The list of yesterday’s Webby Award winners and nominees is full of examples of companies and individuals responding to user needs with elegant and engaging web, mobile and tablet solutions. We’re proud to have worked with several of this year’s winners and nominees.

Established in 1996, the Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the internet, including Websites, interactive advertising & media, and mobile & apps. Here is a link to the full list of 2012 Webby award winners. The 16th Annual Webby Awards will be broadcast live at webbyawards.com starting at 4:30PM EDT on May 21.

At AnswerLab, the management team works hard to create and promote a culture of innovation. That love of innovation starts with employees, who share a passion for all things digital. Our passion for technology is encouraged by way of a handsome technology benefit. Every year, we are alloted a specified amount of money to purchase hardware and software. As a result of this tech benefit, I’ve been able to purchase an original iPad when it first came out, lots of fun and interesting software, and most recently, a new thermostat. Now, I know what you are thinking… who in their right mind would use their tech benefit to purchase a thermostat? Allow me to explain my decision and why this thermostat is turning the user experience of home temperature control upside down.

The Nest Learning Thermostat

The Nest Learning Thermostat is no ordinary thermostat. It is billed as a learning thermostat. This means that it monitors your usage and attempts to learn from it, adjusting its schedule accordingly. The benefits of a thermostat that learns from your behavior are two-fold.

1. It frees you up from having to learn how to program your thermostat. Anyone with a programmable thermostat can fully appreciate how horrible the interface is on a typical thermostat.
2. It can help you save money. By learning from your behavior, Nest can become more efficient and auto-program your comfort zone accordingly.

That’s the theory, anyway. In reality, I’ve decided to turn off the learning function. Why? Because I am somewhat of a control freak. I actually like being in charge of the schedule. Fortunately, Nest is aware of my personality type and allows for one to simply switch off learning mode, turning the Nest from a learning thermostat into a programmable thermostat.

Wait, I just mentioned that Nest’s ability to learn was a primary benefit. By turning that functionality off, what’s left? Plenty!

Energy Savings

Even for those like me who have turned off the learning behavior, Nest has many ways to help save energy. Here are just a few…

• Programmable Thermostat
• Nest Leaf indicator
• Energy History

Programmable Thermostat
Nest claims that ‘only 10% of programmable thermostats are programmed to save energy.’ Why? Because they are hard to program. Thermostat interface design has remained stagnant for years and the emphasis on the user experience is far from top priority. In my case, simply being able to easily program, monitor, and adjust the schedule helps save energy. Nest’s scheduler is extremely simple to update and unlike most typical thermostats’ antiquated interfaces.

Nest Leaf indicator
According to Nest, ‘changing the temperature just one degree can cut your energy use up to 5%.’ The leaf is a simple, yet effective interface element that helps guide you in the right direction. As you spin the dial on the Nest, a green leaf will appear once you’ve hit a temperature that’s energy efficient. As I dial down the temperature, I often find myself taking it down a notch or two further than I might have simply because I know that the green leaf will appear at some point. It’s a brilliant cue that really works.

Energy History
Nest shows you exactly when your system was on, making it easy to look back and figure out your usage patterns. The Energy History shows you when heating or cooling was on in the last 10 days and if the weather, your adjustments or Away (Nest can detect when you are away from your home and set the temperature to a pre-selected setting) significantly affected your energy use.

Access

Controlling Nest is simple and there are multiple ways to do it. Of course, I can walk right up to the Nest and control it directly. Or, I can login from my iPhone, iPad, or any computer with a net connection. That’s right. Nest connects to the WiFi network in our home and is reachable from afar.

There are multiple reasons to access our home thermostat from anywhere. Here are a few examples…

• Suppose we leave the house to go away for the weekend. If we forget to turn the thermostat down, we can just login and adjust the temperature.
• Likewise, we want to be sure the house is warmed up before we arrive. About ten minutes away from our house, we can just login to the nest iPhone app and set our preferred temperature.
• I’m in bed, reading on my iPad and starting to fall asleep. I want our room to be a bit warmer, but I don’t want to have to get out of my warm bed, put slippers on, head downstairs in the dark and press a few buttons on the thermostat. So, I just open the iPad app, login to the Nest app and turn up the heat.

Once you start to realize how easy it is to access your thermostat from a distance, it’s addictive and powerful. Honestly, it’s the main reason I bought a Nest.

