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Our observations of the world around us
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Upping the engagement level on surveys.
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If you believe like we do at Lextant than you’d agree that people are inherently creative and that research should be experiential and emotional. Creativity, experiences, and emotion – not words that typically come to mind with traditional online surveys. That isn’t to say there isn’t a place for them but that we simply shouldn’t be surprised that they may not always be an ideal means to understand people. This matches up well with some of the findings in a recent report by Engage Research and Global Market Institute that stated online surveys are experiencing declining completion rates, poor data quality, in part, because participants are bored. Frankly, questions with fixed answer sets or the habit of adding question after question don’t really seem to be the best ways to understand the inherent complexity in peoples’ behaviors, motivations, and preferences - especially considering that we find ourselves more frequently trying to understand generations that, more than ever, desire personalization, self-expression, and self-determination. Again, these are words that don’t typically come to mind with traditional online surveys.
Online surveys, like those reported on, are just one hammer researchers have, but its likely that because of their flexibility, ease, and reach they’ve been used to hit too many nails. We’re at a point where technology has provided new and powerful ways to give the participant the control and freedom to appropriately express themselves and document their experiences and desires. We’re able to apply the principles or participatory research with available technology. People can now document themselves via audio, photo, or video recording, as well as do so when mobile or as needed, not fixed to a computer or their home. These tools create compelling experiences for the participant and provide rich, compelling data for the researcher. You don’t have to throw away your old hammer, but you should check out getting a couple new ones!
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My thoughts on World Usability Day
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Recently, Sri Putrevu, Kendra Shimmell, Jim Couch, and I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Miamisburg, OH and present Lextant’s point of view at the World Usability Day Conference at Lexis Nexis. For those who aren’t as focused in usability, World Usability Day (WUD) is a “holiday” of sorts organized by the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) designed to celebrate of the practice of usability and its efforts to “Make Life Easy’ and user friendly’. All over the nation on Nov. 13th, usability experts across the world joined together to learn, share, and celebrate usability research and methodologies. Leave it to us usability buffs to create a holiday for ourselves!
The most impressive aspect of this year’s WUD was its record attendance! At Lexis Nexis, Darren Kall (Senior Director of Global Experience Design for Lexis Nexis) did an excellent job of publicizing and raising awareness for the event. With a start time of 1 pm on a weekday, the conference requires the majority of attendees to take time out of their work day to attend earlier presentations. As one would expect, attendance of any presentations that take place before 5pm is usually relatively light. However, for Lextant’s presentation at 3pm, we were moved from a conference room to an auditorium to accomodate our 54 audience members. This is an incredible turnout for a local event!
Lextant presented our philosophy of Experiencability, the marriage of Usability and Experience. At Lextant, we believe that a product’s usability is important, of course, but we also believe that the emotional aspect of the interaction plays an equally strong role in the user’s experience. Traditionally, usability testing does not address the user’s emotional experience. Lextant has developed a set of methodogies that address all aspects of the user experience in a way that leads to a more actionable and accurate design. Our presentation was well received at World Usability Day and we intend to continue spreading our message as other opportunities arise!
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Experienceability
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Sri Putrevu & I will be presenting at World Usability Day in Miamisburg, Ohio next month.
Time: 3:00-4:00 PM, 13 Nov, 2008
Place: World Usability Day- Lexis Nexis in Miamisburg, OH
Topic: Experiential Heuristics: Moving Beyond Usability
Description: Products that truly resonate with consumers are certainly usable, but more importantly, these products create an emotional connection with users that keeps them coming back for more. How can that emotional connection be quantified and analyzed? This presentation discusses “Experienceability”, the combination of user experience and usability testing. Utilizing the experiential heuristics that the user brings to the table as a quantifiable means of measuring a user’s emotions, engagement, and overall experience with a product, service, or environment providing a predictive measure of a product’s acceptance and success yields designs that are richer in experience, easy to use and increases return on investment for businesses.
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