Reader Comments

May, 2008

Look composed – How visuals can draw and drive attention.

Raz Levinhar
Amdocs

One of the main goals of any ad is to draw us in as it competes with all other visuals for our attention. Since direct eye contact is very powerful in drawing spectator interest, the first ad might actually be more effective. The spectators who study it might pay relatively less attention to the product, but there will be many more spectators who notice it than the other alternative as a direct result of its direct eye contact. I'm not sure how the research was conducted, but based on the eye-tracking heat images, it appears spectators were probably presented with the ad and nothing else. Another interesting research would be to present an audience with a variety of ads or a complete web site that includes this ad. We can then try to weigh in the number of participants who fixated on the product of this particular ad in each of its two alternatives. I believe the results will be able to approximate real life experiences even closer.

Mitchell Heller
Heller& BAC, Inc.

While I find these results very interesting, what I do not feel was addressed is the key question of "which one resulted in more sales?".

Did the image of the woman looking at the audience appeal more to men? Does looking at the product generate a better response with women?

I feel this article speaks to how designers can elicit a desired behavior, but I think it is incorrect (based on the information disclosed) to imply effectiveness of the marketing piece.

Jeanne Wilson

I think it would be interesting to see an additional study on where the user would look if the model was looking at the product and the product was shifted up with the tagline below it.

Just for grins...

Ann Pinion

The article by Kath Straub is fascinating. I attended her class in Austin at the Government Technology Conference and was very impressed with her and HFI.

The article "Look Composed" reminded me of something I have been thinking about: Is marketing getting too good? At what point does psychological manipulation cross ethical lines?

Laura Dsouza

I think this is a very interesting observation and worth application. In fact studies have been made in advertising but this kind of user response "proved and tested" is definitely worth all the money and resources spent on user testing.

Prashant Poladia
Monior Group

Very interesting study. That's what every director or creative designer should be aware of. If they understand all this, I am sure the ROI for their client will definitely increase.

Anand Nair
GAC

Very interesting. Informative and captivating. Keep up the good work. Appreciate more such information.

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April, 2008

Layering the customer experience – Humor helps, but only if it's not funny to start with.

Jean Stuart

I like the idea of humor. I like the subtlety of the (optimistically requested). I would think for UIs I rarely vist, humor would be very acceptable and even entertaining; but for UIs I visit regularly, it would have to be very subtle, so as to not become annoying. I kill the Microsoft Office Assistant just as soon as it pops up and make sure it stays dead. That particular novelty wore off fast.

Gerard van Os
Glacimonto

Good article on humor in interaction design. Eric is right in his grief of having to develop yet another set of metrics. The one thing that hits me the most is the non-global character of humor. Cultures throughout the world have their own sets of humor. It makes it even more difficult to "design for all".

That being said, I do believe that humor can help!

Mario Cavallini
Rosetta Marketing

Years ago, I read that humor is a way of establishing comfort with a situation; we laugh at a prat fall when we are comfortable that the person didn't really get hurt. In that light, think of humor as an affordance for lack of harm. We pick up the light tone, and we shift mindset; oh, the form didn't work, oh well, no big deal.

Incidentally, Eric, being edgy is not the core of humor. If anything, the defining characteristic is the switch: humor comes when our understanding of the situation suddenly changes. This points out another pitfall in using humor in a canned, not-really-two-way conversation: since a joke carries two meanings, you want to make sure that the audience/site-user gets the "real" meaning you want him/her to get. Technology, unfortunately, can't explain the joke if the visitor doesn't get it quickly.

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March, 2008

Of cold meds and value – Understanding irrational decision making under certainty.

Leo Hartman
Canadian Space Administration

What if you gave some of the people the placebo and told them they were part of a control group and would get a placebo? Maybe there should be a real control group that gets no drug or information (yeah, we just abduct them and apply the electric shocks! :-)

Are there any studies to indicate how long this effect (perception based discrepancy with reality) will last? People repeatedly buy the expensive cold remedy but what about in a long term, continuous usage situation. I suppose as always, some do, some don't.

What might be the evolutionary value of this kind of behavior? Do we have this phenomenon to thank for things like courage, honor, morality, religion, political parties, ...?

Diane Albert

I love to apply these articles to the strategies of my side business outside the software world. I am a professional musician. My colleagues and I always hear comments about how expensive it is to hire music groups for events. I could charge a lower rate and I would still be as good. There will always be people who can not afford what I charge no matter how low it is.

In some cases, the packaging is the only thing that is different, but that can be enough to sway my purchase decisions.

Interesting article as always!

Don Demrow
Citi

Like the old saying goes: "Perception is reality."

Bonni Dennison
TD Canada Trust

Amusing and enlightening...thanks for sharing!

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February, 2008

One site fits all doesn't fit – exploration of cultural differences in consumer segmentation.

Venkat C. Nallanthighal

This article is mainly based on the quoted survey results. The article mentions that Americans (53%) tend to be more "open minded" compared to the other countries mentioned in the survey. In the follow-up, Dr. Schaffer wrote "In India, there is a worry about fraud: 'Will the product be delivered?' In China, the question is more about whether the product will be real or fake." That conclusion looks like a "stereotyping" to me. I am sorry I didn't see any supporting data for that observation.

If I am (an Indian American) ordering in US, I have more confidence when I buy products from known websites and delivery networks (like amazon.com). At the same time, I would be very cautious about products that come from outside US and unknown websites.

If I am ordering from amazon.com in India, I will have the same confidence because of the Amazon (very well-known website) and US business practices (the confidence factor). My cultural identity doesn't really impact when I shop online. That's why I have to post this comment.

Elianna James
OCLC

These findings are of vital importance to any company which is attempting a "global" strategy. Woe to those who think that everyone "thinks" the same. Would like to see more research, especially comparing younger, web-connected people from various geographic areas. Is globalization making an impact when age/ web experience is factored in?

Ron Harding
Datatel, Inc.

Statistics can be very misleading. Do the statistics indicate a difference in the people in a given country, or is it an indication of the level of service? Do you cater to the U.S. because the population is more ready to shop, or do you cater to France because you have less competition and the population is looking for somewhere to shop?

