OTOinsights, a division of One to One Interactive, Inc., a Boston-based digital marketing firm, is hosting a webinar on August 26th at 11 AM Eastern time, to present their latest customer experience research findings on consumer-promotional emails as solicited from the tourism agencies for all fifty United States.

“One to One’s deep experience serving travel-related brands provide us with unique insight into critiquing and designing engaging promotional email,” said webinar presenter Dr. Philip Rhodes, Managing Director for OTOinsights. “In this webinar we’ll be visiting the State Tourism Agency websites for all fifty states and then signing up for email; then offering expert analysis of the emails we receive over the following ten-day period.”

Our research goal is to determine customer satisfaction for email sign-up, frequency and quality based on these criteria:

• How does the layout impact user experience
• How intuitive is the layout
• What is the nature and quality of the content and offers
• How likely are users to respond
• Does the email engender trust in the user

This webinar will help email marketers, CRM marketers, permission marketers as well as brand managers improve the quality of the efforts, and will be of particular interest to destination and travel marketers. Webinar attendees will receive a copy of the webinar free of charge.

Presenter:

Dr. Philip Rhodes, Managing Director and Director of Research for OTOinsights

When/Where:

Thursday, August 26th at 11 a.m. Eastern Time

Click Here to Register

One to One Interactive has submitted two very exciting panels for SXSW Interactive and would like your support by having you vote for them.  Details for both panels and links for voting are provided below:

Please help us also by asking individuals in your own social networks to vote for these the above panels.  I want to thank everyone in advance for their support. 

Jeremi

OTOinsights presents our latest customer experience research findings for several of the most downloaded iPad magazine applications including Wired, PopSci, GQ, Dwell, and Time.

“Digital publishing has changed consumer magazine consumption; in the past three years over 1,000 have ceased publication,” said webinar presenter Dr. Philip Rhodes, Managing Director for OTOinsights. “The iPad offers magazines a new digital publishing platform that allows them to better present, control and monetize their content.”

OTOinsights’ task-based analysis focuses on the homescreen, navigation, layout, advertisement placement and overall user satisfaction based on these criteria:

• How does the layout impact user experience
• How intuitive is navigation
• What is the nature and quality of the content
• How efficient is it to use
• How likely are users to revisit the iPad magazine
• Does the application engender trust in the user

This webinar will help brands and publishers participating, or planning on participating, in iPad magazine applications as developers, advertisers or content authors.

Join us for this free webinar where we discuss this latest customer experience research and conclude with a best practice guide on how you can create the best experience for your customers. Webinar attendees will also receive copy of this presentation free of charge.

Presenter:
Dr. Philip Rhodes, Managing Director and Director of Research for OTOinsights

When/Where:
Thursday, July 29 at 11 a.m. Eastern Time

Click Here to Register for Free

Dr. Philip Rhodes, Ph.D.

Philip holds a Ph.D. in Information Design from the University of Portsmouth. He has extensive research and teaching experience in hypermedia design and information architecture. He speaks fluent Portuguese, having lived and worked in Brazil. Before joining OTOinsights, he worked with US solution providers Rare Medium and Sapient, as Director of Information Architecture. Specializing in offering user-centric online solutions within the banking, education, and telecommunications sectors. He also taught at several universities in Brazil and the UK, and has been widely published. Philip is both the Managing Director and the Director of Customer Experience Research & Design at OTOinsights, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

OTOinsights Overview

Technology innovation continues to create increasingly sophisticated and complex interaction touch points between brands and their customers. A customer’s experience with these touch points define what a brand means to them and their continuing engagement with the product or service. OTOinsights helps brands succeed in today’s rapidly evolving landscape by providing customer experience research, brand research, neuromarketing research and user-centered design.

Phish is a band that has traditionally allowed individuals to record their concerts. This harkens back to the practices of other great jam bands: The Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, and so forth. Since each show is different, fans like to get their hands on the shows so they too can get the concert experience. In recent years, Phish has been recording shows directly from the soundboard and selling the concerts in various file formats (mp3 & FLAC). These days, fans on Phish’s mailing list get an email the next day containing the show’s setlist and a link to purchase the show. Frankly, that’s a great business model. Not only are they getting revenue from the concert (a lot of which probably goes to promoters, the venue, and others not directly associated with the band), but they are making incremental revenue from those who purchase the show for download.

