Reflections on user experience

iPhone features needed for business usage

2008-12-29T08:31:00.001-08:00

As much as I love my iPhone, it doesn't have all the features needed to make it a great device for business users. Much has been said about the need for features such as copy & paste and the ability to send contacts to other users, but here are 3 features that would greatly improve the iPhone for business usage:

1. The ability to separate email accounts on the home screen

You can add as many email accounts as you want, but there is only one "mail" button on the home screen, and the mail indicator on the mail icon combines all those accounts - so if you have 10 new emails on one account and 15 on the other, it just shows 25 and doesn't separate the accounts.

During the workday, I really don't care about my Gmail account - I just want to know if there is new mail on my business account, and check that easily between meetings. Switching between email accounts is clunky on the iPhone, and giving users the ability to use separate icons for different email accounts would solve this problem.

2. New mail indicator on the locked screen

Most smartphones have some sort of envelope icon on the locked/home screen to show if you've received new mail since you last checked. With the iPhone, you have to unlock the phone before you're able to see if you have new mail. This gets annoying especially if your IT department requires a passcode lock, which means you have to enter the passcode each time you unlock the phone.

A simple "new mail" indicator in the top row of the locked screen would solve this problem.

3. More sophisticated calendar functions

The iPhone calendar is probably the worst part of the iPhone UI (yes, overall the UI is great - it's all relative!). Better integration with Outlook is essential. Some of the features needed:

Visual indication if an appointment is "tentative" or "accepted".
Ability to forward invitations to other users.
Ability to "reply all" to invitations once it's in your calendar.

This is still the best phone I've ever had, but when it comes to business usage, the iPhone still has a ways to go. These 3 new features would get it much closer to parity with Blackberry or Palm smartphones.

Amazon iPhone app and feature-incomplete products

2008-12-13T09:15:00.001-08:00

Amazon recently released their native iPhone application. As far as iPhone apps go, it's definitely good - at least on par with the eBay app (which is fantastic). But this is not a review of the app itself, I wanted to focus specifically on an interesting feature included in the app called Amazon Remembers. It allows you to take pictures of items you're interested in, post it to Amazon, and it then gives you the ability to buy the item from Amazon right from your phone.

The objective is great, but I have some thoughts on the implementation, which I think severely decreases the usefulness of the feature. First, a brief walkthrough of how it works:

	Clicking on the "Remembers" tab in the bottom brings up this description - succinct, well-written and with a clear call to action. Note how expectations are downplayed - "we'll even try to find you a link...". They obviously don't want to set expectations too high - understandably, because Amazon might not carry the product, or they may not be able to identify the product from your photo. I think this kind of transparency is really important - setting expectations appropriately is crucial to establish trust with customers.
	I tested the feature by taking a picture of a book I'm currently reading. The process is simple - you take the picture with the phone's camera, and upload it to Amazon. The "what happens to my photos" link is interesting, and addresses not only privacy, but also provides a little more info on how they go about finding the product on Amazon. They seem to rely heavily on a community of users who look at the photos and try to find matching products on Amazon. In my opinion this is both the app's greatest strength and its central drawback - it improves accuracy dramatically over automatic image recognition, but the asynchronous nature takes away a big chunk of the usefulness of a feature like this. More on that later...
	About an hour after uploading a photo of the book, I receive an email to say that my book was found on Amazon. The email includes a link to view the item in Amazon iPhone app (or Web browser if you prefer).
	Clicking on the iPhone app link takes me to the book, and I can buy it easily from there.

This is, without a doubt, great technology - it works great and it's easy to use. But as we know by now, cool technology isn't enough if there isn't a real user need being met. As I mention above, the central problem with the implementation of this feature is its asynchronous nature. Relying on a user community to review/provide input on the image definitely improves accuracy - but it creates the time lag that takes away much of the utility.

Let's step back and think of a few use cases for product image recognition on mobile devices:

Price comparison to see if you can get it cheaper online than in the store you're in.
Reviews to help you decide which product to buy.
Longer manufacturer descriptions or details about a product you are looking at in a store.

The problem is that fulfilling these needs is useful only while you are in the store. If you have to wait (even an hour) to get the information, you're going to move on and either buy the product in the store anyway, or decide you'll check online later without also having the store experience of being able to view the product in person.

This brings me to my main point. This is a classic example of a product solution where developers failed to stay focused on the real user need, and therefore went out the door with a feature-incomplete product that will now probably not get the usage it deserves. The tragedy is that it's so close - once automatic image recognition gets more accurate, this app will be perfect (SnapTel, for example, is already doing a great job at this). My fear is that, if this current implementation doesn't get a lot of usage, the whole idea will be dropped, instead of what should happen - developers going back to users and understanding what their needs are. Someone else will come along and figure it out, yes, but Amazon has a chance here to be industry leaders if they stick with it.

Larger implication

So if you're looking for a larger user experience design implication in this example, it would be that launching products that are not feature-complete is dangerous for three main reasons:

Fixing issues after a product launches is expensive
It's painful to make changes later on - users get used to the product and are extremely resistant to change (Exhibit A: the "New Facebook")
If it doesn't work at first, the entire product may be eliminated because the business benefit isn't immediately apparent

This is why a product design approach that allows developers to fail early, cheaply, and often, is so important. We can't test-and-learn our way into great products.

Windows Error in Times Square

2008-10-12T13:17:00.001-07:00

I was on vacation in New York last week, and I couldn't resist taking a picture of this Windows error on one of the giant billboards in Times Square. No one can escape the instability of Windows...

How Comcast increases customer satisfaction (well, sort of)

2008-09-18T19:39:00.001-07:00

By a strange coincidence considering what I wrote about yesterday, a colleague sent me this note today along with the image below:

Yesterday, I went through the online process to sign up as a new Comcast customer. This included a chat with a customer service representative. At the end, I was forced through a satisfaction survey page. That survey is attached here. Important to note: this is a screen shot of the page when I first arrived *BEFORE* I had interacted with the survey at all. (In other words, note the pre-selected radio buttons).

