I just came across an article suggesting no fewer than 60 ways to attract Twitter followers (http://is.gd/7maoX). It comes from @technotip (who is worth following).

I’m completely jazzed. I want followers. I crave followers. Followers are now my raison d’etre. Follow me @elreiss. My ego is suffering from hunger pains. FEED IT NOW!

Oops. Did I get carried away? (must remember to Tweet about this – check it out @elreiss)

Penis envy in cyberspace
You really have to laugh at some of these tactics. Number of Twitter followers seems to have become the social media equivalent of penis envy. And some of these scams are clearly the cyber-equivalent of a penis-extender. Henceforth, anyone who even considers running a Twitter contest will be added to my personal blacklist.

Why the tasteless self-promotion, @elreiss?
This is an experiment. OK?

In addition to retweeting stuff from folks smarter than I am and recommending articles, I occasionally have original thoughts. Looking through some of the past year’s tweets, I found around 50 that seemed to stand the test of time better than most.

WTF, @elreiss? Get to the point!
I’m not really out to build a huge follower base, but I would like to experiment a bit with the “content is king” notion. So please remember to “unfollow” if my tweets don’t contribute in some useful way to your own life and work. I’m keeping track of follower stats from day to day. Read ‘em and weep-or-whatever.

52 tweets I (@elreiss) wrote and like
Will the iPon be a brand extension of the iPad?

Why follow your Twitter followers if you don’t care what folks say?

This is a day for avoiding real work. Which is why I’ve been pondering cross-dressers who wear burkas. How would anyone know?

I wish it was as big a crime to be dumb as it is to be dishonest.

The more time I spend on social media (Twitter and beyond), the more I’m convinced our society is in deep shit.

Not all pithy thoughts can be compressed to 140 characters no matter how hard you try.

If the meek inherit our earth, it’s because the strong have abandoned them.

I’m more convinced than ever that “unwired” has become the new “organic”.

TV news interviews are great reality programming. There’s nothing as dumb as an “expert” if you get them off their area of expertise.

If it’s dangerous to talk to yourself, it’s probably even more dangerous to listen.

Good design can never rescue bad strategy. When did pretty uniforms last win a war?

If your competition sells cheaper, it’s called “dumping”. If you sell cheaper, it’s called “supply side optimization”.

America’s infatuation with reality TV suggests that many viewers can no longer differentiate between talent and celebrity. Scary!

False friendships are the emotional downside of most current social media offerings.

I love teaching. I learn so much.

Do arbitrary rules really deserve more than arbitrary compliance?

Ahh. What would the world be like without rhetorical questions?

Packaging designers should be forced to clean and organize a larder once in a while. Valuable lessons to be learned.

If I always knew what I was doing, I’d never learn anything. A little adversity can be a really good thing.

Changing the world is easy. Changing it for the positive is the real challenge. That’s because no one agrees on what’s good.

If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re right.

Still trying to change the world, but I’m more and more convinced that the world would prefer that I just butt out.

Pitting UX against IA is like having your toolbox pick a fight with your wrench. UX is a cognitive container for a variety of skills.

How come “altruistic” is never a value word for companies? Sometimes you’ve gotta do stuff simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Words of wisdom: Don’t burn your bridges before you come to them.

Looking for statistics to confirm my fear that the idiots now officially outnumber those of us who know what we’re doing.

I’m frustrated that there are so many folks in the UX business who are famous just for being famous, not for any work they’ve ever done.

Call yourself an expert? Do you really have 10,000 hours of experience, or just one hour, repeated 10,000 times?

Are you passionate or provocative? Passion comes from the heart. But most provocation seems to stem from ego.

Rules are created when people take advantage of that which is unwritten.

If content is king, is context the kingdom?

Bailouts have become the back-button of the financial industries.

How long is “new media” new? Are we now working with “middle-aged media”?

Jakob Nielsen talks about designing his tweets: http://bit.ly/KLmzf. This is what most people call “editing”.

The blogosphere is the Gong Show of Generation Y.

“Thought leadership” means thinking about a community of practice, not thinking about leadership.

No discernable correlation between your popular searches and your popular pages? You have a serious information architecture issue to solve.

Never judge a book by the taste of the binding.

If you want to be a thought leader, it’s best to start your career by fine-tuning your thinking, not your PR.

“Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.” But does that really mean you have to put up with their silly twitter-chatter?

Words to live by: be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They’re often the same ones you meet on the way down.

The biggest threat to the future of the web is the neighbor’s kid, who is programming crap sites for legit businesses using FrontPage.

Maybe we designers ask too many questions. Maybe we threaten potential clients. Maybe folks don’t care if their website contributes to their business.

I’m seeing incredibly incompetent shops getting web work while really talented folks are out of work. What are the idiots doing right?

Responses to yesterday’s Twitter denial of service attack lead me to believe that some folks have serious addiction problems.

Ultimately, insistence on formalized processes and standardized deliverables strives not to collect answers but to obliterate questions.

The sooner our pitches reflect the fact that most business decisions are made emotionally and not rationally, the sooner we will get rich.

Political correctness is just another way to hide prejudice behind euphemism. I far prefer straight talk and honesty.

UX certification? Reminds me of Groucho Marx’s comment: “I wouldn’t want to be a member of a club that would accept me as a member.”

Gonna take flak from the American consultants…but…IMO ”It depends” is just an unnecessary click in the verbal clickstream.

Mashups can be SOOOO ugly. Here’s a new acronym: TIDE (Tight Integration of Diverse Experiences) Goes nicely with AJAX.

Amateurish SEO drives me mad. Keyword density is the worst fairydust of all time. Fact: you cannot bore people into buying something.

Again, if you like these, please follow me for a couple of weeks @elreiss and see if I continue to live up to expectations. If not, that’s cool – I’m not really out to build a huge follower base, but to experiment a bit with the “content is king” notion. And please remember to “unfollow” if my tweets don’t contribute in some useful way to your own life and work.

Hey, you can also comment right here! Let me know what YOU think about Twitter.

For about a year now, FatDUX has been sharing the following article with business leaders and potential clients around the world. The feedback has been tremendously positive. We’d now like to share it with you. Happy holidays.

