FatDux

Shame on Korean Airlines!

A few days ago I got so frustrated with Korean Airlines’ online booking system I decided to share the horror with the rest of the world.

I admit, because of what I do I am a bit more sensitive about bad web pages. Sometimes I overreact and get cranky (you web designers know what I mean). But this is the second time I’ve ever gotten so far as to write about my bad experience on the web.

The whole thing started the previous night, when I lost my patience with their web site and called the sales line to make the order with a live person. I was surprised that the toll free number connected me to the USA (I live in Europe). The overseas call was paid by Korean Airlines so I did not care. I was connected to a nice lady, who spent about 20 minutes with me trying to find the right flight. What was very surprising to me was that she couldn’t email me the options she found, that my only options were either to buy the flight right then and there or write down all the times and flight numbers and hope I could find the paper again the next time I call the sales line. The lady was so kind and helpful I took a deep breath and wrote down all the details. Which I lost the next day, so I had to give the web a second chance.

I was buying two long distance flights for approximately three thousand dollars

The next morning I opened the Korean Airlines site, which is a narrow (760px) stripe looking a bit funny in the middle of my big monitor. Approximately 90% of the narrow space was covered with ads, menus and options I did not care about. What I needed was the flight booking form displayed using gray on gray tiny font, where the select boxes with dates are so small the data does not even fit and is partially hidden.

(This is a screenshot in actual size, the letters blending into each other is what gets displayed on the actual site)

When filling this form one has to choose the continent and then the city for the departing and return destinations. It is not possible to type in the airport code, or the date, which has to be selected from a miniature calendar. This turned out to be quite annoying when I filled out the form for the tenth time.

The next page showed the date I had selected with a price matrix displaying three previous and following days. I was flexible in the dates, so I wanted to make sure the previous or following weeks are not significantly cheaper, but I could not change the dates in the matrix, I had to go back to the home screen and keep filling the booking form again and again. Filling the stupid form from scratch every single time!

After about ten iterations I found the flight I wanted for $1200 and proceeded to selecting the flight times and other usual stuff. After 10 minutes of fine-tuning our journey to the maximum degree of perfection I realized I forgot to add my soon-to-be wife (I was booking a honeymoon) and I could not add another passenger at this point.  I had to start all over again.

At this moment I was getting really irritated, so the next obvious thing was that I made a mistake in the date. My excuse:  I could not clearly see the date in the booking form, because it was half hidden in the small “select” box. When I discovered my mistake, the only option was to start all over again.

The next attempt got me almost there. I had gone through the price matrix, times, and even the inconvenient login form, this time I typed my and my girlfriend's names and proceeded to the checkout, gave my card number, billing address, expiration date, security code and all that. At the final check I realized my girlfriend will have different name after the wedding. Being so far in the process I could not believe I could not go back to change the name and my only option was to start all over again!

I thought it will go fast this time. But after filling the destinations, dates and number of passengers, the price had changed and the flights were now $350 more expensive. 

And here I have to admit I lost control and almost broke the keyboard.

I had spent almost two hours with this, did not accomplish anything and felt angry and defeated for the rest of the day.

How is it possible that airlines with billion dollar budgets give such a poor user experience when they’re booking a ticket - the most crucial part of their business? Fixing this problem by adding a back button is probably less expensive then the tickets I have bought. Changing the layout of their web, such that users can see the important information, would cost less than what KA must have paid for the phone call I made the to customer support centre? How can a company be so ignorant and blind about how users interact with their systems?

Stepan at the WebTop 100 conference

On 25th of Novemeber I have visited the conference WebTop100 and here is some notes and interesting quotes I have heard:

First presentation was given by Jiri Suchy, the man who stands behind the redesign of O2 web pages. Link

• His team tends to speak to the stakeholders and collect expectations not requirements, because expectations do not necessarily have to be implemented.
• When redesigning in the corporation one good solution is sometimes forced on behalf of another good solution.
• Give the job to good and motivated people. Give them the authority and trust that they will do a good job.
• Programmers should not design UX but need to know the reasons behind particular decisions.
• It is not possible to satisfy 100% of the users, stakeholders and your ego.

Second presentation was by Petr Štědrý from Dobrý Web. Him and his team has redesigned a web of Sencor in just 14 days.

• Petr believes, that the problems in design needs to be communicated visually and that everybody can draw sufficiently to be able to participate on the "discussion".
• They have started the project by the design workshop, where all the stakeholders did 3 round of drawing of their vision.

Next in line was Daniel Frouz, the owner of InetPrint, company providing not just promo materials and prints. He spoke about the redesign of their extensive portal/eshop, where they have reached some remarkable improvements in conversion rate.

• Recomendation: leave enough time for the usability testing. Which should come as soon as possible in the design phase. During the implementation it is too late.
• They started the project by setting the main goals and did a brainstorming using the mind maps.
• When cooperating with external agencies, it is important to communicate extensively.
• Various visual designs have to be done by multiple visual designers.
• They decide to provide the prices on the web, but they plan on blocking suspicious request from their competition.

I did not make much notes from the presentation of Jiří Chromát from Seznam.cz. Not that it was not interesting, but because I do not know much about czech Pay Per Click and their system sClick.

The next presentation was given by Petra Brodílková from Google. The only woman on the agenda (as she has presented herself). She has revealed some nice features for the online marketers, to be used in the very near future.

