December, 2007 – User experience inside and out: The strategy of persuasive design

Jay More: Hello everyone. I'm Jay More, President at Human Factors International and I am delighted that you are all here today for our webcast. With me today, is Jerome Nadel, HFI's Chief Experience Officer. How are you Jerome?

Jerome Nadel: Fantastic.

Jay More: Good. Today's presentation is entitled as you would all already know, "User Experience Inside and Out – The Strategy of Persuasive Design". I'm really excited about this presentation, Jerome because I think that what you are really showing here is more than usability, more than user experience, it is really driving business. I think what you've got is something very practical and I would really encourage those of you who are practitioners to show your managers this webcast once it is archived because I think that there is some really good practical information that they'll enjoy. Let me just cover a few practical points before the webcast starts. First, be sure that you've downloaded the companion guide from the HFI website. Secondly, be sure to submit questions using the button on lower right and we will answer as many as we can – as many as we have time for and as an added feature, we will be answering questions for the next few days over the weekend. So if you don't get your questions in now, it is fine to send them in and we are going to post the answers to the questions, we will keep Jerome busy...

(Laughter)

Jay More: And yeah, for the next couple of days. Lastly, if you really get inspired don't hesitate to hit the contact HFI button and we'll be glad to answer more questions or help you in any way we can. Now Jerome is going to review what we are going to be talking about today.

Jerome Nadel: Thank you, Jay. So there are three core topics of this presentation and we look at this as a conversation as we have questions and answers at the end. These themes have been presented in previous webcasts on the Usability Broadcast Network, the first focusing on the distinction between user experience and usability and suggesting that usability is more than enabling performance speaking to the emotional and persuasive aspects of effective design thinking holistic user experience. Previously Susan Weinschenk and Mona Patel have given a great webcast presentation about this notion of PET scan and we are going to be integrating that into a bigger picture here. Secondly, the notion of building metrics to quantify user experience and I'll suggest that metrics help - enabling you to understand, improve and validate and typically when we look at that and there is another I feel, excellent, presentation with Susan and Phil Goddard talking about UX metrics. They were focused primarily on a set of channels externally. We will be then taking that metrics based framework and suggesting that effective profitable user experience starts from within. What you do determines how you do.

Jay More: So the intent of this –

Jerome Nadel: Broadcast of this discussion is to demonstrate how usability is changing and it is encompassing more user experience, that measurement is important and that it grounds us in a rational framework for analysis and improvement and finally that we not only need to think our external channels but also our internal infrastructure and how that relates to the goodness or efficacy of our external channels. So let's move on, as we speak about the classical framework of user-centered design and we often say here at HFI that we think – user-centered design is informed and validated, we are purical and rational and you see three course steps over here, the first culminating with what we refer to as the "contract for design", suggesting that the first requirement is to understand what is the organization looking to do, what are organizational objectives, are they KPIs? What are the success criteria? Then of course, going out and understanding our end users by doing our classic user-centered analysis to ensure that we understand the end users, their profile, the tasks they perform and how they think. We take that and that becomes the foundation for the beginning of visual design. We are thinking about information architecture, navigation framework – the structure for design and then of course, from a perspective of being informed and validated, we are usability testing these concepts before we deploy or before we incorporate those into our usability infrastructure. Going back to that first step over here, one of the things that we have observed through time is that these success criteria, from an organization perspective vary and we are going to introduce this distinction – those that are more performance-oriented versus those that are more persuasion-oriented suggesting that performance orientation is really the classical view of usability. Can somebody complete a given task or a persuasive orientation says although they can complete something, are they likely to do it? More of a market orientation and not just the content of an overall affect associated with the user experience.

Jay More: It's almost what you are saying is in our process, we have all the right steps – we are methodological in how we approach the design but now you are saying let us think more holistically, let us draw in other aspects of user experience that could make our designs better.

Jerome Nadel: And meet these objectives of the organization so the role of the usability practitioner or user experience practitioner is to help orchestrate the way people interact with technologies or channels, to actually affect them to behave in certain ways. Now we know, coming back from this empirical rigor that we can measure and we are going to talk more about measurement in the second section of this presentation and we have discussed this before in previous webcasts as well. The notion of - from an expert review perspective the ability to score, from end-user ability testing, the ability to measure before and after or yourself against a given competitor. On the bottom-left, we see the notion of continuous usability measuring a longitudinal framework to measure through time and assess improvement hopefully or follow improvement perspective. So this rational framework is critically the cornerstone of the user-centric usability framework but we observed an interesting shift and that is that shift to self serve. Another feeling that is very important as we discuss this distinction between performance orientation and a persuasion orientation and we have two graphics over here, the top-left is the one where we look at the classical self-serve device – the ATM or Automated Teller Machine and the convenience associated with that is that it enables me to get money to go out to service providers like the laundry, to retailers like a shop, or to a bookstore and I am leveraging others with the money that I have to go perform these tasks. But we have observed this shift with the advent of the web and the internet such that now I have ubiquitous information at my fingertips. I can electively get the information myself. I can electively determine that I would rather e-tail than retail and the convenience potentially associated with that but it is optional. Then we saw a trend where OSS ERP systems vendors started building business cases within larger and smaller business organizations alike suggesting that the new business model is one where the size of the human resources group is smaller, the size of the accounting group is smaller because people can serve themselves and suddenly the mandate for effective usability became the clear priority because the business case would not be justified if people could not perform these tasks on this enterprise software. Already there is the beginning of the challenge of who will perform this task – will they do it? Will the business case be met? Then we move to a little bit of observation that self serve has become so ubiquitous, we do live in a self-serve world. So we see in the top-left where you can help yourself back in the day of black-and-white, we are now; again we do live in this self-serve world. Devices within stores, self-serve internet based applications at work are really mandating that people are going to use these self-serve channels. We see at the bottom-left, the notion of self-serve checkout. I live in the Boston area and I see that more and more supermarkets are embracing this framework and the benefit presumably is the lines are shorter when you self-serve but the challenge is will the bar code scanner read the UPC? Do I have to bag my items myself? Is there really value for me? I think often, organizations look at a business case where they say, "If we could make the user do for themselves, we would mitigate costs and they will be a better profit scenario." But what we are missing as we go to the next slide is not just an issue of "can they?" but "will they?" It is not just an issue with usability, it is an issue with usefulness and here we simply state that it is about the things that work. It is about understanding the bigger ecosystem and looking at what kind of interactions are people expecting? Is this meeting their need? What is their emotional reaction? Can we persuade them to have uptake of these given devices?

