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Guest post by Russell Maschmeyer.
Adaptive Path's UX Week 2010 kicked off Tuesday at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, and it couldn't have been a better day for it; the first beautifully hot, summery weather I've seen since I landed at SFO earlier this summer. This year's UX Week promises an interesting line-up of game designers to meta-thinkers, each steeped in the study of people and behavior. You may consider UX folks nerds, but give us credit for being some of the most socially adept nerds you'll ever meet.
UX Week MC & Parter at Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz, explained this is "a week without a theme," though I've noticed a few commonalities among the presentations. One theme, Iteration, stood out on Tuesday. Adam Mosseri outlined his data-driven iterations on Facebook's navigation, Ben Fry led us through his iterative visualizations of the human genome, and Jeffrey Veen (founding partner of Adaptive Path and Typekit) compared the permutations of the ice industry to the launch-early-and-iterate-quickly ethos of Typekit. From a single day of presentations, it became clear that User Experience design requires a "Shoot first. Ask questions. Repeat." kind of mentality.
Though I was excited to see Ben Fry, Jeffrey Veen, and BJ Fogg, the highlight of the day was Nicole Lazzaro. Nicole is the Founder and President of XEODesign, an Oakland based Player Experience Design firm. She proposed a transformative design concept: applying gaming principals to things we don't typically consider games: work, school, preparing dinner, or reading the newspaper.
Of course, that's not a particularly ground-breaking proposal. Game principals have always been a part of non-game systems. We all grew up getting gold-stars in elementary school. What is Employee-of-the-Month if not a grown-up's Big Gold Star? New social applications like Four Square offer badges (a.k.a. gold stars) for using their service. At heart, using gaming principles to encourage behavior isn't a unique proposal. What is unique about Nicole's proposal is her particular model of fun.
By researching emotive facial expression during gameplay and grouping experiences by emotional response, Nicole and her team have theorized four distinct types of fun: Hard, Easy, Serious, and People-centric. Each has it's own effect on our emotional state, and it takes a number of these experiences to create an emotionally satisfying player experience. Gold stars or badges are only a small piece of a larger puzzle. By instilling a number of these types of fun into the experiences we design, we can create incredibly powerful experiences that can positively shape both emotional satisfaction and behavior.
If you're interested in finding out more about XEODesign and Nicole's work, check out her white papers and slides on slideshare.
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I just killed a social game mechanic | Gravity7: Social Interaction Design By Adrian Chan
(image) Techcrunch this week posted a copy of a social gaming playdeck used by SCVNGR. Social gaming is indeed hot these days. But there’s some confusion around game mechanics and social gaming dynamics. I don’t see any social in the playdeck provided below. So I’ve added my own commentary to each of the deck’s 47 points.
My apologies to its author, but the descriptions completely and entirely miss the socio-logical factors that make social gaming what it is. The deck, instead, describes individiual game play and spectacularly misinterprets connections between game play and player behavior. It reads as a Pavlovian exercise in attributing behaviors directly to a small number of game design elements, expanded here unnecessarily into distinctions that are redundant, disorganized (in fact they’re alphabetical), anti-social, illogical, and hopelessly blind.
In fact the disclosure of a deck such as this one might cause one to wonder just who the hell designs our social tools — and whether they are even qualified to execute on the subtleties of social interaction and shared online practices. A deck such as this one demonstrates quite clearly the inadequacies in social thinking and is a testament to the object and reward paradigm that seems to have taken over many game-like social platforms. These are nearing mythical status now as game-ification is installed as the new organizing principle for the design of social tools. A welcome counterpoint to which is the recent revelation from Foursquare that tips and recommendations will feature more prominently in their redesign (at last, we may have a real reason to checkin!).
Where, in this document, is presence? Where is reputation? Where is credibility? Where is there any sensitivity to the many different types of users, whose motives and motivations vary by personality and whose styles and habits of using social tools are distinct? Where is the recognition that social tools are embedded in real social practices? In fact, where’s the user-centric appreciation of experience that has served us so well in the past? At what point did we become so invested in design that began to view user behaviors (and presumably social outcomes) as a direct response to product features? But I digress. I’ll let you be the judge.
From SCVNGR’s Secret Game MechanicsPlaydeck, with my commentary added.
1. Achievement
Definition: A virtual or physical representation of having accomplished something. These are often viewed as rewards in and of themselves.
Example: a badge, a level, a reward, points, really anything defined as a reward can be a reward.
My commentary: Achievement is but one of the relations users form to reward representations. In fact, achievement-reward is tautological. It belongs to the very definition of reward that it proves achievement.
At stake is how does the user relate to the representation. Note that these involve relations not captured as achievement, but having meaning for the user nonetheless. Also note that the meaning of these for users may be social: they are a reflection of the user’s sense of his/her social position, status, rank, membership, etc — all of which are validating but which bestow meaning not just for reasons of achievement. In fact some of the highest forms of validation result from receiving gifts, from recognition by peers, and other attributions obtained not from direct achievement but from indirect acknowledgment by community.
- The user may identify with it: user is a winner, a mayor, an expert, number 1.
- The user may feel s/he possesses it: the representation is a thing, a quality, an attribute of personality, a sign of social status, a symbol of membership, etc.
- The user may identify with the group the representation symbolizes: the user now feels a sense of membership and belonging, as in a fan-team insignia relation.
- The user may want it or aspire to it: the user relates to a reward because it represents an image of what the user wishes for, including wishes to be perceived as. Luxury goods represent social status to individuals, allowing them to feel “rich” even if they are not.
Achievement is an accurate description of one type of activity-response relation, but only one. It misses the social dimensions of partnered and social play (two or more players). It misses the motivations associated with beating an opponent, and fails to distinguish between the “reward” of beating one’s own game play vs beating the game. It assigns too much of the experience to a linear and direct outcome of individual activity, where in social gaming much of the pleasure and motivation comes from activity mediated by social perceptions and dynamically changing social orders.
2. Appointment Dynamic
Definition: A dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take some action. Appointment dynamics are often deeply related to interval based reward schedules or avoidance dyanmics.
Example: Cafe World and Farmville where if you return at a set time to do something you get something good, and if you don’t something bad happens.
My commentary: This is not a dynamic, but a basic form of episodic framing. It states, simply, that in framed activities, some actions may be coupled to temporal intervals or to episodic markers. “Time” as mentioned here actually should be subdivided: time as in a specific point in time (friday, noon) and time as in sequence (after steps 1, 2, 3 have been completed). (All games are an experiential frame: they are structured and organized, have rules constraining behavior, enabling participation, and shaping both imagined, real, and expected outcomes.)
There is no social dynamic suggested here. Nor is there a behavioral dynamic, such that there’s no motivation explained or observed. Just a user’s necessary response to a temporal or sequential contingency. All games take time and all game events happen in order as set by game rules and design.
3. Avoidance
Definition: The act of inducing player behavior not by giving a reward, but by not instituting a punishment. Produces consistent level of activity, timed around the schedule.
Example: Press a lever every 30 seconds to not get shocked.
My commentary: I take umbrage at the claim that behavior is induced by the withholding of game rewards and punishments. Player behavior is sustained by user interest and that interest belongs to the user. In social games, activity levels of other users can be as compelling to users as the provision of game rewards. Among many other factors that may explain why a player plays, and with what degree of conscious and subconscious interest. Avoidance is a non-rule and explains nothing.
4. Behavioral Contrast
Definition: The theory defining how behavior can shift greatly based on changed expectations.
Example: A monkey presses a lever and is given lettuce. The monkey is happy and continues to press the lever. Then it gets a grape one time. The monkey is delighted. The next time it presses the lever it gets lettuce again. Rather than being happy, as it was before, it goes ballistic throwing the lettuce at the experimenter. (In some experiments, a second monkey is placed in the cage, but tied to a rope so it can’t access the lettuce or lever. After the grape reward is removed, the first monkey beats up the second monkey even though it obviously had nothing to do with the removal. The anger is truly irrational.)
My commentary: This one is also tautological. Behavior is the manifestation of psychology. Behavior is expectations. To say that behavior changes with changed expectations is making up a rule where there’s nothing but what’s already perfectly obvious. It’s like saying that people make new choices when they change their minds.
5. Behavioral Momentum
Definition: The tendency of players to keep doing what they have been doing.
Example: From Jesse Schell’s awesome Dice talk: “I have spent ten hours playing Farmville. I am a smart person and wouldn’t spend 10 hours on something unless it was useful. Therefore this must be useful, so I can keep doing it.”
My commentary: Again, a platitude of a rule. There’s no game rule in the observation that sometimes people continue to do what they’ve been doing. Habit would be a better term, and would permit one to at least account for game playing habit, social habit and pastime, routine, addiction, and distraction. Those, at least, are behaviorally differentiated and user-centric.
