May, 2007 – The difference between evaluating 'can do' and 'will do' – How Persuasion, Emotion and Trust relate to conversion

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Hello, welcome to HFI's Usability Broadcast Network. I'm Dr. Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff at HFI. We're broadcasting live today from Park Avenue in New York City. Our topic is "How Persuasion, Emotion and Trust (which we call PET) relate to conversion." And I have with me today, our expert on the topic, Mona Patel, our Executive Director in the New York City area. Welcome, Mona.

Mona Patel: Thank you.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Mona, you've pioneered the methods and concept of PET that we use at HFI and that we're going to be discussing. We're going to start with a video of a talk you gave recently at the New York Palace Hotel and then after the video, we'll come back live for questions and answers. Now before we go to the video I want to remind everyone there's a white paper available on the topic at the website that you can download at any time. You can do that after the broadcast as well. There's a schedule also at our website, of upcoming webcasts and you can submit questions while you're watching the video. We're going to have a live Q&A afterwards. You can start to submit your questions any time while you're watching the video. There's a button down in the lower right corner of your screen. Okay, so let's go to the video.

Mona Patel: Okay. What I do know as New Yorkers, you want to get to the end and the topic of today's conversation is "Evaluating Decision Making" really as it impacts conversion. So let's start there and talk about conversion and how would you define it? Typically people think of conversion and they link it automatically to buying, to e-commerce so conversion is about, "Do people buy? Will they buy more?" But actually conversion, if you look up the definition, isn't just about buying. It's about doing whatever the marketer or in many cases, the website designer intended you to do. So that could be buying. It could be donating online. It could be reading a particular piece of text. It could be clicking on a button so you get more information. It could be being satisfied with content so that you call the company in the future. It can be anything that your website is designed to do. So what is your website, your public-facing website, designed to do? What did you pay money to host this website for? What are you hoping to get out of it in return? That's your conversion and you must define it in order to know how to hit it, right? So if our goal is to evaluate decision-making as it relates to conversion, well first you've got to know what you are trying to convert. Who are you trying to convert? Because the trick is, when you are looking at conversion, it deals more people than the product because you are asking them to make a decision, right? You're asking your visitors to choose, click or not click, buy or not buy, donate or not donate and so if the goal is to understand conversion, then we have to take a couple steps back and understand decision-making and decision-making is complex. What makes you make a decision? Right, so iPod versus the Samsung whatever, I don't even know the name. Why do you have an iPod over the other? Is it price? Probably not. Is it features? They both play music. Is it functionality? They play music in the ears. So what is it? Why did you buy an iPod over something that is cheaper and does the same thing? And again, it's not just about purchasing but looking across at any number of sites. What is it that makes you donate? Donate online, on top of donating for any particular organization? Or fill out a survey? We're going to be talking about an example of that. You know what makes you decide you know, "Yeah, I'm going to do it now" or "Not today"? Or click on an ad, we know people click on ads but what makes you click on a particular one? Decision-making is really complex, even bug decisions. So the way you think, you come up with a list of things and that's how you make a decision. For example, buying a home, right, I know I need a home with a two-car garage and I know it has to have a fence, it has to have a yard for my dog, I know that it has to be near a school and also near the post office. Is that how you buy a house? A lot of confuse faces looking at me.

(Laughter)

Mona Patel: I don't know! Aren't you going to tell me? Well my brother is a real estate agent and in fact, it's really funny. He would not say, "this is absolutely not..., this is the last thing you look at, when you're selling a house." People walk in and you nod and you say, "Got it. I see what you're looking for." And you use it as a framework but that's not what they like. What does make people buy? And the thing is, it's a really complicated thing and especially when it's indicated where you don't even intend to buy. So when I gave this talk in D.C, right before that, I wanted to get a suit for that talk. I had no intention of buying online; I never buy clothes online, okay? But I wanted to see what the prices were and sort of have an idea of what suit I wanted to get. So I go this website, Bluefly.com. It opens up, have you guys been to it? It's a couple of years, okay. So it opens up there and there are some examples of suits. I look up one and say, "Okay, there's one that's nice. It's not that bad in terms of price." I look it up if they have my size, I'm done right? It sits idle and I'm on the phone and also the window concept. Would you like a personal shopper to help you find what you're looking for? Personal shopper.

(Laughter)

Mona Patel: My personal shopper (Laughs) is going to help me find what I am looking for. So I engage. I open the window and say, "I'm looking for a suit, here's the size" and she says, "Do you have the style number?" It's open in the back so I copy and paste it, very easy and she says, "Well actually, there is a suit in your size but it is in somebody else's shopping cart. If they don't buy it within the hour, it's yours. And more than that, if you want, we'll put it in your shopping cart." You don't even need to do anything. Guess, did I buy?

(Laughter)

Mona Patel: Just guess! So now, this is a case where I didn't even want a suit, I had no intention of buying a suit and I have never bought clothes online. Did I buy? What made me decide to engage today in this environment? What was it? What was it? It was. It acted on a whole lot of other stuff. Probably my addiction, my ego and a whole lot of other stuff.

(Laughter)

Mona Patel: So – but that's exactly it. It was emotion, right? Emotion is critical to decision-making and in fact, there have been studies and studies and studies that show that without your emotional centers intact, you cannot make a decision. So for example, if you wanted to pick a restaurant you can talk about the menu, you can talk about the atmosphere but if your emotional centers have done a lot of research about people and characters and who had had emotional centers damaged, you cannot pick a restaurant. So emotion is critical for decision making but it's really hard to understand so we want people to make a decision. Got that- check. But how do we get them here, well first we've got to understand emotion and again, emotion is really tough to understand because there are a couple of different attributes. So some of you may remember the A, B, C model, right? Arousal, that's one attribute of emotion – so something that has been in us since the beginning of time. It's evolutionary, grounded in who we are. Engrained in who we are, as people and there are primary emotions – sadness, joy, fear, disgust that exist in every single one of us and maybe these are the same emotions that our ancestors used to pick which cave they were going to sleep in or which berry they were going to eat. Instinct, right? A reaction that happens that you don't even know about. It's not on the conscious level. It's physiological. Then there's behavior, right? The smiles, the sweating, the goose bumps, the frowns, the expressions of emotion. You sometimes don't even know you have that, right, but your body reacts to this instinct and showcases in many ways the behavior and it seems a conscious feeling, an interpretation of how you feel – how you think you feel, right? I'm hungry. I think I feel hungry. Am I really hungry or is it something just telling me I should eat? I mean that's a big debate within the realm of reasoning. So, you know there are so many elements of emotion. How do you define it and how do you get your hands around it and we're going to be talking about this in excruciating detail in just a moment.

