Maryrose Lyons blogging since 2003...

7 Ways to Make User Experience Count

June 26, 2008 at 2:31 pm

Reboot 10 is on. The annual meeting for ‘practical visionaries’. Rather self congratulatory, but apt. I go for inspiration, as a gift to myself to think about the really big topics addressed by the keynotes, to find out about new apps, services, and ideas in the breakout rooms, and to catch up with friends and see what they’ve been up to for the past year.

Best of the morning was Andy Budd , quintessential Brit user experience designer.

He introduced his user experience graph - time and pleasure plotted on x and y axes. (Am trying to get a pic to add here) and his lively presentation was peppered with real life examples and how to carry them over into the online experience.

1. First impressions count.

Unwrapping your apple product is like undressing your girlfriend for the very first time.

Research shows that women take under 30 seconds to make their minds up about a man. (Men take slightly longer).

To a packed room fuil of designers, he proclaimed that design counts! We all know that fancy product packaging in everyday products can entice us to spend that extra couple of cent.

People can tell the quality of a website in 50 milliseconds. This is based on design.

Nice examples of first impressions:

* First screen of Basecamp, little video to up your skill level and not bombardyou.
* In situ tours on Yahoo. Doesn’t take you outside that experience.

2. ATTENTIVE SERVICE

Real life examples include the waitor refilling your glass, the supermarket opening a new checkout because there’s a queue, etc.
It’s all about process efficiency. Again Apple as an example. They built a protoype of their flagship store. And when they started using it, they realised that it was based around the business model of ie. laptops, ipods, etc. That’s not how users use the products - so they re-engineered it by how users use the products - with a section for photographers, then videographers, musos etc.

3. PERSONALISATION & CUSTOMISATION

Real life examples are going into the pub and the barman remembering your name. Starbucks took this and built it into their processes - they take your name, shout back your order with your name. They’ve even gone further and allow you to customise your drink.

* On the Wii – most popular best feature is “mii” - tiny characters you can customise yourself. Beautiful social interaction.
* Gamers and their characters exhibit a high degree of attachment to that which they’ve created - . World of warcraft gamers post pics of their chars on flickr!
* Second Life – people pay real money for fake designer shoes! Don’t want to look like a newbie.
* Flickr does it well. Welcomes you back using your name… (and I like the hellos in difference languages)

Conclusion: personalisation and customisation works! A 12 year old’s bedroom really does look like a myspace page. No boundaries, no borders, create what you want! Freedom to experiment.

4. ATTENTION TO DETAIL
My favourite one. It’s details that make me smile that resonate.

Real life examples - car companies design the sound of the car door going thunk. They know that we perceive that sound as the quality of the machine.
Disney – even the trash cans are themed. A regular bin would break the magic.
Innocent smoothies – ’stop looking at my bottom!’ on the bottom of their cartons.

Conclusion: if you can build delightful experiences into your service/app, youll will make a difference in people’s lives.

Online:

* Threadless – if you add something to your shoppoing cart and you forget it, they email you if it’s about to sell out. Win win. I feel ilke they care. They might make a sale.
* Moo email confirmation email - beautiful - “Remember I’m just a bitr of software. So if you have anuy questions please contact customer services who are real people… ”

5. GIVE THEM FEEDBACK

Real world example is slot machines/pokies. They’re very responsive, you put your money in and it makes a thunk sound. You press button it beeps. You get immersed into the feedback cycle. Even include speakers in the tray to make it sound like you’re winning more. Or another example -if you press a button in a lift, you think it’s not working if you don’t see a light.

Online:

* Apple .. genius bar in stores where peole can get help to solve their problems based on hotel concierge desk. Take offline nuggets to make online exp better.
* Buttons that look like buttons.
* Process completion bar - Lined in
* Kayak – shows you immediately that the system is working, shows you what it’s doing and updates as you wait…page changes to show you it’s done. (Except I have never bought a flight from kayak because they are always the most expensive. An example of where good design doesn’t entice me to pay more!)
* Google maps ingenious.. people love to play with it. It’s fun to use. Because of the feedback mechanisms built in.

6. MAKE IT FUN
We love having fun. (In fact I think this point has stimulated a little break out chat later today on fun and play). We love collecting especially if there’s a payoff, like free coffee! But beware - as points can lead to leaderboards. And if you show people where they are in the system, they might not want to play anmore.

Real life examples:

* Fly on the urinal in Schipol airport. Reduces spillage by up to 80%! You can now buy your own fly for your loo at home here. urinalfly.com !!

Online:
Collecting photos on Flickr (or I might add Pixie)
Colecting friends on Facebook

Conclusion: we love collecting, but don’t go with leaderboards (like Digg did and that has impacted on the quality as leaders on the diggerboard are digging for position rather than content).

7. CREATE THE PERFECT ENVIRONMENT
Real life: Starbucks… sofa, cd, mug…
Virgin lounge, … make you want to pay ..
Vegas – the centre of design with the purpose of imparting people from their money.

Right now we have too many sites that create negative curves in terms of user experience. We have frustrating sign up processes and spaces you can’t escape from.

A great presentation from www.andybudd.com. I had all the links in above, but the damn connection here is flicking in and out, so I lost it all!! Go find them yourself, use Google!!

Posted in Reboot 10 |