On November 10, 2011 I, Emily Winters, attended the Northeast Ohio Usability Professional’s Association’s (NEOUPA) World Usability Day Conference.  It was an interesting event held at Dave and Buster’s in Westlake, Ohio.  I regret to say that I didn’t play any games while I was there, but I did learn a lot and met some very intriguing people. The following are my notes from the day and the pointers that I picked up from each speaker.

What Makes Them Click?

The keynote speaker at the conference was Susan Weinschenk.  Susan has a Ph.D. in Psychology and has been working in the usability profession for over 30 years.  She presented, “What Makes Them Click?” a workshop all about helping you make changes to a site that will get clients to use it.  The key things from her talk were the three sections of the brain and the list of things that you must go through, and include within a site, to see if you are providing customers with user-centered design:

• 3 brains
  • Mid – where we deal with social interaction, memories and emotions
  • Old- being afraid to make the wrong decision, instinctive
  • New- where rational and logical thought happens

Making people click involves these:

• Choices
• Social Validation
• Reciprocity and Concession
• Scarcity and fear of loss
• Food, Sex, danger
• Pictures and Stories
• Similarity, Attractiveness, and Association
• Commitment and Consistency
• Social

My favorite of these topics was the idea of concession, which is asking for more then what you want from the beginning.  The example that she used was asking random people for a one-time 2 hour commitment vs. asking for one hour a week for a year.  The people will often say no to the yearly commitment, but if then asked about the one-time 2 hour commitment they feel indebted to you to say yes because they have already rejected your idea once.  This principle only works if the requests aren’t too outlandish.  The tricky part of concession is that you are manipulating the outcome in your favor.  Is that an ethical thing to do in business?  Susan did not have an answer for that, nor do I, but it is something to think about.

During Susan’s workshop she mentioned several books that she recommended we all read. In no particular order I will share that list with you:

- The Psychology of Influence  by Robert B. Cialdini

- Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy D. Wilson

- Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change by Timothy D. Wilson

There were a few books that she suggested we look at to find out more about her presentation topic.  Those included:

- Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? by Susan Weinschenk

- 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk

- The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

- How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

The “Ability” to Achieve Social Media Success

Presented by Kurt Krejny, Director of Online Marketing, Fathom Online Marketing. You can find him on Twitter at: @KurtKrejny

Kurt talked about how to design sites with cross channels in mind as well as incorporating Facebook and Twitter into your webpage.  He pointed out that there are a number of abilities that you need to be successful in this.

The four main points were:

• Use-Ability: Must make things easy for the user
• Like-Ability: Must design so that people will “like” it.
  Do not be afraid to ask your users what they want!
  Good example of this is the Facebook page for Zappos.com
• Share-Ability: Can or will people re-post your information?  What do you want to be shared?
• Find-Ability: Can people find you? Are you branding your pages?  Have you filled out your information completely on Facebook and Twitter?

The Relationship of User Experience and Search Engine Experience in Website Redesign

Presented by Laura Cameron, Senior Search Strategist, Metrics Marketing Group

In her presentation the main thing that I got out of it was thinking about search engines as users.  She went over the fact that if you want your website to perform well you must take into account the needs of the search engine as well as your human users.  The two users think very differently, but if you incorporate the needs of both, the website will have a greater chance of really succeeding.

• Key takeaways
  • search engines are users
  • inform the user experience
  • collaboration of SEO and usability improves category names, content migration/development and conversion
  • Google: Webmaster Central Blog- good basics

eWord-of-Mouth  Web Design for Maximum Virality

Presented by Mike Wise, Founder of WebWisedom, LLC

The main thing that Mike wanted us to take away from his presentation is that eWord-of-Mouth is a powerful tool to have on your side.   It comes from bloggers, people posting on Twitter, e-networks, raving fans, and viral videos/presentations.  Many of the people using social networking sites are between the ages of 35-44 years of age with the second largest group being 45-54 years of age.  The target audience is not teenagers but more mature adults.

Data: The Building Blocks of Good E-mail

Presented by Chris Serger, eMarketing Director at C. TRAC and Ashley Szeremet, Step 2

I happened to have the good fortune of sitting next to Chris Serger at the conference.  He was a very engaging speaker and a nice person to share conversation with.  His presentation was the first of two on e-mail marketing.  The points that I took away from his talk were that you must gear your e-mails to the audience.  He created a “good” and “bad” list of things to collect and to not collect when you are getting people’s information that I would like to share:

During the presentation, Ashley Szeremet explained that you should always update your information so that you can stay current with what you are sending out.  Gear your mailings towards the information that you have- ex. gender specific and age appropriate.