(Laughter)

Mona Patel: But then the one thing I do want to remind you of is that your decisions are not solely emotional, right? Ego or not, I'm not typically going to make a decision based solely on emotion. It gives me that anticipatory reaction. My gut kicks in and I have an idea of where I want to go because emotionally, it's going to make me feel good but on the flip side, the rational part of my brain is still working -sometimes (Laughs). And so I've got to see words. I've got to see images. I've got to be engaged and justified in my decision with what I see and what I think. So the emotion is going to trigger – prime you for decision-making and the rational parts are going to allow you to follow through, right? So this is important when you talk about how do you feel and how do you think you feel? So where does usability fit in this whole idea? We know we want conversion. We know that decision-making is going to lead to conversion. Where is usability in this spectrum? And usability is defined in different ways, I know. Like focusing on user performance for example, can people do, right? So in a case like this, this is an example of a site – it's the Amex Membership Rewards program and the way it works (let's see if I can work this) is that you click on these icons here and it shows a picture over here. These are blurry icons and they don't have labels and it has nothing to do with what your primary task is which is seeing all the shopping rewards or earn points. In fact, it takes me away from what I need to be doing, right? These images cause me to engage and I'm playing around and I see what I can do but it's taking me away from my task. It added clicks and I thought we weren't supposed to add clicks in usability. It's adding clicks, is it usable? Is this engaging? Another example. The BMW mini-site. Such a pretty site. Such a pretty site, you know? It has black with white text on it, all caps, it uses jargon – we came, we saw, we motored. Better yet, there is or there used to be - I don't know if it's still there, an icon that flies across the screen and you catch it and it opens up a window and that tells you things like the best places to stop if you're taking a road trip between Baltimore and New York which is taking you away from the task of buying a Mini, but how cool is this site? So where does usability fit within all this? These sites are violating usability principles – best practice heuristics, right? There are icons that don't have labels and they're not even icons, they're blurry. There is text that you can't read and that you can't understand if you're not, you know, "in". So where does usability fit? Well, the idea is that usability is essential to website success right? We all know this and we have proven it many, many times. If people can't do something, they can't do something. If people can do something, that's a good thing, right? So usability is the "can do". Moreover though, what we're looking for right now is will they do? What makes them want to do? Then, we're talking about decision-making. We're talking about Persuasion, Emotion and Trust and how that impacts decision-making. So can-do, will-do and what you're doing by that is leading to conversion. So let's say you have your usability. We know in this entire realm, you have "can-do" knowledge. We know this is what works and we know that people will be able to click. You add in this idea of understanding and persuasion, understanding emotion, understanding trust and how it leads to people wanting to do something. With those two things put together, you get results. One is a better understanding of decision-making and one is a positive customer experience. Those two lead to conversion. So let's make this more concrete. We talked about it at a very high level right. Picking on Citi, I don't know why. (Laughter)

Mona Patel: So we're looking at the screen here. What it allows you to do is to pick or find your perfect credit card. How many perfect credit cards do I have? Just take a look – what do you see? Here's a number. I can see it, it's 26. So I can do the task but what does that mean? Does it make me want to click and go deeper and sign up for a credit card which I assume is the purpose of this site? You know, so if I see 26, is that good? Is that bad? Is that exciting – "Oh my gosh, 26 options, that's fantastic, lots of choice!" or "Oh my God! 26 options? That's a lot of choice." You know what is it? How does that impact conversion? Does this page entice me enough to interact, if yes, why? What about it makes you want to click? If no, why not? What about makes you want to close? We don't even need to talk at a high level; we can get it down to even just one feature. Newsletters, I know is a topic of interest to some folks here, or the process of getting people to sign up, right? So in thinking about newsletters, when you're on any site, how can they design that feature to make you sign up for newsletters, to make it better, to make it persuasive, and to make you want to click on it. The feature is the same. I sign up, I get a newsletter, right, but what make me want to sign up? Obviously brand is going to play a huge role. Obviously the site is going to play a huge role and what I get out of it but more than that, let's talk about how you present this information. So sign up, underline and it is easy enough. I can click on it and it will take me somewhere and I know I'm going to get a newsletter. What in it? I don't know. Something? Okay this is better because now I don't need to go anywhere, right? I can sign up here. E-mail address required. That's a scary word. Does that make me want to enter my e-mail? Does it make me want to see what I get first? Probably, right? So perhaps better, maybe the same, you tell me what I'm getting, you tell me the value of it but now I need to click on a button again and go somewhere. So that was good but also bad. Keep going. "Be the first to know!" on Bluefly. Now you're talking, it depends on your target audience, right? So the wording is not going to appeal to everybody but for certain people that visit that website and that is the target audience, it doesn't even say newsletter. It doesn't have that word anywhere within it. It's just "Be the first to know!" Fill the field and click the button. "Sign up today for baby.com" I enter my baby's birthday and I'm ready to go and again, it doesn't use the word newsletter. This is from ESPN – "Insider gets you" No you're not talking what you're giving me, you're talking about what I get. Now we are talking, right? "Expert analysis, latest rumors, trades and matchups and all the tools you need to stay ahead of the game..." You're telling me what I get. Now you're talking to me. Right, so based on just this one feature, there's so many ways to design and which one of these is going to give you the conversion that you are looking for? Right and all we looked at here is content. A little bit of the design and graphical elements. Where it's going to be located on the page is obviously going to play a role but just within this small sector of what - 50 words, 20 words? There's a huge amount of this research that could be applied to help you better your conversion. Now you can take it too far, right? When you are using words, you may go the other way. Right, "The world's most popular natural health newsletter" well, the words are there but does this look like a newsletter that you would sign up for? Does it elicit your trust? Why? It's just the graphic. You know, we've talked about persuasion and "is it easy for me to click on it?" We talked about emotion "what am I getting out of it? Tell me what I get." And we're talking about trust all within a design and those three elements will impact whether somebody converts or not because it impacts decision-making. Why does this matter now? Well, because we are very, very demanding consumers, right, where if you've thought about the websites I mean years ago, the website was a raw medium and you had plenty of others in terms of interacting with your end user. Often today, the web is the only source of contact with your end user, with your customer and so if this is your only source of contact; it's really got to be persuasive. It's got to do everything that you would have done with every other medium you had at your disposal before, right? The second and it's this whole idea of Web 2.0. The web is evolving and as the web evolves, people are evolving and demanding more and more and the more you are going to give them. I don't want you just telling me I want to play. I want to be engaged. I want information that I can't get elsewhere or you know what? I'm going elsewhere. Very demanding and so how do we meet this need? It can't be just usability. You've got to build on usability, it's central and again, if people can't do – they can't do. But then beyond that, how do we design to make them want to do? The problem is emotion again. It's so hard to understand, right, so hard to define because I think different than you. I think that my emotions today are different than what I would have felt yesterday on the same topic. Maybe I wouldn't have bought yesterday, maybe I'll buy tomorrow but today I won't for whatever reason, right? I think I know how I feel. So if you ask, I'll tell you. I'm sad, I'm excited but I don't even truly know what's happening inside. It's my interpretation of what's happening and even if we were to get our hands on what emotions people have, okay – "I think I've got this person nailed. This person is happy"; does that mean they are going to convert? Is that emotion that ties in to conversion every single time, right? Think about this, for an e-commerce site, what are the emotions that I need to have in order to buy? For the cancer.org site, what are the emotions I need to have in order to donate? Very different. So in one case, you may be looking for happiness and in another case, it maybe fear and disgust that you're trying inspire from your consumer to get them to realize what they need to do. So again, it does depend on your brand, it does depend on what your site is out to do but conversion like I said at the very beginning, you define it and then you move towards that and the emotions that relate to that conversion is what you are trying to measure. So let's get into this in a little bit more detail because what this slide points to, is that emotion is tricky and difficult to define but in fact we do know quite a bit about emotion. From user centered design that has already been done to leveraging from that, we've created this PET scan process which attacks the user framed assumptions in different ways. So the first thing, it says – and I'm going to do this by study because I think that would be the best way to give you the background. Let's say you walk outside and there is a sign that says, "Consumer Evaluation Study" right and in front of it, it has four buckets – A, B, C and D and in each bucket, there are pantyhose. Okay, so your goal is to look at each one of these. You look at whatever order you want however you want, and you pick one that you want to buy, okay? Well, when you ask people, "Which one of these pantyhose would you buy?" Here are the percentages. So there is a substantial amount and this was statistically significant for this study of people who would pick D, the pantyhose in D. Now the pantyhose are all the same – the exact same color, the exact same size, the exact same brand – they are exactly the same yet 40% say they are going to pick D. If you ask them why, "well it's the sheerness, the elasticity or this feels like my brand" – they will give you reasons as to why, that make no sense. It's impossible for that to be sheerer or more elastic or the brand you were used to, compared to the others. These researchers do a lot of follow-up and it turned out that the reason you pick D is because it's on the right. People tend to with things on the right. If you ask people why they pick it, not only will they tell they picked something but they will give you reasons that are not true. Think about the usability tests when you ask, "Would you buy? Why? Do you like this? Why?" So, that's one, right, you can't just ask them how do you feel and why do you feel that way? Remember that as this is the information that went into the methodology. Suppose you feel or you notice that your boss isn't paying attention to you. Right so you notice that your boss isn't paying attention to you and it has been a couple of weeks that this is happening. What would you say is the reason behind why this is happening? Is it a) She has great confidence in your abilities, so she's just kind of leaving you alone; b) she has lost faith in your abilities so you're just a lost cause, or c) it has nothing to do with you? Or d) it's the boss – that's mine.