But now, they have taken it another step further. Last week, Phish announced the release of their iPhone application. This application allows users to stream the shows that they have purchased. So, no longer must these shows take up precious space on your device - as long as you have a robust connection, you can stream the shows to your heart’s content. Not only can users stream the purchased shows, but they can also listen to a ‘featured’ show and other items from the Phish archive. Finally, the cost of the application is $3.99, which seems expensive by typical iPhone app standards. But, when you purchase the app, you get a free download of a show - a $9.99 value. In essence, the app costs -$6, which is a great value for someone who is going to download a show anyway.

So, let’s break down why this is such a great application and will not only give a positive user experience, but will also increase Phish’s revenue:

• Price: If you are a fan who would otherwise purchase a show, this app doesn’t cost you a thing.  In fact, it saves you $6.
  • Plus, no subscription fee.  If you want additional content, you purchase it.

• Incremental content: Users have FREE access to the featured show and other Phish content.

• Incremental band revenue: The app will most likely encourage users to purchase more shows than they ordinarily would.
  • Fans may trade downloaded shows with friends, but these will not be streamable via the app.  They will have to load the shows onto the iPhone and use up a lot of space.
  • It’s easy to purchase a show via the app, so spending a quick $9.99 is an easy click away.

• Leveraging Social media: The app allows users to see which shows are the most popular.  Fans will then probably purchase these popular shows.

This is not to say that the app is perfect.  Let’s a look at some of the drawbacks:

• It requires connectivity to stream.
  • This one may be bloody obvious, but let’s say you’re on a road trip and don’t have a robust connection.  Poof, there goes the utility of the app.
  • Solution: allow users to temporarily download a show while they have a connection.

• You can’t purchase just the stream, you must also purchase the downloadable show.
  • Solution: include a lower-tier price that allows a user to only stream the show.

• Users can’t use their existing content.
  • If a user owns a Phish album, s/he probably doesn’t want to purchase it again just so they can stream it via the app.
  • Solution: keep the albums as a permanent fixture in the featured content.

Overall, Phish did a great job in developing this app.  It takes user wants  into account and creates a path to incremental revenue for the band.  This app is a great example to other bands or companies who are struggling to determine a business model for their app.

Meanwhile, our insights into making human meaning and motivation via the social sciences is evolving its relevance to marketers at a similar pace. The good news? Peering into the future of digital marketing can help translate the present and transcend into the future.

Join us for this free Webinar where we explore these topics:

• What is Web 3.0, when will it arrive, and most importantly…what will it mean
• What emerging digital marketing channels are most likely to become a part of your 2011 planning
• Why digital marketers are increasingly less concerned about technology innovation and turning their focus to the social sciences
• Why creative is becoming plural and what does that mean for your digital marketing approach
• Why speed, innovation and improvisation matter and yet are in conflict with how most organizations approach their marketing

Webinar attendees will also receive copy of this report free of charge.

When/Where:

Thursday, June 24 at 11 a.m. Eastern Time

Free Registration Here 

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the annual conference of the Usability Professionals Association (UPA). This year, UPA was held in the beautiful city of Munich, Germany which is full of nice people, amazing food, and delicious beer. In this post, I will attempt to summarize the presentations that I attended.

Opening Keynote: Technology as a Cultural Practice - Rachel Hinman, Nokia Research Lab

Rachel started by talking about her journey to becoming a user experience professional. She started in the art world, but decided that having food on the table would be a good idea and so made the move to UX. She stated that UX professionals are problems solvers - we tackle different types of problems all in the name of making a better experience for users. Whether the problem is in design, taxonomy, interaction, or strategy, UX practitioners are called upon to be the voice of the user (or to ask users directly). But what do we miss when UX is framed as problem solving?

