Usability Broadcast Network

Spencer Gerrol, Executive Director, and Kath Straub, Chief Scientist, of HFI

January 16, 2009

The Science of Persuasive Design: Convincing is Converting

PET design is HFI's latest research-based methodology leveraging the science of persuasion, emotion, and trust to guide users to make decisions that lead to specific actions.

In this webcast, you learn the scientific basis of PET design, as Spencer Gerrol, Executive Director, and Kath Straub, Chief Scientist, review key research findings on consumer decision making and persuasion.

Learn how these findings can be applied to make your communication strategy and website more effective!

• Learn key persuasion strategies
• Discover when and why they work (and don't!)
• See how others have applied these same principles
• Learn how to measure their effectiveness on your own site

Kath and Spencer highlight real world examples of great persuasive design, and demonstrate how key persuasive strategies (such as: social proof, perceptual contrast, obedience to authority, framing, and scarcity) can be applied to improve designs.

Join Kath and Spencer to see the power of PET design in action.

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Katie Hill, Director of Technical Services, and Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, of HFI

October 23, 2008

Who are we designing for? The generational dilemma

Who are you designing your website for?

Companies are often challenged with designing for at least 3 demographics with different needs, interests, and ways of interacting with technology:

• Baby Boomers
• Generation X
• Net Generation (a.k.a. Millennials, Generation Y)

Ironically, Generation X is the smallest population segment but often the one responsible for designing most websites. It's rare to have the luxury of focusing on only one age group, though. So understanding generational differences is a key to creating sites that are usable, persuasive, and engaging.

HFI has been conducting exploratory research about the impact of generational differences on Web design. Susan and Katie examine each group's tendencies, attitudes, and expectations towards technology. They share findings, ideas, and examples describing similarities and differences between the groups and offer thought-provoking takeaways for user experience design.

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Dr. Eric Schaffer, CEO of HFI

September 25, 2008

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

The next wave of the information age is about designing for persuasion, emotion, and trust (PET design™).

You still need good usability – if people can't find something they can't be persuaded by it – but soon usability will no longer be the key differentiator it has been. It's often not enough to design a website that is easy to navigate, understand, and transact on. Just because people can do something doesn't ensure that they will.

The future of design is about creating engagement and commitment to meet measurable business goals. Whether your site is e-commerce, informational, or transactional, you must motivate people to make decisions that lead to conversion. This could be getting people to:

• buy a product
• sign-up for a newsletter
• donate to a cause
• ask their doctor about a drug
• vote for a candidate
• invest in your company

The interactive online environment offers far more opportunities to influence decision making than traditional advertising or marketing channels. Yet understanding people's subtle emotional triggers requires a rigorous set of new techniques, the results of which can even conflict with classic usability best practices.

This webcast offers a strategic overview of the science of persuasion, based on HFI's new PET Design methodology. Learn how your company can apply research-based techniques to influence online behavior.

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Phil Goddard, VP Western Region, and Sean McLeary, Project Director, of HFI

June 26, 2008

Optimizing e-commerce UX: Create websites that empower customers, are effortless to use, and create a joyful shopping experience

Today's online purchaser is savvy, and Web 2.0 allows for a wider range of experiences. But when does putting new technology in front of your customers risk losing them? When and how do you part with convention to build a better experience?

This webcast will explore how to create an engaging e-commerce experience by:

• empowering customers to learn or interact with the product space fully
• building effortlessness into the shopping experience
• creating a joyful shopping experience

Topics include:

1. How to show a product online and cross-sell effectively
2. Designing easy-to-use checkout processes and handling psychological chokepoints
3. Optimizing access to huge product inventories with highly interactive filtering and comparison features
4. Working in rapid development cycles to gain internal buy-in for usability research

Finally, Phil & Sean will illustrate how HFI's metrics-based scorecards capture e-commerce best practices, showing examples from sites that achieved the highest scores across the "Five Dimensions of User Experience."

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Jerome Nadel, Chief Experience Officer of HFI, and Eileen Gilfedder, Vice President & Senior Director of PFPC

May 15, 2008

Meeting B2B objectives through user experience design: a case study at PFPC

In this webcast, you'll learn how user experience design has become a strategic, mission-critical practice at PFPC, a leading provider of processing, technology, and business solutions for the investment industry. Jerome and Eileen will describe the redesign of PFPC's AdvisorCentral, a core business-building Web portal for financial advisors and broker-dealers that provides client account information, research services, and tools. AdvisorCentral is also a major marketing tool and source of trend data for participating mutual fund companies.