Jay More: I think your example or self-serve is very good because it meets with the example in your previous slide, we can see different mixtures of performance and persuasion and how they interplay to create a successful user experience. It's not just performance and it's not just persuasion. It's both.

Jerome Nadel: And we're going to be speaking on that now. We're going into detail.

Jay More: (Laughs) We are going to speak on that.

Jerome Nadel: That's a key theme over here that one can argue that historically that the practice and space and science of usability focused primarily on the "can do", on the performance orientation. We have a design, can somebody complete the task? We haven't looked at it holistically, in terms of orchestrating the set of interactions to look at the emotional impact, the persuasive impact and ensuring that in fact, it's not just somebody can perform a task but they are likely to perform that task. This brings us back to a recent webcast delivered again by Susan and Mona, friends and colleagues of ours, where Mona has been evolving these evaluative techniques referred to as PET – Persuasion, Emotion and Trust - to try to assess the emotional impact of content more holistically within the design of an interface in the system and suggesting that this ultimate criterion of success – conversion is not only the performance side of it but the persuasive side as well and we have added to that saying that there are many measures and we are going to share some examples and discuss those, of this conversion. It might be conversion of you've convinced somebody to use and put the item in the shopping cart. It could be contribution in a 2.0 environment where you are encouraging the end-users in the social network to contribute, to give back to create this viral repository content that others will take.

Jay More: You know, what's so exciting about this framework is that I think it gives the practitioner and the executive champion of usability a much broader framework to think about their business because if you combine usability with persuasion, emotion and trust, you're suddenly covering a lot more than if you had just picked one or the other. It is so much more holistic. It is so much bigger and it so much more relates to how people really buy. Just because we can use something, does not mean we will.

Jerome Nadel: Exactly Jay, and this is going to be out theme as we go through, to suggest that usability is coming closer to strategic marketing and this diagram is intended to reinforce - let's not get rid of what persuasive usability is good at – the science, the methodology, the rational rigor but as well, as we have observed in our engagements, that more and more react in an advisory role in a strategy. Executives within an organization are articulating their strategy at a high level and they are translating that into a channel strategy or digital strategy and that digital strategy determines as we see to the left and to the right, is there more of a performance orientation or is there more persuasion orientation? And this is not an absolute dichotomy, it's a continuum between the two and we feel and we are excited about this topic obviously, there is a shift. There is the space of usability and again, we can debate the semantics of is it usability or user experience? What's important is what is encapsulated in those terms that it is no longer just a focus on the performance. More holistically, the role of the user experience designer, of the usability practitioner, is to help orchestrate the interactions end-users have with systems, with sites, with devices etc. to meet the strategic imperative of an organization which means again, let's not lose the purical techniques that we know and love. Let's ensure that we have attentive ear to strategy and can help executives translate high level KPIs into digital strategy KPIs and then let us determine how much of our contribution is on the persuasive side versus on the performance side.

Jay More: You know I think that in speaking to the CUAs, maybe listening to this broadcast, I am sure there are many I think you can use this information to really speak even more effectively to marketing executives and marketing staff members within your company. As you begin to talk not only of performance but about persuasion, you are really beginning to come to the junction where user experience meets marketing. I think Jerome that you're giving people the tools to be more effective in their jobs. We really want you CUAs to really have more knowledge so that you can grow your careers and be more effective in your company.

Jerome Nadel: The space is changing. You know these are exponential times and we need to stay on the track. In fact, we look at a couple of examples about this persuasive notion that it is not just about effective design but persuasive design as well. So here we have a bit of a provocative line of "move me from voyeur to contributor" so again, you know if we think of YouTube, if there were no videos up there, there would be nothing to go to. So it's not just being the passive viewer or voyeur, it's encouraging, persuading, influencing, pulling me to be a contributor and in fact if we look at these design challenges, more and more have become a strategic remake. We are trying to understand what is the desired outcome? And as we see in terms of market facing design, it is often about "can we get somebody to do something?" and I'd suggest historically, the design of systems weren't thought of in that context, it was more "we have to give a design to make somebody know where to go to complete a task", much more of a isolated laboratory rigor which loses the context of the full ecosystem, the environment in which people act. There are other options but you want to keep them here. Before I have talked about stickiness, you know it is not enough just to keep someone here; you want to ensure that you elicit the desired behavior.