6. Blissful Productivity
Definition: The idea that playing in a game makes you happier working hard, than you would be relaxing. Essentially, we’re optimized as human beings by working hard, and doing meaningful and rewarding work.
Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk wherein she discusses how World of Warcraft players play on average 22 hours / week (a part time job), often after a full days work. They’re willing to work hard, perhaps harder than in real life, because of their blissful productivity in the game world.
My commentary: Who says we are optimized by working hard? Are we then confused by distraction? How about when we get lost in distraction? And can’t distraction be unproductively compelling? This makes no sense to me at all, and worse, makes a grand claim to human psychology that is at once deeply biased, culturally insensitive, non-specific (to psychological and personality differences), assigns personal motives to game participation, and even manages to establish a contradiction between what is work and what is play.
7. Cascading Information Theory
Definition: The theory that information should be released in the minimum possible snippets to gain the appropriate level of understanding at each point during a game narrative.
Example: showing basic actions first, unlocking more as you progress through levels. Making building on SCVNGR a simple but staged process to avoid information overload.
My commentary: Ridiculous, and ignores everything we have learned from narrative/story theory, besides which it also insults learning theory, learning modes, and conflates all game events to “snippets of information.” Information provided to a game player that s/he has leveled, has been awarded points, has a new team role, is being attacked are each meaningful only in context. Context, not information, frames the meaning of information, and defines what and how much information serves the purpose of sustaining game involvement. Information provided within a game is a game event.
8. Chain Schedules
Definition: the practice of linking a reward to a series of contingencies. Players tend to treat these as simply the individual contingencies. Unlocking one step in the contingency is often viewed as an individual reward by the player.
Example: Kill 10 orcs to get into the dragons cave, every 30 minutes the dragon appears.
My commentary: Besides being redundant (both “chain” and “schedule” imply serialized activity or events), this rule seems to say that players understand game play sequences. I think we got that when we were toddlers. All game play engages users in serialized activity for which there are proximate actions and contingent events. That’s the nature of a game — it’s a fiction understood. Game players may like to know what happens, or may welcome surprises. In social gaming, the involvement of others, especially when their communication is part of the play, adds to the experience. And communication cannot be accounted for by scheduling.
9. Communal Discovery
Definition: The game dynamic wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a challenge. Immensely viral and very fun.
Example: DARPA balloon challenge, the cottage industries that appear around McDonalds monopoly to find “Boardwalk”
My commentary: Episodic involvement of an audience, or part of an audience, is explained best on sociological grounds, not by means of the discovery concept. What is discovery for some is mob rule, action, suspense, or teamwork to others.
10. Companion Gaming
Definition: Games that can be played across multiple platforms
Example: Games that be played on iphone, facebook, xbox with completely seamless cross platform gameplay.
My commentary: No comment but that it’s poorly named, since “companion” suggests partnered play. In either case this is a product feature, not a dynamic.
11. Contingency
Definition: The problem that the player must overcome in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
Example: 10 orcs block your path
My commentary: All activity that hasn’t finished is contingent. Better would be to differentiate among contingencies. Those would include coupling (of user action to response); proximate contingency (what’s next); distant contingency (what happens later); social contingency (change affecting all players); etc.
12. Countdown
Definition: The dynamic in which players are only given a certain amount of time to do something. This will create an activity graph that causes increased initial activity increasing frenetically until time runs out, which is a forced extinction.
Example: Bejeweled Blitz with 30 seconds to get as many points as you can. Bonus rounds. Timed levels
My commentary: Time constraint. That players behave increasingly frenetically is a supposition suggesting a relation between user experience (frenetic) and activity intensity (speed of activity). I don’t think we all experience time constraints in the same way. Some potential players may in fact avoid games because of the stress-inducing panic that comes at the end; others may live for it. Again, not a dynamic, just a game design choice to involve a clock and to constrain the play to a set time frame.
13. Cross Situational Leader-boards
Definition: This occurs when one ranking mechanism is applied across multiple (unequal and isolated) gaming scenarios. Players often perceive that these ranking scenarios are unfair as not all players were presented with an “equal” opportunity to win.
Example: Players are arbitrarily sent into one of three paths. The winner is determined by the top scorer overall (i.e. across the paths). Since the players can only do one path (and can’t pick), they will perceive inequity in the game scenario and get upset.
My commentary: Awkwardly phrased but accurately observed. Perhaps the perceived or experienced social inequality could be captured in the dynamic as intentional unfairness. Still, this is less a dynamic than a reporting problem: game state or status can be reported equitably to its players, or not. At issue is whether design or reporting creates advantage. Advantage can itself be structured into game play as a form of reward (as in qualifying rounds in many sports that reward players with advantageous starting positions).
14. Disincentives
Definition: a game element that uses a penalty (or altered situation) to induce behavioral shift
Example: losing health points, amazon’s checkout line removing all links to tunnel the buyer to purchase, speeding traps
My commentary: Disincentives are used in game mechanics, but are not the same as punishments. Punishments would be better called “penalties.” What matters more than the disincentive (what happens if you’re bad) is the rule that articulates the right and wrong ways to play. These rules should accommodate individual experience of play as well as game design and also the society of players. Red cards for tackling in soccer protect players from injury as well as disincentivize hacking tackles as well as improve play for soccer players and fans overall. Ask what function the disincentive plays and at what level of game play.
15. Endless Games
Definition: Games that do not have an explicit end. Most applicable to casual games that can refresh their content or games where a static (but positive) state is a reward of its own.
Example: Farmville (static state is its own victory), SCVNGR (challenges constantly are being built by the community to refresh content)
My commentary: I prefer the term “open” to describe frames that are open ended. Endless suggests a tedium. This dynamic risks missing the user experience, wherein “endless” may just be a fun personal habit. (I’m playing again. I like it.)
16. Envy
Definition: The desire to have what others have. In order for this to be effective seeing what other people have (voyeurism) must be employed.
Example: my friend has this item and I want it!
My commentary: Envy is undifferentiated here. Envy is the relation of Subject : Subject (Attribute). Voyeurism is entirely different and not needed here. All that’s needed is a value system that attributes value to the Attribute which gives envy its pitch and tone. In this way we become envious of wealth, looks, power, ability, and what have you. All are different and all are explained as much by what the observer relates to (desires) as by what the perceived possesses. I do not envy political power and a politician does not make me envious. Voyeurism is a distinctly different social relation comprising parts anonymity, privacy, ethical norms, fantasy, and image.
17. Epic Meaning
Definition: players will be highly motivated if they believe they are working to achieve something great, something awe-inspiring, something bigger than themselves.
Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk where she discusses Warcraft’s ongoing story line and “epic meaning” that involves each individual has motivated players to participate outside the game and create the second largest wiki in the world to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.
My commentary: I like the term and I have a lot of respect for McGonigal (misspelled above). But this could be differentiated further. There is no epic meaning. There may be situations in which players are highly motivated by a higher cause or calling; or by crowd psychology (action, thrill, spectacle, synchronicity); or by abstract principles (doing right, being good, giving back); and so on.
Meaning may be meaningful because it is spontaneous, or because it responds to a situation. The concept of epic as grand narrative arc normally involves a situation that calls an individual to exceed him/herself in their response as action. But may also be the emergence of higher power within the individual. This is epic as England winning the world cup in 66 or epic as in Gandhi.
18. Extinction
Definition: Extinction is the term used to refer to the action of stopping providing a reward. This tends to create anger in players as they feel betrayed by no longer receiving the reward they have come to expect. It generally induces negative behavioral momentum.
Example: killing 10 orcs no longer gets you a level up
My commentary: Woah. I think this one describes what happens when players quit. That players quit is obvious, but hopefully we’re a bit more sophisticated than the Pavlovian description here suggests. Some try again. Some create new accounts and user name and play even harder next time. I guess they’d have to be described by the Lazarus dynamic. Also known as the Resurrection dynamic, and not to be confused with the Easter Egg.
19. Fixed Interval Reward Schedules
Definition: Fixed interval schedules provide a reward after a fixed amount of time, say 30 minutes. This tends to create a low engagement after a reward, and then gradually increasing activity until a reward is given, followed by another lull in engagement.
Example: Farmville, wait 30 minutes, crops have appeared
My commentary: Why not cal them timed rewards and scratch the part that tries to explain rhythm as a directly-induced behavioral response to timed game intervals.
20. Fixed Ratio Reward Schedule
Definition: A fixed ratio schedule provides rewards after a fixed number of actions. This creates cyclical nadirs of engagement (because the first action will not create any reward so incentive is low) and then bursts of activity as the reward gets closer and closer.
Example: kill 20 ships, get a level up, visit five locations, get a badge
My commentary: I’m beginning to wonder if the author of these game mechanics is OCD, ADD, or both.
