Posts filed under 'Understanding users'
I want to respond to danah’s post at some length, hence a separate posting. To understate the case, our relationship to advertising is a complex one. We can recoil when we read reports of advertisers’ manipulative practices, yet we can also enjoy advertising, and find it genuinely informative; while it’s often a delight to escape advertising in unspoilt landscapes, we have probably driven our branded car to get there, are sporting branded outdoor gear etc. etc. I suspect there are as many inconsistencies in our attitudes to new media advertising as to traditional media. So, for example, the same people who complain about pop ups and banner ads in web pages (and, yes, there is evidence that advertising on web sites disrupts processing of site content) may also be watching and sharing favourite ads on YouTube. We’re in it to the hilt.
So advertising is part of popular culture, much of which we may not particularly want to espouse, nor to see influence our children. There is conflicting data concerning children’s understanding of advertising, and its influence on their decision-making (always a good idea to look at who is publishing the data). Some suggest that children become sceptical about advertising pretty early on (we might question whether this a scepticism we want our children to develop; my understanding is that the French, who have light regulation on advertising to children, take the view that it’s part of growing up). Most European countries have some restrictions on TV advertising to children, with Sweden at the most stringent end of the scale and the UK among the more relaxed. And there may be downsides to these restrictions: the British advertisers’ association, the IPA, have claimed that in Greece, where there is a restriction on advertising toys during children’s TV, there has been a reduction in the quality of children’s programming, with cheap imports substituting for more expensive, locally-generated programmes (it’s their role to point to these kinds of consequences, of course). Recent UK restrictions on TV advertising of junk food to children have seen a migration of advertising to the net. I don’t think we yet know what influence it has there but it’s hardly likely that businesses would be investing in it if they didn’t think it would have some effect. Marketing takes the opportunities that are available and if we want the benefits advertising brings (e.g. sponsored events, broadcasting, on-line experiences, phone services etc.) we also have to be aware of its impact and vigilant for potential abuse.
And if the impact of advertising in our everyday lives is complex so, too, is our role in working for companies of all kinds that use advertising to promote their products or sponsor their activities. In the UK there was a ripple of press reports in 2003 when a collection of documents from advertising agencies working on campaigns for tobacco manufacturers revealed an agency’s derogatory classification of their market segments, including a description of some smokers (low income) as ‘slobs’. It’s not hard to see how these cynical attitudes can develop if, at best, a company’s only contact with its customers is to herd groups of them into a strange environment and observe them from behind a two-way mirror in the forced discussion of a focus group. Hardly a recipe for empathy. Short-hand labels for customer segments are efficient for internal communication, but they are only a key to the real people, with everyday lives, emotions, aspirations, behind the labels.
How can we mitigate the distanced cynicism that tempts companies into manipulative advertising practices or, for that matter, to ship untested goods, plan obsolescence into products, snare unwitting customers into providing personal data that can be traded, fail to deliver adequate customer support and so on? We have to recognise that business has its agenda and it’s not the same as its customers’, although some congruence is needed for a business to succeed. As researchers we have a role - albeit a relatively small one - in creating that congruence. The closer a business is to its customers, and the more it understands them, the more opportunities it has to choose not to be exploitative, to be humanely human-centred. The conventional research recipe of clusters of regional focus groups are not going to raise executives’ social consciousness. We have to push for imaginative approaches to doing and presenting research that keeps the internal team as close as possible to its external customers. That can mean working outside our own comfort zone sometimes, experimenting with new methods, learning new techniques. The subtleties of different research approaches may not be of interest to the people who use our research, but as researchers we’re guardians of the methods being used, and the conclusions that are drawn from them.
January 10th, 2008
In her Shift6 post last week danah queried who actually clicks on internet advertising and concluded that, far from the targets advertisers hope for, it may be those who tend not to use the internet in a focused way, possibly the least technology literate. Advertisers might be heartened by positive reports of the impact of Land Rover’s advertising on iPhone. iPhone users are a pretty select group and could well be just the targets Land Rover want. Certainly they are likely to make informed choices about what they browse. But to understand the real impact of the campaign itself one would also have to factor in the novelty impact (still) of the iPhone and the fact that iPhone appears to deliver a better browsing experience than any of its competitors.
