Colleen Jones, author of "Clout"

Colleen Jones is the author of Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content. I read Colleen’s book and then invited her to give a talk at a panel I was putting together at the HCI conference in 2011.

Anyone involved in website design and development talks about how important content is, but how much time and energy do we really invest on website content? When you are designing a website it’s easy to get caught up in layout and design standards, and formats. In this podcast with Colleen we talk about what it means to pay attention to content.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking on this link It’s 30 minutes in length.

Topics include:

• How website content is becoming the main way customers interact with a company.
• Why it is that content so often gets ignored.
• Some practical steps you can take to get started on your path of giving content its due in your design process.

Besides writing books like Clout, Colleen is the Principal and Founder of the company Content Science, where she consults and teaches workshops on how to change the role of content in your internet marketing.

What do you think? Is your organization structured so that excellent content for website visitors can be a top priority? How critical do you think this is?

You can reach Colleen through her website, Content Science.

The book is:

Jones, Colleen. 2010. Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content. New Riders.

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100 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People

In his TED talk, John Bohannon says that “bad powerpoint presentations are a serious threat to the global economy”. He estimates that:

Each day $250,000,000  (USD) is spent on presentations, assuming each presentation is ½ hour long, with an average audience of 4 people that have an average salary of $35,000 USD.

Each day there are 30,000,000 presentations created

¼ of presentations are a total waste of time

$100,000,000,000 (USD) is wasted globally on presentations each year

I don’t know how accurate his numbers are, but I do know that I feel blessed when I see/attend a great presentation, and bored and antsy when I”m watching/attending a bad one.Which got me thinking about why a lot of presentations are so bad, and only a few are good. Having been a presenter all of my adult life, I’m dedicated to, and fascinated by, the science of giving a great presentation, and therefore decided to make that my next book: 100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People.

Score a free copy of the book – For this book I am including “Stories From The Field” which is a collection of tips and stories from YOU. I’m asking people to send me their presentation tips, techniques, good, and disaster stories. If I use the story or tip you send me in the book, then you’ll get a free copy of the book (due out in May).

So if you have stories, tips or techniques email them to me at: thebrainlady@gmail.com

Thanks!

Justin Davis of Madera Labs

Justin Davis of Madera Labs is a great speaker and a lot of fun to talk with. I met Justin in 2010 in Lisbon Portugal, where we were both speaking at the UXLX conference.  I invited him to speak on a panel with me at the HCI conference in 2011. I think we talked non-stop for 5 hours one day at the conference. Most of that was just because we can’t stop talking about user experience and designing interfaces, but for a half hour we turned on the microphones and recorded an interview together. It’s a deep dive into affordances and adaptive interfaces.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking on this link (30 minute podcast)

In this podcast we talk about:

What is an affordance 

Are affordances important on even something as mundane as a form (the answer is yes)

Have affordances been disappearing over time in interfaces?

Why it is a problem when affordances are missing

Is there a clash between visual design styling and human cognition

The 4 types of affordances — (we refer to the chart below in the podcast):

How thinking about affordances helps pay attention to the small things that are important but can be overlooked.

In addition to talking about affordances we talked about adaptive interactions – where the website/app changes based on the users’ actions, including:

Content based adaptation – change content on the page based on your past behavioral data

Content based filtering – change your interaction choices based on your past behavior

Collaborative filtering – change content and interaction based on what others have done who seem to like what you like

Interaction adaptation – the interface changes, not based on content consumption, but based on how you move through the interface.

What do you think? Are affordances important? What is the future of adaptive interfaces?

FYI — Justin’s twitter address is: @jwd2a

In Part 1 of this series on the Science of Happiness, I wrote about a happiness set point.

This is Part 2, where we take a look at the relationship between happiness and geography.

Is where you live correlated with how happy you are? –  The answer is yes. But it is a complicated answer. There is a lot of research on the relationship between happiness and geography. As you might imagine, the results depend at least partially on which questions you ask. If you ask people how satisfied they are with their life, and how they felt about the previous day, then you get the data that Forbes reported on from Gallup. The top “happiest” countries according to Gallup are:

1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. Norway
4. Sweden
5. The Netherlands

at the bottom of the list of 155 countries are:

1. Sierra Leone
2. Cambodia
3. Comoros
4. Burundi
5. Togo

On the Gallup list the United States is #14 and the UK is #17

(If, instead of asking people you measure things like income, access to education, etc, you get very different data, in other words, objective measures don’t agree with subjective measures. A great source of objective measures is the UN’s Human Development Indicators).

