New Packaging for Campbell’s Soup Impacts User Experience & Hopefully Sales

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Posted February 19th, 2010 in Brand Experience, User Experience | 2 Comments

I am fascinated by Neuromarketing, because I like psychology, I like user experience and human factors research, and I like selling stuff and making money. A lot of people have a bad impression of neuromarketing because they worry about Evil Marketers tapping into our brains to get information about how to influence us… and that may be an aspect for some companies that spend money on this research. But trying to understand what customers want and need and how to appeal to their sense of style, tastes or desires is also what we do in user experience testing, so I look at it more positively than negatively.

This week I saw a great example of neuromarketing and wanted to share it with you. I think this is just so neat, that the Campbell’s company put the time and effort in, but I like this example most for the enhanced user experience. Check out this new label…

campbells-soup-label

The Wall Street Journal says that the research was conducted over a two year period, to figure out how to get consumers to buy more soup. From the PSFK blog:

For the past two years, researchers studied microscopic changes in skin moisture, heart rate and other biometrics to see how consumers react to everything from pictures of bowls of soup to logo design.  They combined these biometric tools with a different type of deep interview to more accurately gauge which consumer communications worked better.

These labels are not just pretty to look at – they will actually make locating the right soup for your needs much easier… right now the logo on red really does draw your eye to it much more than is helpful – it’s distracting compared the often lighter-colored soups. Color-coding the cans will also be helpful – so though this was done to make soup a more appealing purchase decision, it also makes buying it quickly easier, so the user experience has been improved also. I can’t wait till these cans hit the shelves.

neuro-logoIf you want to learn more about neuromarketing (as a layman), my two favorite resources are Roger Dooley’s blog and the book Buyology. Roger Dooley is a fantastic guy to talk to – I’m lucky to have him as a friend on Twitter, and his blog is so educational and interesting. What I love about his posts is that he uses lots of examples and then explains why and how the example is effective or not, all without overloading you with information or too-complex details for those of us not immersed in this field of study everyday. I read everything he ever writes and highly recommend it: Neuromarketing, Where Brain Science and Marketing Meet. Read Roger’s take on the new packaging in Your Brain on Soup.

Buyology, by Martin Lindstrom, is a book, a site, and an experience. You can view chapter summary information, buy it at numerous places, or read many news articles about the book and Lindstrom’s take on what makes people buy something. Visit the site – there is a lot of information to explore!

Information vs. Engagement: Are You Giving People What They Need?

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Posted January 23rd, 2010 in Customer Experience, Life Online, Process, User Experience | 8 Comments

kris-biz-3I don’t expect this to be an overly popular post – I have brought this conversation up several times – I even moderated the #sm42 chat about it, and it almost always results in a backlash of folks that claim all social media communication is about engagement, and I am wrong to think otherwise. But still… I think otherwise. I just can’t let go of the notion we can make social media work even more efficiently and effectively for all concerned.

I’m not against engagement and talking to people. Obviously I talk to lots of people who talk to me on Twitter, and do my best to engage both new people I don’t know and people I consider friends. As well as prospects, clients and various companies and brands. I am a user advocate, after all, so I get it. Using Twitter, Facebook and various other social platforms to develop mutually beneficial or even just interesting relationships with others is not new. Using these platforms to solicit web traffic, sell a book, product or service or promote yourself as a celebrity or expert of some type is really becoming yesterday’s news, as well. People are jumping onto these platforms by droves to take advantage of the marketing opportunities, and to provide a listening ear or customer support also. There is definitely marketing value, in listening to people and acknowledging what they have to say about your company… it takes finesse sometimes, which savvy social media marketers and community managers have (or anyone tweeting for your company) in order to read the needs and then meet them, for the particular individual you’re dealing with.

But I know there’s more we can do, with all the people, and the easy, instant access, and the short-burst communication and the open api’s and ability to integrate technology online, where it can be accessed from anywhere there’s a computer and internet connection. So much more. Some enterprising local companies are taking orders over Twitter and having food or drink ready for the person when they arrive. Delivery companies are finding ways to use Twitter. Cabs can be ordered and dispatched. Shipments can be tracked. I even had an interaction with a great company called Gourmet Library and they changed their site for me that night, to add a suggested feature. Now THIS, this is a beautiful way to use these unexpected (a few years ago) resources in ways that can benefit our bottom lines and improve our business processes.

Still… people go on and on about engagement and almost can’t stand to have a conversation including social media that doesn’t put the total emphasis on that singular concept. I understand why – lots of companies and business people are on Twitter, but they don’t all do it like we wish they would. Some of them are stiff, not overly chatty or friendly. Some are defensive. Some of them have an account name and don’t even tweet or acknowledge things being said about them at all. Some users/customers/prospects DO choose another company based on the lack of interaction, by the way. Some send out automated, crappy sales solicitations and annoy you. Some just listen – you know they are – using all the real-time streaming as intelligence but they don’t deign to respond. Some intervene too much – maybe you want to vent about your hideous tasting sandwich from a fast food chain, but don’t want to be confronted about it in public. So all the advice and the opinions and feedback about how to develop these relationships online is definitely warranted.

But is “engagement” the ONLY need that people have? I’ve been thinking about this a long, long time. I believe people/users/customers/buyers/employees have needs, and engaging with a company representative in order to meet the need is only one facet of a holistic plan to be implemented.