Feel free to use this in your own work. Here’s an easy-to-distribute PDF (25 kb):

Download: 10 dos and don’ts of web development

The 10 dos and don’ts of website development (that every CEO should know)With the current economic downturn and significant layoffs among sales staff, the web has become more important than ever as a means of communicating with customers/clients/membership. But I have yet to meet a CEO who likes website development. It makes business leaders uncomfortable. The web experts speak in a cryptic language – CMS, KM, XML, CSS. The site seems to take forever to build, costs more than expected, and invariably provides less value than the organization had hoped.

No one likes signing a big check without some idea as to what they’re getting. So if you’re a business leader, here are a few basic, non-technical tips that will significantly increase your chances for online success. And they let you do what you do best – lead.

1. Don’t confuse marketing with communication

Most marketing efforts are concerned with gaining the attention and interest of a particular target audience – often quite aggressively. But on the web, your audience has come to you voluntarily. So, lighten up on the promotional hype. Yes, your site can become an important sales tool, but it should do so in straightforward, conversational language. Don’t let an eager salesrep talk you into blinking banners on every page. Instead, regard your website as part of your service mix first and your marketing mix second. It’s about creating a valuable experience for your site’s visitors, about starting a dialog with your customers (and potential customers). Therefore, make sure your web team represents a good cross section of disciplines in your organization.

Do: View your website as part of your customer-service package.

2. Don’t view your website as a software development projectCreating and maintaining most informational websites is no more a “software project” than publishing your annual report. You write reports using a standard word processing program; you publish to the web using a standard content-management system. There are dozens of superb systems available, and hundreds of excellent add-ons (survey systems, social networks, video channels, wikis, etc.) so don’t let anyone talk you into building one from scratch. That’s also why this activity shouldn’t be handed over to your IT department. Granted, a site with very sophisticated functionality will probably require special programming, but don’t count on your in-house skills as being enough.

 

Do: Whenever possible, purchase standard software from a single-focus vendor (Microsoft will probably not be on your shortlist).

3. Don’t couple unrelated initiatives

Just because one project concerning computers and customers is in the works, you won’t necessarily create synergy by tacking on other initiatives that also involve computers and customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a frequent sinner. But unless you have a huge budget and sophisticated needs, both your website and your CRM activities will be far more successful (and much cheaper) if you tackle them one at a time. Keep your intranet development out of this, too (although you can probably use the same publishing software used for your website). In other words, don’t let HR take over the project either. And don’t turn your website into a software development project.

Do: Deal with your website – and just your website. Then take care of the other stuff.

4. Don’t be afraid to set measurable goals for your websiteYour website can be an active part of your business plan. In fact it should be. Don’t just view it as your extended business card or think that a graphic redesign is going to help you attract new customers/clients/members. Your website should be assigned targets just like every other department in your organization. And don’t just go for easily measurable numbers. Merely increasing the number of visitors is a poor goal. Shortening the sales process is better. Increasing your conversion rates is great. Streamlining logistics is a good goal. Reducing manual intervention in a sales or service process is a good goal, too. And there are dozens of others that have a direct effect on the bottom line – even for companies that don’t run an e-commerce site. So get your web team to tell you which needs they have identified, the goals they have set, and how they intend to achieve them. Since most in-house teams have limited experience in web development, this is one of the key reasons for hiring an outside strategic consultant.

 

Do: Insist that your website become an integrated part of your company’s business activities.

5. Don’t confuse your needs with those of your visitors

You may want your website to communicate your company’s values, service offerings, products, or something else entirely. But visitors to your site will have their own agendas. Your web team needs to identify these needs and address them with relevant content and functionality. The simple truth is, unless a site fulfills the needs of its visitors, it will never fulfill the needs of the site owner. Give your web team the time and budget to do their homework and actually talk to potential users. Very few companies truly understand how their customers use the internet.

Do: Encourage research. Accept surprises that go against your basic assumptions.

6. Don’t view your website as a fixed-term project

Your website is a process, not a project. Unlike a printed brochure that might have a useful lifetime of a year or so, your site’s content should be reviewed regularly (even daily) so that it remains accurate, interesting, and dynamic. For the most part, maintenance only takes a few minutes a day. But someone has to keep the process going, studying the statistics that tell you who has visited and what they did, and adjusting the content so that it becomes even more compelling. And that means you need to allocate resources to this critical task. Your website needs to be included in your annual budget each and every year.

Do: Once you start the process, make sure to keep it going.

7. Don’t confuse print design with web design

You probably have an ad agency. For them, “concept” means look and feel. But on the web, the “concept” is what your site can do. Your brand consists of how your website “acts” just as your brand is affected by how your employees act. Don’t let an old-school art director force you to sacrifice usability for the sake of a design guide developed for printed communications.

Do: Acknowledge and embrace web best-practices that run counter to your design guide.

8. Don’t let personal opinion cloud your focus

When it comes to websites, everyone has an opinion. But don’t just assign tasks to the people who are most enthusiastic or most vocal. Instead, find people with proven expertise and then do everything you can to help them do their jobs efficiently. And as the project progresses, try not to let your personal taste get in the way either. The only opinions that really matter are those of your website’s visitors – not your friends, family, or the well-meaning wife of the chairman. Ask yourself: “Do I want to get my way or do I want to get rich?”

Do: Seek out proven experts and support their work.

9. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions

There are no stupid questions. And no one should make you feel like you’ve asked one. But be prepared to remember the answer – asking someone to walk you through the same subject six times is bound to create friction.

Do: If in doubt, ask. Always.

 

10. Don’t hide in your office

Your active support for a web project can make the difference between success and failure. Make sure everyone on the team is pulling their weight – particularly those who are responsible for writing and updating online content. Make sure the team leader has access to you when policy questions arise. That said, don’t become a micromanager – hire the best and let them get on with it.

Do: Demonstrate your active support for the project. Keep the whole team inspired.

My thanks to the dozens of CEOs who have critiqued this piece. You’ve all contributed valuable information. Thanks for sharing with me so I can share with others.

As a guy in charge for our Zagreb office I’m thrilled and happy to share some news with you. First of them is our little anniversary – today marks exactly 2 months since we have been incorporated and established our first office here in Zagreb, Croatia.

We are the youngest FatDUX office worldwide and as such we see ourselves as an important part of the overall corporate success. We will embrace this blog as well as our Twitter accounts more actively in the future so for this first, introductory post, I’d like to introduce you to our office, our team.