Don’t Make Your Subscribers Think: How to Optomize Your E-mail Usability

Presented by Tricia McCune, Director of E-mail Marketing Strategy, Fathom  Find her on Twitter: @CLEMeetup

While her presentation was directly after the only other E-mail marketing presentation, she still managed to keep the topic new and different from what had just been introduced.  Her key points were:

• send e-mails out from the most recognizable name in the company (not from the mascot or an employee)
• keep track of when you send out the e-mails to get the best response.
• Sending them out on the weekends will be a bad idea for businesses only open during the week
• Best times to send out e-mails are Monday or Tuesday at 9:00am
• Shorter headline type subject lines are best
• E-mail design and any offers must be reflected on the landing page.

Information as Opportunity

Presented by Karl Fast, Professor at Kent State University E-mail him at Kfast@kent.edu or on his personal page http://about.me/karlfast

His presentation was very interesting.  I think he was trying to get us to consider the ways in which people use their bodies to figure out problems and how this will affect the way we design for the user.  Rather than trying to explain his ideas in depth I will direct you to this website: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/

Content Marketing Metrics: Justifying Content Marketing Spending

This session was presented by Jay Baer, Author, The New Revolution, Cam Brown, CEO, King Fish Media, Lynn Esparo, VP Marketing, Nuance Communications (makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking), and Shaku Selvakumar, Worldwide Strategist-Web and Social, IBM Software Group.

Cam Brown made some great points about the user’s perspective. We need to gain the trust of people before they are willing to give their data. That data is necessary for us to create leads. He encouraged the audience to do better because acquisition of new customers is expensive. He suggested looking  at customer loss and retention more closely. I was reminded that trying to gain a new customer is known to be much more expensive than keeping existing ones and he pointed to that as an area that we are falling short on.  Lynn Esparo added to his message by watching for decreasing returns as a measure of customer satisfaction. An increase in the amount of each cart is also a great measure of customer (and thereby content) success.

Jay Baer started with the basics of looking at what we can measure:

• What is consumed (read, eaten, etc.)
• What is shared- engagement, acquisition
• Lead generation metrics
• Sales and reiteration

Jay reminded us that Google is our most important customer – if Google cannot find and index your content, no human will. I remember being very excited about the idea of being a digital dandelion, but could not find a reference online and my notes aren’t clear on that point. Was it that we should be ubiquitous like a dandelion, that we should spread out ideas on the wind? Or something else?

He also reminded me of a great presentation I saw a few months ago at NEOUPA‘s, World Usability Day meeting.  Jeff Rohrs of Exact Target described their research on Subscribers, Fans and Followers at that meeting.

Lynn Esparo encouraged us to nurture people along in their journey and Cam Brown added that with permission based marketing we can nurture the sale along. It’s knowing when to move in the ask, and building that trust.

“If have [your customer's] trust, then you can ask for the order.” – Cam Brown

Jay then spoke again about focusing on your “weapon” and planning who and when to share content. Figure out what the audience wants and share that; don’t just throw it all at them. This was a sentiment I was happy to hear throughout the conference. I saw it as an indirect nod to User Experience (UX). Over and over again I heard people saying things like:

“Think about the audience (user), and create content for them.”  - Music to my ears

Regulated Content Issues in the Financial and Healthcare Industries

It was a pleasure seeing Scott Linabarger, Director of Digital Marketing at the Cleveland Clinic(#1 Hospital Web site) join Katie Herbst, eMarketing Director, Westfield Insurance; Brent Williams (a fellow Akron-ite), Director of Professional Services, Knotice, Ltd. in a panel moderated by Chris Seper, CEO, Med City Media.

Brent Williams talked about the logistics of content, such as the need to determine the ownership of the content on a Web site.

Who owns the content? What is the escalation process? – Brent Williams

Brent reminded the audience that honesty is the cardinal rule in social media. People can tell when you are not being clear or are not telling the truth and that will get around quickly.

Katie Herbst took an approach that is both aggressive and difficult, in order to help manage content in her organization. She became a coach and has made herself available so that if people have questions they have a resource (any time day or night!). She wants them to participate in making content, and as an insurance organization, they need to make sure the content is within their guidelines. She sees it as risk management and she puts herself out there as a resource.

Scott Linabarger reminded the audience that YouTube is the number two search engine in the world – making content for that channel is obviously helpful to your organization. This reminded me of the United Breaks Guitars debacle that David Meerman Scott mentioned in his opening talk, and how Taylor Guitar became the hero of that situation. Scott Linabarger’s advice regarding using YouTube is:

“Be not afraid [of social media]“

Cleveland Clinic’s policy for communicating with people is to respond in some fashion with on one business day. They may not answer thoroughly, but they at least acknowledge the communication.