For you, in your life, what’s the fastest way to go about getting a particular piece of company information? Say you want to know the hours and location of a company you plan to do business with later today. Do you…

  • Ask a friend/spouse/coworker if they know?
  • Look them up in a paper phonebook?
  • Look them up in Google or online?
  • Go to their site and hunt until you find the information on the site?
  • Call phone information and ask for their phone number so you can talk to someone on the phone?
  • Drive by the location to look at a sign on the door?
  • Search for them on Twitter or Facebook, to see if the company is there and you can ask or see the info?
  • Send an email to them to find out?
  • Ask an intern/spouse/assistant or some other person to find out?

Different people will take different approaches, based on how they learn and gather information, and where they are at the time. If I’m driving, I might ask someone else to look it up for me, or I might Google a search at a red light. If I’m on Twitter, I might pop the name into search and see if the company is there, and take the lazy route of asking someone and waiting for the answer. If I want to see the company’s site, I might visit and poke around and eventually get to the info. But I want to be able to do any of these things, and come up with the answer fast… because I have a lot to do and this is kind of like “white noise” in my day – until I get the info I need, I can’t ignore it and so it’s on the mental task list until I can check it off.

110430Emarketer’s latest research offers reasons that people befriend or follow a company using social media. They say social media users are “interested in deeper engagement.” That seems to be somewhat true, but have we helped respondents identify what it is they TRULY need? Two of these categories are too vague (at least as represented in this simple chart.) Do they need a person from Whole Foods, Macy’s or Apple to address them? Or do they need a question answered, a complaint addressed, a suggestion for a feature or product acknowledged, some praise for an employee noted, a request considered, or some other, specific need answered, that may or may not involve “engaging?”

What requires unique answers vs. what could be answered in a FAQ or inventory call? Inquiring about known product availability is different than asking if the company even has a product that meets a particular need, or a service offering. Asking for hours of operation is different than engaging in a conversation about the best person to contact within the company to discuss a potential business deal, or an inquiry about a unique problem with a newly purchased product. Asking a Human Resources representative on Twitter about the most appropriate clothing choices for a new hire, is different than asking if there are job openings. One requires human engagement, the other can be answered by a machine. We don’t refuse to automate business processes inside the enterprise, or factory, or kitchen… wherever they make sense and are affordable. So why do we act as if some automation of information via a social platform is a crime against humanity?

As a user experience designer, I have seen that interactions inside a site or software system (or over a phone system) are also forms of engaging with your company and brand. The increasing popularity of making purchases online is a testament to this. You need to think of interactions and transactions as mechanical engaging, and you’ll see how important they are. People have good, bad and downright horrifying experiences, just like they do with your employees in person. An online experience with a site or ecommerce shopping cart can leave the same good or bad taste in your mouth, resulting in the same good or bad word of mouth sharing. If you have a crappy site, and are hoping your salespeople or customer support will make up for it (or vice versa), you won’t be fooling anyone, really. Customer care is a pervasive, underlying foundation or it’s not, and all aspects of your approach need to deliver on it. Social media is not a silo, your site is not a silo, your blog and community managers are not a silo, your managers, customer support handlers, marketing people, receptionists, retail floorwalkers, the lobby, restrooms and the parking lot are not independently going to carry the brand – it takes all of these pieces – human, tangible and intangible – working in tandem from the same value belief system, to satisfy prospects, buyers, partners and even former customers.

So instead of looking at the world of social media and thinking “Oh my gosh, how can I even go there? Our staff doesn’t have enough time as it is!” I am suggesting that you step back and ask yourself, what do people in your business ecosystem really NEED?

  • What do prospects need?
  • What do people appropriate for our products/services need, that don’t know about us yet?
  • What do existing customers need?
  • What do people with a return or complaint need?
  • What do potential partners need?
  • What do employees need?
  • What do our salespeople need to close deals/do their job?
  • What do company managers need?
  • What do investors/stakeholders need?
  • What do people we owe money to/do business with need?

Then look at your people, business processes and existing technological systems, and pinpoint where you can start to meet these needs. If you can honestly always answer “deeper engagement” for the myriad needs you will come up with, I’d be highly surprised.

We have got to separate true need of specific information (inventory question, process explanation, how to return something, what time a store closes, if something desired is in or out of stock, if a discount is available for bulk purchase, if sales or discounts exist) from ego gratification from need for positive acknowledgment (desire to contribute to brand growth or offer a suggestion) from need for issue acknowledgment (desire to be heard when customer has had a problem or complaint.)

All of us that do marketing consultation and act as social media advisors need to be careful tossing around terms like “deeper engagement.” What does that mean, anyway? I have deep engagement with my closest friends and family – not so much with Freshbooks, though I sure think very highly of them and recommend them often (for example.) It makes people feel good when a company rep or major brand responds to them, but why? Is it because they are perceived as being busy/important/popular and the name-dropping in our direction impresses others (and maybe delights us. It can be fun when someone you admire responds.) But is our ego drive to be acknowledged an unacknowledged driver behind the call for engagement with brands and companies on Twitter? Or do people need access to information, that may sometimes includes a person and sometimes an automated FAQ or inventory tool? What makes interacting with Sally Smith (a random person – like any of us) any different than interacting with Mark Parker (the CEO of Nike)? Do we value a brief interaction with Mark Parker, who we don’t know, more than with a beloved friend who lends us a word of encouragement, or a mate who declares undying love in public for all the world to see, or a boss that gives us an ‘atta boy’ in front of our peers?

If people aren’t accessing Twitter accounts for fast info now, is it because that type of interaction doesn’t much exist today, so there’s no precedent to believe they can do that? Or because they don’t want to? (The classic chicken and egg question.) I would much rather hit Twitter (where let’s face it, I am 75% of the time off and on) and ask a quick question and get the answer now (automatic response) or later (via a nice human) than dig through a company site full of information and FAQ’s or support questions. It might be the height of laziness for me, but it’s the art of providing convenience and engagement (even if automated!) for savvy businesses who have the foresight to see it now, because it WILL come eventually. Our processes for automating certain interactions are more clear inside the company than on these social platforms, I think. We haven’t built them yet, but we can and we should go further than the “social” in social media and include opportunities we have to meet and answer needs in a number of cool ways.