But most importantly, I’d like to celebrate the fact that despite this global economic downturn that is hitting southern Europe and the New Europe countries especially hard – we are thriving, adopting to our client’s needs and, oh well, we are being innovative as much as we can.

Often it is being said that necessity is the mother of innovation – apart from that being just too often cited – there is actually truth in that. Also, one can argue that this current downturn and climate certainly affects the ability of the companies to stay ahead and innovate in a negative way.  However, it is also serving as a catalyser for change, opportunity to rethink your mission, your business and your overall business values.

It is challenging – for sure

When I’ve left the Microsoft Development Center in Copenhagen where I used to work as part of a really great and international user experience team – I was filled with mixed emotions. Leaving the Microsoft where I used to work and collaborate with for years (counting my Microsoft Croatia experience) and starting the new business from the scratch was huge endeavor. Truth be told – in my personal contacts, over Twitter and even via Facebook bunch of people were saying that I should accept the offers and stay in Denmark with Microsoft or some other company but just few said that I should return back home and start a new business with my team.

And here we are today – two months after official incorporation, after months of prep work, market analysis, team gathering and consultations. I’m bold, proud and thrilled to say that we are here and we are here to stay!

Our team

Our core team in Croatia is rather small but we are utilizing the broad network of our local and international contacts. Antun Debak is our creative director and our youngest employee – may that not fool you – he is extremely talented guy with years of experience working for some big names as a freelancer, Darko Čengija (pronounced as cheng-ee-ya) serves as our external consultant – he is employed at the Poslovna učionica not by FatDUX (though we treat him like he is one of us) and I (Vibor Cipan) am serving as a CEO of the FatDUX Zagreb office.

Three of us have meet several years ago and worked together and collaborated with Microsoft Croatia and their partners on various projects – from design, product development, coding, project management, copywriting… After all these years – it was quite natural for us to start on something together.

After my first meeting with Eric and Søren in Copenhagen while I was living in Denmark, I knew, intuitively, that one day we will be part of our FatDUX family. Months of negotiations, discussions, talks – and we had our deal. Today we are proud part of the FatDUX global family contributing to our client’s bottom line and their success.

How the sayin’ goes: We work hard and play hard. I know it is braggin’ but heck, we went to Rammstein concert for our first team building few weeks ago. Life is fun at FatDUX Zagreb and we love it that way.

Keep in touch

As I’ve mentioned – we will keep in touch on a regular basis now – utilizing this blog, Twitter and all other services we can thinks of. Yes – I guess you can get a clear picture that I’m a pretty much a huge fan of social networking and interaction – significant part of our local business and corporate communication strategy is being shaped by direct contact with. And yes – we love to talk. English, Croatian, Czech and virtually any other language (with a little help from our friends) works for us…

That being said – here is how to keep in touch with us and contribute. We sincerely want to include you in this conversation.

Antun  (@adebak) is on the Twitter – you can follow him there. He is also on LinkedIn. Darko is on LinkedIn too (trying to convince him to join the Twitter) and you can reach me on Twitter (@viborc), LinkedIn and my personal blog – UXPassion.com.

Be sure to follow us there and we also have our official FatDUX Twitter account so – follow us and let’s talk.

Keep in touch!
Pozdrav iz Hrvatske!

Hi Eric –
Bad news. I’ve been laid off due to cutbacks. That said, the company just hired two new people in my division and our profits are the highest ever recorded. In fact, my division now has sales of EUR 35 million. So let’s assume there are other reasons for letting me go.

I still need another year and a half of salary to make ends meet, so I’m desperately looking for a new job. Now most folks think it’s impossible for a 67-year-old to get a new job, but as you know I’m used to dealing with impossible challenges. I’m looking for something either in Denmark or abroad that lets me use my marketing talents, and maybe even do a little Flash programming if need be. Even jobs that only last a week or two are welcome.

If you hear of something, I hope you’ll keep me in mind.

Cheers,
S

Damned right we’ll keep him in mind!
Here’s some background on this fellow:

The incredibly narrow-minded management of this company has never really liked my pal’s out-of-the-box thinking. So each time he’s built up a profitable new business area (he’s created several), they take away his department and send him out to do something else. Recently, to get him away from headquarters, they packed him off to China. He taught himself Chinese and built up a multi-million Euro business selling his company’s products in a completely new market segment! When he needed interactive marketing materials and was denied a budget, he taught himself to program Flash (and he’s pretty good at it).

I’ve worked with this man for almost 20 years on a variety of marketing projects. He’s a real gentleman, his professionalism is exceptional, and he’s a seasoned innovator who produces measurable results. Not surprisingly, we’re going to try and work him into the FatDUX family. But in the meantime, if you hear anything, let me know and I’ll pass the word along.

Bill McLaughlin

CEO – Select Comfort

Minneapolis, MN

Dear Bill,

I have the most wonderful bed in the world, a Select Comfort bed.  It has two air chambers zipped into a padded quilted mattress cover, and attached to a pump with two controls.  Each sleeper can adjust the firmness of the mattress to his own preference with just a button.  We’ve had it for over 15 years.

Its only flaw is that every two or three years one of the air chambers inside the mattress starts to leak, and pretty soon it mostly deflates every night.  The only thing to do is to get a new one shipped out from the company.

Because it was my side of the bed this time, I was pretty motivated to solve the problem.  I went to the Select Comfort website, found their customer support contact page.  It was late, outside of their call center hours, so I decided to get the process going by email.  I chose my problem from their dropdown list (“Previous purchase questions”), entered my name and address and phone number and email (all required).  I also entered a description of my product and my problem.  Oddly enough, this was not a required field.  I unchecked both the “o please send me more promotional material!” boxes and submitted the form.  Immediately in my inbox was an automatic confirmation that they had indeed received my email, and would gladly get back to me within two or three days.  And that if I wanted to call them, they’d take my call right away.

Rule No. 1 – Respect your customer’s mode of communication.

If you’re going to offer email customer support, it should be at the same level of service as phone support.  A real response should come by the end of the next business day at the latest.

Two days later I got a nice email from the customer support specialist telling me that my name and address wasn’t in their database, and asking me if I could send any other names or addresses that might have been used.  I did, and shortly received an autoresponse thanking me for my interest in their product and informing me that they would be sending out the DVD package that I had requested right away.