Response from Kath Straub:
Keen observation, Ron. Statistics CAN be very misleading... and a good statistician (like a good pollster) can show some very 'creative' things. In fact, if you go back to the original source you will note that I also went to their original numbers and recalculated to generate the graph we included in the newsletter.

For instance, the paper reports that 66% of the risk-adverse segment was French. It's important to consider that this observation:

• DOES mean that of the 3 countries studied, most of the risk-adverse participants were French.
   
• does NOT mean that most of the French are risk-adverse shoppers. (We presented the distribution of type within country in the graph in the newsletter.)

As for interpreting opportunities / applications emerging from this data, I agree that this work suggests that there may be a new, potentially untapped, market in France. But I would be reluctant to use this kind of research to decide that one country or another presents a better 'entry' opportunity.

Rather, I think this research suggests:

• The design elements/content that persuade consumers to engage in France are potentially very different from those which would tip American consumers. For France, we would need to include design elements focused on reducing potential consumers' perceived risk in Internet shopping and general discomfort with new and somewhat ambiguous experiences. For Americans, we may not need to include those elements.
   
• Organizations targeting German consumers need to take into account the observed behavior pattern (research/compare on the Web, buy in the store). To optimize the website value, they need to provide comparison tools that are effective, efficient, comprehensive and visible. In addition, the site needs to find seducible moments to encourages trust and convenience (e.g., show consumers how convenient and professional the local store is). Finally, the organization's business model needs to encourage and support synergies between the clicks and the bricks sales teams.

It's important to note that this research helps us be more sophisticated and specific about the design elements that have impact within specific cultures, reflecting the distribution of shopping segment density. But all three groups appeared in all three cultures. The real 'answer' will be a design that balances the design against the motivations/drivers of the target consumers for that organization.

Sandra Niehaus

Very intriguing article! any way to get the full text?

Response from Kath Straub:
The reference is included in the bibliography. You should be able to purchase the article on the Net ($35.50 USD) from IngentaConnect, or perhaps you can access it at your local (academic) library.

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December, 2007

Show me the study! 2007 annual research review

Zephyr

The paper on testing multiple design alternatives is intriguing but it also raises a lot of questions. Usability testing's primary purpose and strength have always been about observing how successful people are in using a tool. Asking them how easy it is to use something is notoriously unreliable. The paper seems to put a disproportional weight in comments.

Also, people will learn about the non-interaction based aspects of a task while they perform them. Things like verbiage, capabilities, domain knowledge, even getting a better understanding of what's being asked of them. What they learn on the first task (first design alternative) affects their confidence and knowledge when performing the second and third tasks (other design alternatives). I couldn't find how this bias was addressed.

Lastly, I'm surprised that the authors were expecting solid design suggestions from the participants. As they state themselves, usability tests produce findings: what works, what doesn't, perhaps why. You still need an interaction designer to translate these into solid design improvements.

Response from Kath Straub:
Ah... your observations are quite sharp and insightful... and certainly ones that serious practitioners should be considering, addressing, and adjusting for in their own work. After all, usability testing should be a form of controlled experimentation... If only applied research could be well designed laboratory research....

But the pendulum does swing both ways. At what point do we worry that controlled, balanced experimentation shifts us away from ecological validity in our findings? After all, as I explore a site (in my real world), I do get exposure to it... and that exposure has an impact on how I execute subsequent tasks.

To arrive at a (reasonable?) local minima, it's important that practitioners understand and apply rigorous scientific method to their testing designs. That is your point, right? And we agree on this point. I would be curious to know what proportion of the active user experience practitioners today have taken (and still remember the key points from) their experimental design course(s)?

That said, the point of the paper – at least the one we are hoping practitioners will take away – is that testing multiple designs (against each other) can yield a very different outcome than testing a single design (against itself?).

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November, 2007

Meta-Usability: When the method is not the message.

Dawn Barber
SUPERVALU

With all due respect (and I mean that), is the term "gap" in this article a leading term? Perhaps replace "gap" with "overlap". For instance, Arnie Lund has said in his Journal of Usability Studies titled, Post Post-Modern Usability "...post post-modern usability is about shaping a practice that is a synthesis of the understanding of the user and context, and the growing understanding of the principles of how people interact with the world."

Your section titled, Practitioners, hear thyself... I fully agree with your bulleted list. On one of my projects, it was gratifying to hear a PM say, "If I'm on a project without usability, then I'm entering it as a project risk right away." It's funny though! While having met many successes doing the very things in your bulleted list, there will always be resistance to usability. The logic, ROI or the editing of usability jargon won't change the "real world". That's just too easy – it wants results and it doesn't matter how they get it!

Thanks for an engaging article!

Konrad

I agree with this. However, unless the problem is familiar to the business or clearly visible, we may not have enough credibility without describing the methodology. But we should still do it in business terms.

Romeu Bessa
Iowa State University

Thanks for writing this article. The issue of how to link research, practice, and client's needs has motivated me for many years. How I have addressed this has changed, but in the end the inter-dynamics between different communities of practice has always dictated what could and what could not be accomplished.

My background is in art. In the mid to late 80's I started thinking about the impact that computers would have on some traditional art media, in particular painting and printmaking. I went through an MA and an MFA program at two different universities thinking about this, participating in interdisciplinary research labs, and articulating responses to what I anticipated would be a major crisis. But research, practice and users' needs seemed to be out of sinc, and resistances persisted despite the exponential development in digital technology.

Twenty years later I am finishing a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction and this issue is now at the center of my attention. Ironically, but seriously, my challenge now is to find ways to put my research into practice.

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October, 2007

Playing doctor? – Trends in health information seeking on the Web.

Jennifer Blake
Sutter Health

Great article on health care online. Very timely for a large project that we are doing right now. Thank you!

Hector Fernandes
Premera Blue Cross

Good article. This confirms trends observed by other research on the same topic. The Mayo Clinic is another source used by consumers seeking health information from a neutral third party.

Subhrajit Majumder
Web18 Software Services Ltd

The information was useful & I quite agree on the shift in trend from 2000 to 2005.

Don Child
Health is Your Destiny

I think it's debatable as to whether the doctor really does know best. If you are talking about an allopathic paradigm, yes. But is that the best paradigm? For many people, the answer is no. A more holistic medical practice recognizes that treating symptoms through surgery or pharmaceuticals is often not the treatment of choice... educating the clients to change their lifestyle is far more effective in the long term.