Maybe it’s just me, but…

  • I would greatly prefer to order some of my food and beverages directly via Twitter and then go pick them up (like Coffeegroundz in Houston wisely initiated early on – I was longing for this just the other day from Moe’s in Shawnee, KS)
  • I’d love to be able to sit on my rump in Twitter and ask an Amazon account about a book someone mentioned, and have the link to it sent back to me, instead of going to the site and searching
  • If I have an Apple Mac issue (I have multiple Macs and an iPod), I want to be able to hit a knowledge base with my question from Twitter. It may work or may not, but it seems easier than going and digging up the info at their site. It’s just one more hook, but for me, mentally massively more convenient.
  • Someday I want to ask for hairdresser (lawn care, dry cleaner, nail salon, doctor, air conditioner repair, etc. recommendations and receive a nice link back to a list of known folks reviewed near me (or the city I will be going to.) I don’t want a special, local Kansas City site – I want to ask the world at large, from where I hang out (my site, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
  • I’d like to be able to tweet a preferred appointment time to my nail lady, doctor’s office, chiropractor, etc. and get an answer back – an automated return of “Yes, that time’s available, would you like to schedule” or “No, I’m sorry, it’s not” is no less valuable coming from a software system than it is a human being. Either way, I get the appointment – engagement and customer care happens with the practitioner I am going to see and the people who take my money at the door, in addition to the software system they set up to meet my needs.
  • If my internet goes out, or the electricity, I want to tweet an account and get a status update back.
  • I want to ping my gym and find out what classes are being taught at 5:30 pm (because I realize that’s when I can go.) Or I want to know when Thom or Martha are teaching, or some other schedule related question.

Ask the question OUT, get the answer back IN is the future of cloud computing. Right now, I have to do a lot of work, despite how much more convenient things are now than they were 5 years ago. I have to know the places to go, or ask people and find out, and then go to the sites, and then do a search, and maybe they have or don’t the info I am looking for in THEIR particular database. If they don’t I have to start over.

But these social platforms have opened a new door – they offer new horizons of people-powered comments, reviews, praise and complaints to work with. With links mentioned, people recommended or disputed, reports posted, analytics tracked – this is incredibly valuable to the humble person overworked, underpaid, and with the ambition to pack as much productivity into a day as they can.

Forrester, who many companies rely on to separate the good from the bad data and information, has recently added a bucket of “conversationalists” to their social media persona ladder. But… I think this needs more work. I’ve added a couple of notes in green:

forrester-ladder-of-sm-users

This chart just doesn’t address people who are seeking information vs. the need to engage, in any of these areas. The RSS feed comment is mildly confusing – I assume they mean these collectors aggregate feeds into a feed reader or something, or maybe mix them, but not sure. “Inactives” may not appear to be doing anything, but we can’t know that – after all, they signed up for some reason… maybe they are self-educating or scouring for deals or seeking specific information.

Why aren’t we building databases based on social queries? Is it because we are so focused on people, and people who need people (LOL!) that we are totally overlooking an entire segment of socialization? Once I asked @WholeFoods if they carried Nutella – someone answered and said no, it does not meet their ingredient quality list. That answer could be popped into a database for a future automated query, so the next time a Nutella addict wants to know it could be answered automatically. The supplements questions alone (if anything like the quantity we got in the store) could result in a big time-savings for the human staffers.

Similar questions as an example: take Cost Plus World Market – do they have a location near me, do they carry Fat Tire Beer (at my location, or nearest?) Does LifeTime Fitness have a tennis center at a gym in Kansas City? (No, automated answer.) Will they ever have one? (Requires human answer with explanation.) Can I tell someone who will listen/respond at LifeTime, how much I wish they would bring Tennis to a KC gym? (Human answer with link to ideas site or direct forward to tennis program director, preferably on Twitter, or Facebook, or wherever I have initiated this conversation.) Do they have any recommendations for tennis in the Kansas City area then, given they are not meeting my need as an existing customer? (This is where the company could go the extra mile in their answer/recommendation, resulting in customer loyalty, user retention or positive WOM benefits.)

I am not saying the people running branded accounts on Twitter aren’t doing a world of good for their companies, customers and brands. I have no idea why, but one day someone mentioned to me she had a big problem with a seatbelt in her Ford. Not knowing how I could help, but having a passing acquaintance with Scott Monty, Ford’s very socially present PR person, I forwarded her issue on to him. He got the right people involved apparently, and a few days later she told me Ford had contacted her and was resolving the problem. Now, while I was glad this was the case, I don’t know why her efforts to reach them on her own had failed. These are the kinds of customer care issues all companies have to examine and correct where they see failures. If there were only automated systems, this would not have been possible, and I am not recommending we replace the people spearheading social media efforts at the groundbreaking companies that are here now, with automated systems. In fact, to know how to deal with people who request things and ask questions of you on Twitter, you need to BE an active Twitter user, so don’t even think about planning automated services without being immersed in the social culture, or you will likely pay for it in negativity.

I’m suggesting we (my company and others who think about technology and integration and business processes non-stop) help these Twittering employees and companies by coming up with new solutions. New ways of approaching the needs. New ways to scale and manage the requests. I hope that’s clear, if you read this far!

I leave you with two things. Tonight I asked the question “If you have recently interacted with a brand/company on Twitter, what was the nature of your interaction? Question/comment/issue?” and I got a lot of neat answers and opinions, which I have starred as favorites. I recommend browsing these comments for insights.