(Laughter)

Mona Patel: But c) right, for the most part we would like to think that we would answer c). Some of us might be more intuitive and might say, "I think I can assess and say a) or b)" but the situation changes everything. What if I added on that this boss was gone for two weeks of vacation and just got back? Would that change your answer? What if, this boss is going on vacation in two weeks? Would that change your answer? What if she just hired somebody brand new who clearly is better than you? This person has got everything nailed and you just don't and you know it. Would that change your answer? Right, so the situation does change everything so if you ask something about "how do you feel? –a, b or c?" and you don't understand the context in which they are evaluating that statement, how can it be accurate? And the last, is that is that it's easier to look out than in and I'll explain so if I ask you, for a charity drive would you purchase a flower, right? 86% of people – 83%, I'm sorry, of people would say, "yes, I would". If you ask if others would purchase a flower, 56% of them would say you know, that person would but actually the answer is closer to what people think other people do. People are better at predicting other people's behavior than their own. Here's another example. How much would you donate? So giving a part of money or a daily or weekly salary, what percentage would you donate or what number would that come out to? On average, I would donate $2.44, other people $1.83. In actuality, it's very close again to what other people did. So why is this? It's just interesting to identify a list of why this happens. Think about how much information you have coming your way – everyday, right, I think one of the books said that (that we've been reading) that it's like 11 million pieces of information that your brain absorbs in a second. 10 million come through your eyes, just what you're sensing and your brain can only process 40. So you've got a whole bunch of stuff coming in that you don't even notice. But it did and it impacts how you see things. It impacts what decisions you make and you don't even know they are happening and that's one of the reason why the researchers attribute this happening because I pick up on cues and I can tell what other people will or won't do better than what I can guess for myself. Really interesting. So, we've got a problem. We can't ask them because they don't know. We can't ask them because the situation changes things and we can't ask them because they can't judge for themselves what they do. So how we get that emotion? Well, all of this aside, you can still get at it. It's tricky and you're trying to combine different modes of what does work but there are ways to assess emotion and remember the goal isn't to figure out if this person is happy. The goal is designing for conversion. So looking at what decisions lead to conversion and what motives and persuasion tactics lead to decision-making? So with that in mind, if our goal is conversion, what we need to do is upfront, get smart and at the later - at the end, validate if what we've done is right. So we're building on what we know about usability. You know, all of us pretty much, well most of us have backgrounds in Psychology, in Cognitive Psychology and Behavioral Psychology. So this is not new stuff for us. We're just enhancing what we've already done and what we already know, where we have usability testing and we have user-centered design and we're modifying the techniques that go into user-centered design to focus more on "will do" not just "can do" okay? So up front, just looking at user-centered design in your data gathering, you're just modifying the questions you ask and how you ask them to get at the answers you're looking for. What motivates people? What's their mindset as they come up and visit a site? What's going to trigger a reaction and you will see examples of this. In the usability testing phase again, not just focused on performance but looking at like we did with the newsletters, "what makes you want to click?" not just "can you find the button?" but what makes you actually engage? And in the usability PET scan, you will see examples of this. We're pooling in everything together so there are physiological measures like eye-tracking and I'll show you an example of that, there are behavioral indications that we are looking for like their non-verbal responses and then there's verbal – expressive – what they're saying and how they're saying it? And we're correlating a cross of those various measures to come up with what is happening at the emotional level and how is that leading to what we care about decision-making and conversion? So in this PET scan process, we're going to dive in before we do any questions about the concept, have I sold you on "it's important to think about decision-making"? So far, so good. The conversion is important, we all know and the decision-making –Persuasion, Emotion and Trust as important factors of decision-making, any questions so far? Alright, so let's keep going. (Laughs) So the process – how do we get this? Well, there is a bunch of ways. The first is that we start with priming questions and we will see all of this in concrete terms later but let's start with the theory and then we'll move in. So priming questions – you guys must have seen in the news articles that say that if you play a video game, you show more attributes of being aggressive after or if you look at a beauty magazine, you're more down on yourself after? Right? This is this idea of priming where you put something in front of a person or a participant, you get it in their mindset and then you remove it. The idea is that that topic is more accessible for them than it would have been otherwise so that's the idea that we are using here. Now I see a lot of nods, "Oh, the psych research", it is coming back, right? (Laughs) This is the idea that if it is a site about surveys and the golden ways to get people to fill out a survey for maintaining their health or staying on top of their medications, you want to start by talking about their disease, these disorders, their conditions and the medications they take and what takes them off track and what brings them on track. If it's a site designed to get you to click on an ad for a marriage site then you want to back out and prime them with discussion on marriage. Who's married? Who's not? Are you married and why not? What is your concept of marriage? How do you find people? Then, dig in. If it's a site about cancer and I'm getting you to donate for cancer then we want to prime with a discussion on what your experience has been with cancer. This is not easy stuff. This is not, I mean this requires a field moderator to do because you will see tears, you will see frustration, you will see people wriggling – I mean it's very difficult to do this research but it's the juiciest research ever. I mean the amount of information that you get is astonishing because now you're getting at what motivates people to be on this site and interact with you as an organization and this site particularly. That's what we're looking for. Conversion – and when you're hit with this information, it's just really powerful. So that's the priming area, then I don't want to tell you what to do. I want you to do what you want, right? So you're primed, you're ready to go and you open up your site and you do what you want and by the way, we're running eye tracking throughout this. It's not invasive eye-tracking, it's basically a camera that's in your screen that you totally forget about and I will show you an example and it's tracking exactly where your eyes are going, how long you're spending on each element of the page, where you're clicking and where you're not. You're exploring, you can think about it if you want and if you don't, fine, but the idea is not to engage. The opposite of usability testing "where did you click that? Why didn't you click on this?" – no probing, right. Let them go. Watch them go and see what happens and you will see shrugs and you will see "huh?" and you will see "right there, there it is, I've been looking for this!" Right, that's a reaction that you're looking for, that's what you're trying to data on so open exploration happens and if they do not go to the task that you need them to, remember we'll focus on conversion; we definitely want to get feedback on conversion. So we take them through the 2-3 tasks that the organization, the business side cares about. So if it's a cancer.org site, they could have been all over the place but what I want to evaluate is donation. If it's a public site and it has an ad for matrimony, then you now want to take them through there. So then you bring it back to the 2-3 sites and why I say 2 or 3 and not 10 or 15 or 50 tasks sometimes that you are doing in a usability test is because when you see the amount of detail that you want to get into, you can't do more. Second, if you limit your scope to the 2 or 3 tasks for conversion then your findings are limited to only those things that impact conversion and your recommendations are limited only to what impacts conversion and now none of them would be business and you will see why. So after you go through those 2 or 3 tasks, and again, I'm noting everything from where you're looking through the eye-tracking tool to what you're saying to all your non-verbal communication, right, extensive