I didn’t make eye contact because I know the rules. The other individual obviously didn’t and proceeded to have a conversation with us as he stood there naked with one leg up on the bench. And that is all I have to say about that.

It occurred to me that my experience wasn’t as delightful as it could have been that day. Likely because others neglected to follow the unwritten rules of the locker room. It made sense since most people are unaware of these commandments. When we initially joined the gym, they never provided rules of locker room conduct. So I took it upon myself to draft an important few in the hopes that they could be built upon. Maybe even printed out and hung up. So here goes.

7 officially, unofficial rules of every men’s locker room. Follow with care.

• No sight seeing. Unless you are looking for locker, your workout friend or your lost child, your eyes should remain in a fixed position that will get you from point A to point B. This is not a museum even though you may find the occasional ancient, artifact walking around.
• When naked, limit direct eye contact with strangers. It’s not nice to stare people down when you are clothed. It’s extra creepy when you are not. And borderline illegal when it is aimed at younger children.
• Do not elevate legs more then 10 degrees. Keep your feet on the ground. Or damn close to it. Stretching should be done before or after workouts inside the gym. There is absolutely no need to lift your leg and show the room your danglers. Side note: Elevating leg above 10 degrees and direct eye contact for extended periods of time is grounds for caning.
• No food. Unless you have a fetish for eating sandwiches off of toilet seats, snacks should remain outside.
• Respect the 12″ safety radius. It gets crowded. People bring in racquetball racquets. Others are bending down to get their gym bags. Prevent an accident.
• Sox / shoes are not to be worn alone. Shorts and pants are their natural companions. They need to be worn together.
• Blow dryers are for your head. That is all.
• No snapping towels. No!

Entrepreneurs Danny Potter and Noel Hunwick conceived and created the E-Table™ with the belief that this interactive ordering system can provide improved efficiency in dealing with customers, with the potential to reduce staff costs, turnaround covers faster, and increase customer spend.

Certainly an impressive, engaging customer experience.

Even today, I still recall having the same conversation with my own father. It feels like it was yesterday. He was getting ready for work as I wondered into his room. The leather box on top of his dresser that I have seen a million times before had caught my eye. It was black with two doors that opened in opposite directions. Inside were rings of his father and silver dollars. I asked if Santa was real.

The point of bringing it up is not so much about delivering the answer. It’s about the minds ability to ignite an emotional, human response from a story. And what that is. Research indicates that we all organize knowledge by storytelling. And, as a tool in the classroom, storytelling is vital to promoting student growth. It is how we learned as children. Yet in the world of communications and user experience, this foundational method of engaging is often forgotten or lost in the wake of business goals and feature demands. And products end up in the sea of sameness.

So, why does storytelling make sense in developing user experiences for products? Cindy Chastain, Creative Director, Experience at RAPP summarizes it as a means to give the product purpose and to focus and define what you are building. She refers to this as “the core value of the experience” or “experience theme”.

(Learn more about Experience Themes in Cindy’s article on Boxes and Arrows.)

I would go on further to say that through storytelling; we are creating a reason to believe. And having worked with diverse, multi-disciplined teams, that is not always easy to do. But, vital to providing consistency at every point of contact. Sounds a little like branding doesn’t it? The reality is that there is inter-connectivity.

So how do we approach projects with storytelling in mind? Begin with an experience goal. Ask questions. Explore. Discover. For you process junkies, try to better understand the narrative structure. There are a ton of great resources out there. Some of which I have listed below.

Look to filmmaking. To describe a story in film, one needs to answer:

• Where is the story set?
• What event starts the story?
• Who are the main characters?
• What conflicts do they face? What is at stake?
• What happens to the characters as they face this conflict?
• What is the outcome of this conflict
• What is the ultimate impact on the characters?

(Source: [InPoint] Home: Welcome to InPoint, the Online Production Resource Centre at Pacific Cinémathèque. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. <http://www.inpoint.org>.

One can draw parallels between the questions asked in the filmmaking world and those created in the UX world. There is a reason for that. Both are created to charge a human response. Sounds a lot like a discovery process yes? Kind of. The difference is that asking questions in this context arrives at answers that are more meaningful, emotional and interpersonal. That is the sweet spot. Your user goals shape into experience goals. And you can begin to approach experiences more holistically. This is definitely not a one-size fits all approach however, you can begin to see how it can fit nicely into existing user-centered approaches and underpin a brand story.