Rule No. 2 – Listen to what your customer says, and remember it the next time you speak.

I had already provided them with a description of my problem AND a backend database code for their use by selecting “previous purchase question” as my subject.  And remember?  I had also unchecked both boxes asking them to send me more promotional literature.  (I’m still getting it; the DVD arrived in less than a week, and I’ve gotten follow-up postcards every three or four days so far.)

I replied that I didn’t want any DVDs, but that I did want a new single-port chamber for my dual queen size bed and inquiring how I could go about getting one, just as I had in my original email to them.  I got another immediate autoresponse telling me that they had received my email and that they would gladly get back to me in two to three days.

In a couple of days another nice customer service rep gave me instructions on how to confirm that the problem was indeed in the air chamber and not in the pump, and asked me to get back in touch with them after I’d verified the problem.  I was pretty sure that the problem was with the chamber, but I followed the directions and confirmed it for them by email: definitely the chamber.  After getting the expected autoresponse from the customer service ‘bot (2-3 days!), I then got an email from the support staff that said that it sounded like I needed to replace the chamber, and that I should order it from Customer Service.  They gave a toll-free number.  They also let me know that they couldn’t find me in their database.

Rule No. 3 – Respect what your customer knows.

Not only did I already know what the problem was with the bed and what I needed, I also already knew that I wasn’t in their database, and I already knew that email responses were running at 2-3 days’ response time.  A full week was wasted with this back-and-forth.

Meanwhile I’m sleeping on stacks of pillows every night because I start out with a bed full of air and by 3am it is nearly completely deflated, my butt on the slats of the bedstand.  I can’t pump it up in the middle of the night because the pump makes a heinous racket to which the DH for some reason objects most obstreperously.  My neck and shoulders and lower back are all killing me.  And then fall rolled into Los Angeles, and I found myself at the mall, looking for sweaters.  And there, across from the Build-a-Bear was a Select Comfort retail store.  So I popped in, spoke with the nice man there.  He listened to my story, looked me up in the database (“Yep, you’re coded as a prospect!”) and surreptitiously gave me a queen dual chamber that he had lying behind a big cardboard display.  I took it home and pumped it up, but it turned out to have a leak as well.

I was at the same mall a few days later and returned it to him.  He gave me another one, but while he was digging around looking for it, another customer in the store who was purchasing a bed and some accessories asked me if I liked my bed.  O how I did wax prolific on the wonders of the bed.  I truly love it.  At least fifteen years of slumbering bliss on this bed.  A testimonial, dear brethren!  After this, the nice store manager gave me the chamber.  I asked him, “If this one doesn’t work, can I come back here and order it from you?”  No, he said, I had to order it from Customer Service.

Rule No. 4 – Empower your service workers to provide service.

There was a customer sitting at the counter while I was there, checkbook in hand, ordering a bed and accessories.  We all of us there in the store know that orders can be placed through the retail store.  Why can I not get the replacement item I need from the nice person I’ve now got a relationship with?  Why can the email support staff not take my order?

I got the second replacement chamber home, and it leaked even worse than the first one.  I’m not too upset, because I didn’t pay for either of them.  I girded my loins, picked up the phone, and called Customer Service’s toll-free number.

It was busy.

I called again.  I got a recording that said, basically, that they were too busy to take my call, and I should call back later.  Click.

I called three more times and it was busy.

The fourth time I got put into the queue, after selecting the most likely-sounding option from the voice menu.  After about 10 minutes I was connected with a lady who asked me briskly for the name on my account.  I gave her my name.

“I can’t find you in my database.  What’s the phone number that might be on the account?”  I gave her that.

“I can’t find you in my database.”  I tell her what I want to do, to buy a replacement chamber.  She begins to go through what I recognize as the troubleshooting script, the one I have already been through with the email folks.  I stop her and start to say that I’ve already identified my problem, and that I just want to order the replacement chamber.

“I’m trying to solve your problem!”

“You haven’t even asked me what my problem is yet.”

Rule No. 5 – The customer’s problem is the one that needs solving.

So far my primary topic of conversation with these people, across ALL their modes of communication, has been about their database.  Now I didn’t call them up because I’m not in their database.  I’ve got a bed that deflates every night.  I just want my good nights’ sleep back.  I called them up because I need a single port dual queen replacement chamber, stat.

I tell her that I’ve followed directions given by the email team and have confirmed that I need a new air chamber.  “Well you can’t buy that from me!”  She says she’s going to put me in the database and then connect me with the right department.  I give her all my information (again) and she enters it all into the database, and she gives me a customer number (2275984) that I can give to the next rep so she can pull up my record.  And then she transfers me.

After a few minutes on hold I am connected to a new person who promptly barks, “Name on the account?”  I give her my name and, she says, “I can’t find you in my database.” At this point my weasel is pretty steamed.  I tell her that I have just gone through this exercise with the previous rep, and that she had put me into the database.  “She even gave me a customer number so you could find me.”  She asks for it, and I give it to her.  She tells me, “I can’t find that in my database.  You’re not in our database.  What did she use to give it to you?”

“Her voice,” I said.  “And I wrote it down with a pencil on paper.”

Rule No. 6 – Don’t ask the customer for any of your internal codes or identifiers.

How are the customers supposed to know which of your internal systems were in use?  At this point I’m pretty sure that I am in all of their databases and that customer number 2275984 is CSR-speak for “Give this customer some serious hell!”

She begins the troubleshooting script.  I stop her.  “I’ve already done that.”  After a fair amount of wrangling I force her to take my order NOW for a non-returnable $200 item.  I ask for the name of the VP of Customer Service and she gives me the name and mailing address of the CEO.

And since it had been such a <sarcasm> pleasant </s> experience overall, I replied to the last email that I had finally managed to order the replacement chamber from customer service, and that I’d be grateful if they could let their VP know that he could expect me to pitch him soon for some business process redesign work.  A few days later I got this response:

My replacement chamber did finally come, and it has worked very well.  I still love my bed, and I’m sleeping great again.  But I am afraid that any recommendation I make for Select Comfort’s product in the future will have to be tempered by serious reservations about their service.  And in the 21^st century, is there any difference between the two?