At AnswerLab, we test mobile apps and websites all the time. Some are better than others. I’ve seen plenty of users struggle to discover and use apps, resulting in a frustrating experience. From my own perspective, the Nest iOS apps are well conceived, and easy to use. The initial screen simply shows an image of a home and a circle, which represents your Nest. Inside the circle, the current temperature. To change the temperature, I simply tap on the Nest and hit the up or down arrows. Minimal interface, intuitive, easy to tap.

If I want to dig deeper into the schedule or settings, all I need to do is turn the device to landscape orientation and a multitude of well layed out options are at my disposal. I’m honestly amazed at how well Nest has executed their mobile and desktop experience.

As a new homeowner, Nest is helping me keep our family’s energy costs in check. It’s also a beautiful appliance that sparks conversation. Nest has set the bar for the modern appliance by focusing on the user with minimal design, learning from the owner’s behavior, and implementing easy to use mobile apps and browser based interfaces.

In case you can’t picture an AnswerLab office outside of the Bay Area, we prefer to show, not tell, what it’s like to spend a day here at AnswerLab New York. Take a peek at our new home…

Welcome! At first our entry area wasn’t so welcoming… but adding some mirrors, shelves for storage, and a cover for the eye-sore that holds our internet and phone connections, ensures anyone who enters will feel right at home.

At first, this office was a place for empty furniture and equipment packaging . We cleared the mess to reveal a workspace and the final product is our fully functioning qualitative interview space! With a quick set up of appropriate monitors and laptops this becomes a remote user testing space.

A week in we finally had desks, chairs, monitors, a printer… and a ladder. We made some further progress by adding tackboards for each desk station.

Finally, through the sweat and tears, we have our complete New York office space! Come visit!

While the AnswerLab team members all share a passion for improving the digital world, we each have a different tale of what led us here. We’re sharing our stories in a new series of user experience expertise blog posts where the AnswerLab team reveals what feeds our curiosity and what led us to UX research.


In my case, I drew maps as a professional cartographer for over 10 years. My maps could show you the best places to get a drink in the Florida Keys, how to get around in St Petersburg, or where to catch a boat ferry in Bangkok. I traced coastlines from satellite images and tracked down 40-year-old government maps of small cities in Argentina. I once drew a map based on a sketch on a bar napkin still stained with beer – and it was a good map. My head is full of maps of places that I’ve never visited.

But as time went by, I began to get uneasy about how little attention we cartographers were paying towards the people who were using and reading our maps. When a map reader was confused by one of our maps, that person was often dismissed with “well, he just doesn’t understand maps”. One cartographer commented: “The map makes sense to me and if someone just bothered to spend a few minutes thinking about it, they’d figure it out too.”

We cartographers were trained professionals, so how could it be our fault if someone didn’t understand our maps?

I became more interested in how people were using maps and what parts they found confusing. I collected the funny stories that people would tell me about the mistakes that they had made when using a map to get around unfamiliar places – like when someone thought that a conference center was a mile away from where he was (rather than just around the corner) because he thought that a generic symbol represented the size of his hotel complex.

At that point I had never heard of user research, but I started wondering why we didn’t talk to our map readers when we were designing new map specs. We spent hours debating the details that we all passionately cared about – for example, icon design or the extent of a map’s coverage – but if you asked, we wouldn’t have been sure if it mattered to anyone else but us.

I can’t recall when I first heard about user research, but when I did I remember thinking: This is right. Why haven’t I heard about this before? Why aren’t we doing things like this?

So I went back to school and got a masters degree from the School of Information at UC Berkeley, where I focused on UX design and research. And now I’m at AnswerLab, where I work as a UX Researcher.

I don’t spend my day drawing maps anymore, but I still carry maps in my head of the paths that people take when navigating a website. I still collect stories, but they’re about technology and what works and what could be better. And now when someone asks, I can tell them whether or not those tiny little details matter to the actual users.

Quick and Painless Approach –
When testing and recruiting in a public space, minimizing objections from the venue and potential participants saves a lot of headache and makes for a smoother study.

While intercepting people, we would mention that the process was “quick and painless”. We let potential participants know it was a 10-minute market research study and that they would be compensated immediately upon completion with a gift certificate to the café. They were already at the café to eat, so why not take a quick 10 minutes and have breakfast or lunch paid for? Providing gift certificates to the testing location as an incentive not only helped us sign up participants quickly, it also helped us easily secure a venue. When contacting possible venues, the additional revenue for them from gift certificate sales eliminated most initial objections and concerns.

