Words Matter

One cold, snowy day in February--in Texas (seriously, it wasn’t funny), Niall, Sara and I were sitting around a table (during our Certified User Experience class) trying to come up with a script for one of our usability tests. We were going back and forth around which words to use and finally I just asked our professor Brian, "Are we obsessing over the wrong thing here......wrestling over which particular words to use?" (I guess I was worried that maybe we were over thinking the exercise.)


His response surprised me. He said, "You have to do that....words matter."


WOW! In that one phrase, Brian affirmed a profound truth I have always known, but sometimes shrink back from expressing. Words are powerful because they have the capacity to convey a reality and to point us toward a particular truth or meaning. The better the word choice, the more clear the meaning or understanding of the reality could be.

This is why during site visits and customer interviews, when we ask our customers questions and they say a little, we sometimes ask them to "say more". Sometimes, their use of additional words or different words helps us to better understand --or DISCOVER with greater clarity-- the truth of their reality.

This is why as we worked on the Online Learning Environment (featured in the last post), we watched and listened (through usability testing) to how our customers were interpreting the environment they were in front of and how they were understanding the meaning of the words.
As we observed them, we tried to DISCOVER what words would prompt them to go to a certain place or asked them to tell us what words they were expecting to see to indicate they had arrived at the right location.

So we had to determine, do we use the word "assessment" or do we use the word "test". Do we write the words "vocab builder" on the button, or do we put the words "play game" on the button. In this case, what started out as “assessments” became “tests”. What started out as a button with the words “vocab builder” became a button (shown below) that said “play game” (and vocab builder served a more descriptive purpose).

Does it mean that we spend hours and days on choosing just the perfect word? No; to reiterate what we talked about at one of our last company meetings, we need to hold in tension the triple constraints of time, cost and quality. But what it does mean is that we pay attention during the discovery phase and the evaluation phase & we do our best to choose the words or images or icons etc.  that best represent the truth of the reality--and then try it. We'll learn soon enough if we are understood, or if we understand the customers’ reality--and we keep moving forward. The moral of the story is---Words matter.


______________________
**To ponder this further

(either individually or with your team)

 consider the question:

How does the above reality transfer into my own work or the work of our team?

DISCOVERY-- a Deeper Defining of our Audience

So last week we talked about "User-Centered Design". Another word often connected to User-Centered Design is this one: usability.

Usability is defined as "the degree to which something - software, hardware or anything else - is easy to use and a good fit for the people who use it." (upassoc.org; above emphasis added)

I like this definition because it encompasses what is intrinsic to something that is usable, that it’s "a good fit for the people who use it."

How can we know if something is a good fit?

If you were a tailor, creating a suit to fit a customer, how would you ensure that what you created for the customer would fit not only the person himself, but also his expectations? The occasion? What he would be using the suit for?

You would begin by asking for information about the customer right? What's the occasion he's going to be attending? Where is he going to wear the suit? What is his style? You would also begin by taking his measurements, right? And then creating that suit to what you measured.

http://www.cartoonstock.com/

By discovering all of this information, you are narrowing in on what you have to create to "fit" this customer, but also increasing the possibility that what you create for him will make him happy and satisfied (and a returning customer, you hope!) You are also saving fabric that you might have used if you had guessed the man's size, accidently made it too small, and then had to recreate it.

Or maybe, instead of asking him up front what occasion the suit was for, you created the suit in a couple different types of fabric just to make sure. In this case, you would have spent extra time, energy and resources trying to "pinpoint" what might be right instead of spending extra time up front on "measuring" and ensuring that you identified all the "fit points".

I want to show you a BEFORE and AFTER scenario to illustrate how Discovery (or going deeper in defining who our audience is and what they need to do) can lead to a different product (than what we may create without this process) and often, one better suited or that "fits better"--to the needs of the customer.

The first version of the teachers' website was fashioned from ideas, brainstorming sessions, and wouldn't it be cool conversations.

 BEFORE taking the Customers' measurements

The IT staff spent hours and days and months fashioning these features into an interface that we'd hoped would WOW our customers. And then we asked some of our customers to try it. And boy did we learn. We brought teachers in and watched as they struggled through the different pages and tried to remember where to go next.

We saw how it wasn't clear where to go to find what they were looking for. We saw confusion about what features were called. We learned that even though we gave them control over student accounts, for them, this scenario wasn't the best way of solving the common student "I forgot my password" problem. We learned a lot. And then we made changes

The second version of the teachers' website could be called simple. But honestly, its functionality far surpasses anything we've offered teachers before, it’s organized in a way that teachers are used to, it refers to buttons and pages using language that is familiar to teachers and ultimately, it allows the teacher to complete their identified tasks quickly and efficiently.

AFTER taking the Customers' measurements

We arrived at version two through discovery—through taking measurements--listening to, watching and observing: what tasks the customers were trying to complete.

Tasks/Requirements

• Check the student book for the page number they need to assign for reading-this required that they have access to the student text/site from the teacher site
• Look at the unit test/customize for different classes. this required that the test be available in formats that were customizable
• Access teaching Manual from home to check on activity-this required that the Teacher Guide also be available online so that the teacher could access this even if their print book was at school

The above tasks & requirements, along with others identified, formed the skeleton and the base structure for what became the second teachers’ site. This base gave IT clear direction on what the teacher was trying to do. IT and design could then concentrate their time, energy and resources on coding/developing/designing those pieces necessary for teachers to successfully complete the above tasks.

That's how the discovery process (taking the customer measurements and defining more deeply our customer's tasks) helps to pinpoint the product specifications that allow a product to go from an "okay fit" for the customer to a "great fit and a great experience".


