How Personality Can Improve User Experience
Leave a CommentDean Vipond gave an entertaining and interesting talk at Future of Web Design, Leeds last Wednesday. He was looking at ways in which a website can have personality and how that helps to make the user feel engaged. Perhaps the ****ing amazon example he gave would require some thought, but I did notice one myself recently. On Google, there is an ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button. Of course, most usability peeople might say the button should explain what it does. According to the Google website, this button “automatically takes you to the first web page returned for your query.” So the button, it it was literal, would say ‘top ranked page.’ But I think the slightly less formal wording works well in this content.
It made me wonder if there are other sites which should be slightly less formal but aren’t. But it’s a risky business. There’s a thin line between being friendly and being pretentious. Imagine an online bank which, instead of saying, “your bank accounts” said “hiya chuck, do u wanna see how much dosh you’ve got left (& panic if ur out of cash lol).” It’s really not going to work. But I do think we could make the language of the web a little less dry.
Of course, language which is less dry needs to be plain English if anyone is going to access your site who is not local or a native speaker. For example, I’m from Manchester and I can say “Manchester is dead good” meaning “Manchester is very good”. If you didn’t know that dead means very, you might look it up and would still have no clue unless you knew to look in a Mancunian dictionary, and even then you’d find out that dead can also mean ‘finished’, as in, “is that drink dead?”
So, I was really pleased at Dean’s presentation. A great reminder that language doesn’t have to be too literal, we can add a little warmth and humanity. More so if the website is personalised. For example, a label called ‘Show Calculator Tool’ may be strictly correct, because if I press the button, the calculator button does indeed display. However, the more human ‘Show Me How Much I Can Save&rsquo, although it doesn’t strictly describe what happens, explains the button more clearly, because it describes the purpose of the tool so I can get what it’s about without having to open it up.
Of course, all this requires a huge amount of time and effort, and when planning projects, this needs to be considered. I do think that a lot of usability problems could be solved with clearer labelling, whereas most people’s response when users don’t understand a form is to add more and more explanatory text until the website becomes a mass of confusion. Less is more, as long as the label is appropriate. And thinking in terms of personality can really help this process.
Browser Styles
Leave a CommentThere are a number of approaches that users can make to browsing through a site. There is a metaphor for real life.
Let’s say I want to buy a lawn mower. There are four approaches to this:
- I’ve really got better things to do with my life than waste time choosing lawn mowers. I trust the person in the shop, so I’ll just take their advice.
- I like to feel I make the decisions, so if the person in the shop tells me about just three of the lawn mowers, I’ll choose the best one for me.
- I like to make sure that I get exactly the right lawn mower, so I’ll listen to the advice of the person in the shop, and I’ll look in the brochures as well. If the one I find in the brochure matches the one I’m recommended in the shop, then I’m happy to go ahead.
- I really don’t need the advice of the person in the shop. Just give me the brochures and I’ll work out for myself which is the best one.
There is a correlation between these types and the Kiersey Temperament Sorter.
What are the user journey strategies that your users take?
SEO for a new site
Comments (1)A new site was created and linked to on Sunday. Today is Wednesday and it’s still not appeared on Google. I wonder if adding a link to Lancaster Woodcraft Folk will kick Google into action?
Is it time we put an end to “e-mail”?
awful email gif
I need a new dicationary. The one I’ve got is pretty good, but I don’t like to have a dictionary that’s too old. Language moves on too quickly. I did take a look at one dictionary, Collins, which calls itself modern. However, whatever its virtues, I will not be able to purchase the volume. The reason is that it fails the email test. The entry for this word states e-mail (or email).
It is email. Not e-mail. Simple as.
How on earth did we start using e-mail in the first place? e, of course, is short for electronic. So e-mail is short for electronic-mail. But as electronic is a single adjective in front of the noun mail, the hyphen is inappropriate. e is a contraction of electronic, so email should have been written e’ mail. And like o’clock and can’t, the space can be removed to make e’mail. But either through ignorance, a desire to appear cool or modern, or technological limitations in implementing the apostrophe, we ended up with e-mail.
There might have been a case to include the hyphen if there was any kind of amiguity of the meaning of email. But there isn’t. If I write the word email out of context, are you in any doubt as to its meaning? Of course not. Now, is email a type of mail, or an entity in its own right? Compare with website, this is now a single unhyphenated entity and no longer a type of site, which would have made it a web-site. Email, too, has become an entity. Therefore, the correct spelling is email.
For anyone who claims that e-mail is the correct term, or eMail for that matter, I urge you to consider your grasp of grammar and your elements of style (do not be cool).
Do you agree that it is time to kill off e-mail, or is there a grammatical nuance which my argument has bypassed?
Are there any other words which require such clarification?
What is your favourite usability book?
Wonderline gives a usability reading list on IA/UI/UX. I thought there were some missing. But I kept scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling. There are so many of them. One day, I’ll write a list of books, but in the meantime, here are my current favourites:
- The Elements of Style: This classic by Strunk & White written 100 years ago is actually about how to write. It give simple advice on writing. It is opinionated and incomplete. A pleasure – and fun – to read.
- Don’t Make Me Think (2nd edition) – the classic usability coffee table book by Krug, with the best script for conducting a usability test which I have come across so far.
- Blueprints for the Web – Wodtke usbaility classic which prompted me to do more with wireframes and blueprints.
- Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd Edition) – the findability classic. Perhaps more detailed than it strictly needs to be. If you want comprehensive, this is it. If you want corporate, this is it.
- SEO for Dummies (3rd edition) by Kent – covers all the main elements of SEO – I want to get hold of Professional SEO too.
