First off I wanna say the views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page has not been reviewed or approved by anyone in Web Ops and therefore is simply the opinion of the Author. Also its a blog, its meant to be fun, light hearted and not too serious. It not meant to be gramatically perfect either, its our diary. So all you sitting there with your red pen sucking through your teeth about miss use of grammar, if you want Shakespear, jog on. Glad we got that sorted.
Well, what an eventful first few days! The journey over was fairly painless thanks mainly to “Gail Moreleys” Easy way to enjoy flying by Allen Carr and I only made three visits to the throne as opposed to my usual eight or nine. We were up and down in our farty little Fokker 100 in about 35 minutes, ironic really my journey to the airport took longer than the actual flight!
We arrived at the Swiss hotel and Martin had done a good job, it was slap bang in the middle of Amsterdam. First Impression of the city were as expected, pretty much like any other major city, mega busy with lots of multi national folk wandering the streets, knitted jumper slouched round their shoulders, sleeves fastened at the front by folding up the cuffs. The only major difference with this city is that everyone rides a push bike and smoking doobies in public places is common practice. All that aside we trundled into the hotel and checked in, well so I thought.
Being slightly cynical and having entrusted Portman travel to book my hotel I wasn’t too surprised to hear the slightly patronising and overly polite receptionist say “I’m shhorry Mr SShhterry we haf no reshherashhhon in thisshhh name”, apologies at my attempt to try and emulate a Dutch accent in written terms. I wasn’t too fussed as I fired up the laptop and showed the now not so patronising receptionist my booking. She yet again showed me her pearly whites and assured me they would get to the bottom of it. In the mean time we were joined in the lobby by four rowdy Geordies who seemed somewhat intoxicated on the cities narcotics, we requested rooms no where near them. Finally after about half an hour and several phone calls to the banker we dealt on room number 205 and room 435. Would seem the hotel messed up and Portman had done a fabulous job, that’ll teach me. Martin was given what seemed to be the penthouse in comparison to my shoe box but never the less we settled into our homes for the week, unpacked, freshened up hit the city to watch some footy and enjoy and cold pint. In true British fashion we searched for the nearest English bar and complained about the price of the beer and how we didn’t like the look of the local grub! What ever happened to embracing the different cultures?
I’d love to tell you more about how our night panned out and what we got up to but you know the rules, besides this is supposed to be about our experiences on the course and not a seedy insight into the fruits that Amsterdam boast. Which reminds me usability conference!
Now if I’m to believe one of the first things we learnt today and that’s that the average user scans a sight for no longer than about two minutes at the most and rarely read all of the content I’ve kinda cocked up as im 500 words in and only now getting on to what I learned today. I guess my argument would be this is one of those sites which is rich in content and you come here knowing that you are going to be doing a fair amount of reading. So if you are still reading and I do still have your attention, thanks for being patient. Lets face it though, the workey stuff I’m about to go into isn’t half as interesting as listening to how I was up and down on a toilet seat like a yo yo in the airport!
It was an early start, Martin rolled over and woke me up with a coffee and a smile…We were just thinking of your expenses budget Chami, one room booking is better than two. Just kidding. On arriving at the venue we were greeted by some smartly dressed NNG peeps and I held my breath as they searched for my registration documents, surely lightning can’t strike twice? Luckily this time no probs and I was handed my conference pack along with my funky NNG satchel, oh its so Milan catwalk, me and Norris are gonna be the envy of NU with that bad boy hanging on our person!
We marched into the conference suite and we were handed more gumf by a lady that would struggle to get through airport metal detectors she had that many interesting piercings on show.
First speaker was an angelic looking Indonesian lady called Hoa Laranger. Her tone was mellow and her American accent made her slightly more interesting, not sure why? If I’m honest in her first hour and a half she didn’t exactly tell us anything controversial or earth shattering and a lot of what she preached we were both aware of. What it did do though was give us the satisfaction that what we do on a daily basis is spot on with what a world leading usability coach would teach. It was almost a NNG stamp to say, what we do is on the money. I noted some gems which I hadn’t cared to think about below. Oh and by the way, if you don’t agree, tough, they are Hoa’s statements which I simply noted!
Don’t localise your site unless you know your user. Aviva.com would be a prime example for this. If we make reference to something UK based it may put off a user say from the States. The example she used was where someone had used the term petrol on a global site which or turned off an American user as they refer to this as gasoline.
The importance of lower tier product pages. So many search engines deep link now so having relevant contextual copy with clear sign posting and an easy way to navigate back up the site is paramount. A whopping 75% of users by pass the homepage.
Slogans and mission statements can confuse. By placing something like this on a site we are assuming that the user has seen the offline marketing, or the TV ad. If they haven’t its simply wasted and will only prove to confuse the user as it will seem ou of context.