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August, 2007

The Art of Icons – Where more realism is better, and why that's helpful.

Michael Zuschlag

This study may be helpful in preparing documentation for physical devices, but I don't know what this has to do with the more typical use of icons in software, where the image typically represents a virtual object or process, rather than anything physical the user is handling. For example, I would not conclude that a photo-realistic image of a folder will perform better for an "open" command than a simple line drawing of a folder. For small images, the photo may even perform worse because it tends to make the object harder to recognize. Furthermore, for this study, they had the luxury of using images "of the actual part." In software (and highway signage), the designer will not necessary know the precise folder, printer, wastebasket, or pedestrians the user experiences. Photos may include irrelevant details that can distract the user (e.g., photo shows a folder stuffed with text-bearing papers, but the user is looking for a folder holding only two jpegs). More abstracted representations of these objects may be less likely to conflict with the user's reality.

Chris Gielow
Cardinal Health

Does this mean that we should change our highway signage to pictures instead of symbols? For a first time learner, perhaps, but let's not forget about speed and accuracy, and the benefits of recognition over recall.

Ruth Shapiro
CSC

I would agree with Eric on the spatial positioning of icons. Using the new IE7 as an example, I am still struggling to find the reload button after months of use. The icon is clear enough, two arrows in a circular fashion, but the new position, to the right of the address bar, is not where my mind's eye looks for it. Moving the back button up and to the left a bit didn't affect me nearly as much.

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July, 2007

Serious Games – On using simulation experiences to encourage desired behavior

Thanh Nguyen
BusinessOnLine

I wonder how much of a time gap there were between when users played the virtual racing game and actually took the Vienna Risk Taking Test. I would speculate that if the users took the Vienna Risk Taking Test two weeks after playing the game (instead of right after), their risk-taking behavior would probably be equal to those who played the soccer game.

Eric Stark
U.S.P.S.

Yes, I agree with the Author(s) findings. Especially in the paragragh discussing facing one's fears through graphical intervention or positive role playing. You know, just look up the word "playing" in the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Dimiter Simov
Lucrat

I am curious how people who play shooter games or strategic games in which players build their own worlds and fight other worlds would score in the Vienna Risk Taking Test.

That is, is there a correlation between aggression and risk-taking? It is also curious whether people's personal risk-affinity in games is correlated to the results in the test. Do people who take great risks when playing such games take similarly great risks in life.

John Moore
Human Experience Design

The neural pathways for simulated or imagined activities are very similar to those for the actual activities. using those pathways over and over builds efficiencies that makes those actions, attitudes, and emotions more natural. The Army has been very successfully using simulations for many years in order to overcome soldiers natural resistance to killing other human beings.

Watching violent media and playing violent video games has also been shown (via fMRI) to reduce impulse control and critical thinking.

This effect is far more pronounced in children who's mental processes are more flexible than adults. Of course many media producers, including the MPAA and video game manufacturers, deny that media affects behavior.

Glenna Schindler
Healthcare Services Group

How timely. I was just thinking about how "games" can be substituted for risk management in-service programs and what type of games could be developed to do this. Do you know of any that have already been developed connected to risk management?

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June, 2007

Understanding the persuasive flow

Afshan Kirmani
Kern Communications Pvt. Ltd.

I completely agree with you guys. It's all about the context and the placement of these ads. Let's have a look at banks that promote their websites. Most ads do not have a context. Just the other day I was reviewing the online account management of a client website. These were the issues I encountered:

1. Before enrolling for account access, the website doesn't have an enticing cue to enroll. The ideal thing to do is to provide an ad that talks about the benefits/features of online banking. Now that's a context.
2. The website provided a number of ads in the online account management section which just cluttered the page. The focus was completely taken away from the main content on the page. Now this is not a context where you provide ads. In fact, the ads were for home equity loans, mortgage loans and credit cards.

My point here is that we need to create a "context" for ads. This is important as it engages a user since he/she would be already thinking about it.

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May, 2007

Why "how many users" is just the wrong question

Shilpa
HP

I have for years read the debates over which number of users is statistically significant, and yes the minimum of 5 has always been a safe bet. But seriously I don't see how increasing the number of tasks is more beneficial. I am a designer for applications for which I generally test a scope of tasks per feature and there is no need for more tasks when my goal is to a test specific set of features that can be completed with a finite set of tasks. Also the article references sites; in my experience the types of tests we perform to validate the usability of a site are often different than the types of measures used to test the usability of product applications. I think this distinction needs to be made.

Raju

Can you please comment on the selling of this idea to clients – three groups of 6-12 participants. This would be helpful because every different user groups you recruit adds to the cost. Is it advisable to separate out as common tasks across groups and special tasks per specific group? Somewhere it also connects to the maturity of usability practice within an organization. Your recommendations can help practitioners in companies sell this to their own management or clients. If an end-to-end software solution provider needs the bandwidth to address usability in projects, are there more automatized tests or techniques that can be provided?

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April, 2007

Thin slicing: inside or outside the world of user experience?

Jennifer Fabrizi
MassMutual Financial Group

In his comments, Dr. Schaffer hints at the most important aspect of this phenomenon: intuition and instinct. Certainly our anthropology colleagues can attest to the use of intuition and instinct in our very survival from our genetic roots. That judgments are showing to be "amazingly accurate" is therefore not surprising. Our survival skills are now being triggered in the virtual world of the Web. The Web has obviously expanded the range of types of interactions people have in the virtual world. It's like we're in the savannah again, scanning our environment for opportunities and danger... I would guess that the visual link to instinct and intuition has been in place long before our language-based cognitive processing skills, and is therefore stronger and more well-developed. Indeed, we can all think of many times when our cognitive processing gets in the way of better performance – if you don't think too much, you end up doing better.

I think the traditional cognitive approach made sense when we were only designing applications that did specific things, and will still apply when we design for tasks.

