September, 2008 – Why usability is no longer enough: The need for Persuasion, Emotion, & Trust (PET design™)

Susan Weinschenk: Hello and welcome to this live webcast presented by HFI's Usability Broadcast Network. I'm Dr. Susan Weinschenk; Chief of Technical Staff here at HFI and the title of our webcast today is "Why Usability is no longer enough? The need for Persuasion, Emotion & Trust Design" and I have with me today a dear friend and colleague, Spencer Gerrol. Welcome Spencer.

Spencer Gerrol: Thank you Susan.

Susan Weinschenk: Spencer is an executive Director with HFI. He works on the East Coast in the USA. Now before we get going on the content of our talk, let's kind of walk through what we are going to do today.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: We have a video that we are going to be showing first about 20 minutes long.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: And that's Dr. Eric Schaffer, our CEO, and he has been travelling all over the world actually teaching our very new course on...

Spencer Gerrol: That's right.

Susan Weinschenk: Persuasion, Emotion & Trust which we call PET. So you're going to hear the term PET a lot today. So I thought I might as well introduce that right away.

Spencer Gerrol: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: And Dr. Schaffer is going to be talking on why usability is no longer enough. After the video we will come back here, you and I have a few things that we want to talk about.

Spencer Gerrol: I'm looking forward to it.

Susan Weinschenk: And then of course, we are going to be doing questions and answers. So I just want to remind everyone before we get going on the video first of all, you can download the free white paper if you haven't done that already and there's a link on your screen to do that and then you can also submit questions anytime during the video, after the video, while we are talking etc. so go ahead and submit the questions and we will be answering as many of those as we can get to before our time is up today. Now before we go to the video, anything?

Spencer Gerrol: Well I'm really looking forward to of course to hear Eric speak and is there anything in particular that you would like an answer to or anything that you are looking for to hearing about Eric's talk?

Susan Weinschenk: Well you know, what I am going to do is tell the audience that there's something that I think they should pay attention to in particular in the video.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay, what are you talking about?

Susan Weinschenk: Well, I have a surprise for you right?

Spencer Gerrol: Oh no!

Susan Weinschenk: So I have kind of hiding behind my papers and my books over here, a bottle of Old Spice. I tried to get the cologne but they were sold out.

Spencer Gerrol: (Laughs)

Susan Weinschenk: So I had to get the after shave and there is a certain point in the talk where the Old Spice is talked about. So I would like everyone who is watching the video, to just kind of pay attention to that and when we come back from the video there is going to be a special reason why I brought with me today with Spencer sitting right next to me.

Spencer Gerrol: Now Susan always manages to embarrass me with these references.

Susan Weinschenk: No it's just a little surprise.

(Laughter)

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, so let's go to the video and we'll see you in a few minutes.