• Remarketing - you will be able to identify the visitors of your web pages, for whom your specified adds will be display when they browse the web. How cool is that!
• She has introduced a google optimizer. A tool which automatically creates the online marketing campaigns and while it runs the campaigns, it learns itself and optimizes along the way.
• She has mentioned an application Our Mobile Planet, which shows statistics of mobile usages. For some it might be a well known thing, but for me it was a cool new application.
• Then she has advertised the AdMob. A system for online advertisement on mobile phones. In the Czech Republic it has 1.7M users and over 100M impressions.
• Petra also spoke of the TrueView, a system which allows you to post video ads before the Youtube videos. I personally find those ads annoying and skip them, but important thing is, that the advertiser only pays, if the viewer sees the whole clip!

The next presenter came late, so after 5 minutes of waiting I left for a coffee and got sucked into the discussion with Jiří Suchý and Ondřej Kratochvíl about what it is like to be a UX designer in the big corporation.

The next presentation was by Ondřej Kratochvíl, about the critical state of the UX in the Czech Republic. From my point of view this was the best speech - bold and critical.

• From Ondrej's perspective thee is 3 main problems when it come to czech web pages: Trying to be different no matter what, Putting everything into the menu, Not explaining clearly what is the company about.
• It is important to deal with UX as a whole, not just the usability testing.
• It is important to deal with UX across the all channels, not just web.
• It is important to communicate with external agencies.
• UX can not be measured, and therefore it attract lots of incapable people.
• The most important marker is the "customer satisfaction" (even more important then sales)
• Constant patching is often so expensive, that it is better and more effective to do a complete re-design.

For the next presentation of Martin Kalda from Mather, my attention has been weakening, so even when the presentations were interesting I just could not keep my full concentration:

• Designers use the filler texts "loren ipsum", which they later replace. However they also use the filler images from the databases, which the don't! And so we have the webs full of annoying young professionals shaking hands.
• We do the webs for the companies, not for the CEOs.
• By default, companies should have the brand manual and use it!

Michal Špaček from Skype has complaint about the security of the webs. One of the sites he found so offensive, that he decided to punish the owners by hacking it (live). Unlike everyone else, I did not find this so amusing. I was thinking about the owners of the page who will have to spent their money to fix this and everyone else who has to spend our money to protect agains hackers like Michal.

At the end Jan Havel from Actum had an interesting presentation, not just visually, about our fears and phobias when it comes to designing webs.

• What stops us from doing things properly is the fear.
• Clients do not improve the agency by micromanaging it. Give them the trust and authority.
• Agencies fight the micromanagement using the method of ugly green stain. They place something horrible on the design, for the client to complain about it, winning this battle and not complaining about anything else.
• Every self-respecting agency is counting the time and charges for extra work.
• If we make a bad decision, but quickly, it can be fixed. However, if we hesitate with the decision nothing is done and nothing can be fixed.
• It is important to see where the money is.

Vestas - "We don't need no stinkin' social media"

Investors have totally lost confidence in the leadership of the Danish windmill giant, Vestas. Earlier this week, on October 31, 2011, their stock plummeted almost 25% - the most recent, most dramatic swing in a roller-coaster ride that started in 2008.

This most recent disaster was triggered by a discreet announcement late Sunday evening that a German turbine factory, owned by Vestas, couldn’t deliver on time, which was going to severely reduce earnings for the year.

I’ve been monitoring Vestas for over a year, not as an investor, but because I am fascinated by how poorly this company handles social media. Let me be blunt: Vestas just doesn’t get it - and it has cost them millions.

A story about “Black Tuesday”
On the morning of October 26, 2010, I read the headline on the Danish business newspaper, Børsen, that Vestas was going to fire 3000 employees. At 9:45, someone told me that Vestas’ CEO, Ditlev Engel was holding a press conference at 10:00. Around 10:15, another colleague told me that a Danish windmill company was declaring bankruptcy and that there would be a statement at 11:00.

About 10:20, as Engel rambled on to the press corps (streamed live on the internet), the first remarks started to appear on Twitter: “So when is he going to tell us the company has gone bust?” Actually, another, smaller windmill company, Skycon, had gone into receivership. Although this news had been announced earlier that morning, the particulars were overshadowed by the happenings at Vestas. No interesting statements were made at 11:00.

However, looking at Vestas’ stock price that morning, there was a curious, minute-by-minute correlation between the tweets and the stock. About 10:20, when the stock was falling, but not yet in free-fall, the first social media messages appeared. And during the next 15 minutes, Vestas lost almost DKK 20 million in stock capitalization. After 11:00, when it was clear from the news updates that Skycon, not Vestas, had gone broke, Vestas stock rallied briefly. But only briefly; the company lost a bundle that day - the company’s communication punctuated by occasional tweets providing a link to the online video of Engel’s press conference.

Coincidentally, a senior VP at Vestas told me later that day that the company had a community manager responsible for their social media. But what does this person actually do? For the next 26 hours, there wasn’t a single tweet - during which time Vestas lost over 10% of its total market capitalization.

Late in the evening of October 27, 2010, Vestas finally posted a tweet. Too little, too late.

Could social media help?
If you had looked at social-media activity related to Vestas on October 26-27, 2010, it was clear that people - including Bloomberg - were looking for some kind of useful communication. But there was none.

On October 27, 2010, Vestas had roughly 450 followers. A couple of days ago, Vestas stock again plummeted, this time by almost 25%. They now have 3,600 followers on Twitter. But did Vestas tweet? No. A repeat performance from a year ago.


Finally, a tweet - at 9:20 AM on Tuesday November 1, 2011. Throughout the dismal Monday, Vestas remained silent.

So here’s my message, dear Vestas: people WANT to talk with you. The dramatic rise in your number of Twitter followers shows this. So why aren’t you engaging with them? Do you have a social-media strategy or are you just making this up as you go along? If so, consider taking a different approach. The most recent debacle reduced the value of your stock by 24.3%. The costs to prepare a professional social-media strategy and the salary for an effective community manager are far less. You do the math.

