Users don’t tend to ask for large-scale site overhauls; massive changes mean having to learn a new UI, and that’s rarely something that folks get excited about. Massive changes also tend to feel unnecessary (it worked before, why fix it?) and arbitrary (why did this thing change and that other thing didn’t?) How, then, to explain to users why changes were necessary, why you made the changes you did, and how to effectively use the new UI?

(Twitter didn’t do a great job of explaining why it made a small but significant change last week, and users staged a minor revolt.)

The Google AdWords team made a smart decision to make a video about changes to the AdWords administrative interface. Team members describe how they collected user feedback to inform changes to the interface, and how these changes make the user experience better. The video makes the interface changes feel necessary (they significantly improve site performance) and human (real people put lots of thought into how to make this better, and the new features represent their best efforts).

In the future, “games are going to be one possible dimension of your personality.”

Via fora.tv

SXSW is just around the corner! Our panel, “Developing Super Senses: Tools to Know Your Users” has been scheduled for Monday, March 16 at 5pm. Come hear me, Mark Trammell, Nate Bolt, Carla Borsoi, and Andy Budd duke it out over user research best practices.

Here’s the panel description:

You know you need to do user research, but how? Should you write surveys, do focus groups, or develop personas? And how do you act on what you’ve learned? We’ve been in the trenches and have concrete suggestions on what you can, and should do NOW to conduct effective user research.

We expect your attendance. And come equipped with a good question or two.

Last week I traveled to Denver to participate in the annual Web Directions North conference. I’m a fan of web conferences, and this one was particularly enjoyable. From watching the sun set behind the Rockies while snacking on still-warm doughnuts to debating the future of SVG with new friends, this was a good week.

On Monday, Mark Trammell and I led a workshop on user research. We focused on helping the workshop participants understand what key challenges their organizations face and how different research methods could help address these challenges. The participants were engaged and thoughtful and really inspiring as I think about my own organization and the user research that I do as part of my daily life.

I also gave a talk about how three companies made significant changes to products and processes based on user research and customer feedback, and how they knew which findings and feedback to act on. I’m still collecting stories of how companies make smart choices about acting on user research findings, so contact me if you have a good story to share.

Many, many thanks to John Allsopp for putting on an awesome conference in a tricky economic environment, and to the friends and colleagues who contributed so much to making this such a great event.

From Look at it Another Way by Indi Young

The people who designed the bike talk about what the bike can do, but the rider wants to find out what she can do. In the former vocabulary: “We give you 20 gears.” In the latter vocabulary: “I’ve decided to bike to work twice a week, but I fear the pain of getting up that steep hill on the way there.” If the bike company were smart, they’d be talking about making it easier to get up hills while commuting to work, or suggesting alternate routes or techniques so that you’ll arrive at the office without needing a shower and a nap.

From the excellent introduction by Karl Fogel to Version Control with Subversion:

No one ever called the tech support line and asked, “How can we maximize productivity?”. Rather, people asked highly specific questions, like, “How can we change the calendaring system to send reminders two days in advance instead of one?” and so on. But it’s a lot easier to make up imaginary Frequently Asked Questions than it is to discover the real ones. Compiling a true FAQ sheet requires a sustained, organized effort: over the lifetime of the software, incoming questions must be tracked, responses monitored, and all gathered into a coherent, searchable whole that reflects the collective experience of users in the wild. It calls for the patient, observant attitude of a field naturalist. No grand hypothesizing, no visionary pronouncements here—open eyes and accurate note-taking are what’s needed most.

In February I’ll be traveling to Denver for the next Web Directions conference. Web Directions is officiallly described as “a highly focused conference and workshops for web designers, developers, UX and ID designers, and other web professionals whose day to day job is building web sites and web applications. It features two dozen world class experts, with a razor sharp focus on practical techniques and technologies you can use right away to build even better sites.”

I’ll be giving a talk on building empathetic corporate cultures and co-leading a workshop with Mark Trammell on setting up a user research program.

Beyond usability: How to build a culture of customer empathy

When everyone at your organization cares deeply about the customer experience you will build better, more inventive, and more delightful products. So how do get everyone to really care about and understand not just the usability but the overall experience of your products? Though it takes time, an empathetic corporate culture is not impossible to create and nurture.
In this session Juliette Melton will share several case studies in how to build a culture of empathy at your organization, including best practices for running usability tests, sharing web usage statistics, and developing user personas.