To see the BEFORE and AFTER example of the teacher site-in a larger format:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/66111958/Before-and-After-the-Discovery-Process

What IS "User-Centered Design?

Before we delve deeper into different aspects of User-Centered Design, let’s step back a moment and talk about what these words mean.

The Usability Professional Association defines User-Centered Design as “an approach to design that grounds the process in information about the people who will use the product. UCD processes focus on users through the planning, design and development of a product."

For me, it's easier to understand this concept by comparing it to another concept we've employed (but maybe not referred to it as such), which is user-driven design.

What’s the distinction between user-centered design and user-driven design?

In user-driven design, the user is actually in the driver’s seat and could be telling us any number of things including:  what they want, how they want it, what they need, what they are trying to do, what they want at the moment, what they think they need, what they would "wish" to have.

In user-centered design, we as professionals are driving, but what guides us on our trip is understanding the fundamental and foundational needs of the user, i.e. where they want to end up, what they need to do along the way (their tasks) and what they need in order to make the trip (their requirements). And then we use our experience, expertise and understanding of the roads to get them there.

 To use examples we may have encountered in our work here at Saint Mary’s Press:  

REAL EXAMPLE #1: Let's say a customer calls us and says, "Do you have an app for the IPAD for this high school textbook?"

In user-centered design, we would respond to the customer, "Tell me, what are you trying to do?” The customer may respond with, “I want to be able to read this text on the IPAD.”  “AHH!  No problem,” we say, “The digital text is already set up to work on the IPAD so you have everything you need.”

In the user-driven design scenario, we may have gone ahead and created the app---even though technically  it wouldn’t have changed their experience of being able to read the book. If fact, what we would have created, they wouldn't have used because it wasn't necessary for what they told us they were actually trying to do.

What's striking to me about this example is that being user-centered actually allows us to serve customers more thoroughly because we are seeking to understand the root task they are trying to accomplish. By approaching it this way, it also allows us to spend our resources on creating those products/services that get at the core of what our customers are trying to do and how go about using something.

We always, always, always want to be gathering insight from the users of our products, our customers.  It is always valuable!  But we need to know how to interpret what we are hearing and how to arrive at the most fundamental level of “what are they trying to do?”

REAL EXAMPLE #2: When we revised The Catholic Youth Bible, we had to choose between creating the Bible with brown or black type on the inside. So we asked some different classes of students/teachers to view a fifteen page sample of the Bible in each of the colors and to let us know which one they would want to read. The response we received was "BROWN!”  We released the Bible with brown type and we heard from users "This brown type is really hard to read". Yikes!

Looking back, I think the team working on the project did due diligence in terms of trying to include the customer in the process as best we could based on what we knew at the time. Today, we might have approached it differently. We may not have let the user’s choice determine or drive the decision, but we might have instead utilized other usability tools, such as eye-tracking software that could help us to observe the users actually reading in both of these color types and thereby get at how the color was affecting the users’ ability to read the words as well as their overall satisfaction of the reading experience.

These are great examples of the difference between user-driven design and user-centered design and why we always want to “ground” our design of a product in what the user—our customer—is trying to do.

To learn more on these topics:

 Another article on User-Centered vs. User-Driven

Eye-tracking, Scrolling and Attention

Where to get affordable eye-tracking software

The Savviness of Singapore: What They Understand About Customer Experience

During my years in the marketing department, we watched and listened to scores of companies around what they did in relation to "brand". We looked at companies that did branding well to be aware of and understand better what was at the foundation of a powerful brand and a powerful customer experience.

One of the companies we looked at was Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines, we learned, did "flying" in a different way. It wasn't as if they had found some special path to the far east and back.  The paths their planes took were similar to those taken by every other airline flying into and out of the same countries.

The particular path they have chosen to take as a company is not about where they go, but about how they get there and how they get the people on that path with them--their passengers-- to their final destination.  

But it's not just the Airlines, it may be--as David McQuillen suggests below-- the whole country. For those of you who remember the name David McQuillen (from the last post), listen, as David, Head of Group Customer Experience at OCDC Bank, talks about what he has discovered in Singapore and what he sees in the country's future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1F-QxhGGBE

What strikes you about this? 

David McQuillen on Customer Experience Immersion

One of the most memorable and unequivocally, one of the most convincing talks I've ever heard around the importance of understanding your customer's experience--i.e. what they are trying to do and what kind of experience they want to have--was from a man by the name of David McQuillen. David is the former head of the Customer Experience Group at Credit Suisse Bank, and he was the keynote speaker at the 2007 Catalog Conference that I attended in Chicago.

His talk was amazing. But's it's power laid not in the volume or power of his speaking but in the truth and tranformative power of the story--he told a story about his experience being in the customers shoes and what changed for him as a result of having that experience. He wasn't speaking abstractly, or in theory, but about reality.

He told a story about one way that his company (at that time Credit Suisse) tried to understand their customers who faced disabilities, in this case, customers who were in wheelchairs. As a member of his team, he also, took a turn and spent the entire day working from a wheelchair.

(So, in this case, they didn't just observe their customers, but they took it a step further and immersed themselves in the actual experience of the customer.)

In this 1 minute 50 second clip (of the finale of the same story told at another conference), David shares what he came to understand from that day of --not just observing, but --being immersed in the experience of his customer.

p.s. for some reason, this video may take a couple minutes to load......

you may want to check your e-mail until it loads.... :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsVB8YjrxvY&NR=1

 "Emotions are exceptionally powerful in convincing people

why an experience needs to be a good one."--David McQuillen