data collection. Then we go around retrospectively, let's do it back again – I noticed you clicked on it, I noticed you looked at it, I noticed you shrugged here, talk me through. Not as ideal as if you asked them while they were doing it but better than ruining that data. So you get the full of what they did and then you take them back through and say, "tell me a little bit more about this, both on the emotion side – tell me how you felt" and I'm not asking you but asking you to circle, or tell me non-verbally how you felt and then asking you about the usability. We've asked the tough questions –do you trust this site, why or why not? Huge, as we know. Then the post test questions – normal, "what did you like best and what did you like least?" And the idea is that you're building on what happens in usability but it's different so just a couple differences just so you have an anchor point to compare. So with the goal of usability testing it is performance, "can people do?" A lot of times you're noting success rates, you're noting the time on the task sometimes and the number of errors. They are performance driven. With this, it is emotion and usability definitely what causes the hiccups throughout the process in terms of usability but moreover, what has been their reaction to key pages, to key elements within the page? The sample size is bigger, we're doing eye tracking, we're doing motion-sensing so that automatically means we're not doing the 5 or 10 or 12 or whatever number is your favorite of usability testing. It's not just how many people to find out the number of problems, it's getting down deeper into how people think. So you're doing a larger sample size. Recruiting criteria – recruiting for usability testing, we're looking for a particular demographic, you know you've got a B, a well done and a will do but with the recruiting on the PET scan, it's really tricky because you want to get people who have the ability to be open about a particular topic so you screen not only on how they interact with you but for example with cancer, have they had an experience with experience with cancer? So even the recruiting gets a little bit touchy but it's different, it's not just who you are, it's what you've done and what you believe and what motivates you to do that and making sure that we have the right people from that perspective, psychographic perspective. The origin of tasks in a usability test. I come in and tell you what to do for the most part. With the PET scan, you come in and you do what you want and I may bring you around to 2 or 3 tasks that I care about because I'd love to get your feedback but you know what? If we run out of time, that's going. You're doing what you want and we're trying to understand decision-making through that. The number of tasks, I just mentioned, the probing method – usability testing, we always have2 or 3, right? So after the done task, we have some questions so that we make sure we get answers why they clicked? Did they see? What if it said...? Very different from this which is that retrospective, let's go back around. The interface in the evaluation – in usability tests you can test anything, we've tested – we've sketched out literally sketch outs to fully functional sites. With a PET scan because we're looking at Persuasion, Emotion and Trust, you've got to have something that's almost fully built, right. If you do it on a wireframe, you're not going to fully get the level of detail you want that said, remember we pulled examples of parts of this PET scan methodology earlier so the modified data gathering, we'll rely on it to get some insights, the usability testing that has been modified, we'll rely on it to get some insights. So you don't need to wait to the very end to do this but when you package it all together, you really do need a site that ahs the graphics and has the content and has the white space that you want to evaluate. And then the goal of the analysis, with the usability test you get to the bottom line, it's improving usability for PET scan; it's evaluating usability and this idea of Persuasion, Emotion and Trust because, bringing it all back to what I promised I would, it deals with conversion, right? So if my goal is to impact conversion, then everything I give you in this PET scan has got to give you the information you need to make the changes you need to make to impact conversion. So it's not just a report that says, "here's what worked" but what we're trying to do is to give you really deep insight into what we found from this PET scan and it's going to deal with Persuasion, Emotion and Trust and I'll walk you through more details of this but just stepping back at a high level, a couple of things that you would want to get, probably too soon – tell me if I am wrong (laughs), there's a strategy, right? That's one part so you did all this research and what does it mean? Where do I go? What do I focus on? You know, if I want to impact conversion, tell me what to do – high level, not down to the details but high level – how do I need to start thinking? That's one, two – heat maps and scan paths, really scientific stuff so where people look because as much as you're going to tell me what's going to impact conversion, I need the data to support it. Whether it's to sell up or to sell down or just to know but I need the concrete data that shows me why you're telling what you're telling me – the strategy and I'm going to move down and then up. The motivational personas – these personas are different and we were talking about this earlier. The personas that you – some of you may do them already – there are some personas that you are typically used to. Ann is a 36 year old woman, she lives in New York City, she doesn't have a car you know, every once in a while she shops at blank, blank and blank and she likes to do..., right? It's much more demographic about what they do, who they are as a person so that you can center your design on that person. But what we're doing with a motivational persona is not even necessarily defining a person, you could talk it that way but it's more understanding what motivates that person? The motivation, the mind sets, the needs so it's not just who you are, it's what convinces you and there may be four or five different ways to convince somebody on a site to do a particular conversion, those are your four or five personas. So it's not Ann and then Dave and then Scott. It's a person who needs control you know, and so you can name that person or you can put them in a group anyway you want but it's more about what drives them and less about who they are as a person. The Persuasion Flow Diagram is one of the most powerful ways to show you this and the idea is you're breaking conversion down into micro-conversion because in order for me to do D, I have to go A to B to C to D and if you drop me anywhere between there, I'm not getting a D, right? So instead of just thinking of conversion as this one big goal, they come this side and then somehow miraculously end up here, we break it down into step by step, click by click, what do we need consumers to do in order to convert and then, at each step and at each click, green, yellow and red. Green means "good, keep that", red means ‘bad, oh no!" and yellow is "you've got to think about it" but it's that simple. You want to keep people you want to keep moving through – that these are the things that you do and these are the thing you don't and this is coming from the evaluation. This is coming from the research. We saw people fly right through this part - that gets a green. We saw people stop, that's a red. And what we're doing now is not phrasing, some of these findings would be usability, right? They couldn't find the button. That's going to be red. Not good. Right, but what you're doing now is instead of saying that this is a content problem or navigation problem or presentation problem or interaction problem, which we do in usability speaking our language, we're now going to speak the language of the people who care which assist conversion and everything I'm telling you will impact conversion therefore everything needs to be fixed that I told you – tell you. You know, a lot of where this came from has stemmed from discussions with usability folks on "Why won't people listen to my recommendations? They're really good. They make a lot of sense. I worked hard on them." You know, part of what we're doing in just this Persuasion Flow is re-prioritizing based on what the business needs. Conversion and everything that the business needs to do to get conversion. It's no longer about fixing a navigation problem which is fine and good but if people can't buy because of that navigation problem, I don't care what kind of problem it is, I need to fix it. I'm going to come around. Emotion Map – so Google is an example. "Oh, Google." This is the reaction that you get. "Make it like Google." Every usability test in the past two years, every session is ‘why don't you just make it like Google?" Well, because it is a portal! (Laughs) It's not Google but this has changed people's perception of what they're willing to do and what they want to get out of. We'll just go I and make it really easy, right? So when you say the word "Google", there is a physical "Hah." "Google, I love Google. It's been everything I want. Sometimes I don't get anything out it but I still love it. I love Google." Right?