Rule No. 7 – Customer service is the product too.

Give us a call, Bill.  We can help.

Sogni d’oro,

Lynn

FatDUX Los Angeles

Back in January, 2009, I published my definition of user experience. UX, as user experience is popularly called, is a difficult subject to discuss with business clients. To them, “UX” is just more expensive hot air from the folks who brought us the dot bomb.

The basic problem is that discussing an experience – any experience – is highly subjective. And although others have attempted to set up metrics (notably Robert Rubinoff’s User Experience Audit, and Livia Labate’s User Experience Health Check), we don’t always end up with particularly useful data. Here at FatDUX, we were looking for a simple tool that could help us turn observations and subjective conclusions into useful dialog with our clients.

Our UX quantification model will undoubtedly be criticized by the scientific hardliners. But it does help us uncover many problems and communicate these to the client. And it works better than beating them over the head with statistics.

Please note, we take a very broad view of “user experience,” incorporating both online and offline interactions of three types:
 
- active
- passive
- secondary

Please refer to the original user-experience blogpost for details regarding these types of encounter.

Avoiding complicated algorithms
There are lots of complicated ways to work numbers, particularly when dealing with the subjective data that invariably lies at the heart of any discussion of user experience. But rather than putting together confusing formulae to present our research, we work directly with our clients to quantify empirical observations in a very simple model.

The model in brief
We start by consolidating our research findings in a single first-person narrative – an X-log (experience log). This is somewhat related to phenomenology. Once we’ve assembled this story, we work together with the client to:

1. mark each individual interaction – we call these “snapshots”
2. assign a value from 1 to 3 to each snapshot in relation to its contribution to the overall experience
3. grade the experience on a scale from -3 to +3
4. multiply the value by the grade to get a score (this is the really useful number)
5. note any events that are recurring, unique, or may be influenced by chronology (cause and effect relationships).

Plugging in the numbers
We mark each interaction, but some may later be thrown out if they are sufficiently trivial or so unique in character that they are deemed irrelevant in the broader, generic sense of the project. Although no individual snapshot can be assigned a value of 0, if you really think it deserves a value of 0, this is probably an interaction you’ll want to ignore.

When we grade the individual snapshots, we use the following scale:

+3 = fantastic
+2 = good
+1 = better than expected
0 = no effect on the ultimate user experience
-1 = poor
-2 = awful
-3 = mission critical

Unique or chronological events won’t always influence the score, but in the case of repeating events, the interaction clearly needs to be looked at carefully.

A sample narrative
Here’s a simple story based on a trip to the movies. It represents an amalgam of several user interviews, onsite research, review of user-satisfaction surveys, etc.

My family (my wife, myself, and our two kids) decided to go to the movies. We checked the internet and found the website for our local cinema complex after a quick search on Google. But we had to click three times to get to the program page and wait through a silly animated ad for a movie that hadn’t even been released yet. Worse still, we were forced to download a pdf to find out the specific movie names and playing times. And after all that, we couldn’t even order tickets online, much less purchase them, so we couldn’t avoid waiting in line when we arrived. You’d think a big four-screen complex would have a more sophisticated website. But we did find out what was showing, decided to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and piled into the car.

Finding a parking place was easy. The theater has a big lot, which is important since driving to this particular theater is really our only option. Just as we were leaving the car, it really started to rain, but happily, the entrance wasn’t far away.

There were three ticket windows open, so the lines were short. The girl behind the counter was noisily chewing gum and barely looked up during the entire transaction. In fact, she didn’t say a single word to me except to ask for the money. Wow, prices have really increased this past year. I was surprised at how expensive it was.

The lobby was inviting and quite clean. We bought popcorn and soda at the concession and found our way to our particular auditorium. It was easy to spot the signs pointing the way. As we approached, we noticed overflowing trashcans with popcorn and other garbage from previous audiences.

The seats were well-marked and easy to find. The seating was comfortable but there was old popcorn underfoot. The temperature in the room was pleasant, although all of the wet people made it get a little steamy. The sound was great and really enhanced the special effects, so we really enjoyed the movie. When we left, there was a nice usher, who opened the exits and wished us a pleasant evening as we went out. And it had stopped raining. A nice end to a nice family outing.

Defining the interactions
Reading through the narrative, we mark the individual interactive events – the snapshots. This gives us the following list:

1. Find website on internet
2. Click three times to find relevant page on site
3. Reaction to irrelevant animation
4. Find schedule (download PDF)
5. Reaction to lack of purchasing options
5a. Opinion of website
6. Park car
7. Reaction to parking lot
8. Reaction to rain
9. Reaction to proximity of parking to entrance
10. Reaction to short line
11. Reaction to rude ticketseller
12. Buy tickets
13. Reaction to ticket prices
14. Reaction to lobby
15. Buy popcorn and soda
16. Find auditorium
17. React to overfilled trashcans
18. Find seats
19. Reaction to seats
20. Reaction to popcorn on floor
21. Reaction to temperature
22. Reaction to steaminess
23. Reaction to sound
24. Reaction to movie
25. Reaction to nice usher
26. Reaction to dry weather
26a. Opinion of evening

Note that opinions are not really interactions, hence we have 5a and 26a.

Assigning values and grades
Ask your clients to help you fill out the values and grades. This is a great way to get clients emotionally involved in the design project without having to show them pretty layouts.

Conclusions
Having made this chart, there are several things that become painfully apparent. First, the lack of purchasing options is really a major problem. The need to watch irrelevant animations and resort to PDFs for information was also pretty bad. Snapshots 11, 15, and 25 suggest that additional emphasis should be placed on customer-service training for front-line personnel. Snapshots 17 and 20 illustrate that cleaning is a problem. Snapshot 22 revealed that the climate-control system was out of whack, which proved to be an easy repair.

The most important point of the exercise, though, was that the client suddenly understood how all of these events ultimately contributed to the total perception of the movie-going experience. The X-log narrative started a productive dialog about user experience and not about the color of the links.

We hope you’ll find it useful.

FatDUX Zagreb is now well on its way to becoming a reality. Our new Croatian CEO, Vibor Cipan, and his outstanding team, are in the final stages of incorporating the company – and we already have several important clients.