Less is more. We hear it bounded around all the time but its very true, if you believe what Hoa says anyway. She has suggested to some companys that to improve the site they need to remove 50% of the copy on the site. Every link, every bit of copy, every image poses a decision for a user and give them too many and they wont make any at all.
Manage expectations. A link is a promise, if you say click here for our latest half year report and then they click only to find something other than what you promised you will loose the user. So manage that expectation, do what you say you will do and keep your promise.
Martin doesn’t eat eggs – can’t say what he calls them though, ask Amanada.
Users read standard sites in an f shape. Hoa presented lots of data that showed in a heat map style where the user looks and it showed a definite f shape. I’ve got an idea, lets wrap our text in an f shape?! I think I’m on to something here.
Lots more interesting insights into her findings over the 10 years she has been doing user research but just as I was jotting my last few notes I noticed a pale grey haired chap appear at the back of the room. Jakob Neilsen. A strange looking fella, he has surprisingly young skin and as a result looks like he’s wearing an old man disguise complete with wig and oversized clothes. He obviously moisturises. He is also so white he is almost translucent, like a jelly fish. Delightfully charming chap though.
We arrived at the Swiss hotel and Martin had done a good job, it was slap bang in the middle of Amsterdam. First Impression of the city were as expected, pretty much like any other major city, mega busy with lots of multi national folk wandering the streets, knitted jumper slouched round their shoulders, sleeves fastened at the front by folding up the cuffs. The only major difference with this city is that everyone rides a push bike and smoking doobies in public places is common practice. All that aside we trundled into the hotel and checked in, well so I thought.
Being slightly cynical and having entrusted Portman travel to book my hotel I wasn’t too surprised to hear the slightly patronising and overly polite receptionist say “I’m shhorry Mr SShhterry we haf no reshherashhhon in thisshhh name”, apologies at my attempt to try and emulate a Dutch accent in written terms. I wasn’t too fussed as I fired up the laptop and showed the now not so patronising receptionist my booking. She yet again showed me her pearly whites and assured me they would get to the bottom of it. In the mean time we were joined in the lobby by four rowdy Geordies who seemed somewhat intoxicated on the cities narcotics, we requested rooms no where near them. Finally after about half an hour and several phone calls to the banker we dealt on room number 205 and room 435. Would seem the hotel messed up and Portman had done a fabulous job, that’ll teach me. Martin was given what seemed to be the penthouse in comparison to my shoe box but never the less we settled into our homes for the week, unpacked, freshened up hit the city to watch some footy and enjoy and cold pint. In true British fashion we searched for the nearest English bar and complained about the price of the beer and how we didn’t like the look of the local grub! What ever happened to embracing the different cultures?
I’d love to tell you more about how our night panned out and what we got up to but you know the rules, besides this is supposed to be about our experiences on the course and not a seedy insight into the fruits that Amsterdam boast. Which reminds me usability conference!
Now if I’m to believe one of the first things we learnt today and that’s that the average user scans a sight for no longer than about two minutes at the most and rarely read all of the content I’ve kinda cocked up as im 500 words in and only now getting on to what I learned today. I guess my argument would be this is one of those sites which is rich in content and you come here knowing that you are going to be doing a fair amount of reading. So if you are still reading and I do still have your attention, thanks for being patient. Lets face it though, the workey stuff I’m about to go into isn’t half as interesting as listening to how I was up and down on a toilet seat like a yo yo in the airport!
It was an early start, Martin rolled over and woke me up with a coffee and a smile…We were just thinking of your expenses budget Chami, one room booking is better than two. Just kidding. On arriving at the venue we were greeted by some smartly dressed NNG peeps and I held my breath as they searched for my registration documents, surely lightning can’t strike twice? Luckily this time no probs and I was handed my conference pack along with my funky NNG satchel, oh its so Milan catwalk, me and Norris are gonna be the envy of NU with that bad boy hanging on our person!
We marched into the conference suite and we were handed more gumf by a lady that would struggle to get through airport metal detectors she had that many interesting piercings on show.
First speaker was an angelic looking Indonesian lady called Hoa Laranger. Her tone was mellow and her American accent made her slightly more interesting, not sure why? If I’m honest in her first hour and a half she didn’t exactly tell us anything controversial or earth shattering and a lot of what she preached we were both aware of. What it did do though was give us the satisfaction that what we do on a daily basis is spot on with what a world leading usability coach would teach. It was almost a NNG stamp to say, what we do is on the money. I noted some gems which I hadn’t cared to think about below. Oh and by the way, if you don’t agree, tough, they are Hoa’s statements which I simply noted!
Don’t localise your site unless you know your user. Aviva.com would be a prime example for this. If we make reference to something UK based it may put off a user say from the States. The example she used was where someone had used the term petrol on a global site which or turned off an American user as they refer to this as gasoline.