Jay More: Well in fact, there are cases and maybe this isn't the time to go into them, where we have seen or where a site has been made more usable from the performance point of view. The overall conversion, if you will, actually dropped. You may be thinking if I have made it more usable, why would the conversion drop? But there's more to the story as Jerome is saying.

Jerome Nadel: And we will be looking at metrics as well to say you know, again here we are still at the definition space. So the definition space is saying our historical definition of usability is too small, we need to open that up to look at a more full benefit of user experience, of being proactive, almost a metaphor of chess, don't move a piece at a time – think four or five moves down to really master the board. We see another example over here and this was one where we spoke about Web 2.0 site. Portals by and large have not met the expectations of the marketing industry and there was a requirement, an expectation that performance would improve, that collaboration would improve and here, for those of you in the practitioners' space, you know the old "is it object action or action object?" If we think about collaboration, did people think about "I am going to collaborate, let me go collaborate" or did they collaborate in context? I know this graphic over here is a bit small for you on the other side of the viewer but we see a framework, this is where the collaboration at Ernst & Young in fact, what we came to in the bottom-right is the idea of a document viewer whereby once you found this artifact, this document, this jewel of knowledge - that's the time to encourage me to collaborate. Be it a vote symbolic of a tag, a vote, a rate or put on my own blog, initiate a discussion thread and we suggest often that the design of these collaboration tools are created in such a way that they say "I am going to collaborate, let me start there" or in fact, it's not in context, that question, that invite, is much more salient. You're likely to get more up take if you put it in the context of "Now that I have found something that I like, what would I like to do around it?" So it starts changing the way we think about design because it is not just "can they find the thing they are looking for?", "could they initiate a collaboration?" but it is more of "how are we orchestrating the interaction that they have and is it optimized against the goals of the organization?" and from the KM perspective, it's not just finding, it is using and sharing.

Jay More: As a teaser to the next webcast, I couldn't help but commenting that you are all familiar with card sort well we have come up with something called PET sort – Persuasion, Emotion, Trust – that really speaks to what Jerome is talking about, with the context that's where decisions are made but more on that in January.

(Laughter)

Jerome Nadel: So last slide by this way of introduction over here, and we have been doing some work and we are going to share that. We are going to talk about metrics, in fact the notion of cross-channel metrics. Here we speak more at a strategic level to say let's imagine and appreciate this in the context of the financial sector of banking and we typically see in organizations, there are product and service owners so you have an organization, we're going to give a business unit that is responsible for a given product – I am responsible for mortgages, someone else is responsible for basic banking accounts, someone else is responsible for other type of investment tools. Then you have channel owners. These people, the channel owners, might be responsible for the ATM, the branch, the online banking etc. What we're suggesting is that the lack of synthesis in the collaboration between the product and service owners and the channel owners creates a very fragmented experience that is somewhat haphazard and suggesting over here, we are going to elaborate a bit more in the next section, is that what we are really looking for is a proactive framework where we understand the synergies between the various products and services and the channel's strengths and weaknesses and are orchestrating the optimal mix of the two to maximize both uptake and profitability. What we found around not only the financial space but in general, there is often a push to sell a self-serve to simply reduce cost but we are minimizing the opportunities to wallet-share and uptake and we will be speaking about that more. So again, suggesting that customer experience is a market differentiator, this is becoming more of the strategic remake at the executive level to say "how can I be the dominant player on the market?", "how do I leverage technology with the digital strategy that is in line with the products and services I have?" - optimizing experience to make more money with more margins.

Jay More: I think it is very well said, Jerome. I really think that HFI, what we really do is to bring two things together which Jerome has articulated so well. We are not losing the science as we expand the user experience. Science is a big part of it, it is the foundation as Jerome has shown, it is the integration of both science and business to drive business and this channel example really shows that and we'll show that.

Jerome Nadel: And again, you know, foundationally as we acknowledge that we are living in a self-serve world, there is more opportunity than ever to do good here and that's why I think we're so excited to share some of these concepts with you.

Jay More: So how are we going to make all of this happen?

(Laughter)