Know Your Users: How to start tomorrow with guerrilla user testing

Right now, someone, somewhere, is using something you’ve built. Who are they? Are they having a good time? It’s not that hard to find out.
User testing doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and shouldn’t only happen at the end of the product development cycle. The best and most useful research is distributed throughout the product lifecycle and can be done within a stone’s throw of your office using inexpensive tools. At this workshop, Juliette Melton and Mark Trammell will show you how to build an effective user testing program from scratch and how to keep it going over time.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for those who want to understand how to learn about user experiences, including project/product managers, designers, and usability professionals.

What will you learn?

• A structured approach to building a user testing program
• Web analytics basics
• Surveying tips
• How to include coworkers in your research
• How to perform task analysis
• Recruiting testing participants tips
• Best practices when sharing research findings

(Wondering about the spaceship I would land in Colorado? Full lyrics here. Anyone who lived in Colorado as a kid will probably know it by heart.)

The ever-observent Killface of Frisky Dingo is displeased that a map is missing some essential information. “Oh, here’s a good idea — indicate north! Otherwise, it’s not technically a map. It’s just a drawing.”

I recently decided to cut back on media consumption and increase vegetable consumption in one swift move, by cancelling Netflix and Rhapsody subscriptions and joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture — basically a farm subscription). I was generally pretty happy with Netflix but didn’t cycle through DVDs frequently enough for it to be worth it. I thought that Rhapsody was basically OK, but had enough annoying bugs that I didn’t feel like it was worth keeping around.

Canceling Netflix was as easy as signing up for Netflix. The feedback mechanism was spot-on, as well; the cancellation page included a survey to provide feedback on why I was leaving, and the reasons listed were clear and well thought-out, as well as being actual weaknesses with the service. For example: “I am disappointed with the technical quality (i.e.the software doesn’t work on my computer or I am a Mac/Apple computer user) of the “Watch Instantly” feature of the service where I can watch movies and TV episodes instantly on my PC.” Even the closing message was kind and well-written: “From all of us at Netflix, thank you for your patronage and we hope to have you as a customer again in the future.”

End result: I did cancel the subscription, but I still have positive feelings about Netflix, and would be willing to re-subscribe in the future.

But then, Rhapsody. Sigh. I assumed I could cancel online. I was wrong.

I did call, and the office was closed. So I had to call back from work, which meant either bugging my office-mates or holing up in conference room. So imagine this scene — I’m sitting in a cavernous, echo-y conference room, calling the Rhapsody people, going through a phone tree, waiting on hold, and then finally getting connected to a human. And, not surprisingly, this was a very unhelpful person. I don’t think it was necessarily her fault — she had to work from a pretty bad script. For example, she asked me why I wanted to cancel, and I explained that the Rhapsody website is very slow, that my libraries and playlists kept disappearing, and that there were consistent problems with the sign in process.

Rhapsody employee: “So… the service is not interesting to you?”
Me: “No. The service is broken.”

She either had to make a selection from a limited number of items, or her English wasn’t up to understanding what I meant. Either way, this would be filed as a Bad Customer Experience. I wanted to give my feedback and they didn’t want it or didn’t have a way to get it.

And then I got an email from Rhapsody, with a link to fill out a survey. I didn’t have time to respond immediately, so had to wait a couple of days. I really did want to let them know about the technical problems I was having as I thought it could be useful to them.

Alas.

I know they’re lying when they say they value my “time and opinions,” since they 1. wasted my time and 2. clearly aren’t enormously interested in my opinions.

End result: I will never re-subscribe to Rhapsody and would dissuade anyone else from joining. I had been on the fence about it, but no longer.

Subscription services generally see a large percentage of their subscribers cancel and return. Why antagonize people who are canceling? They are a lot more likely to return as customers than the average web user. Making customers jump through hoops to cancel won’t keep them leaving, but it sure will keep them from wanting to come back.

Oh, and the vegetables we’ve been getting every week from Terra Firma Farm are amazing.

Found in today’s nytimes.com, a compelling proposal for a ballot re-design.