”How do you choose the right cards to do a card sort with?”

This made me realise that, in many user centred design projects, the research is simply used to educate the Information Architect (a person). Often the client doesn’t see an overt relationship between the research findings and the final design choices. They simply trust the IA.

User centred research

To show the relationship between each research exercise and each FF&C I created a simple Excel spread sheet like this (click to enlarge).

Across the top I used the following headings:

Research types

• User focus groups suggestions
• User Survey support
• Online user forum support
• Competitor analysis support
• Stakeholder suggestions from Face to Face Research
• External stakeholder suggestions
• Recommended content & features (cards for sort shaded)

Strategic decisions

• Priority (1, 2, 3)
• Justification
• Additional info
• Phase
• Responsible

Features, functions & content

Then I listed all the possible FF&C down the left, including:

• everything on the existing site
• all the stakeholders’ business requirements (preferences)
• competitor ideas
• requirements uncovered and tested, and
• new ideas.

Next I simply went through each FF&C and checked whether it ‘passed’ each research ‘checkpoint’.

This can be done very quickly with a client in a workshop.  That way the client has full visibility of what is in or out in the design, and most importantly, why?

The last thing to be done is putting a priority on each FFC.

Just last week I used it for another client. We did less research therefore there were less columns. Here’s a partially completed example (click to enlarge):

Table of content, features and functions in IA

This method was incredibly successful!

It allowed us to generate valuable and insightful discussion with the client and their senior colleagues. In this case, the colours on the left were used to show the priority that people gave in the cards sorted in the face-to-face workshops.

By looking at the spreadsheet you can very easily see if each of the things that stakeholders thought they needed was also a requirement of users. And also what new ideas users had come up with, and whether they are in or out.  The list provides the information architect with a checklist, a heuristic framework, to ensure nothing is missed.  It also lets the client quickly see that everything is justified.

How do you choose cards for a card sort? Don’t just guess, make use of all of the research that you have completed.

What do you think of when I say viral?

The visualthesarus.com is kinda cool

To me, “Viral” mostly conjures up bad feelings right? Computer virus, swine flu, bird flu, epidemic, pandemic.

So what is So good about a ‘viral’ social media marketing campaign? Are you trying to infect healthy people?  or just sell them crap?

Let’s look at some campaigns that worked:

Target Bullseye Gives

Choose your own charity.

Ford fiesta

Ford gave 100 people a car for a while and let them tell everyone about their experience!

Dunkin Doughnuts

Free stuff - sustenance, prizes and notoriety!

Why?

You have to think ‘What is the intention of you marketing campaign?’ Is it just to sell stuff or is there some ‘good’ in it?  Your campaigns will actually be successful if you’re:

• Helping out
  • Target’s campaign is for charity
  • Dunkin donuts’ campaign worked as they have away stuff.
• Providing a voice
  • Ford certainly gave their customers a voice by letting them sprout off about their cars!
• Connecting people
• Improving businesses

I was interested to see that Laurel Papworth’s Jan 09 list of cool social media campaigns from Australian organisations. They all ticked the boxes from my list above. It includes The Power House Museum, Aussie Defence Force, non-profits and retailers, plus they also

• provided stimulation for people’s minds
• raised people’s level of consciousness by making them think - educating them

If you are not aware of any useful things in your campaign, then it is probably wasting people’s time and not particularly successful or indeed sustainable. In fact under viral marketing on Wikipedia is actually states that ‘The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable!’

What a waste!

When I was at the recent iMedia Brand Summit in the Hunter Valley (loved it!) much of the conference covered social media and the ability to access huge numbers of people relatively easily BUT

The reality is that if you are doing it purely for sales or personal gain then you have missed the point. In essence a good campaign needs to add value to people’s lives by offering them something they need, or didn’t know they need, online. In this context it is about helping your customers. Make sure you are honest, well actually authentic is a better word.

