Billie Andersen

Billie's bio

Billie Andersen became interested in human involvement with technology during her undergraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence and then consolidated her knowledge of HCI and innovative systems with a Masters degree in Human-Centred Computer Systems. She has been with Foviance for over two years working on extremely successful projects across sectors, specialising in Retail and Finance.

“During my masters I chose to specialise in social media due to my fascination in how people communicate, and I have spoken on the subject at the Usability Professionals Association conference. Since my time at Foviance I have also become interested in alternative research methodologies and have developed expertise in remote testing.”

At an event for Social Media Week London last week, a question was raised over whether responding to people on Twitter and similar social media sites would encourage more customers to air their complaints in public. In my opinion, the answer is that it probably does, particularly if people see others being responded to effectively. However, this should not be a reason to ignore disgruntled customers. People will still have their grievance, whether or not they choose to voice it. Read more…

An article was published the other day that questioned how worthwhile it was for companies to spend money on social media , in light of a new report that discussed the predicted increase in social media spend in 2010. According to the article, companies have spent more time on social media this year than ever before and that more companies are focusing on this medium as a marketing strategy.  
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Social media adoption promises plenty of positive benefits to modern businesses. It is simple, quick, cost-effective, and can help organisations to reach out and collaborate with wide audiences in a variety of interactive forms that simply can’t be achieved through direct communications. Forrester Research analysts predict that by 2010, 82% of all companies will be using social media marketing. Unfortunately there are now too many companies trying their hand at social media without a well thought through strategy. They are blindly jumping on the social media bandwagon without any clear understanding of how to implement it. Companies need to take a step back and plan sound social media strategies as they would any other projects they choose to undertake.
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Nanopayments (the idea of making a profit by getting a large number of people to pay a small amount) have been talked about for a while now, and although not in their current form, the idea of nanopayments is not a new one.

For example, it is the way that mobile operators make a profit off text messaging, and remember the Million Dollar Homepage? A student from Wiltshire sold a million pixels’ worth of 100-pixel blocks, which companies could purchase and advertise on at $1 per pixel. However, the deployment of this type of payment to general consumers within the online sphere is relatively new. At the moment, for example it is used on social networking sites to buy items such as virtual gifts or in games to buy extra levels. Read more…

Calculating the return on investment when using social media can be tricky. The inability to measure its impact can be a huge barrier for companies wishing to employ social media. And for those who do use social media in their business, it’s difficult to see how well, or indeed, how badly, a campaign is going. Read more…

Since the advent of the internet, the ways in which people choose to communicate have changed dramatically. With the evolution of social media, these changes have accelerated even faster. Read more…

Angel Gambino, Ex founder of Bebo – Global VP of Music & Content, as an acclaimed social media expert in the music, media and technology industries, Angel is now an advisor. Read more…

Although remote testing will never be a complete replacement for traditional user testing, it does have its role in the user experience professional’s tool box – and it’s becoming an increasingly important one.

Traditional one-on-one website usability testing reveals a rich insight into any suitable site evaluated. It uncovers lots of qualitative data while providing a perfect opportunity to watch users’ behaviour, interpret their actions, and engage in conversations that delve into their opinions and difficulties. So when is remote testing appropriate?

There are times when small, qualitative samples are not suitable. Remote testing can instead provide a large volume of quantitative, statistically significant data. It can provide proof of issues on a large scale, or produce the figures needed for a business case. Remote testing and traditional user testing can also be used in tandem. Remote testing can provide statistical data to back up findings from a usability study. Or, perhaps, findings from a remote usability study can be expanded and explored during a one-on-one study.

As more brands become global, it is more important than ever for companies to optimise their international offering. There is no better way to understand the quality of an international presence than to test a company’s website in the international community. Current financial instabilities have heightened this importance, despite making funding of such testing harder to achieve. Remote international testing eliminates a large proportion of these costs – certainly a good deal of travel – while potentially enabling a single team to conduct all tests.

Of course not all types of remote user testing should be viewed in the same way. Certainly a clear distinction must be made between remote moderated (using screen sharing software) and remote unmoderated testing (using in-depth customer experience research tools such as WebEffective), and studies should be designed with this in mind.

Although it is conducted via some form of screen sharing software, remote moderated testing is very similar to traditional user experience testing. A moderator conducts the tasks in a similar way to a traditional user test, and is on hand to answer or ask questions at any time. They are even able to observe certain facial expressions and behavioural nuances via a webcam. Emphasis must be placed on ‘think aloud protocol’ to ensure that nothing is lost from the visual cues that cannot be seen.

Remote unmoderated testing is an entirely different story. Because there is no moderator present, any communications with participants must be really clear. There is no chance to ask questions, and if instructions are misunderstood this could easily lead to inaccurate results, possibly turning the whole study into an expensive mistake. The study should be written with no room for error and participants must be prompted to give full answers. There are pros and cons for this unmoderated form of remote testing. On one hand, participants without moderation will have less social anxiety about providing unhelpful feedback and therefore may be less inclined to write a lot. On the other hand, the lack of a moderator may give the participant more freedom to voice their opinions on more sensitive topics, or where the participant would feel embarrassed if identified.

Understandably, the person running an unmoderated remote study has even less control over their participants’ environment than with a moderated remote study. This means there is less control over distractions, or interruptions from the study which can affect completion times, but over a large enough sample this should even out.

It should be remembered throughout that with any international testing, evaluators must recognise and be sympathetic to differences in participants’ language, social conventions and mental models in order to be culturally sensitive and collect useful results. It is also advisable to understand variations in laws surrounding the treatment of human subjects in different countries. As the need for remote user testing increases, it is essential to understand the need to plan studies that always uses methodologies that best suit the individual project.

Here at Foviance, we are experts in both moderated and unmoderated remote user testing, and will be releasing the results of unmoderated industry studies with our partner Keynote later in the year. We’ll share our analysis with you as soon as it is available.