There is an even more powerful application of storytelling in UX. And that exists in how we present our work to our partners (clients). Instead of going into meetings and touting how we are going to solve problems with our ideas, challenge yourself to deliver a story of how their customers will be compelled to use their product over and over again as they BELIEVE it was the best experience. Because it was.

So does storytelling work? I began this post with a little piece about my daughter and myself. What amazed me is that my wife answered virtually the same way as my father did more then 30+ years earlier. And it was all about believing.

Best described in the closing line in one of my favorite holiday movies/stories – The Polar Express.

Here are some great storytelling resources:

Smashing Magazine

“Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One”
“Better User Experience With Storytelling, Part 2″

Screenwriting, filmmaking, etc books:

The Disciplines of User Experience
Story
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Emotional Design
Lovemarks

Presentations:

Dorelle Rabinowitz
Storytelling – A Compelling Design Tool

Cindy Chastain

Experience Themes: An Element of Story Applied to Design
Thinking Like a Storyteller
“Experience Themes”

Storyteller Evangelists:

Cindy Chastain – @cchastain
Christian Saylor – @christiansaylor
Dorelle Rabinowitz – @dorelvis

References:

“Experience Themes.” Boxes and Arrows: The Design behind the Design. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. <http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/experience-themes>.

“Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One.” Smashing Magazine. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/29/better-user-experience-using-storytelling-part-one/>.

“Better User Experience With Storytelling, Part 2.” Smashing Magazine. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/11/better-user-experience-through-storytelling-part-2/>.

At Hart, I was welcomed with what truly felt like open arms. This was the kind of culture Mike Hart ingrained. I was given the opportunity to work side by side with an extremely talented group of individuals. People spending endless, exhausting hours on the work because they were so passionate about it. And I was challenged by amazing clients.

These were truly some of the most amazing individuals I have ever worked with. And they will be truly missed. I look forward to building on the relationships that began at Hart.

My next chapter will begin in Austin, Texas. Living in a warm climate has always been a dream of my wife and mine. (So I guess we can check that one off the list.) And I am truly excited to become part of my new team at razorfish.

“The Breakup Letter is a design research tool that Smart Design uses to understand the emotional connection between people and their products, services, and experiences.

At IIT’s 2010 Design Research Conference, Smart Design asked participants of their Sex Ed workshop to test out this tool by writing and reciting a Breakup Letter. Each participant took 15 minutes to write a letter and then shared their stories of finally moving on.”

Reference: “Smart Design: The Breakup Letter on Vimeo.” Vimeo, Video Sharing For You. Web. 11 July 2010. <http://vimeo.com/11854531>.

Many believe that it requires a large research investment to properly inform a persona. That is not always true if your organization thoroughly knows their customer and there is no doubt by any team who they are based on experience. This is often not the case. The time and effort required to research, analyze and document personas, should not be underestimated

To further complicate things, there previously hasn’t been empirical evidence for this type of investment.

This research paper was first published in the Irish Ergonomics Review, Proceedings of the IES Conference 2009, Dublin [click me to see].

The scope of the experiment was focused on the effectiveness of using personas in the design process.

Methodology:
The study was aimed to assess and measure the effectiveness of using personas as a design tool. It further tried to answer – does using personas give designers any advantage in designing more effective and user-centered solutions? Would there be a quantifiable usability difference between the designs from the persona-based teams over ones that did not use persona?

Results:
“The study indicates that using personas offers several benefits for user-centred design in product development. The results support claims that using personas focuses more attention on the end-user, particularly in the early stages of the project. Not only does this increase the likelihood of a more usable end product but it also provides a clear user focus at the initial design research and idea generation stages, which enhances the possibility of incorporating user-centred features at the product specification stage. Personas have a role in helping designers to innovate new ideas but can also assist in validating new designs as they emerge. They can provide a valuable user-centred input early in the development cycle – helping to bridge the gap between research and design.”

For a number of years now, many marketers have realized the benefits of using personas beyond the digital space. And today, it is more important then ever to understand the needs, desires and motivations of customers.

Reference:
Long, Frank. “Research Paper – Real or Imaginary: The Effectiveness of Using Personas in Product Design – Frontend – User Experience Design Consultancy.” Frontend.com – Frontend – User Experience Design Consultancy. Web. 01 July 2010. <http://www.frontend.com/products-digital-devices/real-or-imaginary-the-effectiveness-of-using-personas-in-product-design.html>.