21. Free Lunch
Definition: A dynamic in which a player feels that they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. It’s critical that work is perceived to have been done (just not by the player in question) to avoid breaching trust in the scenario. The player must feel that they’ve “lucked” into something.
Example: Groupon. By virtue of 100 other people having bought the deal, you get it for cheap. There is no sketchiness b/c you recognize work has been done (100 people are spending money) but you yourself didn’t have to do it.
My commentary: This one could be differentiated further. There are serendipitous events which may be well described as a free lunch. But there are also gifts. There are also shared benefits. There are targets achieved by means of collaboration (in which work is often not equally shared and results not equally deserved). The dynamic seems to want to identify a relation between effort and conscience, but if this is the case then social factors have to be considered.
22. Fun Once, Fun Always
Definition: The concept that an action in enjoyable to repeat all the time. Generally this has to do with simple actions. There is often also a limitation to the total level of enjoyment of the action.
Example: the theory behind the check-in everywhere and the check-in and the default challenges on SCVNGR.
My commentary: I’m thinking OCD. But the focus on simple actions still has me wondering if it’s ADD. The somewhat poignant remark at the end about a limited total level of enjoyment has me thinking OCD. Possibly a game tester.
23. Interval Reward Schedules
Definition: Interval based reward schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.
Example: wait N minutes, collect rent
My commentary: I’m beginning to sense a real problem with this author’s experience of time. But it does seem that he or she has figured out when the rewards come. That’s good. Because apparently these games are completely lacking in content and other people.
24. Lottery
Definition: A game dynamic in which the winner is determined solely by chance. This creates a high level of anticipation. The fairness is often suspect, however winners will generally continue to play indefinitely while losers will quickly abandon the game, despite the random nature of the distinction between the two.
Example: many forms of gambling, scratch tickets.
My commentary: Oops I spoke too soon. Add to fixed and variable: surprising. And there are other people now, too. It’s nice to know that their behaviors predictably group them into winners and losers (those being people who play and those who quit). I have to agree that fairness is suspect. Nothing’s fair. You’re playing and playing and it’s regular and timed and then it gets a bit more rhythmic and suddenly BLAMO the lottery rule delivers a punishing blow. Sigh.
25. Loyalty
Definition: The concept of feeling a positive sustained connection to an entity leading to a feeling of partial ownership. Often reinforced with a visual representation.
Example: fealty in WOW, achieving status at physical places (mayorship, being on the wall of favorite customers)
My commentary: Loyalty is not related to ownership any more than betrayal is an attribute of the dispossessed. If loyalty is reinforced with a graphic or icon then something is represented. If something is represented it must have been achieved (rule 1). If it was achieved, there is no loyalty, but only an individual sense of achievement (rule 1) owing probably to extended bouts of serialized game play sustained by varying levels of intense anticipation of fixed and/or variable rewards obtained by the successful selection of contingencies. The word “addict” as substitute for loyalty comes to mind.
26. Meta Game
Definition: a game which exists layered within another game. These generally are discovered rather than explained (lest they cause confusion) and tend to appeal to ~2% of the total game-playing audience. They are dangerous as they can induce confusion (if made too overt) but are powerful as they’re greatly satisfying to those who find them.
Example: hidden questions / achievements within world of warcraft that require you to do special (and hard to discover) activities as you go through other quests
My commentary: It’s the trap door in LOST. He’s down there pushing the button every 108 minutes. Here’s a meta game for you. Sports on tv are played by players whose skill playing the game is required by their teams to play the game which is watched by fans for whom it’s a game and by tv audiences at home, who listen to the game play narrated by commentators who often play games with their analyses. About 98% of the people who enjoy sports get this. Any frame can be embedded in other frames. Re-framing is what makes social games fun to play with friends: the game is played as a game (player against himself/herself and the game) as well as against others as well as having meta social meaning for its being a social pastime.
27. Micro Leader-boards
Definition: The rankings of all individuals in a micro-set. Often great for distributed game dynamics where you want many micro-competitions or desire to induce loyalty.
Example: Be the top scorers at Joe’s bar this week and get a free appetizer
My commentary: Micro is unnecessary but I like the idea of sets.
28. Modifiers
Definition: An item that when used affects other actions. Generally modifiers are earned after having completed a series of challenges or core functions.
Example: A X2 modifier that doubles the points on the next action you take.
My commentary: Not a dynamic but a game rule.
29. Moral Hazard of Game Play
Definition: The risk that by rewarding people manipulatively in a game you remove the actual moral value of the action and replace it with an ersatz game-based reward. The risk that by providing too many incentives to take an action, the incentive of actually enjoying the action taken is lost. The corollary to this is that if the points or rewards are taken away, then the person loses all motivation to take the (initially fun on its own) action.
Example: Paraphrased from Jesse Schell “If I give you points every time you brush your teeth, you’ll stop brushing your teeth b/c it’s good for you and then only do it for the points. If the points stop flowing, your teeth will decay.”
My commentary: Some confusion here manifest in whether players play for the game play, or for the outcomes of game play. Both are always worth taking into account. But I fail to see how this becomes moral hazard.
30. Ownership
Definition: The act of controlling something, having it be *your* property.
Example: Ownership is interesting on a number of levels, from taking over places, to controlling a slot, to simply owning popularity by having a digital representation of many friends.
My commentary: You guys with me on this? *One ring to rule them all*? Yes? I’m glad to see it finally confirmed that Wall St is a game.
31. Pride
Definition: the feeling of ownership and joy at an accomplishment
Example: I have ten badges. I own them. They are mine. There are many like them, but these are mine. Hooray.
My commentary: Three things that are themselves distinct, two of which are already defined here as dynamics (rule 1, rule 30), inversely related to rule 16, possibly as precondition for rule 25? Completely ignores the social recognition conventionally associated with pride. But perhaps that social recognition is mediated by means of rewards and representations. In which case we would have a nice attachment theory of mediated social recognition, achieved not through interaction but through substitutes: socially visible representations and awards.
32. Privacy
Definition: The concept that certain information is private, not for public distribution. This can be a demotivator (I won’t take an action because I don’t want to share this) or a motivator (by sharing this I reinforce my own actions).
Example: Scales the publish your daily weight onto Twitter (these are real and are proven positive motivator for staying on your diet). Or having your location publicly broadcast anytime you do anything (which is invasive and can should be avoided).
My commentary: Not a dynamic, but a system constraint. Visibility of players and play is a product choice. Its influence on player experience and play will be explained by the user’s personal and social investments. In either case, the act of sharing one’s play socially is not for the reinforcement of one’s own actions. That would be anti-social.
33. Progression Dynamic
Definition: a dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks.
Example: a progress bar, leveling up from paladin level 1 to paladin level 60
My commentary: not a dynamic but a design choice.
34. Ratio Reward Schedules
Definition: Ratio schedules provide a reward after a number of actions. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.
Example: kill 10 orcs, get a power up.
My commentary: I’m beginning to think that instead of variable and fixed we just say regular/irregular. Either way we’ve got temporality covered here. More than covered. Completely nailed to the floor.
35. Real-time v. Delayed Mechanics
Definition: Realtime information flow is uninhibited by delay. Delayed information is only released after a certain interval.
Example: Realtime scores cause instant reaction (gratification or demotivation). Delayed causes ambiguity which can incent more action due to the lack of certainty of ranking.
My commentary: See prior comment.
36. Reinforcer
Definition: The reward given if the expected action is carried out in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
Example: receiving a level up after killing 10 orcs.
My commentary: See prior comment on rule 31.
37. Response
Definition: The expected action from the player in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
Example: the player takes the action to kill 10 orcs
My commentary: Ditto.
38. Reward Schedules
Definition: the timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.
Example: getting a level up for killing 10 orcs, clearing a row in Tetris, getting fresh crops in Farmville
My commentary: Help me, I’m melting.
39. Rolling Physical Goods
Definition: A physical good (one with real value) that can be won by anyone on an ongoing basis as long as they meet some characteristic. However, that characteristic rolls from player to player.
Example: top scorer deals, mayor deals
My commentary: Complete mental paralysis threatens as I try to distinguish between goods and rewards, and between the pride of ownership and the reward structure of having an actual physical good (real value).
40. Shell Game
Definition: a game in which the player is presented with the illusion of choice but is actually in a situation that guides them to the desired outcome of the operator.
Example: 3 Card Monty, lotteries, gambling
My commentary: Not a dynamic, but basic game design. The game player will always experience choice as choosing. The designer has designed the game’s play, its rules, and outcomes. Illusion doesn’t enter the picture because we’re talking here about playing games.
41. Social Fabric of Games
Definition: the idea that people like one another better after they’ve played games with them, have a higher level of trust and a great willingness to work together.