And it’s that experience that I want to come back to. Because, as I commented on danah’s post, it’s so hard for users to get a good experience of the technology as it is presented to them, out of the box. Often organisations prioritise the functionality they want to attract users to – this could be because it adds pzazz at the point of sale (video telephony), or because, when used, the functionality can generate revenue (internet portal). And many users (perhaps most) do not know how to customise their device, or fear the consequences of playing around with the interface, concerned that customising will bring about irreversible results they hadn’t anticipated. On a mobile phone interface marketing priorities can be particularly irritating. There’s so little real estate, the manufacturer’s or service provider’s priorities can squeeze the options people actually want to use. Since it appears that the most frequently used functions on mobile phones are voice, text and time/alarm clock, you might expect many people to have those functions, and everything connected to them, immediately visible on their home screen. Often, surprise, they are not.
However, as danah’s post implies you are most likely to have focused access to the functionality you want if you have grown up with computers and mobile phones; put simply if you are young. Don Norman thinks younger people understand technology better because they have the time to play around with it. Certainly that’s a factor. A review by Hilary Coolidge also highlights the social element of technology use among teenagers, that peers are likely to be influential, providing opportunities to learn new skills, in a way that may not be typical for older users (last Saturday evening at a restaurant where I was eating a group of late teens were having a celebration meal. Every one of them was using their phone to snap and share pictures of their friends. It just wouldn’t have been the same with a generation older, at least not in the UK). And along with the time and social milieu, I think younger users are less scared of the consequences of tweaking technology settings. Perhaps this is naïveté (having sorted out my pre-teenager’s phone from over-exuberant tweaking I can vouch for that), perhaps justified confidence, or a combination of the two.
The need to respond to the combination of naïveté and lack of confidence was reflected in Stephen Fry’s post in his Guardian blog this week. In typical avuncular tones he encourages readers to desert the standard Internet Explorer or Safari default on their PC or Mac, and to consider using Firefox, with a step-by-step guide to how to do it. Handholding of this kind is exactly what people need in order to get the most out of technology and the comments on Fry’s post suggest his readers (of all ages) are grateful for it. Now I’m not suggesting that Microsoft or Apple should tempt their customers to ignore their proprietary software for open source alternatives (well, I might dream). But I do wish technology companies would open up the potential for customisation to their users, so that people can clear away what they genuinely don’t want to use and tweak what they are using so it best fits their needs. And, remembering the (possibly apocryphal) comment “I just paid $2,000 for this damn thing, and I’m not going to read a book,” this possibility can’t be covered off via a paragraph embedded in a manual. It needs a more up-front approach: this piece of equipment (your phone, your laptop, your camera etc.) is yours to customise, just as you will move a piece of furniture to the place you want it after it has been delivered to your home. Sadly, we’re a long way off from that, so focused use and customisation remain the preserve of those who, firstly, know that customisation or alternatives to basic settings are a possibility; secondly, have sources of support to go ahead; and, thirdly, have the confidence to ‘just do it.’
December 13th, 2007
‘Yeah, if it’s something free, man, I’ll give them my information.’
‘No way, I don’t give my phone number to anyone.’
Two comments by Blyk members on different points of a spectrum sent me to re-visit research on people’s perception of risk (Stuart Sutherland’s book, Irrationality, is a good place to start if you’re interested). Warned of the pitfalls of making personal information available (of spam attacks; of the potential for fraud; of pictures, posted for fun, that come back to haunt you) why do some people seem not to guard their ‘digital privacy’ particularly closely?
- We’re not statisticians: for most people, the good experiences outweigh the bad. So for the handful of companies that have bombarded you with unwanted emails or messages there are many more that haven’t. Rationally, a good experience in the past doesn’t mean the next experience will be good, but we’re unlikely to see it that way unless we force ourselves to think like statisticians. Most of us don’t; for if we did, everyday decision-making would become pretty unwieldy.
- Our experience and memory are limited: it’s hard to envisage the consequences of a serious violation of privacy before it happens. If it hasn’t happened to you, or to anyone you know well, warnings from computer safety educators or news stories about fraud victims won’t pop into mind, especially not at the point you’re making your decision to accept an offer in return for handing over personal data. The offer is far more salient personally, and far more likely to trigger a response.
