Once we got there and got seated we all gleefully played with the table and I have to admit that it was quite fun and I was surprised at the number of things you could do. Among the host of distractions, you could change the colour of the table, see into the kitchen via a webcam, play games, get tube map, and see what is on in the local area. I think quite a few additions have been made to it since my colleague Phyllis was there over a year ago (See Flashy only goes so far). Another nice touch was when it came to ordering food, if you place the cursor over the dish that you were considering it would project the dish onto your plate so that you could see what the food looked like before you ordered. Very nice!

However, all this pleasure is not without pain. When browsing the menu you can only see five dishes at a time, which meant that you have to remember what you want to have and then scroll through the menu to see the other options all the while keeping your current favourite choice in mind. I found this difficult and ended up scrolling back and forth to try and decide what to order, which took time. The more decisive at the table were much better equipped to deal with the lack of a menu to scan. And this caused another problem, each person places their own order via the table. The food is then served when it is ready as opposed to when all the food for the table is ready. And of course this resulted in the food being served in stages.

The food (once everyone’s arrived) was delicious. And after dinner everyone became playful again and started to interact again with the table and most started playing the games also provided. At one point I looked up from a deeply engrossing game of ‘matching pairs’ to see everyone else at the table also playing games at their own section of the table and realised that the interactivity of the table actually detracted from the real, social experience of coming to a restaurant with friends, which was to enjoy your friends’ company and interact with them as oppose to the table.

For all the novelty of restaurant it actually missed the point of creating more interactive products, although it did add something positive to the experience it didn’t enhance the main goal of the user in this case. Is too much interactivity a bad thing?

…Food for thought!

The research, which was carried out at a university in Glasgow, used neurological measures EEG and Electrooculography (EOG) in tandem with behavioural analysis software to measure Webstress; this not only allowed us to see the user’s facial expression and what was going on the screen but also what was going on unseen, below the skin. This extra dimension afforded us fresh insight into the pitfalls that users experience when interacting with poorly performing sites.

This EEG cap was used tandem with behavioural analysis software

If you would like to find out more about this research you can download the white paper.

Or if you have any questions and would like to how we can help identify and overcome barriers with your online offering, please get in touch.

Read Wednesday’s press release or view promo video.

From a business perspective, customers are also less likely to come across something that they didn’t think they needed or wanted, but realise that they can’t live without when shopping online. On the high street, products are mixed in together so customers have to search for items and it is much easier to wander around a store casually looking at things. Supermarkets, too, frequently change the placement of products to maximise customers’ spend. These types of experiences can be difficult to replicate in online stores, where traditionally chance finds are not commonplace.

However, when buying other items, such as books or CDs, seeing and feeling them before you buy is not so important; but a fortuitous find could greatly improve a shopping experience. Amazon cleverly uses recommendations to help customers do this online. They work in two ways. First, recommendations on which products to buy are made to customers based on what other customers (who bought the same products as them) have bought. Second, Amazon recommends products that are similar to the ones that the customer has already bought. Although this sounds deceptively simple, Amazon were the first to adopt this approach to selling, and judging by their success, and its adoption by other online retailers, it works. This sort of practice is now becoming the norm and a high proportion of high street clothing retailers will now recommend a shirt or t-shirt that will go with the pair of jeans that you are looking at.

I came across another way of doing this the other day. The Book Depository website has long been a seller on Amazon, and in addition to the Amazon style approach to recommendations it also has a section that allows you to ‘Watch people shop‘. This novel and interesting tool, which combines the voyeurism of big brother with shopping, allows you to see what people are buying and where they are buying it from. Admittedly, this approach is not as user focussed as the Amazon paradigm, but it did succeed in keeping me engaged and on their site, so I guess it is working to some extent. And although when I recently bought something from the Book Depository it was not something that I spotted on the ‘Watch people shop’ option, I do think that this type of approach is a step forward towards engaging customers and shepherding them towards the products companies want them to buy. Even though the novelty of this approach may wane (like the soon to be axed big brother TV show), I think that ultimately these types of experiences will pay dividends in the long run.

It is an interesting concept in these frugal times, but is it one that is going to provide an insight into how to break into this untapped market? I am not convinced. I think it is a novel way to while away 5 or 10 minutes but that’s really as far as it goes. The most interesting thing about the site is what it highlights – the value of 5 dollars around the world. But of course communicating value it is not always as simple as displaying a picture of what it’s worth. Others have tried to highlight value in different ways, Boden for example have a formula that purports to measure the value of their clothes: value = price (£) / times worn.