Croatia is a fascinating market with a wide range of opportunities. Obviously, tourism and the hospitality industries rank high. Agriculture, too. But more importantly, Croatia has a growing and highly innovative high-tech sector. In fact, I recently addressed a group of IT executives at a meeting hosted by Microsoft Croatia on this very subject – innovation.

It’s interesting that here in Denmark, where “innovation” is on every company’s list of so-called “value words,” true innovation remains as rare as tits on a turtle. But in Croatia, they don’t talk about innovation, they just do it.

We’re delighted to have this opportunity to effect real change in Southern Europe. And we look forward to building our professional network in the region.

What are the so-called benefits for a company that offshores? More importantly, what are the dangers?

Why companies go offshore
Mostly, offshoring occurs in order to reduce wages related to folks on an assembly line. In these cases, the only winners are the owners of the company. Yet this form for “profitizing” is a double-edged sword.

When offshoring industrial products, workers are usually not required to think – they probably aren’t even encouraged to do so. But because wages are cheap, production efficiency doesn’t have a high priority. Alas, failure to empower your assembly line to think causes quality problems to remain unnoticed too long. And there will be no manufacturing innovation whatsoever.

How offshoring can kill innovation
Innovation is not invention – although it builds on inventions and the related best-practices that evolve. Specifically, innovation means solving a problem. Here’s an example of assembly line innovation. A woman ran a machine that stamped out rubber parts from a flat mat that was fed into the cutting die. Looking around the production hall, she noticed that her machine was the bottleneck – it was the single slowest operation. She also noticed that the die travelled 6 inches each time a new sheet of rubber entered. Yet the rubber was only 1/4 inch thick. The travel time was considerable, as were the security measures that prevented fingers from getting caught in the machine. She suggested reducing the travel to about 1/2 inch. This was done and total production for the facility increased by over 70%. True story.

Alas, most employees just do what they’re told and don’t ask questions or suggest improvements. So much for in-line innovation.

Offshoring and agile development
Successful offshoring (and outsourcing) also requires the original manufacturer to specify details to an incredibly minute degree. The specification alone can take hundreds or thousands of man-hours. Yet in most instances, this document only serves as a legal cover-my-ass tool when litigation arises because something is not done correctly, not an instrument designed to promote efficiency.

In software development, “agile” is currently the method of choice if you’re really interested in benefiting from the combined wisdom of your team. Most offshoring/outsourcing models don’t allow this, which is why the Ukraine, Romania, and India, are generally awful choices for offshoring of software development, not because of the quality of the work, but because of the lack of feedback and dialog. You want a team that thinks and spots errors in the specification, not one that just follows orders. And ideally, one would think that low-income countries would be better off building their own economies instead of fostering a community of wage slaves.

How to kill a brand
Brand is another issue. Today, Burberry in the UK has offshored all of its clothing production to China, with the exception of its famous trench coats. Georg Jensen “Danish” jewelry is made in Thailand. Even the iconic American Radio Flyer “little red wagon” is now produced in China – and 45 former employees in Chicago are out of work.

Will I buy another Radio Flyer? No. Today, it’s just more plastic junk from China; the brand has been devalued and no longer represents an American company.

Should I buy an expensive Georg Jensen ring from a high-street shop? Or should I travel to Chang Mei and buy one on the street from the same worker who toils at Georg Jensen during the day and files and hammers at home during the evening. “Royal Copenhagen” china is also made in – well – not China, but Thailand.

I’d be interested to hear from folks who can tell me when offshoring is truly in the interest of the company and their customers.

(Last updated 31 January 2010)

The truth is, most online readers don’t care much about how web writers tackle grammar, spelling, and punctuation as long as they get the information they need. That said, good grammar does build trust in your organization. Proper spelling does, too - so proofread your text and ask a professional copywriter to look it over if at all possible.

Here are some of the many tips I give our online clients during my popular “Writing for the web” workshop.

 1. Kill your darlings
This is a quote from the American writer William Faulkner. Basically, it means you should take a critical look at what you’ve written. I often discover that if I cut out my first paragraph, I will improve the text 100%. On the web, visitors want you to get to the point. They’re not on your site to admire your fine writing.

2. Apply George Orwell’s rules
George Orwell, the English author of 1984, Animal Farm and other classics, has six rules of writing. Here they are – they’re all gems:

1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.

2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4) Never use the passive voice when you can use the active

5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday equivalent.

6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous!

3: Build shared references
This is about getting your readers to understand what you already know. For example, if I mention “the soup Nazi”, you may or may not recognize this reference from the TV comedy, Seinfeld. As writers, we cannot take any chances - our job is to make sure that people understand exactly what we mean and what we say on each web page.

Just for fun, read this description and create a vision in your mind:

“Ordinary 60 W lightbulb with standard screw-in base (E27)”

Pause a moment before you read on. Make sure you see the lightbulb in your mind’s eye.

OK, continue reading.

Most people envision a typical frosted lightbulb. Yet, we lack a true share reference – after all, what does “ordinary” mean? For example, is this lightbulb 110V or 220V? Clear? Colored? Frosted? Does the lightbulb work or is it burned out? Do you know what an E27 base is? (probably not: it stands for Edison 27 millimeter, which is something of a defacto standard the world over).

This simple description of the lightbulb left a lot of questions unanswered. As web writers, our task is to leave nothing to chance. And it’s no surprise that marketingexperiments.com discovered long text outsells short text by 41%!

This point could be a whole lecture unto itself. But if you understand the generic principle, you’ll create much better web copy. Here are five tips for creating stronger shared references:

1) Don’t take anything for granted

2) Anticipate the questions people may have

3) Answer questions they didn’t think to ask

4) Examine your content in the context of what your site visitors probably want to do

5) The communication environment will affect the information needed at any given time

4. Write front-loaded paragraphs
Start with your conclusion. Here’s an example:
“A special tax on automobiles will be used to finance road safety improvements.”

You can then continue with the rest of the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How questions that you’ll want to answer in your introduction:

“The Prime Minister announced this yesterday at a press conference in London in response to the drastic rise in road fatalities.”

Your site visitors want information fast. Don’t make them wade through a lot of text to get what they need. And from an accessibility viewpoint, putting the conclusion up front means that automatic screen-reading devices (such as JAWS), can “tell” sight-impaired folks what they need to know immediately – including that this might not be the page they want to be on.