FatDUX Prague sponsoring EuroIA in Prague

ENG:
I am proud to announce the opening of FatDUX Prague. Our offices are located just minutes from the famed Wenceslas Square in the heart of the Czech capital. Over the past few years, our sister company, ExperienceU, has grown to become one of the most respected usability testing facilities in Central Europe. Now, working hand-in-hand with FatDUX Prague, we are able to provide a full range of UX services – from strategy and design to usability and search optimisation.

To help celebrate our new company and build our local user-experience community, FatDUX Prague is subsidising 20 registrations for residents of the Czech Republic to the upcoming EuroIA conference. The conference is possibly the most important event of its kind in Europe. We are honoured that this year, it will be held right here in Prague on September 22-24.

Rather than the normal registration fee of EUR 430, with our discount code, you will only pay EUR 150. We will take care of the rest. For details and your personal code information, please write to me directly: stepan (at) fatdux.com

CZE:
Rádi bychom oznámili oficiální otevření pražské pobočky dánské designové agentury FatDUX. Naše kanceláře se nachází na okraji historického centra Prahy. Díky spolupráci s agenturou ExperienceU, respektovanou zejména v oblasti testování použitelnosti, dodáváme celé spektrum služeb v oblasti UX, přes strategii a design po audit použitelnosti a SEO.

Abychom oslavili oficiální vznik nové pobočky a zároveň podpořili místní UX komunitu, FatDUX Praha sponzoruje registraci 20 zájemců z České republiky o nadcházející konferenci EuroIA. Tato konference, která se řadí mezi nejvýznamnější svého druhu v Evropě, se bude konat v Praze 22 – 24. září.

Místo plné ceny 430 Euro zaplatíte pouze 150 Euro a FatDUX doplatí zbytek. Případní zájemci, neváhejte mne prosím kontaktovat na: stepan (at) fatdux.com

Undercover Boss – service design bitch-slapping for clueless CEOs

Are CEOs out of touch with reality? I’d say a lot of you are. Although you CEOs don’t have to go to extremes to improve things, most of you do need to do something, so listen up. If you don’t want the long backstory, skip ahead to the last subhead. 

About the title of this blogpost

Undercover Boss is the title of an American reality series. The premise is simple: an out-of-touch CEO puts on a disguise, takes a low-level job within his organization, and hears the truth about the company problems. After a week of play-acting, he goes back to his office and makes everything right again.

(By the way, I write “he” as I have yet to see a female CEO profiled. But I digress…)

There’s a great review of this episode by Ken Tucker at ew.com here:
http://watching-tv.ew.com/2010/02/14/undercover-boss-hooters-episode-2/

Quick recap of the “Hooters” episode

For those of you who haven’t seen the episode or read Ken’s synopsis, the “star” of this particular show was CEO Coby Brooks of Hooters.

Hooters is a chain of restaurants featuring beer and chicken wings served by buxom young women in tight t-shirts and hot-pants. FYI: “Hooters” is a slang expression for breasts. In the United States, the cute Hooters owl-logo only misleads those who are certifiably clueless (you can see it on Coby’s shirt in the photo below).

Coby Brooks (at left - duh) with two typical Hooters employees.

During the show, Coby learned (among other things), that although men love Hooters, most women feel the concept is degrading. I would have thought this was kind of a WTF “no-brainer” observation, but it certainly surprised our friend Coby as he talked on camera to random folks on the streets of Dallas, TX. (Good we got him out of his posh office and cosy private jet).

Hey, the concept is demeaning. But let’s face it, Hooters knows tits, ass, and beer is a winning combination for roughly half the population. In the meantime, Coby is now promising to rethink the company’s image. “We’re gonna tell folks about all them Hooter gals who are now doctors and lawyers and rock stars and…”

Uh…and this proves what, Coby? Did you know that feminist Gloria Steinem was once a Playboy bunny?

Lesson #1
Coby’s advisors look more like his drinking buddies than business executives.

Dear CEO, don’t hire your buddies. Don’t hire ass-lickers. Hire folks who aren’t scared of you. Sycophants and spies will never tell you the truth. And don’t take personal offence when someone disagrees with you.

Lesson #2
Coby probably would have been a better CEO if his father hadn’t just plunked him down into his current position without either warning or training. Coby seems to have had a very strained relationship with his dad and it’s clearly been tough to fill daddy’s very large shoes.

Are you a CEO looking to turn over the reins of your business to the next generation? Think twice before giving the job to a family member. This has been the downfall of many a family-owned company. Put your idiot offspring in charge of a charitable fund or something else that’s fairly harmless, but keep him away from the executive suite.

Lesson #3
Poor Coby inherits a billion-dollar business and finds out to his incredible surprise that the folks making chicken-wing sauces at his dad’s old factory in Atlanta loved his dad, but hate the current owners (er…that’s you, Coby). Why? Because Dad walked the floor and knew all his employees by name. Coby is an “absentee landlord”. The employees feel abandoned and uncared for. Which was a theme throughout this show – also when Coby visited his restaurants. Good TV. Naïve management.

Dear CEO, go “walkabout” – an Australian expression for going into the wilderness. Get your ass out of your chair and walk the floor, greet the guests, answer the phones. Honestly, you don’t need a reality TV show to get you moving.

Lesson #4
Clients come to FatDUX precisely because we can uncover problems for them without bias – which is what all agencies should provide. The amazing thing is, the work is not always particularly difficult – although it often appears impossible to those inside the organization. That’s because it’s not enough to solve a specific problem; you have to deal with the generic cause of the problem. In service-design language, this means fixing the problem both ways. We can see patterns that are often invisible from inside an organization – the more siloed the departments and functions, the more invisible the patterns are to senior management.