To take thin slicing into account when designing the user experience, it sounds like a stronger tie between marketing, design and usability is implied. But what about testing? Beyond eye tracking, what are the best methods to test for the influence of thin slicing? I used an online A/B comparison survey to try to measure test participants' perceptions of two graphical treatments of a Web site against brand and heuristic values. The outcome was very interesting: there was not a clear "winner." However, one graphical treatment clearly engendered more trust, while the other engendered the sense of ease-of-use and fun. So it seemed to me that the conclusion was to use page elements from one version to convey trust (banner, specific use of graphics and color) balanced with screen elements from the second version to facilitate ease-of-use and scanning (effective grouping and white space, placement of most important information, clear layout). We don't have eyetracking software to confirm these conclusions so I hope I was on the right track...

Vikram Hazra
Rogers

Users identify key elements necessary to establish "the trust factor," this could be security certification, brandname association etc. I would say brand perception adds to trustworthiness factor to certain extent. Once that is established, the focus shifts to making a decision.

I think the art of UX design is to identify these key elements based on research and build the architecture such that it drives the user through the shortest and most linear way to execute the decision.

Edward Glister
IBM

Thanks for another insightful article. The research is catching up with the beliefs we intuitively understood. Is there an equivalent to "thin slicing" for the IVR? What is the supporting literature? Here's an example from our experience: for a utility company we changed the voice when we wanted to provide confirmation of a transaction. We used a male voice to confirm a field visit and a different female voice to confirm a payment made. The change in voice and tone gave a message beyond the mere words.

Marc Silver
ETS

We often tout the use of a "5-second" test to judge a Web page's layout and architecture – i.e., if you can't figure out the purpose and structure of the page in 5 seconds or less, then it needs redesigning. Based on this research, maybe we should be thinking in terms of a half-second test.

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March, 2007

Designing for "mature" users

Dan Ford
Sigma Micro

Instead of placing users into arbitrary categorizations based on age, wouldn't it be more efficient to address this as an accessibility issue and not just a problem of "old" people? I'm personally offended by the implication that just because someone is "old" their vision is failing or they're becoming less intelligent than others who are less "mature". Yes, there are users who are visually impaired, have learning disabilities or possess motor control issues. But those things are not a condition of age! I feel these age classifications are poorly conceived and the author could have done a better job.

Lauren Hansen
JPMorgan Chase

Was it really necessary to label the age groups as "newly old" through "very old"? Wouldn't just specifying the age ranges have been enough? I stopped reading the article at that point because I found the labels offensive.

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February, 2007

Do you see what I see?

Verna Dunn
BMC

A very interesting article. I keep telling colleagues that cultural differences go deeper than just "they talk and dress funny." It's much more complex, and fascinating.

Yuka
MMSI

An intriguing article! I'm a Canadian-born Japanese, born and raised in Canada all my life. After the picture test, I expected my "sight patterns" to resemble that of a North American. I was wrong! My sight pattern resembled my nationality! My parents are first-generation Japanese, and I was brought up in that style. Perhaps the first few years of our lives have a significant impact on how we see things for the rest of our lives?

Stephen Montgomery
Vivid Broadcast

I find this very interesting, particularly when thinking about corporate branding. Logos often consist of company name and a graphic such as a swirl or blob next to the text of the name. From reading this article it leads me to wonder if people from other nationalities would focus on the text or the graphic elements of the logo more?

Frank Long
Frontend.com

I can across some interesting cultural issues recently during some work we carried out for a large global brand. Specifically we were designing instruction graphics that would need to be understood without translation. We were using icons to indicate the right and wrong way to complete tasks. Our research lead us to discover that western and eastern interpretation of common symbols are widely different. In Asia a circle stands for "good" while the western "tick" has no significance at all. Never underestimate the cultural nuance!

Keith White
Digital Content

Interesting but how does the gender differences of peripheral vision and acuity impact on this?

Chris Martin
Avenue A | Razorfish

I'm from India and have lived in the Middle East, and I'm pretty certain that the perception of everyday time in Asia is not cyclic. First, Asia covers a wide swath including Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, so try not to make generalizations about Asia. The Middle East and East Asia have very little in common, for example. It is true that Hinduism proposes that eras are cyclic, but not all Hindus take this literally or consider it at all. Each era is vastly longer than a person's lifetime, though, so it doesn't affect the everyday perception of time even among those who do take it literally.

Laura
BCCL, India

Could have added to the article if we had samples (print screens of Web sites) to support the article. Again visual senses prevail over all.

Margaret Menzin
Simmons College

1. The picture you gave at the beginning had no instructions about how long one was to examine it.
2. It was hard to decode some of the objects (clarity).
3. Having asked us to do you a favor by looking at the photo, it would be nice to know how others saw it.

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January, 2007

What's your unconscious got to do with it?

Matt Floyd

In the section "So who's really in charge here?", I can recall tons of stores that use this method. McDonald's; having the inside unappealing to the customer so they will not stay, making it the "get and go" environment they seek. Americus Diamond; I can't walk in there without feeling the romance due to the music which results in me buying something for my girlfriend :O!

Businesses also tend to use the state-dependent memory method. Businesses will have an advertisement of happiness which tends to bring back memories of times when we were happy. A good example of this might be Kodak. The way they have brought the "Kodak moment" to people. The information you guys provided was very insightful – thanks!

p.s. I can explain EXACTLY why I made each purchase decision... I am a teen, who will eat anything/everything. :)

Wendy

While it may be possible that the subconscious mind plays a role, the word "unconscious" by definition means that it is not aware at all and therefore cannot play a role in decisions.

Even to the extent that the subconscious is involved, it does not consist of something separate and mystical apart from the conscious mind. The subconscious consists of conscious decisions that are automated.

In the case of the German wine, if you had had German wine before and despised it, it would be in the realm of your consciousness and no amount of German music would make you consider it.

Martina Lexner
IBM

Excellent information !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paul Hubert Vossen
I-SQUARE

Closely related (but approaching it from another point of view): the "top ten" book of Barry Schwarz "The Paradox of Choice" – a must-read for those interested in choice and decision.

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December, 2006

What did we learn this year?

Mike Hughes
IBM Internet Security Systems

Thanks for such a broad summary of key research – I'd say what a time saver, but that would imply that I would have done this on my own. Good job!

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November, 2006

Can one build a Web site or application that engenders trust?

Martha Roden

I enjoyed the write up about trust on the Web. My sense is that usability certainly plays a big part in trusting a company when you visit their Web site. After all, if you can't find what you need and understand what you read on a Web site, you're certainly going to wonder whether the company that created that site knows or cares anything about you!