Jerome Nadel: So we'll go back a little bit to go forward so again, user experience versus usability – pick the term that you prefer but acknowledge that it is bigger than what we have looked at historically versus the "can do" and the "will do". Metrics are important and there is a wonderful webcast a couple of months back or several months back, time flies, again by friends and colleagues, Phil and Susan, talking about user experience metrics and we have been doing a lot around dash boarding and recently we took an initiative about looking at a set of banks and doing a comparison in a cross-channel study as a demonstration of the value of cross-channel user experience metrics and what I would like to do is share more of the anatomy of the score card, the cross-channel score card but then really speak to what does it mean, how does it enable and organization? Again, if you are not in the financial sector, this has relevance cross-sector and I think you will appreciate that as we go through. In fact, we've given presentations on this in the financial sector and the immediate response was that this would work in other environments as well. So let's go from the bottom to the top over here. What we're beginning with is saying that there are different types of views or criteria set that enable us to create a composite score card. We could think of the channel best practices, the notion of personas and scenarios. What are the tasks that are trying to be performed? The notion of PET as we have been repeating – Persuasion, Emotion, Trust - what is the affect, the emotional response associated with the content or more holistically the way things are being presented? Then looking at detailed pages, or from an IVR perspective - props, these all roll up into a score card. This could be done for a given channel so in this context from a banking perspective, we'll talk about the flag information site, the net banking once I have been authenticated and the branch where you know it all started. ATMs, IVRs, call centers, mobile banking, so you see on this channel UX score, the benefit already is that I can compare my bank's or my organization's channel against another and now we have the structured way of scoring, comparing and then moving based on what we've learned and then re-measuring again later. You see the next level that is to say is how do we rate or score each of these channels individually and then compare them? The challenge of course in doing that is that a mobile phone is very different from a branch. How do I compare things that are fundamentally different? What criteria do I use to compare one versus the other? Here we speak a little about statistics in the notion of standardization, normalization, and what we are suggesting here simply stated is that regardless of the criteria that one uses to evaluate each of these channels, if you normalize the score, now I can compare and apple to an elephant and the benefit here now is that I can look more holistically across my channels and ask how are we doing? So let's have a look really at the anatomy and then we are going to come back and see what does it need in terms of orchestrating strategy and the totality of the user experience? Before we move on to the example of the dash board, let's take a more holistic view because another theme we focused on is not just the expert rating score card but including other type of analytics and metrics into this so looking at usability testing results, looking at real-time analytics, looking at surveys and aggregating all of those into these composite scores and this could be something that's done at intervals in time or it could be done in a more continuous way. So we see a very robust container that enables us to look at cross type of data to get a very complete view of the usability user experience efficacy of each of our channels and again, if we start normalizing the scores associated with each, now we can start effectively comparing one to the other.

Jay More: You know, people may be wondering, with this sort of fantastic framework and looking so holistically, how many companies are really doing this right now from your observation? This is something new, isn't it?

Jerome Nadel: Yes, definitely.

Jay More: A lot of people are just beginning to look at score cards and metrics in this holistic way across channels.

Jerome Nadel: Yes, and it is a challenge to put this together and it's something that we have been working on to try and simplify that to come up with things like this. What we will do is, we will look at just a couple of examples of the notion of the score card dash board. So again, this was done for a research study that we did. In fact, looking at a comparison of looking at Bank of America, HSBC and Citibank and I have left things anonymous here. We are not getting into details of our findings on that study but it was an exercise to enable us to demonstrate how score cards could be used. So we're talking now about Bank A. You see at the top, we have three navigation buttons, if you will, we have the "Overall" dash board, we have the "Compare" and we have the "Track". So we see at the bottom, we have a set of channels and there are scores associated with each of these channels. The overall UX score across the channels is 67% and of course, there is a set of ways to come up with a mean or average of 67%. One channel could be high for one bank but it's a different channel that is high for another coming to the same score but of course the challenge of rolling up to a grand mean is that it doesn't have all of the fidelity of what was the score of each channel? So the next example over here still in that dash board and again, there is so much to share, we could talk about it more offline if you're interested, is now drilling on to say we are focusing on this flat site not the banking, not the authenticated user site but the user sets some criteria for this website score card and then you see specifically for the whole page, the sub-categories that are rated to get a score overall. What we do is to weigh those to suggest that there are things that are on the overall score card that are in fact bigger contributors that explain more variance, if you will, to the overall usability and user experience. So the point here from a dash boarding perspective is now we have the structured way for even an executive who is not so familiar with the space of usability to say "How are we doing? Let me understand a little bit of the detail of the scores that we have received." Then from Marketing or competitive analytics perspective, the idea of a comparative dash board - "How are we doing for this channel against our competitors?" Done on the same structure of a measurement framework, now we have the data that enables us to see where we are strong and where are we weak? Again, the theme over here is measure, analyze, take action and then monitor what you are doing through time.

Jay More: Yeah, I think the value of what you are talking about, one of the many values, is that CUAs and usability practitioners can really use this concept to showcase to management the value of what they are trying to do. We always talked about, if you do a usability study, well it is one thing to do and another thing to communicate it.

Jerome Nadel: Yeah.

Jay More: And this leads to effective communication. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it and that's what management wants to see and hear.

Jerome Nadel: Said like a true manager.

(Laughter)