So, in other words, if you don't interact with this survey at all, and just click Submit, you will effectively indicate that you've had a perfect experience. I guess that's one way to get your customer satisfaction numbers up...

Remote control usability: Comcast vs. Logitech Harmony

2008-09-17T18:51:00.001-07:00

It is often much easier to figure out which companies are design-focused vs. engineering-focused when they produce physical products as opposed to online interactions. Think about Target's redesign of the prescription drug bottle as an example of design-focus, and the 1040 Tax form as an example of what happens when there is little to no design input on a product.

When I recently switched from TiVo to Comcast's DVR, I knew what I was getting myself into, because I've seen their remote controls. What I found on screen was a similar experience gap. Where TiVo's onscreen experience is elegant, simple and useful, Comcast seems intent on stopping development as soon as the bare minimum functionality is marginally working - regardless of whether or not anyone would be able to use it.

But that's not what I want to write about today. I want to focus on remote controls, and specifically the differences between Comcast's remote for the HD DVR's, and my latest purchase, the Logitech Harmony 880 universal remote. Both are shown below:

Comcast DVR remote	Logitech Harmony 880 remote

The Comcast remote - Why it's bad

Several buttons that mean nothing to the user (A, B, C, several "picture-in-picture" buttons at the bottom that don't do anything).
Made primarily to work with the DVR itself - universal features (to work with other devices) built as an afterthought.
Programming different devices is a pain - each requires a specific sequence of key-presses and entering a device number based on your A/V components - this is engineering process at its worst.
No indication of the remote's current state (what component it is currently manipulating).
Confusing use of red color (Does it mean danger? Help? Power functions?).
Ambiguous labeling ("Power" vs. "All On", 2 up/down arrows).
No use of button size and placement to indicate important functions that are used a lot (volume, changing channels, page down, etc.).

The Logitech Harmony 880 remote - Why it's good

Beautiful, ergonomic design that makes you actually want to use it and not hide it under a pillow.
Progressive disclosure of features - depending on your "activity" the "soft keys" at the top of the remote perform in different ways, with clear indication about each of it functions via the onscreen display.
Online programming of the device - no need to remember device codes to set up the features for each component.
Thoughtful key layout with no ambiguity about which button does what.
Several smart features, like starting the backlight when you lift the remote off the table.
User language incorporated throughout - simple commands such as "Activities" and "Watch a DVD" instead of high-tech references.

It's clear that Logitech did some user research to find out what the underlying user needs were before they developed this product. A lot of the features can be directly linked backed to complaints I'm sure we all have about remote controls. A couple of examples:

"I can never see the buttons on the remote when it's dark in the room, but I also don't want the light from the remote to disturb my viewing." Solution: motions sensors that turn on the backlight when you pick up the remote, and turns it off after it's been sitting still for a while.
"I don't want to have to struggle with device numbers and complex remote programming". Solution: build an online interface where the user can program the remote, and then send the commands to the remote through a USB connection.

There's probably more to say, and yes a lot of arguments to be made for why Comcast's remote isn't that good - it's not their core business, they're just focused on their own products, etc. But that's old-school thinking. "Walled garden" thinking. In today's open-source, user-centered world, that is not an excuse any more. Companies need to make products that are usable and useful enough that people will continue to use them, without restricting them to using only those products. It makes for good user experience, and good business.

Now with all that being said, I'll close by mentioning that Comcast still did a much better job than Cyberhome with their $30-line of DVD players. Yes, it's cheap, but this is just a really bad remote control design. The problems are endless, but the most glaring issue is the complete lack of logical layout and no way to distinguish one button from the next since they're all the same shape...

Review: Garmin Forerunner 405

2008-09-12T17:34:00.001-07:00

Ok, so this post isn't strictly about user experience or social media - but you'll let me bring my personal life into it every once in a while, right?

I have been waiting a while for a GPS sports watch that I can wear as an everyday watch as well, which is why I decided to take the plunge and get the Garmin Forerunner 405. There are always early-adopter issues with new technology, but I have to say that, despite some kinks, this is a fantastic watch, and I highly recommend it to any runner (or biker) who is serious about their training. Below are my thoughts on why I love it, what I don't like, and some of the rumors out there that you shouldn't believe! By the way - I got it without the optional heart rate monitor (you can get it with the HRM here), because at the moment distance and pace information is what is most important to me.

The good

Accurate GPS distance and pace tracking, much better than any foot pod product I've used (like Nike Plus)
Endless customization possibilities to show the training information you want to see during workouts
A virtual partner "running" at a set pace, to keep you on track
Extremely easy to use once you figure out the touch bezel (outside gray part) menu system.
Also easy to use during workouts - simple taps on the bezel changes your views to show different information.
Automatic lapping - I set the watch to lap over every 1 mile, so it shows you your pace for each mile, which further helps you to stay on track.
Wireless syncing of workout data to the Garmin Connect web site, with immediate access to your workout data, including an automatically generated Google Map (see below for a screen shot of one of my workouts, or go here to see it online)
Desktop client (Garmin Training Center) allows you to program advanced workouts (like interval runs, etc.) and send it wireless to the watch. During workouts, the watch then keeps you on track and on pace through audible beeps and succinct screen messaging.
Inconspicuous enough so that you can wear it as a regular watch all day.

Sample workout - click to view online:

The bad

I don't have a lot of bad things to say about this watch, but in the interest of trying to stay objective...