Gross National Happiness – In his book, The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner covers the research on happiness and geography, with a bit of satire thrown in. He travels to several of the countries at the top of the list, a few in between, and a few at the bottom, and writes about his adventures, including his visit to Bhutan where they invented and use a GNH (Gross National Happiness) index to make policy decisions instead of the GNP (Gross National Product) or GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

Trust is the Key – Weiner summarizes the research this way: The more the people in a country trust their government, the higher up they are on the happiness scale. Another strong factor is the amount of family and social ties that the people in that country have.

Time to move to Denmark? – What do you think? Should we all go move to the Scandinavian countries that rank high? Is this just a correlation and not a causation? Do you think geography is linked to happiness?

If you’d like to dig deeper:

Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss, Twelve, 2008

Forbes article on the Gallup research

UN Human Development Indicators

What is your happiness set point?

Are you a happy person? Is there such a thing as a happy person? Is happiness something that can be scientifically studied? Only you know the answer to the first question above, but the answer to the other questions is “yes”. This post is the first in a short series on the science of happiness.

Your set point – Two books that talk about the set point of happiness are: The How of Happiness, by Sonja Lyubomirsky, and Stumbling On Happiness by Dan Gilbert. Each individual has a tendency to have, and stay at, a certain level of happiness. Some people are naturally more happy than others. There is a “set point” for your own personal happiness, and that set point is 50% determined by genetics. In other words you are born with a tendency to be very happy, somewhat happy, or not very happy. The events in your life can affect your happiness, but not very much, and not for very long. Whether you win the lottery, or lose your job, you will tend to “bounce back” or not, to your natural level of happiness.

How to determine your set point – Chances are you already know approximately where your happiness set point is, but if  you are interested in finding out more exactly, you can take a questionnaire and score yourself in The How of Happiness book. BUT, I have to say that that is the only part of the book that I recommend. I purchased the How Of Happiness book because it promised to handle the science of happiness. However, only a small portion of the book relates to the science. The rest is a collection of what I consider tired advice on how to be happy (spend time with loved ones, be grateful for what you have, etc). Luckily for us there are other books that are research based and have real insights about happiness. I’ll be covering these other books as I write the rest of this series on The Science of Happiness.

Can you change your set point? – By definition, a set point is something that is hard to change. So the bad news is that you really can’t change your set point for happiness. BUT having said that, you should realize that only about 50% of your happiness is determined by that set point. This means that even though you can’t change your set point for happiness, you CAN change how happy you are, (to a limit). In the rest of the posts in this series we’ll explore the research on happiness factors, and what you can do to be happier regardless of where your set point is. Here’s a sneak previews– being grateful for what you have won’t necessarily do it (and may actually lower your happiness!).

What do you think? Do you know your own happiness set point?

References:

The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Penguin, 2008

Stumbling On Happiness by Dan Gilbert, Vintage, 2007

Just a quick note to say that I’ve launched my new business today. I’ve left Human Factors International and have started a company dedicated to research and training in all things user experience. It’s called the User Experience Institute. I’ll be posting more information on it as well as getting a new website up and running soon.

Ideas for research? – The new company will focus on training (classes, on-line seminars etc), but we will also be conducting practical research in user experience. I’d like your input into what design and user experience questions you have in general. Here are some ideas other people have given me recently:

• What is the best way to design a table?
• What’s the latest reaction to having scrolling pages vs. breaking things up into multiple pages?
• Are breadcrumbs really (still?) dead?

I’m collecting practical questions like these, and then we’ll design some studies to test the ideas, and put together some seminars etc to communicate. Send me your burning questions about all things related to people and technology!

You can reply in the comments, or send an email to: thebrainlady@gmail.com

My view last week "off the grid"

I spent last week “off the grid” on an island in Lake Michigan.  No internet, no email, no cell phones. It was different, interesting, and strange. I was actually glad to get back to the grid. But the experience made me think. The major difference for me was that I stopped “multi-tasking”.

Task switching, not multi-tasking –  A while ago I wrote a post about multi-tasking, and the research at Stanford that shows that even younger people aren’t good at multi-tasking.  But the term multi-tasking is actually a misnomer. People can’t actually do more than one task at a time. Instead we switch tasks. So the term that is used in the research is “task switching”.

