The EchoUser Experience

Does not compute image

This morning, while recruiting participants for an upcoming startup usability study, I stumbled upon a mythical creature I didn’t think existed. After chasing it through the underbrush of the internet to no avail, I eventually gave up, disgusted and disheartened, for the creature was gone - potentially forever.

And the creature in question? That rare breed of human who doesn’t have access to a DSL connection.

I know, I know, breathe in deeply - I didn’t think they existed, either. But it turns out that this kind of person is out there, and we have to plan for them accordingly.  More and more I find that people respond to my online recruitment ads, often for a remote study that needs screensharing and the like, without having the necessary technological hardware to actually complete the study. Like that story where from the band of monkeys eventually one will write Shakespeare, sometimes potential participants make it into the pool when they really shouldn’t.

It would be easy to blame the participant - I mean, who doesn’t have DSL access these days in the U.S., anyway? As it turns out, quite a few people don’t, so in the end it really is our bad as user researchers, not the participants. We need to make sure we’re designing studies - and recruitment procedures - that aren’t exclusionary from a technological perspective, even when we’re building a product or service that requires (relatively) advanced technology.

Examples of non-traditional recruitment abound: Etan once stood in a BART station for hours to recruit BART riders, while Mick loitered in a Best Buy (with permission of course) hoping to snag potential wireless hub buyers. The main problem, however, is that these methods, while often very effective, are time consuming - and expensive.

So how to recruit in an internet-ready world, when we’re not all on the same technological page?  Any thoughts? Examples?

A rainy day, in SF town

I went to my first TED(x) event this past week.  I’ve never been to TED or a TED affiliated event before, so it was a real treat to see it live and in person after hours of watching luminaries on my laptop.  Hosted by the cool crew at Parisoma, the venue was far more intimate than I thought: about 45 people in attendance - including a few speakers - in a nifty loft space on Howard; not a bad way to spend a rainy day, IMO.

So how did TEDxSoMA compare to the TED we all know and love through the videos? Other than the world’s most uncomfortable chairs, I spent 4 solid hours totally captivated.  I was lucky enough to get a front row seat (literally) next to my new friends Simon and Ted, which let me see the talks up close and personal.  Overall the speakers all seemed well-versed in TED-style speaking: clear, very little reading, and lots of pictures if they chose to have a slide show. From Phil Libin at Evernote, to Heather Fleming at Catapult Design, to the intense Damon Horowitz from Aardvark (who reminded me vaguely of Gene Wilder in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), it was a great lineup, and when you add in a great duet with the stunning Solenn Seguillon and beer from the folks at 21A, it was a recipe for success.

Common thread?

The only gripe I have is this: the talks, while fascinating, didn’t cohesively tie into the theme of the event, “Interactivity in Different Realms”. Sure, it was great to hear Libin’s theory on why man’s brain has changed little in 20,000 years (hence why we need Evernote), and Howard Roffman’s well-versed (and read) story of Star Wars over the years, but I found the common thread tenuous at best. But with an eclectic mix of people in the room we had little trouble brainstorming and chatting during the intermissions, and overall it was a great time.

Happy (belated) New Year, one and all - I do hope 2010 turns out to be a smashing success for everyone.

I figured I’d start things off with a video made by my friend and colleague Etan (@Zaqintosh).  It’s a concept for what an iPhone app designed to measure experiences (any experiences, from surfing a website to hopping on BART) could look like, and even though it’s crude, I think it gets the potential across.

Can you imagine if we were able to rate experiences on the fly, all day every day? I, for one, would love to track which ones get me up, and which bring me down.  The trick, I think, will be to get people used to rating their life experiences; Yelp’s easy because it’s tied to businesses, but it might not be obvious to people that rating a bad jog, conversation, taxi ride (due to traffic, not the cabbie) or plane ride is just as valuable as rating your local Starbucks.

In any case, without further ado, voila:

iPhone experience measurement concept - EchoUser

Dropbox and the Human Touch

A few months back I got an email from the crew at Dropbox reminding me to use their service.  If you haven’t tried it yet, Dropbox is a neat file syncing service that lets you back stuff up online as well.

Anyway, usually I hate reminders to use a service - I find them intrusive, and the repeat offenders get put on my spam list even if the service/product is actually pretty cool.

But Dropbox’s email actually made me smile:

It’s got three key attributes that make it much less annoying than other reminder emails:

1. It’s visual.

I get it, you want me to use your service. But please don’t show me a long bullet-point list of why you think you rock.  Dropbox gets this, and replaces long text with an image instead.

2. It’s funny.

The picture did actually make me chuckle.  It won’t win any best joke awards on BET and Carlin certainly wouldn’t be impressed, but in my book any laughter is better than none (and certainly better than a groan as I hit Spam). Further, it shows they have balls, which is always a good thing.

3. It’s human.

This is the most important part: the hand drawn image really lets me connect with the company.  Dropbox isn’t just a bunch of faceless programmers shoving their product down my throat - somewhere somebody actually sat down to draw this picture, and that’s a powerful thing.  So powerful that I actually pictured him or her doodling away with their tongue stuck out. Pretty cool.

Even though in the end the email didn’t get me to keep using Dropbox (I honestly don’t have a need for it), it did get me to take the time to write about it, which in the end is almost as good.

When San Francisco banned plastic bags 2 years ago, my whoops of joy could be heard across the Golden Gate in Marin.  Having grown up in the developing world I grew accustomed - sadly - to seeing plastic bags everywhere they shouldn’t be: the streets, clogging drains, polluting rivers, the ocean, even stuck on phone lines. Everywhere except in garbage cans. You can be sure that I for one wasn’t going to miss their absence at all.