(Laughter)

Mona Patel: That's emotion and you need to capture that. We want to capture that for you so as we get triggers from the emotional side of what people feel and what their reactions were, we want to capture it in the form of an emotion map. It can be silly with smiley faces, it can be complex. There are a bunch of different ways you can do it but the idea is to capture the emotion people feel either by task, by page or by element. Down to that level. So that you know, emotion impacts decision-making, if there is an emotion in there that you don't like, that's a problem. And then rounding back up to the score card. The score card is something that focuses on the T of PET scan – P-E-T? because trust and credibility, there's been a ton of research we've already done in this phase of what works, what doesn't, what allows people to get comfortable with the site and trust it and so what we are doing in this way is, remember in the session we asked if you trust the site, why or why not? – after all the 30 sessions are done, the moderators and the observers fill out the score card and you will see an example but the idea is, are you bad? Are you good? Or are you right just down the middle? And you get a score at the end and a reason why you have that score. You know, you go up higher, that's good. If you don't, bad. It's very simple. So again, try to simplify, give me a lot of detail as to why things are happening around me all back up into that strategy of what you do next. That's what the goal is of the PET scan – it's to evaluate not just the usability, think about the usability report – usability test report where you know "here are my findings, here are my recommendations". It's the same format but giving you different angles of understanding this idea that's complex – that's Persuasion, Emotion and Trust and then how to use that in concrete recommendations to make it better. How are we doing on time? Alright. It's freezing (Laughs) so let's take questions.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:-

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Welcome back and it's now time for our question and answers session. Just to remind you, you can submit questions with the button that's at the bottom of your screen. So we've had some questions come in Mona - that was a great presentation.

Mona Patel: Thank you.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And we had some questions come in while the presentation was even going on. So we'll just get started right away with the questions so here's the first one. When did you first start thinking about this idea of PET scan?

Mona Patel: Oh, gosh! Well, I suppose it was a couple of years ago. It was in our usability testing classes actually. We would have students come in and talk to us about how it was difficult to convey the importance of usability findings to their management, typically to Marketing.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: And so their reports were often focused on things like navigation and content and the importance of improving the usability and their stakeholders or Marketing would be more focused on how do I impact conversion? So that's kind of where we started to bridge the gap between usability and conversion and how can we create a site that's usable but also meet the needs of the stakeholders which is improving conversion.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And then you just kind of developed the idea from there?

Mona Patel: Yeah. Basically from there you know, to convert this decision-making as you saw in the deck and the idea behind decision-making is this whole concept of persuasion, emotion and trust and the impact that has.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Here's another one. How do the use of personas work with PET scan? You talked a little bit about this in the video.

Mona Patel: Yeah. So you know, personas are part of the design process and obviously, we feel they are very important in the design process as usability professionals.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: Because you're putting the user in the center and it is helping guide the design towards the end user but what we're doing with the PET scan, the idea is to focus more on motivations and mindset so probably the best way to answer this is through an example. One of the projects that we did was the matrimony site.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Mona Patel: So typically for a persona format on this site you might focus on Jesse being a 30 year old male who is single and looking for love and you know, he drives this car and lives in this state.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: That would be a typical persona.

Mona Patel: Right, all the demographic information and what we ended up doing with the PET scan version of the personas is focusing on what motivates them and what their emotional characteristics are so the two that were most prevalent were the internally motivated to get married and the externally motivated.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: So internally is obviously I am looking for someone, I am kind of sad about the whole concept of marriage and everyone else is married and I want to move forward.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: This would actually be what it would say in your persona.

Mona Patel: Yes, exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Very – it's very different.

Mona Patel: And this was a test that we actually did in India so the ideas was that there was a lot of parental pressure to get married.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: And it's society pushing on me and I am just kind of reacting.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: I see.

Mona Patel: It's more than mindset, motivation, environment versus who you are and the demographics of who you are.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay. Next one.

Mona Patel: Okay.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Our team is responsible for an e-commerce site.

Mona Patel: Okay.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Given a limited budget, would you recommend performing a traditional usability test or a PET scan analysis? Which one should you do?

Mona Patel: Okay. My first reaction is figuring out what you want to measure. Is it "can do" or "will do"? You know so the usability is "can people find what they are looking for in that e-commerce site?" And the PET scan is more "what would make them want to?" or you know, "will they actually click the buttons?"

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: So depending on your goal, that's where you want to lean. The second thing is where you are in the design process so if you're working towards a final design then you're probably looking more along the lines of usability as a PET scan builds on usability and if it's after the design is complete, then it could be more of a summative usability test or a PET scan. The other thing is what we've been doing recently as you know, are these PET inspired usability tests that inspire data gathering.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You want to actually explain what that is? What does PET inspired mean?

