Any time you mess with the user experience, you’re going to risk backlash. If change is based on a solid understanding of your customers and the extent to which this disruption will – eventually – work for them, the effects will be not just survivable, but allow you to thrive.

Netflix committed a customer experience faux pas and the question is – Will Facebook do the same with their new total site redesign?

<< Check it out on Forbes >>

Here’s the beginning of the Daily Artifacts article:

 $1.85 billon dollar customer experience mistake made by Walmart (a conservative estimate of lost revenue that does not include the hundreds of millions spent on remodeling stores)
- What happened? Walmart rolled out “Project Impact” – a major change in strategy and store customer experience – starting in 2008 
- Why? Customers answered a Walmart survey and told Walmart that they would prefer less clutter in the stores
- Walmart revised their decades-old strategy of low price and wide selection
- 15% of the inventory removed from the stores 
- 30% – some suppliers reported losing 30% of their stock in Walmart stores due to the revamp
- Removed pallets of items like juice boxes or sweatshirts stacked in the centers of aisles. 
- Slimmed down merchandise on “end caps,” displays at the ends of aisles
- Shortened shelves
- Revamp not only removed items but cost “millions of dollars” per store in refurbishment costs
- Saw an immediate loss in sales and decline in same-store sales data

As a long-time user experience practitioner, I was taken aback by these attack from many sides. However, as my partner at Success PragmatiQ, Larry Marine, and I have come to realize, there is some truth to these concerns. Larry and I have addressed these issues in a number of articles and blog posts. Read on…

First, there has been a historic battle in Agile development camps as to the importance and place in the agile process. Many agile developers don’t see a need for up-front user research and product design. Unfortunately, agile is a development process and not a design process. Larry Marine and I addressed this problem in a recent article, “The Grand Design in Improving Agile Success,” on the new Software Quality Connection website. Our approach is that up-front, user-centered research can define users’ problems and create a design that solves these problems. User experience design can then be integrated into the agile process with parallel sprints that preceed development work. Read our article and let us know what you think!

Secondly, other articles have stated that user-centric design approaches don’t produce breakthrough designs. Read “User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea” at Fast Company’s Co.Design. Their premise is that listening to users and user-led design produces incremental improvements to design and sameness rather than innovative products. Our response to this is presented in Larry’s blog, “Mediocrity in Design.” Our response will definitely stir the pot! Again, please let us know what you think.

Finally, Larry was interviewed in Boulder by Allison Tatterson, where he spoke about user experience and what product managers should know about it. View the interview text and video. Here’s a snippet of what Larry had to say:

Every interaction someone has with a product, service, or company, creates an “experience,” including the branding, messaging, product positioning, sales channels, ordering/purchasing process, as well as the actual use of the product. Every touch-point combines to create a general perception by the users, and, as the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. That experience sets the tone of how that user will perceive the company and all aspects of it, including other products and services. User-experience design is the process of managing those experience touch points to achieve a specific desired effect. Good experience design is all about setting and managing specific expectations and experiences.

Along these lines, I wrote a brief article, ”Effective Website Design – It’s all about managing expectations!” – in RMDMA Magazine (Page 4). Same topic – managing expectations about website design.

We hope this will generate comments and discussion about the drawbacks and improvements to be made in user experience and user-centered design. There’s nothing like a frontal attack to rally the troups!!

Theo Mandel, Ph.D. gives an invited presentation – “Golden Rules of Web Design” – to a Digital Marketing graduate course at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver
September 27, 2010
Denver, Colorado

Each year, the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association hosts DM DAY, the region’s most comprehensive, best-attended direct-marketing event. The 2010 event was no exception, presenting a full day of authoritative speakers, timely seminars and substantive workshops that addressed the wide range of skills and expertise direct marketers need to stay competitive. Visit the Conference Website.

Mandel created a webpage for session attendees, providing links and materials, including the presentation, the “Golden Rules” chapter of his book, and charts and checklists for reviewing your websites. Visit the Golden Rules of Usable Web Design webpage.

Luke  Wroblewski writes about some new websites that lay out registration forms in a narrative format rather than a standard grid format. Here’s an example:

 A/B user testing showed that the narrative style form increased conversion rates by 25-40%. This new style goes against conventional UI guidelines of trying to lay out forms to enhance scanning vs. reading. This new style follows the reading style, which may prove better for common registration forms that ask information such as, “Who are you, what’s your e-mail address, where do you live, etc.?”

It is too early to see who wins this contest, but it is refreshhing to see new, innovative ideas in UI design!

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

<< View Luke W’s blog >>

<< Follow the blog trail >>

Why are so many things broken? In this entertaining talk – one of the favorites of Gel 2006 – Seth Godin gives a tour of things poorly designed, the reasons why they are that way, and how to fix them.

Watch the Video

Chicago’s Horizon Realty, a property management company, filed a $50,000 libel lawsuit Monday against a former tenant, Amanda Bonnen, over one of her alleged Twitter posts.