- Analytics – something else I plan to study more.
- Accessibility – do you have any suggestions? – everything I have learnt has been on the job or at conferences. I’m interested in measuring whether or not a site is accessible. I’ll leave the standards based design and hacks to the designers.
What is your favourite usability book and why?
What does a Content Strategist do and what are their deliverables?
This question on content strategy was recently pos(t)ed on an email list, with a link to an article called Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data on Boxes and Arrows. Having written a content strategy, I felt the urge to respond on strategy writing as follows:
– A strategy is just another word for a plan
- The strategy could be: what we can do with the resources we’ve got; what we could do if we invested in this thing, or more likely both
- A strategy should include the who, what, where, when, how, and why.
- The strategy should include the following four elements:
1. what does the business want to achieve
2. what resources does the business have to achieve it (infrastructure, staff, finances etc)
3. what are the user needs, and
4. what content / services are available and who is going to manage the content.
- The strategy has to be used – will the strategy make a difference, and if so, how
Having written a content strategy which was left unfinished and is gathering dust, I would focus on the last question first and make sure the people at the top are engaged in this (you don’t write a strategy in order to get the top involved, you write a strategy because the top are involved)
Also, don’t fall for the old ‘how can we have a content strategy when there isn’t a business strategy’ routine. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two, so both can inform each other.
Jay Fienberg from Juxtaprose gave an excellent response on the content strategy role and content strategy deliverables (reprinted with permission):
A Content Strategist is person who paints a cohesive, usually far-reaching, compelling picture of what an organization’s content is and can be, how that content comes into being, and what are its key values to the organization, to clients / customers, to the world, etc.
A “Content Strategy” deliverable is a kind-of plan, but it’s more about a strategic path of development (across multiple projects / multiple time spans) than a specific project / time span.
A “Content Plan” would be more specifically at the project level– including who exactly does what, and how they do it. And, typically, the lead role for implementing a content plan would be the “Content Manager.” A good content strategy would provide a path that can span across multiple content plans.
A content strategist can be the person who creates a content plan, and/or can also wear the hat of content manager. But, in bigger projects, there can be separate individuals doing the content strategy and content management roles, and they’d likely collaborate on some or all of the content plans.
What are your thoughts on content strategy, content strategists, and associated deliverables?
Btw, notice how the original questionner demonstrates a good use of non-sexist pronouns – it is more important to write respectully than to respect archaic rules of grammar!
Do you really want Geode to know where you are?
I don’t
Geode, the Mozilla goe-tagging project, has been announced. This will use mobile, wi-fi and user-input technologies to tell a website where you are and offer appropriate content. This all reminds me of a terrifying book I read a year or so ago called Ambient Findability by Peter Morville. Peter Morville was co-author of Information Architeture for the World Wide Web. This book is a tremendous resource for findability. However, the book Ambient Findability has nothing to do with Findability. Findability is the ability of a user to find content after arriving at a website. Ambient Findability is the ability of the internet to know where you are at any moment in time.
So what is the point of all this? What great benefit does this happen to the user? Apparently, if I hit a new town, I can take out my laptop, and it will tell me where there’s a cafe nearby.
Am I missing something here? Why not just ask someone? Would you reveal your location to a website just to find a cafe in a new town?
How do you raise the profile of your URL?
I was watching the briefing by Gordon Brown earlier. I noticed that on the front of the two lecturns was some writing. I assumed that one said Prime Minister and the other Chancellor. But no, not at all. What they actually said were the identical same words: number10.gov.uk. So I duly typed this into my Firefox address bar. Took a scout around. Noticed the flickr, YouTube and twitter feeds. Thought (very briefly) about whether to add number10 as a friend.
Hey, hold on a minute. If I link to this site, it’s going to help their SEO. The sites going to move up from No. 3 on Google to No. 1. (Interesting that telegraph.co.uk is No. 1 – they are hardly going to be his No. 1 fan – shows that SEO isn’t just about being nice – a search on Yahoo for miserable failure currently returns www.whitehouse.gov/president as the top result – and if you’re reading this after November 2008, the president is currently George W. Bush – The Mighty Bush).
So, the financial crisis has helped with SEO of number10.gov.uk. What interesting and bizarre offline campaigns are you running to raise the profile of your domain name?
Why do you Ask?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7646579.stm
I checked out the site using HideMyAss, as it’s available in the US, but not here in the UK until 20 November. Its target audience is my age range (35 to 55) and they don’t care about 20 year-olds, which is refreshing. So does it work? Well, I daresay they’re not really aiming at techies like myself, but I typed in usability blog to see what came up. On the right column, there are related searches. That caught my eye. In the list were: Definition of Usability, Usability Testing, Web Usability, Define Usability Testing, Usability Factors, Web Design Usability, Why Is Usability Important, Human Computer Interaction, Hci, Heuristic Evaluation, Accessibility, Jakob Nielsen. From an information architecture point of view, this could encourage people to think more about related searches to improve the findability of content. Not only that, but this could be a quick and dirty (and cheap) keyword generator. I’d be interested to know who uses ask and why. I don’t know anyone who does, buy that could either be the circles I move in, or maybe it’s something people only do in the privacy of their own home. Write and share your comments.
Serial Killers and Information Seeking Behaviour
At my talk on Information Architecture last year, I described how the foraging behaviour of bees could help us to understand how users find information. It seems that the same technique is now being used to help find serial killers. Bees join hunt for serial killers. I need to think further about the fact that bees do not seek nectar which is to hand, and how this might help building the user experience.