In rebuilding or exploring any new desktop online experience I heavily rely on analytics to provide us with that important, real-time data on how users are consuming content. It allows us to find importance in everything from top pages they hit (as well as did not hit), time they spend with content, how they come in, where they go out, where we lose them, how we found them, those silly words they used to find us, pages that for some reason just didn’t work, goals, funnels, abandonment….the list goes on and on. All great stuff for data junkies to act on (if used correctly).

My tool of choice is Google Analytics on most client projects. Especially when it comes to rebuilds, I’ve made this an ingrained part of my team’s discovery process. It informs our content planning, information architecture and user experience planning. And it gives both my team and the clients’ a benchmark of data. It’s free, it is simple to integrate  yet powerful to use and a snap to share reporting. Used right, it can also be effectively used it to track print advertising through the use of goals and events so one can really apply a success matrix through use of it.

google reporting

November 2009, Google announced Google Analytics for Mobile Apps. As with websites, there are two basic categories of user interaction you can track – pageviews and events. Teams can then use this data to understand which features are most popular and inform decisions about which features should be promoted or prioritized for further development.

For more powerful, enterprise level analytics, there is also WebTrends. And for those of us who have been around a little while and remember Log Analyzer – their product matured from that lengthy install and cumbersome software setup to a little more elegant web based system equipped with all the fancy little dashboards you team needs to produce all kinds of reporting. Of particular interest to this post is their Wireless Dashboard providing explicit detail on a particular website’s device trends, WAP carriers, mobile devices, WAP image support, mobile browsers, WAP markup languages, WAP screen sizes, WAP script support, PALM devices, PALM trends and more.

webtrends dashboard

This is the kind of data that better informs decisions on what to build for. And as we move aggressively toward more users accessing the web over hand-held devices, we want to ensure that our products are prepared and the information is correctly delivered to the masses. This is not to be confused with a more lengthy discussion on correctly developing mobile content, apps, device research, etc. The point is to use these tools to help you better understand how your users are consuming your content. Simply put, if you notice that there is an upward trend in mobile users to your website, and your site is not optimized to deliver content well over mobile devices, then you should consider change.

The above mentioned above only scratches the surface of analytics for mobile web. But what about at the application level? There are options.

localytics dashboard

Localytics – This is a free app that provides real-time analytics and it currently works with Blackberry, Android and iPhone. Their website says that Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm are coming soon. The service also provides an easy to use dashboard that allows users to create custom segments on-the-fly.

medialytics dashboard

Medialytics from Medialets – is an analytics platform for iPhone and Android app developers that provides key insights on their apps and users. Combined with the parent Medialets, they are a rich media advertising and analytics platform. Back in April, Medialets together with creative agency Razorfish launched Pants Dance, the world’s first Shakable Ad™.

flurry analytics

Another recent merger brought 2 more mobile application analytics and monetization platforms together – Flurry and Pinch Media. Both companies have launched widely used analytics services for the iPhone and Android phones. In the end, the single company named Flurry.

To monetize the data, Flurry recently launched AppCircle, a recommendation platform. Developers install it in their games and it analyzes a user’s taste in apps. Then it recommends apps for the user. These recommendations are likely to be highly useful because they’re based on the user’s past purchases. Flurry gets paid through a revenue sharing agreement with the developer. – Dean Takahashi

mobclix app ranking

Mobclix -provides iPhone analytics and the “largest mobile ad exchange” for your apps. They analytics driven mobile ad exchange allows them to optimize ad inventory to maximize eCPMs through a bidding platform for advertisers, ad networks, and agencies.

So not only are these platforms providing us more data. The platforms are acting smarter by providing real-time data for actionable business decisions. Definitely high value for both the developers and marketers.

There is no perfect tool. Today’s economy demands that we are resourceful and smart. Use the free tools to create the business case and benchmark data. All of these resources are giving analytics away. It is up to you (and me) to use them and make our products and experiences better.

So what’s next?

Behold Google Favorite Places.

“Businesses unlock their free business listing with Google’s Local Business Center, allowing them to enhance the content of their listings with photos, correct hours, coupons and more. This also tells Google that the business’ location is correct, so we can send a window decal if the business is popular enough.” – Google

So how it works is Google has identified more then 100,000 local business in more then 9,000 towns and cities nationwide that are searched on the most. And they sent these businesses , which include everything from restaurants, stores and more, a window decal from Google featuring a scannable QR code.

That code could be scanned into mobile phones —including iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerry and more—and be taken directly to that business’s Place Page on their mobile phone where they can find reviews and coupons or “star” the business as one they want to remember for later.

Sound cool? Yeah, because it is. And here’s more from Google on the QR code.