Eric Schaffer: Hi! I'm Eric Schaffer, the CEO of HFI, and I'm here to tell you that usability is no longer enough. You know, I've been doing usability work for over 30 years and we've slowly built up to the point where usability has become a major differentiator. Really, usability was the third wave of the information age. The first wave was hardware and just getting the hardware to work was a huge challenge in the 1980s but towards the end of the 80s, hardware became just a commodity and no one ever won in the industry because they had a good laptop. We just bought it and then in the 90s, software became the challenge and companies that built software that didn't crash, had lots of functions - SAP, Microsoft - they were the companies that really flourished and it was a huge differentiator but today being able to code, even my kids can code in HTML. So it's not really a differentiator. Everyone can do it. You outsource it. It's a commodity. Then usability has finally become the differentiator. Who can build practical, useful, usable and satisfying applications? That was really the key thing until now almost in a heartbeat, that's the becoming a hygiene factor. People expect good usability and you don't win in the market because you have good usability, you might lose if you have bad usability. Today we're just beginning the fourth wave of the information age. In the fourth wave of the information, the differentiator is who can build for persuasion, emotion and trust. That's the differentiator - persuasion design and it's something that I saw and it started to be noticeable just maybe 4 or 5 years ago. In the very beginning, I remember sitting with this one government in Asia and I was sitting with the folks from the government and they said, "You know, we're building this website and we want it to be vibrant." Vibrant! I'm like, "What do you mean by vibrant?" And I look at – and they say, "Oh, we have a mock up." And I look at it and it's got all these colors and wiggly stuff and it's confusing and we tested it later and the CEOs we tested it with looked at it and said, "We don't trust this site because it looks unprofessional and scary and pushy." And I thought well, those people maybe they are just idiots. What do they want vibrant? But I started to see that people looked to usability people and said, "You're calling us idiots, you're thinking that we're doing something wrong but there's really something real that they want." There's really something important here and the important thing is to shift our objective when we're doing design. So today if you do usability work you think about designing for a particular user. You're successful if you make that user's work fast, accurate, self evident or requiring very little training, safe and satisfying. That's great, so I'm satisfying - my user is satisfied. We think about that as good but really if you think about whom your real user is, it's your CEO and your real objective is not to make your end user the person using it satisfied. The real objective is to make money for the CEO. That's the difference and so as we think about doing that, what we have to do is move away from just saying, "I want to build a website or application that somebody can use" to "I want to move toward making one that people will use." And so that's the enormous difference. This is the new wave of the information age. Not just "can do" but "will do". I have to deal not just with the ability of somebody to use an interaction but I have to deal with the ability of somebody to decide to do that interaction. So when I say that the design objective is to make your CEO happy, to make your CEO successful and it is not to make the end user satisfied, it's an important distinction. So it's about having a persuasion event happen so if I want somebody to buy insurance, I can make it easy to buy insurance - that's good. I can make it a satisfying experience but I may not sell insurance because I made somebody feel happy, satisfied and because I like things easy. I may sell insurance because I made somebody feel frightened, because I make somebody feel anxious that if they don't buy this then something bad could happen to their family. So it isn't the case where we can just say, "I've made it easy and I've made it satisfying and so I'm going to win in the market." At the end of the day, that's our success and in the past it worked really well because almost every store that was online, every e-commerce facility was like a shop with razor wire and glass laid out in the front. You could barely get in and you were a bleeding wreck by the time you made it, right? You had to go through so many steps and it was so difficult and so confusing and you had to keep keying stuff and it was so frustrating but now we're moving that down. And yeah, you need to make sure there's no glass and barbed wire in the front door but then beyond that and now that from a competitive point of view and your competitors are probably removing the barbed wire, now we have to make it so that the inside of the shop is enticing and not just necessarily enticing in a way that it's easy and satisfying but it maybe enticing in ways that make me feel pressured, make me feel committed, make me feel engaged, that push me to make a transaction in ways that are far beyond just "it's easy and satisfying." And when we make decisions, we make decisions not just based on some logic - seeing the information. We don't just make decisions based on just reason, we make decisions based on emotion as well, and so we have to engineer the emotional side of our interfaces. So being able to design for emotion is really key sure, you can physically do something. That's a given now, if we do that usability work people can do it but will they do it? That's another question. And getting somebody to decide to exercise as opposed to sit and eat a sandwich means engineering something far beyond just showing the content. You should exercise. We have to look at ways in which we can convince people emotionally to decide to and if I feel motivated, if I feel like oh, I feel social pressure to do it, I feel like the girls are going to be impressed, I'm much more likely to do it than if I'm just told I should. We have to understand the techniques of influence and those techniques are based on the deeper side of our psychology often our physiology. So here's an interesting study. So you've got a set of guys and they are walking through the park and we're going to have a girl walk up to them and have them fill in a survey. Now in one part of the park it's just a nice straight road and in the other part we have a suspension bridge that's 230 feet over a river in Vancouver and we have some girl walk up to the guy, who is just walking in the park, the same girl also walks up to guys just as they come off the suspension bridge, okay? So the question is which guys - the one that's walking in the park or the ones coming off the suspension bridge are more likely to ask the girl for a date? It turns out that it is the guys coming off the bridge and the reason is what's interesting. So the guys coming off the bridge, they've just walked across the bridge. It's been a scary situation and their heart rate is up, their breath rate is up, there's adrenalin going through their system and they actually attribute some of that excitement to meeting the girl and so they're more likely to ask the girl out and we use that in our lives in other ways like, if you're going out on a date you go to a horror movie, you go to a roller coaster, why? Because the scary movie, the scary roller coaster will tend to make us excited and we attribute some of that physiological excitement to the person we are having the date with. You know, one of our staff used to when he was in the grad school, he used to work in an Audi dealer and the rule of the Audi dealer was when they gave demo rides they would do it very carefully, very slowly. But when this fellow would do demo ride, he'd go tearing around the corners, squealing tires and he sold the most cars because people attributed the excitement, that physiological excitement -the heart rate, the breath rate to "the car is exciting". No it's just – it's bad driving but that's the way it works. So when we're persuading people, it isn't necessarily providing the technical details of - that the car is good. In fact in many cases the technical details are just used to justify the emotional decision we made anyway based on completely different factors. I mean take something like playing the lottery, right? You play the lottery basically every time you buy a ticket, on average 50% of the money is gone, so why do you play? You don't play to win, you must never win! You play for the excitement, for the dream .You pay for the excitement. If you look at the flow of using a lottery ticket or playing the lottery, it's about the emotions, it's about the hope, it's about the excitement and when we design the interface in order to support that we can ask ourselves in this design, is this really supporting that feeling of excitement? Or would it be better if we had something more like this which is what HFI designed. It's specifically engineered to optimize the excitement that you are paying for. When you buy a lottery ticket it's a lot like, it's a lot like buying a roller coaster ticket. You're paying for the excitement and so we need to design to optimize it. There's a process and we've looked hard at what it means to do user experience design. We've understood that and we started working on the next generation of certification even. We have the CUA which has got a couple of thousands of people certified now but the CUA is about "can do". As we look to the next generation certification about not just being just a usability analyst but user experience analyst. A user experience analyst is wider and a big part of that is the aspect of persuasion, the whole process of persuasion. I mean going around the country teaching people, around the world really teaching people persuasion classes and the usability people their heads pop because there are so many places where it can conflict with usability and we have so many tools to learn that we can apply to systematically building an interface that's persuasive. It's not just about telling people the content, it's much more. So when you look at our set of persuasion tools, it's kind of a long list and the tools that are about designing the things so I love it and that's powerful. I can design so that it fulfills my needs. I can design so that it's fun to use and there's a field called phonology and we should take advantage by understanding that. How to make things intrinsically motivating? I can engineer for trust in very systematic ways. It's not something that's random or we kind of hope that somebody feels that way. We know from research what the variables are, that make somebody feel that can trust a website and you can engineer that. Do I use photos, don't I use photos, and those things are all well understood. Then beyond that, we can go and begin to use influence methods that make something look like it is really good. Make it appear that I would want to have that. Actually fire off triggers that are emotional triggers that make people grab for, like in Filene's basement where people are fighting over I don't know what it is, I don't know what size it is and I don't know what people are fighting over it, right? So there are triggers like that that we can fire off and take advantage of. We can make people feel pressure to buy it, a social pressure to buy it. We can make people become committed and to become truly a fanatic in supporting our product. These are the things that are not random; they're things that are part of persuasion engineering for example you know, the Rule of Reciprocation is really interesting. So there's a wired in, very adaptive automatic process where, if you're given something, if you're given a gift, you feel much obliged. This is a survival factor so if I'm growing up in a small cave society many, many thousands of years ago, it really makes a difference if we can share and sharing means that if somebody gives me something I give them something back. So it's wired in. So you see today, if you have a mailing and you ask for donations and in that mailing - you'll get 18% back giving you a donation. But if you put in a gift of personalized mailing labels you get 35% back. So we're pretty much doubling the response rate because there is some small gift and we can use that in lots of different ways. So if I'm giving you something, if you are downloading some software then it's a great time to turn around and ask for a gift like a donation because you can get it back because there's a feeling of obligation, not a 100% but it does work. So there are so many factors and methods like this that we can use. The whole process of designing for persuasion, it is more difficult than designing for usability. I need to be more careful. If you want to see if somebody can come to your site and find a Barbie doll then you can bring me in and test me and you'll see whether I can find the Barbie doll or not. But I have two older sons and I don't have any reason to buy a Barbie doll and I've no interest in Barbie dolls and so if you want to see whether I will buy a Barbie doll I'm not a very good participant. So you need to get much more realistic participants, you need to be much more careful in the way you run tests, you need to understand the depth of people's drives and you need to understand the depths of the blocks that keep people from doing things. You need to understand what's underlying that so it's not enough to say you know the users are feeling manipulated. We need to know the deep beliefs and the deep feelings that underlie it. So this is a whole new realm that we have to reach if we're going to do good user experience design - if we're going to design for persuasion and it goes very far into the deep parts of our brain, our deep conditionings. So there's a real big difference between what a usability specialist does in the persuasion area and classical marketing efforts. So marketing staff tend to prime frame and condition, it sounds like something you do with your hair, right? So they use very classical and many of them psychologically based methods to get somebody to feel that the product is familiar, to get them to feel like it's good, to get them to have a warm attraction for it and that's good but we can go way beyond that when we start working in an interactive environment. And in an interactive environment, we have to have a whole different set of skills and perspectives and methods. And so as I have gone around teaching persuasion and I have marketing people coming into the class and they go, this is a whole other perspective, this is a whole other set of skills that we can use to take advantage of the online media in order to optimize somebody's experience of a product, optimize somebody's experience of a website, optimize persuasion based on so many more techniques beyond just priming, framing and conditioning. Spencer Gerrol, one of our executive directors and a fellow with a real interest in persuasion, did a major study on his own trying to find the after shave that would be most likely to help him find female companionship and after much experimentation he discovered that Old Spice is the best. Why Old Spice? Well, so the girls that he was trying to go out with, their fathers wore Old Spice. Oh! So they have a deep memory of smell, it's a very deep kind of memory and so the association is still there and poor Spencer brought this girlfriend back to his house to meet his parents and his father met the girl and shook her hand and smiled and said, "Shalimar." And the girl said, "What?" He said, "Shalimar - that's the perfume you are wearing." And she said, "Oh you're right! How did you know?" He said, "That's what my wife wears." So Spencer got it back the other way, he was really embarrassed. So we need to look not just at superficial tools but at beliefs and at modeling what the deep parts of our brain are doing in order to look at persuasion. And we need to do it in a way which is not just guessing but is scientific. We need to be informed and we need to be validated. We need to be able to get research results that tell us that yes; we are doing the right thing. So this is the new challenge, this is the next stage in the information age and this is the path for our usability practitioner to begin to open a whole new realm of value that would bring to bear. Sure we have to make things usable. We have to. If a user can't find it they can't be persuaded by it but usability at this point in the information age, usability is no longer enough and we have to go beyond it to deal with persuasion, emotion and trust.