Mona Patel: Well, it's taking pieces of the PET scan and incorporating it while you design so the first couple of times you presented this idea of a PET scan, people loved it but they didn't want to wait till the very end to find out what the emotional reactions were of end users.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Oh, okay.

Mona Patel: So what we tried to do is pull pieces into the process earlier so the personas, a perfect example of something that you can do during the data gathering phase.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You could do that earlier.

Mona Patel: The eye tracking you can do as on a wire frame or you can have the emotion talk on these ideas of evaluating emotion before you have a design. So it can be a PET scan, it can be a usability test or it can be this combo hybrid "PET inspired" usability test.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay. Alright, good so it really depends on what you want to do.

Mona Patel: Yes and then of course, I noticed it's at a limited budget.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, so do they cost about the same to do?

Mona Patel: No. No, of course not. (Laughs) The usability test, I mean it's simpler, right? You have a smaller sample size.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: The usability test is simple? Okay.

Mona Patel: You have the smaller sample size; you have tasks that you ask people to perform over and over again.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: With the PET scan, it's more open and you have a larger sample size, it takes almost double the time to plan...

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: The eye tracker, you might be using that for traditional usability tests as well, right, but maybe not.

Mona Patel: Exactly. And so you can pretty much, it's not exactly double, but it's close to double.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: What about the amount of time it takes to you know, run the test?

Mona Patel: That's it. That's exactly so we're still doing an hour's session but we're doing more sessions.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You're doing more sessions to get more time there.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Now, another question came in that had to do with how long does it take to complete a PET scan study. So I'm thinking it actually might also take a little bit more time to plan this.

Mona Patel: That's right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: As well as running it and then it takes more time to analyze data.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So would you say the whole thing is twice as long?

Mona Patel: Yup. Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: To do it as it would be for a traditional usability test.

Mona Patel: Exactly. So if you take a usability test at about 3 weeks, a PET scan is usually about 5 ½ to 6 weeks.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay. Okay. Alright, good, well let's keep going here. There's another question here that I think that I might be able to answer.

Mona Patel: Sounds good.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Even though you're the expert on PET scan. It says what research would you recommend that discusses credibility and trust? So I'll just mention some of the - probably two sources about this. One of my favorite books that I have talked, I've talked about it before on webcasts. If you've watched our webcasts, you've probably heard me mention this before. It's called "Strangers to Ourselves: The Adaptive Unconscious" and that's I think a great book...

Mona Patel: It is.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Just talking about this kind of non-conscious processing. One of the best journals, there are a lot of journals in our putting research into practice class, we review a lot of different journals and there's this one journal, "The Journal of Consumer Psychology" is the one that I find have a lot of articles related to decision-making, trust, credibility and they – they don't just do website work or you know, software design but they have been getting into that a lot. That would be another one that I suggest you check out. Okay, here's another question. How does the PET scan differ from traditional market research?

Mona Patel: Well, I think you know, PET scan is based on understanding the value of usability test and ethnographic research and market research so, there are definitely parts that are the same but the idea of PET scan is focus on decision-making so not necessarily asking people what they think and whether they think they would buy but it's more of these analysis techniques with the eye tracker and the emotion clocks and these kinds of tools which is getting at the subconscious level.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: So it's different in that way but it does borrow heavily from all of those fields.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And – and it's almost like we have all these different methods you know, there's usability - there's traditional usability work and usability testing and then there's market research and then there's like ethnographic research and then PET scan so they're all kind of related.

Mona Patel: Yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: But they all have their own little niche of exactly what they are trying to get at and what methods they use.

Mona Patel: Exactly, what questions they need the answers to.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Mona Patel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Exactly, okay. Alright. Can you give us an example of a finding you have found in a PET scan that you wouldn't have found in a more traditional usability test?

Mona Patel: Yeah, well, it's probably - in a couple different ways. So we recently did a PET scan of a site design to have people fill out a survey and the survey was on health-related information. So in the usability test, we would have figured out whether people can complete the survey and in the PET scan, what we focused on more is whether people could complete the survey, why or why not – in terms of following through and getting the whole thing completed. So things around like "it seems that these questions are kind of nosy and I don't trust the site" "I don't trust who created these questions" and "I don't know whether they are trying to sell me something" so that's not something you would typically get when you're doing a "can do" evaluation but it was more focused on what it would take for them to keep going. We got more details so the eye tracker gave us a ton of information on where people were looking and what was hanging them up? What drew their attention away from the survey and what brought them back? And then we also, not so much different from usability testing but again, more detail around the features we added within the site to create a more trustworthy site and a site that was more compelling for our end users. So it's not necessary that they're different, they complement each other there but you get a lot more in terms of in-depth.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: In depth data, okay.

Mona Patel: Your turn? (Laughs)

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: My turn? Well, you know we'll see, you know we've got a lot of questions coming in so we'll just see who wants to answer which one.

Mona Patel: (Laughs)

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Here's one. Can this be applied to desktop apps or web apps where the user has been forced to convert for example; their company has already bought the application that they will use in their work? And is this context (this word is a little strange here), is it similar to Jared Spool's ideas on the "scent of information"? You know this first question, can it be applied to desktop apps or web apps where the user has been forced to convert, and we are using conversion in a different way though. This means they have been forced to convert, they're forced to use the application.

Mona Patel: Right, right, right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right, and when we talk about conversion, we're talking about people making a decision to move forward in a particular way.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And those are kind of two different things. So I – I mean it can be – I mean it can be used, I think that scan still applies if the question is what kinds of decisions will people make while they are using this piece of technology.

Mona Patel: Right and if they're – I would want to say if you probably want to use this to figure out that given that people are being forced to use this application, how can you design or customize the application so that people want to use more of it?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: Rather than using a part of it. So in that way, yes. I mean the whole idea of PET scan is understanding decision-making so if there's no decision to be made so you have to sue an application, there's no decision then may be not but if you have to use an application and the idea is to get you to use more of it or more often...

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Or in a wider functionality.

Mona Patel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Use it instead of...right? Keeping a parallel system.

Mona Patel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So in that way it would apply. And then this question about the "scent of information". Now to me, this is different because my understanding, when you design to improve the scent, that's more of information architecture, navigation design question. Does the user understand what they're looking at the navigation, at the information architecture, then their stand on what to do next, I guess there's some similarity.

Mona Patel: Yeah, definitely. I love the idea of the scent of information.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Mona Patel: I remember having a lot of passion for it when I taught because it's this idea of does a word or does a graphic or does a graphical element give people the information they need to want to click so it's similar in that way and again you know, all these ideas do build upon each other. So it's not just scent of information in that "do you know what's going to happen, why don't you click on it?" but does it provide the right meaning and then the right context in the right way with the right emotional impact to make you want to.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So I actually kind of admit, it makes this idea of scent of information kind of even deeper.

Mona Patel: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a great idea so absolutely.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay. You mentioned usability measures "can do" and that is essential. But I still have problems selling that within the organization. Why will this PET scan be more compelling to my management?