The importance of lower tier product pages. So many search engines deep link now so having relevant contextual copy with clear sign posting and an easy way to navigate back up the site is paramount. A whopping 75% of users by pass the homepage.
Slogans and mission statements can confuse. By placing something like this on a site we are assuming that the user has seen the offline marketing, or the TV ad. If they haven’t its simply wasted and will only prove to confuse the user as it will seem ou of context.
Less is more. We hear it bounded around all the time but its very true, if you believe what Hoa says anyway. She has suggested to some companys that to improve the site they need to remove 50% of the copy on the site. Every link, every bit of copy, every image poses a decision for a user and give them too many and they wont make any at all.
Manage expectations. A link is a promise, if you say click here for our latest half year report and then they click only to find something other than what you promised you will loose the user. So manage that expectation, do what you say you will do and keep your promise.
Martin doesn’t eat eggs – can’t say what he calls them though, ask Amanada.
Users read standard sites in an f shape. Hoa presented lots of data that showed in a heat map style where the user looks and it showed a definite f shape. I’ve got an idea, lets wrap our text in an f shape?! I think I’m on to something here.
Lots more interesting insights into her findings over the 10 years she has been doing user research but just as I was jotting my last few notes I noticed a pale grey haired chap appear at the back of the room. Jakob Neilsen. A strange looking fella, he has surprisingly young skin and as a result looks like he’s wearing an old man disguise complete with wig and oversized clothes. He obviously moisturises. He is also so white he is almost translucent, like a jelly fish. Delightfully charming chap though.
Neilsen is of Nordic decent but has clearly spent either a lot of time in America or working with Americans because his accent has definite American under tones. A pleasant chap who again was easy to listen to but his timing wasn’t great. For a man who has devoted his life to knowing his users and doing in depth research on user behaviour he clearly didn’t pay much attention to his audience today. Lunch was due to be served at 1 and yet at 12.45 Neilsen was cramming us with information and stats. I simply couldn’t concentrate on anything more than what I was gonna be served for lunch. Could have done with a lighter touch on the info being force fed Fois Gras style just before lunch. Never the less a good hour with him and again nothing ground breaking but good to hear him speak and see what makes the guy tick. You could tell he is very passionate about good usability, he got excited talking about it, you could see, even from the back of the room!
Lunch was fantastic, red meat to go with the red meat I had eaten the night before, think I can feel gout coming. After lunch we had another lady speaker called Kara Pernice. She put me in mind of Stiflers mum. She clearly worked out. She was no taller than 5 foot 2 but she looked like she could squat a small bungalow. Again another American but with a much thicker accent than those before her. She exuded confidence and was by far the best speaker of the three, even injecting a little light hearted whit into her presentation. She, as did Neilsen and Loranger talked a lot about do’s and don’ts critiquing websites highlighting examples of what they were trying to demonstrate. She talked in depth about use of images and the pit falls we make, using images to try and liven up a site. She also talked badly of using stock images, something NU could be accused of using. She talked about the effective use of text in a banner and what blend works best. Incidentally, she suggested all text banners work best and backed it up with some stats. Mmmm stats, I can almost hear you MI boffs frothing at the mouth. We looked at images where eye tracking had been used and it was suggested that guys look at images in depth much more than women again giving stats to back this up. Then an interesting twist, she showed two pictures of a baseball player. One had the results of where the women had looked the other where guys had looked, funnily enough the guys had a bigger fixation on the male genitalia than the women! Martin looked at me and asked if I was involved with that study. Cheeky sod.
He day finished up with a conclusion and a ‘what we looked at’ from Nielsen. All in all although not a revelation in terms of learning’s but all the same a very useful day where we confirmed what we do is correct. The procedures, the thinking and how this all contributes to creating fantastic websites.
Now off to bed, just realised my clock on the telly says 00:47 and it’s another early start tomorrow. Eight hours of Information Architecture lectures, shame Christian I didn’t do this a month earlier could have been handy learning’s for the Aviva project!
Oh..one last thing, seems I have taken a bit of a battering in Martins blog what with saying I made him late this morning. Well for info I got ready in 15 minutes. He isn’t so perfect though. When I got to his room tonight he was muttering on about how his phone chargers weren’t working on either of his phones. Helps if you flick the switch near the door to power all the sockets in the room you dullard!
2 comments:
Little worried about the disclaimer at the start - will this hold up in a court of law!?! I better check ! ;)
Could you guys check something out while your there... Question is how do we balance the needs of the business, customer and the Brand ? I think we do a fairly good job of Busines and Customer but what about Brand. I know that this is more of a question for design but just thought I'd ask...
Have a good week guys! Sounds like a busy but fun week ahead so enjoy!
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