Example: From Jane McGonicgal’s TED talk where she suggests that it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone because you need them to spend their time with you, play by the same rules, shoot for the same goals.
My commentary: Games are a social pastime. Glad to see that noted, even if it took 40 preceding rules to get to it. It should be noted that in 1969 El Salvador and Honduras went to war for 106 hours after playing each other in a soccer match. It is known as the soccer war.
42. Status
Definition: The rank or level of a player. Players are often motivated by trying to reach a higher level or status.
Example: white paladin level 20 in WOW.
My commentary: Rank is fine. “Status” is unnecessary and in the day and age of status updates, confusing. Possibly explained by rule 31.
43. Urgent Optimism
Definition: Extreme self motivation. The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
Example: From Jane McGonical’s TED talk. The idea that in proper games an “epic win” or just “win” is possible and therefore always worth acting for.
My commentary: Neither a dynamic nor an accurate description of human affect. Cautious optimism better modifies optimism. Urgency is useful in characterizing need. Would be difficult to distinguish from “desperately hopeful.”
44. Variable Interval Reward Schedules
Definition: Variable interval reward schedules provide a reward after a roughly consistent amount of time. This tends to create a reasonably high level of activity over time, as the player could receive a reward at any time but never the burst as created under a fixed schedule. This system is also more immune to the nadir right after the receiving of a reward, but also lacks the zenith of activity before a reward in unlocked due to high levels of ambiguity.
Example: Wait roughly 30 minutes, a new weapon appears. Check back as often as you want but that won’t speed it up. Generally players are bad at realizing that.
My commentary: Totally redundant with rule 23, and conflates the two kinds of time: duration and sequential (time it takes for Z to happen, and sequential ordering of X,Y,Z).
45. Variable Ratio Reward Schedule
Definition: A variable ratio reward schedule provides rewards after a roughly consistent but unknown amount of actions. This creates a relatively high consistent rate of activity (as there could always be a reward after the next action) with a slight increase as the expected reward threshold is reached, but never the huge burst of a fixed ratio schedule. It’s also more immune to nadirs in engagement after a reward is acheived.
Example: kill something like 20 ships, get a level up. Visit a couple locations (roughly five) get a badge
My commentary: Again, conflates the two kinds of time. An “unknown amount of actions” simply states that the sequence is unknown. Is a again a game rule.
46. Viral Game Mechanics
Definition: A game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people)
Example: Farmville making you more successful in the game if you invite your friends, the social check-in
My commentary: Completely misses viral distribution dynamics, which are part distribution system, part communication, and part social graph.
47. Virtual Items
Definition: Digital prizes, rewards, objects found or taken within the course of a game. Often these can be traded or given away.
Example: Gowalla’s items, Facebook gifts, badges
My commentary: And I think we’re back to rule 1.
Tags: game-mechanic, social-gaming, kill, deck
Tweeted by: miniver, gravity7, seanleoryan
PDFs:
http://www.gravity7.com/gravity7_forensic.pdf,
http://www.gravity7.com/gravity7_retainer.pdf,
http://www.gravity7.com/gravity7_oncall.pdf,
http://www.gravity7.com/gravity7_socialmedia_audit.pdf
Sentiment analysis: neutral]]>
» UX Australia ‘10 Report: Day One Johnny Holland – It's all about interaction » Blog Archive
Melbourne set out to impress for this year’s UX Australia, held in the beautiful Langham Hotel. Year two of the conference had a feeling of building on the work from the inaugral event with confidence and assurance - (even if the day began with many recovering from the pre-drinks before). Some recurring themes of the day were business and design, wicked problems, and the emotional side of user experience, with the community coming to the fore with an active twitter stream and visual notes.
Keynote – The Dawning of the Age of Experience
Jared Spool
(image)Jared Spool's Range of UX Skill
“Saying a website is ‘usable’ is like saying dinner was ‘edible’
Spool kicked off the conference with an entertaining and wide ranging talk (who knew that there were people called chicken sexers?) that covered user experience and business, design knowledge, and ways to create great UX.
He began with a rundown on the iPod/Sundisk/Zune scene (market share 75%, 7%, and 5% respectively), and a breakdown of the reasons – despite the iPod having inferior hardware and a troublesome OS, they have won on their service system (they are the top digital seller of music/third overall, and are the only manufacturer to have service stores) and an attention to brand.
He also touched on similar success stories (Netflix has far overtaken Blockbuster, and attracts new customers largely through their existing ones evangelising it), but more interestingly some failures, to highlight the perils of favouring user experience over business:
- Big Box Retailer lost 20% of revenue after spending $100k on redesign, took 3 1/2 years to recover.
- A 1,700 person law firm moved from static HTML to a Sharepoint site – no one could change anything, didn’t bill for a month (~$4m), and employees were near revolt
- An information site changed the findability from 4 clicks to 1, which would have been good … except that the site make money on clicks! They had a 40% drop in page views.
Spool also touched on how design decisions can’t always be interrogated, as while research is useful, designers – like chicken sexers, sushi chefs, and midwives – often “just know” solutions through experience (see his related Johnny Holland post on Hands and Brains for talk on this as well). The intriguing suggestion here was that we should maybe consider the idea of UX apprenticeships. This becomes more important when we realise the range of skills involved in UX (see diagram on right).
Spool suggested we ask three questions to find great UX:
- Vision – “can everyone on team describe experience of using the design 5 years on?”
- Feedback – “in the last 6 wks, have you spent more than 2 hrs, watching someone use your or a competitor’s design?” Studies show that exposure time impacts success
- Culture - “In the last 6 weeks, have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?”. Scott Cook, the CEO of Intuit, holds ‘failure parties‘ – he presents an award to the recipient, teases them for 2 minutes – and then spends the next 28 unpacking what they’ve learned from the project.
and summarised that successful UX:
- integrates users & business,
- is learned but not open to introspection,
- is invisible,
- is cultural,
- ….is something we’re still learning how to do (and we’re getting better everyday).
Defining Experience Strategy with UX Designer as Protagonist
Anthony Colfelt
Colfelt gave a number of memorable metaphors for UX design in his presentation, backed up with his work at UX consultancy Different. Beginning with the solar system of UX (currently tech is the sun, circled by the business, which is circled by customer experience), he suggested that to counter this and allow user experience happen earlier in the project management process, UX designers should be like the ultimate protagonist – Arnold Schwartzenegger.
His key takeaways were that experience research should be like a shield (no holes, scientifically implemented) as it could then be used to avoid costly mistakes downstream.
Designing wide in Government: A recipe for doing the design of very, very complex concepts that impact on society
Darren Menachemson
To give a sense of the complexity of designing wide in Government Menachemson started with Horst Rittel’s notion of wicked problems. Menachemson gave insight into what is involved in tackling incredibly complex design spaces (such as systems for dealing with the whole health of a patient over a life time). Wide design starts with wide outcomes requiring us to focus on products and service in the contexts of systems – rather than a micro view (interfaces, interactions, etc). Many of the points resonated with essential service design principles, but a key (differentiating?) aspect was illustrated through the perspective taken in the Citizen Journey map by the Design Council: the start point is the citizen’s journey in life (from which we can identify and leverage the points of intersection with government), not the citizen’s journey with the government (big big picture!). His tactics? : work collaboratively (but make sure this work is somehow accountable and has influence), stay away from the detail (for as long as possible) and cultivate a tolerance for ambiguity.
Getting new blood from old stones: How to get new insights from old data
Stephen Cox
Cox shared a different way of thinking about research and how it ties into our everyday work in this fantastic presentation delivered with some great home style video humour. Prompted by a need to bring vendors working on customer research projects up to speed with knowledge already possessed by Westpac, Cox shared how he mined old data (10 years worth!), found new high level insights and patterns and shared them through tools like bare bones personas. Rather than sticking to the status quo of research on a project by project level (tactical) his “insights framework” helps the organisation identify and seek operational and strategic insights from existing and future research data. This was also a call to action for design research vendors to get more strategic with their own expertise – research is cumulative, so start embedding strategic questions within project-level research that can help to inform and develop higher level knowledge.
Design Thinking – Is This Our Ticket to the Big Table?
Iain Barker
Barker started by asking the audience whether many called themselves either Design Thinkers or Service Designers (both only had a few hands raised), a fitting start for a talk that looked at the current business – but not design – darling, “design thinking”. Sharing a number of resources both for and against the argument:
- the IDEO definition
- Helen Waters at Design Week 2010 “For now, the business community seems to have the ball, and it’s running with it. But designers can’t afford not to be a part of this conversation”
- Kevin McCullagh at the Big-Rethink 2010 “There’s something odd going on when business and political leaders flatter design with potentially holding the key to such big and pressing problems, and the design community looks the other way”.