The GPS can take up to 5 minutes to acquire satellites. This is not a problem if you always start your runs at the same place, because it remembers where you were and locks in pretty quickly if your position hasn't changed. But I sometimes run from home and sometimes from work, and then it can take a while. But once the satellites are locked, it stays locked - no dropouts, even when running on underpasses or next to tall building.
Instantaneous pace information not 100% accurate. You'll see, for example, in the workout above that it says my maximum pace was 2:57 min/mile. No, I am not a superhero. There are some kinks with that data, so I switched my display to show average pace instead, which is very accurate.
Battery life is not fantastic - the watch lasts about a week if you work out 4-5 days a week. But it's easy to extend battery life by turning off the GPS when you're not working out, and turning off the backlight. You can also lock the bezel, but I rarely do that because in "time" mode the watch goes into powersave after a few seconds which locks the bezel automatically.

The myths!

I read quite a few reviews before buying the watch, and I was skeptical because of some negative reviews I read. Don't believe them! Here are some common myths...

It's too difficult to use. Simply not true. This is complicated technology, and you can't expect to just walk up and use it like an ATM. My simple advice is this: spend 30 minutes reading the manual, 30 minutes familiarizing yourself with all the features, and after that you'll never be confused again. This watch has a great, simple, elegant design, and the menu structure makes perfect sense. But you'll have to do a little upfront work.
The bezel is too sensitive. You can set bezel sensitivity - mine is set at "medium" and I have no problems.
It's too big. Maybe for women with small wrists, but I wear it every day and I hardly notice it.
The online software is too hard to use. I really haven't had any problems at all. If you install the software and USB stick it uses to sync wirelessly correctly (i.e., follow the instructions!), you should have no problems. They also just did a major redesign of the Garmin Connect site, so it's easier than ever!

The bottom line

This watch reinvigorated my workouts, and is keeping me on track for my half-marathon training and my push for a PR in that race. I can't imagine a better training partner to help me improve my running. Seriously, you should get it.

You can buy it from Amazon without the heart rate monitor here, and with the heart rate monitor here.

Weak ties and "parasocial" relationships

2008-09-09T10:42:00.001-07:00

A great article in the New York Times magazine examines the social impact of the new wave of "digital intimacy" brought on by sites like Facebook and Twitter (see Brave New World of Digital Intimacy). It's well worth the read, and I want to focus on one particular aspect, which is the references to social network theory, particularly the strength of weak ties - something I've written about before (see Structural Holes and online social networks).

The article explains the rise and immediacy of frequent updates and micro-blogging (or "ambient awareness" - a concept I like a lot). It then goes on to analyze the networks people feed their updates to, which is where weak ties come in. As a refresher, here's what weak ties are about (see my previous post about it for more detail):

In his 1973 paper entitled “The strength of weak ties”, Mark Granovetter developed his theory of weak ties. The theory states that because a person with strong ties in a cluster more or less knows what the other people in the cluster know (e.g. in close friendships or a board of directors), the effective spread of information relies on the weak ties between people in separate clusters.

Ok, so here is where we pick up the NY Times article:

But where their sociality had truly exploded was in their “weak ties” — loose acquaintances, people they knew less well. It might be someone they met at a conference, or someone from high school who recently “friended” them on Facebook, or somebody from last year’s holiday party. In their pre-Internet lives, these sorts of acquaintances would have quickly faded from their attention. But when one of these far-flung people suddenly posts a personal note to your feed, it is essentially a reminder that they exist. I have noticed this effect myself. In the last few months, dozens of old work colleagues I knew from 10 years ago in Toronto have friended me on Facebook, such that I’m now suddenly reading their stray comments and updates and falling into oblique, funny conversations with them. My overall Dunbar number is thus 301: Facebook (254) + Twitter (47), double what it would be without technology. Yet only 20 are family or people I’d consider close friends. The rest are weak ties — maintained via technology.
This rapid growth of weak ties can be a very good thing. Sociologists have long found that “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems. For example, if you’re looking for a job and ask your friends, they won’t be much help; they’re too similar to you, and thus probably won’t have any leads that you don’t already have yourself. Remote acquaintances will be much more useful, because they’re farther afield, yet still socially intimate enough to want to help you out. Many avid Twitter users — the ones who fire off witty posts hourly and wind up with thousands of intrigued followers — explicitly milk this dynamic for all it’s worth, using their large online followings as a way to quickly answer almost any question. Laura Fitton, a social-media consultant who has become a minor celebrity on Twitter — she has more than 5,300 followers — recently discovered to her horror that her accountant had made an error in filing last year’s taxes. She went to Twitter, wrote a tiny note explaining her problem, and within 10 minutes her online audience had provided leads to lawyers and better accountants. Fritton joked to me that she no longer buys anything worth more than $50 without quickly checking it with her Twitter network.

So that's the good part. Here are the perceived dangers:

It is also possible, though, that this profusion of weak ties can become a problem. If you’re reading daily updates from hundreds of people about whom they’re dating and whether they’re happy, it might, some critics worry, spread your emotional energy too thin, leaving less for true intimate relationships. Psychologists have long known that people can engage in “parasocial” relationships with fictional characters, like those on TV shows or in books, or with remote celebrities we read about in magazines. Parasocial relationships can use up some of the emotional space in our Dunbar number, crowding out real-life people.

The bottom line

I believe the pros outweigh the cons. Facebook's model is to enhance offline relationships, not replace them. Most Facebook connections start with someone you know, someone you went to school with, someone you met at a party. Few relationships on Facebook are exclusively online.

On Twitter I follow people I know, or people/organizations I know of and am interested in (Richard Roeper, CNN Breaking News, NYT articles, etc.).

I am excited about how social media is expanding the reach of our networks, and how it allows us to tap into our weak ties more effectively. I don't feel like my life is moving increasingly online at the expense of my offline relationships. I see my online life increasingly starting to enrich my offline, real-world experiences.