Jerome Nadel: The last example over here is and we talked about changing and assessing the benefit of that change is looking more longitudinally. So here we look at the idea of tracking. So within Q1 or Q4 last year, Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 of this year, are we doing better or are we not doing as well? Of course, there are extraneous factors that can how well we are viewing against competition and the like but we are starting to take the rationality of user-centered design, informed and validated and translate in a more dynamic framework to say "Let's look at our channels and assess what we are doing through time." But this is the beginning of the value because in fact as you were saying, if I can't measure, I can't manage. So we start looking and there is a lot more behind what we are going to be sharing over here but as we look cross-channel at the banking environment, we see the legend on the top-right, there are a set of things that we are looking at so how well does it communicate? How can I research? How can I ultimately transact? So we look for each of these channels and how effective they are in supporting these task types. We know for example, that a branch is already good but inconvenient to get to and expensive to host where a call center and IVR might be of less cost but it's going to have less value to the end-user so now we start orchestrating a framework where we say, "Let's look at these channels and acknowledge the cost structure, the value structure and start creating a formula looking at which channel should I use?" I think that that is demonstrated well in this slide here where we take some core tasks - research, apply, transact and ask ourselves which of these channels are best at supporting these types of tasks? We acknowledge that there is not only one channel that will support that task but we know the costs associated with them are not equivalent and what we are advocating, once again in the metaphor of playing chess, is start looking at your cross-channel user experience strategy with two goals in mind. One, what is the user experience? What is the-whether you benefit from the impact associated from that? And then what is the cost on the other side? It starts looking like a P&L over here because when we are looking at what is the revenue? What is the cost? What is the margin? We have a holistic way of looking at the value of these channels. The last, to keep us moving because I imagine there is going to be a good set of questions we have a third section to speak to, the next section in this piece is thinking in terms of wallet share. So how do we sue metrics to drive and support strategy? You see here the distinction of convert, serve and engage. So arguably the channels that are optimized to support each of these task types are different and acknowledging that we can build a strategy in a structured, measured way to achieve that ultimate goal of wallet share where we not only converted someone to come onboard by supporting them from a service orientation but engaging them to maximize their perceived value of us.

Jay More: And the metrics all along from the continuum from convert to engage ensure that we are aware of what we are really doing and that we are really maximizing efficiency and efficacy and persuasion in each of the channels.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely. It's a structured analytical way and Jay, in real words, if you can't measure, you can't manage. Historically the framework of usability and user experience was difficult to distil into a set of numbers into a structured framework but now this enables us to act on it, not only from a reporting perspective, from an orchestrated perspective and I am encouraging the practitioners and the viewing audience into thinking that way, that we are not just assessing and reporting, we are helping create the experience. So it's almost like a choreographer trying to create a scene that behaves the way we would like it to behave and that's really the art of influencing design.

Jay More: It may be good to look at it this way that just usability by itself may have focused only on convert. What are the mechanics of conversion? But a more holistic user experience with metrics to measure really drives from the point that it is not enough to convert, we have to service the customer and we have to engage them as you say, for wallet share.

Jerome Nadel: Yes.

Jay More: It's just more than usability.

Jerome Nadel: In a previous webcast that I collaborated on with Jeff Bur** on Web 2.0, we said it is not enough to have somebody satisfied, they need to be advocates and I think from the marketing perspective, I think that's what you want. You want your customers, your consumers to be advocates and the more they are an advocate, the more you have of that wallet share. Their discretionary spend is going to be spent on you and really that's the essence of brand and marketing. What we're saying is usability and user experience is coming closer and closer to strategic marketing especially when these channels are externally based and that's really the intent over here as we move into the last section before we go to questions and answers and that's really suggesting that what you do does affect how you do. That what you do internally is correlated with how you do externally and typically we say that correlation does not imply causality but here we are suggesting that it does. That if you have an effective infrastructure internally from a strategic orientation to the infrastructure to do good usability, that's going to have a material impact on the quality of these external tasks.

Jay More: And this is a good place to bring in experts, wouldn't you agree?

Jerome Nadel: I think so, definitely Jay. So with that what we are suggesting is what you do on the inside affects how well you do on the outside and this is not a new topic or theme of course.

Jay More: I think I've seen this book somewhere.

Jerome Nadel: I think you might have. So our colleague and the founder of HFI, Eric Schaffer, was so inspired by what we had observed, we have worked with organizations through time and we would work on these tactical or even strategic initiatives but the benefit of one engagement didn't seem to carry over another.

Jay More: Piece meal is not enough.

Jerome Nadel: Piece meal never worked.

Jay More: That's right.

Jerome Nadel: So what Eric was looking at almost at a meta-analysis is what is the profile of the organizations that embraced more holistically on the inside the benefits of usability and the usability infrastructure and how are they different from the organizations that continue to run piece meal? And he tried to encapsulate that into a set of profiles to say that organizations that are effective shifting from a piece meal to a more systemic infrastructure framework have done this and that led in part, to this notion of the usability maturity model suggesting that you progress in levels or you evolve to embrace a more holistic usability infrastructure or institutionalized usability infrastructure but historically we were really looking at the inside and we weren't directly connecting the in to the out. That's what as we close on these themes, again repeating, we talked about the broader definition of usability and user experience, we talked about the fact that we are now doing, not only within HFI but we are seeing this framework of metrics and a more structured thinking becoming more prevalent but it's being focused much on the outside. What we are suggesting as we move forward is the idea that - think inward-facing and customer-facing. Start connecting the two. You know, a matrix management framework where we just don't have initiatives that are on the in that are very disconnected to the out, that we have a more integrated approach. That's...

Jay More: May be if you could...

Jerome Nadel: Sorry.

Jay More: Can you give an example of an initiative that would be inward-facing where there would be some; I would say myopia, on the outside?

Jerome Nadel: Well, we often you know, we have been advocates of course through time with the idea of building standards and arguing that standards are going to be better in terms of the re-use and the consistency of design but connecting that against the framework of who are the users on the outside and how do we leverage these standards across the various channels that we have?

Jay More: So just because I star guide or a standard on the inside, it does not mean I connected the dots to the outside.

Jerome Nadel: No.

Jay More: So I am missing ROI, I am missing benefits.

