretend everybody already has all the background they need.

His point is that too many people choose the third option, and end up missing a chance to connect with their audience.

Of course, this sounded all too familiar to me, since user experience professionals run into this question all the time. Who am I designing for? What do they need to know? What do they want to know? etc.

So it’s interesting that Jared Spool recently outlined 5 ways for UX professionals to think about their audience:

• User Centered Design. Discover at your audience’s goals, needs, and context before you design.
• Activity Centered Design. Consider only the activities or steps necessary for the design to function.
• Genius Design. People who have been designing for years, and have great intuition, can just follow their instincts.
• Self Design. Assuming you were the audience, what would you want?
• Unintended Design. This represents those who did not think about their design from anyone’s perspective. They just put down something they thought would work.

You can see an obvious correlation between the options Seth and Jared both put forward.

The clear takeaway is that, just like you would never give a presentation without thinking about your audience and what they need, you should never design a product (digital or otherwise) without thinking about your audience.

Thanks to the current emphasis on Design in business, we don’t see very many clients recommending Unintended Design any more. But I have seen clients try everything from Self Design to User Centered Design. And I can tell you that we always see better results as we move along the scale that diminishes personal bias and increases our user insights.

P.S. The discussion on IxDA about User Centered Design is actually really interesting (if you’re into that kind of thing). You can jump to my response or read the whole thing.

I was reading David Pogue’s article (16 October 2008) in the New York Times, “A Look at Google’s First Phone.”

“Like the iPhone store, this market is a gigantic development, rich with possibilities; as programmers everywhere create new programs, mostly free, this ‘phone’ will turn into something vastly more flexible — and patch many of its feature holes.

Better yet, Google insists that its store will be completely open. Unlike Apple, it will not reject software submissions if they don’t serve the mother ship’s commercial interests. For example, Apple rejects programs that would let you make phone calls over the Internet, thereby avoiding using up cellular airtime. Google and T-Mobile swear they would permit such a thing.”

The part that rang loudest was that the “store will be completely open…programs that would let you make phone calls over the Internet, thereby avoiding using up cellular airtime. Google and T-Mobile swear they would permit such a thing.”

Wow.

How often do you work on a product that is that user-centered?

To be fair, I’m not surprised that Google and T-Mobile are doing a completely open market. After all, we know the Google. I had T-Mobile for 5+ years. During that time, they launched T-Mobile wireless calls with a fairly good billing deal. (If you started a call wifi, you didn’t use any minutes; leave wireless and you still weren’t using minutes. And, if I remember correctly, the rate was $10/month.) They seem to be ok with getting their subscriber fees. I thought it was nicely done.

But, still. It’s open. Totally and completely open. That is going to make for a very rich collaboration between the companies and their stakeholders.

Google and T-Mobile: I tip my hat to you. Also, thank you. You are going to be a great basis for some rationale next time I propose a feature that is very user-centered.