Pottery Barn has an excellent e-commerce web site that I frequently use in competitive assessments to illustrate clean simplicity of product showcase that lets you fall in love with the product (well, not me, but other people). However, they released a mobile catalog app, and here’s what users of the app have to say. “I don’t understand what this is supposed to be… It is pointless. I’m surprised PB isn’t a little more saavy with their app.” Another user of the app said, “Pottery Barn can usually be counted on as a source for quality and style; unfortunately this clunky app has neither of those things.” Walmart’s app got better reviews, but customers are quick to point out gaps that would cause the app to meet what they expect of Walmart. One user said, “The whole point of getting a store’s app is to view their weekly ad. Duh…” Another Walmart app user said, “Please add an option to upload pictures, request prints and pick them up at the store… please?” A user of Home Depot’s app said, “You can’t create shopping lists unless the product is in a project or ad! Fix the list feature and it may make sense!!!”

Of course, reviewers clearly expect a lot from these free apps, and to be fair, these apps also had very positive reviews. But as a multichannel design strategist, I can’t ignore the fact that these tech-savvy customers have a clear picture in mind of how mobile technology could improve their interactions with retailers. It seems to me that retailers would be wise to expend some effort to get an equally clear idea of how their customers expect to interact with them in this relatively new channel, and to focus design efforts on supporting those types of interactions where feasible. It’s striking to me that user reviews are not harping on lower prices or more coupons, which is a frequent type of feedback encountered in e-commerce forums. Instead they focus on how customers want to evolve their shopping interactions using mobile shopping tools. And notably, their expectations for different retailers are different, as illustrated by the comments above. Moreover, the variation isn’t random. It models how customers shopping expectations vary in different retail contexts, which is very valuable information for retailer’s multichannel design efforts.

When e-commerce was as new as mobile retail is today, say 1995 – 1996, when Amazon was pretty lonely in its market niche and my friend Warren Bare was in his basement inventing the first really big career web site, this depth and breadth of feedback was not to be found anywhere, and the people who knew how to catch and incorporate such feedback into new design work were few and far between. The situation is quite different today, as a perusal of social media sites quickly reveals. There is no excuse for releasing retail apps whose design concepts don’t model a deep understanding of how a specific retailer’s customers shop and make decisions in their particular category of merchandise.

I’m developing some materials on specific ways to do this type of purchase modeling for a talk I’ve proposed to SXSW 2011 entitled, “Digital Ethnography for Design Innovation.” Please vote for my talk, if you haven’t already, at:

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/8232

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

As a simple example, consider a new homeowner who wants to buy appliances. Our hypothetical customer goes online to look at types of appliances, features, trends, and prices. After getting a sense of current offerings and retailers of choice, the customer visits the store. The customer has stored tear sheets for the products of interest on an Ipad, with quick access to the models that were in the consideration set. There is a kiosk with a video that shows advantages of the latest features on various models the store carries. The customer saves the most interesting videos to a personalized online account on the retailer’s site, to watch later at leisure. During the store visit, the customer finds a couple of models that are a better fit than those found earlier online, and wants to get comparative prices for similar models within a reasonable driving distance. Later at home, the customer views the models found in the store, views the videos again, and creates a detailed comparison table. The customer does a last minute price and availability check in the area, and then orders the appliances with the best price, fit to expected usage, and availability.

For the above scenario to work, the shopper has to have a platform agnostic account with the retailer, and a compatible shopping interaction using the various technology devices: computer, Ipad, and kiosk.

In recent years, ethnographic studies have gained favor across a wide range of commercial design situations. In the world of web design, the term ethnography can be used rather loosely to mean any research that is conducted on location, or in context of the activity for which a web-based system is being designed. Ethnography is most often used as a data gathering tool when the cost of research is significantly outweighed by the potential revenue of creating an innovative product. Ethnography is especially applicable to projects that are multi-cultural in nature, but is not limited to those types of projects. In design-related ethnographic research, the “culture” being studied may be a segment of a population that shares a set of common characteristics or goals.

Some of the methods associated with ethnographic research are: participant observation, in-depth interviews, participant diaries, informant debriefs, and context mapping. My presentation at UPA 2010 in Munich will focus on the application and adaptation of ethnographic research methods to the field of web design and usability, rather than a rigorous definition of anthropology research methods.

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

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