Jerome Nadel: Oh, there is tangible benefit and this is really our call to action over here. That again, we have talked about what we have done on the inside, we talked about what we are doing on the outside but how do we bring those together in a way that an organization can have an audit of the inside infrastructure, the resulted outside user experience efficacy and start connecting the two. Then from a sustainable continuous usability perspective, start tying these together and this notion of dash boarding and having senior management use this as a key driver and performance indicator for how they think about the strategy to go into market is something that I think the field of usability has not embraced at large.

Jay More: I think from what you are saying, we can almost take a look at cases where we have helped build standards and really show how that standard can be used better.

Jerome Nadel: Yeah.

Jay More: By taking it outward, tie-in...

Jerome Nadel: And connect it.

Jay More: And connect it.

Jerome Nadel: And that really as we are coming to close on the presentation section of this webcast really looks at this framework over here again of sustainable user centricity. The notion of understand, improve and validate. The framework over here, we refer to it as executive guidance and it begins in three-course steps. The first is, you have got to measure and that's a starting point, you can't manage if you don't have measure. So what we begin with is an audit on the inside, the infrastructure that exists and their scoring associated with that and in parallel, the scoring on the outside and that's that grounding report card. We suggest that that's the best way to have a discussion about strategy so now usability is in date a small thing within their IT of their group, it becomes something that is connecting the development environment, the project management environment with the marketing environment and the customer facing environment. Even when we start to get these players together, now there is a different view of the value and importance of user experience because you will have those on the outside saying, "We know we want to do better" we can now point to what we are doing on the inside that would enable us to do better on the out. Alternatively on the inside saying, "You're not leveraging what we have"

Jay More: Right.

Jerome Nadel: And we are talking about matrix here. So our observation again, is almost the extension of the institutionalization of usability and it's not enough to do it only on the inside, you've got be connecting the in to the out and that was the theme of this third section here where now the strategy starts with "Here's the report card, what are we going to do about it? Where do we suggest that we put our effort?" Measure, monitor and continue as we move to the third, from a continuous improvement perspective to say that "These are the scores that we've gotten, these are the results that we're seeing on market based perspective what should we do to improve? Let's continue monitoring."That we think is really the state-of-the-art moving forward, that we've embraced the holistic totality of user experience. We have a framework where we can quantify and measure that and we are looking at it both internally and externally. With that, we see some of the measures on the inside and the outside here so the internal facing audit versus the customer facing audit. The internal facing audit is looking at a course - set of things like staff, metrics, standards in place etc. and measuring their efficacy, really relate it to the usability maturity model. What are the components of the program? What is their state of evolution, if you will? Then independently but in parallel, doing that external audit much of the metrics framework that I was sharing with you in the previous slides. Then tying those together to get an overall holistic view and it comes back to a dash board that is not only meaningful to the Chief Marketing Officer but is equally meaningful to the Chief Technology Officer and certainly meaningful to the Chief Executive Officer.

Jay More: That's really, well, a really great tie-in. You've just hit the magic triple point.

Jerome Nadel: That's the triangle; you end up with a triangle like that and that brings us because I know again, the point of questions is "how do we pull that all together?" and there is one simple slide that attempts to synthesize this. So at the top, we have out upside-down pyramid reminding ourselves that Human Factors and usability is grounded in empiricism, methodology, scientific rigor. Let's not lose that. From a strategic perspective, if you don't know where you are going, don't run and we find often, that we are asked to get involved in building systems but weren't clear about what are the success criteria. "What do we want to have happen - performance on the left or persuasion on the right or some combination of the two?" So this inverted pyramid over here reinforces that let's never lose our empirical rigor, in a practical way let's ensure that we are collaborating from an advisory perspective around a strategy and let's determine what side of the angle we are on here from persuasion or performance perspective. Then in the bottom-left, let's measure that, let's assess this to look either what's reflected here, longitudinally are we doing better through time at a competitive level, at an individual channel level. Finally, that's not enough, you need to be looking at the in and the out together and looking at that in a recurring way and that's what we have been focusing on with organizations to say, "How do we build an infrastructure that has a material impact? That does triangulate the connection of the CTO, the CMO and the CEO on top?" And in terms of the presentation component, that pretty much does it in about 45 minutes so we have done well by the guys that are helping us keep on track over here, and that brings us to a set of questions and answers.

Jay More: Let me remind you, uh, thanks, Jerome. You've pulled together a lot of complicated material and organized it in a way that is easy to understand but that's what we do for our living.

(Laughter)

Jay More: But, anyway, everyone continue to send in your questions because we are trying to get in as many as we can but if we don't get all of them, again, we will have a look at it through the weekend and we will put the answers on the website. Here's our first good question.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:-

Jay More: Describe some baby first steps that I might take to move toward persuasive design. How do I get started?

Jerome Nadel: Excellent question and again, we've got a, one of the things we look at HFI is that we've got a collection of experts and I would consider myself as our Chief Experience Officer, to be the generalist over here. We've got a team dedicated to this notion of emotional and persuasive design and that would be a question that I could have Mona Patel, who is leading that charge to come back on in more detail but I would say, the first step is really more of what is the behavior that you are trying to elicit? So it comes back internally and asks what the desired behavior is? Is it in a social networking, I want contribution, is it that I want people to put things in the cart so first, elicit desired behavior. Then, we I think developed some pioneering techniques about how to evaluate the emotional response to content in its presentation and have come up with a set of techniques about that in what we call a "PET scan". So the first step, once again as we speak in baby steps is, understand what you are trying to have happen and that again, speaks strongly enough of the importance of that as we know often, things are being designed without being clear about what success would mean. Then a structured framework of how do I evaluate the emotional impact of that content? I assure you that there are techniques that we are employing that enable us to assess the emotional reaction and the persuasive value associated with content in its presentation. Then of course, from user-centered design perspective, design that into the re-design and then evaluate it against it.