Dear CEO, ask questions. Ask tough questions. Demand answers. Don’t accept “it depends” as an answer from highly paid consultants. Hell, everything “depends” so there’s no need to dwell on the obvious.

Lesson #5
Dear CEO, you don’t want to be on Undercover Boss. If you’re good, you’ll never be on Undercover Boss. You’re supposed to know what’s going on in your organization. That’s why you get the big bucks.

Folks, it’s easy to get folks to tell you the truth. Just ask. If you’re honest, open, and fair, people will tell you things. But you do need to go out and talk to people. Talk to your customers (alas, far too many companies don’t ask because they are scared of what they may find out). If you want to align your business goals with user needs, you’d better understand what these needs are. The magic word is “listen”.

Coby didn’t learn a thing he couldn’t have learned in much simpler ways.

Polish IA Summit 2011 – Warsaw – April 7-April 8

I am absolutely positive that someone was leaning on the Fast Forward button during April because it flew by. It is only now that I am able to see over the paper piles on my desk and talk about my fantastic experience that started my April 2011 off at a brisk pace. In early April, I was privilege to be asked speak at the Polish IA Summit in Warsaw. My deepest thanks to Wieslaw Kotecki, Hubert Anyzewski and all at UseLab for putting together such a terrific program. And, a very special thanks to Magda Wolszczak- Protas who did such an incredible job of coordinating the event on top of taking good care of this clueless American visitor to Warsaw. It was an exceptional experience.

My colleagues have done such a fantastic job of representing the content of the Polish IA Summit that I will refer you to them for specific representations of what we learned over an inspiring two days.You will also find many tweets using #iasw as your search term. The summit hash tag was the most popular tag in Poland for the first day of the Summit on April 7, 2011.

My personal epiphany from the conference was confirmation that the U.S. hegemony over IA/UX/Experience Design, or whatever you want to call what we do and where we do it, has long been over. We’re lucky here in the United States where we have been blessed for years with the thought-leadership of many of the originators of our practice. When we limit ourselves to conferences, meet ups, webinars and other information sharing venues from the continental U.S., it is easy to think that this is where all of the innovative, thought-leadership is happening. Au contraire. The viral nature of the Web has spread the good word far and wide. Our colleagues overseas are blazing many trails with innovative work and forward-thinking.

We service a global community that deserves a global perspective. Such perspective does not come from following the same superstars on Twitter or seeing the same people deliver similar PowerPoint slides at local conferences. I believe that a truly global perspective comes from the experience and intellect of our colleagues overseas. And for this you need to get on the long plane ride and go find it. Here are some international IA events for which I could find links: German IA Summit, Italia IA Summit and the EuroIA.

The IA Institute site, Boxes and Arrows and other professional sites announce other events in Australia, South America, Asia and Eastern Europe. I plan to do what I can to include educational opportunities from outside the U.S. in my professional development from now on as I believe strongly that it makes me a better IA. I hope that you do also. And, in the United States, it is a tax deduction.

Polish IA Summit Recaps

Martin Belem on the Polish IA Summit. Martin has done a fantastic job of bringing forth salient points for many of the presentations. He is too modest to talk about his own presentation that illuminated an interesting path from SEO to IA in Five Lessons from an Information Architecture career.

Peter Boersma did a fantastic job of sending us on our with with his closing plenary that examined the state of IA and UX, where it came from and where it is going, in UX: (still) the next step for IAs. He also has excellent notes for many of the sessions from the Polish IA Summit.

Claire Rowland and Chris Brown, from Fjord, delivered a thought provoking presentation on extending our concept of design in Designing Beyond the Glowing Rectangle: User Experience Design and Research Implications of the Internet of Things that closed out the first day’s session.

Dopamine and the mind – why good designs go wrong

Over the years, I have noticed a strange pattern: when executives (site owners) are asked to comment on design layouts, they often say there is too much text and demand larger pictures/graphics – whether these are relevant or not. These executives are disappointed and frustrated with the design proposals they see. On the other hand, if you listen to users (during usability testing, for example), they complain that these same pictures/graphics are getting in their way. Like the executives, they also exhibit frustration, but in a diametrically different way – “Why are you making me scroll past this crap to get to the information I really need?” 

My question was simple: was there a scientific reason for these dramatically different reactions to essentially the same designs? And I think the answer is “yes”.I’ve included a few salient footnotes for those of you who are scientifically inclined.

Thesis in brief (1)

Why do two groups of people seem to consistently disagree regarding the “attractiveness” of a website design? Could it be that there was a physiological reason for these reactions? In short, was our brain playing tricks on us or misleading us? Were our development and presentation techniques actually encouraging inappropriate client reactions?

Early research

I have known about the functions of neurophysiological “reward chemicals” since my pre-med studies at Washington University in St. Louis 1972-1976. In late 2007, having spotted the curious reaction pattern described above, I started to do some more serious research, focusing on the limbic system (2) and the nature of reward chemicals (3).

I made the assumption that if the pattern I had identified was universal, voluntary intake of recreational reward chemicals (e.g. nicotine, caffine, cocaine, etc.) was probably not at the heart of these reactions. So I looked for chemical rewards produced by the body itself. Soon, my inquiry zeroed in on dopamine, a chemical messenger similar to adrenaline. (4)

Dopamine – friend or foe?

Dopaminergic neurons appear to code environmental stimuli rather than specific movements. (5) This, in layman’s terms, means that pretty pictures stimulate dopamine release, which perhaps explains why executives favour graphics over blocks of text in dummy design layouts.

Although this reaction seems obvious (pictures are more attractive than text), it was reassuring to know that there was a scientific reason for this.

Task-solving activities

The second part of my question dealt with why test subjects so often reacted badly to eye-candy (i.e. gratuitous pictures/graphics).