Susan Weinschenk: Hi and welcome back. So Spencer you know, I want the real details. I want the whole story on the Old Spice.

Spencer Gerrol: Old Spice?

Susan Weinschenk: Old Spice, yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: So can you tell me what that was really about?

Spencer Gerrol: What's this smell like to you?

Susan Weinschenk: That smells like my dad.

Spencer Gerrol: (Laughs) I'm not surprised

(Laughter)

Spencer Gerrol: So - Okay I'll go back into the history of this story a little bit. When I was studying Human Factors at Tufts University, I was taking various different Psych courses and one of my courses was really more in Freudian psychoanalysis, you know like Oedipus complex and that's one thing at the side...

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: That's one side of the thing and in another course we were really more focused on cognitive psychology – it was about learning decision making, we were learning about memory and we were learning things like how is smell connected to memory where the old factory bulb a part of the limbic system that you need to make connections with the medulla, emotions, memory, smell all very, very closely connected, right?

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: So you know one of the reasons why I wanted to be in this field and the first place why I work for Human Factors International is because I've always been very passionate about applying psychology. So everything that I've learnt in class and there are many stories like this is things that I always wanted to figure out how they apply in life.

Susan Weinschenk: So you went on these experiments? (Laughs)

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah, that's kind of how it works. I asked around and I found out there were two generations you know, our fathers, wore Old Spice almost exclusively across you know all men and the fact so when you tell me this is what your father wore, does not surprise me whatsoever as does mine.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, right.

Spencer Gerrol: So you know I said that's interesting and then we know that smell and memory are connected and so I thought I'd give this a shot.

Susan Weinschenk: But what -okay, what does this have to do though with design?

Spencer Gerrol: Okay, what I learnt from giving it a shot, was that it was a powerful effect that people noticed and they made comments and you know of course, karma is – it comes back to haunt you know?

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: And I meet the girl that's told in the story who uses Shalimar which is my mom's perfume and ...

Susan Weinschenk: Right (Laughs).

Spencer Gerrol: Okay, it works both ways, that's how it works, isn't it? But your question is how do we then...

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah what does this have to do with it?

Spencer Gerrol: With the design right?

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, we have to make design decisions at interfaces.

Spencer Gerrol: Right so let's start by taking a glimpse into the future. Let's have a vision of interface design in the future.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: And you know, let's imagine 5 or 10 years from now everyone has the smell printer and we can produce scents in the web. It's a possibility. So you could arrive at a site where you want to check out different perfumes and test them.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay and then the smell will come?

Spencer Gerrol: Sure and that's one thing right.

Susan Weinschenk: There have been like prototype systems like this right?

Spencer Gerrol: They have. And you remember smell a vision?

Susan Weinschenk: Smell a Vision in the theatre, right,

Spencer Gerrol: (Laughs)

Susan Weinschenk: But it wasn't very popular.

Spencer Gerrol: Right but there are even more powerful ways where we could be using this kind of technology so you know, you could be on a car website. I mean, we are talking about cars in the video and what does a new car smell, that maybe persuasive.

Susan Weinschenk: And there was an article in, I think it's at wired.com, I was reading...

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Estimates by the year 2015 that this will be built in to you know computers.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah I think it is a distinct possibility and you know even more powerfully, let's say you are going in to book a vacation, this is an area that we've worked a lot in and if you are looking at Caribbean vacation or something , smells of the ocean, the beach, sun screen...

Susan Weinschenk: Okay (Laughs) but what about ---

Spencer Gerrol: And have a little button you know, "Book Your Trip Now", that could be a very persuasive element.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah that will probably work. But what about, I mean that's for the future, what about right now?

Spencer Gerrol: Okay right now I think the main message that we are trying to communicate is that if we dig deeper into the roots of cognitive psychology and how that affects decision making we can have a stronger effect on persuasion, on emotion with our consumers and so you know the smell printer is not available right now,

Susan Weinschenk: Right now.

Spencer Gerrol: But these principles - deeper use of cognitive psychology, if we have access to these things and use these things then we'll really have powerful impact on consumers and that is what PET is all about.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, it's about having powerful impact.

Spencer Gerrol: It is, based on psychology.

Susan Weinschenk: I have another question for you from the video before we do though; I have one more Old Spice question. (Laughs)

Spencer Gerrol: Oh of course. (Laughs)

Susan Weinschenk: Do you still wear it?

Spencer Gerrol: No, and I never really wore it for very long as well.

Susan Weinschenk: Oh okay.

Spencer Gerrol: And you know that is a PET thing as well. The reason I chose not to wear Old Spice has a lot to do with PET. Despite the fact that I knew consciously this works, this works. Oops! I'm advertising now.

(Laughter)

Spencer Gerrol: There are still other PET elements that make me not want to wear it so we know that the cost has a big impact on our perception of value

Susan Weinschenk: And...

Spencer Gerrol: And this is the cheapest thing in the store.

Susan Weinschenk: It's doesn't cost much when you bought it at the store, right?

Spencer Gerrol: This is the cheapest thing you can buy.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: And if we dig deeper into psychology not only does cost have an effect on our perceived value that higher cost is good but it also has an effect on our own sense of self. If you wear something that you perceive to be cheap, you'll change how you perceive yourself and what you are really trying to convey and how you are trying to convey it.

Susan Weinschenk: And I would also think that you don't necessarily want to be like, you might not want to feel that you are exactly like your dad.

Spencer Gerrol: Well, certainly...or like everybody else. Individuality is the key depending on what culture you're in.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, you can give it back now.

Spencer Gerrol: You can have it.

Susan Weinschenk: Thanks.

(Laughter)

Spencer Gerrol: Give it to your husband.

Susan Weinschenk: Alright. So there's another thing in the video...

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah?

Susan Weinschenk: That has to do with you.

Spencer Gerrol: More things?

Susan Weinschenk: Which is the car story...?

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: The crazy guy driving around in the Audio...

Spencer Gerrol: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: In the Audi giving demos was you.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah that is true.

Susan Weinschenk: And what I want to ask when Eric talked about that idea of excitement right and how that will relate to design...

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: Of a website, he mentioned the California Lottery...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Which you also worked on.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah that was a great project.

Susan Weinschenk: So how did you actually go about you know, building a sense of excitement at a lottery website?

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: I mean it's a - it's a computer screen.

Spencer Gerrol: Well actually, there are many ways in which we used that website to build excitement in the website but I'll tell one story that is particularly relevant, it is related to the car story.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: That was again something I did when I was learning that stuff in school and trying to apply that right?

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: So we knew that excitement was important in the California Lottery. Hope, excitement, dreaming – there were some of the emotions that we wanted to target but one of the things that we have to do with our PET methodologies is to dig deeper and understand really what about excitement, excitement can mean a lot of things in different situations to different people so what about excitement is important to California Lottery and when is it important? These are all the questions that our research had to delve very deep into and you know, one of the things that we learnt is that excitement is very critical at a specific point in the my interaction with the lottery. It's not important when I am looking at what the jackpot is...

Susan Weinschenk: You mean like "Is the jackpot - is 2.7 million dollars this week?"

Spencer Gerrol: Right, sure, all that is exciting. That's one definition in the world but the most important emotion at that point is dreaming, what I would do if I won that kind of a thing.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: Excitement is critical at the point when you are checking your numbers but that's not enough for you though, we need to figure out how do we convey excitement? What elements of excitement need to be conveyed and what is that really mean?