You'll learn why:

• PFPC invested in enhancing the user experience of AdvisorCentral to improve its market perception, competitive position, and user adoption
• quick, tactical user experience improvements led to a long-term, strategic user experience program
• the next generation of Web portals can become the "financial supermarkets" first predicted at the dawn of the Internet era

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Kath Straub, Chief Scientist, and Jay More, President, of Human Factors International

April 24, 2008

"Recession-proof" your business through customer-centered design: their experience IS your business

Your website is often people's first (and sometimes only) interaction with you. Jay and Kath will explain why:

• designing the customer experience is mission-critical and can't be adequately addressed on a project-by-project basis
• your competitors are taking notice and increasing online spending: the majority of companies are investing more on Web analytics, usability, and behavioral research than they did last year (source: Forrester)
• emerging metrics for online brand and persuasion are providing new insights into the customer lifecycle

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Kath Straub, Chief Scientist, and Spencer Gerrol, Executive Director, of Human Factors International

March 6, 2008

Designing the e-government experience through citizen-centered usability

Putting government online is one thing—creating websites that are easy to use is quite another. Kath and Spencer share principles and approaches from citizen-centered design to fulfill the potential of e-government. You'll learn about how to:

• Provide self-service
• Make it usable & meet citizen expectations
• Run your website like a business
• Apply "continuous" usability

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Kath Straub, Chief Scientist, and Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, of Human Factors International

February 7, 2008

Trends in user experience design: What you need to know in 2008 that can help your business

Susan and Kath explore our top 5 trends in user experience design for 2008:

• Emotional design and persuasive architecture
• Designing for different generations
• User experience and human factors in healthcare
• Creating a joyful, effortless e-commerce experience
• Self service in e-government

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Dean Barker, Executive Director, and Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, HFI

January 10, 2007

What have we learned? Looking back at 2007: Highlights and takeaways from recent Human-Computer Interaction research

In this Webcast, Susan Weinschenk and Dean Barker examine 6 of our favorite studies and their practical impact on user experience design. Taken from HFI's Putting Research into Practice course, this includes research on:

• Trust factors in health Web sites
• Data-gathering methods for children
• Usable error messages on the Web
• Aesthetic perceptions of Web pages
• Eye gaze patterns for searching vs. browsing

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Jay More, President, and Jerome Nadel, Chief Experience Officer, HFI

December 6, 2007

User experience inside and out: The strategy of persuasive design

The Internet has created a "self-service" mindset. Employees (inside) and consumers (outside) expect to find information and complete tasks on their own. User-centered design makes it easy for them to do so.

Yet just because someone can do something, it doesn't mean that they will.

So how can you create designs that are usable AND encourage conversion, contribution, uptake, and usage? Good user experience design makes this possible.

Co-hosts Jerome Nadel and Jay More present a strategic roadmap for user experience design. Combining usability with the science of persuasive design, learn how you can:

• impact online decision-making and user motivation
• create a dashboard-based framework to measure and track user experience
• integrate your customer channels and internal-facing systems
• help executives appreciate and understand the value of user-centered thinking and design

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Phil Goddard, Executive Director, and Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, HFI

November 15, 2007

Who's keeping score? The value of usability scorecards and metrics

Businesses depend on metrics to make informed design decisions. Co-hosts Phil Goddard and Susan Weinschenk explain how HFI's evolving set of user experience metrics can help you:

• quantify best practices in design at a site, sub-site or page level
• prioritize your usability resources across a range of projects
• get valuable feedback quickly, in "design time"
• track and benchmark user experience over time
• learn how you score against your competitors
• synthesize your various user data streams into an integrated UX dashboard

This will be an exploration, not a dissertation. Leave all stat packages and spreadsheets behind!

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Apala Lahiri Chavan, VP Asia, and Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, HFI

October 11, 2007

How to create breakthrough products and services through Contextual Innovation

Is your company expanding into new markets or cultures? Contextual Innovation is HFI's systematic process to help you understand target markets and successfully introduce your products and services.

Apala and Susan share many innovative consumer data-gathering techniques from the front-end of this new methodology. These techniques are particularly suited for international work in emerging markets, since getting people to speak their mind can be challenging in high-context, non-Western cultures.

You'll learn 14 data-gathering methods, including:

• Bollywood technique – a "dramatic" approach to usability testing
• Emotion tickets – a creative cultural probe
• Bizarre-bazaar – an informative performance method
• Funky facilitator – a new data collection approach

This is the first of several webcasts on the topic of Contextual Innovation. Contextual Innovation provides a structured framework for brainstorming sessions in order to design novel, useful, and effective products and services. Bringing together ethnographic, business, design and technical elements, it's truly a multidisciplinary process.

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Jerome Nadel, Chief Experience Officer, and Jeff Horvath, Executive Director, HFI

September 13, 2007

User experience in a Web 2.0 world...and what it means for your business

Web 2.0 refers to the new tools, applications, designs, and patterns of use that are turning the Web into a social user experience. But what does Web 2.0 mean for business strategy?