Jay More: This is another good question. How would you compare a company intranet against another? This is again, taking the channel question of comparison to now multiple intranets across different companies and I guess that the question, the person asking the question is wondering "Is my intranet better than another company's?" I think that's what it is.

Jerome Nadel: Yeah, there is a challenge here of course, because each intranet by definition is proprietary and it is not published in the public domain so how do I compare it against others? It's interesting to see that we do a lot of work in intranets and portals, internal portals that typically intranets – by looking at them you can determine who owns them. There is the internal coms-owned intranet that's really a communication vehicle; there is the KMO intranet – the Knowledge Management group that's really about access to knowledge and content to perform tasks and then there is the IT run intranet portal which is single sign-on authentication locations to do work. So the first question would be when you are doing this comparison is what is the framework of your intranet? Is it more internal coms-led, is it more IT-led with access to applications, is it more KM-led in terms of accessing knowledge and being able to collaborate about it. Once you've isolated where you fit amongst those three goals now there are core puristics to evaluate your own, in terms of how well you are doing and what we've done with various clients is we have done best practice score cards. So we're speaking to what are best practices of intranets and portals across these three categories and how can we apply that to an evaluation of yours against the best practice? You know, the next best thing would be going into these other organizations and doing a structured evaluation on theirs. But the best practice framework score card is one that we've done repeatedly to grade.

Jay More: And then those best practices could be used to evaluate an intranet or compare them?

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely.

Jay More: Here's another good question. They're really good questions, thank you. I can understand the weighting scheme that may have been used to determine the importance of each channel, but what sort of regressions were used to determine which channels should be used in each part of the strategy e.g. overall brand satisfaction versus satisfaction with individual channels or overall satisfaction versus usability ratings?

Jerome Nadel: That's a hard question and this is one we could spend a lot of time on.

Jay More: A lot of time on.

Jerome Nadel: And one that we debate amongst experts over here. You know, the first thing that I think is important is you can't really have this kind of discussion until you have some measurement because measurement allows for management. So the first observation and what we find is that the metrics framework is very provocative because suddenly somebody says, "Wait a minute, I can start comparing in a more structured and coherent way" which is the first step towards improvement and again, when you assign the data weights associated with the priorities of channels and the strategy of how you combine and contrast them, that really comes against, you know, organizational goals. It's going to be an impact of not only what's the value of the channel, what's the convenience to the end-user, what's the cost associated with that channel and this is where the space of usability goes beyond the simple reporting of findings but helping orchestrate the symphony of how these things go together. Again, I'm not sure, you asked a question of course, but if you come back to us, we will come back to you with a more detailed answer on that. An excellent question and I'm sure that others were interested in the answer too as well.

Jay More: I think this is another good question. Essentially this question is saying, it's great to have usability metrics but how do you develop them? What software tools are you using to track it? I think it's a good question because you will be hearing this from HFI next year even more that it's really important to keep track of what you've done in the past and to store and use what you have done so that you don't forget the studies you've done and build on the past. So I think the question almost leads to that.

Jerome Nadel: Well, you know Jay, the point that you're mentioning is the notion of a corporate memory and what we find again is that often studies are done and then they are done for one group and kind of forgotten and as we look at things like persona libraries and score cards, let's not throw those away because we could re-use those later. We are building an overall user experience knowledge base and that's an initiative that we are excited about here that we are continuing to evolve. When we talk about usability metrics, let's differentiate that from analytics. So you know in the space of analytics, you talk about web reporting and the like but what we are speaking to here is a structure where from an expert review and puristic evaluation orientation or usability testing orientation, we are doing these point-in-time assessments and translating those qualitative findings into a quantitative framework. So from a software tracking tool, you can also incorporate analytics and you know, then again, there could be a more clever automated integration with you know, XNLPs and APIs. The level that we have been working with these are translating our historical reviews into a more quantitative framework that enables you to look at a channel and start comparing cross channels and depending on its environment and it's volatility, we determine how often those measurements ought to occur.

Jay More: Another question. What person in what position would you recommend for facilitating/leading the institutionalization of user experience?

Jerome Nadel: Say, I know you know a lot about that so maybe you can begin and I'll comment.

(Laughter)

Jay More: Alright, Jerome, you're going to be everybody's CXO.

(Laughter)

Jay More: No, but seriously.

Jerome Nadel: Well, you know again, and this really comes back to a lot of what Eric has stated in his book that there needs to be an executive champion. So you know, an executive champion needs to believe the value of user experience in an institutionalized framework and this has been something as we collaborate with organizations to help them build a kinetic energy. You know, Eric in his provocative language talks about a wake-up call. Something needs to break bad before an executive will say, "We need to address this problem." In fact, our experience has been that there are ways to make that argument that aren't exactly you know, such a critical incident here but certainly, there needs to be someone at a more senior level to say that this is not just an issue of quality or let's check off within a given group but understands that there is you know, a business market facing benefit that is associated with this that it's the executive sponsor and then again there is the manager who is responsible for making sure that the program is executing and that could fall in various groups. It could be under IT, it could be under strategic marketing or it could be under the program management office.