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: So I would say, probably you know at least three really critical areas of excitement that we need to work on. One is that it's not about watching someone riding a roller coaster. You have to get on the ride yourself, this is an involvement.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, so you have to be participating.

Spencer Gerrol: Exactly,

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: As opposed to just looking up here's the winning numbers, looking back and forth which I kind of boring...

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah that doesn't sound all that exciting.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah it's not exciting and so what we did instead is we wanted people to actually enter their numbers, this is them getting on the ride, this is making it personal all of a sudden which is the first element of leading forward to that excitement which we want.

Susan Weinschenk: So instead of looking at the numbers on the screen they have to enter their numbers...

Spencer Gerrol: They have to enter their numbers, exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: And so then we have to move into okay what is the next thing that people are telling us about this excitement that they want about California Lottery and actually it's interesting they needed to be nervous, they need to have kind of a little anxiety.

Susan Weinschenk: Have they told you this when you interviewed them?

Spencer Gerrol: The interviews have to be very close to clinical psychology interviews. You're digging deeper and deeper and deeper.

Susan Weinschenk: To get into that because they are not just going to come and say "I would like to be nervous at your website", right?

Spencer Gerrol: No, you dig deep and so they need to feel some anxiety...

Susan Weinschenk: Alright.

Spencer Gerrol: That's like the half-way up the roller coaster...

Susan Weinschenk: Okay. So...?

Spencer Gerrol: Right before you go down, so I just entered my numbers and then I want to feel nervous at this momentary sensitive anxiety...

Susan Weinschenk: So how do you do that?

Spencer Gerrol: Before I submit my numbers so after I enter the numbers...

Susan Weinschenk: So I'm going to have to enter the numbers and then I'm going to press the button?

Spencer Gerrol: You press go and you would see, we did a PET test which is different thing than a usability test and we witnessed people going, you know they enter the numbers and then they go to hit the submit button and they kind of hesitate...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: And they don't hit it and then they close their eyes almost. There's a hesitation, there's a nervousness that they want...

Susan Weinschenk: They were expecting that.

Spencer Gerrol: That is part of the excitement. But the most important part of the excitement is the third thing that we're going to talk about which is the sense of anticipation.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: And so you think that I just entered my numbers...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: And hit Submit...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: And here's the winning numbers...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: No, we weren't going to do it. We have the numbers come out one by one, balls dancing around so that there was anticipation building up, building up with each number that comes up.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay interesting.

Spencer Gerrol: So now we're producing an emotional response just like whipping around the turns in the car to create excitement in the test drive, we're creating excitement with the interaction that we created

Susan Weinschenk: Alright...

Spencer Gerrol: When checking the numbers.

Susan Weinschenk: I have a question for you. That whole thing...

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Oh, before I ask the question...

Spencer Gerrol: Sure.

Susan Weinschenk: Remind everyone that we have your questions coming in...

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: And we will be going into Q & A in just a minute...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: So if you want to submit a question please continue to do that. My question to you, if I just typed in my numbers...

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah?

Susan Weinschenk: That would probably take like about ten seconds. In fact, not even type my numbers, to read the numbers and compare it to what I have, that takes about 5 seconds.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah not even...

Susan Weinschenk: But all this typing in the numbers and the balls rolling around I mean this actually took more time so could we say that this made it less usable?

Spencer Gerrol: I think that's a fair point...

Susan Weinschenk: So is there a tension between designing for what we call PET and designing for usability?

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Or do they go hand in hand?

Spencer Gerrol: I think that we can talk about it in such great depth that we make sure that they do go hand in hand but we need to decide when and what are the others that will be a critical factor and so you're right, if I actually take a look at this, this persuasion can be at odds with usability. I had to enter my numbers at 7 clicks and then switch so that's 12 key strokes and then hit "Go!" and then had to wait and wait and wait. Then you know, based on the efforts that I'm putting in and the time that it takes me to do it, this is less usable.

Susan Weinschenk: Right so is that a good thing?

Spencer Gerrol: Well the most important element in checking your numbers we learnt is not actually being able to do it efficiently or easily. It was, yeah it's an intuitive process that no one would have trouble doing it but creating that excitement was the critical factor. That being said you will have people, who really are looking for efficiency; they are in a rush etc.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, right.

Spencer Gerrol: They're not looking to have this trip on the roller coaster, that's possible if not the predominant thing.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: But we want to make sure that we have a clear intuitive path to just see the winning numbers without them going through the process which we designed in as well.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay interesting, alright. What do you think? Are we ready to go through some questions?

Spencer Gerrol: Yes, let's take some questions.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:-

Susan Weinschenk: Alright, let's do that. So they've been coming in and I'll just you know start with the one here that is on top of my pile. It says, I'm a graphic designer, how can I learn to make use of these PET design concepts? So what if this applies if you're a visual design, you're not a usability person not necessarily interaction designer, but you are a graphic designer?

Spencer Gerrol: Visual design person, yeah absolutely. In fact, I would to the visual designers out there this is a huge opportunity. If we can identify the right emotions, one of the strongest tools we have at conveying those emotions are imagery, visual design...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: And one of the things that we were doing with part of this methodology is to do testing of those visual designs to see if they are spurring the right emotions.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: And the power of that is incredible. Some of that you know, it's almost a preconscious effect a thin slicing which we talked about.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: But certainly the power of imagery and visuals in conveying an emotion to target persuasion or trust...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: Is a critical element.

Susan Weinschenk: So you know, one of the - I want to take a second and talk about books because you know, I've been doing a lot of reading and I'm always saying, "Oh yeah, have you read this book and have you read that book?"

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: And I brought some books with me to just kind of show but one of the books that I didn't bring with me that talks about this whole idea of visual processing is the book "Brain Rules" by John Medina.

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: And it's a brand new book, 2008 and it's an interesting book. He talks about a, it's called a PSE - The Pictorial Superiority Effect.

Spencer Gerrol: (Laughs)

Susan Weinschenk: That, like 50% of the cortex is taken up by visual processing and so we are very visual, right? And just a few other books I want to mention before we do some more Q & A. "The Psychology of Influence" this has been around since 1994, Robert Cialdini, which has a lot of these concepts that Eric talked about in his video and another book I really like "Strangers to Ourselves" by Timothy Wilson, "Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious".

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: And then the third one I brought with me, "The New Unconscious" this is, I mentioned this in a newsletter recently, it's like only-yeah only get this one if you really like to read like heavy research articles and the science behind it because a lot of what we're talking about is this whole area of science, some of which is fairly new about the processing that goes on now unconsciously and that's what these books are about and then I want to mention a brand new book coming out in January 2008 called "Neural Web Design" because I wrote it so I have to mention that one, right?

Spencer Gerrol: That's great.

Susan Weinschenk: But I think these books are really good and that's one way to learn what we're talking about. Alright, let's do some more questions.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: Next question - I understand that the emotion and excitement in designing software or anything will sell the product. But how do we maintain customers once they have bought it if we don't concentrate on making the design easy to use and concentrate on the traditional usability principles?

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: So it's kind of similar to that what I asked you before of "are these things at odds with usability?"

Spencer Gerrol: Right. We need to be careful, right, so we don't ever want to convey that, "Oh usability is not important, it's not enough."

Susan Weinschenk: Well, you're saying usability is no longer enough.

Spencer Gerrol: Right, but it's not unimportant.

Susan Weinschenk: It's not that it's unimportant.