Jerome and Jeff explain how your company can benefit from Web 2.0 by designing a useful, relevant, compelling user experience for both customers and employees. Learn how:

• Businesses can use social collaboration technologies internally to improve communication, content creation, and distribution
• You can create a sense of community on your public-facing sites to draw customers in
• Principles of good design will change when creating social-based, collaborative interfaces (e.g. navigation, search, etc.)

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Dean Barker, Executive Director, and Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, HFI

July 12, 2007

More than just a pretty page... The importance of user interface design patterns

User interface (UI) patterns are reusable templates for interaction design. HFI's Dean Barker and Susan Weinschenk explain how UI patterns ensure consistent designs that follow best practices, letting you focus on content and user needs. Patterns are the foundation of a user interface design standard and address greater detail than styleguides. UI patterns offer many benefits:

• Capture best practices
• Designers have a reusable foundation to create interface designs
• Solve routine design problems
• Encourage rapid design exploration and prototyping
• Retain a valuable enterprise knowledge base

You will learn how to:

• create a user interface pattern library
• demonstrate the business case for a pattern-based approach to UI design

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Mona Patel, Executive Director, and Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, HFI

May 10, 2007

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

Susan hosts Mona's introduction of a new methodology called "PETscan." Mona explores, through the lens of persuasion, emotion and trust, how consumers make decisions that lead to conversion.

The PETscan methodology provides a concrete means of understanding the various elements of the consumer experience.

• What motivates users to keep clicking through a transaction?
• What graphics elements inspire the "right" emotion?
• Are you following best practice principles around credibility and trust?

Web site conversion can be increased by designing for these underlying needs, whether the site is e-commerce, informational, or transactional

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Ed Sander, Senior Director, New Product Strategy, Global Marketing, SAP, and Jerome Nadel, Executive Managing Director, HFI

April 26, 2007

Designing effective 'self-serve' portals for user convenience and business efficiency: SAP – a case study

Jerome and Ed share a roadmap to plan and implement successful, user-centered portals. Topics include:

• The shift to "self-serve" portals: usability is not a luxury
• What customers want: attributes of effective portals
• SAP runs SAP: a case study
• Portal trends in the marketplace, including Web 2.0
• User-centricity: a strategic imperative

Examples draw on SAP's global experience as an ERP vendor, along with the story behind their own implementation of a user-centered corporate portal.

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Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, and Jay More, President, of Human Factors International

March 29, 2007

Trends in user-centered design: What you need to know in 2007 that can help your business

Jay More and Susan Weinscheink of HFI explore the top 5 trends in user-centered design for 2007:

• Web 2.0: New social collaboration technology signals a radical shift for best practices of user experience design
• PETscan: Usability gets personal: how to increase conversion by designing for Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust
• Contextual Innovation: A new methodology to guide product & service development for new markets – the next leap for usability
• User interface patterns: Don't miss this opportunity for cost savings and improved usability
• Usability scorecards and metrics: This is key to continuously improving the usability of your site or product

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Kath Straub, Chief Scientist, and Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, of Human Factors International

September 21, 2006

The Future of Usability Testing

Susan Weinschenk and Kath Straub explore new innovations in usability testing and share the research behind them. Learn which techniques will fit your needs best. Topics include:

• Remote testing
• Automated testing
• Mixed-fidelity prototypes
• Testing more than one design at a time
• Alternatives to the usual think-aloud technique
• Eye-tracking

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Eric Schaffer, CEO, and Apala Lahiri Chavan, VP of Asia, of Human Factors International

May 4, 2006

Usability Operations: If you're not global you are NOT competitive

HFI's CEO, Eric Schaffer, and VP of Asia, Apala Lahiri Chavan, explore the value proposition of blending local staff with offshore resources. This seems to be the best practice most of the time. They also provide a definition of when it will not work.

Topics include:

• What drives successful offshore operations
• Process driven usability work
• Remote data gathering
• Challenges and limitations
• Creating an offshore office
• Working in a Blended Team

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Giovanni Piazza, Global Director, Knowledge Web Program, Ernst & Young, and Jerome Nadel, Chief of Global Technical Process, of Human Factors International

March 2, 2006

Managing the knowledge behind business decisions through user-centered design – a case study

Join HFI's Jerome Nadel, Chief of Global Technical Process, and cohost Ernst & Young's Giovanni Piazza, Global Director, Knowledge Web Program, for this informative free Webcast.

Jerome and Giovanni explain why efficient access to knowledge is essential for global business operations. Giovanni discusses how his company realized its systems needed improvement – and why user-centered design proved to be the appropriate solution. This empirical approach to interface design/architecture enables effective business decisions.

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Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, and Jerome Nadel, Chief of Global Technical Process, of Human Factors International

February 9, 2006

How to Find Your Executive Usability Champion

In this Webcast, Susan Weinschenk and cohost Jerome Nadel discuss this critical aspect of making usability routine throughout your organization.