5. Accept that people read differently on the web
Reading from a screen isn’t particularly relaxing. The mention of “website” doesn’t conjure up images of a comfy sofa, a crackling fireplace, and a warm cup of tea. Fact: people read differently on the web (and about 25% slower, too). This is what they do:

1) Scan to find areas of interest

2) Scan subheads to zero in on subjects

3) Skim copy for keywords and phrases

4) Read to get detail

5) Click to interact

So, don’t get too wrapped up in creating atmosphere. Let your readers get on with the task at hand – whatever that may be.

6. Respect levels of detail
Web readers appreciate getting a basic idea of where they are when they dump onto a page from Google. Levels of detail help establish this understanding, even when other cognitive devices (breadcrumbs, for example) are not available.

In a newspaper, there will be three levels of detail:

- Headline

- Lead

- Full story

On a website, you’ll find:

- Label (often the same as the link)

- Short summary (executive summary)

- Detailed presentation (main subject page)

- Supporting evidence (data sheets, photos, and other contextual elements)

When writing web copy, it helps a lot to understand how your text will be used and where it is positioned in relation to other content elements. That means good writers will also understand the structure of the site on which they are working – the information architecture.

7. Don’t make things too granular
“Granularity” means the extent to which information is spread across multiple web pages. Well, sometimes a cracker is better than a handful of crumbs. So make sure that information that is needed simultaneously appears on the same page. This is a particular problem when plucking interesting features from a data sheet available elsewhere on a site. Again, this is directly related to the work you should be doing to create shared references.

8. Define your goal
Before you write anything, ask yourself:

WHY am I writing this

WHAT is my main message

WHO am I talking to?

HOW do I want them to respond.

Hey, no kidding. How DO you want them to respond? This is how you increase conversion rates! When people have made it to the bottom of the wonderful page you created, give them someplace relevant to go! Don’t make them scroll back to the top.

9. Minimize instructions
Here’s a fabulous example from Steve Krug’s outstanding book, Don’t Make Me Think:

“The following questionnaire is designed to provide us with information that will help us improve the site and make it more relevant to your needs. Please select your answers from the drop-down menus and radio buttons below. The questionnaire should only take you 2-3 minutes to complete.”

OK. Either folks know what a drop-down and radio button is or they don’t. Is there really a reason to tell people which techniques you’ve built into your survey? There’s also too much reference to “us” and “we”. You’re asking the reader to do you a favor. Act appreciative. ´

Here’s how Steve edited out the instructions and turned the message into something that was useful and potentially valuable to readers:

“Please help us provide better on-line service by answering these questions. It should only take you 2-3 minutes to complete this survey.”

Looks easy, but it requires thought. And you have to be aware of the problem, which you now are.

10. Eliminate “happy talk”
Any page that starts with the word “welcome” needs serious rethinking. Get rid of this kind of crap. As I suggested earlier, Kill your darlings – and cut out the first paragraph. This often helps.

Happy talk is often the result of a copywriter not knowing what to say. Go back to No. 8 and revisit your goals. You should have no problem – unless the page is really unnecessary (in which case it should be dropped).

11. Be objective
Drop the hype. People come to your site voluntarily. You don’t need to make a verbal fuss in the same way you would if you were trying to get a magazine reader to stop and read an advertisement. On the web, you want to get to the point and give people valuable information.

In traditional advertising, we use the AIDA model:

Awareness

Interest

Desire

Action

But we’re not talking about traditional media, are we? By the time folks have landed on your site, they’ve passed beyond the “interest” stage. It’s your job to create “desire” and encourage “action”.

12. Be personal
Lighten up. Try and use more “you” than “we”. Although your users may be guests in your house, as a good host you’ll want them to feel welcome. Make them feel as though it is THEIR house.

13. Be concise
Get to the point (I know I’ve said it before). Let folks grab-and-go. They’re not here to savour your fine language.

14. Avoid secret language
Acronyms are dangerous. So is industry slang. In the interest of creating shared references, make sure you don’t use words, expressions, or abbreviations that folks don’t understand (“E27” for example). Again, this is about creating shared references. Spell things out as often as you need to – and don’t worry about repetition.

15. Make stuff scanable, skimable, usable
Start by identifying trigger words and keywords make them easy to spot (keyword: “shirt” trigger-word: “non-iron”).

Consider bulleted lists as these are easier to skim than sentences. They improve overview and give you a navigational option (hyperlinked lists) General rule of thumb: use bullets for:

- features

- subjects

- ideas

Use numbered bullets for:

- sequential tasks

- ranking

- lists where the total number is somehow relevant (20 tips, for example)

16. Write communicative subheads
Subheads make text easy to scan, even while scrolling (or perhaps particularly while scolling). In general, you’ll want a subhead to be visible at all times on your screen.

You might want to consider writing your subheads as questions (as long as you don’t turn your text into a FAQ). In most cases, you should use more subheads online than you would in print.

Good subheads signal that the story is going to get even better. And truly great subheads tell site visitors a story even if they don’t read the details in the actual text:

“I used to be a poor ditchdigger”

 “Then I discovered my writing ability”

 “Now I am a top content strategist on the web”

17. Write accurate labels
Labels and link text will almost always be the same as the headline of the page on which folks arrive. You want to keep these short and direct. They are often the hyperlinks/buttons on which people are clicking.

Make the first word the most important word. When people scan a page, they rarely read the whole sentence/link, they look at the first word, so make it count!

Avoid “cute” headlines. You need to establish a shared reference. As opposed to the title of a magazine article (which is designed to entice and tease), a good label represents a promise to the web visitor: “If you click here, this is exactly what you are going to get.”

18. Go back and edit your work
Do this before you publish your stuff. Do it after you see it online. Do it again next week (this article will be different the next time you look).

Keep asking yourself:

“Is this clear?”

“Is there a simpler way to say this?”

“Is there a shorter way to say this?”

“Is this even necessary?”

19. Remember to write the “invisible” text
About 10% of all web text is only read by machines – metadata. But it is incredibly important in terms of search engine optimization. Here’s the stuff you’ll need to provide for every page:

Meta title
Search engines see this first and the title functions as the link on which folks click in Google, MSN, etc. The meta title is primary text in the current search algorithms, so don’t dismiss it lightly! The first word should be the “killer term” but don’t start with the name of your company except on your home page. Most browsers cut the meta title off at about 65 characters, so be concise.