Tokbox makes video calling a breeze

2008-08-15T11:34:00.001-07:00

I recently wrote about 12seconds, a service that let's you record and post short updates about what you're doing -- much like Twitter, but for video. I've also recently been playing around with Tokbox, another new video service, but with a different and very singular focus: making video calling as easy as possible.

Tokbox has 2 main offerings:

Video calling, including conference calls
Video mail, which makes it easy to record and send videos to friends and family in an asynchronous way

Video calling is a direct attempt to take on a major part of Skype's business. Easy asynchronous video mail is something I've been looking for for a while now, since my family (1) lives very far away and (2) is the lowest common denominator when it comes to tech-savviness! But before I get to that, first some thoughts on the user experience:

In the spirit of most Web 2.0 sites we see these days, the site is clean, fast, friendly, and singularly focused. When you log in, you choose if you want to call someone or record a video mail. There is virtually no way to get confused about what the site is about.
Video calling/recording is as simple as it could be. Similar to 12seconds, as soon as you click on an option, it starts your camera and you're ready to record.
For video recording, there are no extra steps to send your mail, TokBox sends an email on your behalf. You can add email addresses on the fly, or drag & drop "Friends" that you have added previously (again, taking on Skype functionality, but with a narrower and simpler focus). The recipient gets a link to the video (no large attachments!!), which they can view even if they're not registered with Tokbox.
A new feature allows you to make your recordings public, which wanders into 12seconds territory, but I personally don't think this is something Tokbox should pursue. The danger in a simple, great idea like this is that the developers can get feature-happy, and very quickly clutter up a very clean experience to the point where the site loses its focus (and its users). This is something 12seconds should be careful about as well, as they continue to add new features almost daily.

The ultimate usability test for any online application is always very simple for me: can my mom use it? And I'm happy to report that she embraced this site in a way that surprised me. I haven't used it for video calling, but since my family is in a different time zone 8 hours ahead, that's not what I need this for. I think what sets Tokbox apart is not their video calling, which most IM applications now do as well, but I believe their marketing and branding should focus on easy-to-use video mail. If you start with that, and make it really open, users will always find a way to use the service in ways you never imagined. And so, without knowing it, they will give you ideas for monetisation...

Proctor & Gamble shifts to design thinking

2008-08-04T10:51:00.001-07:00

There is a great article at BusinessWeek.com on how Procter & Gamble is changing from a process-centered organization to a design-centered organization. Many of us have worked at companies where this comment from one of their design managers seems all too familiar: "[design is] the last decoration station on the way to market." But as this article shows, it doesn't have to stay that way.

It is a fascinating look at how P&G is shifting away from this culture, and teaching its employees the power of design thinking:

"Once business leaders see they can use design thinking to reframe problems, they are transformed," says Tripp. "The analytical process we typically use to do our work—understand the problem and alternatives; develop several ideas; and do a final external check with the customer—gets flipped. Instead, design thinking methods instruct: There's an opportunity somewhere in this neighborhood; use a broader consumer context to inform the opportunity; brainstorm a large quantity of fresh ideas; and co-create and iterate using low-resolution prototypes with that consumer."

VuVox -- your visual voice

2008-08-01T17:38:00.001-07:00

VuVox is an interesting new site, currently in Beta, that helps you create rich media collages of your photos and video. It has the basic functionality of Photoshop without the headache of knowing how to use it, and the sharing capabilities we've come to know and love in Flickr. The site still has some usability issues, but it is remarkably easy to add, edit and manipulate your media to create collages.

One of the best features is that it can connect and pull in media from your SmugMug, Picasa or Flickr accounts, and you can immediately start using the media through drag and drop. Very slick.

Below is a collage I made in about 10 minutes (after the media was done uploading). Click the icon next to "Menu" at the bottom to view in full screen. You can sign up for a Beta account at www.vuvox.com/collage.

12seconds.tv -- introducing video-Twitter

2008-07-25T17:22:00.001-07:00

I was invited to the private Alpha release of 12seconds.tv, and after about a month of playing around with it, I wanted to post some initial thoughts.

First, the background. 12seconds.tv says that it "allows friends and family to record and share short video updates about what they are doing or where they are. You can use a webcam or a cell phone." So it's basically Twitter, but instead of typing you record video updates with a maximum length of (you guessed it) 12 seconds. Why only 12 seconds? Well, in their own words, "Because anything longer is boring." It's an interesting idea, the site is very clean and they are adding great features almost every day, but the question I had on the first day still sits in my mind: "Will anyone use this once the novelty wears off?" But I get ahead of myself. Let's start with some thoughts on the site.

As easy as it gets -- if you're into video

Recording your 12seconds updates is extremely easy if you use a webcam. As soon as you sign in to the site, it starts your webcam, and you're ready to go. They made it really easy to record, name and publish your updates to your "channel". Similar to Twitter, you can follow friends and be followed by others, so updates are shared in that way as well.

It's also easy to embed updates in a blog -- here, for example, is my first update. Mundane, I know, but I was just trying it out, ok?

Duma caught red-handed on 12seconds.tv

That was recorded with my cell phone. You send cell phone updates to the site via email. You get a unique email address that's linked to your account, so when you send it, it appears on your channel automatically. Again, really easy.

The developers clearly spent a lot of time thinking through all they ways they can remove any obstacle that might make it difficult and laborious for people to record their updates. The end result is a no-frills user experience that's laser-focused on the site's single user goal: recording and posting video updates. It's a great example of what happens when designers focus on making core functionality work well, without spending unnecessary time and resources on side-features that aren't important.

Very cool, but who will use it?