Lunch: 42 Minute Shotgun

These sessions gave five thought leaders seven minutes to talk briefly about their chosen topic. Overall, I was dissapointed in the overall representation of women at the conference. The audience had a lot of women in it (perhaps a majority), but the speakers, particularly at the lunches were mostly men. In addition, both lunches were titled (Cage Match and Shotgun) in ways that would make them more attractive to more aggressive people (primarily men), making it less likely that women would event want to participate. I’d like to see more women speakers at the next CMW.

Jay Baer spoke again and I especially enjoyed his discussion about “Helping is the New Selling.” He said that we have to earn the right to promote to people. He pointed out that the difference between utility and you-titlity is just two letters, but the meaning is significant. You make a customer when you help them.  If you make a friend then when they are in the market you are already there in their circle of trust. I don’t think he was encouraging us to make or fake friends just for sales, instead he was encouraging us to see what else we could do to make the relationship real, and that the sales would come when the person had a need because we would be at the top of their mind and they would have awareness of us.

Jim Kukral, Author, Attention! also spoke. His topic was “If You Want To Be Remarkable, You Have To DO Something Remarkable” and he, as always, brought his remarkable enthusiasm.

“Muppets & Marketing: What I Learned About Content Marketing While Working At The Jim Henson Company” was presented by Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer, Tippingpoint Labs and he encouraged us to think about what they (our readers/consumers) see. As an example he told us that Muppets all are cross eyed because they look better on camera that way.  So while they may look funny if you look closely, to the viewer it is exactly what they would expect. Again with the user’s perspective – love it!

Ahava Leibtag, Principal, AHA Media Group had an interesting talk about “Personalized Content Through Biometrics” where she got us thinking about all the different types of recognition that we may already use and which may be more common in our near future such as hand, thumb, and face recognition.

Helping Your Content Be Found

This was the last session I attended and another interactive and interesting one! There were two women on this panel: Lisa LaCour, Vice President of Marketing at Outbrain and Amy Laskin, Content Strategy Director at Ogilvy. They were joined by Michael Pranikoff, Global Director- Emerging Media at PR Newswire and the session was moderated by Michael Marzec, President at Smart Business Content Marketing.

Amy Laskin started out asking us “When are Mom’s online and what are they doing?” Understanding that in her business is very important for some customers.  Lisa LaCour added that knowing the mindset of these customers and putting the content in their mindset is key to having your content be found.

Michael Pranikoff urged us to stay the course when search engines change and not make major changes to content. We need to speak the language that our customer’s use (yes!) and that includes providing good captions for video content.

Amy added that we need to have the right people – they need to be qualified. Focus on the long tail searches, not on the numbers. She reassured the audience that a few small groups are all we need.

Lisa then told us to engage the community and for that we could use another site or build one. Amy building on that said that the communication needs to be personal and that there needs to be a reason for the communication. Go to the communities where they already are. Sites like LinkedIn and Flickr are under-utilized.

Finally Michael reminded us that just because you can doesn’t mean you should with any of this. He recommended that we connect back to the original content and send our users back to where they want to go.

The Power of Story

Sally Hogshead opened with a great talk about stories. Her energy and enthusiasm really set the stage for a great day. I was most interested in her discussions of the word Fascination - meaning an intense emotional focus. I thought about this in the UX environment and how I become fascinated by the people I am conducting research with and about.

• How can I get my clients to be fascinated by their users?
• Who is my user?
• What does my customer want?
• What would fascinate them?

Emotional Storytelling

Next up was Regina Brett speaking on “Emotional Storytelling: Growing Your Small Business/ Non-Profit by Pulling the Heartstrings.” Her comments were both fun and helpful for those of us who need to tell stories on a daily basis.

For storytelling Brett recommended:

• Making the story personal – have your audience in mind
• Put a human face on it. Make it memorable
• Tell one story at a time
• Include only one start, one ending
• Take out the junk-“Divorce your darlings”

No Theories Allowed: Content Marketing for B2B Brands

Gary Spangler, Marketing Manager, DuPont, Michael Procopio, Social Media Strategist, HP Software and Arnie Kuenn, CEO, Vertical Measures joined forces.

I was very interested in Kuenn’s claim that for Search results it was better to be in the seventh search result position than the second search result position for a head phrase search. Someone doing a head phrase search (1 or two words) is looking for quick results and/or may quickly realize that they have made a mistake. They are unlikely to look past the search result in the first position if they don’t get what they want. A long tail search has many keywords and his reasoning is that someone doing a long tail search is invested in their search and is more likely to continue looking. Read Kuenn’s recent blog entry for more about this interesting topic.

Spangler made a fun play on the “Content is King” saying – now content is the whole Deck of Cards. He works with a lot of Web stuff and now refers to the manage of web sites, social media sites and other content as “web properties.” In large organizations with many content creators he recommended setting up a Website Editorial Board (WEB) and that they have regular meetings with an inspired coordinator and he recommended that everyone be invited including: CSR, marketing, communication, leadership, etc.