Mona Patel: (Laughs)

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, so they're having a hard time just selling the idea of usability in general.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So is it a good idea then to keep trying to do that and now to do something new like "okay, I want you to fund usability, oh by the way; I would also like you to fund PET scan."

Mona Patel: (Laughs) Well that could probably be a toughest of all. I mean the whole idea behind the PET scan deliverables were to structure them so that they made sense to our end users which are our stakeholders.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: So the idea was to re-do usability deliverables so that it kind of made sense to whom we're talking to so treating our clients like end users.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So it might be an easier sell.

Mona Patel: It should be, it should be because what we we're doing, at the kick-off, understanding what your conversion goals are? That in every slide in your deliverable deck, the focus is on the changes you want to make whether it is based on usability, whether it's based on graphics, whether it's based on flow to impact that conversion. Not "you need to change your navigation and move it to the left-hand side because that's a standard" but "you need to change your navigation and move it to the left-hand side because that will impact people's desire to click" and that desire to click will impact the money you make through conversion.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: I mean I'm even thinking, I love the "can do", "will do" way to explain it and I'm even thinking that selling this will do PET scan and presenting that within an organization might help sell the whole package because then I think, there might be some light bulbs going on and it's like, "Okay, yeah, I get that. Yeah, we want the will do and I guess we pay attention to the can do as well."

Mona Patel: Right, exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: That that might help selling.

Mona Patel: Absolutely. And again, this is another reason why we do the PET inspired data gathering or PET inspired usability testing, we are going down one path and kind of being the force that tells your management about the value of usability, then this kind of build into it, of "I can tie in the findings of this research to conversion and into the impact that it will have on the bottom line."

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay, here's one having to do kind of with the methodology, yeah. How do you conduct the retrospective part of the testing?

Mona Patel: Oh, okay.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Do you have the participant got through the entire task or experience again, or just part of it? So you're not having a traditional usability testing where we are talking out loud while we're doing the test.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So you don't let them do that with this.

Mona Patel: No, not at all.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Kind of two reasons, right? Partly because of eye tracking and also you don't want to engage all that conscious thinking.

Mona Patel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right, so when you're all done, how does that work? Do you sit down with them and then you say, "Okay, now...?"

Mona Patel: Lets' do that again, exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: So the idea of – in the beginning of the slides, I think we talked about limiting the number of tasks that we were doing to 2 to 3.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: Because the amount of time you spend on each task is you know about 10 or 15 minutes. The participants do it by themselves and you go back through and say "let's do that again" and as you go back through, now you can interview them. So the same probes that you would have used...

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Now did you say – what if they went back through it and did something totally different? I mean you say to them you know, "you're new at this, you clicked on here, and tell me what you were feeling?"

Mona Patel: Yes.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You have to be very careful too about the words you are using.

Mona Patel: Exactly, so "Tell me what you were thinking and circle what you were feeling. We want to keep all the feeling down to the visual level and not talk about it and then tell me what you're thinking on the conscious side."

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: And remember those two things together help us understand the decision-making because it is "what did you feel?" and trying to get to it as we can on that and then justify to us what did you think?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yes.

Mona Patel: You can guide them through. You can say, "well you clicked on this button but later you hesitated and read through this text so tell me a little bit more about that", it can be open-ended or you can say you know, "what made you click?"

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You know I don't have a reference right in front of me now but when we did the webcast – remember we did the webcast with Dr. Kath Straub?

Mona Patel: Yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: On usability testing trends?

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: We talked – there was a study in there about current think-aloud technique versus the retrospective think-aloud technique and so if you want – it was a great paper on that and I'm sorry that I don't remember it but you can if you want, download that white paper from that broadcast and you could get the exact reference for what that study was but it showed that the retrospective technique was actually very good and quite valid.

Mona Patel: Just from the practical experience, it really is.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Do you think it is?

Mona Patel: Yeah because when participants are going through by themselves without any interaction, you're getting all of those non-verbal clues that you wanted you know their furrowed brows, ro their eyes...

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: Or the tilt of their head, you get so much information.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: That's interesting. And it's a different kind.

Mona Patel: Right, a totally different kind.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And you need to get used to that.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: The current thinking aloud is so ingrained in how we do the tests.

Mona Patel: And even as a moderator, it's very different to switch because they are so used to you know, "let's do some questions."

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, now you're just sitting there.

Mona Patel: But you're taking a lot of notes too.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: Because you have to follow them through and you have to take them on that guided path so you're taking down a ton of notes.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: It's intensive.

Mona Patel: It's very intensive.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay, alright, oh, we did that one.

Mona Patel: Okay.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: What size of a user sample do you need to study with a PET scan to get accurate data for improving conversion?

Mona Patel: Well, you know the idea is that you want to get enough people to interact with in public and so for those of you who remember psych classes; it's about 30 people per user group. Also, the other thing with the eye-tracking you need a larger sample size to accommodate for all the differences in the way people's eyes move essentially.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: About 30.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Here's a question, can you elaborate more about the trust score card?

Mona Patel: Okay.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Can you tell us what that's about?

Mona Patel: Okay. So there's a lot of research on trust already and Susan touched on it earlier with one of the questions on the sources for trust and credibility and so rather than re-inventing the wheel, we wanted to write down in one place, what these guidelines were. What are the elements of a website that impact people's trust? That site or that brand and since a lot of this research already existed, we turned it into a score card where we essentially - I think we have a list of 18 or 19 different factors and there's a separate set of about 10 or 15 that can applied to separate types of sites so e-commerce, B2B, etc. and it's a simple, "inferior, on par, superior".

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: And you could go through and it's you know, is the navigation clear? Are you getting corporate feedback? Is there a privacy policy that people can find? Is the source of information available? So these are some of the – some of the metrics that we are using and we're basically just go after doing the interviews, you're going through and checking off where they are and you put the number at the end and the analysis why you have that number and what you can do to improve.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, one of the things that I found when you know you go back to this idea of working with stake holders and working with business stake holders in the organization rather than working with traditional usability people, is that they love this score.

Mona Patel: Okay. (Laughs)

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And they actually – and it's almost like the higher up you go in the organization...

Mona Patel: Definitely.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: The more they want – not just a score, they want a grade.

(Laughter)

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: I remember we were – I was presenting to I think it was a VP of this one company and we were doing our traditional usability presentation and we were giving our recommendations and prioritizing and at one point he said, "This is great. I really like all this but really what I want to know is do we get an A, B, C, D or F?" That was the reaction.

Mona Patel: (Laughs) I had a similar experience.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: and it was interesting when he said that "I'm trying to get a feel for how critical this is and how much of effort – you know is there something I need to stop now and you know, get the team together so do we have really serious work to do or is it something where, okay we have some tweaks to make over the next few years?"

Mona Patel: Yes.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And I thought was – it really helped me understand kind of his – you know I hadn't looked at it. To me, it was "oh, we want all these details and we want to do this and we want to do that."