- We’re clubbable: perhaps most influentially, most of us are group animals, generally comfortable to work within organisations, join clubs, be with others at events etc. Cooperative group behaviour (driving on the same side of the road, paying for goods in shops, expecting transport to operate to a timetable) is just part of everyday life. While we may be aware that the organisations we deal with are using our data to target us for marketing or other purposes (in fact many, including Blyk, are quite explicit about this), we expect them to be respectful and cooperative. Some Facebook members recently had a taste of uncooperative treatment when they found their browsing and purchasing behaviour tracked and displayed by Facebook’s Beacon advertising program. How was this resolved? By the group influence of the American campaigning organisation, MoveOn, which people signed up to (registering their contact details in the process, of course).
It may be that we are all on the brink of serious uncooperative experiences with the web tools we use. Commentators have suggested that the Facebook Beacon fracas was but the tip of an iceberg. But, unfettered by strict rationality, most of us surf optimistically, join in and enjoy web experiences.
Getting inside people’s decision-making, to inject caution before commitment is likely to be extremely difficult (even with well-understood hazards, such as smoking and alcohol, health educators have difficulty getting their message across). But given that there is a likelihood that many people will continue to act humanly and, therefore, incautiously, there is an opportunity for companies to commit openly to respectful data handling. It may cramp their style for trading data in the future, but as more companies commit themselves to rigorous standards, those that don’t will stand out. Maybe this contrast could pique people’s consciousness just enough for them to ask ‘whatever they’re offering, do I want to hand my data over to them?’
December 6th, 2007
The design blog, Core77, has published an interview with Don Norman, author of a series of books on user-centred design (the best known of which, The Design of Everyday Things, was the first, and possibly only, book on user experience to become a bestseller).
Norman always makes interesting listening. I loved his recommendation to his interviewer, Bruce Tharp, that he should ‘question authority, even if that authority is me’ so was frustrated that Bruce didn’t go off-script a little more to pick Norman up on some of what he said. So I’ll do so here on his behalf.
The ‘question authority’ comment came about a third-way through the interview where Norman criticises the techniques used by companies who are committed to user-centred design. His comments focus particularly on ethnographic research and the creation of personas. Norman complains that, interesting as these processes are, they fail to connect to the engineers and designers creating products and services and so are, in effect, a waste of time. What Norman wants, he says, is processes that focus on the task, rather than on people. I know what he means, but worry that he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
So let’s take a short step back from Norman’s comments and remember what preceded the typical user-centred processes many companies now use. Often, nothing. Or, if you were lucky, focus group research on a product that was in the final stages of development, when it was too late to have any impact on its fundamental design. Products were shaped by engineering dictat and the styling of the designer (think back to VCR controls of the 1980s). As Norman mentions, a typical company reaction to problems users encountered with their products was that the users were stupid. It’s certainly true that people feel stupid when dealing with products they can’t work. And that has implications for the company selling the product. Would you buy again from a company that had made you feel stupid? Probably not.
So how do companies take that step from thinking ‘right product, wrong customer’ to thinking that their customers have a right to products and services that meet their needs and are genuinely easy to use? I think it’s through empathy with the user (so does Norman). And how do you get that empathy? By meeting your users and seeing how they use products and services and by hearing what their concerns and preoccupations are; that is, through observing people in context, precisely the ethnographic research that Norman dismisses. Then you need to find ways to keep those end-users in mind so that, even when you’re not talking with them, something of their attitudes and concerns remains with you while you design. Not an easy task, but one in which the personas Norman writes off can be a useful tool.
These research tools rarely answer detailed design questions. That’s what iterative prototyping and user feedback cycles do. But they help focus design thinking on what people want, they support understanding of gaps in the market and decisions about what to design, and sometimes, yes, give insights into design detail too.
What I think Norman is criticising is the unthinking application of research techniques, and the failure to connect them to design process. That isn’t a problem with the techniques themselves, but inflexibility in some organisations in how they are used. There was a similar rigidity about 15 years ago when many companies established ‘usability labs’ to test products during development. Over-scientised in their approach, over-staffed and unwieldy, they couldn’t provide nimble enough input to be useful. In most cases they were abandoned in favour of a leaner approach, often involving designers directly in testing their own products.
As with usability testing you need to understand ‘ethnographic research’ as a portfolio of techniques to get close to users; for example, shadowing them as they go about their daily tasks, talking with them in context, asking them to create diaries, to take part in workshops with designers, finding out what they’re saying in their blogs or on forums (no, this isn’t ethnography, in its academic sense, which is why I prefer to call these techniques observational research). There’s no single true way. And since many real-life interactions are private and it’s hard to predict when or where’ll they’ll take place, finding a good way to research them requires some creativity.