There are various viewpoints as to the role of dopamine and the task-completion process. For example, Pennartz et al. (6) asked in 2009:

“Given the parallel organization of corticostriatal circuits, the question arises how coherent behavior, requiring integration of sensorimotor, cognitive, and motivational information, is achieved.”

Perhaps part of the answer to this critical question can be found in Taizo Nakazato’s research, published back in 2005 (7):

“During the task performance, dopamine concentration started to increase just after the cue, peaked near the time of the lever press, and returned to basal levels 1–2 s after the lever press.”

By way of background, this study deals with rats pressing a lever to receive a food reward. In internet terms, I equate this behavior with humans pushing a button/clicking a link to receive an informational reward. In other words, task accomplishment produces a reward – in this case chemical.

Actually, though, it appears that the anticipation of task-completion triggers dopamine release (8). And it could be that executives about to see a proposed design for the first time may be anticipating the presence of pretty pictures.

Yet the essence of the problem seems to be that if something delays/hinders task completion, dopamine release actually causes post-action frustration. Dr. J.G. Fleischer describes this phenomenon quite succinctly: (9, 10)

“If the [subject] does not receive the reward when it expects to receive it, then there is a depression of dopamine release, which is consistent with the negative preduction error that would occur in that situation.”

In other words, if something gets in the way of task completion, dopamine doesn’t get where it’s needed (“depression of dopamine release”). I suggest that perhaps the pretty pictures and eye-candy that were anticipated and appreciated during the presentation phase, are actually getting in the way of test subjects who expect a more relevant response to their query (i.e. clicking on a promising link). If we make people scroll to get to the stuff they want (and expect to receive), they experience dopamine depression.

That said, a more recent study by Wanat et al. (11), suggests that further research is needed:

“[The] enhancement of reward-evoked dopamine signaling was also observed in sessions in which the response requirement was fixed but the delay to reward delivery increased, yoked to corresponding trials in PR sessions. These findings suggest that delay, and not effort, was principally responsible for the increased reward-evoked dopamine release in PR sessions. Together, these data demonstrate that NAcc dopamine release to rewards and their predictors are dissociable and differentially regulated by the delays conferred under escalating costs.”

In other words, the tougher it is to achieve a result, the greater the dopamine reward. This somewhat contradicts my thesis – and yet these findings also indicate that the response is situational. Hence, I feel certain that Wanat & Co. are actually looking at a different side of the problem, unrelated to task-based frustration, but that related to task-completion in a triumphal ”I just made it to the summit of Mt. Everest” kind of manner.

Drawing on my network

In late 2009, my online research led me to my grade-school best-friend, Jon Kassel. (12) Jon is now Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. Jon’s speciality is addiction. Naturally, the effect of drugs on emotions represents a key part of his own research.

Jon and I chatted informally about the problem with which I was wrestling. And without putting too many words in Jon’s mouth, it seems my thesis holds water – certainly from a cognitive point of view, and more and more from a clinical-psychology point of view, too. I hope that Jon and I can work on this in more detail sometime.

Please note: my conversations with Jon served merely as litmus tests and should not be construed as formal endorsement of my theories on the part of Dr. Kassel or the University of Illinois.

Community research

Of course, it could be that the pattern I thought I had detected was merely a fata morgana, Maybe my community wasn’t seeing the same things I was. So in January 2010, I published a simple survey on SurveyMonkey, which I broadcast to the interactive-design community via social media and list serves. (13) All of my questions could be answered with a simple yes/no. Here they are, along with the results of the 144 people who responded within the first week:

1. Have you ever been at a client meeting where you or your company have presented detailed page mockups for a proposed website (a “comp” complete with graphics and “greeked” text)?

Note: This may or may not represent the culmination of a longer discovery/strategic/IA process, but exactly where this presentation occurs in the overall process is not particularly important in terms of this survey.

Yes: 97.9%
No: 2.1%

2. If you have been to a website design presentation meeting as described above, have you ever heard the client say, “Very pretty, but there’s too much text. We need more/better/prettier graphics.” (this is when clients start talking about including pictures of their pet cat.)

I see this mostly when senior officials have not participated in an earlier discovery/IA/wireframing process.

Yes: 70.5%
No: 29.5%

3. Having been present at the original design presentation, have you later observed (probably through a one-way mirror during a usability session) that respondents say “Don’t make me scroll through the damned eye-candy to get to the substance. Get rid of the picture of that dumb cat!”

Yes: 58%
No: 42%

4. So in short, do you see any correlation between requests for more eye-candy during the layout approvals, and irritation with the same eye-candy during task-based usability testing?

Yes: 59.9%
No: 41.1%

About 62% of the respondents were from North America, 30% were from Europe, 8% were from the rest of the world.

Even though this is a primitive survey, the statistical results are significant; the pattern I hypothesised is recognized by others by a factor approaching 2 to 1.

Today, “dopamine” seems to have become “flavor of the month”

I first mentioned this research en passant in blogpost I published in January, 2009. (14) I talked about it again briefly at the IA Summit in Phoenix, AZ in April, 2010. Today, the subject seems to be finally taking hold – most recently at the IxDA’s conference, Interactions 11, in Boulder, CO last week (February 2011). Here, Charles Hannon, presented the subject formally (e.g. as the main subject of a talk) for the first time in our community. (15) Although the subject has also been broached tangentially at EuroIA 2010 and elsewhere, I look forward to speaking with Prof. Hannon at some point; alas, I was not able to attend the Boulder conference.

A second empirical observation

When I first suspected that comprehensive design mock-ups might be creating problems, we tweaked the development/presentation process in my own company, FatDUX. Subsequently, we spent much more effort in guiding senior management through our decision-making process prior to showing actual color design mockups. Although we had always involved our clients in the earlier stages of the development process, we had never previously insisted on top-management participation.