Be Flexible –
Pay attention to how things are working early in the day and adjust as needed. We noticed early on that we had greater success rates when women approached men and men approached women. We adjusted our intercept strategy accordingly.

Café traffic didn’t behave the way we anticipated throughout the day. We assumed high traffic times – morning coffee and lunchtime – would be prime recruiting times. Not so. In the morning people were rushing to get to work and at lunch it was grab and go.

Be Creative Getting the Word Out –
Our biggest draw was our simplest: a large poster board sign we put in the window of the café. A large sign in a bright color with short text can easily be seen by passersby across the street. “Market Research $25 for 10 minutes of your time” brought many of our participants to the café asking if they could participate.

Posting signs near the café cash register and handing out flyers allowed potential participants to learn what we were doing and ‘opt in’ to talking to a screener. This helped us efficiently screen out any participants who weren’t willing to have their image or data recorded because we included this information on our flyers. Nearby university annexes also proved to be good locations. We handed out flyers in those areas for 15 minutes the afternoon prior to our sessions.

Social media channels like Facebook and Twitter were also a great way to quickly and cheaply reach a large number of potential participants. Word of mouth in general was very effective. Many of our participants went back to their offices and sent co-workers down to the café.

What Didn’t Work –
We got little engagement from being on the street with a clip board. Having a clipboard in downtown San Francisco typically signals you’re asking for money. Red Cross and Greenpeace frequent corners with heavy foot traffic and most downtown pedestrians are practiced at ignoring those types of solicitations. We abandoned this strategy early in the day.

Why Take A Live Intercept Approach?
Live intercepts are ideal when you are studying the environment in which participants are being intercepted. For example, one of AnswerLab’s lead researchers intercepted people in San Jose airport to ask how the airport could be improved. In the case of our cafe-based study, we chose a live intercept approach because it was extremely efficient. While it also was closer to a real-world environment than being in a lab, the key benefit was being able to complete such a high number of sessions in a short period of time at such a low cost. If you’d like to see us in action, watch the video about the day’s events.

After joining AnswerLab in July, I signed up for a Zipcar account (AnswerLab has a corporate account to support employees’ travel to local clients). Zipcar clearly knows its target audience – busy, mobile people with places to be. Every aspect of the customer experience – signup, reservation, driving, filling up the tank, and car return – has clearly been designed with user experience in mind. Here are just a few noteworthy examples:

Clear, Cross-channel Communication of “The Rules”
The Zipcar model works because they’ve established 6 core rules – without these critical rules like returning vehicles on time and full of gas, the model would collapse. If you think back to a traditional rental car experience, the rules are often buried in the fine print of a multi-page lease agreement. Unawareness of the rules can lead to some unexpected fees.

In contrast, Zipcar’s rules are explicit, clear, and simple. I’ve got them memorized, and they appear below. Why do I have them memorized? Because they’re communicated clearly and reinforced at key touch points. Note the effective use of imagery used on the site (top), and the concise rules on the back of the Zipcard (bottom).

6 Simple Rules

The ZipCard

Differentiating on Customer Experience
In today’s competitive marketplace, no company can afford to ignore customer experience, and building a great customer experience requires deeply understanding customer needs, often through research. It’s clear that Zipcar has done its homework by eliminating the pain points commonly associated with traditional rental car providers to provide a “Wheels when you want them” experience. There is no hard upsell on the car; simply choose a list of available cars online or through their iPhone or Android App. There are no long lines to talk to agents to pick up your car; just “unlock” by touching your Zipcard to the windshield. There is no hard sell for pricey insurance or lectures or surcharge on prepaid gas; they’re already included.

4 Simple Steps

Reserving a car from an iPhone App

They Design for Humans – and Humans Sometimes Make Mistakes
What would be one of the quickest ways to take a Zipcar out of commission? Having a customer lose the keys. The smart way to avoid this pitfall is not to assess fees for lost keys, but rather to prevent it from happening in the first place. By designing for mistakes – one of the most savvy strategies a business can take – Zipcar ensures no vehicle is taken out of circulation due to lost keys by securing them via a nylon cord so they keys never leave the cars in the first place.