So now that I've sung the praises of the site design and the innovative idea, the question still remains, who is going to use this? Here are a few challenges I see for 12seconds:

As easy as it is to record and post updates, it is still, by its nature and no fault of the designers, a non-traditional process even by Web 2.0 standards. Most people update Twitter when they have a spare moment -- standing in line at Starbucks, waiting for your wife to finish getting ready (lots of time there...), between meetings, etc. It's not as easy to whip out your camera phone and record an update while other people are around.
It's also sometimes a game of trial and error to get your thoughts down to 12 seconds! I've had to record multiple updates because I had to find a way to remove some words.
Mostly, I'm worried about the laziness factor that I've written about before. Will this just be fun for a while and then people will stop recording updates? Of course, it could reach a tipping point and end up leaving Twitter in the dust, but it's not a sure thing at this point.

Let me end by saying that I really hope 12seconds.tv succeeds. I have a lot of respect for the focused user experience, the clean design, and the innovative twist on keeping up with what your friends are doing. I'm just hoping there are enough people out there who feel that sometimes, typing just isn't enough...

Netflix doesn't know me: How I lost faith in recommendation engines

2008-07-21T15:57:00.001-07:00

When Netflix first came out with their movie recommendations, I thought it was a great idea. I frantically started rating movies I'd seen -- good and bad -- confident that the brain behind it all will do its magic and recommend some hidden movie gems that will change my life. Well, I'm still waiting for those movies. And to be honest, I've become a little bit frustrated with the whole thing.

Describing the latest example I encountered will reveal how much I liked a movie that I probably have no business liking, but I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of my reputation in the name of science, or whatever this is...

The first problem has to do with how Netflix shows the star movie ratings on their pages. As an example, this is what I see for the movie August Rush in my queue:

You would assume that the customer average rating is just over the 3-mark, right? Well, looking at it closer, it turns out that Netflix shows you a rating they call "Our best guess" (3.4 in this case), instead of showing you the customer average (4.1 in this case):

Here's the problem. I loved this movie. I'm giving it 4 stars. But since Netflix doesn't know that I have a soft spot for modern musicals (despite how highly I rated the movie "Once"), the "Netflix brain" didn't think I would like this movie as much as the average customer.

This is as much a user experience problem as a problem with the recommendation engine. It took me a few weeks to realize they're showing me "Our best guess" in search results, and not the true customer average. Now I have to mouse over to see the true average every time. Why? Because I don't trust the brain any more -- Netflix just never seem to get it right.

Incidentally, on Amazon.com, the average user rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. Pretty good. So this is the problem then. There is such a wide range of tastes out there that it's hard to know who to trust. This is the problem Netflix is trying to solve -- let's look at "users like you" and then you show you that average instead of the overall average. You're therefore initially more inclined to believe the "best guess" rating provided by Netflix, than the average consensus provided by all users. It's a good idea, but the implementation doesn't seem to be there yet (this example is just one of many, in case you're wondering).

I say all this to make a simple point -- it appears that the collective wisdom of the average man on the street does a better job of predicting if I will like a movie than the recommendation engine provided by Netflix. The question is whether it would ever be possible for recommendation engines to get to know you well enough based on your preferences. Maybe if it takes into account not only your movie interests, but also music, books, online activity, etc.? Yes it sounds creepy, but how else would Netflix know how much I like bizarre musicals?

The Internet and our brains

2008-07-18T11:21:00.001-07:00

The Atlantic Monthly has a great article in the July/August edition on what the Internet does to our brains, asking the question, Is Google making us stupid? Here's the basic premise:

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Read it (if you can still read, not just skim...), and I guarantee at the very least it will get your brain thinking again.

How Customers Define Value on eBay

2008-05-21T14:52:00.001-07:00

I will be at the Academy of Marketing Science's yearly conference next week in Vancouver, speaking on a panel on how consumers are rendering much of traditional marketing obsolete. Here's the quick blurb:

Forgetting The Consumer Label Altogether

This special session explores how consumers themselves are taking the notion of consumer co-production far further than traditional services marketing ever intended, and in doing so are invading each of the traditional bastions of corporate marketing strategy, from product conceptualization to pricing, and from distribution to marketing communication.

I will be talking about how eBay fits into this phenomenon in a presentation entitled "The End of MSRP -- How Customers Define Value on eBay". The basic premise is that eBay has become the best site on the web to establish and discover the true market value of any product -- regardless of whether it exists in a catalog or not (and even if it doesn't have an established retail price). The slides from my talk are below -- I lay out the different processes sellers and buyers follow on eBay, and how that comes together to establish product value.

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The keys to Amazon's success

2008-04-28T15:09:00.001-07:00

The charmed life of Amazon's Jeff Bezos is a great article in the latest Fortune magazine about Amazon.com's success. The key paragraph for me is the CEO's statement of their relentless focus on customer satisfaction -- even it means bad earnings for a few quarters:

For all of Amazon's ups and downs over the past 13 years, Bezos's strategy is one thing that hasn't changed. Customers want three things, he says: the best selection, the lowest prices, and the cheapest and most-convenient delivery. At Amazon, he explains, all decisions flow from those fundamentals. "What's not going to change over the next 10 years is incredibly important - you can build plans that are durable and meet important customer needs," he says, adding, "Ten years from now, customers will still want vast selection, low prices and fast, accurate delivery. In fact, it is impossible to imagine a world 10 years from now where customers will say, I love Amazon, but I just wish your prices would be higher."

A good example of this is Amazon's decision to build some excess warehouse capacity. As Amazon started to grow its business in the late 1990s, some members of the management team argued in favor of building just enough of the giant, automated warehouses - four of the $60 million facilities - to meet projected demand. Bezos decided to build five. "From a financial point of view, we should have built four rather than five," says Bezos, pointing out that in 1999, when the centers were built, "for a company that only had $1 billion in sales, spending $300 million on fulfillment centers is a very big investment."