However, highlighting the value in what we do as an industry is a different story. Companies do not always realise that investing in usability or the user experience can reap huge rewards. But I think, to be fair, a lot of companies are coming around to this way of thinking. However, with all the belt tightening and credit crunching that is going on at the moment, some have opted to try and save by cutting spending on evaluations. This could well be to their detriment as more prudent companies recognise that now more than ever is no time for cutting corners when you are trying to get an edge in a competitive market.

There are a number of ways to stay ahead of the game – analytics can help you measure success and failure and point to areas that cause users to drop off, not to mention understanding who is visiting your site and why. If this is carried out both pre and post user testing, its real value is clear. By combining analytics with user testing or an expert review you can get a more holistic view of your online offering. For cross-channel insight you can think about throwing emotional research into the mix. If your belt tightening is starting to make you feel the pinch maybe it is time to consider some of the above!

We face a number of challenges for designing usable interfaces on these shrinking devices. For one we need to contend with the increase in the number of applications and games that are freely available, mobiles are being used in many new and varying ways. Addressing how to make this interaction easy and engaging while on the move is a formidable task. The change from testing in labs to testing in the field will be an important one. Testing in lab conditions will highlight a high proportion of the issues but many more will be missed. Things like mid-day sun can be simulated to a certain extent but not walking and texting at the same time or looking after a child and trying to find someone’s contact details simultaneously. By using small cameras which can be attached to the handset which records participants’ interaction is one way. Another is to make use of embedded software which records users’ interactions, relaying the keystrokes and menu selections back to usability specialists to be analysed. However it is done, mobile testing is going alfresco. Far from being left out in the cold mobile manufacturers should take to the streets.

This time it would be different. I knew the areas that I wanted to live in and the kind of place I wanted, so if I stuck to that, what could be simpler? Well… after viewing the first couple of places I realised that it was not going to be the straightforward task that I had hoped for. The descriptions of some of the rooms promised a lot, but, sadly, failed to deliver. I had resigned myself to more traipsing. This was until I spotted an ad that provided a link to a Youtube video of the available room. The video showed the room and the rest of house, which I thought was very clever. What it did was give potential tenants an insight into what was being offered and did it in a clear and concise way. Not only do you get to see the room without having to make the trip over there, but you also get the impression that there might be interesting people who approach things a little differently living there.

I didn’t get a chance to view the room, or meet the people, it was gone by the time I got round to calling them (which probably tells its own story). So the search goes on… but it did leave me thinking – How can we communicate the benefits of investing in usability studies as clearly as the video on Youtube showed the room? And what tools have we got in our kitbag that help us to do that? Research into emotional engagement is forging the way. By using tools like EEG and fMRI, we can paint a clearer picture of what keeps a customer engaged and on the website, while also placing a spotlight on the areas that are causing confusion. These objective measures provide a more reliable indicator than their subjective counterparts – interviews and surveys – which are useful tools but in some instances can be unreliable, with participants over reporting successes and under reporting failures. This type of data is pretty powerful stuff and will help convince even the most ardent sceptics of the importance of investing in usability.

Making use of this sort of technology can only lead to an increase in the customer’s user experience and may lead to products getting snapped up as quickly as the room did…

But isn’t this all a bit far fetched and the stuff of science fiction films? I do not believe so, and having being involved in some research in this area myself I feel equipped to comment. Usability has been evolving and has moved from the realm of quantitative measures, such as task completion times and number of assists, to qualitative measures gleaned from self reporting techniques, such as questionnaires and focus groups. The next stage in its evolution is into the emotional – user experience. But don’t take my word for it, HCI heavyweights such as Don Norman have already written about this (see Emotional Design). Furthermore, it can be seen that by triangulating the EEG data with other measures of user experience a high correlation does exist. Not only does it provide a means of pinpointing the highs and lows of a user journey, it provides us with a user experience yardstick with which we can measure these peaks and troughs.

Although EEG is still in its infancy and for now shouldn’t be thought of as some kind of user experience panacea, I believe it is a good starting point and something that can be used in conjunction with other techniques. As it grows and develops, so too will our understanding of user experience. Better make way for the new kid or there may be a showdown…