- The rather concerning statement from Bruce Nussbaum that “CEOs must be designers“
- Don Norman’s “Meanwhile exploit the myth [of design thinking]. Act as if you believe it. Just don’t actually do so.”
Design Thinking and Experience Design - can't we all just get along?
However, backed up with some amazing stats such as that shares in design-led companies outperform others in stock led indices by 200% ) he urged designers to perhaps just do design thinking work, (and be prepared to have to fight for design processes and against indoctoration) even if they’d rather not be called design thinkers.
Design Secrets Revealed
Todd Zaki Warfel
Originally called “the right way to wireframe” this rare behind the scences glimpse of what Ux’er’s do all day was was prompted by the lack of visibility around UX work. Unlike visual designers who show case on sites like dribbble.com or developers using Github, we’ve never seen the wireframes of the likes of JJG or Peter Moriville (though we have now!). Todd Zaki Warfel, Will Evans, Fred Beecher and Russ Unger took up the challenge – shut up or nut up – to “pull back the Kimono” and expose their work practices.
What we learnt:
- They never work to requirements (“that’s for monkeys”) – use methods like the task analysis grid instead which put things in context and enforces a prioritisation
- Sketch, sketch and sketch some more – as a team – do it fast then (live) prototype
- Pitch and critique at every stage, with clients (practice can be required & as @Sandie_lewis tweeted “critique is about how well a design meets the design goals. Not about what you like or don’t”)
Check out the slides and the 4 minute video of the whole process below or with related videos:
Designing for Biofeedback
Erik Champion and Andrew Dekker
Champion and Dekker’s presentation on their research into biofeedback [academic paper, PDF]was an insightful look into future interfaces. Their study (as well as talking about zombies and psychology, the uncanny, and current biofeedback devices) adapted Half-Life 2 to adapt to skin (sweat) and heartrate feedback from users wearing a glove. The game used the feedback to change the game in a number of ways:
- The scene was monochromatic with a low heart rate, vivid at faster rate, and red with high stress
- Deliberately keeping breathing rate slow made the user see through walls.
Tests shows that gamers preferred the biometric version of the game. Champion and Dekker suggested that future applications for this include gaming, meditative purposes, and even public spaces.
Beyond Frustration: 3 Levels of Happy Design
How much happiness can you design in? Dana Chisnell urged designers to think about designing for happiness. In a presentation similar to her UX Mag article of the same name, she outlined what she considered her 3 levels of happy design:
- Pleasure – a pleasing awareness, the of course, relationships, satisfying. Don Normal calls this visceral. She suggests that they have ‘treats’ [or Easter Eggs] and are thoughtful, and gives http://tripit.com , http://mint.com , and Virgin America as examples.
- Flow – Understanding, contentment, time stops – immersion, key strengths emphasised, trust
- Meaning - reflectiveness, commitment, belonging, contributing, making a difference (part of something bigger than you) – examples include http://zipcar.com
Change Agents at Object Gallery: A multi-disciplinary experiment in interactive physical installation design
David Gravina
(image)Changing Agents project
Can design change the world? Yes, but not without a road map and some tools. Gravina shared the public kick off of Digital Eskimo’s new Change Agent’s project (building on the theme of wicked problems introduced by Darren earlier) – the goal is to create an open source & free to share toolkit to help designers tackle the big issues. Digital Eskimo attempted a public form of collaboration with other designers via installations at Object Gallery and then ACMI. It turns out that post-it notes are a big hit for gathering ideas even in a gallery context! Gravina reflected on the opportunities and pitfalls of trying to engage people in big ideas in such public spaces and the dangers of giving people free reign with texters! While the ideas people contributed to the physical installations were intriguing, the real results were in getting other designers and architects on board the Change Agents project.
101 things I (should have) learned in interaction design school – the sequal
In the follow up to the hilarious-but-strangely-informative UX Australia 2009 talk (where they took rules from Matthew Frederick’s book 101 Things I Learned at Architecture School and attempted to apply them to interaction design), Morris and Morphett upped the ante in every way possible …. from a DIY (!) money grabbing machine on stage, to a host of 101 Things books to work from (now architecture, film, fashion, business, and culinary school), a Windows 7 app user-testing-from-hell session, and numerous mentions of the trials and tribulations of their http://ux101.com site.
(image)Chaos reigned at UX Australia when Matt and Shane took to the stage ....
That said, most of the rules pulled from other design disciplines, ranging from customer allergies to studio locations proved fairly easy to translate:
- #77 from 101 Culinary: A customer’s allergy is a chef’s problem. Translation: know your users test a lot.
- #45 from 101 Film : Studio or Remote (for locations). Translation: testing in the field versus testing in a controlled environment
- #63 from 101 Film : Help the audience keep track of your characters (have original, pointed names). Translation: don’t have a flat unprioritised visual hierarchy; think of user paths and anoint landmark pages to help people through your site.
—
Jared image by mssuec
Matt and Shane images by wheelyweb and NathanaelB
Related posts
- UX Australia ‘09 report: Day 2
- UX Australia ‘09 report: Day 1
- UX Australia ‘09 report: Alex Wright Keynote
- EuroIA 09 report: day 2
Tweeted by: pennyhagen, jeroenvangeel, ruthenry, th3q, rfeijo, UsabilityNinja, mojoguzzi, RichmondUX, uxtweeter, UXfeeder, johnnyholland, vickytnz, AliceNWondrlnd
Twitter hashtags: #uxaustralia, #UX, #IA, #IxD
PDFs:
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07312.18055.pdf
Youtube Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLenYBX3Iqk
Slideshare Presentations:
http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=uxaus-behindthekimono-100826014017-phpapp02&rel=0&stripped_title=design-secrets-revealed
Sentiment analysis: neutral]]>
Cool Infographics - Cool Infographics - TEDTalk: David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization
How to add the
Cool Infographics button to your:
- iPhone
- iPad
- iPod Touch
Subscribe on your Amazon Kindle:
Tags: mccandless, visualization, datum, cool
Sentiment analysis: neutral]]>
The Four Phases of Design Thinking - Warren Berger - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
What can people in business learn from studying the ways successful designers solve problems and innovate? On the most basic level, they can learn to question, care, connect, and commit — four of the most important things successful designers do to achieve significant breakthroughs.
Having studied more than a hundred top designers in various fields over the past couple of years (while doing research for a book), I found that there were a few shared behaviors that seemed to be almost second nature to many designers. And these ingrained habits were intrinsically linked to the designer's ability to bring original ideas into the world as successful innovations. All of which suggests that they merit a closer look.
Question. If you spend any time around designers, you quickly discover this about them: They ask, and raise, a lot of questions. Often this is the starting point in the design process, and it can have a profound influence on everything that follows. Many of the designers I studied, from Bruce Mau to Richard Saul Wurman to Paula Scher, talked about the importance of asking "stupid questions"--the ones that challenge the existing realities and assumptions in a given industry or sector. The persistent tendency of designers to do this is captured in the joke designers tell about themselves. How many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?
In a business setting, asking basic "why" questions can make the questioner seem nave while putting others on the defensive (as in, "What do you mean 'Why are we doing it this way?' We've been doing it this way for 22 years!"). But by encouraging people to step back and reconsider old problems or entrenched practices, the designer can begin to re-frame the challenge at hand — which can then steer thinking in new directions. For business in today's volatile marketplace, the ability to question and rethink basic fundamentals — What business are we really in? What do today's consumers actually need or expect from us? — has never been more important.
Care. It's easy for companies to say they care about customer needs. But to really empathize, you have to be willing to do what many of the best designers do: step out of the corporate bubble and actually immerse yourself in the daily lives of people you're trying to serve. What impressed me about design researchers such as Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO was the dedication to really observing and paying close attention to people — because this is usually the best way to ferret out their deep, unarticulated needs. Focus groups and questionnaires don't cut it; designers know that you must care enough to actually be present in people's lives.
Connect. Designers, I discovered, have a knack for synthesizing--for taking existing elements or ideas and mashing them together in fresh new ways. This can be a valuable shortcut to innovation because it means you don't necessarily have to invent from scratch. By coming up with "smart recombinations" (to use a term coined by the designer John Thackara), Apple has produced some of its most successful hybrid products; and Nike smartly combining a running shoe with an iPod to produce its groundbreaking Nike Plus line (which enables users to program their runs). It isn't easy to come up with these great combos. Designers know that you must "think laterally" — searching far and wide for ideas and influences — and must also be willing to try connecting ideas that might not seem to go together. This is a way of thinking that can also be embraced by non-designers.
