Persuasion in Design

I came across this article from a year ago that provides a nice summary of psychological techniques of persuasion.

Whether we're designing e-commerce or general product acquisition experiences, these techniques are important to keep in mind while designing.

Are you testing a page or product sequence, trying to improve conversion? These can also provide great ideas for alternative treatments that you can A/B test using tools I've mentioned in previous posts such as Optimiz.ly, Google Website Optimizer, and others.

Read more:
> Persuasion in Design | UX Magazine

Upcoming DC tech events

There are a bunch of upcoming tech events and initiatives worth checking out; here's a list from Frank Gruber and Jen Consalvo at Tech Cocktail:

• What's Next DC Conference, Jan 23
• DC Tech Meetup, Feb 15, 7:00pm ET, Social Media Week Edition
• Tech Cocktail, Fed 16, 2012 630:pm ET, Washington D.C.
• SXSW 2012, Mar 10th, 2012 6:00pm CST, Austin, TX

SOPA and PIPA

You many notice today on sites like Wikipedia and Google that the Internet is protesting two bills in Congress; a summary from Wikipedia:

"SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively. SOPA is short for the "Stop Online Piracy Act," and PIPA is an acronym for the "Protect IP Act." ("IP" stands for "intellectual property.") In short, these bills are efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, but, in our opinion, they do so in a way that actually infringes free expression while harming the Internet." 

You can read more about this proposed legislation on Wikipedia and Google, among other places. Please take a moment to understand why these bills are so dangerous, and why so many oppose them. Each site provides a way for you to contact your congressional representative and add your voice. Although President Obama and his administration have opposed these bills, they are still in Congress and the threat has not gone away.

Infographic: Doctor Who Timeline

Infographics are everywhere it seems, and sometimes aren't much more than a couple of facts blown out into a graphic that really doesn't add insight to the idea being conveyed.

There are, however, rich visualizations to be found. And, if you happen to be a fan of Doctor Who, this particular graphic packs an incredible amount of information into a journey that feels worthy of the Doctor himself:

• Each season, when it aired, and the number of episodes
• Each Doctor, and who portrayed the character
• Each companion, and in which episodes they appeared
• Each enemy of the doctor, with callouts for special characters like the Master
• All laid out, in true time-lord style, by year

Check out the entire graphic with additional annotations on CableTV.com- enjoy!

> Doctor Who Timeline Infographic

Comparing Social Network Fan Audiences

This article compares the fan audiences of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. It recommends that media companies focus on Facebook and Twitter, while brands should focus on Facebook and Google+, where brands are growing faster than Twitter.

Read more, and view the complete diagram:

Which social networks should you focus on in 2012?

Personal 2011 AddThis Infographics

We're in the process of sending out 2011 AddThis year-end inforgraphics to all of our publishers who receive weekly analytics reports. I thought I'd share a few excerpts from mine for this blog, and show off design and development work by Jeff, Foo, Aaron, and Greg.

Here's my month-by-month chart of shares and clicks back to my blog:

I clearly blogged a lot more in the spring than the fall; I'll have to work on that... Each infographic also includes a map showing which countries contribute the most sharing: 

I learned that Facebook is the service most used to share my blog posts, followed by Twitter and Address Bar Sharing. However, Address Bar sharing and Twitter were more effective than Facebook at sending clicks – social traffic – back to my blog. 

If you are an AddThis publisher and receive weekly analytics reports, you should be receiving your own 2011 report in the next few days. If you're a registered user but opted out of weekly analytics reports, you can change that in your profile settings so you can get a report next year.

If you don't use AddThis, what are you waiting for? Grab code for your site – and be sure to register with your email address to receive analytics – it only takes a moment. 

Here's to an exciting 2012!

The Key to Privacy

Privacy is always a core issue to experience design, and identity management is becoming more and more challenging as we interact with more websites and social networks.

This is a cool (though not new) idea: take your identity with you. I might have to try this out. I use a password system to keep track of the hundreds of passwords I use across sites, but this would be much more secure.

Read more:

SplashID Key Safe - USB Drive with a built-in Password Manager for Windows & Mac OS

Page Flow Design

Morgan Brown writes about Page Flow Design on Smashing Magazine, illustrating how designers can create better user experiences by designing sequences instead of just pages.

Read more:
Stop Designing Pages And Start Designing Flows - Smashing UX Design

Designing a Classic Game

I'm fortunate to have grown up at a time when I could experience the design of console and online games evolve from infancy. I remember playing 8-bit Pong and Adventure on my Atari console in high school, and watching single-player role-playing games move to a nascent Internet with Ultima Online and Everquest.

The article below is a look back at the original team and how Everquest came to be. It's a great story of a small group of people with a vision for a product, no budget, and learning quickly from mistakes. Working from an 80-page design document John Smedley and his team created a game that would inform and inspire enormous and incredibly varied worlds such as Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, and the upcoming and wildly-anticipated Guild Wars 2. Game design details like instanced missions, corpse runs, connectivity management, and a host of other design and technical challenges all started with Everquest, it's peers and predecessors. Fun memories.

EverQuest: The Making of a Classic

Ok, Just This Once

I've written a lot about the benefits of keeping user experience simple. Here's something designed to be ridiculously, gloriously complicated. Enjoy!

Disruptive Innovation

Article from Technology Review looking at how established companies are joining startups at creating innovation that disrupts markets. Read more: The Empire Strikes Back - Technology Review

The Joy of Stats: Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

Han Rosling describes how income and life expectancies evolved over 200 years, across 200 countries of the world, in 3D space.

Check out more about his programme, The Joy of Stats, over on BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wgq0l

Web Usability Testing Tools

I like to use a number of tools to evaluate usability, including basic strategies like heuristic evaluation, crowd-sourced tools like UserTesting.com, powerful tracking suites like Google Analytics, and A/B testing tools like Google Website Optimizer and Optimizely.com.

These kinds of resources help test everything from entirely new products to details as small as button labels, and are crucial to running a data-informed business. Small changes can create huge improvements if tested correctly; the key is figuring out what kind of test will provide the information you need early enough to make a difference (and don't forget about statistical significance!)

Here is a list of additional tools to check out; there are many others:

18 Useful Web Usability Testing Tools