New friend @CariEllison gave me a link to a related article that’s interesting, so you might want to check it out also.

Want to discuss this? Tell me I’m full of smack? Need help with an integration plan or process? Let’s talk about it. I’m curious to know what other folks think of the idea of mixing automation (for utility, aid and response, not marketing – huge, huge difference) with people on social platforms.

What's Your Body Saying About Being Fearless?

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Posted June 7th, 2009 in Human Factors | 7 Comments

A little bird on a wire informed us yesterday there was a thought-provoking new post over on The BrandBuilder’s blog (thanks Reza!) “Be fearless!” Blanchard instructs us, in his inimitable style. How I wish I could, some days. He says that “courage is one of humanity’s greatest gifts” and that is such a beautiful observation. But what if persistent, underlying fears and hidden emotions are getting in our way, despite our best intentions?

I don’t know if any of you suffer from the same issues I do when it comes to business risk, taking chances, stepping out on a limb or going for what you truly want… but sometimes I am fearless, sometimes totally uncertain (but willing to take a chance if I knew the right direction) and sometimes I am positively paralyzed with either indecision, fear of the unknown, or fear of what I imagine might go wrong.

I was thinking about where these emotions and fear and uncertain meandering musings come from, and they are lodged in my body in different places. So I want to get literal for a moment… are we in touch with where, in our bodies, we are literally or figuratively having uncomfortable feelings that stop us? I have an image here of some places in our bodies where fears collect, and might cause us to hold back – maybe even unconsciously if we’re not aware we’re holding onto these thoughts and physical sensations.

fearless-article

What’s going on in your head?
Are you telling yourself the truth or semi-fiction based on hidden emotions? “We’re better than competitors… we suck next to our competitors… this is not good enough… we aren’t selling enough… we can’t get ahead… we aren’t closing deals… we need more budget… what am I going to do? I hate my job… my boss is out to get me… I can’t ever make my boss happy… I’m not making enough and can’t get another job… what if no one likes this design? What if I fail?” How many times are we smiling on the outside, with a running dialogue of fret, worry and fearful outcomes draining our mental energy? 

What’s going on with your mouth?
Are you mostly telling the truth, or telling lies? Are you stuffing feelings and impressions before expressing them for fear of retaliation or confrontation? Are you biting your tongue, rather than lashing out at an abuser? Are you loose-lipped or gossiping, and then regret it? Do you say things in a harsh manner and then regret it? Do you praise the people who are important to you enough, or show your gratitude in your speech, or do you curse the day you (or your family, friends, employees, managers, etc.) were born most of the time? Who renders you speechless? Who do you want to confide in most? Who do you love talking to? Who do you share secrets with freely? Who do you watch your mouth with or can’t trust with information? What makes you drop your mouth open and what do you feel when that happens? What are you eating that you feel is good for you (or not)? Who do you want to kiss?

What’s up with your eyes?
Do you see situations clearly or dimly? Do you think you see things (based on fears) that aren’t really happening? Are you in reality about what you see, or in denial? Do you help others see clearly, or try to mask the truth and pull the wool over their eyes? Are your eyebrows raised in shock or alarm? Do you feel helpless because your eyesight is failing you? Do you feel happy with the vision you have, physically and metaphorically?

How’s your hearing?
Are you listening to what people really say, or reinterpreting it to suit yourself once it passes from your ear to your brain? Are you listening to what customers want, or trying to get them to hear what you want from them? Are you open to hearing new ideas from unexpected sources? Do the people around you consider you a good listener, or do they know you won’t listen to a thing anyone says? What do you long to hear? Who’s whispering in your ear? Who says horrible things to you? Who do you wish would shut up? What do you still hear (in your head) from your childhood? Are the things people say to you accurate? Can you trust what you hear, and if not, what can you do about it?

How do your throat and neck feel?
Is your throat inflamed or “tight” physically? This can happen when we stuff feelings inside and don’t express them. Your throat literally constricts from the pressure of this repeated behavior. Does your neck move easily or is it locked up? A lot of people carry their stress in their neck – if it feels like the trunk of a hardwood tree, you need to examine whether you have stress that is going unrelieved piling up in that area… “the weight of the world on your shoulders” needs to be diminished so your neck will be unrestricted in its movements. You need to be able to move your neck freely so you can see everything that’s around you.

What’s going on in your gut?
Do you have nervous butterflies? Do you feel nauseous? Are you excited? Is your tummy doing flip-flops? Do you feel like you could upchuck if something doesn’t change? Is there a burning sensation in the pit of your stomach? When people blush, the lining of their stomach has an associated reaction that can make it feel like a flame is been applied. Has something either delighted you so much that you’re immersed inside that flame, or worried you so immensely that you feel sick? Does your gut send you a warning (intuition) when you are about to make a mistake or choose a path that you should reconsider? Do you digest the food you’re eating well? If your job, your marriage, your partners or your business is giving you ulcers, listen to your gut and make changes before more damage is done.

What’s going on underneath your skin?
Does someone give you the creeps or make you feel dirty inside? Do you warm to the touch of the people you’re with, or grow cold when they touch you? Does the idea you have or person you’re with give you goosebumps of delight, or chills of impending doom? Is someone under your skin, driving you nuts? Do you wish you could just get them out from under there, somehow? Would you rather be somewhere else, than where you are presently? What makes you feel alive and tingly, all over? What makes you want to crawl inside yourself like a turtle and hide?