They Foster a Sense of Community and “Ownership”
As mentioned earlier, the Zipcar model can only be successful if people can depend on the cars being available and ready to drive (i.e., full of gas). One way of ensuring compliance is by making the rules very clear. Another, perhaps more powerful strategy, is to instill a sense of personal commitment to the Zipcar community and the cars in their fleet. It’s not just about returning the car on time because it’s a Zipcar rule, what’s more important is to consider that you’re impacting another Zipster – a person just like you, with meetings to get to and people to see. It’s not just about keeping the car clean and reporting damage for the sake of following the rule, but it’s about taking care of Snowy or Mushu (yes, each car has a name) or whatever car becomes your “favorite” and ensuring you see that the car is maintained and reliable for your future use.

Oh Yeah, They Have Great Mobile Apps, Too
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Zipcar’s iPhone and Android apps are also models of great user experience. They focus on simple tasks such as making or reviewing reservations, fun but useful features (remotely honking the horn of the car you’re looking for!), are easy to use, nicely reinforce the brand imagery, etc. I mention the mobile experience lastly because it’s a given that Zipcar would need to have robust mobile apps to meet the needs of the audience they serve. No doubt they followed a user-centered design process to create their apps.

What is more interesting – and more challenging from a business standpoint – is to put as much thought into the design of the entire holistic Zipcar experience. It is their customer focus – a deep understanding of customer needs – that truly sets Zipcar apart from its competitors and serves as a model for any other company looking to be the leader in their industry.

• Master strategies for company growth
• Learn the ins and outs of doing business in emerging markets
• Learn critical success factors for mergers, acquisitions and IPOs

I was blown away by the quality of the programing, the ease of networking during the conference, and the resources invested in the event by E&Y. One attendee mentioned that the event budget was around $13 million. Incredible!

From the 5 days of panels, speakers, Q&As and presentations, I took away 5 key insights:

1. We all have blind spots.

Francis Ford Coppola commented that even the most forward-thinking companies can be blind to opportunities sitting right before their eyes. IBM invented a copy machine but couldn’t convince executives it was necessary. Similarly Xerox invented the PC but didn’t see the full future potential. Coppola noted that generally people are conservative, and when you do something differently, people see you as an oddball. However, “The things they fire you for when you are young are the same things you find yourself getting a lifetime achievement award for when you are old.” I wondered, what does this say about opportunities for us to move user experience forward? Are we missing obvious opportunities right before our eyes?

2. Customers now own brands, too.

In the old days, we saw brand mainly as a marketing and advertising effort. With the digital age, we saw that the online user experience became an extension of a company’s brand. Now, with social media, people have become owners of brands as well. Harley-Davidson riders are starting to do advertising for the company. Oreo cookies have 23 million Facebook fans constantly engaged in dialogue. Because of the strong role of consumers, there is less margin for a company to veer off brand message. Claudia Poccia, President and CEO of Curwitch Products said customers “shape the brand, personalize it and engage with it in real time. This relationship . . . must be totally authentic and transparent – because the experience can all change on a moment’s notice.”

3. Pharma 3.0: Patient Outcomes & Digital Devices

Healthcare and Pharma 3.0 involves an extreme focus on ensuring that patients have positive outcomes from their prescriptions and programs. As a result, companies are investing more in technologies and devices that allow them to drive compliance and monitor patient progress. One technology that has taken off is the smartphone app. Between 2006 and 2009, 11% of Pharma 3.0 initiatives were smartphone apps. In 2010, the segment exploded, and 41% were smartphone apps. The user experience of digital home devices and apps will be critical to compliance. Can diabetes patients effectively monitor their blood glucose and transmit results to their doctors? What will be the most effective way to communicate feedback from devices? How can smartphone apps best be integrated with patients’ lives to drive adherence? UX research in this space will be the key to successful patient outcomes.

4. CEOs Get That Best Insights Come from Customers.

Across various Q&A sessions and panels, I was thrilled to hear that leading CEOs truly understand their best insights come from talking directly with their customers. The CEO of 1-800 Flowers, Jim McCann, commented that their customers actually developed their best-selling product. Michael Dell stated, “The best insights come from customers, even if they want something new but can’t imagine what.”

5. Speaking Skills Don’t Tell the Whole Story.

I always had the impression that former President George W. Bush might have been lower on the intelligence scale due to his lackluster performance as a speaker. As President, he often looked like a deer caught in the headlights and made numerous verbal missteps. After listening to his fireside chat at SGF, I realized I’d completely judged him unfairly. In conversation with James Turly, Chairman & CEO of Ernst & Young, Bush was poised, confident, witty, charming, self-effacing, and entirely more knowledgeable on world affairs and the office of the President than I’d previously credited him. Lesson learned: personalities can change a great deal when someone takes the mike.