But I think trust on the Web goes beyond navigation, layout, fonts, colors, and content. I often look at testimonials from customers (with real names), and I look at whether the company offers any personal information about its executive staff. That's something that I really appreciate about the HFI Web site – the "big wigs" all provide their pictures, along with friendly, personal information about themselves. This makes them look and feel like real human beings who actually care about something more than profit and loss statements – they care about people. And I can trust someone who cares about people!

Charles H. Green
Trusted Advisor Associates

Interesting piece, thanks for putting it together.

I think some general principles about the nature of trust may help here. In my work (sources cited below) I have found useful the Trust Equation--a formulation of the components of being trustworthy:

(Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / (Self-orientation).

In this approach, credibility has to do with issues like clarity, reputation, credentials, transparency – things that help us believe what is being said.

Reliability, by contrast, has to do not with words but with actions. It talks about track record, predictability, breadth of usage, and again reputation.

Intimacy has to do with security – am I comfortable sharing this information with this person, will they know how to treat it, will they know when it should be passed on and when held confidential, discretion, sensitivity.

But the fourth factor – the one in the denominator – is the most powerful. It has to do with motives. Why are you doing what you are doing, and to whom are you paying attention? If the answer is, yourself, then I do not trust you. If the answer is 'me,' then to that extent I do trust you.

Most of those traits – the one exception being reliability – are traits that affect interpersonal relations, not institutional relations. Trust is largely human and personal, not corporate.

This suggests that the ideal Web site would have some combination of the following attributes:

1. Clear in its logic and visuals
2. Annotated, sourced, linked
3. A track record of past success
4. Testimonials that are identifiable
5. Clear statement of benefits to users
6. Transparency about economic model of the seller or web host
7. Customizable
8. Transparency about all information
9. Easy access to all models of communication (e.g. links to email, phone, blog, online)
10. Make comparisons available to comparable sites

Others I'm sure will draw further implications from the general principles.

(I am a speaker and consultant, co-author of The Trusted Advisor (Free Press, 2000), and author of Trust-based Selling (McGraw-Hill, 2005). More at www.trustedadvisor.com)

Meghana

One of the major drivers of trust is customer satisfaction. When your company does not deliver the product as seen/promised (as is the case in many e-commerce sites), users lose trust in you, however user-centered your design! What is crucial to remember here is that trust is not just limited to the interface but spreads across everything related to the product.

Laura Damkoehler
ELM Resources

I'm surprised, or maybe not so surprised, to see no mention in this article of source citation as a trust factor in Web design.

I think this poses an interesting question when it comes to online content in general. Do design factors compensate for the legitimacy of information when it comes to trusting health, financial, and other research information on line?

Too often I think Web designers sacrifice citing sources for design. I appreciate that this Website provides clear citation for its sources.

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October, 2006

Narrative presentation and building brands

Rajesh Kalidindi

Thanks for newsletters.

Yes, I have seen the effect of narrative presentation in my current project. As mentioned in this article, we know the power of Personas and Scenarios in the UCD (User-Centered Design) process. Now I have experienced the power of stories in requirements documentation. As part of Agile methodology, requirements wrote as stories gave better results for developers, testers and project stakeholders. We observed that short stories are more effective than lengthy stories.

Hank Zucker, Ph.D.
Creative Research Systems

Thanks for the newsletters. I have appreciated getting them.

As a fellow researcher, I'd like to make a comment on this one. You quote statistical significance below without giving any quantitative information about the size of the effect. Does the narrative style result in 2% more narrative processing of the information or 50% more? Either could potentially be statistically significant at the .001 level, but would have a different impact on how much folks should worry about presenting info in a narrative way.

Well, my two cents anyway.

Rajesh Ghodke
Philips Design

Stories are primary means of communicating someone's message/s. When users are kids the complexities of the narratives are simple and with direct focus. As we grow up the stories get intricate and messages within them also get interdependent. This helps to build the curiosity level and so are desirable, interesting. It is also observed that things which are interesting attract attention and the result is people understand them as they concentrate more and are eager to understand the semantics.

Best examples can be novels, emotional advertising, family oriented serials.
This formula of narratives has been in use for a long time. Why do we like Mark Twain and we remember his poems even long after our schooling? Maybe he is more successful in creating the curiosity though the use of words which compel people to visualize the environment he wants to portray.

Human progress can be observed as built around the fact that he was/is and will be curious about the world around him. I think the more the level of curiosity, the more are the chances of being a successful story.

Raghavendra S. Rao
eRT

I agree that narrating any topic in a story engages people and makes them remember the events in the story with topic under discussion. I have used this method while I was a teaching assistant during my graduate studies. I also use this technique in my current job. Nice reading. The article itself was written in a storyboard.

Wanda Lamb
Shasta County Foster Care and Adoption

We are wanting to use our personal family stories and I was pleased to read that this is an effective way to recruit more families. The human touch goes a long way to sell an "I can do it" idea...

Alastair Middleton

Interesting piece - thank you. I'd like to have read more about narrative as it might play into the design of web interfaces, so as to encourage greater interaction, enjoyment, and - of course - increased propensity to buy. Will be exploring the works referenced. Thanks again.

Maleka Ingram
Intel Corp

Great article. I would like to see real life examples of where narratives have been used in the business world.

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September, 2006

Knowing what the buyers want, when they want it

Bonnie Hautamaki
Alion Science and Technology

This is very interesting! Two comments:
(1) There has been some research conducted on the effect of "frame" on decision-making (i.e., whether the question is posed in a positive or negative frame). My colleagues and I are currently involved in an experiment to determine the effects of frame on decision-making.
(2) In the context of Ho and Tam's study, the "negative" tone deals more with "you should buy now, 'cause you are about to lose something you'd like," rather than a bad/negative attitude on the part of the seller (or agent). We all deal with the pressure of a "negative" pitch to buy, when we ask ourselves, "shall I buy this item now, since it's the only one of its kind available? (...and someone else may buy it out from under me if I don't get it myself...)" and/or, "shall I buy this now, 'cause the price will be higher the next time I come back?" Note: Amazon.com seems to have implemented this "negative pressure" quite effectively (and not offensively) with their "Gold Box" strategy.
- Thanks for the food for thought in this article!