The next Blog will Cover Day 2 of Content Marketing World 2011.

I love that my work improves people’s lives on a daily basis, even in the smallest ways; by decreasing frustration and saving time. Hopefully these improvements allow them to do meaningful things in their lives and the lives of others. However, one of the biggest challenges I face in my career is being able to do projects that make a difference beyond the pixels on a user’s screen. I want to be able to do work that makes a positive difference in my community and the world.

At UPA 2011 I plan to have conversations with many other’s in my field and to work on finding projects that allow Midwest Research to Design for Social Change. Join me in those conversations!

We have a new look courtesy of Anthony Weiler Design and we recently moved our offices!

We still offer the same high quality services at reasonable rates with stellar talent and now we have a nicer place to hang our hat.

Take a look around and tell us what you think!

Examine your customer’s needs and behaviors. We conduct research in-person or virtually, and will get to the core needs and behaviors of your customer. We present our findings in an easy to understand format with clear and actionable recommendations to help make your designs more user friendly.

Learn methods that put the customers needs’ first. We teach basic UX methods as well as helping teams to sharpen their advanced skills. We will customize the training based on your team’s needs and the project at hand. We also help integrate UX methods into agile and other developmental strategies.

However, the people involved in projects where UX and Agile are mixed don’t always see an easy way to integrate well and deliver on-time.

UX professionals prefer the luxury of time to prepare and conduct research to understand users that can takes weeks or months. They perhaps follow that work with the creation of prototypes based on the findings, then test those prototypes and iterate them based on the new findings. All of these activities can take time to plan, recruit users and conduct.

Agile teams on the other hand need to move forward quickly and complete releases within weeks, not months or years (G-d forbid!). They are invested in the user’s ability to complete scenarios, but are confident that the team’s ability to constantly iterate is enough to safeguard against major issues.

I had the pleasure of participating in many discussions regarding these differences as well as our shared focus on users at Agile 2010. One of the most productive conversations was with Derek W. Wade of derekwwade.net. He described our initial conversation in his recent blog post “The UX and the SM Should Be Friends.”

Derek’s blog also hints at what our future conversations will be covering. We hope to help to bring these two sometimes disparate groups together in understanding. Derek stated it beautifully:

“Let’s us UX and Agilista people listen to one another.  We’re not truly in competition, we both want the same things.  We just have different ideas of how to go about it.  And it’s in the union of the two that true value will be created.”

I’ve included some comments in this post about the presentations I felt were most thought provoking and fun to attend.

Beyond Sprint Zero: Using Collaborative Product Discovery to Plan Agile Projects

Jeff Patton was perhaps the most exciting speaker I had the pleasure of being in the audience for. His views on integrating Agile practices with UX are spot on. One slide showed a puzzle with a piece in the middle taken out. The removed piece was the solution and around the “hole” were all of the pieces that make up the context of that solution. The context he described included: business strategy, users and goals, product stages, and regulatory constraints. Yes!

Jeff also spent a great deal of time emphasizing that the target solution needs to be outcome (solutions that create maximum positive impact and happy customers) and output (ideas, features, capabilities, specifications, requirements) needs to be minimized. This is of course in an environment of constant, incremental, development. What a happy place the world would be if there was less output and more happy outcome!

I was drinking the Kool-Aid strong until he introduced “simple lightweight “pragmatic” personas to learn what you don’t know about your users.” The idea of doing this didn’t bother me as much as using the word “Persona” to describe the result. I totally agree with the method of gathering everything you know, putting it into a template for a persona and seeing what you are missing. But the idea that someone might refer to that as a persona does bother me, because a well-done persona is based on research and traceable to that research. Many of my clients are uber concerned about using the correct corporate terminology for various UX activities, that it has caused me to get very tied up in semantics. In the end, what is really important is that people realize that talking to users is extremely important, regardless of what it is called.

Improving Customer Conversations

Esther Derby helped attendees to improve their interviewing skills. While this was review for me, it was extremely helpful to hear how she presented the topic and what techniques and activities people were familiar with. Esther has a great approach to interviewing, is a wonderful presenter, and gave conference attendees a bag stuffer that included questions that would help them to change their organization by changing their questions.

The Right Way to Wireframe

Todd Zaki Warfel presented “Opening the Kimono“, which included a brief exercise and explanation of the 6-8-5 technique (6-8 small sketches in 5 minutes) for sketching wireframes. It was wonderful to see many of the techniques I learned 10 years ago and that I feared were perhaps out-of-fashion, are still being recommended by those the IxDA community reveres as its best.

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I hope to attend Agile2010 again in the future. I met many fun, smart, people and learned a lot as well. I highly recommend it if you are looking for a good conference that mixes Agile and UX.