My empirical observation is that if C-level administrators are made part of the comprehensive design process, there is less chance they will insist on bigger pictures or cuter kittens on the website. In situations where we have not been able to obtain face-time with senior officials, our designs are more often open to challenge. Only expensive rounds of usability testing have enabled us to reinstate the graphic-design best-practices we normally espouse.

Some background

Both of my parents were scientists and the value of the scientific method and controlled studies was something I learned in parallel with my ABCs. As a pre-med student at Washington University in St. Louis, I continued my scientific studies, although I did wind up in a so-called “unrelated field” (encouraged by my father, who helped me send my first e-mail back in 1982 (no typo) to his secretary at the University of Miami). I have since been involved in the creation and/or critique of over 1500 websites and online apps.

So in closing, I encourage you to do your own research to prove or disprove my contention. And if you’d like to share your own empirical observations and/or research, I hope you’ll leave a comment here or write me directly at er@fatdux.com.

Here, I use “thesis” in the literal Greek fashion: as an “intellectual proposition” (θέσις), not a “dissertation” (dissertātiō).

http://rossmed.drbuschman.com/notes/semestertwo/limbic.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence

http://www.utexas.edu/research/asrec/dopamine.html

http://biopsychiatry.com/dopaminerev.htm

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/41/12831

http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=j1392rk26327525j&size=largest

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/dopamine-neurotransmitter.html

http://nsi.academia.edu/JasonFleischer/Papers/26012/Dopamine_Signaling_and_the_Distal_Reward_Problem

http://books.google.dk/books?id=BA8kvh7jgFEC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=when+an+individual+expects+a+reward,+dopaminergic+neurons+are+fired&source=bl&ots=JMINA_81vP&sig=9fC8tPBQ6hGBzweK0B9y0Og3rIg&hl=da&ei=9_tYTeDyEozoOaTzsJIF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/36/12020

http://www.uic.edu/depts/psch/kassel-1.html

Twitter, plus the SIGIA list maintained by the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and the discussion list of the Interaction Design Association. The survey was published on 10 January 2010.

http://www.fatdux.com/Blog/2009/01/10/a-definition-of-user-experience

http://www.ixda.org/interaction/ppllightning.html#CharlesHannon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Strangelove

Trips and User Experience

We all take trips on regular basis. They might defer in destination, purpose and pace, but nonetheless we travel to that finale we once set foot to. And while we are at that, we do not venture on a flat surface, but rather go through a maze of intersecting multiple such ones. What I am trying to say is that we all have an ultimate goal, and although there are twists and turns in each road map we all get there eventually.

Fewdays back, I had to fly to Germany for one day - a quick in and out into the heart of technological country's capital Munich. There were two meetings to attend and both of them required extensive hops on the trains. Now, my German, if I can say I have any, is strictly attached to the fact that I speak French and English. And if I try very hard, from time to time I can make up the meaning of all these signs, names and direction. I have to say that prior to the trip I was worried. No one was supposed to pick me up from the airport and I had to find my way in a city I have never visited before.

To my surprise, there was not a single moment I doubted the way I took. This is not, because I am a super-duper  smart bloke. It is because someone in the city's government took the time to make everything so accessible through the metropolitan's rail system. This is what I call great user experience - Munich simply did not allow me to think of anything else except my upcoming meetings. Efficiency seems to be written in bold capital letters.

Now let's take a step back to the week before the trip when I had actually to figure out the whole trip - this is my online travel to the destination - getting as much information and setting the plan up:

• Lufthansa.com - I had to buy a ticket and the site offered me a purchasing process in 5 simple steps. It actually added value to me acquiring the ticket without pushing any irrelevant info or added value service.


• Google Maps - East, West, South, North, you know, that type of thing. Well, street names and addresses to look up. Simply input the address and the magnify. Click on Print and the PDF is already on you Mac and then on the Kindle. Easy-peasy!


• Munich Transportation System - with this one I had a blast at http://mvv-muenchen.de. Not only it saved me money by pinpointing the cheapest option for my travel, but also the info was available in 5 languages. Try to research these for Moscow, Shanghai or Sofia. Word of advise, if you decide to do that, have a shot of vodka next to the computer… On a second thought, get the whole bottle!

As I said, the whole trip was a quick and dirty job - no fancy-shmancy touristy stuff, no time for food and definitely no opportunity to be lost in translation. The only bad moment I can think of is that Munich has virtually nonexistent free Wi-Fi spots. Shanghai and Sofia rule big time over that.

But here is the punch in the whole story - User Experience. This is not a notion that applies only to your website or application. It concerns every trip the user takes in order to complete a task set up front, reach a goal or simply enjoy the ride. Great user experience is achieved through supplying all the means in terms of information architecture, content, clarity and staying out of the way(which means no messing up with my mind). And believe me, doing all that needs careful consideration based on research, common sense and ability to walk in someone else's shoes.

And before you take off to another page on the FatDUX's site, have you ever wondered how the whole thing with the Metropolitain map started?

Well, you have to give credit to Henry (Harry) Charles Beck. Almost 80 years ago, he created the London Tube Map based on a topological approach. And since, he did that on his own time (not during working hours), I guess he simply wanted to offer a better information architecture and user experience. Or in Grant Campbell's most eloquent words at EuroIA 2010 in Paris:

"Much of IA involves clarification: how can complex information spaces be made clear to users? In many cases, we achieve clarity by anticipating the user's need and selecting or suppressing details, just as the mind suppresses sensory information that is extraneous to a given task. Beck's map of the London Underground is a famous example of information visualization that achieves just such a purpose, by abandoning scale, and by emphasizing only those details necessary for a clear purpose."