Think about the ‘core’ message for your customers. What will give them an ah ha moment. Make them realise something that they had never thought of before, never knew.

Truth is, we all know that if we help someone the rewards come back in many many ways. It’s called Karma.

The other day I Stumbled Upon a website what suggested that you write down your worries as soon as you think of them. It’s like your writing them down for a later date, so you don’t forget them.

All of a sudden I discovered:

- There’s not really many things on my list
- Once written, the worry is forgotten.

Pretty simple really…

- Hi Such and Such,
- How are you?
- Kind Regards, James

I think that dispensing with some formalities saves me time and helps the reader get straight to my point?

But will my pithy emails be perceived as rude?

What do you think?

Then I looked at Roomatic.com and entered Tsunami and watched the Twitter Stream live.

And then I found this from the Bureau of Meterology and find it is a 7.8 earthquake off the south coast of NZ.

Now I will wait for the media to catch up and hope I don’t need to pack my bags. I live at the beach in Sydney.

The power of the internet to get people into action! And perhaps create #TwitterHype!

Use our new eye tracking lab in York St Sydney for cost effective eye tracking for your research in:

- web usability
- market research
- advertising
- TV
- retail

Register by emailing jbreeze at objectivedigital.com

Come to our EyeTrackLab launch event on July 28th in Sydney

EyeTrackLab is a partnership between Tobii EyeTracking, Objective Digital and City Group Rooms.

Social interaction is one of the key areas driving the take up of the Internet in today’s society. As a result, there has been an explosion in the number of social networks that consumers can get involved in, with names like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare and YouTube all instantly recognisable commodities. While most people now know what these social networking applications are, leveraging the opportunities they offer, especially in a business or enterprise sense, is something that most are struggling with at this point in time.

This workshop will aim to explore the potential that some of these applications have in improving customer support, market research, brand management, collaboration, marketing and business development.

You will have the opportunity to hear case studies, and more importantly, set up your own profiles on these sites, or to expand on the profiles and interactions you have already established. In doing so, you will learn:

• What the tools are

• How each can be used

• What specific business processes can leverage social networks

• How to convince your boss of its value

• How to manage social networking

and you will get more than your hands dirty!

**All attendees are advised to bring your laptops. You will be required to social network during the day. Yes, I won’t be upset if you aren’t listening to me all the time! After this workshop you will ‘get it’, have the building blocks of a business strategy and be able to demonstrate the benefits of social media to other colleagues and friends.

Here are some quotes from previous workshops:

“Excellent presentation and a lot to take back to work”

“I have now entered the twitterverse”

“Very hands-on and lots of great ideas”

“Lots of tips and stuff to think about. Great job!”

“Practical demonstration of Web 2.0 tools”

Please register your interest by emailing jbreeze at objectivedigital.com
or pay straight away on Paypal!

About your facilitator (me):

James Breeze

James is a registered Organisational Psychologist and user experience evangelist who constantly seeks out better ways of doing things. His practical approaches to technology has allowed many people to finally understand the social media opportunity and start doing it for themselves and their businesses.

James has 10 years experience across a myriad of user experience, social networking, web and intranet projects having worked with small to medium businesses, all levels of government in Australia, as well as the largest enterprises. He is a seasoned professional facilitator, with over 15 years experience.

He regularly runs public workshops with the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), Australian Computer Society (ACS), Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA), ArkGroup, IQPC and with his clients.

James is an Honorary Associate, Masters Supervisor and Guest Lecturer at Macquarie University and the University of UNSW. He has also lectured at Canberra University.

He has recently started a discussion on social networking in the User Experience group on LinkedIn. Please add your thoughts. Also, check out his new posts on social media here.

• My blog - Customer service with Twitter
• Australian Anthill Mag on socialising online

A straight shooting slide show all about Twitter for business. You might even learn a bit about yourself too.

See if you can find all the birds

Please share it around and tell me what you think in the comments!

What do you think?