Instead, he was positioning the company to pursue "more fundamental things": that is, keeping Amazon's customers happy. Remember all the post-holiday news stories at the turn of the millennium about little Timmy and Janie not getting their presents on Christmas because some fly-by-night toy site couldn't handle the holiday crush? Amazon came out smelling like a 1-800-FLOWERS rose. "A lot of companies stumbled and we didn't," said Bezos. "We had an insurance policy against that huge burst of demand" - the fifth fulfillment center.

Which leads up to the most important statement I think he makes:

"A lot of decisions around consumers are like that," Bezos says. "When you do the math it's not clear what will happen."

When you create a great user experience, the business will follow...

UX links of the week (4/10/08)

2008-04-10T21:06:00.001-07:00

Interaction Design

Designing Office 2007
Jensen Harris, the guy responsible for user experience in the Microsoft Office group, delivers a near-comprehensive talk on how the Office 2007 UI was conceived. A must-see for everyone!

Sign Up Forms Must Die
You load a new web service, eager to dive in and start engaging, and what’s the first thing that greets you? A sign-up form. We can do better, says Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Via a technique of "gradual engagement," we can get people using and caring about our web services instead of frustrating them (or sending them to a competitor's site) by forcing them to fill out a sign-up form first.

Content Strategy

Placing Value on User Assistance
User assistance writers are often the Rodney Dangerfields of the UX world, bemoaning the fact that we don’t get any respect. I think the real problem is that user assistance folks are not particularly good at communicating the ways in which we add value to an enterprise. This column explores two models that show how user assistance adds value and how we can communicate that value to those who pay our salaries—something I would like to encourage other user assistance writers to do.

User Experience Research

Extreme User Research
Clients don’t know a thing about their users, and designers think that if they like it, everyone will. Sound familiar? Daniel Lafreniere's 30-minute "extreme user research" plan comes to the rescue for those of us facing this exact situation. With this practical method, you can generate loads of useful data that will have a real impact on design, thus making the website more effective and profitable.

Usability testing: integrating eye-tracking and mouse clicks
Our usability test lab has a software environment allowing for capture, recording, analysis and full interpretation of observable events during a usability test. Moreover, since we are very interested in user behavior, verbal comments, facial expressions and eye movements, as well as keeping a record of keystrokes and mouse movement, we also use other software.

What Adaptive Path Thinks When It Thinks About Eyetracking
Recently, we had a discussion on an internal mailing list about eyetracking, specifically around why we didn’t use it as a research tool…

A little off topic…

I'm Over Twitter
I'm so over Twitter. I haven't wanted to admit it to myself, but a couple of things really tipped the scales for me. The first was a Newsweek article from 1995, which famously called the Internet a passing fad. The fear of being the guy (or gal) is a big part of what drives the technology hype-machine. Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. I feel like it's time to be brave enough to say what I really think.

Design for the Next Billion Customers
Niti Bhan and David Tait, who are specialized on research and strategy for emerging markets, recently collaborated with Experientia on an extensive ethnographic research project in Africa. Niti and Dave condensed their broader insights in what it means to design for emerging markets in a long article for Core77.

Is the Internet just a fad? Ask 1995!

2008-04-08T17:20:00.001-07:00

There's nothing like a little trip down memory lane every once in a while. And when I recently stumbled upon this 1995 Newsweek article that called the Internet a fad, I couldn't tear myself away from it. To be honest, my first though was, "Man, this guy must feel stupid for writing this." But after thinking about it for a while, I realized that the author had a 50/50 chance of being right. Things could've gone the other way -- a few smart people could've decided to focus their energies elsewhere, and this Internet thing would have never become what it is today...

Below are a few excerpts -- but I encourage you to read the whole article, it really makes you think twice before speaking in absolutes...

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

To the author's credit -- stores have not become obsolete...

Brand Loyalty and the User Experience

2008-04-04T11:53:00.001-07:00

I recently attended a brand presentation where the video below was shown. It’s pretty funny, and also (in my opinion) a perfect example of how interactive products and consumer-generated content should fundamentally change our traditional views of customer loyalty. Loyalty in our current environment is fostered through repeated great (user) experiences, not through advertising and coupons…

But even though I like the general point the video is trying to make, I think it stops a little short of the real issue. It is really just saying that we should listen to our customers better. But that's not enough -- we need to understand the customer in ways they don’t even understand themselves, and then build experiences that meet unmet (and sometimes unconscious) needs through repeated, positive experiences that deepen the customer-company relationship.

Uncovering these needs happens not through "Voice of the Customer" research programs, but through more contextual research efforts like ethnography and contextual inquiries (combined with validating quantitative research). I believe this is where traditional Market Research programs have historically fallen short -- although there is evidence that the tide is turning on this topic as HCI becomes more mainstream and user experience research techniques become more accessible.

In my view there can be no more powerful synergy in discovering how to deepen true customer loyalty than a collaborative effort between Market Research and User Experience Research. This view is very much in line with the thinking described in the Adaptive Path blog essay The Long Wow, which I have referenced before.

So in essence, my viewpoint is this: To not realize how important repeated, quality user experiences are to Loyalty would be an egregious misjudgment of what Loyalty really is about with an interactive product.

Netflix - more homework than entertainment?

2008-03-24T16:24:00.001-07:00

As Netflix continues to be down today, I'm reflecting on the panic I felt when I saw this message on their site this morning...