These days, it’s not just about problem solving. We must now consider cultural expression. What is occurring in a given culture? How do tools, conflict, power, housing, & religion affect users? As UX practitioners, we must consider these elements when designing for a positive interaction. Hinman discussed a couple of examples: mobile money in Uganda and mobile literacy in India. In Uganda, many people don’t have bank accounts, but the idea of using a mobile as a payment device has taken off. And for India (and elsewhere), where there may be illiterate people, special care must be taken when design in a mobile interface. Users typically overcome usability problems via reading, so when illiteracy is at hand, we must make more universal designs. Additionally, today’s new mobile devices tend to be sleek and sexy, which may not necessarily fit a given culture. Finally, we tend to use many metaphors when creating interfaces. But are we taking other cultures into account? What is a metaphor to one culture may not mean anything to another - the metaphors need to be culturally relevant.

In summary, we need less problem solving in UX and more ethnography.

Using Stories Effectively in User Experience Design - Whitney Quesenbery & Kevin Brooks
If you are a UX practitioner and are unaware of the importance of stories in data collection, you’ve evidently been living under a rock. Stories allow us to gather context, goals, needs, and wants. According to the presenters, stories are a unit of analysis that can be used to spark UX ideas. But, we are terrible listeners - we are chronically under listened to. As an exercise, the presenters had us find a partner and then listen to them tell a story for one minute. But the listener was not allowed to talk. Go try this - listening without interrupting is harder than you might think. It’s hard to just shut up and listen - but listening is the privileged position. We can learn so much from others’ stories.

What do listeners do while hearing a story? They will recreate the story in their mind, adding their own images and visions. So, since both the listener and the storyteller are creating images, they are both shaping the created story. Then, when the listener retells the story to colleagues, those colleagues form a relationship with the original teller. This is a great mechanism for relaying and gathering user needs. Stories can be incorporated into current UX methodologies: persona development, usability study scenarios, and others. Think about a typical usability study task - they are typically uninspired, boring, and may not have significant relevance to the user. But what if we put a story around the task? We can draw users in and give them additional stake in the task so that it becomes a little more real.

Stories collect the patterns and contexts of work products which can then be applied to UX methodologies. Additionally, there are “juicy” stories that come from more than one source, have specific action detail, show user data, and contradict user beliefs. These are the stories that we must capture so that we make better experiences for users.

Unfortunately, this presentation is not currently available on Slideshare.

Is Eyetracking Worth It? - Michael Summers, TrueAction
This intriguing presentation was unfortunately only 30 minutes - it could have gone much longer. As UX practitioners, it is up to us to discover problems, have ideas on how to fix them, and persuade others to implement these. Eyetracking can provide some good persuasion data to support fixes that you know need to be implemented, but methodology is critical. First off, it is important to avoid bias when calibrating the eyetracker. That is, don’t tell participants that they are sitting in front of an eyetracker. Instead, make up a story as to why they need to follow the red dots with their eyes - they will then be less conscious of where they are looking. Additionally, the traditional think-aloud protocol for usability studies will disrupt the users’ natural eye flow - so don’t use think-aloud when collecting eyetracking data. People tend to look away when talking - it isn’t natural for them to talk and not look at the person to which they are speaking. You may want to choose just one or two tasks where think-aloud isn’t used, so that the eyetracking data will be more reliable. Tobii (the eyetracking company) has been touting the retrospective think-aloud (RTA) method to gather both eyetracking and think-aloud data. But the presenter was not impressed with this methodology - he stated that it most likely causes primacy and recency effects. Finally, the presenter stated that heat maps are borderline useless and cause a lot of harm. Yes, it’s a pretty picture to look at, but don’t make a pretty picture that isn’t supported by data. Instead, use areas of interest and metrics to convey eyetracking data.

Unfortunately, this presentation is not currently available on Slideshare.

Triangulating Research Using Multiple Methods: Lessons Learned from Using Eye-tracking, EEGs, Surveys, and More - Jim Hudson, PayPal
This one was right up our (OTOinsights) alley. The overall theme of the presentation is that triangulating on the user experience will improve credibility. That is, data that has been collected from different angles, but tells similar stories provides credible evidence to implement UX changes. This presentation highlighted three case studies of how PayPal used different data modalities to inform design decisions. An interesting point that came out of this presentation is that statistical certainty and sample size are not necessarily correlated. In other words, you don’t need statistical significance to be certain that a usability problem exists. The studies carried out by PayPal were done in different cities to determine if there were any differences in the demographics, but there weren’t. Even though they collected consistent data in the different cities, the fact that they tested in 6 cities added credibility to the study. Another interesting (and actionable) point from this presentation is that if you want to conduct a quantitative usability study (unmoderated & remote), your prototype needs to work in all browsers - not a quick task. Hudson also made a great point about eyetracking: it can be used as the cake, the icing, or the sprinkles - it’s a versatile tool. Finally, Hudson pointed out that UX practitioners should be using usability studies and web analytics to predict what users are going to do, then make changes as needed.