Mona Patel: (Laughs) Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And he just says, "what's the bottom line?"

Mona Patel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So they love grades.

Mona Patel: Is it A or F?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Exactly, A or F, right? Alright, next one. Have you conducted PET scan studies for B2B, business-to-business models as opposed to B2C, business-to-consumer? For example, what might it be like to try and understand the emotion of a certified financial manager in assessing a mutual fund to recommend for a client?

Mona Patel: Absolutely. I mean that's a perfect example of where to apply it because it is decision-making, right?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: So what are the pieces of information that a financial manager needs to pick a particular mutual fund? How does the organization of the various mutual funds impact their desire to pick one over the other?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: What are the ways that they want to compare two different mutual funds and how do you make them lean towards one if that's what you're trying to do? I mean, you know it's down to that level of design but it's a perfect example of where you can so it's not B2B.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: It doesn't really matter if it's B2B or B2C?

Mona Patel: No, it's decision-making. Anytime somebody can choose this or that.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And you want them to kind of go that way or route them...

Mona Patel: So they pass conversion, right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right. And you talked in the video that conversion doesn't, because you're used to you know traditionally conversion mean you know purchasing on an e-commerce site.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: We're using it in a broader sense here.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right – conversion meaning "take the action or decision that you would like them to take".

Mona Patel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay, some more. Can you do PET scan without eye tracking?

Mona Patel: Well yeah. You know the idea behind this word PET scan is that it is some kind of test that you do after the design process to figure out how you rank or how you rate but as you go through, you can do that PET inspired data gathering and that PET inspired usability testing to still get at some of these ideas of Persuasion and Emotion and Trust as you design and as you build. So one of the workshops that we just did focused on how you do a PET scan at a conference.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Oh really?

Mona Patel: Yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: That's interesting.

Mona Patel: So how we get more detail about what drives people to sign up to be a member of a society and what doesn't?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Mona Patel: Yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: But the eye tracking is very powerful.

Mona Patel: Absolutely.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: I mean that's when you actually get the data?

Mona Patel: Yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So if possible, use the eye tracker but if you don't have access to eye tracking equipment, you could do- you know you could still do some without it.

Mona Patel: Yeah, absolutely. The eye tracking gives you so much interesting information.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Mona Patel: Especially with that retrospective part we talked through before?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: I typically was looking at the eye tracker where people looked and used that to come up with the follow-up questions during the retrospective part so you're going to do some of that on the fly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Mona Patel: When you don't have the eye tracker running...

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Well you know, if you don't have and most companies don't have – I mean a lot of people who have usability testing labs don't have eye tracker but you can – we have an eye tracker at our Baltimore research facility that we can rent that lab out. A lot of usability testing labs are starting to get them.

Mona Patel: Yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: There are some at universities. So even if you don't have one, you might be able to get access to one and do it and if you have never seen eye tracking or had a demonstration, I would really recommend that. A little plug here for the usability professionals – which is the Usability Professionals Conference that is coming up in June and usually there is an exhibit. For instance, Toby, which is the name of the eye tracker that we have, usually exhibits there and you can try it out if you have never done it or you can participate as a user with him and experiment. It's really interesting and a lot of fun. We don't always get to play with you know, fun equipment so we like it.

Mona Patel: (Laughs) What else do we have?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Here's an interesting one, alright. Are there ethical issues to consider when implementing PET scan because you are soliciting emotional reactions that are potentially unexpected or undesired? Is there a line not to cross? You know, this reminds me – in usability testing have you ever had somebody cry during the usability test?

Mona Patel: (Laughs)

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: A regular usability test, not one of these.

Mona Patel: No.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You haven't?

Mona Patel: No, but in a PET scan, yes.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: No, no, no. I have had people – I have had people sitting there crying.

Mona Patel: I have wanted to cry, does that count?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: When you were doing a test?

Mona Patel: When I was actually doing a test.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Or when you were running the test?

Mona Patel: Running.

(Laughter)

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: No, that's because you were exhausted and had a headache because that's what usability tests do to you. No, no. I've actually had people get angry, I've had them – you know and it's so amazing because you know traditional usability tests and back in the days when they were doing software and no one was doing usability work so software was really hard and people would get so frustrated and they would think that there was something wrong with them.

Mona Patel: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You know? And I have on video, people you know, tears going down and people going you know, "I'm sorry", yeah so I – it is possible to get strong emotional reactions.

Mona Patel: Yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: I don't – I think – in my mind, as long – in terms of the ethical issues, as long as you're being honest with people about you know, what's going to happen and what site they are going to be looking at etc., then I think you are bring ethical.

Mona Patel: Yeah.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: People have an emotional reaction, it's not like we're trying to trick them into having an emotional reaction, and we're just measuring their emotional reaction.

Mona Patel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: And I think, well, one of the things that we have done in this process is we have several consent forms for PET scans and it's not much different than a usability one but it just flushes out a little bit more with this idea that they can leave at any time, that we're going to be talking about topics such as and we will fill in exactly what those topics are depending on the project and so that helps a lot.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So you do have a different one?

Mona Patel: Yeah, we do have a different one and it's basically three bullets that are different and it flushes it out a little bit more that you can leave any time, that all your materials will be confidential, we'll never use you name...

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Mona Patel: And then so that, we're going to be talking about some sensitive things. If you don't want to answer, that's fine.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: Those are the three there.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Which you might give in a normal usability test anyway.

Mona Patel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Just re-iterate it.

Mona Patel: Exactly, you just tell them one more time about it.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Okay. Actually, I think this is our last question that we have time for.

Mona Patel: Okay.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: How do you capture the physical cues – the nods, the frowns? Do you use specific technology; do you note it down in notes or do you use something else?

Mona Patel: It's a combination. There is technology available, we're trying it out so I wouldn't say yet that that's the way to go but maybe in a month or two, if you send me an e-mail, I'll tell you. What we have in our notes is – we have a couple of observers during each PET scan and each one is taking a set of notes on what people are doing, what they are saying, what their tone of voice is, what their non-verbal cues are and we are trying as best as possible to standardize that across the 3 observers. So there are check boxes and there is a bit of rigidity around that and then we compare notes at the end and that get through a point where it takes a longer time to analyze.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right, as you have all that data.

Mona Patel: Exactly, and you also want to be careful about how you're interpreting the data. So a sigh or a nod or a frown as it says here, doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Mona Patel: So you're kind of comparing on that front as well.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And I think that this is an area that will mature.

Mona Patel: Definitely, I'm thinking.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: We'll have some technology to help us.

Mona Patel: We'll capture that data automatically.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So, thanks Mona. This has been fast and fun. Some things to remind everyone about – an archived version of this broadcast will be posted on our website in about 2 to 3 weeks and the white paper will still be available for download. Our next webcast is on July 12th and that one – the topic is "UI – User Interface Patterns" and that's going to be with Dean Barker and myself. We look forward to seeing you at the future ones and thanks again for joining us.

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