Feature Richness and User Engagement

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for August 6 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/features.html
		
Summary:
The more engaged users are, the more features an application can sustain.
But most users have low commitment -- especially to websites, which must
focus on simplicity, rather than features.
		
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User Experience 2007 conference

  > Barcelona, November 4-9
  > Las Vegas, December 2-7

31 full-day tutorials
2 keynote presentations: e-commerce, the state of usability

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

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CASE STUDIES WANTED: MEASURABLE IMPACT OF DESIGN CHANGES

I am collecting examples of metrics that quantify the impact of design
changes. If you have data you are willing to share, please email John
Berger at [email protected]

Any type of user interface is of interest: websites, intranets,
applications, mobile devices, etc. Also, the design changes may refer to a
complete redesign of the total UI or it could just be a single feature,
screen, or design element that was changed.

Measures of interest include anything that measures how usage changed.
That often means an improvement, but data that documents negative results
are just as interesting.

Example metrics:
  * conversion rate 
  * total e-commerce sales in dollars and/or units 
  * size of average "sales basket" for e-commerce 
  * training time needed to learn a feature or system 
  * sign-up rate for newsletters or other desired action
  * lead-generation
  * time on task and other productivity measures 
  * subjective satisfaction scores 
  * average page views and/or duration of visit per user
  * returning visitor traffic
  * frequency of return visits 
  * number of times a feature was used 
  * percentage of users who bail out at a certain step 
  * number of calls to help desks or tech support 
  * learning or comprehension scores 
  * other usage or impact metrics,
    including new ones you have invented yourself 

For whatever metrics you have collected, please send both the "BEFORE" and
the "AFTER" number as well as a short description of the kind of system
you were measuring and the type of change made to the design. If you can
send us before/after screenshots, so much the better (whether or not you
will allow us to publish the screens), but we are also interested in data
where you cannot send screens.

We can keep your contribution TOTALLY ANONYMOUS and purely report your
numbers as statistics that don't include any indication of what company or
design they refer to. Of course, we will give you full credit if you are
willing to be named. Also, if you send us screenshots, please indicate
whether we should treat the screens as confidential info or whether you
will allow us to publish the images. (Feel free to "sanitize" screenshots
by erasing confidential info.)

All contributors will get a free copy of the report with the full set of
metrics.

If you can help in this project to document the range of measurable
effects from user interface redesigns, please contact John Berger
([email protected]). John can also answer any questions you may have
about this project.

DEADLINE: September 7

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TANGIBLE MEDIA BECOME REAL

Toymaker Fisher-Price has introduced an interaction device to help
toddlers access websites without typing.

To use the "Easy Link Internet Launch Pad" a kid inserts a plastic
figurine into a cradle (attached to the computer through USB). The system
reacts by opening different web pages, depending on which character is
used. Figures include Barney, Bob the Builder, and other popular
children's characters.

Tangible media have long been a favorite topic of academic researchers in
HCI, and it makes sense to target preliterate users for early commercial
designs with these physical interaction devices.

Video of the Easy Link Pad in use:
  > http://tinyurl.com/3cwu6j

How children use websites once they learn to read a bit:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/kids

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SECTOR-SPECIFIC INTRANET USABILITY

Our reports on intranets for government agencies and the financial
services sector have been very positively received, so I decided to
produce targeted reports on other sectors where we have enough good
intranets to warrant a publication.

Full-list of sector-specific intranet reports:

Financial services:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/financial

Manufacturing, industrial companies:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/manufacturing

Technology sector, computer companies, telecoms:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/technology

Knowledge-intensive companies, design agencies, consultancies:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/knowledge

Retail:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/retail

Government agencies:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/government

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iPHONE AND MOBILE WEB

Dave Winer reviews the iPhone after a month's use, providing deeper
insights than most reviews, since many issues in mobile user experience
only become clear after sustained use in multiple contexts.

  > http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/07/25/iphoneMonth1.html

Dave's conclusion: Blackberry still "outshines Apple's product."

For most companies it doesn't matter whether Blackberry, iPhone, or the
next Nokia device is the best PDA. Your mobile sites MUST WORK ON ALL
MOBILE PLATFORMS that are used by any decent percentage of your customers.
(Just as it doesn't matter what market share Firefox has relative to IE:
as long as Firefox is above 2%, your regular site must work on that
browser, or you're throwing away too many customers.)

What's important is the strategy for how customers should access your
mobile services. There are two main choices:

  * your regular website, made accessible for mobile devices
  * a special version of your key services, optimized for mobile

This choice between ACCESSIBILITY (barely working user experience) and
OPTIMIZATION (good user experience) is exactly the same as companies have
for supporting users with disabilities. The main difference is that vastly
more money is at stake for mobile strategy than the amount you'll make
from selling to blind customers and people with other disabilities (each
of which requires its own design for full optimization of those users'
UE). More on this dilemma:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/accessibility.html

Halfway down his article, Dave Winer states his conclusion: accessing
regular websites on a mobile "isn't going to work," even with as big a
screen as the iPhone.

There has been some debate about this point, with a Forrester report
claiming that the iPhone eliminates the need for "stripped down sites
crammed onto the small screens of devices meant for phoning, not
browsing."

I am on Dave Winer's side in this debate: I too think that services need
to be designed for mobile to provide a satisfactory user experience.

There are two reasons to side with Winer: 

First, he is the one who has the user experience credentials.

Second, using a tiny screen and slow connection is a very painful way to
access websites designed for big-screen desktop PCs. Remember using
websites on 640x480 and a modem connection? iPhone only gives you half of
that, and screens are unlikely to get much bigger as long as they need to
be mobile, and thus handheld. Designing a scaled-back UI is a vastly
superior way of supporting real-world mobile user tasks, such as executing
stock trades, checking the weather forecast, or buying a book.

For an interesting example of a scaled-back UI, see this site which is for
disabled users, not mobile, but these two design scenarios are very
similar:
  > http://www.amazon.com/access