Spencer Gerrol: In fact, it is critical. If they can't find it, it doesn't exist. We've always said and that is still true no matter how persuasive it is, if it's not usable - no one's going to be able to do it.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: So usability is absolutely critical. We will not let that go. We will make sure it is integrated into the projects and you know it's something that we can't forget about. We don't know how we would.

Susan Weinschenk: Right it's ingrained into us but we're adding on these ideas of what about the particular interaction is persuasive or not persuasive. You know one of the things – one of the ways I like to think about it is to talk about what is the target behavior? You have someone coming to use this product whether it's a website I mean, we talk about PET a lot with websites...

Spencer Gerrol: We do.

Susan Weinschenk: With anything - any product, they are going to be using the product. What is it that you want them to do?

Spencer Gerrol: Absolutely.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, overall in this experience but you could also talk about at a page by page, screen by screen level, right?

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: What is your target that you want them to accomplish on that screen...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: And if you decide that and you know that then you can look and say, "Okay definitely, we want everything here to be usable but what more do we need to do in order to sway them..."

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: "To go over here and fill that out or click that or push that button right?"

Spencer Gerrol: Right and so yes, we made with the lottery, we talked about 7 clicks and 12 keystrokes and it takes a long time but it is not unintuitive. It's very easy to do and at the same time, it produces the emotions that we need – the persuasive elements that we really need.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: I really like what you said and I want to target into something you said though...

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: About objectives.

Susan Weinschenk: Yes.

Spencer Gerrol: What is the goal and what are the objectives?

Susan Weinschenk: What is the goal and what are the objectives?

Spencer Gerrol: If you can't identify your business objectives for the site as a whole, for a given page...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: Then we're not going to be able to do PET yet. So the very first step in the PET process is to really focus on those business objectives. What are you trying to accomplish? What is the desired behavior?

Susan Weinschenk: Which is not, that is not necessary at odds with what we would think of as traditional usability, right?

Spencer Gerrol: No, not at all.

Susan Weinschenk: Because the idea is "What do you want the user to do?" "Oh, we want them to fill up the form." You know?

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, so we're going to design a usable form and what could we do to ensure that they will fill out the form?

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: For instance, I was reading about a piece of research that recently - that showed that if you, you know you want someone to fill out the form and they did two different versions of that, one was that they gave them some useful information...

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: I'm trying to remember what it was. I think it had to do with – yes, it was information about media formats...

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: Like when should I use you know, this kind of audio format? When should I use another? So they gave this useful information and then at the end of the useful information they said, "Would you fill up the form?" Okay?

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: And then in the other version they said "Oh you would like the information? Please fill out our form and then we'll give you the information."

Spencer Gerrol: Really an assumption in fact.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, so they were using, they were experimenting actually with the principle what we would call, I think Eric might have referred to in his video, I know he does that in the PET course called "Reciprocity" right?

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah he did talk about that process in the video and what they found was that more people filled out the form and completed it when they gave them the information first.

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Because you gave me this information, it was useful. I owe you something right?

Spencer Gerrol: Right, that's one of the persuasion techniques.

Susan Weinschenk: And I think that's an example we still want to form to be usable right?

(Laughter)

Spencer Gerrol: We kind of like that.

(Laughter)

Susan Weinschenk: It better be easy to fill out but the question is what else could we do to get them to fill it out when they, in this case, they have a choice, right?

Spencer Gerrol: Right. So now at the end of the day focus on those objectives, use the persuasion tools to make it more powerful to have the impact you want...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: But don't forget about usability please.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

(Laughter)

Susan Weinschenk: Alright next one. Isn't PET more related to content like the company's value proposition and marketing offers rather than related to, it says rather than just design?

Spencer Gerrol: Okay content is critical and that is an important part of PET. We talked just a minute ago about the impact of visual design on PET.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: Now I'm talking about the impact of content on PET - the language, really the message that we're conveying.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: Absolutely critical and so yeah, these are all elements of PET but so is the interaction design, the screen layout...

Susan Weinschenk: The order that things are in...

Spencer Gerrol: Exactly.

Susan Weinschenk: My example that I just gave about the research about do you show them the information first and then the form or vice versa.

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: So when we talk about PET design, we're talking about that in a larger context. We're talking about the order of the screens, the flow of the screens, the visual design of the screens...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: As well as the content...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: And the wording.

Spencer Gerrol: What am I, how am I using the interaction? How am I using all those elements to design, to create an emotion, to spur trust?

Susan Weinschenk: Right, right.

Spencer Gerrol: There's a lot of depth there.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, next one. Isn't this (this I am assuming is PET) - Isn't this just what marketing people already know all about? I mean is it – is it...

Spencer Gerrol: That's a good question.

Susan Weinschenk: Is it just like the usability people woke up to marketing and we think we invented it or is it just tell you something that's new or different?

Spencer Gerrol: Right. It's a great question. It's one that we, for the past 2 years actually, it's a question that we've asked ourselves all along all the way and overwhelmingly we found that it is very different from what the marketing people are doing. And we've had many marketing people sitting on the- you know, the full course and at first they are all nervous. "What are they saying going to say, is it going to be the same?" And overwhelmingly, they get so much out of it. It's very different. The main differences are we're using methods, tools, techniques that didn't really exist before, that we've been developing for 3 years now and these are things that the marketers really get, they understand it and they say, "Oh, we've been looking for something that is powerful and the way to do research."

Susan Weinschenk: And it's standard but it's the methodology that's somewhat new to them.

Spencer Gerrol: Oh its completely new to them. And you know let me – I have here actually, one of the, it's a job aid for PET tools. And you know, for the first time...

Susan Weinschenk: This is from our PET course?

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah it's in the course, you get it there and for the first time we have just basically a check list of all of these persuasive tools that are at our finger tips that we can try to apply as we're creating some design and you know, going beyond some of the emotional elements that we talked about like you said reciprocity, we're talking about social proof, you know priming, farming and conditioning, and that's something that we've been using that was in the ad agencies for a while.

Susan Weinschenk: That is - the marketers have definitely been doing that. Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah, absolutely. Reciprocity and social validation...

Susan Weinschenk: So, some of it is things that they have been doing...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Because I think that a lot of it comes heavily from Psychology, right?

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: And a lot of this from, as I mentioned about the books, this kind of a new area of Psychology, some of this stuff is very new, I mean it comes from the last 10 years with a Magnetic Resonance Imaging and FMRIs...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: And this is where we're able, you know, we've been learning about some of these new ideas.

Spencer Gerrol: Sure, sure. You know the kind of the site that people who are watching are very familiar with things like cognitive dissonance but we're going to talk about how do you apply cognitive dissonance to a design to spur a desired behavior?

Susan Weinschenk: Alright now, we've got a couple questions around this one so I'm going to bring this one up because this is so often comes out when I give talks on this topic and I think that there's one when Eric's given his talks, when you've given talks, so the question is Aren't you manipulating people, is this ethical?

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah, the ethical question always comes up.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: It's a very important one to answer.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, so?

Spencer Gerrol: It's very a very important one to even think about if you even begin to approach PET design...

Susan Weinschenk: And the reason they're asking this is you know, we're always talking about persuading people to do this...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Persuading people to do that...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: What's the line there?