Commit. It's one thing to dream up original ideas. But designers quickly take those ideas beyond the realm of imagination by giving form to them. Whether it's a napkin sketch, a prototype carved from foam rubber, or a digital mock-up, the quick-and-rough models that designers constantly create are a critical component of innovation — because when you give form to an idea, you begin to make it real.
But it's also true that when you commit to an idea early — putting it out into the world while it's still young and imperfect — you increase the possibility of short-term failure. Designers tend to be much more comfortable with this risk than most of us. They know that innovation often involves an iterative process with setbacks along the way — and those small failures are actually useful because they show the designer what works and what needs fixing. The designer's ability to "fail forward" is a particularly valuable quality in times of dynamic change. Today, many companies find themselves operating in a test-and-learn business environment that requires rapid prototyping. Which is just one more reason to pay attention to the people who've been conducting their work this way all along.
Warren Berger is the author of GLIMMER: How design can transform, business, your life, and maybe even the world (Penguin Press). He edits the online magazine GlimmerSite.com.
Tags:
design, creativity, innovation, designthinking, process, ux, thinking, hbr, management, business
Delicious Users:
Darrell G, Blane, Cosalux, plengqui, cdnorman, Kathryn, Frank Capria, Andrew, ibox2000, dmegivern
Tweeted by:
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Twitter hashtags:
#DesignThinking, #innovation, #bizarch, #entarch, #Design, #creativity, #ux, #harvard, #clientrelationship, #proqure
Sentiment analysis: neutral]]>
(image) Every believer in Web Analytics 2.0 knows that awesomeness comes not from answering just the "What" question but from also answering the "Why" question.
What comes from Google Analytics, Adobe Site Catalyst, WebTrends, CoreInsight / NetMetrics and more.
Why comes from lab usability studies, website surveys, "follow me home" exercises, experimentation & testing, and other such delightful endeavors.
Why gives context to the What, and delightfully helps you not have to overlay your biases when you try to infer visitor intent form all the What (clickstream) data.
I know that you agree Why is important.
I know that you even realize Why is ever easier to accomplish (usability studies are economical, surveys and testing platforms start at the sweet price of free!).
Yet your site stinks like a skunk.
The reasons are complicated.
You are smart, so that is not it. Maybe it is internal politics. Maybe it is the agency you have outsourced the site to, the agency whose only competence seems to be gratuitous use of flash. Maybe it is that it is not your job, you are the "quant" guy or "GA girl". Maybe even after taking one of the team and going out on three dates the IT Dude still refuses to put Website Optimizer tags on the site. Maybe the well meaning but "never met our real customers" HiPPO dictates site design.
Bottom-line: Your site stinks and you need to fix it.
Allow me to introduce you a User Centric Design that is, I think, the solution you have been waiting for: Heuristic Evaluations
I love heuristic evaluations because they are cheap, fast and you probably already have resources you need in your company. A large part of my adoration also comes from the fact that heuristic evaluations are us going back to the basics in an attempt to create un-stinky websites.
(image)
What Are Heuristic Evaluations?
A heuristic is a rule of thumb. In as much, heuristic evaluations follow a set of well established rules (best practices) in web design and how website visitors experience websites and interact with them.
When conducting a heuristic evaluation a user researcher (or an HCI expert) acts as a website customer and attempts to complete a set of predetermined tasks related to a website's existence. For example: Trying to place and order, or looking to find out the status of an order, or the solution to an error code, or decide which of many products on a site are optimal for a specific customer persona.
But here is the lovely part, and why almost anyone can perform heuristic evaluations. in addition to best practices the researcher (or you!) will raw from their own experience, knowledge and common sense.
Heuristic evaluations are best when they are used to identify what parts of the customer experience are most broken on your website. They can be very beneficial if you have not yet conducted any usability tests or when you would like to have a quick review of prototypes that the designers might be considering.
In either case, you can quickly determine the lowest hanging fruits in terms of "broken" parts of the customer experience. With this feedback there can be iterative improvements to the customer experience. You'll probably already have connected the dots and realized that this is a fantastic way to identify ideas for A/B or Multivariate experiments on the live website.
(image)
[I Heart] Group Heuristic Evaluations
There is one more thing, a way to amplify the impact and get even better results.
Get everyone involved!
Heuristic evaluations can also be done in groups!!
Invite people around you with key skills, such a designers, information architects, web analytics professionals, that girl in accounting you really like, other analysts in the company (and their quantitative understanding of site data), search experts, the intern who only communicates via Posterous, and so on and so forth.
The goal is simple: Identify flaws by attempting to mimic the customer experience (if possible under the stewardship of a User Researcher, if not then under the gaze of your haunting brown eyes) by completing the tasks on the website as a custom.
The great benefit of the group heuristic evaluation method is that you can tap into the "wisdom of crowds". This is especially powerful because the web is such an intensely personal medium, and the group members can offer different points of view that highlight issues quickly.
The process that worked optimally for me was to send an email to 10 or so folks (a diverse set!). Invite them to a noon meeting in a largish conference room and order lunch for them (best $50 I ever spent). Once everyone was settled (by 1205!) project the website on the screen and try to complete the most common customer tasks.
I (or you) have to do a good job of moderating the discussion and ensure everyone participates. There is no such thing as a bad opinion, diversity is good. Collect all pertinent feedback.
Heuristic evaluations can provide valuable feedback at a low cost ($50 in my case) in a very short amount of time (an hour in my case) and identify obvious usability problems. Hence they are best for optimizing work flows, improving user interface design and for understanding the overall stinkiness (or lack thereof) of the website.
Here is another subtle benefit of the group evaluations: improved communication and, dare I say, camaraderie between different groups in your company (big or small).
There is nothing that quite brings people together like a, pardon the expression, bitchfest. Everyone contributes, everyone commiserates, everyone loves it. Next time they are doing something they'll know what you do. Next time you need help, you'll know who to call (and they'll pick up the phone!). It is a great way to bring a sense of common purpose and a sense of ownership to improving the website experience.
(image)
Conducting A Heuristic Evaluation (The Glorious Process!).
You're excited right?
Here are six steps to conducting a successful evaluation process, either when you do it or you are doing it as a group:
1. Write down the tasks that customers are expected to complete on the website. If you are using surveys on your site (even a simple site level survey like 4Q from iPerceptions or page level survey like Kissinsights) then that is a fantastic source of this information. You should also, if possible, talk to the site owner. Here is what you might end up with on your list:
- Find information about the top-selling product on the website.
- Locate a store closest to where the customer lives.
- Place an order on the website by using PayPal. (If the website doesn't accept PayPal, how easily and quickly can a customer find that out?)
- Sign up to show up at a protest march against taxes on the richest Americans.
- Successfully contact tech support via email.
- Pick the right product for customer profile x (where x can be a small business owner or a family of four or someone who is allergic to peanuts).
2. This is sometimes hard but try to establish success benchmarks for each task. For example success rate for placing an order for the best selling product = 80%, signing up for the protest march = 99%, contact tech support = 90%, etc etc.
3. The fun part. Walk through each task as a customer would and make note of the key findings from the experience – everything from how long it takes to complete the task to how many steps it takes to the hurdles in accomplishing the tasks to how profound your embarrassment was that this was your own company's website.
4. If you were using a best practices checklist (more on this below) then make a note of the specific rule violations.
5. The hard part. Create a report of the findings. You can use PowerPoint with a screenshot of the webpage and clear call-outs for issues found. Or you can use Camtesia / a screen recording software to capture the session (and the group discussion). This can be distilled to a "the best of the bitchfest" collection for your superiors.
6. The hardest part. Categorize the recommendations into Urgent, Important and Nice to Have. We all get swept into emotions fervor. It is also possible that when you present your findings to your Sr. Management they might be a bit HiPPOish (not that there's anything wrong with that).
You want to go in with the Urgent, Important and Nice to Have based on impact on the customer experience and the company bottom-line. This helps drive a "what we should do" discussion rather than "I think we should do that" discussion.
That's it.
The process, as always in web analytics, is important and I hope the above six steps help you create a process in your company that is repeatable and yields impactful results.
I want to stress again that this is a great way for you to get into the customer's shoes, for your to build camaraderie, involve the cross-functional team of people, and finally find the lowest hanging fruit for sure and perhaps even some big ones.
(image)
The Cheapest Heuristic Evaluation Exercise.
I have hinted about the cheapest possible heuristic evaluation exercise a couple of times in this post.
It is: You sitting down with your common sense and a list of "best practices" and checking how well, or badly, your website does against that list. Then do steps 5 & 6 above.
This is fast and impactful. Even in the worst case you identify the most broken things / annoyances.
I have used lots of website best practices usability checklists over time and have settled on using Dr. Peter Meyers's 25-point checklist. It is simple, effective and quite expansive. You can download it here. [If you' have Web Analytics 2.0 then you'll also find an "extended edition" on the CD that is attached to the back cover of the book.]