Unfortunately, this presentation is not currently available on Slideshare.

Designing for a Multi-Channel Experience - Amy Cueva & Megan Grocki, Mad*Pow
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read this far that these days, users are interacting with brands via multiple channels: Facebook, email, phone, Twitter, and maybe even a Web page. In fact, 70% of US consumers research via 2 channels before making a purchase. As such, it is imperative for brands to build this experience in a way that aligns with user expectations. Consumers don’t care how your company is organized, they have a need. So having a Twitter feed or Facebook presence that is confusing to potential customers does not do any good. This would be especially true if stakeholders at your company are not aware of your brand principles and attributes. You don’t want different messages going out via different channels. So, when conducting discovery research, don’t let political dynamics affect stakeholder interviews: projects are 40% design and 60% getting it done. UX practitioners sit in the middle of the customer, marketing, technology, and the product/business. We must navigate the waters, trying to keep everyone happy and informed, while adding our own value.

The presenters made a great point about user attention: drunk people probably have about as much attention as a typical Web user. Wouldn’t be interesting to do a usability study with drunk participants to see how they compare? As for how to develop an appropriate multi-channel experience, the presenters suggest adding channel preferences to user personas. Additionally, use comics to convey how users interact with the different channels. As mentioned above, stories can be very important in conveying information and a story about channel usage will help people understand the user experience.

Update: The embedded slides were crashing computers, so you can go view this presentation on Slideshare.

Eye Tracking Meets the User Experience - Panel led by Jen Knodler, SMI
This was a panel put together by Sensomotoric Instruments (SMI), an eyetracking (ET) equipment vendor. The panel highlighted the various ways that they are using eyetracking: Web page design, car instrumentation design, academic research, and other domains. Frankly, I think this panel was put together to highlight SMI’s equipment, but there were some informative tidbits. First off, ET can be used to uncover where users do an exhaustive review or where they selectively disregard. Where are your user doing the most research? Where are they completely missing a critical area of interest? These are the main reasons for using ET. But it’s important to remember that ET is a tool, not a methodology. Incorporate ET into your research, don’t form your research around ET. One panelist made an interesting comparison of how gaze is treated in different domains. In social psychology, a gaze indicates a message carrier, but in cognitive psychology and user experience research, gaze indicates attention. Additionally, the early fixations may require special handling by researchers: 1st fixation = latent, 2nd = orientation, 3rd = cognition. So, are we doing a disservice to our ET research when we concentrate on the first fixation?

There was another round of heat map bashing here and one that I wholeheartedly agree with: heat maps don’t tell you how a user was affected. You need additional research modalities to determine affect. Additionally, when doing UX research, we can try to have a control group, but you can’t control for behavior in a control group. So special attention needs to be given to how control groups are handled.

Unfortunately, this presentation is not currently available on Slideshare.

Implications of User Engagement with Search Engine Result Pages - Dan Berlin, OTOinsights
I would remiss if I didn’t recap the OTOinsights presentation. Here, I presented two studies where users interacted with different Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Using neuromarketing techniques, we found that users were more engaged with SERPs which contained images and video. They were also more likely to click on these media. So, a good job on traditional search engine optimization (SEO) may get your site listed first with the inclusion of multilinks. But that doesn’t mean that people are going to click on that first link or the multilinks. It is imperative for companies to optimize not only the text on their Web sites, but also their media. Make sure that the search engines are indexing your pictures and videos - that’s going to drive traffic to your sites. The second study we conducted investigated whether putting rich media in the top sponsored area of a SERP is engaging to users. In short, it’s not. Yes, users’ attention was drawn to the top of the page, but they wouldn’t necessarily click on the rich media. The users indicated that they need a reason to click. Why would they watch a video if its the same commercial that they saw on television? Why would they click on an image? So if you plan on putting rich media in a top sponsored area, give the users a reason to click. What are they going to get out of clicking in a new area?