Task switching is “expensive” – There has been a lot of research on task switching. Here’s what we know from the research:

• It takes more time to get tasks completed if you switch between them than if you do them one at a time.
• You make more errors when you switch than if you do one task at a time.
• If the tasks are complex then these time and error penalties increase.
• Each task switch might waste only 1/10th of a second, but if you do a lot of switching in a day it can add up to a loss of 40% of your productivity.
• Task switching involves several parts of your brain: Brain scans during task switching show activity in four major areas: the pre-frontal cortex is involved in shifting and focusing your attention, and selecting which task to do when. The posterior parietal lobe activates rules for each task you switch to, the anterior cingulate gyrus monitors errors, and the pre-motor cortex is preparing for you to move in some way.

Video Genie lets customers record video testimonials

Let’s say you are browsing for shoes at your favorite online shoe store. You see a pair that looks like what you are looking for, but you aren’t 100% convinced. Then you notice that in addition to the regular reviews written by other shoppers, there is a video you can click on. You click on the video and watch a stream of customers show you the shoe and talk about why they like it. Persuasive? You bet!

Video is one of the most powerful media choices for online persuasion. Here are 5 reasons why:

#1 — Movement in peripheral vision grabs attention – In a previous post I talked about why movement in your peripheral vision is so powerful at grabbing attention. Video online is movement, and so will automatically grab attention more than anything else on the screen.

#2 — Speakers and listener’s brains sync up – In a previous post I talked about the research by Stephens (Stephens, Greg, Silbert, L., & Hasson, U., 2010. Speaker–listener neural coupling underlies successful communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 27, 2010.) that shows that the brain patterns of listeners synch up with the brain patterns of the speaker they are listening to. This means that a video of someone talking  is going to be more powerful than just reading words on a page.

#3 — Video compensates (somewhat) for the asynchronous problem – In a previous post I wrote about the research by Wiltermuth and Heath (Scott S. Wiltermuth  and Chip Heath,  Synchrony and Cooperation, Psychological Science, Volume 20 Issue 1, Pages 1 - 5) on how synchronous behavior bonds people together. A lot of online communication is asynchronous — the communication is not occurring simultaneously in real time. Emails, Facebook posts, twitter posts, are asynchronous. Chat is synchronous. Synchronous communication is, in general, more persuasive. Video can be synchronous (think Skype) or asynchronous (think TED talk or YouTube). But video does have the advantage of allowing you to hear and see an actual person, rather than the more removed reading of text. In this regard it is the most powerful of the asynchronous media.

#4 — Video can convey emotional info, not just factual – In my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? I talk about how important it is to speak to the emotional mid-brain if you want to get your message across and have your message be remembered. Video has the advantage (over just reading text) of communicating social and emotional information, not just facts.

#5 — Video testimonials combine all the powerful elements together – If you haven’t seen Video Genie in action, I suggest you go to videogenie.com and check out their example videos. This is a new technology that allows customers to easily make a video testimonial and post it to your site (you get to moderate it, i.e. watch it before it gets posted). I’ve talked a lot (in books and other posts) about why testimonials and reviews are so powerful (it’s the principle of social validation). Video testimonials are social validation on steroids. Social validation, brain syncing, emotional content… you just can’t beat this for persuasion.

The technology for video is finally getting easier and easier to create and integrate online. (Another interesting example is Vokle.com – it allows anyone to host their own video talk show, live, with people calling in.)

What do you think? Are you using video at your site?

Dave Gray

I actually can’t remember how I came upon the book Gamestorming. I probably read a review of it on one of the blogs I regularly read. I ordered the book and started reading it right before I was going to leave for a trip to meet with a client team. The book is full of design “games” and other group activities that you can do with teams. I read through it to see if there were some new ideas I could use for my meeting. I picked out two “games” to use with my client. They were a great success, making the meeting more productive, efficient, and fun for me and the team.

I contacted one of the authors, Dave Gray, to see if he would be willing to do a podcast interview with me.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking on this link

In the interview we talk about:

• Different ways to do brainstorming that are more interesting and more effective
• An interesting activity called “dot voting” that I tried out at my meeting
• The history of the corportate meeting, and how meetings have evolved over time
• Why having someone facilitate a meeting is a bad idea and what to do instead
• Why design games and meeting games can make your meetings and sessions more powerful and productive
• A low-tech social network “game” you can use with up to 100 people in the room that makes invisible connections tangible and visible
• A quick simple “game” you can use to help keep your meetings on task and on time.

Have you read the book? If so, comment on what you think.

Here’s a link to Amazon if you are interested in the book:

Here’s how to contact Dave Gray and get more info:

website for the book: Gogamestorm.com

twitter for Dave: @davegray