What’s going on with your legs & feet?
Are you always on the move, and wish you could slow down, or do you love it? Are you mostly sedentary and hate it? Do you wish you could be somewhere else? Do you want to click your heels together, like Dorothy, and Go Home, more than anything in the world? Have you stood in the spots you most want to see? Are you face-to-face with people who matter to you? Are you running away from something or someone? Do you wish time would stand still around you, so you could catch up on life’s many chores? Do you fantasize about walking out on your job, spouse, children, parents or group of friends? Are you paralyzed from the waist down, and afraid to move? Do you want to run toward something, but feel your feet are stuck in place?

What is in your heart?
If your mind is aligned with both your integrity and your desires, you are probably following your heart, unencumbered, regardless of doubt, uncertainty, fears or setbacks and failures. Sometimes we want to follow where our heart wants to lead us, but there are obstacles in the way: our moral conscience, the moral compass of society, what the consequences are, what other people will think, what we feel we can manage, what we feel sure about… the path may not be clear at all times or navigating it may be fraught with complications. Sometimes we do things for the reasons in our heart, though our mind or our gut nag against it. But what makes your heart beat fast? What causes it to burst with joy? What closes it and causes you to turn away? What have you denied it? Where does it ache? What happens, if you have a business or relationship failure when something was terribly important to you, inside your heart? Is it broken permanently? Do you feel it has cracks? Does it mend fully, when someone dies, or we lose a job, or a friend or lover leaves? How weak or how strong is it? What will people say about your heart, when you leave this earth? What do you want your legacy to be? Where does your heart want your body to be, right this minute?

There are two ways we can deal with having all these bodily reactions, buried or repressed feelings, borrowing some thoughts from pop music below. I’m sure a lot of us have felt the way this first video describes – we don’t say what we wish to say, and stuff our emotions or bury them beneath the surface. This song is about a love relationship, but it applies to virtually any situation where the stakes are high. You may feel you’re playing it safe, but the huge gamble in living with things you’ll never say, is that you risk never having what you want.

Things I’ll Never Say

Or… as Eminem says, with characteristic bluntness:
Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted – ONE moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

Lose Yourself

The mind, to me, feels more like an unruly animal we have to tame, conquer and discipline at times, in order to move past fears and have the courage to keep taking action. But is what’s in the heart the most necessary factor for Being Fearless? It feels that way to me quite a bit. If I want something, even if there are many difficulties, and my desire is heartfelt and I am being true to myself, that helps propel me forward, in business, in love, in life. I’d love to hear what you have to say about it. What do you think it takes, to be fearless and make those plans a reality and your dreams come true (or die trying?) :-)

A Study in User Experience: Twitter & #fixreplies

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Posted May 13th, 2009 in User Experience | 15 Comments

I have found that being a user experience person has often meant arguing a lot. Your role in the company, is to be the user advocate, not the company advocate, so that your voice is a reminder and constant reflection of a product’s users… you represent them, and are paid for doing that.

But that means having to speak up, be confrontational at times, and be as persistent as you can possibly be when you passionately feel bad decisions are about to be made without being fired.

So this Twitter issue of removing a certain setting regarding seeing your friends reply to folks you don’t know, and the subsequent user experience fallout is the most beautiful train wreck a girl like me could ever witness. And it offers free lessons to anyone who will pay attention.

I have long been vocal about the fact that the one role not offered or filled at Twitter, is the role of a User Experience professional. They recently hired a Creative Director and front-end UI developer away from Google, to much fanfare. But those roles and those types of skill do not typically include enough understanding of human factors and behavior to have averted a UXP crisis of this magnitude. Obviously.

Here’s how the meeting would have gone at Twitter, had I been (for example) their User Experience Director:

Engineering Type: “We need to remove the ability for people to see other people’s @replies if they’re not following them anyway, because of….. (insert reason here. I don’t know why they felt the need to do this and Twitter has not explained.)

Creative Director: Cool. It’s just a checkbox on the Notices tab so we just take it off and we’re done.

Manager Type: Someone might need to post something for the damn users so we won’t get a million support questions. Gotta run… sales needs me.

Marketing: Hey! I’ll write a cute blog notice and talk about how it was confusing anyway, so we just helped everybody out!

Me: Are you freaking crazy??? A LOT of people use that feature because that’s how they find people they don’t know, to follow. Plus, they like to see what their friends are saying to each other. You can’t just yank that from the screen and write a cute blog notice! No way. We need to find another solution to address the (engineering issue reason) and not take away a well-used feature. You need to fix this on the back end. This is not the answer.

Much argument and debate would then ensue. History indicates I would eventually either win this battle, or a change would be made in a much different manner than it was with the #fixreplies debacle.

I am not saying this to be arrogant or tout my own user experience prowess. This is what a good user experience professional, in a position of influence, can do for your companies. It is a critical role… much more critical than software companies and product manufacturers realize. 

Right now, every 20 seconds on Twitter, there are about 50 more comments being made, mostly by outraged users, with the hashtag #fixreplies in it. Comments with “#twitterfail” and “Options Back” are also part of this user outcry. Thousands upon thousands of comments are being made by I don’t know how many users. But this bad user experience train wreck never had to happen.

From the removal of the feature with no warning or choice, to the subtly offensive tone of the notice regarding it “this is undesirable, and you all were confused” to the sheer chaos and confusion of many users who aren’t even quite sure what the issue is, to the aftermath of at least 16 hours or more and counting of vocal user upset, this feature removal has been handled badly in every particular.

8 hours ago at this writing, Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, tweeted “Reading people’s thoughts on the replies issue. We’re considering alternatives. Thanks for your feedback.” He knows people will see that and spread it around and some people will get the message. But that is not hardly enough, when your users are spending their valuable time complaining, in an attempt to elevate the noise so you will hear it. Because that is the point and the heart of the #fixreplies movement. Twitter’s users want to be heard.

