Virtual Floorspace

The digital design space has grown exponentially since a CERN research partner first showed me a web site in 1994. At the time I was pretty unimpressed. It was a picture and some text. Big deal. I was already working with multimedia that had 1000x the features and functionality. But then he informed me that the page he was showing me could be viewed simultaneously by anyone, anywhere in the world. That changed my perception from yawn to yipes! within a few seconds.

Since that time, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the leading web agencies in the world, designing web sites for some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. Before e-commerce took off, there were only a handful of people covering all the bases on web site design and development. Now, in larger companies, there may be hundreds of people that have some responsibility for the primary web site. They are all focused on different aspects of the site, from strategy to marketing to merchandising to design to implementation to testing. More important to this blog post, they are focused on different levels of granularity, different types of problems, and different solution sets.

Designers, copywriters, developers, merchandising, and usability professionals tend to work at the component, page, and site levels, depending on their particular responsibilities. Project managers and sales people tend to work at the site level and company level. Architects work at the machine, package and company level. Project sponsors, client partners, design strategists, researchers, and marketing professionals work at the company, market and industry levels. They are looking at macroscopic factors that ultimately will spell financial success or ruin of the endeavor.

I read a lot of discussion groups related to web strategy and design, and it never fails to amaze me how each group looks at the level of granularity at which it operates (component, page, site, machine, company, market, industry), and then judges people working at all of the other levels on the basis of what the judgee knows about the judger’s work. This is nonsensical, since the concerns at each level of granularity are different. One level is not necessarily smarter or dumber than another level, but they see the world through different lenses, they work on different kinds of problems, and at the end of the day, are compensated according to different success criteria.

For example, I have always had a dislike for project salespeople. They seem to blithely oversell scope, which then becomes the team’s problem as they try to meet the client’s expectations. By crunch time, the sales person has moved on to a different account, and is schmoozing new clients, out and about every sunny Friday afternoon. That’s how I saw them until the day I realized that the weakest link in my company is the sales guy, which unfortunately at this point in my company’s evolution is still me. I should have taken some notes…

Before criticizing people in other roles in your family of web professionals, consider for a moment that they may not be focused on the same issues, and may not be prepared on a moment’s notice to consider problems outside of their scope. It doesn’t mean they’re stoopid, it means their job is different. Cut them some slack.

Copyright 2010, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts

Uncategorized e-commerce, e-commerce strategy, e-retail, user experience, user experience strategy, UX design, ux strategy

In a retail store, a person walks in and an associate (hopefully) asks, “How can I help you?” The customer then has an opportunity to explain where he or she is in the process of purchasing a product or series of products. The sales associate can step to any point in the sales process, and at any level of detail that the customer indicates they are ready for. They may simply want to know where the nails are, in which case they are looking for directions. They may want to know how to build a deck, in which case they are looking to the associate to provide instructions. Or they may be preparing to remodel their den, in which case they may want an overview about the whole project, or may want advice about how to approach various parts of the project. These three quests involve some of the same products, but are vastly different in the type of support that the associate can offer.

On a web site, the interaction design needs to anticipate and evaluate what the customer is doing and what they need in order to leave with all the products they came to buy. The knowledge that the site has of the customer’s goals may be based on past purchases or recent interactions, or could depend on clickpaths and searches. Or the site can attempt some type of conversation that involves some responses to questions and then a series of product-finding steps. Regardless of the approach, the interaction design of the site needs to take into account the purchase stage and process that the customer is in, as well as the preferences of the customer, in order to provide a higher order of service than the typical search and navigation system have to offer.

Fortunately, most e-commerce customers and sites do not have an infinite number of high value, high frequency interactions. They tend to fall into patterns. Those patterns can be understood through a number of different research methods, and, once understood, can form the basis of high value usage scenarios. These scenarios can then be used to guide interaction design. The scenarios are different from use cases, which consist of every function that the system is capable of carrying out. Scenarios focus on valuable events, whether the value is based on total spend or frequency of occurrence.

So customers often want directions, or instructions, or counsel. What these customers are probably not looking for when they enter the store are lots of advertisements about products unrelated to their quest. And yet, dissect many e-commerce page designs, and you see some space devoted to directions for finding a particular item (navigation), less space devoted to instructions, although that is slowly changing, and precious little space offering practical advice about choosing between one product and another, although that information is well-understood by many of the store associates. Fortunately, social media tools are starting to bridge the advice gap. It’s just a little hard to tell the chaff from the wheat sometimes.

Copyright 2009, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)

Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts

Uncategorized customer research, design strategy, e-commerce design, online conversations, user experience strategy, user research