What does this mean? What happens to my queue that I spent so many hours perfecting? As pathetic as it might seem, I had to calm myself down a little bit... Anyway, it reminded me of a great article I read a while ago called "Netflix Guilt". It's about how asynchronous entertainment (the ability to watch what we want when we want without being attached to a TV schedule) might actually be a move in the wrong direction, turning "entertainment" into "homework". For example:

The digital revolution has introduced us all to the life-altering phenomenon known as asynchronous entertainment. We can now enjoy movies, TV shows and our favorite media sources wherever, whenever we want. But a decade into this monumental shift, the drawbacks are coming into focus. Episodes of “The Daily Show” and “Letterman” pile onto our DVR television recorders like copies of The New Yorker, begging to either be consumed or wastefully discarded. Netflix movies line up on our shelves like airplanes on a runway waiting to take off. And all of those blog postings relentlessly flood into our Web browsers every hour, every day. There’s certainly not time for all of it. Is this entertainment? It feels more like homework.

So as I wait to see if my queue is still going to exist tomorrow, I encourage all of us to reduce the number of entertainment homework we do. You know, just to preserver our sanity in case a site goes down or our DVR's stop working...

Use A/B testing wisely - never in isolation

2007-11-24T07:39:00.001-08:00

A recent discussion on a UX forum I participate in turned to the topic of A/B testing. I really enjoyed the conversation so I wanted to reiterate some of the points I made, and expand on it a little bit as well. It's not my goal to define A/B testing here but to share my opinion on its use. I believe that even though A/B testing can be extremely valuable to help identify the best iteration of a site or a particular page, it should never be used in isolation.

Since A/B testing is relatively cheap to do and the results are so compelling, companies are in danger of adopting a "test and learn" culture where pages are just A/B tested with no additional user input. That would be the wrong way to go. A/B testing shouldn't be used on its own to make decisions, it should always be used in conjunction with other research methods -- both qualitative (such as usability testing, ethnography) and quantitative (such as desirability studies).

A/B testing is an important method in the research toolkit because it can give you information that usability testing on its own cannot. The main goal of A/B testing is to see how business metrics move up and down depending on the version of the page -- click through rates, checkout rates, purchasing rates, etc. You can't see that with usability testing alone. But as Kohavi et al. point out in their paper Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web, A/B testing has some major limitations:

Quantitative Metrics, but No Explanations. It is possible to know which variant is better, and by how much, but not why. In user studies, for example, behavior is often augmented with users’ comments, and hence usability labs can be used to augment and complement controlled experiments.
Short term vs. Long Term Effects. Controlled experiments measure effects during the experimentation period, typically a few weeks. It is wise to look at delayed conversion metrics, where there is a lag from the time a user is exposed to something and take action. These are sometimes called latent conversions.
Primacy and Newness Effects. These are opposite effects that need to be recognized. If you change the navigation on a web site, experienced users may be less efficient until they get used to the new navigation, thus giving an inherent advantage to the Control. Conversely, when a new design or feature is introduced, some users will investigate it, click everywhere, and thus introduce a "newness" bias.
Features Must be Implemented. A live controlled experiment needs to expose some users to a Treatment different than the current site (Control). The feature may be a prototype that is being tested against a small portion, or may not cover all edge cases. Nonetheless, the feature must be implemented and be of sufficient quality to expose users to it.
Consistency. Users may notice they are getting a different variant than their friends and family. It is also possible that the same user will see multiple variants when using different computers (with different cookies).

As with most things, it is important to use A/B testing responsibly. Since every research/testing method comes with its own limitations, a combination of methods is the only way to get the full picture and make the right decisions.

iPhone shows that good design = good usability

2007-11-07T09:12:00.001-08:00

TIME Magazine just crowned the iPhone as the best invention of 2007 (see Invention Of the Year: The iPhone). I know what you're thinking, and I thought the same thing: can we please stop talking about the iPhone now? Well, almost. But let me just quote one thing from the article. The author gives 5 reasons why the iPhone deserves this honor, and the first one is this (emphasis added by me):

The iPhone is pretty

Most high-tech companies don't take design seriously. They treat it as an afterthought. Window-dressing. But one of Jobs' basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology. All the cool features in the world won't do you any good unless you can figure out how to use said features, and feel smart and attractive while doing it.

An example: look at what happens when you put the iPhone into "airplane" mode (i.e., no cell service, WiFi, etc.). A tiny little orange airplane zooms into the menu bar! Cute, you might say. But cute little touches like that are part of what makes the iPhone usable in a world of useless gadgets. It speaks your language. In the world of technology, surface really is depth.

I think Apple is showing us all the good usability can look great too. They understand that it's not just about accomplishing your goal, but also about feeling "smart and attractive" in the process. I think as usability professionals we often feel constrained by design, as if design stands in the way of making something truly usable. Let's go beyond that -- let's keep the usability great and make it pretty...

Broken Experience #4

2007-11-01T17:38:00.001-07:00

I don't even know where to begin on this one... This form presented itself to me when I opened my browser to get Internet access at the hotel I'm staying at. Here are the list of things I can see wrong with it -- feel free to add if I missed anything...

Broken image at the top
"Please choose from the following plans", but there's only one "plan"
Why is there a Price column? And why, if it's free, is it only valid for 24 hours?
"Enter number of days... as long as it's 1!" What ??? Why is that text box there if I can only enter a "1" in it?
"Please leave this box blank." Why is it there if I'm not supposed to use it?

A completely redundant form -- if it's free, just let me in :)

Creating loyalty through great customer experiences

2007-10-28T13:56:00.001-07:00

Brandon Schauer from Adaptive Path wrote a great article last week called The Long Wow, about how to create customer loyalty through repeated great customer experiences. It encourages companies to go beyond just measuring loyalty (through overly simplistic measures like Net Promoter Score) or instituting "loyalty programs", and spend time to create experiences that delight customers again and again. To quote from the article:

True loyalty grows within people based on a series of notable interactions they have, over time, with a company’s products and services. No card-carrying programs are necessary: Apple doesn’t have a traditional loyalty program; neither does Nike or Harley-Davidson. These companies impress, please, and stand out in the minds of their customers through repeated, notably great experiences.