The usability checklist has four sections. Here's a brief summary:
Accessibility
1. Site Load-time Is Reasonable
2. Adequate Text-to-Background Contrast
3. Font Size/Spacing Is Easy to Read
4. Flash & Add-ons Are Used Sparingly
5. Images Have Appropriate ALT Tags
6. Site Has Custom Not-found/404 Page
Identity
7. Company Logo Is Prominently Placed
8. Tagline Makes Company's Purpose Clear
9. Home-page Is Digestible In 5 Seconds
10. Clear Path to Company Information
11. Clear Path to Contact Information
Navigation
12. Main Navigation Is Easily Identifiable
13. Navigation Labels Are Clear & Concise
14. Number of Buttons/Links Is Reasonable
15. Company Logo Is Linked to Home-page
16. Links Are Consistent & Easy to Identify
17. Site Search Is Easy to Access
Content
18. Major Headings Are Clear & Descriptive
19. Critical Content Is Above The Fold
20. Styles & Colors Are Consistent
21. Emphasis (bold, etc.) Is Used Sparingly
22. Ads & Pop-ups Are Unobtrusive
23. Main Copy Is Concise & Explanatory
24. URLs Are Meaningful & User-friendly
25. HTML Page Titles Are Explanatory
Seems simple right?
I bet your website currently breaks 10 of the rules above. It is hard to believe. Set up a quite hour aside. Go through the checklist. But first go download the detailed checklist at Dr. Pete's website.
When you are done remember to do steps 5 and 6 of the recommended heuristic evaluation process outlined above.
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Benefits of Heuristic Evaluations.
In case you somehow made it here and were not convinced of the value doing heuristic evaluations here is a quick summary of the benefits:
- Heuristic evaluations are extremely fast to perform, with a very short time to insights.
- They leverage existing resources in your company (what could be awesomer?).
- You'll identify the most egregious customer issues on your website (often all the low and medium hanging fruit, quickly).
- They can be used very effectively early in the website development process to find potential customer hurdles / deal breakers.
- If you have an existing UCD program or hire an external company/agency. heuristic evaluations can reduce the cost of full usability tests by helping fix the obvious problems. The $900 an hour charged by the Agency can then be focused on hidden / really tough challenges.
Thing to Watch For.
It should be clear that I am a fan of the heuristic evaluation process. And it is every fan's duty to also highlight things to watch out for. Here they are:
- Both single person led or group evaluations contain company employees, and sometimes usability experts, but none of them are the actual customers. Despite using best practices and our wisdom we might miss some subtle problems, even as we identify the obvious ones. Be very aware of this.
- [It follows from the above point that.] The better you are at step #1 outlined in the heuristic evaluation process, the better your outcomes will be.
- When there is disagreement in recommendations from the heuristic evaluations there can be great value by doing live website tests or usability studies (whatever is faster, usually experiments).
- Heuristic evaluations are best for optimizing work flows, larger more obvious parts of website design and the overall usability of the website.
In summary: Not quite God's gift to humanity, but rather the best thing you could do to identify the low and medium fixes to your site that will significantly improve the experience of your customers.
Don't spend your day immersed in Google Analytics and just the "What" analysis. Understanding "Why" is the key, use it to unlock actionable insights.
Ok your turn now.
Have you done heuristic evaluations for your website? Who leads them in your company? Do you have a list of usability best practices that you use on your website? What other methods of of listening / collecting voice of customer / answering "Why" do you use in your company?
Please share your feedback / critique / questions / answers via comments.
Thanks.
PS:
Couple other related posts you might find interesting:
- Overview & Importance of Qualitative Metrics
- Eight Tips For Choosing An Online Survey Provider
- Measuring Success for a Support Website: A Point of View
- Is Conversion Rate Enough? It's A Good Start, Now Do More!
- Multiplicity: Succeed Awesomely At Web Analytics 2.0!
Tags: usability, analytics, google, design, process, wa, usabilidad
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Sentiment analysis: neutral]]>
And yet, despite this bleak reality, some talk persists of silver linings: less cash to spend means less materialism, a real change to “the definition of living well,” as Jim Taylor, a vice president of Harrison Group, a market research firm in Waterbury, Conn., told The Times as the big banks melted down in the fall of 2008. At that time, unemployed Wall Street dads were said to be discovering the unexpected joys of domesticity. Minivan moms in the summertime learned that days at the public beach were just as rewarding as playing tennis while the kids improved themselves at foreign-language camp. The glue of all this new happiness was meant to be togetherness — a belief that still sustains reports that people are volunteering more, pulling together and even replacing their propensity to compete with their neighbors with a new spirit of cooperation and solidarity. “There’s a new level of social coordination,” says Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University, relating to me how parents of his acquaintance recently agreed to a multilateral halt in the escalation of kid-birthday-party madness in favor of back-to-basics cake and balloons. “In some areas of our life we’re resetting. Over time, we may get de-escalation.”
This glass-half-full narrative, the popular trope that the Great Recession will ennoble us by purging us of our excesses, has, as its reference point, the Great Depression — or a certain idea of the Great Depression. After all, we’ve been told countless times, the Depression put an end to the libertine individualism of the flapper age: families stayed home and played Monopoly, finding strength and sustenance with one another. Missing from this rosy picture, however, historians point out, is the fact that, as Steven Mintz, a Columbia University historian puts it, “they had no choice.” The atmosphere was often pretty rotten in those times of togetherness, he says, and many kids reacted by getting away from their parents as quickly as possible: “Teenagers who were unhappy with their families created a separate culture, a teenage culture, for the first time. Their family lives were unpleasant — their fathers were depressed — these kids separated themselves.”
What the Great Depression was actually like — mostly wretched — and how we frequently choose to think of it — as ultimately redemptive — are two very different things. Our society didn’t fully come together over the New Deal; the opposition to it was fierce. What would bring Americans their strongest sense of unity, a powerful sense of purpose and energy — and ultimately, jobs and large-scale, life-bettering educational opportunities — was the cataclysm of World War II, according to the historian Glen Elder Jr., author of the classic “Children of the Great Depression.”
Our nostalgia for the Depression speaks volumes about how we feel not just about the past but also about our lives today. A craving for a simpler, slower, more centered life, one less consumed by the soul-emptying crush of getting and spending, runs deep within our culture right now. It was born of the boom, and not just because of the materialism of that era but also because of the work it took then to keep a family afloat, at a time of rising home prices and health care costs, frozen real wages and the pressures of an ever-widening income gap. As the recent Rockefeller report showed, for most families the miseries of the Great Recession don’t represent a break from the recent past, just a significant worsening of the stresses they’ve been under for years and years.
That the Great Recession could then bring hope for a major recalibration — a resetting of all the clocks — is not surprising. Unfortunately, though, it’s not happening in any meaningful way. The poor are getting poorer, and the rich, despite stock-market setbacks, are still comparatively rich. The most devastating losses in household wealth over the past two years have been suffered by the middle class. And families are fraying at the seams. The Pew poll showed nearly half of people who had been unemployed for more than six months saying their family relationships had become strained, and a New York Times/CBS poll of unemployed adults last winter found about 40 percent saying they believed their joblessness was causing behavioral change in their children.
Parents who have jobs are working longer hours than ever. Mothers are taking shorter maternity leaves. The birth rate is on the decline. The divorce rate is declining, too — it’s too expensive for people to break up their households — but that’s not necessarily a family-friendly thing, as a report from the Council on Contemporary Families noted in April: “We know from the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s that divorce rates can fall while family conflict and domestic violence rates rise.”
What came out of the combined experience of the Great Depression and World War II — broad measures of quality-of-life equalization like a sharply progressive tax policy with rates on the wealthy unimaginable today, the G.I. Bill, government-subsidized home mortgages for veterans — permitted the easier, less-frenzied middle class family life that older Americans remember from the 1950s and ’60s and that younger Americans dream of. In other words, it wasn’t individual families that reformed themselves after the crucible of the Depression. It was our society.
Judith Warner is the author, most recently, of “We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication.”
Tags: marketing, consumer, recession
Delicious Users: C
Sentiment analysis: neutral]]>
When it comes to touchscreen devices, we’re not making the best use of our fingers.
Our fingers (except for the thumbs) are made up of three hinge joints. (Thumbs have a unique (to humans) joint at their base—the saddle joint—and only one hinge joint.) These hinge joints allow us to bend our fingers into several shapes. Doing this is a form of flexion. (Extension straightens the finger.)
Barring disability and age, most adult fingers have at least two comfortable positions: fully extended or curled. The index finger, generally being the most flexible, can have several (at least two) comfortable curled positions. As proof of this, watch yourself type and see how many finger positions particularly your fingers move into. (This isn’t true for hunt-and-peck typists, if there are any of those still around.)