Spencer Gerrol: There's a line that I think in that is very individual to people so yes, this can be used for good. This can be used for evil. Alright, you know, there are these super heroes and super villains and these are very powerful tools and we need to really think carefully about how we're using them. So if we're using it for educating people so they don't get a particular disease, then you're going to save many lives and so that's one use. If you are using it to encourage teenagers to smoke, that is another use. And each individual has their moral compass and each organization or company you know, needs to draw a line as well and be able to say you know, this is where we are crossing a certain line or think about it just this way quite simply, when you do this work can you sleep well at night? That's always a good gauge and certainly it's an important question for everyone to ask.

Susan Weinschenk: And I know, you know, at HFI for instance, we have a policy that no one has to work on a project that they don't want to work on or be pushed to do something that they feel is unethical.

Spencer Gerrol: That's right, yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, the next one and you'll probably like this one because it's about government.

Spencer Gerrol: Because I do lots of government work.

Susan Weinschenk: Because you do a lot of government work. Do you have any advice for government websites to push PET since we're not trying to push a product and we have a hard time making our content "exciting"? (Laughs)

Spencer Gerrol: Sure, sure. That, I mean that's a great question. We've been doing a lot of government work and we've been doing a lot of PET work in government.

Susan Weinschenk: So the lottery is actually – the lottery is unusual, right, right. Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: The lottery is only small sized and they're selling something so that's different.

Susan Weinschenk: Alright, so for example?

Spencer Gerrol: For example, California Jobs website.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: They have an objective. They want people to want to work in California to be persuaded that this is a great place to work. I'm going to fill out this form; I'm going to work here.

Susan Weinschenk: So the target behavior is get them to fill out a form.

Spencer Gerrol: Drive an application, right. But let's say something more boring. What about you know, tax service centers? You go to pay your taxes. They also have objectives. They want you to pay it online as opposed to by paper because they have return of investment for the more people who do the taxes that way versus the people who do it on paper. So every government organization will have something that they are trying to accomplish. Maybe it's signing up for something, maybe it's reading up on something, you have some objective and whenever you have something in mind, a desired behavior – something that you want people to do, you'll always be able to use PET to spur that. So, yeah it's fun to talk about e-commerce.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: Because that's a critical thing where PET is very, very important.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: No doubt about it. It's also really important for anybody who has any e-goal will find good.

Susan Weinschenk: You know when I was looking at websites and especially looking at the application – the graphic design visuals...

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: That's on government websites and I went to a number of different government sites and I had a very hard time finding government sites that had pictures of people.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: And I was looking for you know particular pictures of people and I think I found one you know, the State of Tennessee – they had some pictures of people there. But I was just amazed at how many sites did not have pictures, had very small font, you know was just not a visually interesting site.

Spencer Gerrol: Not a visually engaging site. Yeah, so the visual design in government sites certainly needs to be updated.

Susan Weinschenk: And yeah I mean you know, I know that you guys have been doing a lot of work for California and I have to say the California site has lots you know, lots and lots of pictures.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah you know, so there are some waves starting to be made. Government is jumping onboard the persuasion design concept.

Susan Weinschenk: So it's not just the e-commerce, right?

Spencer Gerrol: No, absolutely not.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, here's another question. How do we go beyond the usability issues and how do we convince others that usability is no longer enough?

Spencer Gerrol: Right. You know quite simply, let's show the ROI. We have many applications that we've used; we'll be really seeing a bunch of case studies soon so that we give people fire power that they can take forward with them but persuasion accomplishes those objectives in a much more powerful way. Once we can demonstrate that ROI to people, we start to show them some comparative data that we've been coming up with over the past year or so doing these kinds of projects, I think it's an easy sale. Just like usability becomes an easy sale when you start to show the before and after, the comparative data, how much more are successful people using it? They can and now we're going to be showing how much more successful these designs will be because people will use them.

Susan Weinschenk: Now I'll bet there are some people watching who are saying, "Hey, I'm just trying to convince others that usability is important..." (Laughs)

Spencer Gerrol: In the first place, is it first there? Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: "Then how do you convince them that it's no longer enough..."

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Buy interestingly, I think it's the same – it's the same. In order to convince, well first of all, in order to convince people of any of this should apply persuasion techniques, right?

Spencer Gerrol: Oh yeah, persuasion techniques. (Laughs) Use it for persuasion's sake.

Susan Weinschenk: Well you know, and we were talking before the webcast, right?

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: We were saying that I've actually taught some sessions on these topics not for persuasive design but for usability professionals to be more persuasive when they are presenting their design recommendations. But the other thing that I was going to say is, I mean to use principles of persuasion when you're doing this and to use as you said, metrics – before and after data.

Spencer Gerrol: Right, that's one of the most powerful things that can sell this.

Susan Weinschenk: So you can just show...

Spencer Gerrol: You know, I don't really have to give you my sales pitch because here's the before and here's the after and look at the difference.

Susan Weinschenk: And look at the difference. Some of you have got you know, as you said, some case studies like California jobs website...

Spencer Gerrol: Sure you know, we have the lottery case study where we've done some amazing persuasion work.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah. So how do people get hold of these case studies?

Spencer Gerrol: We'll be releasing some soon so check back with us.

Susan Weinschenk: Are they going to be at the website or ...

Spencer Gerrol: They will, as things come out, they will be at the website.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: We're even going to be releasing some video case studies because we think it would be a more engaging and persuasive format.

Susan Weinschenk: Really? You're going to be more persuasive in your format. That's good, alright. Where does intuition come into play? Google™ Chrome is so usable because it is so intuitive. Does intuitiveness have a place in PET? So I thought that this was an interesting question.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: And you know, one of the things you still bother me a lot, a lot, years ago, you know, I go back like many years in this field...

Spencer Gerrol: (Laughs)

Susan Weinschenk: And I would give a talk on usability and I would never use the word "intuitive" and "intuition" and "intuitive design"...

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: Because I didn't know what that meant. You know, I couldn't define that.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: And so I would purposely leave it out of it. I would give a presentation and I'd leave that and inevitably someone would – someone in the audience would raise their hand and say, "You know, I want my designs to be more intuitive." So everybody else was using that word and I wasn't.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: One of the things that I think is very interesting as we move into PET; we're talking about non-conscious decision-making.

Spencer Gerrol: Sure.

Susan Weinschenk: And, and intuition, when people say, "I want to it to be more intuitive" and "My intuition told me this", they're referring to that thin slicing. They're referring to that instant...

Spencer Gerrol: Okay, so I'm making my decision quickly.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, that instant decision is what PET is all about, right?

Spencer Gerrol: Sure.

Susan Weinschenk: This idea is about people make decisions very quickly, not based on...

Spencer Gerrol: Not based on emotional reactions.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, not based on emotional reactions, only on rationality and reason. So, now let me answer this question.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah I interpreted it as...

Susan Weinschenk: You've interpreted it differently?

Spencer Gerrol: I did interpret it differently.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah, I took intuitiveness to actually mean you know, intuitive interaction is something I would expect...

Susan Weinschenk: Like, okay...

Spencer Gerrol: And so I was thinking you know, this intuitiveness, this is usability. You want the site to easy to use, interesting...

Susan Weinschenk: Right, right.

Spencer Gerrol: Intuitive interaction and so that certainly has the place that it's always had.

Susan Weinschenk: Right and I agree with you. But the reason I thought it was so interesting to bring it up now is that I – people make decisions about how intuitive an interface is really quickly.

Spencer Gerrol: Really quickly, absolutely.