As I read through the article (and you should too!), a couple of recent experience came to mind of how 2 completely different companies either made me loyal from the start, or increased my loyalty by doing something small to help me out.

1. Running Revolution

Nothing is more important for a runner than shoes. After sticking with New Balance shoes for years, I recently decided to try out something new. But since I didn't know where to start, a colleague recommended Running Revolution, a small boutique shop close to where I live. I became a loyal customer long before I even bought my shoes there.

These guys get runners. There are no prices on the shoes -- for them it's about finding the right shoe for you, and nothing else. They measured my foot with thermals, brought out pairs of shoes that they knew would be a good fit for me, put me on the treadmill and videotaped me to measure bio-mechanics, and I can go on and on. Suffice to say that I didn't walk out with the most expensive shoes in the store, but I will never buy running shoes anywhere else again. They made a life-time customer simply by fulfilling my need for a great running shoe. They know that I will come back again and again, so they don't have to sell me the most expensive shoe in the store right then and there.

2. Amazon.com

Even though I'm already a loyal Amazon customer, the repeated great experiences keep strengthening that loyalty. Small things count. While browsing around, I noticed that the Overnight 1 Click button was disabled. When I scrolled over the button, I got this message:

How nice and and completely unnecessary of them! They could've gotten an extra $3.99 shipping cost out of me, but instead they refused to let me pay extra.

I'm sharing this as examples of what Brandon points out in his article -- that through a continuous focus on user needs and building great experiences, you create loyal customers that are so much more valuable in the long run than if your only goal is to squeeze as much revenue out of them as you possible can, right now. Unfortunately Wall Street doesn't believe in this unique brand of economic "delayed gratification", but I wish more companies would just start doing it and prove them wrong...

Can a social network become too large?

2007-10-21T19:51:00.001-07:00

An article in the latest issue of The Economist explores the fact that there might be less to Facebook and other social network sites than meets the eye... The basis of their argument is as follows:

[There is an] an important limitation for social networks, such as Facebook, compared with older sorts of network, such as the postal or telephone systems. These benefit from Metcalfe's Law, which says that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users. In other words, the more people have phones, the more useful they become. This “network effect” leads to rapid adoption and puts up barriers for new entrants.

But unlike other networks, social networks lose value once they go beyond a certain size. “The value of a social network is defined not only by who's on it, but by who's excluded,” says Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster. Despite their name, therefore, they do not benefit from the network effect. Already, social networks such as “aSmallWorld”, an exclusive site for the rich and famous, are proliferating. Such networks recognize that people want to hobnob with a chosen few, not to be spammed by random friend-requests.

This suggests that the future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the Internet to replicate the millions that exist offline.

Although I agree that social networking sites are not perfect at the moment, I don't think the reason is that they are too large, as The Economist suggests. I want to fall back on one of my earlier posts, where I mentioned the importance of "weak ties" between people in separate network clusters to facilitate the flow of information in that network. If the future of social network sites is really in "myriad small communities on the Internet" that are not connected in any way, each network in isolation will become pretty useless over time, since there will be no new information coming into or going out of that network.

In order to have value (or social capital), a network needs to be (1) large, (2) open and (3) have (weak) ties between different clusters in that network. Alexander van Elsas and Rolf Skyberg writes a lot of about the need for open social network sites, and I agree with their views and their thoughts on how this can be implemented. The article in The Economist is an interesting read and it does raise some serious questions about the monetary value that is placed on Facebook and other sites at the moment, but I just don't think that smaller, isolated networks is the right way forward.

Visualization of quantitative data -- bad examples

2007-10-19T15:56:00.001-07:00

I'm a big fan of and RSS subscriber to Smashing Magazine -- they have some great articles on design, and I always find myself reading all the way through most of their posts. With that said, I have to voice my disappointed in their recent article on chart and graph generators. It's probably not even their fault really -- I applaud the hard work they did on pulling together a bunch of Flash, AJAX and CSS based chart generators that are available online. But the fact is that most of these tools are completely useless unless you know how to visualize data properly, and that is, sadly, a skill that is not taught enough.

All of these tools create pretty flashy charts, that’s for sure, but does it really help to tell the story of the data? Why would you ever need a donut chart or a 3D stacked cylinder chart? What does that add to the data that a simple 2D bar chart can’t show you?

If you're not familiar with Edward Tufte's work, you should definitely check it out. He coined the term "data-ink ratio", in which he argues, to quote from Wikipedia, "against the inclusion of any non-informative decoration in visual presentations of quantitative information and claims that ink should only be used to convey significant data and aid in its interpretation." Below are some examples, from the Smashing Magazine article, of how "non-data ink" is so overbearing that it completely overshadows the data:

There are so many things wrong with these charts, but let me just point out the 3 main issues really briefly:

Unnecessary usage of area. The eye is not good at comparing the relative sizes of areas. On the first graph, can you easily tell if France or Canada is bigger? We are good at comparing lengths though, which is why bar charts are almost always a better option than pie charts. (And by the way, what on earth is the hole for on that first chart?).
Unnecessary and incorrect usage of color. In the first chart, different colors are assigned to each country. Since this should have been a bar chart and not a pie chart (as per my first point), different colors aren't needed, and just adds non-data ink to the graph. If you're going to use color, then don't use highly saturated colors as in these graphs -- it's uneasy on the eyes and in many cases indistinguishable to people who are color blind.
Unnecessary usage of 3D. 3D effects should just never be used, period. It clutters up the charts, and also often results in occlusion -- where some data points are hidden behind others.

We need to teach analysts the techniques to create simple and straight-forward charts that let the data shine through. All these primary colors and 3D stuff have nothing to do with the data. A great resource on this is Stephen Few's book Show Me The Numbers -- I highly recommended his book to anyone who spends any time making charts for business presentations. Ok. I'm glad I got that off my chest...