Meta description
This is the text Google displays on the two lines just under the link, so use it to grab people’s attention and play off your page title. Remember to include keywords and triggers. But kept the description to about 140 characters with spaces or Google will cut it off.

Meta keywords
Some experts say that the search engines don’t register the keywords. This isn’t true, so make sure you write them. Here’s how to do it:

- word or short phrase

- comma

- space

- new word or short phrase

And remember to write alt attributes for images and graphics, particularly stuff that is hyperlinked. You may know these as “alt tags”, which is the incorrect, but more popular term.

20. Don’t let anyone talk you into increasing keyword density for SEO
You cannot bore people into buying a product or exhibiting interest for a service. Keyword density is bullshit, plain and simple. Yes, it will get you a higher rank on Google, but it won’t improve your conversion rate. The same is true for keyword frequency (closely related to keyword density even if the official definition is a little different) “Optimization” means getting customers, not getting hits. If you’re really interested in improving SEO, here’s how to do it:

- Write worthwhile content

            Build shared references

            Answer questions

            Create value

- Write relevant metadata

            Title

            Keywords

            Description

            Alt text for graphics

- Write clean code

            <h1>Headline tags</h1>

            <p>Call to action closing paragraphs</p>

            Close “if” and “while” statements

- Get listed:

            Open Directory

            Yahoo!

            LookSmart

And in closing…
There’s a lot more to say about the subject, but this should kick-start your “writing for the web” process. Other sources include:

FatDUX bibliography and key links
http://www.fatdux.com/resources.html

Very good writing guide from MIT
http://libstaff.mit.edu/webgroup/writing/layer.html

Excellent links and initiatives from Yale University
http://www.library.yale.edu/eli/instruction/webwriting.html
 
Jakob Nielsen’s slightly outdated “Writing for the web”
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/

Sun Microsystems web-writing guide
http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/

Books I like
Letting Go of the Words
Ginny Redish
(Morgan Kaufmann, 2007)

Web Word Wizardry
Rachel McAlpine
(Ten Speed Press, 2002)

Web Copy That Sells
Maria Veloso
(Amacom, 2005)

Hot Text: web writing that works
Jonathan and Lisa Price
(New Riders, 2002)

Call to Action
Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg ( with Lisa T. Davis)
(Nelson Business, 2006)

The Internet Writer’s Handbook
Martha Sammons
(Allyn & Bacon, 1999)

On Writing Well
William Zinsser
(Quill, 2001)

The Elements of Style
William Strunk & E.B. White
(Longman, 1999)

Content Strategy for the Web
Kristina Halvorson
(New Riders, 2009)

Don’t Make Me Think!
Steve Krug
(New Riders, 2006)

Blatant commercial plug
I conduct “Writing for the Web” workshops for companies and organizations throughout Europe. These are custom-designed for your own in-house team and can be half- or full-day events, depending on your needs. These generally run from EUR 3,000 to EUR 6,000 plus travel and per diem. Although there are no limitations to the number of participants, 25 per session is a good maximum number. But three to four participants is also fine as there is more time for individual coaching. If you’re interested, contact me directly at: er (at) fatdux.com.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll follow my ramblings on Twitter: @elreiss.

Before I started working at FatDUX, I didn’t know of such terms as ”user experience” or  ”usability”. Of course I had had both good and bad experiences with both – I just wasn’t aware of the fact that I was dealing with stuff that people actually write books about. But more importantly, neither did I know that a large group of people was lacking this knowledge, and because of that, caused me countless moments of frustration and hair pulling. I do have very healthy hair, but I see now, that it is most likely just due to good genes, and definitely not thanks to bad designers.

What I quickly discovered though was, that the “not knowing” part in most cases really is the criteria of success. “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug made this very clear to me, and I can only give my best recommendations to newcomers in the field.

Relief
One of the things I love most about being a part of all this, is that my dread for failing as I use new stuff, is completely vanished. The worry I sometimes had, looking stupid not knowing which button to push or which way to go, has been replaced with this new feeling of being enlightened.

I conceive myself as rather competent when it comes to logic and common sense, and even though, all kinds of stuff from websites to electronics to road signs, have left me feeling slow and incompetent numerous times. I’m pretty sure I will never stop pulling my hair in aggravation every once in a while, but instead of feeling stupid, I’m merely intrigued – intrigued and urging to pinpoint the wrongdoings and suggest a better solution.

There is however a downside to this as well: as much as I hated being the laughee – an easy victim for not knowing how to use a specific item – just as much did I love being the laugher. I could of course give a rat’s ass and just keep demeaning my friends anyway, but nobody likes the double standards-guy.

Ignorance is bliss
Our job here at FatDUX is to design great user experiences. Sometimes we do this from scratch, and sometimes we correct other’s mistakes. Correcting mistakes is a discipline that requires a targeted search for errors, and this is done by using your error-goggles – goggles it’s crucial for you to take off at the end of the day. Because wearing these in your everyday life will surely cause your brain to overload.

Let me try to exemplify this in a different context:

Besides from being an intern here at FatDUX, I work as a bartender. What I have discovered along the way is that my standards and expectations have increased in step with my expertise. That means that I’m quite likely to be a mean critic when I’m out for cocktails myself. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss! If I hadn’t developed a taste for expensive whisky, I might as well pay 10€ instead of 20€ for a manhattan.

An expert of all things
I guess what I’m trying to point out is true for most occupations, but working in the field of user experience must be one of the most extreme cases. I mean, as a bartender, I can at least limit my criticism to the cocktail bar. UX has no perimeter. Weather you are using the toilet, drugs, a hat or Windows Vista, you are being a victim of a user experience. Anything can apply to the term. A very overwelming thought given the fact that certain people are experts.

I, myself, am no near being an expert as far as UX goes, and that’s what scares me the most; I’ve only just looked through the peephole, and yet, the analyzing-everything-era of my life has already begun. I fear ending up a grumpy old hind sighted man.

On the other hand, I know my boss Eric Reiss pretty well by now. He is no grumpy old man, but an expert indeed. I guess he has found a way to balance out these things – I sure hope I will too.

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