Claim token for technorati: STKBZ4XWH6EX

This is certainly not a new idea by any stretch. Dell found popular success with their own “Idea Storm” website which basically allowed customers to vote for features and products that they wanted. One of the results was the development and release of the linux community driven UBUNTO box.

Starbucks is another with their My Starbucks Idea website. They ask customers to help shape the future of their company through ideas. Both Starbucks and Dell used the Salesforce.com platform “Ideas”.

What is exciting about this new era of brand building is the possibilities. And how much faster product and service innovation can occur as well as allowing companies to react quicker to issues. But I think it is important to point out that it is one thing for a company to be open to these possibilities, including the spearheading the communities of thought and voices. It is another to be able to support it from an infrastructure standpoint.

It is obvious in the case of both of these companies, they were ready to deliver from a service and product engineering standpoint. They put their ideas into action and they show it. Starbucks shares through their Ideas In Action blog. Dell has an Ideas In Action community portal as well.

So let’s take it a step further. In a 2000 article titled “IDEAS INTO ACTION; Dell, It Turns Out, Has a Better Idea Than Ford” published by the NY Times, Fred Andrews noted “Dell made its name by selling directly to customers and allowing them to specify the features they wanted their personal computer to include.” This was an article about supply chain management and not about “IdeaStorming”. But it is interesting to say the least, that this was a flag raised.

It is almost a decade since this article was published. Dell continues to live their mission by embracing their customers, listening and acting – they continue to move forward. Is it possible that if others had looked, listened and acted differently almost 10 years ago, the outcome would have been different today?

Here are some links to idea storming / crowd sourcing / idea management players in this space.

• http://getsatisfaction.com/ – “People Powered Customer Service”
• http://ideascale.com/ – “Innovation, Crowdsourcing, Idea Management”
• http://uservoice.com/ – “Harness the Ideas of Your Customers…”
• http://www.fevote.com/ – “Suggestion Boards for Social Suggestions”
• http://www.brightidea.com/webstorm.bix – “WebStorm by Brightidea, Inc. is an Idea Collection and Ranking Portal”
• http://www.feedback20.com/ – “Engage With Your Community”
• http://www.ideatorrent.org/ – Open Source, “Open Invitation Software”

Reference:
“Build your own “IdeaStorm” with UserVoice « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing.” Web Strategy By Jeremiah Owyang: Web Marketing, Social Media. Web. 30 Aug. 2009. <http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/05/02/build-your-own-ideastorm-with-uservoice/>.

But this post isn’t about a particular misstep. It is about asking the question – should we execute user research every time we design?

Jackob Neilson writes in his Alertbox – Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design, #10 – “Not Answering Users’ Questions – Users are highly goal-driven on the Web. They visit sites because there’s something they want to accomplish — maybe even buy your product. The ultimate failure of a website is to fail to provide the information users are looking for.”

To understand what the user is asking, it makes sense that we must first understand the user. And that isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Take for instance a low-budget project or one that has rapid turn-around. There isn’t always the time or money to execute research. I’ve been in client meetings where they have clearly no idea who their user or audience is. Or believe that their audience is everybody. But I have found success in asking the right questions and being a little resourceful.

1. For the limited budget project, ask to look at their customer database. It would be outstanding to dive into an advanced CRM system and segment. Many companies completely forget about their own database. Perhaps it’s a simple Excel or one that could be exported as a tab delimited file then opened in Excel. Do a little sorting and soon you can begin gleaning common titles or companies in a B2B situation, maybe there are a lot more males or female names, take a look at their email addresses (this is helpful in email design trying to assist in finding target email clients, etc. Taking this list to a mail house or analyst could also prove invaluable (depending on the complexity) if they can assist in segmentation.
2. For a decent size project with little or no budget for 3rd party research, use the above mentioned method along with some open-source research tools like Quantcast. Let’s say your clients URL is nestle.com. Just enter it in and it pulls from a variety of resources to provide you with demographics and lifestyle information like this:
   
   
3. If you are working on high priority projects and there is a success matrix in place for performance, using a 3rd party is invaluable. If you are the IA or UX designer, you should be provided insight detailing the outcomes of the research and information you can act on to design quality into the product. This will ensure you are correctly communicating and provide benchmark data for testing. I shared more on forms of this in my post titled: Automatic Usability Evaluation Applications.

I believe that user research should be engaged in every project.  Minimal information is better then no information at all to act on. And as protectors of creating positive online experiences, it is our missive to make sure this is always a part of the process.

Do you agree or have any examples of arguments against this position?