In 1908 London Tube's map had a geographical approach (distance, babe!):

In 1933 Harry Beck took a structural approach that takes the noise and user's perplex off:

It seems Munich Transportation Services paid close attention. Lufthansa and Google Maps did so, too. But do you? Next time you take a trip, think about it and do share in the comment section bellow!

P.S. Thanks to our own Eric Reiss for providing pointers on background information!

Photo swapping with DSB

This morning I went to the train station to acquire a monthly traveler's card from DSB (public Danish transportation) The last time I needed this, was ten years ago when I went to college. At that time you would have to bring a photo of yourself to the card personal. Not a problem! I had tons of those small photos of myself I got from the school photographer. Today however, ten years later, I don't have any photos of myself lying around - well except maybe for a few of the ones back from college.

Luckily, I thought, this is 2010 and DSB can't possibly be using the same procedure as they did in the analogue 90's. By now, they will for sure have a small handy camera attached to their computer, ready to snap my picture. It was with great disappointment I found out that this was not the case. The nice lady behind the counter asked me for a photo the same way she did in '99.

When I go to Tivoli they have an automated system for taking headshots. The same goes for the gym. And the university. And the library. And the local pool club. And the…

The number of members in these kinds of institutions is nothing compared to how many people are using DSB's traveler's card on a daily basis.

If you live in Denmark, you will know that complaining about trains arriving late, is as common as talking about the weather. In fact, it's a perfectly reasonable subject for a conversation with a stranger - and just for perspective; conversations with strangers in Denmark are the last thing that defines our cultural code.

I can imagine that it's no easy task to manage thousands of departures and arrivals each day and have them all be precise to the minute. DSB has always struggled with the goodwill of the public, and perhaps paying a bit more attention to the easy fixes would help the amount of goodwill go in the right direction.

I ended up buying an unpersonalized traveler's card - a rather expensive solution, but my options were to spend money in a photo booth, and that would have set me back even further.

I'm one of those actually appreciative for the existence of the public transportation, and I can live with the bus or the train being late by 5 minutes. But honestly DSB, look at the calendar year and wake yourself up before you go-go!

Tech tips for conference presenters and organizers

I attend a fair number of conferences each year. I speak at a number of these. I also help organize a conference, EuroIA. Here are some of the things I’ve learned over the years. Perhaps they will make your life easier and your presentations smoother. As an audience member, there’s nothing worse than watching novices fiddle about on stage.

Note: this is not so much about HOW to present, but how to handle the technical and practical aspects of public speaking. Presenters: I’m assuming you know that eye contact is a good thing. Organizers: I assume you understand the importance of keeping a conference running smoothly and providing free WiFi.

Note #2: I will be incorporating reader suggestions in order to keep this article up-to-date. So if you have a great tip, please let me know.

Tips for presenters

1. Take the time to check your presentation ahead of time on a real VGA projector. Under all circumstances, you need to know how to get your presentation up on both the projector AND your laptop screen (two clicks on F4 or F10 for most PC users). You’ll find that orange and yellow will become greenish. And light grey lines in graphs and other graphics may disappear entirely. Some videos may become way too dark. Adjust your colours and other elements accordingly so your audience actually gets to see the things you want to present.

2. Check your timing. Audiences feel cheated if you have to rush through or skip large portions of your presentation. And you look pretty foolish, too. If you want to take questions afterwards, make sure to leave time for this. For this reason, I ALWAYS take a small, easy-to-read analogue clock with me that I put somewhere I can see it. It is easier to glance at a clock with big hands than at your wristwatch or presentation tool. If all else fails, I sometimes start the stopwatch on my phone and put the phone on the floor in front of where I will be standing. Whatever you do, NEVER run over your allotted time. If your organiser is going to provide time signals, make sure you understand them and VISIBLY ACKNOWLEDGE them when you see them during the final minutes of your presentation.

3. Check your equipment ahead of time. Use a break prior to your presentation to set up your computer and make sure everything works properly – particularly video and sound. You can then disconnect it, knowing that when it’s your turn to present, the changeover should be a simple matter of plug-and-play.

4. If you are presenting from someone else’s computer, make sure to check your animations. (Powerpoint does not convert one-to-one when moving from a Mac to a PC and vice versa.) Also, not all Powerpoint and Keynote functionality is backward compatible. If your presentation was created using the latest product release and relies on sophisticated features, check these thoroughly after you transfer your presentation to the host computer. Personally, I still use PowerPoint 2003 because it works with pretty much everything (except a Mac, of course).

5. If you are using a remote presentation tool (I love my Logitech 2.4 GHz cordless presenter), make sure to check that it has batteries and is in good working order. If you are using a smartphone and Bluetooth (Android, iPhone, etc.) to advance your slides, make sure it is also charged and ready for action (Warning to new presenters: because smartphones use touch-screen buttons, you’ll have to look at your phone each time you need to click, which can seriously hinder your presentation style. Far better to buy or borrow a dedicated clicker with physical buttons. And practice using it and the laser pointer!)

6. Always make sure your computer has a VGA port or an adaptor to this format. If you are presenting from a Mac, make sure to bring your own MiniDVI to VGA adaptor. As an audience member, it’s irritating to wait while a presenter asks the audience if anyone has an adaptor. Organizers have a schedule to keep; the time you waste is often your own. Note: the adapter for older Macs will not fit a newer machine and vice versa.

7. Bring with you all the proper power cables and outlet adaptors you will need. Simple electrical plug compatibility can be a real hassle sometimes, so make sure you can actually plug in your laptop. 120V and 220V conversion is rarely an issue; the problem is always with the physical plug connection. Remember to take your adaptor with you when you’re finished (most of the adaptors I own have been left behind by others in hotels and at conferences).