Combining Web Analytics with Usability - Martijn Klompenhouwer & Adam Cox, User Intelligence
This was a slightly disappointing presentation. I was hoping to get some concrete methodologies on how to use Web analytics to inform the design and analysis of usability studies. The presenters indicated that analytics don’t necessarily tell you why something is happening - you can see a bounce rate, but what is really going on? You need user research to determine that. UX practitioners can use analytics to help focus user research: determine who to recruit, how to build personas, and to determine what people are currently doing on the site so that realistic scenarios are created. Analytics also allow UX practitioners to examine the sales funnel to determine where people are dropping out of the process. Where are they leaving the funnel? We can also determine where people are landing on a Web site - remember, people don’t necessarily start on the homepage. As such, why do we typically start usability studies on the site home page? Start users where they are most likely to actually land on the site.

There are other ways that analytics can help inform a UX practitioner. Did only 2/10 participants run into a usability problem during a study? Validate the problem with analytics. It can also uncover unanticipated user flows. Are users landing in unexpected locations on the Web site? In the end, combining the methods allows you to tell a story bolstered by real-world data.

Five Users will Find 85% of Usability Problems and Other Myths - Panel led by Rolf Molich
There is no way that I can do this panel justice here - it was just too good. But I will certainly try. As we entered the room, we were handed a list of statements and we were asked to indicate whether we agree or disagree (or both) with the statement. Each person was given a red, yellow, and green piece of paper to hold up to indicate our choice. It was quite interesting to see what the general consensus was among UPA members for the various statements. The panelists then gave their opinion on the statements and opened it up to discussion.

Rolf started off by showing Jakob Nielsen’s famous graph indicating that ~12 users will find 100% of a Web site’s usability problems. So, does this mean that 15 users will find over 100% of the site’s problems? Probably not - it’s a parabola of doubt. But, it’s a matter of semantics: a small number of users will find enough problems along the critical path. The conversation then turned to a debate about expert reviews vs. usability studies. Overall, the consensus was about equal as to which is better. But, usability studies provide many things that expert reviews do not: user context, an ability to meet and empathize with users, and political leverage via struggling users. Rolf mentioned that one team for the Comparative Usability Evaluation (CUE) study that performed an expert review found problems not uncovered by any of the usability study teams. Another great point made by Whitney Quesenbery was that when you conduct a usability study, you get an expert review. But, if you do an expert review, you don’t get a usability study. In the end, expert reviews are great when paired with usability studies.

The conversation then turned to the utility of eyetracking during a usability study. Rolf does not find any merit in this. The other panelists gave at least a little credit to eyetracking. It can help convince clients that a problem exists (heat maps = eye candy and are thus convincing), it can help engage observers, and it can help highlight different behavior patterns from different demographics. But overall, eyetracking can tell you what users look at, but it can’t tell you what they see.

Again, I haven’t done this panel justice. There was just too much goodness to capture. This should have been videotaped so that every UX practitioner and student can learn from these UX visionaries. Unfortunately, this presentation is not currently available on Slideshare.

It was an absolutely wonderful week in Munich. The conference organizers did an amazing job and I can’t wait for next year’s conference in Atlanta.

Here’s some of the mobile content, services and campaigns I’ve seen so far.

1GOAL:  1Goal wants world leaders to end poverty by supporting education for all. As part of the world’s biggest ever mobile phone campaign, mobile companies from across the globe have come together to offer more than 1.5 billion people an opportunity to show their support for 1GOAL  by voting ‘YES’ through a free text message, or by going to http://1goal.mobi on their handsets. The campaign is FIFA’s official charity for the 2010 World Cup.

Yahoo World Cup mobile site: Yahoo launched a mobile World Cup news aggregation site. Search results for football clubs will automatically include matches and results, and the mobile homepage includes a “World Cup module” with scores and matchups.

Sony Ericsson Extra Man mobile site: provides fans with videos from World Cup qualifiers, a WorldCupiPedia, and social networking site applications built into the site.

ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup App: includes customizable elements, a bracket predictor, news alerts, community features, live scores, and video content.