Susan Weinschenk: And they're not making that decision you know, if you've slept on it and you say, "Is this easy to use?" and I say, "Yes, I think it is."And I think they're making that decision very quickly not necessarily based on "Yes, it only took me 4 clicks to fill out the form." Right, you know, I mean you and I would say, "Oh yes, it had the faults and the drop-off..." but this would give you the usability reasons.

Spencer Gerrol: Sure.

Susan Weinschenk: But the rest of the people out there are making those quick flash decisions.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay, let's make that more concrete. Let's talk about – let's talk a little about what goes into those decisions? I think a part of what we're talking about here is a rational decision versus an emotional decision. We're started to broach that topic in Eric's video as well but one of the key things to keep in mind is that you cannot make a decision without emotion.

Susan Weinschenk: So we actually can't make...

Spencer Gerrol: You cannot.

Susan Weinschenk: We think we make rational decisions.

Spencer Gerrol: You think that rational decisions are better and that's how you're making them...

Susan Weinschenk: And I think because you and I were talking about the research behind that and then that's actually in Damasio book, right?

Spencer Gerrol: Right. So Damasio talks about and this was I guess the early 70s?

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: Damasio has a couple vocations; he was clinical but very focused on cognitive psychology. And so he had one patient referred to as Elliot and one patient referred to as Gage, both had brain damage. Neither could make really good decisions – good rational decisions. So Elliot had a tumor in his ventral medial prefrontal part of the brain.

Susan Weinschenk: Oh, I want to ask you to repeat that phrase that was good.

Spencer Gerrol: (Laughs)

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah it was pretty good.

Spencer Gerrol: And when they removed that tumor, he could no longer make decisions.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: And so they said okay, it must be because you know; this is an area that could be rational-it could be emotional and they removed some of the rational processing, some of the cognitive processing out of his brain.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: He can't make decisions. They put him through a lot of tests and they just said, "Wow! His rational thought was intact as ever."

Susan Weinschenk: It was just fine, right.

Spencer Gerrol: He could sit at the restaurant and look at all the menu options and say you know, "Let me analyze this, this has more fat, this is actually..." all the elements that shows that rational thought is there.

Susan Weinschenk: That the rational thought is there, right.

Spencer Gerrol: But he could not make a decision and that's because play a very vital part in the decision-making process.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: And what's happening is in the complex environment in which we function, you have so many variables that you could not possibly analyze all of the different options and so what happens is your emotions kick into gear and eliminate the vast majority of all those scenarios...

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: And all of those variables...

Susan Weinschenk: So you end up with a smaller set?

Spencer Gerrol: A smaller set and you have to process it.

Susan Weinschenk: So it was from an evolutionary point of view, it was really useful...

Spencer Gerrol: Emotion is important. Yeah, that's correct.

Susan Weinschenk: To have that.

Spencer Gerrol: Right. So we could access those emotions...

Susan Weinschenk: Because if he just stood there waiting to analyze everything...

Spencer Gerrol: You'd better make a decision there, absolutely. But if you have that fight or flight response, you're out of there.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, right.

(Laughter)

Susan Weinschenk: Right, alright. Okay, next one?

Spencer Gerrol: Absolutely. This is a long one.

Susan Weinschenk: This is a long one, I know. So sorry about that. I don't know if I can shorten it so I may just read the whole thing.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay. Let's go for it.

Susan Weinschenk: Alright. For online commercial banking products like wire transfer and all of that, users are using the applications daily to manage, monitor and process transactions for the company. I understand the need for making the site feel safe, secure and trustworthy because we are talking about the trust part in PET more than the persuasion part.

Spencer Gerrol: It's the trust part.

Susan Weinschenk: We've accomplishes this and our users no longer seem to be concerned about these trust issues. Thank you.

Spencer Gerrol: Good.

Susan Weinschenk: Other than that aspect, where do you see the persuasion and emotion coming into play? How do we make our customers "want to use our products over other financial institutions' products? I am having a hard time seeing how this translates to our types of products and sites.

Spencer Gerrol: Excellent.

Susan Weinschenk: And they even wrote "Thank you" before we even answered their question.

Spencer Gerrol: You're welcome.

(Laughter)

Susan Weinschenk: Alright, what are we going to say to this person here about this thing?

Spencer Gerrol: So they have specific objectives, right? So we're in a good place. We don't see them but they want customers...

Susan Weinschenk: Well, they say they want to make sure that customers want to use their products because apparently this is a situation where they have a choice...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: They can use these products or they can use other products.

Spencer Gerrol: Right. So what we have to do is first of all, we have to do some deep analysis about the users and understand what would persuade them? What do they want out of the experience? What do they feel? What do they want to know? So we have to start at that level but then we also have remember, I mentioned...

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah.

Spencer Gerrol: The PET tools right?

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah the cheat sheet, right.

Spencer Gerrol: Exactly and we can say, "Okay, let's decide which of you know, which of these apply in this situation." And I don't know the answer because we haven't done the research but I can just give an idea...

Susan Weinschenk: A for example...

Spencer Gerrol: Right. So maybe it is important for them to have social proof so that you know, they know that this is something that's popular, there are a lot of these have been sold, a lot of people like this...

Susan Weinschenk: A lot of people are using these guys' products.

Spencer Gerrol: Right, and not only is it used by a lot of people and it's a lot of people like you so we have to you know, bring that in. Or there's a limited number at this price or scarcity you know? So we start to really take a look at the tools...

Susan Weinschenk: But that doesn't have to do with the design?

Spencer Gerrol: So those were some of the things that were conveying the design.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: Right, and so one of the questions was about content and I certainly agree that content is one of the key factors. You know, and then there is the emotional aspect. So maybe they're trying to sell a loan or an insurance product.

Susan Weinschenk: Well they're doing a transaction product. They're doing transactions. They're like sending wire transfers.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah and how do we make...

Susan Weinschenk: So, the question is...

Spencer Gerrol: Because you want them to use our product...

Susan Weinschenk: Right, right.

Spencer Gerrol: One of the challenges, I think, a lot of institutions like a bank will have is because of a wide variety of products and services and one of the key elements of persuasion is that we need to create a guided path toward discovery. So a lot of times people don't even know what the bank is offering and so what we need to do is to understand what are the connections? What is that affinity diagram? Actually, we have a method of producing something called mind maps that helps us to understand how the various products and services are connected so that you can cross-sell and up-sell. So that's one of the key elements but each of these products and services, whether you realize it or not, is connected to some emotion and something internal that's going to be a part of my decision-making.

Susan Weinschenk: So I would think also that it – I mean, they said that people aren't concerned about trust but I think there's also, let's see, there's a rational part of trust, right? Will the wire transfer go correctly?

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Am I sure when I've done this that it's really happened and sent to the right place?

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: But I would think that there are things that you could do I the design of the screens that would continually...

Spencer Gerrol: Evoke a sense of trust?

Susan Weinschenk: Evoke a sense of trust, right and...

Spencer Gerrol: You know, or maybe what we need to do is...

Susan Weinschenk: And that would make me feel comfortable. It's not even just trust, it's about comfort that this if for me...

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: That I'm the type of person at the bank or I'm the type of bank...

Spencer Gerrol: It's designed for me.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, that this is designed for me.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah and I think that a lot of things on this list that we could go and say you know, how to apply this in this situation. Of course, the research is important to actually understand the most effective way.

Susan Weinschenk: By research you mean the research with that particular set of users?

Spencer Gerrol: With the users, yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay. Alright, here's another one. While the principles of PET are aimed at the individual, how does its application change when implemented in a B2B relationship? In other words, the individuals receiving the message are making decisions for a broader community like a company or organization. So not consumer but B2B.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: I mean I think it all applies. I mean the thing is you're making a decision for other people.