8. Fully charge your laptop or iPad before your presentation. If someone kicks out the plug, you don’t want your presentation to crash.

9. If you need sound (typically a 3.5mm jack to plug into your headphone output), tell the organizers well ahead of time. Don’t automatically assume that sound will be available.

10. Optimize your screen resolution. PC users seem to do best at 1024 x 768. That said, older projectors will sometimes insist on 800 x 600 resolution. Mac users should probably start with 800 x 600 and work their way up to something higher. The wide-screen projectors now coming into use will probably require you to fiddle with your settings for optimum results. I have no rule of thumb at this point.

11. Older Mac operating systems require a restart to properly connect to the projector. Remember this if the computer is not connecting properly.

12. If your laptop is connected properly, but the projector gives you a “No Signal” message, try switching the source input on the projector (for example from PC 1 to PC 2).

13. If you are going to upload your presentation to Slideshare, do so ahead of time, but mark it as “Private”. The morning of the conference, you can easily switch this restriction to “Public” from a smartphone or some other low-bandwidth device so your presentation immediately becomes available.

14. If you want to read more about generic presentation tips, check out this excellent 2007 article from Lifehack:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/18-tips-for-killer-presentations.html

Or this one from BZ Media:
http://bzmedia.com/speakertips.htm

Or this great advice from Donna Spencer:
http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/2008/10-tips-conference-presentations

And if you will be speaking through an interpreter, check out this excellent advice from AZ World:
http://www.a-zworld.ca/blog/interpretation/tips-for-conference-orzanizers-and-speakers/

Tips for conference organizers

1. Make sure you have a range of suitable electrical adaptors, plus both of the Mac VGA adaptors in your emergency kit. Ensure that there are unused power outlets available at the speaker’s podium – at least two.

2. Arrange hand-signals with your speakers so they know how long they have left before their time runs out. I generally stand at the back of the room and hold up two hands with fingers outstretched to signal “10-minute warning”. A single hand is the “5-minute warning” Making a “T” using both hands means “Time up”. Put a clock on stage if one is not already hanging at the back of the room. And don’t be afraid to drop a Q&A session or simply break off a presentation if the speaker is unable to finish at the proper time.

3. If a session starts late (but not because the presenter is unprepared), don’t cut the presenter off early just to make up time. You owe them the chance to deliver their session properly. Better to incorporate longer breaks and to shave some time off of these to get back on schedule.

4. Don’t force your guests to use a standard presentation design template. This cramps their visual style. Even a simple header/footer will invariably take up valuable on-screen space. It’s better to do without.

5. Although you may need contributions for your printed proceedings well in advance of the conference, give your speakers as long as possible to edit and improve their presentations - preferably up until the night before the conference (when their own creativity and adrenalin levels are at their highest). Insisting on a “final” presentation weeks ahead of time will invariably lead to poorer performance levels during the conference itself. Note: the best presenters practice and fine-tune their stuff up until the very last minute – not because they are unprepared, but because they are gearing up for the performance they will be giving.

6. If you want your conference logo or Twitter details on the opening screen of the presentation, let your presenters know in good time. Do them the favour of sending them an optimized logo that is easy to paste into their presentation (eps, jpg, gif). Don’t assume presenters are going to bother to download something from your conference website and then Photoshop it to the right format – or that they even have the skills needed to do this.

7. Although tempting, avoid uploading presentations to your on-stage conference computer. This can easily screw up videos and animations. If swap time is critical (e.g. moving from one presentation to the next), arrange to have a VGA switch available so you can move from one computer to the other at the flick of a button.

8. If you have a cover slide to open your conference, or even a simple presentation of sponsors etc. to kick off the proceedings, consider giving this to your keynote speaker so he or she can incorporate it at the beginning of his or her own slide deck. This avoids the first presentation hand-off and starts the conference in a smoother manner. If you have a standard title slide you want to use as a transition to other presentations, give this to your presenters ahead of time.

9. If you plan on starting your conference by thanking all your volunteers, consider putting together a PowerPoint that runs automatically and loops endlessly while people are finding their seats. Seth Godin has a good article about how to do this. As opposed to a simple cover presentation, you’ll probably need to keep this on your conference laptop and not give it to your opening keynote speaker.

10. If you absolutely need a presentation delivered to you on a USB stick (to coordinate with a video recording, for example), make sure to let the presenter know exactly what is needed and how it will be used in advance of the conference.

11. If you have a screen behind the speaker, beware of using big plasma displays (LCD). These will not appear properly in photographs taken at the event. The colours always change and the effect can be very disconcerting.

12. Keep in mind that projections on a wall will be dimmer than projections on a real movie screen. Back projections will not be as bright or photograph as well as front projections.

13. Make sure projector and sound cables (VGA and 3.5mm jack) are available at the same physical location (the podium for example). Curiously, many technicians have VGA at the podium and sound somewhere else entirely. Conversely, make sure the cables can be separated; many laptops have VGA and jack inputs on opposite sides so bundled cables can create problems.

14. If you need to give your presenters a microphone, make sure they are cordless. Handheld is OK, but lavalieres are much, much better. Be sure you know how they work and where the mute button is located – don’t rely on a local technician. Ensure that the batteries are fresh in the morning – and swap them during the lunch hour. That said, if you can afford it, keep your technicians in the room at all times.

15. If you expect questions from the audience, make sure a hand-held cordless mike is available, plus a runner who can bring the mike to audience members. If you have two aisles, two mikes/runners are better than one.

16. If you want to read more about how to run a conference, check out this article:
http://www.stateofsearch.com/five-tips-for-search-conference-organizers-to-please-your-visitors/