The event really nailed some key areas of opportunity available to companies focused on creating superior B2B and consumer digital experiences:

• Customers are more likely to have a first digital interaction with a brand on a mobile or social platform.

• Users adopt new products or services when doing so results in experiences that make their lives better.

• Every touch point you have with customers is a key moment in your brand’s story. Even the way you handle the experience of a customer leaving is impactful, both in the likelihood of their return and their social impact via word of mouth on future customers.

AnswerLab led an interactive session on best practices for uncovering user insights across mobile platforms with ethnographic research (studying users’ natural environments and their mobile behavior within the context of these various environments). We enjoyed the opportunity to share our mobile expertise and best practices with hundreds of UX practitioners in this educational forum. We’re looking forward to next year and more World Usability Day events.

Here are some of the key insights into the mobile user that we’ve discovered:

• First Impressions Count… A LOT: Users’ first experience with a mobile application has a strong impact on their brand perception and interest in further engagement; a poor first experience with a mobile application can cause brand aversion and an increase in consideration among competitors’ offerings.

• Security:  Mobile users express more concerns about security while making purchases on their mobile phones than on their computers.  They want assurance that their billing and shipping information would be securely handled.   Users comfort level is increased when viewing a secure login “lock” icon or messaging regarding security of the site.

• Efficiency (time) is key – With the possibility of a dropped signal, incoming phone call, or other interruptions while out in the world, users need to be able to quickly complete their task.  For example, when making purchases, users appreciate the ability to quickly checkout using previously saved billing/shipping information.  They expect a simpler checkout on a mobile phone without extraneous content as well.

• Ease of Use: Pinch and zoom can be fun, but it’s better to just make the elements easily clickable on the small mobile screen – users will tire of having to pinch and zoom every time they want to click a link or select a button.  And keep in mind that mobile “conventions” are still gaining awareness and users need help figuring them out.  Don’t assume they’ll “just know.”  Conventions that span the general web and mobile have a good level of awareness, but emerging conventions for mobile specifically can be really confounding for even more experienced users if they aren’t obviously discoverable and understandable.  Of course, testing helps with this.

Leverage what AnswerLab’s Mobile UX Research Team already has learned about the mobile user for your next project.  We can focus on answering the hard questions about developing digital initiatives specifically for the mobile space.  Contact us to learn how we have helped clients increase app discoverability, design mobile sites, and develop cross-platform mobile strategies.

The powerful elements driving player engagement in a game – such as progress bars, status upgrades and badges – can also engage and reward consumers in non-gaming situations. For instance, LinkedIn’s progress completion bar encourages its members to address the information gaps and complete their profiles.

Understanding the user experience of gaming uncovers ways to make the best use of gaming elements that have the potential to drive adoption and engagement of products beyond “gaming.” It also highlights how to evaluate digital experiences that are not simply about measuring usability.

Last week, AnswerLab’s Sal Becerra had the opportunity to co-present with Electronic Arts’ Laura Smith at the BayCHI monthly meeting.  They shared a case study about evaluating mobile games:  How Research Plays: The UX of Mobile Gaming.

The case study describes how AnswerLab partnered with EA to research their first mobile app development experience. EA’s goal was to be the #1 downloaded free game in the iTunes app store. They set a high bar for themselves and met it – with reviews of 4 out of 5 stars – through the development and implementation of a UX strategy.

EA charged AnswerLab with meeting the following research goals:

• Create a UX framework the EA mobile gaming team could incorporate into their agile development process
• Establish benchmark metrics for future development
• Assess and measure the user experience of EA’s mobile games.

AnswerLab delivered some key “playability” learnings from the study:

• Fun is about keeping players in the flow. It’s that balance between challenge and boredom.
• Challenges are good!  When you’re making a casual game, the game itself needs to be challenging.  The players don’t want to feel like they have mastered or finished it, but at the same time it needs to be easy to understand the games objective and use the interface controls.
• Surprising or unclear game key elements can be delightful.

Interested in more of the details? Do you need ideas about how to evaluate a user experience that goes beyond “usability?”  The full presentation is available here: PowerPoint presentation