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: But it's still a person making a decision. (Laughs)

Spencer Gerrol: There's always a human being involved who is susceptible.

Susan Weinschenk: Right, being persuaded or not being persuaded. Making a decision based on that emotion versus you know, not, yeah?

Spencer Gerrol: Right and there's still an objective that needs to be accomplished. There are still elements that that person will use as ammunition you know, when they take it back to the overall business.

Susan Weinschenk: So one of the things I think that's really interesting because we talked about rationale you know, people don't make decisions based on reason alone.

Spencer Gerrol: Purely on reason.

Susan Weinschenk: But one of the things that we also know is that once they have made a decision that is an emotional decision, they want to have a rational reason to tell themselves and to tell others.

Spencer Gerrol: Right, right.

Susan Weinschenk: So you've got to have both.

Spencer Gerrol: That's right.

Susan Weinschenk: You've got to you know, once they've made that decision now you're going to supply them with all the things they're going to need...

Spencer Gerrol: What am I attributing this to?

Susan Weinschenk: To go and explain to someone else you know, why they picked it?

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: And we'll use all the rational ones but that's not why they picked it...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Or chose it, right?

Spencer Gerrol: That's right.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay, I have a question actually for you and this has to do with that lottery screen.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: On that particular lottery screen, the navigation bar – I was looking at it before the webcast...

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Was on the right side of the screen...

Spencer Gerrol: That's right, yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: It wasn't on the left side.

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: So you know, if you do this PET stuff does that mean – we talk about if you do PET, you don't throw usability out the window.

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: But if you do it, do you throw like all of our – do we have to throw all of our typical guidelines and standards here? You know, everyone is used to having a navigation bar on the left...

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: So if you do PET design, do you mean you can't have a navigation bar on the right?

Spencer Gerrol: Well, certainly.

Susan Weinschenk: Why was...

Spencer Gerrol: I think you're raising this...I think this is a very important thing that I want to acknowledge for our-especially for our usability audience. We have become accustomed as a field, to making a lot of decisions based on principles and rules. That's a great thing. It's very handy because you know that you'll get it right, but what we also need to understand is that we can't follow those principles and rules completely blindly and if we actually understand that root behind that rule, behind that principle, we can have a lot more design freedom especially in the PET space. Part of the PET space is about freedom and creativity and thinking outside the box. And so let me you know, with that navigation on the right-hand side, and by the way, it's even less usable than that if you think about it because it moves when I click on things and they move, right?

Susan Weinschenk: Oh, I just saw people there.

Spencer Gerrol: So we're supposed to have people left-nav, that's usable. Let's stay in the same place, that's usable.

Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Spencer Gerrol: And that's all true but we did do eye tracking and we did design it with everything that we know about visual perception in mind and so the design is usable and in the eye tracking, people's eyes tracked on that navigation. Not only that, it was even more usable because people spend more time looking at the main content area of the site and following the guided path that we designed in which is another key element to persuasion.

Susan Weinschenk: Because in this case you're saying the nav-bar was not like the key part of the screen that they should focus in on. It was the there if they needed some other things.

Spencer Gerrol: I wanted people to follow a guided path on the...

Susan Weinschenk: You were guiding them through the main part of the screen.

Spencer Gerrol: The rollercoaster that we described that we wanted them to interact with.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay. Alright, alright.

Spencer Gerrol: And so there were other elements that were important and we didn't sacrifice usability just because we didn't stick to the rules that some follow blindly.

Susan Weinschenk: But it does-it does mean like you said, that there seems like more freedom...

Spencer Gerrol: We make the best of it.

Susan Weinschenk: Are you afraid at all that people will say, "Oh, I have more freedom!" and then just start to do wild, crazy things...

Spencer Gerrol: Yes.

Susan Weinschenk: And they'll say, "Oh, I'm doing this. Oh, it's out of the box! It's PET."

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: People will start then...

Spencer Gerrol: Well then, that happens.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah but it won't be usable though.

Spencer Gerrol: Right.

Susan Weinschenk: Even if they say it's PET.

Spencer Gerrol: You know Flash, when Flash first came out and you know how it happens, it gives a lot of design freedom that people didn't have before...

Susan Weinschenk: Right, right, right.

Spencer Gerrol: With other things to jazz things like that and a lot of designers used this inappropriately. In ways that make the design not usable.

Susan Weinschenk: Okay.

Spencer Gerrol: But it can be a powerful tool and when used appropriately, you can have that freedom that allows you to have more of an impact that you might otherwise might. The lottery design is in Flash and that's how some of the motion and animation is happening.

Susan Weinschenk: Exactly.

Spencer Gerrol: But we're using it in a very careful way based on everything that we know about cognitive psychology from a usability side, adding everything that we know about cognitive psychology from a persuasion side and bringing that together to have a usable persuasive site.

Susan Weinschenk: Now can people actually go to that lottery site?

Spencer Gerrol: It's not up yet.

Susan Weinschenk: It's not up yet, okay.

Spencer Gerrol: We are working on...

Susan Weinschenk: We were just about to make a lot of money for the state but I guess we can't do that.

Spencer Gerrol: (Laughs) They're working on development right now.

Susan Weinschenk: I think we are about done here.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay. They were good questions.

Susan Weinschenk: So before we finish up, I want to mention a couple of things. First of all, yeah actually, I have like a whole bunch of announcements here.

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: There is a blog at our website.

Spencer Gerrol: Eric's blogging, yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: Eric's – Eric Schaffer's blog on usability. And you can get there probably from the website. You can get there from the screen of the webcast. It's also beyondusability.humanfactors.com and this is a blog about the topic so I want to invite people to go there.

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah, let's get some comments there.

Susan Weinschenk: Also, I do want to mention because we've mentioned several times our new PET design class which is – you and I both been in, attended the class. It's a really exciting class. It's a three-day class and we have a number of them coming out. Actually, Eric Schaffer isn't even watching this webcast right now because he's teaching...

Spencer Gerrol: He's teaching a PET class.

Susan Weinschenk: Because he's teaching a PET class in New York City but we have coming up in Philadelphia and Atlanta...

Spencer Gerrol: Yeah.

Susan Weinschenk: And a bunch of other locations. So check that out at the website.

Spencer Gerrol: One of my clients just came back from one of them and sent me an e-mail and was all captivated.

Susan Weinschenk: People do love it. We also, for those of you who are CUAs out there, I know that not everyone is a Certified Usability Analyst but for those of you who are, and you've probably seen this in an e-mail but I just want to encourage you. There are two surveys available at CUA Central, our website for CUAs. One on our new CXA certification that we're going to be implementing and we're going to get your feedback on the curriculum for that. And the other...

Spencer Gerrol: And this is the first course in the CXA.

Susan Weinschenk: That is the first one there and then the other is, we're gathering some data on some brochure designs for a puzzle, brochure designs for our PET course. And so, many of you have been filling out the surveys and we just love that so please continue doing that. They will be available, I believe, only through tomorrow...

Spencer Gerrol: Okay.

Susan Weinschenk: And then we're taking those surveys down. And then lastly, our next webcast. Don't forget to join us. It's going to be on October 23rd so mark your calendars for that. I want to thank everyone for attending today and I want to thank you very much, Spencer, for joining me.

Spencer Gerrol: Thank you Susan.

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