Kinesiology lesson over, flash forward to touchscreens. Most of these use one finger position—fully extended—for taps, swipes, etc. Often, buttons are placed at the very top of the screen, forcing users to reach using a fully extended finger to access them. This is likely because in the desktop or application space, designers are used to putting menu items at the top, out of the way, where they can be just as easily accessed by a mouse and cursor as a bottom menu. But with touchscreens, items close by (at the bottom of the screen) are better for two reasons: they don’t require changing a hand position (often even removing a hand), and secondly, they are less likely to cause screen coverage, when the user’s own hand hides items on the screen.
Most reading apps on the iPad, for instance, put the Back or Home buttons at the top left of the screen, where you would usually find it on a browser. This is also because, I’m guessing the designers decided, the thumbs are already in use: to swipe turning pages. This is true, but the thumbs could have another use in the flexed (curled) position to access menu items at the bottom of the screen. (This isn’t to say that the menu items need to be visible all the time, I should mention. With many apps for reading, they are invisible until the screen is tapped.)
Granted, this is much less of a problem on touchscreen mobile devices like Android phones or the iPhone, since the thumbs can typically reach the top of the screen without much interference (although you’ll still get screen coverage, and it can be an overextension for people, particularly women, with smaller thumb lengths). But this use of a second “space” with a curled finger for touch targets could have many different uses, such as in gaming, typing, and different menu styles.
Fingers being less ideal than cursors for many tasks, this is one area where the finger has the cursor beat by having two natural “modes.” It’s an interaction and ergonomic pattern well worth putting to use.
Tags: touchscreen, finger, kicker, joint, device, cursor, hinge, thumb, position, screen
Sentiment analysis: neutral]]>
(image) This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
The importance of having an attractive website that converts visitors into buyers and helps cleverly promote your small business is essential in these fiercely competitive times.
Your website has to capture a visitor’s attention, entice him or her to stay and browse around, create an interest in your product or service, and result in sales. For small businesses with limited time and budgets, design is an essential factor in both attracting and converting potential customers.
With this in mind, here are five current design trends that most small businesses can utilize to great effect.
Let us know in the comments below about any additional design trends that you have spotted in the small business world.
1. Minimalism
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While this web design style has been popular for some time, it’s worth revisiting as no small business owner wants to turn visitors away with a cluttered, overbearing and hard to navigate website.
Minimalist design effectively strips away the excess and helps the user concentrate squarely on the content. If a page has too many elements, the user will easily become confused about where to focus on, with many elements vying for attention.
With page weight now affecting your GoogleGoogle(image) search engine position, it’s the perfect time to reassess how streamlined your design is.
There are several principles and steps you can follow to create a more minimalist design:
- Go through your site and prune any unnecessary widgets or elements which aren’t serving a real purpose.
- Make good use of whitespace, which is the space between different elements of a design. Used well, it will allow for easier scanning of your site and help frame the elements on each page.
- With fewer elements, choosing the right color palette or accent color is critical. As color has great significance and meaning, it’s best to test how certain colors interact with each other.
- Browse your site through the eyes of your visitors, evaluating if there is too much information, confusing or off-putting elements, or sufficient calls to action. Answering these types of questions truthfully will help you prioritize the essential elements.
A minimalist design doesn’t have to be bland and boring; it can easily be modern, fresh, sophisticated, elegant or refined, based solely on the details within the design.
2. Unique Photography
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Two men shaking hands, a group of people in suits sharing a joke, the call center girl: these are all tired, clichd images that litter thousands of business websites. These types of images fail to convey either information on the company or a sense of the site’s character, and are essentially meaningless.
Using custom photography or artwork whenever possible is recommended, though for small business owners, both time and budget are limited and stock photos are a relatively cheap and accessible resource.
So when choosing stock imagery, it’s best to keep in mind these four tips:
- Research your competitors and industry and take note of the images used. You can then find a unique way to represent your product or service.
- Avoid being too literal in your choice of imagery as abstract compositions often give a more dramatic and memorable effect.
- Don’t always opt for the cheaper low-res image, as pixelated imagery devalues your overall design and looks unprofessional.
- Veer away from the bland and predictable and let the images ‘break out of the box’.
Imaginative imagery will reinforce your brand message and add greater character to your website. So, when you must use stock imagery, do so with great care and take the time to find the right piece that will convey the true personality of your service or product.
3. Bold Typography
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Web design at its core is about communication, and typography is a vital component of that. Great web typography helps bring order to information and creates a coherent, visually satisfying experience that engages the reader without their knowing.
A recent trend is the use of big, bold typography which helps to create contrast between other text while grabbing a user’s attention. Oversized text can help create hierarchy and ensure users understand your message loud and clear.
In order to utilize typography to create a bold statement, keep in mind the following tips:
- Determine the single most important message you want to emphasize, as too many messages can lead to choice paralysis. Understand the qualities of the message you are trying to convey, and then look for typefaces that embody those qualities.
- Choose a typeface that will match the character of your work. For instance, if your company embodies the feel of an Old Style font, you should consider Bembo, Garamond and Sabon. It will also greatly depend on what you want to convey with the type, because legibility is as important as the character of the type.
- Give the typography the prominent position it deserves by surrounding it with a generous amount of whitespace. This will add emphasis and create even more focus on the typography.
- Testtest(image) out some of the various font replacement options such as Typekit or Typotheque. These allow you to license fonts to embed within your site, and help you to experiment with beautiful typography.
Typography is an art and the decisions you make are subjective; however, carefully selecting a typeface can make a huge difference to the quality of your design.
4. Clear Calls to Action
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As a small business owner you want your visitors to complete a certain task when they land on your page. It could be to download, sign up or checkout, but these calls to action are one of the most important (and overlooked) elements in a small business website.
You want to grab your visitor’s attention and move him or her to take action. Crafting a clear, concise call to action is essential.
Here are four tips to keep in mind when designing a call-to-action button or advertisement:
- Language: Keep the wording short and snappy (always start with a verb), but also explain the value behind the action the user is taking. In some instances it also helps to create a sense of urgency using words such as ‘now’, ‘hurry’ and ‘offer ends,’ with ‘free’ being the number one incentive.
- Positioning: Ideally, calls to action should be above the fold, and be placed on every page of the site in a consistent position. For instance, SquarespaceSquareSpace(image) (shown above), not only has a large call-to-action button at the top of the page, but also has a slightly smaller button in the footer of every page.
- Color: The color should make the call stand out from the rest of the design. Brighter, more contrasting colors usually work best for smaller buttons. For larger buttons, you may want to choose a less prominent color (but one that still stands out from your background), so as to balance out its size.
- Size: The call-to-action button should be the largest button on any given page. You want it to be large enough to stand out without overwhelming the rest of the design
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It’s vital you test different combinations of call-to-action buttons and see how each affects your conversion rates (see A/B Testing below). It’s also best to make sure they fit within your overall design.
5. A/B Testing
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With competition growing fiercer online, it’s important for small businesses to have a website that converts visitors to buyers and creates a competitive edge. That’s why it is important to continually measure and improve site performance, usability and conversions.
One of the foremost ways of optimizing your web design is via A/B testing (sometimes referred to as split testing). An A/B test examines the effectiveness of one landing page over another. The two versions are randomly shown to site visitors to see which generates the best results. You then evaluate the performance of each and use the best version.
Various elements can be tested, including, layouts, copy, graphics, fonts, headlines, offers, icons, colors and more. Here are a few tips for A/B testing:
- Clearly define your goal before beginning any test. For example, if you wanted to increase sign-ups, you might want to test the following: type of fields in the form, length of the form, and display of privacy policy.
- Start with elements that will have the biggest impact for minimum effort. For instance, you could tweak the copy on your checkout button to see if conversions can be improved.
- Don’t use A/B testing in isolation as this alone won’t give you a well-rounded picture of your users. Instead, use other feedback tools, such as Feedback Army or User Testing, in conjunction with A/B testing to get in-depth analysis of user behavior.
A/B testing won’t make a bad design great, but it will prove an effective aid in optimizing your current design’s usability and conversions until you decide to overhaul your website design completely.
These are just five web design trends that small businesses can take part in to enhance their websites. Which web design changes would make the most sense for your small business?
More Web Design Resources on Mashable
- 10 Free Web UI Kits and Resources for Designers
- 10 Free and Fun Twitter Bird Icons for your Website
- HOW TO: Implement Google Font API on Your Website
- Top 10 Accessories for Typography Nuts [PICS]
- 10 Beautiful and Free WordPress 3.0-Ready Themes
Tags: webdesign, trends, design, web, inspiration, business, trend, website, smallbiz, pattern
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Sentiment analysis: neutral]]>