In this Webcast, Susan and Jerome explain:

• Organizational prerequisites for getting an executive champion
• Personal characteristics to look for in a champion
• How to support your champion going forward

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Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, and Jay More, President, of Human Factors International

July 14, 2005

The ROI of Usability and Making Usability Routine

In this Webcast, Susan Weinschenk makes the business case for usability. She and Jay More also examine the impact of making usability routine throughout an organization. Susan will be sharing ideas, research, examples, and case studies, including:

• How do you make the case for usability in hard dollars?
• How can you convince others that your usability efforts are aligned with the needs of the organization?
• How do you engage in usability in a cost-effective way?

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Mike Flood, Vice President of Internet Services, and Pat Malecek, User Experience Manager, of A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.

May 25, 2004

From Inspiration to Action at A.G. Edwards

HFI's Executive Managing Director, Jerome Nadel, hosts Pat Malecek, User Experience Manager of A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. Pat discusses how his team of Certified Usability Analysts (CUAs) were instrumental towards making usability a routine practice at A.G. Edwards.

Following many of the principles outlined in Dr. Eric Schaffer's new book Institutionalization of Usability: A Step-By-Step Guide, A.G. Edwards' CUAs provided design guidance, usability testing, standards development and training for both Web and Intranet applications.

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Kyle Tolar and Mark Boxer of Anthem, Inc.

February 26 , 2004

How Can You "Insure" Usability? – Achieving Routine User-Centered Design for Anthem's 12 Million Members Worldwide

Dr. Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff at Human Factors International and Kyle Tolar, Usability Program Director at Anthem, Inc., discuss how Anthem attained the training, standards, and resources they needed to create a sustained usability effort.

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HFI's Center of Excellence in Mumbai, India, performs remote usability testing.

August 11, 2003

Meeting the Demand for Usability Expertise: An Offshore Model

Dr. Eric Schaffer discusses how you can create and utilize a "Center of Excellence" dedicated to realizing your company's development and design projects. Learn how you can staff a sustained usability effort.

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Eric Schaffer discusses Web design standards

May 22, 2003

Web Design Standards: 10 organizational secrets

Dr. Eric Schaffer discusses the practices and processes that facilitate the organizational development needed to create a successful Web design standard.

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Eric Schaffer and Susan Weinschenk discuss mentoring for usability

March 11, 2003

Mentoring for Mainstream Usability

Dr. Eric Schaffer introduces Dr. Susan Weinschenk, HFI's new Chief of Technical Staff. Together they discuss:

• What mentoring is, and how it is different from consulting, training, or educating
• Examples of how mentoring can be used to move projects, people, and the organization forward to a new level
• Characteristics of successful mentors, mentored staff and programs
• How and why to start your own internal or external mentoring program
• Mentoring for usability strategies

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Eric Schaffer, Nicole Poirier, and Carolyn Burke.

December 18, 2002

RBC Royal Bank’s Online Banking Initiatives: usable design now and in the future

Dr. Eric Schaffer, CEO of HFI, and Carolyn Burke and Nicole Poirier, e-commerce managers at RBC Royal Bank, discuss their initiative to make user-centered design a central part of RBC Royal Bank's Online Banking. This is followed by a live question and answer period.

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Eric Schaffer and Phil Goddard answer questions from viewers.

September 12, 2002

Colin Hynes, Director of Usability at Staples, Inc.
Biography

June 4, 2002

Keeping Users Stuck to Your Site

Colin Hynes discusses the effect of drop-off and how usability initiatives reduced drop-off at Staples.com by 73%. This discussion begins with a definition of drop-off and moves into an explanation of the value of drop-off data. Then we delve into the correlation between drop-off and return on investment. Finally, we highlight two examples of Staples.com initiatives that were focused on reducing drop-off by using a systematic process of customer research and redesign.

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Eric Schaffer and Phil Goddard, HFI's Director of Training

March 21, 2002

HFI Certification—Fulfilling Your Needs as a Practitioner

Usability is more and more critical to online success...

• but most developers have no formal training in it
• and most companies have no formal program for it.

HFI's Certified Usability Analyst program is aimed at developers who want up-to-date training for practical work in user-centered design, and acknowledgement for their years of hands-on experience. These are the certified paramedics of the field.

This program also allows employers to find and promote qualified individuals with authenticated skills in usability.

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Eric Schaffer, Founder and CEO of HFI

November 1, 2001

The Institutionalization of Usability

Executives who are interested in catching the next wave of the information age should hear this message. With only a 1/2 hour investment of your time, you will learn about the key differentiator for online success in the coming decade.

Dr. Schaffer discusses practical usability, The Third Wave of the Information Age, the institutionalization of usability, developing a holistic strategy, measuring success, and getting started.

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