So what does being heard mean? Ev acknowledged they are seeing the tweets, for anyone who happens to catch it. I would have preferred they make a status notice, as they have one up about maintenance and downtime later today. He also posted a year old blog post about this feature because it apparently has confused some people. The detail and communication in that post is better than the “Small Settings Update” blog post that accompanied this sudden feature loss last night. 

It’s never a good idea to completely remove a used feature without warning. You must always consider the purpose, tasks and emotions of the user if you want to take away a feature previously offered. Their feelings about it, are your problem. So like in any relationship that matters to you, if you need to make a change, it must be handled with the utmost tact, diplomacy and fairness as humanly possible.

Numerous problems with the update notice have fueled the #fixreplies outrage. Twitter won’t even tell us the reason behind the change. They said it was “confusing” but with tons of people having selected to use it, it cannot be that confusing. People aren’t dumb and have noticed this.

They spoke “down” to users by making this Big Brother-like statement: “Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable.” The contradictions in that sentence slay me. They could have also said, ”We know you like to follow along with conversations and actually have the real data to prove it, however, we have decided that you are all wrong. Denied!” Never, ever insult your user’s intelligence or ability to make choices for themselves in your documentation, errata in blog posts or in guiding text on the screen. NEVER.

The behavior of users is really fascinating to watch. Twitter is lucky to have all of this free feedback. I would have killed to have it for products I’ve launched or had to roll changes out for in the past. What they will do with it, I have no idea. They continue to baffle me as a company, so I’m watching, with thousands of other PR folks, marketing people, brand and community managers to see how they’ll exit this scrape.

Twitter is the best way for visible brands and companies to get feedback on their products, services, campaigns and decisions. I’ll say that again, in case the point was missed… Twitter is the best way for visible brands and companies to get feedback on their products, services, campaigns and decisions. Do they understand this, for themselves?

Yesterday the phenomenal Brains on Fire company in Greenville, SC held its apparently legendary “Fire Sessions.” In a post written by Olivier Blanchard on the event, he pointed out that “internal culture” was the predominant theme, and that if you “build the right company culture, the tools pretty much become peripheral.” I think, from what I have seen and read, Twitter does have a strong company culture. But from a total outsider’s perspective, they seem to live in a bubble of their own making. They are far smaller than their user base. It is the users they do not seem to connect with (unless they’re celebrities.) 

Where is the User Experience advocate? Where is the Community Manager? Where is the team of people, working under the community manager, in different parts of the world because cultures and language and usage might be different, whereas the universal point of Twitter is the same: it is a connector. Where are the people, inside Twitter the company, who understand this, care about it and want to change the way they interact with their own users? Why is the Get Satisfaction support site, more lip-service than really utilized to communicate with people who take the time to write to Twitter in an attempt to share their frustrations and help them understand how to be better? These are my questions.

But my questions are not as important as this one… today, the number one question of Twitter’s user base, is “Will you please fix my @replies back the way I had them? I liked it that way.”

Are you going to not just listen, but take action, Twitter? We’re all waiting to hear from you.

Is Your Agile Software Process Handcuffing the User Experience Design?

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Posted February 15th, 2009 in Process, User Experience | 15 Comments

I’m running across a new problem with a number of clients and wondering if my user experience colleagues are having similar issues. The advent of web applications has resulted in a change for many software providers in the way they release software today.

Agile software development is a method in which software is designed, examined and delivered to the market swiftly, so that end-users can provide feedback and more feature changes can be made and adjusted within a few months time, rather than once or twice a year. For off-the-shelf software, such as Adobe, Apple or Microsoft products, this is not as practical a method as it is for web-based services. I’m not sure if large corporations have employed any Agile methodologies or not. The Wikipedia entry describes my issue perfectly:

Agile chooses to do things in small increments with minimal planning, rather than long-term planning. Iterations are short time frames (known as ‘timeboxes’) which typically last from one to four weeks.

So here’s the problem: I am often called in to redesign an existing product, that was designed primarily by developers and managers, and not by an interface or interaction designer, or with consultation by a user experience design specialist who could point out workflow and related product issues, as well as design a product brand identity. And that’s great – this is one of my favorite things to do. Redesigning a product is sometimes easier for me than designing one from scratch, because I can see the technology working – it’s like a live prototype to play with. To take an unpolished, but great idea, and make it even better for the users it was built for, is a lot of fun for me.

Historically, I come in, look at a product, talk about the business and marketing goals, and craft a “big picture” plan for the product line identity, interface design, workflow, help systems, etc. and then the big picture gets broken down into phases and tasks. But look at the Agile description again: minimal planning, small changes, releases every 1-2 months. That allows for feature by feature adjustments, not a total redesign of the workflow, layout, navigation systems, etc.

What’s a user experience designer with a great idea of how to make this product in front of her better, to do now? I don’t have an answer to this yet. I think when it comes to restructuring the workflow of a product to make it significantly better, executives need to understand there is a time for Agile, and a time to redesign, and redesign efforts take more in the range of 2-6 months to complete, in my experience. It all depends on how much is “surface” redesign, such as moving things around on the pages and creating a nicer look and feel vs. how much the deeper code has to be modified because features need to work completely differently than the developers designed them.

As is our habit in the software industry, we tend to look inward and not outward when creating processes that are supposed to make our business run better. Do we need the internal motivation of a release every 4-6 weeks to make things happen? Customers don’t necessarily demand a release once a month, they just need bugs fixed and problematic features redesigned so they can perform their tasks better. Can we design an Agile process that is flexible enough to allow for large-scale design changes when they’re needed? Why do we have to release something once a month? 