Jay More: Thanks for than answer.

Jerome Nadel: And you ought to have a Chief Experience Officer, that's where it all fits.

(Laughter)

Jay More: There is only one Jerome. The next question, do you have any examples of sites that combine usability and PET (Persuasion, Emotion, Trust) really well? That's another good question.

Jerome Nadel: That is a good question. You know, again, I don't know that I might want to volunteer sites in this format but I know we're doing a lot of work around some open studies and doing some reporting on that and I'd say stay tuned because we'll be speaking to not only the attributes that identify sites that score well from the PET perspective but those that are best degree as well.

Jay More: You know what comes to mind is, I've been in the market to buy a new car, the Audi R8 micro site that's the marketing site for Audi is a fantastic example to me of PET and I just want to go out and buy an R8. What's good is the way the video moves through, it just makes you want to go and drive the car.

Jerome Nadel: But often, you know again, we have to be cognizant of the end-user I mean, you know historically we talked about flat sites like Edmond's versus corporate sites and again you know, it's the intent to be some inspiring show that would quickly give me what I am looking for.

Jay More: Sure.

Jerome Nadel: And you know intent-based design means that we really understand this segment, this user type and what they are looking for so general statements like that, you could speak to the R8 or the Mini Cooper and you know lights flash, it's great and exciting but you don't always need that animated, that rich media to be able to exploit the emotional impact of a site or device.

Jay More: You know, I think that since we are putting the answers to these questions, we probably, we should give a specific example of a site that we feel combines both, can we do that?

Jerome Nadel: You know what I'd like to do is again; we're going to be advocating that you continue to submit questions and we'll be coming back on our site with the answer to the top 15 or top 25 questions that we have received. I've got some homework that follows.

Jay More: How do you influence persuasive strategy positioning when a company is operating in a reactive environment due to lack of performance and resources?

Jerome Nadel: That's a challenge.

Jay More: It's almost like a catch-22. You want more persuasion to improve performance but again, you're under the gun and you don't have enough resources to get performance. I think that's the gist of it.

Jerome Nadel: I like that design walk-through where the designer walks into the room every excited about the visual design that they have come up with and puts the first rendering display up and somebody says, "I don't like green, why did you do that?" So the first thing and we talked about you can't manage without metrics, is you begin with what was the rationale for the design? So we talk about a persuasive strategy, the first thing is to begin with some metrics framework and again, when we spoke about this notion of executive guidance that "do not go into the strategy session until you've done the audit." So the recommendation here would be to do the homework upfront that's structured, that's quantitative that highlights this is where we stand today. Now let's determine, again what are our success criteria here? What are the KPIs? And let's have a rational conversation around that.

Jay More: Always come back to your objectives.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely. Again, numbers set you free. Present this in a structured way that this is where we are now, is this where we want to be?

Jay More: You know I would comment on that question. I think in a situation where you are often in a reactive environment and under the gun, you can't think of a better time to come back to your original objectives and therefore, clear KPIs. There may be some chaos and pressure really it is the time to come back to what exactly, are we trying to do here?

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely. You know, I think the role of usability and user experience practitioners is changing. It's no longer you're in the lab, you give us the data, we'll figure out what to do with it. Most of my time client-facing is spent in an advisory capacity in terms of incorporating more holistically where are things now and where do you want to go? I think that there is a great opportunity for the practitioners in the audience to be thinking about the next steps in the progression of their own career, right? It's not just about running the tests or doing an evaluation, it's about translating that into how I can orchestrate this experience that's in a way, in line with these objectives? So there can't be that fragmentation of "there are business objectives over here, I am not aware of them, I'm only evaluating it." It needs to be more connected and that I think you're seeing even in the spirit of Chief Experience Officer and user experience and the like. Organizations that embrace this point of view are beating the market. That's what I think this is about and Jay, I think you began this presentation as really about business so we're seeing a shift in usability so it's more of a business remake and there's a strategic value associated with it.

Jay More: I think Jerome, you've done a really, I think a exciting job of pulling together so many different concepts and I think the message is clear as we look into a way combining the practical science with some of the business concepts you've talked about and putting it together in an organized way really will make all the difference.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely. You know, it's been a, as we come into December - end of the year it's been, it's been an interesting year and we could look back through the Usability Broadcast Network, the webcasts that we've had and again, you know, coming up I guess Jay, you could speak to.

Jay More: Yeah. Let me – let's look forward on January 10, we have as we did last year a webcast entitled what have we learned? Looking back at 07 and that would be without Chief Scientist, Kath Straub and our Chief of Technical Staff, Susan Weinschenk so it will be parallels to last year. Let's look back, let's not miss any of the nuggets this year and so that you can continue, continue to apply them all. So that, that, we invite you all to attend that webcast and a couple of other comments. As always, the webcast will be posted on our website in two to three weeks, that's the first point. This companion document, which you will all find helpful I am sure, will be available for download and we really do look forward to seeing you on the next webcast. So on behalf of both Jerome and I, I wish all of you happy holidays and as always a usable new year. Thank you.

Jerome Nadel: Thank you. Thanks, Jay.

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