Diana Ryan
Rockwell Collins

So, it's an interesting study, but since when is usability the same thing as pushing sales? To me, there's clearly a difference between making it easy for users to pursue what they want/need/expect from your site and applying sales pressure. I feel like if this is what I'm interested in, I should be reading self-help books that sleazy sales people might read to trick people into buying. I'm sure the same principles will apply. Ick!

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August, 2006

Heatwave! Leveraging heat maps (and other eye tracking data) to refine your information architecture

Howard Tamler
AMDOCS

I agree completely with Dr. Schaffer. I think its major value is for marketing, rather than usability assessment. Given the kind of cost-benefit considerations that govern the business world, I don't see how I could justify the time, effort, and expense.

Michael K. B. Warner
Joint Transformation Command - US Military

Excellent article. Visual eye movement map example very useful. Passing article to our webmasters as reference for future Home Page design implementation. Thank you for useful information.

Jack Bellis
UsabilityInsititute.com

Thank you Eric for just plain common sense.

Shuan

It will be great if you can post some information on how to analyze data from eye-tracking studies. For instance, how do we know if a spot is hot because the information in that spot is perceived as important or because the user requires a longer time to understand the presented information? I suppose that such an article would be nice.

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July, 2006

Is usability testing as we know it about to radically change? – new trends in usability testing.

Jessica Enders
The Hiser Group

I thought Susan’s article was fantastic: a concise, timely and relevant summary of academic research that may influence future directions in our field.

I wanted to also point out that in market research in Australia, at least, they are starting to use neuroscience to gauge reactions to things (e.g. advertisements) in much the way that Susan alludes to in her response to Question 5. See this link, for example.

I have concerns about the usefulness of such data and the quality of the resulting analysis (much as I do with eye tracking) but I thought you might be interested nonetheless.

Finally, thank you for a consistently great read.

John Bierschwale
Quest Software

One thought on the generalizability of the West and Lehman paper. They used SAS employees from marketing and UI design groups. I realize they did this for expediency's sake. However, I wonder whether less techy, communications oriented people would provide as good a qualitative feedback in their typed in automated test comments. I was little suspicious when I saw a few of the verbatims seemed more descriptive than what I might expect test participants from the public at large might say. I might not expect references such as "easy to find the dialog" and "in order to commit the changes" from the public at large. Also, at least in the examples given, some were very descriptive task focused - almost what I'd expect a usability engineer to do when describing a problem. It'd be nice to see the study done with a broader recruiting profile.

David Robertson
Petro-Canada

People looking for another perspective on "QUESTION #4: USABILITY TESTING = THE THINK-ALOUD TECHNIQUE?" should read relevant sections of "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell.

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June, 2006

Oh, that kind of better... On the trade-off between feature-laden and usable – the disparity between what consumers think they need and what they can actually use.

Abraham Williams

This illustrates well the lack of awareness humans have of the difference between their behavior and their desires.

Every workday in my software world, I'm working with marketing focusing on the customer desires and tech support working on customer behavior. I'm working on features that profile a user's behavior and then ask the users if they are interested in things that match their behavior.

I'd like for my teams to have a common understanding... focus on users' desires for the sake of the buy AND focus on the use for the sake of keeping the customer. I supposed I can clearly see how we could go wrong just focusing on the customer desires (adding more and more features), but could we go wrong just focusing on the use? My mind puts the use as a higher priority because of the positive word of mouth generated.

Peter Carstensen

I purchased a Motorola wireless phone system on Monday. It will be returned today because its usability is dismal. To add insult to injury, the instruction books has errors (e.g., install 4 AAA batteries in the base unit but it takes 4 AA batteries instead). Lots of text explaining advanced features for which I have no need, but no mention of how to make a simple telephone call or what to do when the phone rings and you wish to answer it. Nothing, absolutely nothing said and guess what? I could not figure out how to answer the phone when it rang! Unbelievable but true.

Bill Shelton
Lockheed Martin

Not every consumer has the "PC mentality." I recently experienced the cell phone dilemma when trying to use my son's phone. Not very intuitive... especially the power-on button. I deal with user interfaces a lot and have developed a user interface for operation of a test station. Surprising how others view what may seem to you as obvious.

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April, 2006

If yuo can raed this yuor brian wroks... Debunking urban legends with usable explanations – how too much educating is not always the best way to get your point across.

Sarla Holmes
Gordon Institute of TAFE

It is interesting having looked into this urban legend, however I approach this theory from a marketing point of view and argue, it's readable and diffferent than what the brain is expecting to see, so it draws the eye. I'd be interested in feedback regarding the theory that because the text is different than what the brain expects, the eye is more likely to be drawn to the text.

Ron Sova
Sova Consulting

Kath, thanks for addressing this issue. This email has been bugging me for a long time. Your third point, about the "adaptability of people" is the reason poorly designed interfaces are still with us. A very well written article, Ron.

Elianna James
NetLibrary

Useful article. Many times in my field, QA Usability Testing, I hear this same argument– "but the design works", "we can find the information", "it works as designed". Strenuous arguments including logic don't always convince. A couple of examples of ways "they" might have trouble using the interface do work! As my late, great grandma said, "It depends on whose ox is being gored!"

Peter Biddlecombe
KODAK Dental Systems

That darned language study:

I have actually sent debunking e-mails once or twice. But the debunking e-mail has to be right. The usual version of the "study result" is that as long as you leave the first and last letter of each word in the right place, the order of the other letters does not matter. If you stick to sentences made up of short words, this is quite difficult to disprove with an example – with a four-letter word, only one "wrong" spelling is possible. You have to use an example with long words to show that the length of words can have a sacgnnnftiiit [significant] effect on the practical value of the conclusion.

Howard Tamler
Amdocs Product Group

Here's something I agree with violently...

Kathy

Good article. Dr. Schaffer makes a good point when he relates the jumbled words to business consequences. I think a jumbled interface will have a negative effect on the interface, very unprofessional.

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March, 2006

When getting the job done isn't enough... How insight into users' process makes interactions more satisfying – how the types of data you collect in a usability test can effect the impact of your redesign recommendations.

Paula Thornton

"Often the biggest value of usability work is a change in process, strategy, or psychological positioning." Indeed, beyond the realm of 'usability' this is the biggest design gap for all business activities/interactions. How might we focus more work/discussion in this area?