How are you handling this issue, user experience designers? I’d love to hear your advice and stories on how to combine Agile with big picture design or redesign approaches. A List Apart offers a wonderful article on Agile Design (below) but doesn’t really answer the “how” to make it work that I am struggling with. Is persuading executives to give me the time I need with developers to make the software better, the only answer?

More Agile & User-Centered Design Thoughts…

Pick Passwords That Protect You Online

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Posted January 8th, 2009 in User Experience | 7 Comments

The UX Booth, a neat new usability site, has an excellent article that could help so many users if they see, so I’d like to point my readers there: How To Pick Passwords That Protect Your Online Experience.

Since the phishing incident at Twitter that I recently wrote about, another issue happened this week where a hacker was able to use a dictionary cracker to get inside Twitter’s back-end, and he promptly started messing with celebrity users accounts, naturally posting the most immature tweets his feeble brain could come up with. The culprit was one employee who had used a dictionary word without altering it in any way. Ironically, the word was “happiness.”

This is a huge problem, as we all have a ton of passwords and it’s hard to keep track of them. I am going to investigate the product mentioned in the article above, called 1Password as a way to help me keep track of passwords so I can use unique ones and protect myself.

Hackers are STUPID… users don’t have to be! Please share the UXBooth article with your friends, coworkers and family members. It’s important!!

The Art of the Signup

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Posted November 2nd, 2008 in Design Projects, User Experience | 14 Comments

There is no single best way to have users sign up for an account online, because there are too many variables to be considered for this aspect of the user experience. Varying factors can include security, purpose of the account, understanding of the user at the time of signup, what information they must have ready and what they will have to do next, among other things. So to point to a cool new site – even a competitor’s – and say “I want a one-field signup process like that!” does not necessarily serve your needs or your user’s. In fact, there is an awesome site I recommend to people that suffers greatly from a confusing signup process because they tried to simplify it too much.

I have been thinking about this a lot, because we’re examining the VisualCV signup process (I do consulting for them) plus I needed to develop a process for a product my partner and I are about to release called Twitterface.
 
Twitterface is an alternate Twitter interface that is browser-based. It offers distinctions like multiple accounts, and a modified brand experience, and so the potential for pain is moderate, but not too severe for Twitter users. Since the software can’t be used without a Twitter account, the vast majority of our audience should find our settings and design options familiar, and will likely want to move quickly into the site so they can see if this is a product they want to add to their Twitter toolkit or not. Here are step-by-step prototypes of the signup process for Twitterface: 
 
Step 1: Signup from the Home Page
One of the first problems I ran into is that users will need a Twitterface account, which is separate from their Twitter account (although they could use the same name/password if they choose.) This is because we will have settings we keep track of for people so their account is easy & pleasant to use. I am hoping this signup form makes that clear by specifying the words “Twitterface URL” but user testing will have to be conducted to make sure.

 
Step 2: Add Primary Twitter Account
Now the user needs to add a Twitter account that will be considered (by us) their primary account, for the purpose of setting up a personal account on their Twitterface page & responding to search tweets. Users will be able to add multiple accounts here before moving on, or they can start with one.

 
Step 3: Select Twitterface Options
The user is asked to select the number of accounts to show on one web page, and their level of security for logging in and out.

Step 4: Choose the Page Design
A default Twitterface theme is selected, but the user can either change it or design their own interface, including background, logo, colors and icons. Because that sounds like a lot to do in the signup process, I made it easy by telling users they can come back and do this later.

Signup Done!  User Sees New Twitterface Page
A four-step process may seem like a lot to do before arriving at the point of the product, but I feel it is the smoothest way to enter the user into our system. An alternative would be to let them signup and dump them straight into their Twitterface page, where they would need to figure out how to go down to the settings and make all the changes we just had them set up in a few steps. That idea didn’t feel very pleasant to me, despite the appeal of getting a user in front of the product immediately.
 
After we have a working prototype of the product online, I will do user testing and ensure this is as smooth as I want it to be, and the design may be adjusted. It is an art to guide users through complex or unfamiliar steps while employing the restraint to have them do enough to get started and begin learning the software, but not too much. I hope I struck the right balance with this design.
 
If you’re an application designer, think about your user’s first few minutes. Could you take them through a guided flow so that they ultimately arrive at the product with some understanding of the different components? If not, what would it take to provide this kind of path? If you look at the prototype screens carefully, you’ll see a lot of guided text on the sides of the page, and buttons that indicate next behavior (they don’t just say “next” or exist on the page if they aren’t needed yet. I also included “hints” about how to swiftly complete the step and keep moving in some cases (see the light blue “psst…” text.) This extra programming effort usually results in a significantly more simple experience for users in the interface. It’s well worth it!

Getting people to signup is a marketing and conversion issue not covered in this article, but the signup experience itself is your user’s first impression of using the product for their own benefit. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this design and see other great examples of signup processes. Link me up! :-)

My 2008 Usability Challenge: So Simple it's Stupid

Posted August 3rd, 2008 in User Experience | 0 Comments

August 1st, for folks outside the usability world I live in, was deemed the day for Usability Challenge 2008, a day when usability folks around the world would unite to make the world a better place in which to function! Or something like that.

I admit, I had several ideas, but have been busy today, so I chose the simplest issue that bothers me to work with. We were to:

1. Find a usability problem
2. Design a solution
3. Share it with a person who can solve the problem by implementing your solution

My issue is with Yahoo’s news features. My pitstop, numerous times throughout the day, is the Yahoo homepage. In fact, if the world outside is coming to an end, I would probably learn about it on Yahoo. So I often see a fascinating headline, but don’t have the patience or the time to sit through television ads in order to watch a video news story. I can glean the juicy bits faster by skimming an article than by watching a clip, and so it annoys me greatly that if there is a news story, there is rarely an accompanying printed piece to go with it, though we all know that somewhere on the web, one exists. (News needs sources, right?)

