User experience experts are usually the behind the scenes type of folks, but
over at the
Ask.com blog there is a 2 part Q&A with Michael Ferguson, Senior
User Experience Analyst for Ask. Michael’s focus is on better understanding
the user experience and “helps the design, marketing, engineering and R&D
teams build valuable and delightful experiences”.
Like most user experience analysts, Michael’s work involves usability
studies that record and analyze users while performing various tasks on
websites. While Michael doesn’t give away any secrets to how to have the
best user experience he makes three key recommendations:
- Speak clearly: use direct and simple language.
- Make it clear where someone is in the experience and what their choices
are. Make the choices distinct from each other.
- Reduce work on the user's part wherever you can. Less to think about,
with fewer clicks, keeps them in the flow.
These are important points so let’s consider them in more depth.
Speak clearly: use direct and simple language.
This is the basic tenet of marketing. If your message isn’t understood then
it isn’t effective. Consider your target audience and make sure that the
messaging and other informational content is targeted correctly. For
example, I recently participated in a usability study for a game playing web
site targeted at 8-11 year olds. It wouldn’t make sense for the language
used to be judged based on whether an adult could easily understand the
information/instructions given on the site, the yard stick by which we
measured was grade 3-6 English.
Make it clear where someone is in the experience and what their choices are.
Make the choices distinct from each other.
Have you ever participated in an online survey or signup for service and
have answered seemingly endless pages of questions? If there is no %
complete or page 1 of 5 indicators then it can be very frustrating to know
how much longer the process is going to take. What about breadcrumb
navigation? Allowing your users to see where they are navigationally on the
site enables them to backtrack and choose alternative locations easily.
Showing users all the choices might be as simple as expandable navigation on
the site showing all the sub-menus under the menus, or might be simply be a
list of all games available on the site (back to my game playing web site
example). Choices should be distinct and understandable enough that the user
is easily able to identify which choice applies to them.
For example, the Apple iPod Store allows users to shop for accessories by
iPod type. This allows users to make a choice that is clear to them and then
shows them appropriate products. It even allows users to select obsolete
iPods. No confusion there. Compare this to the HP store’s menu of brands “HP
Pavillion, HP Pavillion Media Center, HP Pavillion Slimline, Presario” or
their “High Performance, Entertainment and multimedia, Everyday Computing”
menu. Not as meaningful when you are trying to buy a computer that needs to
run certain applications, have a minimum spec, or you have multiple needs.
(In HP’s defence they do have other menus to select from).
Reduce work on the user's part wherever you can. Less to think about, with
fewer clicks, keeps them in the flow.
This seems simple but is surprisingly difficult for many web sites to do (at
least based on the fact they aren’t doing it!). A great example of a search
engine doing this is Ask X. Let’s say you are looking reviews of the Nokia
6600 cell phone. While you are typing in your search query “Nokia”, a list
is being developed trying to guess your search term. As soon as you get to
“no” the term “nokia” is now in your list. You can click on the term you
want as soon as you see it in the list or keep on typing. If I type continue
typing and get to “nokia” now “nokia 6600” is in my list. Let’s say I select
that, I get my regular results but also the list is now showing me ways to
narrow my search and one of them is “nokia 6600 review”. Exactly what I was
looking for.
Now let’s look at a company doing it wrong (this is a common example). A
company advertises a new product on TV. They’ve spent lots on the commercial
production and have bought some great spots in prime time. Maybe they’ve
even supplemented the commercial with some magazine print ads. They’ve even
put a call to action at the end of their ad, go to http://www.website.com/.
So you’re interested in the product and you go to http://www.website.com/,
but you can’t find any mention of the product they were advertising. What’s
up with that? Well in this case, the company hasn’t identified this product
as something you might be looking for on their site and, as a result,
haven’t built in anything into the site that can minimize the amount of work
needed to find out about the product. It is amazing that this can happen,
but it does, everyday. Not a good user experience.
Here’s an example, I want to find out about the new D40 Nikon Digital SLR
Camera, maybe look at the specs or get a brochure. So I go to the Nikon
website, http://www.nikon.com/. Now I have to select Consumer Products. Now
I have to select Photographic Equipment. Oops, no sign of any cameras, now I
have to select Canada (silly me!). Now I’m looking at a flash video of the
new D80 Camera, but I wanted the D40…. So I select Skip video. Another menu,
now I select, Digital Cameras. Ok, but hang on, these are all compact
cameras, so now I select Digital SLR Cameras. Hooray, I finally see the D40
and select it. Now I’ve got the info I need, but wait, 7 steps to get the
info I needed about this brand new product, and NOTE, there was no search
option to skip through the navigation. Shouldn’t this have been easier?
Shouldn’t Nikon have realized that it’s new camera should have been at the
forefront of the site, not buried 6 steps down?
Conclusion
While user experience and web site usability is an interesting topic it
cannot be considered in isolation. While the three recommendations made by
Michael Ferguson are valuable, the first step is to determine your target
audience and their intent before you are able to assess whether a user
experience is a good one. |
SEO
Marina
Garrison