Fox Soccer Channel’s “Ticket to South Africa” App: is similar to ESPN’s and has the latest news, standings, fixtures, photos galleries, venue information, and World Cup history. Once the games begin in June, a scrolling ticker with live scores will appear offering one-click access to in-game match stats, play-by-play information, and video clips.

iPundit App: lets you compete against friends to predict the results for all upcoming matches.  You score points depending on how accurate you are.

EA 2010 FIFA World Cup App: lets you play simulated games based on real team data.

How would you like to see mobile used for the 2010 World Cup?  Have you seen any marketing campaigns that harness the power of mobile?

Back in 2003, MobileLime, a local start up, enabled me to use my phone as a debit card, and rewarded me with mobile coupons from local vendors.  I could walk to my video store in Brookline, MA without my wallet, and pay for my videos with my old Samsung flip phone.

What’s gone awry in the last seven years?
MobileLime’s mobile debit system was never widely adopted,  and the “wallet phone concept,” where credit/debit payments go through mobile carriers hasn’t progressed much beyond paying for ringtones or votes on American Idol.

Chip technology in mobile phones for payment hasn’t been rolled out by major US carriers yet. Even though many credit cards are now embedded with NFC (near field communications) chips and you can “tap & go” to pay for small purchases at your local CVS, consumer awareness of the technology is limited.  RFID (radio frequency identification), another way of storing and processing information, hasn’t really made its way out of the transportation industry, where it has largely been used for tolls, ZipCar activation, or subway fees.

Online micropayments, used mostly for paying for online content or charity donations, never really caught fire.  TipJoy closed shop in 2009. Twonate and Tipit.to are temporarily closed. Micropayments only seem to work on a huge scale, such as 99 cent songs on Apple iTunes.

What will it take to get back to 2003, when I could leave the house without a wallet?
The biggest barriers seem to be the infrastructure and bureaucracy of mobile carriers and credit card companies. Third party fees in the form of percentage of purchase and transaction fees add up without providing much value to small businesses.

Several catalysts are converging right now that could shake things up:

• Mobile smartphone usage is at an all-time high, and consumers are using their phones for scheduling, stock trades, computing, and gaming– much more than just calling.
• Location based social media and mobile couponing- through services like Foursquare, which alert users to nearby deals when they check in at a store or restaurant-  are growing in popularity. Mobile payment is a natural continuation of the experience.
• Facebook has a partnership with Zong, a pay-by-mobile company, and PayPal has a micropayments system and mobile payment app. The existing user base for these two companies is huge. Consumers are already spending millions via micropayments for Facebook games.
• Services like Square are helping to overcome merchant barrier to entry.  Square offers merchants physical reader devices so that they can accept mobile phone payments.

Micropayments  can work on a social and/or mobile network, provided that they’re done within the platform, are easy, and add value for everyday life.  The convergence of shifting consumer mobile behavior and mobile payments embedded into well-liked services could make the difference.  

I’m hoping the  everyday reality of mobile micropayments for things like coffee, parking meters, and videos is just a few years away…

The digital media landscape continues to evolve.  Disaggregated content is consumed in snack-sized pieces in a variety of web, mobile and social environments. Identity fragmentation, permission management, publishing complexity, and relevant measurement pose increasing hurdles to marketers.

The complexity of relationship marketing has increased as consumer’s online behaviors change. Digital messaging used to happen only as email on desktop computers; now consumers are reading email on a variety of mobile devices.

Beyond email, a constellation of messaging platforms such as Twitter, SMS, widgets and social media have been adopted by consumers to handle messages that used to be sent by email. And where once an email address was sufficient to identify a consumer, now a brand needs to know who their customer really is and which channels to reach them through.

This webinar will help brands understand the strategic and operational aspects of Universal Messaging:

• The Shifting Digital Messaging Landscape
• Customer Identity Fragmentation
• Publishing and Measurement Complexity
• Consumer Expectations around Permission Management
• Solutions to these Disruptions in Email-centric Marketing
• Case Studies

Who should attend: Strategists, CMOs, directors and managers of digital marketing, eCRM and email marketing.

Presenters:
Chris Heitmann, Managing Director, OTOlabs
TJ Crawford, Director, Product Management, OTOlabs
Paul Hedgeland, Director, European Operations, OTOlabs

Register to attend Thursday May 27th at 11 AM Eastern