So I have remedied this solution, in a brilliantly executed stroke of genius, heretofore unheard of… with a LINK! Here is my official entry for the Usability Challenge 2008… enjoy!

 

Usability, Enjoyment & the Locus of Control

Posted July 18th, 2008 in User Experience | 0 Comments

In a comment on my recent “recommendations engines” post, Professor James Bradford of Georgia Southern University suggested my irritation with unsolicited (and often inaccurate) recommendations might be due to the “locus of control” factor, and I think he’s right.

A user or potential customer must feel in control, most of the time, to enjoy or continue an experience… whether it’s a virtual experience (using YouTube), a social experience (bowling or shopping) or a software experience (managing finances.) The feeling of being out of control (not understanding something) can diminish the user experience to the degree where people just give up. Notice that I said “feeling”, as in perception – they don’t have to actually be in control, and may in fact be involved in quite a process of trial and error, but their comprehension allows them eventual mastery.

That process of being “in the zone” is something a ue specialist is striving to create with users. If someone is in the zone, it means they are picking up on what they’re doing to the degree that they continue and move into increasingly advanced levels. It’s easy to depict that happening with a gamer, for example… they master the easy levels and then keep trying to master the harder levels of a game. But it happens with web sites, ecommerce sites and software of all kinds as well. The longer you can keep a user in a zone of trying, learning, and succeeding – the better chance you have of keeping the person engaged with your brand, product or service and company.

I found some great articles that specifically address usability and the locus of control. Some of them are older, but still have excellent points and I’d especially recommend user experience students read these and keep researching the topic. Thanks for the great food for thought, James!

Can Personality Be Used to Predict How We Use the Internet?
Locus of control (LOC), a personality dimension based on principles from social learning theory is a generalized expectancy about the degree to which individuals control their outcomes (Rotter, 1966). At one end of the continuum are those who believe their actions and abilities determine their successes or failures (Internals); whereas, those who believe fate, luck, chance, or powerful others determine their outcomes are at the opposite end (Externals). Since increased personal control over outcomes has been cited as one of the major differences consumers experience in a CME, use of the locus of control construct seems especially relevant when analyzing online behaviors.

Control is Everything
Scott Adams got me thinking. In his blog entry for August 17, he mentions that one of our strongest needs it to feel like we’re in control. He used an old example: A genie offers you two choices. In the first choice, “You can eat at the finest restaurants in the world for free, twice a week. The only catch is that the genie picks the day, when you are not already booked, and he picks the specific restaurant.” In the second choice, “You can eat at “good” restaurants, again for free, twice a week. But this time you can schedule it whenever you want, up to two places per week, and pick whatever “good” restaurant you want.”

Usability of Interactive Products
The principle of supporting the user’s internal locus of control is related to the user’s subjective feeling of first person participation and engagement with the interaction, and also to the design principle which aims at this – direct manipulation. The proposition is that interaction is more rewarding if the users feel they can themselves directly influence the objects, instead of merely giving the system instructions to act.

30 Usability Issues To Be Aware Of
You are the advocate of your visitors’ interests and needs; you have to protect your understanding of good user experience and make sure the visitors will find their way through (possibly) complex site architecture. And this means that you need to be able to protect your position and communicate your ideas effectively — in discussions with your clients and colleagues. In fact, it’s your job to compromise wrong ideas and misleading concepts instead of following them blindly. Furthermore, it’s always useful to have some precise terms ready to hand once you might need them as an argument in your discussions.

Universal Usability
The goal of universal access to information and communications services is compelling. Enthusiastic networking innovators, business leaders, and government policymakers see opportunities and benefits from widespread usage. How can information and communications services be made usable for every citizen? Designing for experienced frequent users is difficult enough, but designing for a broad audience of unskilled users is a far greater challenge. Scaling up from a listserv for 100 software engineers to 100,000 schoolteachers to 100,000,000 registered voters will require both inspiration and perspiration… if countries are to meet the goal of universal usability, then researchers will have to aggressively address usability issues.

Culture and Usability Feature: Culture as a Design Heuristic
In a rich discussion of how cultural issues affect HCI and interaction design, “Culture: Predictive or Heuristic?” Emilie W Gould of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute outlined some opposition to using culture as a basis for evaluating HCI. Criticisms of cultural models were based on discomfort with stereotypes, the wide range of individual differences (‘We all know people who don’t fit the cultural mean’), that cultures “drift”, while people adopt – and adapt – technology on a personal level to their own needs and culture may be embedded in technology but technologies also change culture. In all, culture is more explanatory than predictive. Culture may be more useful as a design heuristic than as a user demographic, she argued.

Are Recommendations Engines Circumventing User-Focused Design?

Posted July 12th, 2008 in Customer Experience, Ecommerce, User Experience | 0 Comments

Fanboy30_consumeA dangerous trend is making users of ecommerce sites and software unwitting victims in the quest for more revenue. Though money certainly does make the world go ‘round, and the strong flow of money aids the greater good, the latest features being demanded by marketing departments (not necessarily users) are “Recommenders” designed to keep visitors on a site, spending their hard-earned dollars.

User experience evangelists need to stand up for the users of their sites and software, and make sure this feature does not negatively impact the user experience. These tools may not only destroy a positive brand and user experience, they could ultimately result in the loss of customers if they aren’t implemented with integrity and an awareness of user perception when faced with a barrage of recommendations meant “just for them.”

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