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February, 2006

Where are you when I need you??? (or... Ending the search for search) – users' expectations of where items should be placed on your Web page.

Narendra Singhal
Reliance Industries, Ltd.

I feel "Login" and "Logout" are also significant links worth a mention. To speak about my own experience, I expect the "Logout" link to be located in the top-right corner of the screen, similar to the Gmail Web site. I think it is very logical for us to expect the "Logout" in this place because we think and read from left to right. May be for an Urdu Web site, the user expectation will be exactly opposite.

Michelle Bejian Lotia
University of Michigan

This follow-up study is tremendously helpful for practitioners. I'd like to see "login" added to the list of common Web objects studied in the future. Thanks for this very applied research.

Rebecca St. Martin
Web Sites That Fly

A simple tool for helping others understand that it's not where they "think others will think" site visitors will look – but where they *actually do* look. Making the science of usability easy for project stakeholders to understand as critical to design success is job #1!

Thank you for sharing this.

Christopher J. Dove
Baker & McKenzie

Anticipating people's expectations is the hardest part of creating an intranet site. I have help developed and organized some for both Deloitte and Arthur Andersen, including working with Jim Voorhies at Deloitte. There truly is a fine line between location, graphics, content and speed. All four must be in play.

Chetan Murthy
ArisGlobal

When an Enterprise application needs to be developed, it is absolutely imperative that the Menu or internal links should never be displayed on left or right. It should always be in Top [Horizontal], this gives lot of real estate and a flexibility to improve the usability.

Kimberly Kubalek
Kubalek.com

Thanks for this great article. Sometimes it is difficult to persuade a creative client that his idea for a "cool way to set up the navigation" may not make users very happy. Over and over, I have pointed to your research for support. The best design is often the most obvious, clear design. Thank you!

Scott Lary

Hmm... having the 'participants' paste in items is, I believe, less precise than than using eye tracking to actually see where they look when you prompt them to do a particular task. Maybe these results have not changed because of your methodology where you got what you expected to get?

Thanks for the food for thought.

Prasad

Participants used in the research were undergrad. students. The research tell us the nature of the structure those sites have. Result for 'About us' are bit surprising. Maybe it comes from students looking at more college and university sites where they do have HTML links at the bottom. Back-to-home is on the spot. Wondering if the researchers probed further to tell us if it was the logo.

I hope people looking at this research would understand the user profile and not generalize the research.

I am not sure about the number look. What are we referring to here.

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January, 2006

Selling older users short – the use of the Internet and hand-held devices by older adults and the impact on user interface design.

Judith Sgro

Apparently, they failed to find my 68 year old mother when they did the research on this. She is a nightmare with the computer. She panics about everything...'why is that green light on...how do i get the curser from THERE and put it THERE...is email the same as the internet...' and no matter how hard we try, she just doesn't learn. she gets frustrated and then we do, as well. she just does not understand the whole concept. therefore, i really disagree with this article. give my mother a call and you'll feel the same way.

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October, 2005

Is Beauty the new usability attribute? – the interaction of Aesthetics and Usability.

Jim Voorhies
Deloitte

Interesting article. "...a beautiful interface that seemed like a good idea at the time becomes less appealing if it's not usable... However, when getting stuff done matters, perceived usability – judged through usage over time – is what matters most."

The one thing that isn't mentioned is the other side of this coin, which goes to the heart of the differences in approach between usability work and design work. If a site that is imminently usable but unattractive to the user is compared with another site that is equally usable but more attractive, which gets used more?

Until usability practitioners and designers can join forces to create the best of both worlds, we continue to fail our users.

Sergio Barrientos

As a Chief Creative Officer of an interactive agency, we're trying hard to identify PrEmo models and try to see how impact on a mood once an action is taken. As interactive projects are more reactive than any other communications pieces, I wonder how can a system be built that responds to users moods...

David Heller
Synaptic Burn

One of the great things about Don Norman's book is that he speaks of emotional responses (not of beauty) as something that happens at 3 different levels. These levels exist along different time periods and thus means that while visceral emotional responses can be tested in most usability studies, behavioral and reflective emotional responses occur over a much broader time frame and thus a lab setting does not afford this level of testing, unless you repeat and compare testing results over time.

Now I would also argue that aesthetics exist at many levels within a User Experience and the presentation layer is but one piece. I recommend people check out my "Whiteboard" column in the May/June 2005 edition of ACM <interactions> on the complexity of aesthetics in interaction design.

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September, 2005

Fine-tuning your Internet deception detectors – how people detect, and often miss, Web site fraud.

David Harley
NHS Connecting for Health

1) Wikipedia's definition is slightly misleading: phishing is a special case of carding, which can include many aspects of credit card fraud, rather than a synonym, while spoofing has many other meanings in computer security.

2) The application of the concepts of assurance cues and trust cues is important in this context, but it applies in many Internet contexts. The really interesting question is why 419s and chainmail/hoaxes, which are usually crudely engineered compared to the "better" phishing and money mule recruitment scams and have been around a lot longer, continue to reel in so many victims. There are many reasons for this, but clearly long-term publicity and education hasn't stopped people being distracted by trust cues in these contexts.

3) Practical solutions are (or would be) highly desirable. But the examples of creative thinking (eBay and PayPal) are also examples of heavily phished organizations confusing the end user with the mixed signals that result when understanding of the problems is not uniform across all staff – classically, there is often an enormous dissonance between security and marketing personnel. Many phished organizations compound the problem by using email distribution practices that blur the distinction between phish and legitimate marketing mail.

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August, 2005

Much ado about sex and Web sites... or why it's still important to know who your users are – recent research on the effect of designer gender on Web site design.

Brian Kerr
Vancouver School Board

Thank you for the gender/age/education differences insight into design. As an educator of high school students this is a key point in helping me and my students decide how to present critical content is our school web page projects.

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July, 2005

When discount usability misleads management – a solution – the difference between finding usability problems and predicting success rates.

John Imms
DST Systems

Terrific article and a real service to call attention to Sauro's work and practical Web site. The HFI newsletters consistently provide insightful, dare I say useful, summaries and perspectives to the practicing professional. And they are free! May they bring you many eager customers. Thanks

Robert Thompson
Option One Mortgage Company

Very good article. It is important to understand when communicating the meaning of our testing results.