So imagine my surprise when last week my local Delano’s bagger put my groceries in one of these:

That’s funny, I could have sworn that plastic bags are illegal in San Francisco. So unless I’m missing something, this shouldn’t be allowed.

On second look, the makers of the bag have done their utmost to convince everyone that this is anything but a plastic bag with the liberal use of clever marketing copy.  Phrases like “no trees were harmed in the making of this bag”, and a cute little “nutrition” box highlighting exactly how it hasn’t hurt trees are nice tries - but belie the fact that eventually this bag will no doubt end up in a dump, where it most certainly will hurt a tree.

I get what the folks behind the bag are getting at: we have so many bags in production already that it certainly makes sense to train people to reuse them, thereby preventing more bags from ending up in landfills. Indeed, these particular bags do seem more durable than their crappy white plastic counterparts, so I could definitely imagine using them for more than one grocery run - but let’s face it: I can count on one hand the number of people I know who bring eco bags to the store every time they go.  Heck, I have 3 such bags in the trunk of my car, and I still manage to forget them each and every time.

As luck would have it, these bags have an answer for our laziness, too - a message nudging us to take them to “participating stores” for recycling. Good idea in principle, until my roommate tried it: turns out our local Delano’s isn’t one of those stores.

Go figure.

I’m currently working on a usability and design prototyping project for a San Francisco-based iPhone app company (that shall, for now, remain unnamed).  So far it’s been fascinating, and lots of fun figuring out new ways to test the app, record the sessions, and integrate rapid design prototypes from week to week.

One of the more interesting parts of the project revolves around a diary study activity: we’re basically following half a dozen app users over a month to see how their experience with the app evolves, for better or worse.  I’m currently sending out 2 mini surveys a week, and have a shared “whiteboard” google doc where they can jot down any thoughts they have on the fly.

Experience Blogging

The neatest trick to the diary study, in my opinion, is the inclusion of what I’m calling “experience” blogging: basically, I’ve encouraged the participants to send screenshots of interesting moments they encounter while using the app by using the iPhone’s built in screen capture function (”On/Off” and “Main menu” simultaneous click).  I set up a dedicated photoblog on Posterous.com, and the participants basically send along their screenshots - which are automatically populated on the Posterous site.  The end result is a very neat live stream of app moments, sort of like the “pulse” of the app.

It seems like the native screen capture functionality of the iPhone makes this particularly easy, though I don’t know if any other phones do the same.

Has anyone else tried anything like this before?

You always hear about people doing A/B testing “out in the wild” (as well as examples of how it can be misused) but it’s rare that it is ever noticeable (which is kind of the point).

So when my colleague Aaron and I were working next to each other and happened to visit Salesforce.com at the same time, we were surprised to see the following:

and this…

Notice the difference? Someone at Salesforce is testing out whether people will sign up for the free trial (top menu, red button).

Does anyone have any other examples of A/B testing you’ve come across out in the wild? Would love to see examples.

Much of our work results in our clients having to make changes to an existing product or service.  It’s kind of the point of usability and design: unless everyone loves your product, careful research and testing will be sure to raise a few things that could be changed. Whether it’s the color of an icon or the entire product concept, design leaves no stone unturned.

One of the common refrains we hear from clients is this:

“But how will users know what we’ve changed??!”

(implication: they will hate it…)

We have lots of answers to that question, but here’s an example of my favorite (and perhaps the simplest) answer:

The lesson, it would seem, is to just tell them.

I’m running a stealth usability study for an iPhone app at the moment, and we’re on a tight 4 week RITE (Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation) schedule.

For those not in the know, RITE is a way of condensing the usability and design prototyping process into a short time frame.  Instead of testing a dozen users in one big batch, writing a report with design recommendations, submitting the report, making some of the design changes (or not), and then starting the testing all over again, RITE lets us do the same thing in about a month. We test 4 users every week instead of 12 once a month; we make design changes on the fly instead of waiting for a report to be produced; we get all the stakeholders involved so things can happen today and tomorrow, instead of next week or next month.  In many ways, RITE is the way that usability - and design more generally - should always be done (in my opinion).

One of the problems with RITE, however (and there are a few, believe you me) is that recruiting users becomes a pressure-filled activity. Instead of having weeks to schedule participants, fill in missing slots, etc., we have days to schedule people, sometimes only one day.  For example, I scheduled 2 users yesterday for a session today - pretty nuts if you ask me.

But this entry isn’t so much about RITE, or how to test an iPhone app, or why an external USB camera doesn’t play nice with live streaming and a screencast - I’ll get to all these issues in good time. No, this time I want to focus on a particular user (who shall not be named for obvious reasons), and how persistent she was today.  If any of you live in the Bay Area you’ve probably heard that the Bay Bridge is closed, which is wreaking havoc on…well, just about everything.  And this poor user-who-shall-not-be-named made a valiant effort today to get across said closed bridge, only to spend another hour and a half trying to get into town from the East Bay.  She finally gave up when she realized that making the session would mean leaving her daughter stranded at school without a ride.

So to every user who has ever spent an inordinate amount of time getting to a session, all in the name of a better product, I salute you.

Sometimes I come across positively delightful tidbits as I trawl the web, and this one, the “coming soon” page for Hosteeo, totally got me.

Nice look and feel? Check.

Mystery? Check.

Sense of being privy to something secret? Check.

Provides me with a way of finding out that secret? Check again.

All in all, a pretty effective way of getting my email address - but more importantly, my attention. Thanks to Chris Spooner for finding this gem.