Horizon argues that Bonnen libeled the company with her May 12th tweet, which read in part ��Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it ��s okay. ��

Bonnen ��s alleged twitter account, abonnen, is no longer active. But, based on information in Google ��s cache, it appears that Bonnen had 22 followers.

��The statements are obviously false, and it ��s our intention to prove that, �� said Horizon ��s Jeffrey Michael. ��We ��re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization. �� Michael added that the company has a ��good reputation it wants to preserve. ��

Instead of ignoring a comment that was viewed online by a dozen people, the company is now getting a tremendous amount of bad publicty.

<< View Article >>

Chris Nodder, Nielsen Norman Group
chris@usability4evil.com

Our knowledge as usability practitioners can be used for evil as well as for good. As evil usability practitioners, our job is to create purposefully designed interfaces which make users emotionally involved in doing something that benefits us more than them. Let’s discuss some concepts that use basic behavioral traits and appeals to users’ emotions to lay the groundwork for evil design. Learn more and contribute your own examples at www.usability4evil.com.
   

Sloth
Users are lazy. They follow the path of least resistance. When these paths are trampled through ornamental flower borders ( Desire lines) then you know the flowers were planted in the wrong place. It’s your job to make your desired outcome follow the path of least resistance.

Example:

• freecreditreport.com point out on their homepage that they are not the true “free” credit report people (that would be annualcreditreport.com) but the text is away from the desire line – it’s in a visual dead spot and surrounded by much more attractive targets. So users can easily end up with a monthly subscription deducted from their credit card. Smart! Evil!

Pride
The desire to be more important or attractive than others – and in this day and age, also the desire not to look stupid. Think about the ability to manipulate people based on their fear of being less important, less attractive, or looking stupid. Easy.
Example:

• Linkedin needs your data in order for the site to be useful. So they use language like “your profile is 30% complete” (oh dear!) and offer to search your contacts list for other linkedin members. If you think this is silly, explain the existance of sites such as toplinked.com, which provide a ranked list of the most linked-in individuals on the service.
• Fear of looking stupid leads users to trust sites which display security certifications more than those which do not. However, Ben Edelman discovered that the sites displaying security certifications are actually significantly less trustworthy than those
  which forego certification. Way to go, evil sites!

Envy
An uncontrollable urge to possess something that someone else has, which you do not. The trick is in making people want the thing in the first place.
Examples:

• Apple. Smaller, lighter, smoother, sexier than the competition, so you just have to have one.
• www.youvebeenleftbehind.com – because, when the rapture comes, you want to be even more smug than you are now

Greed
All we have to do is give people the reasons, and greed is motivation enough for them to carry through.
Example:

• Amazon (among many other e-commerce sites) shows you a discounted price and calculates for you how much you save. They offer free shipping if you just slip one more thing into your cart. You can have it sent to you with a single click (no worrying about credit card numbers or any other stressful stuff). If there aren’t enough justifications right there, you can add it to your wish list for later.

Lust
Exessive thoughts or desires – often of a sexual nature. Well, of course sex sells (as long as it isn’t too blatant), but how else can we introduce lust? Anything that you can do to make people feel loved will endear them to you, and make them more prepared to do things for you.
Example:

• Mini, on their USA site have a very slick and quite well implemented configurator that lets you design your own car. In the cold light of day, you’d never consider paying $150 for little wing mirror covers that have a union jack image on them. But once you start playing with the site, that and many other options just look right on the car, so you add them anyway. Because you are unlikely to have a good anchor point for these costs (see greed), and because they are relatively insignificant compared to the overall cost, lust can be an easy sell.

Wrath
Uncontrolled feelings of hate or anger. How many times has that happened to you online? Your job is to channel your users’ feelings, control them, and bend them to your advantage. Normally, social structures prevent people from really demonstrating hate and anger. Anonymity and a feeling of belonging are both states which encourage behavior that individuals wouldn’t normally engage in. If you can create an anonymous group of individuals with similar interests, just sit back and watch the flame wars start!
Example:

• Don’t label required fields on your registration form. Instead, return an error when people don’t fill one in. Now, they’ll be angry but in order to get past the form, they will be more likely to fill in all the fields! Bonus: They’ll ignore the fact that you rechecked the e-mail opt-in box.

Gluttony
Ah, good old overconsumption. Your users’ brains have consumed so many Web pages that now they ignore most of the content and make assumptions. You can make use of this assumption-driven behavior by making elements of your site behave differently than users will expect.
Example:

• Snap.com decided to repurpose a control type to serve ad revenue ends. Let’s see – oh yes, the hyperlink would be a good one: ubiquitous, familiar, and users are already trained to hover and click on them. Let’s turn those into advertisements link bubbles!

Reasons to attend the session

• Free membership to the U4E henchperson’s organization (greed)
• Comfy seats for half an hour, nothing better happening (sloth)
• Learn something your peers won’t know (pride, envy)
• That smug feeling of being part of the in-crowd (lust)
• Practice the U4E secret sign (envy)

Usability for Evil (Evil By Design)