we are: London

I have been reading and thinking a lot about the sign-up processes involved in so many of the websites and apps we use. A website that surrounds a service such as Twitter, Facebook or Tweetdeck deals with the undecided user, the user who is unsure if he wants to use the service or app. However once a user has made the mental decision that he wants to get in on the action he is often faced with nothing more than a boring form. Not the ideal start to the engaging, fun and useful experience promised.

Being met with a sign-up form is not the most engaging way to begin your experience with a product (even if the product is as good as Remember the Milk)

The barrier of the sign-up form

Ok so this twitter thing sounds really good, my friends are all on it so let’s give it a try. Now I know I want to use it but before I can I have to complete the sign-up process. This process can act like a giant barrier between the potential user and the actual user. How can we deal with this problem? Making the process simple and easy to use will greatly improve the completion rate but we can also look at doing more. Services such as Jumpcut (now closed as of June 2009 but outlined in an excellent article on A List Apart), a service for making online movies, used a really interesting approach. Users who arrive on the site can jump in straight away. They can use the service and make a movie and only need to sign-up if they wish to save or share their movie at the end of the process. This removes the initial barrier, getting users engaged from the outset and only asking them to commit to the sign-up process once they have tried to service. This greatly improves the first time user experience.

Twitter engages the customer through the sign-up process

Onboarding and gradual engagement

Getting people signed up to your service is one thing but what about going the next step and getting people using it? This process is often referred to as onboarding. Taking a look at the way twitter handles their sign-up process presents us with an excellent example. If a user wants their own account (they can use twitter to search and read tweets without one) they must go through the sign-up process. During this process they can search suggestions based on interest, search for their friends using their email contacts and also use a free text search for users. Engaging users right from the sign-up process allows them to hit the ground running. They learn about the service and begin with their own customized account filled with tweets based on their own selected interests and people.

Welcome your users

Unfortunately a sign up process will be inevitable at some point for web apps and services but these outlined strategies aim to improve the first time user experience and use the sign-up process to the user’s advantage. If we can let a user experience the service before signing up we can remove the initial barrier. If we can use the sign-up process to engage and teach the user it turns the process into something not only more engaging for the user but of massively more value.

information architecture, interface design, usability design, user centred design, user interface ideas, inspiration, Internet, usability, user experience

There are some web based applications that I use every day. I use Spotify to listen to music, Remember the Milk to organise my life, Tweetdeck to force my opinions on unsuspecting followers and Evernote to record clippings of inspiration and ideas. While thinking about the design of web apps one thing has really stuck in my mind. In an article by Luke W he talked about thinking and designing web applications as products, if web app is a product, design considerations such as customer lifecycle and packaging should be considered.

It made me think if Spotify is the product then what is the packaging? It doesn’t come in a box? The packing of these applications is the website that promotes it. This is the chance that the company has to promote its product and looking towards the restraints and considerations of physical packaging design can help strengthen a design. It gives a narrative for a designer to follow when creating and designing the most effective solution.

The large image used on the tweetdeck homepage makes the product very visible, allowing users to see the product in context.

What can we learn from packaging design?

Packaging has certain contextual and physical constraints.

• Space is limited to the size of box or DVD sleeve so information must be delivered concisely and efficiently.
• Exposure to a potential customer is brief. They may only be walking past or scanning a shelf in a shop.
• Customers will want to see a product so packaging must find a way to make the product visible, either through large, high quality pictures or by making the product physically viewable such as meat wrapped in clear packaging in a supermarket.

The evernote homepage does a good job a quickly communicating the purpose of the product using a limited amount of space and requiring limtied reading time.

Applying this to the web

These are interesting points but how do we apply them to the design of a web apps accompanying website.

• The website should always attempt to get information to the user as easily, quickly and concisely as possible. Copy should be short and sweet, pages should be kept to a minimum, titles and actions should be obvious and users should be able to navigate to content quickly and easily.
• Web users are famously impatient. They will not stick around of they do not get what they want quickly and easily. Just like physical customers time is limited. Benefits and key information must be delivered fast.
• A web application is not a physical product so how can we make this visible to the user? Screenshots, descriptions, videos, tutorials, testimonials, are all ways to make the product visible. The important thing is to let the user learn about the product before they have to download it.

These are all things that most UX designers will already be thinking of but wrapping them up in this analogy or narrative helps to deliver a thought process or a checklist to design against. If you want to learn more about our approach to design feel free to give us a phone on 0207 1991 321 or send us a message.

information architecture, interface design, usability design, user centred design, user interface Design, ideas, Internet, usability, user experience

Be inspired

You are in the last decades of the 19th century and want to understand how people read through a page of text. There is no such thing as an eye tracker (yet!) so what do you do?

You invent one!

That’s how the first “eye tracker” was born in the late 1800s, by Edmund Burke Huey. Readers had to wear lenses with only a small opening, that had a pointer attached. This allowed Huey to observe where they were looking and study which words they paused on. In essence it’s not much different to modern eye-tracking applications and just goes to show that it does take a bit of a great mind (with a little bit of that creative craziness) to come up with something simple and effective to address a challenge.

Be bold

OK, so this is not a history lesson, so why this intro? Chris and I had a discussion the other day about innovation and risk and how we can drive innovation for our clients. Granted, some will be more open than others, but can we help our clients take a bolder approach to things? Try new and not-so-well-tested techniques?

Well, my favourite example is… Marmite (ok, stay with me here)!  I really like their playful, self-deprecating approach to advertising, which they’ve also introduced to social media, by inviting users to post ‘like’ or ‘hate’ videos on Facebook in exchange for… free Marmite cereal bars! Most recently they’ve launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign that pokes fun at all those parliamentary candidate interviews, giving promises about changing the world (one marmite bar at a time).

Love it or hate it!

Allowing (and actually inviting) ‘uncontrolled’ negative content on your social media page would have been concidered mad some time ago, but it takes a bold few to create a new trend. As brands evolve towards being more open and honest with their customers I’m sure we’ll see more and more of this boldness (cue HSBC’s First Direct, O2 etc).

Be different

The question though remains: how can we best help our clients be innovative and stand out of the competition? The answer is by being different - in a positive sort of way! We are different from other agencies and each of our clients is a new and different challenge for us. Most of the briefs we get usually require ‘best practice’, tried and tested solutions that work well for the majority of users and are usualy safe and guaranteed to work. Now - don’t get me wrong - this is great and for some projects that’s all that is needed. But the truth is that it will rarely make a website (and, in turn a brand) unique, standing out from the competition. It surely helps towards a good user experience and happy customers - but in today’s competitive world (online and offline) that’s just not enough to grab everyone’s attention.

We are here to help you go that extra mile for your customers. We love creating unique experiences and with techniques like behavioural targeting and multivariate testing, you can ensure you always get the best results possible. Call Chris now on 0207 1991 321 to have a chat about how we can help you stand out from the competition.

eye-tracking, interface design, usability design, user centred design Design, eye-tracking, ideas, innovation, inspiration