Norman comments that the best design is often found in gardening, farm and workshop tools. But these have evolved over scores, sometimes hundreds, of years into the familiar implements used today. Not so for new technology tools, where there are no long-standing traditions for what they do and how they do it, where there often isn’t a readable relationship between form and function, and where, as I’ve commented before, the people designing the tools may not be those who will use them. That’s where understanding the people as well as the task is so important.
A rhetorical (I assume) question in a review by Alan Cane of improvements to text entry for mobile phones (FT, 24 November) highlights the importance of understanding both people and task. Cane questions whether developing better text entry techniques than we have presently is worthwhile: ‘…surely inputting text through keys is simply a passing phase before voice input takes over?’. I suspect not, and think Cane would be convinced too if he were to observe the detail of how text is being used. Voice input may take over some tasks, or even facilitate new forms of messaging, but text is so embedded in people’s lives, I’ve no doubt it’s here to stay. Take a look at the many contexts where text is used because talking wouldn’t be practical or acceptable; look how text allows editing in a way voice input might not. Text is not just a cheap substitute for talking, it’s a channel with a role of its own. By looking at the task alone, you might miss that. But you’ll know that it’s worth the effort of developing more usable text entry systems, if you look at the people as well as the task.
November 29th, 2007
Survey reports, telling us how new technologies are being used, are part of our media landscape. We take what we can from their snapshots of people’s lives, remembering that their publication is often a PR exercise for a company or organisation. Sometimes somewhat uninterpretable data detracts from their role as PR pieces, at least if we think a little further than the press-released headlines. Recently, the data security company, Garlik, published snippets from its survey of internet use, including the finding that internet users in Wales blog more than in the rest of the UK. Earlier this month Carphone Warehouse, working in partnership with London School of Economics, released its annual survey of mobile use, Mobile Life, (now in its fourth year) showing, among other things, that although Britain leads the texting league in Europe, the French are more likely to end a relationship with a text than the Brits. It’s hard to know what to make of data bites like these, and probably the best option is to make as little of them as possible. We often can’t tell the full story behind them, as Carsten Sørenson, one of the LSE academics commenting in the Mobile Life report concedes.
But these data snapshots can grow legs and take on a life of their own, sometimes unfairly. For example, 18 months ago easyMoney published a survey of 18-29 year-olds, dubbing them the ‘Won’t wait, won’t do generation’ because they often miss doctor, dentist or hair appointments, and sometimes social engagements, rather than queue or wait for them. The behaviour was attributed to conditioning by high-speed interactions on the web and, yes, the charicterisation of an impatient generation has an intuitive ring to it. But what about the 30+ generations? I don’t know anyone, of any generation, who enjoys queuing for an answer from a telephone help-line. And I expect many pensioners would join the 18-29s in abandoning their shopping trolley rather than waiting at an understaffed supermarket checkout. We don’t know if there are inter-generational differences in impatience, because easyMoney confined their research to their target age group, found answers they might have expected, and didn’t look any further.
Large scale surveys have their place but they are a limited methodology. The set of questions that can be asked is relatively fixed. There’s no opportunity for probing behind the answers. And that’s before we get on to the question of how accurately people can self-report on past behaviour.
So its refreshing to see that the Mobile Life report includes some video diaries of mobile phone users, as a supplement to their report. The diaries aren’t linked topically to the report itself, they don’t have international coverage and are collected from individuals who have agreed to spend a week living without their phones. One might argue that they are contrived to elicit people’s emotive responses and don’t show phone use in context. Nevertheless they are a step away from the over-certainty of quantitatively-based reports, and give an insight into the less-than-tidy world of real people’s technology use. This kind of reporting doesn’t have the impressive numbers behind it that quantitative research carries; even with relatively small numbers of people it’s labour intensive to do; it requires a subjective integrity to extract an accurate summary representation of what has been captured on video, often over many hours. But in my opinion, even with its potential practical and intellectual flaws, it’s powerful and potentially more memorable than data bites.
Which it why I found MIT Technology Review’s recent interview of Twitter’s founder, Evan Williams, and two (very articulate) Twitter users so appealing. If you had not understood the potential for ‘ambient intimacy’ that Twitter enables, the real user experiences described in the video would go a long way towards convincing you. Fantastic PR. And not a data bite in sight.
November 21st, 2007
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