Web presentation given in a pre-conference seminar "How to Become a Market-Savvy School District: A One-Day Intensive Strategic Marketing Planning Workshop for Recruiting Students, Staff and Support" with Paul Hart, Matt Schlientz and Layne Fuller.
11. “Don’t ask how you
can get more traffic,
worry about
how to make the
user experience good.”
Kathy Sierra
Game Developer & Author
Bruce Shields, The Ann Arbor News
Create Passionate Users
13. “The first requirement
for an exemplary
user experience
is to meet the exact needs
of the customer,
without fuss or bother.”
Jacob Nielsen
Usability Researcher & Author
14. “Just give me what I want,
and no one gets hurt.”
The User
40. “Instead of asking What are we trying
to communicate? which implies a
one-way conversation... ask
How can we facilitate?”
David Armano
User Experience Specialist & Writer
48. Company Leadership Team
Website
Overseeing Board
Producer
Producer
Content Information
Designer Web Master Programmer Sys Admin
Editor Architect
Author
Author
Author
Ideal Web Team
49. Peter Morville
Semantic Studios
Facets of User Experience
64. PageRank
A numeric value that represents
how important a page is on the
25% Link Popularity
25% Title
10% URL & File Name
10% Heading Text
25% Body Content
5% Images
By Paul Hart
The Image Group
http://www.imagegroup.com/
This is pretty intimidating. Remember, you’re having conversations with YOUR audience. You’re speaking to one person at a time.
We all experience things. How you feel about what you’re serving up is different than how they feel about it. The person that’s taking the food from the kitchen to the table is feeling different than the person who made it.
They eat it in 30 minutes. Doesn’t take away the effort going into it, but just how are you looking at it?
Just like the chef, you’re proud of what you’ve done, but how does the user feel about it?
They may encounter your content in a way you didn’t intend.
Is it going to bring the user back?
Google.com in 1999.
Seemed untrustworthy when it first came out. How could something this simple provide valuable content?
This is what Yahoo.com looked like around the same time. “Push” mentality.
Different than the rest. Based everything on making it useful for the user.
Simple. Effective. Good content.
Am I saying make MSU one big search engine? No, just put the power in the hands of the user.
When the user develops a passion, they become your greatest advocate.
Everything else will follow.
Your goal might actually be to have less traffic.
Discover your users in a way that makes us understand what they want, and how they feel.
Content is king. How do we not only give them what they want, but make them feel delighted?
What’s the context of the user or the content? Where are they, what’s the situation, what pressures?
Sweet spot. Consider all these things in order to create the best user experience.
The quicker we can get the user to what they came for, the better.
Eliminate distractions and make it easy.
Good example of keeping it simple. http://istockphoto.com/
Create a persona for each type of person using your site.
What online experience do they have?
What are their initial attitudes?
What are their goals?
How did they get there?
What questions are your users asking?
Users have a specific task in mind.
Series of hoops for them to get there.
Key word here is “need”.
Example of serving up content in an appealing way.
Every user comes with an intention, small or large.
This is typically how we think of our users engaging with the material.
Users may be “on the street”.
Great example of taking pertinent content and making it available on a specific internet device. Note the top 5 items.
Integrate these into the site where relevant.
Good example of a great user experience.
Beware: “Intuition” is not good when it gets in the way of the thing you’re trying to do.
Will it forget my rating? Probably.
NO! It remembered it.
Not only that, but gave me more things I was interested in.
I followed through and added it to my queue.
Next step. Checked my queue.
http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/
http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/
Again, we want to get them to their desired task as quickly as possible.
Take it to the next level.
When I was buying a shirt, they gave me this. I wanted to do it because it was so cool.
http://amazon.com
http://amazon.com
Discover your users in a way that makes us understand what they want, and how they feel.
Content is king. How do we not only give them what they want, but make them feel delighted?
What’s the context of the user or the content? Where are they, what’s the situation, what pressures?
Sweet spot. Consider all these things in order to create the best user experience.
http://semanticstudios.com/
Large photos of product coupled with prices AND variations.
http://target.com
http://charitywater.org
http://iht.com/
Ideal homepage includes:
Brand consistency, identity, navigation, secondary navigation, overview statement, “quick links” to top items, featured teasers, changeable area for news and events, footer, photography.