Dann Nebbe
Principal Finacial Group

A very thought-provoking article about how to communicate usability results (and set expectations) for tests with low numbers of participants. Having a high-level understanding of statistics, I really appreciate having the tool to use to calculate confidence intervals, too.

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May, 2005

When what they see is what you get – but satisficing isn't enough – the importance of effective detailed design.

Michael Bradshaw
Indian Health Service

I found this article very interesting. I have experienced the Window-to-five set-up often in such areas as skills selections on Web sites, as well.

I definitely agree with Dr. Schaffer. The use of a particular presentation method has to be dictated by the user mental model and the data taxonomy (AKA the content model). It seems that some designers simply build a list of data items without thought to categorizing them. The repetition of seemingly identical data points in these instances will cause even more frustration.

Thanks for the information and for letting me put in my 2 cents.

Tony Austin
Asia/Pacific Computer Services

Right on! Unfortunately there are tons and tons of poorly designed Web pages (and interactive forms on all sorts of other, non-Web platforms) that suffer because of such poor selection-list design. Little things DO matter, a lot!

Laura Fernandez
Times Group

Yes, we can never again make that selection casual. Sure, the study shows surveys can be biased. But this can be said also in the case of a general opinion topic. But in case a user has to select his education level – he has to anyway go to the right option in the radio button one or in the scroll down window. So there are so many dimensions to design, and each design solution is a unique case altogether and very difficult to standardize.

Marjolijn Verbeek
Capgemini

This article was very useful for me! I am teaching the Usability Essentials and told my class about this new research finding on labels being even more relevant to navigational usability than structure. Thanks for this!!

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November, 2004

Observer Effects in Usability Testing... or, how to collect data without messing it up – The effect of the observer on usability testing and the differing results between laboratory and unmoderated remote testing.

Natalie Ferguson, MA, MPH
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Enjoy your newsletter, as always.

A comment concerning the use of the retrospective think-aloud method, with video or without. I find myself a bit concerned about using this method. Has it been tested several times to:

• discover to what degree participants' recall of task performance is fuzzy, even right after the test is over? Perhaps video usage helps reduce this problem, but I wonder if many participants are really able to replay complex series of thoughts and emotions they encounter when testing a site. Although this is not a great analog, I've read recently that trauma victims' recall of the trauma experience is not a direct replay, although they may perceive it to be accurate. Time's passage and other factors color/limit what they recall.
• see to what degree participants will make up parts of what they report afterwards, in an effort themselves to understand and justify their behavior? To what degree will what they report be new interpretations of what happened?

Don't know how much these factors impact this method, but the potential threats are at least something that I would stick in as a caveat in a test report.

Otherwise, this article is such a keeper and should help as we decide what sort of testing to do on future redesigns.

Victor J. Ingurgio, Ph.D.
Human Factors Laboratory, Atlantic City International Airport

Excellent information on observer effects that should be followed.

However, one brief point: let's remember that the folks who assist us in our research efforts are to be referred to as "participants" and not as "subjects". The APA publication manual (fifth edition, 2001) refers to subjects in its grammatical essence (i.e., subject-verb agreement) and "participants" as humans.

Dr. Sorflaten used "subjects" 40 times in the newsletter. Kudos to Janni Nelson and Dr. Schaffer for their adherence to APA guidelines!

Further, as I sat in my cube this morning, I overheard a self-proclaimed expert in research methods and statistics remark that the "subjects" in their study... Need I say more?

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July, 2004

Adaptive Menu Design – How to select the best menu presentation style for a given application.

John Smith

It should also be noted that when users interact with folding menus that require the extra click to see all the choices, they will be less inclined to try menu items which they are less familiar with. This does not make them better users because they are not regularly experimenting with new ways to improve there routine. It can also be said that as they continue on a routine with limited choices they may in fact get so efficient at it that their speed may rival the better ways of doing it. So this may be a mute point.

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June, 2004

Cracking Password Usability... Exploiting human memory to create secure and memorable passwords – This newsletter looks at a novel approach to password creation.

Jim Lutterbach, PE
RW Armstrong

A lot of money will go to the persons who can solve this problem.

Patricia Lareau
Real User Corporation

No matter how clever the suggestions for creating passwords, most people can't do it successfully. They either write them down or forget them!

Here is an alternative that understands usability. Rather than relying on the user to memorize (which he is bad at), it uses the fact that the strongest form of memory is recognition – in particular, recognition of a human face, once it is familiar. I have attached a paper on the science behind this technology and would love to hear your reaction.

Best way to see for yourself is to try it. The demo takes 5 minutes and shows how intuitive this new idea is. Users love it. Nothing to recall, nothing to write down. All around its more reliable and secure than passwords. The help desk calls fall to near zero. www.realuser.com.

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Jack Grimes
GimesOnline.com

There is a better and secure way to create a password. It depends not just upon your ability to remember strings, but rather depends on the ability to construct a string.

Take a date, like your birthdate 2-16-62
And a name, like your mom's name - mary

The secure, constructible password is the alternation of characters from these two strings.

2m1a6r6y2

It can't be guessed and is not subject to a dictionary attack.

I learned this from some security folks in a long forgotten article.

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May, 2004

Enough is Enough... but five probably isn't: Evaluating the "test-five-users" guideline

Martha Roden,
Usability Engineer
CoCreate Software Inc.

Regarding the "Is 5 Enough?" debate in your newsletter.

If you are the only interaction designer and usability professional in a company of 400 people, AND no one really thinks usability tests are important or wants to free up additional resources to conduct the tests... then believe me ... 5 is definitely better than none!

Five people still find more usability problems than zero people.

As always, I enjoyed the newsletter. I guess I can understand the frustration with the recurring question of sample sizes for usability studies, but it can be an important issue, and the various explorations of it have enhanced our understanding of some of our practices (or at least led to some interesting discussions).

I've ordered the Faulkner paper, and am looking forward to reading it. It sounds similar in method and results to a paper that I published in 2001:

Lewis, J. R. (2001). Evaluation of procedures for adjusting problem-discovery rates estimated from small samples. Journal of Human-Computer Interaction,