Susan M. Weinschenk's Blog, page 2

100 More Things #178: THERE ARE GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN TECH USE

The Pew Research Center conducts research on technology use.
Below are the findings for different age ranges (18–29, 30–49, 50-64, 65 and older) of people in the US with various technologies.

Almost everyone from ages 18 to 50 uses a smart phone. For the group from 50-64 usage drops to 83%, and drops down to 61% for people over 65.Around 80% of people in the 18 to 50 age group use social media, with the number dropping to 73% for the 50 to 64 age group, and down to 45% for the over 65 group.Everyone uses the internet. There is not much difference amongst the age groups in terms of use vs. not use, however the amount of internet time does vary with age. Half of those ages 18 to 29 said they were online “almost constantly,” compared with 42% of 30-49 year olds, 22% of those 50 to 64 and 8% of those 65 and older.Young people are more likely to use their smartphones to avoid boredom or avoid people than are older people.

Takeaways

Watch out for making too many age assumptions. It is common for designers to assume that the younger you are the more technology you use. This is true for some types of technology, but not for all.Instead of making assumptions, research the particular usage you are interested in for your products and use the actual data.

100 More Things #177: EVERYONE USES SMARTPHONES FOR NEWS AND IMPORTANT LIFE EVENTS

It may seem like people are using their smartphones to text a friend, check social media, or browse the news if they’re bored, but according to the Pew Research Center more than half of the people with smartphones have also used their phones for many tasks:

62 percent get information about a health issue57 percent use online banking44 percent look for a place to live40 percent access government services30 percent take a class18 percent apply for a job

People with lower incomes are almost twice as likely to use a smartphone to look up employment information and four times as likely to apply for a job with their smartphones.

Takeaways

When you provide job listings for lower-income people online, remember that most of them will be accessing the information and applying via a smartphone. Make sure your product is designed to work well with a smartphone.When you provide local or world news, products related to health, banking, employment, or online education, assume that a large percentage of your target audience is accessing your information from a smartphone. Make sure your designs work on a smartphone.

100 More Things #176: ONLINE SHOPPING INCREASES ANTICIPATION

Let’s say that you’re the CEO of a large retail clothing brand. You have stores throughout the world, and you have a website. People buy shirts, pants, skirts, belts, and so on at your stores and at your site.

If you want people to enjoy the shopping process with your brand, and to be excited about buying your products, what should you do?
Let’s say your answer is: “I’m going to make shopping in the stores the best shopping experience possible. We’ll have in-store events, models wearing the clothes in the stores, and exciting sales. We’ll stock the stores with all colors and sizes, so people can be sure that when they come in, we’ll have what they want.”

No, not a good answer. I’ll give you another try by asking a slightly different question: If people are buying products from your online store, what’s the most important thing you can do to get them excited about buying a product from you?

Now you aren’t sure what to say. You thought your answer to the first question was great, but then I told you it wasn’t. You stumble for a minute and then you light up and say, “We’ll give them free overnight shipping!”

Nope, also not a good answer.

Excitement And Anticipation

Robert Sapolsky is a neuroscientist who studies dopamine in the brain. He trains monkeys to know that when a light comes on that is a signal. Once the signal arrives (the light comes on), the monkeys know that if they press a button 10 times, after the 10th time, a food treat will appear.

Sapolsky measures the amount and timing of dopamine release in the monkeys’ brains during the cycle of signal—pressing—food treat. Figure 76.1 shows the results.

Sapolsky points out that the dopamine release starts as soon as the signal arrives, and ends at the end of the bar pressing. Many people think that dopamine is released when the brain receives a reward, but dopamine is actually released in anticipation of a reward. It’s the dopamine that keeps the monkeys pressing the bar until the treat arrives.

In the first experiment, the monkeys received the treat as soon as they pressed the bar 10 times. In the second experiment the monkeys received the food treat only 50 percent of the time after they pressed the bar. What happened to the dopamine in that situation? Figure 76.2 shows that twice as much dopamine was released, even though a treat was given only half of the time.

FIGURE 76.1 Dopamine release for monkeys pressing a bar to receive a food treat.

FIGURE 76.2 Twice as much dopamine was released when there was only a 50/50 chance of getting the food treat.

And in the third and fourth experiments, Sapolsky gave the treat 25 percent of the time or 75 percent of the time. Interestingly, when the treat was given either 25 percent of the time or 75 percent of the time, the dopamine release was the same, and it was halfway between the 100 percent and 50 percent chance of getting a food treat.

It’s All About Unpredictability And Anticipation

When the monkeys got the treat all the time, a fair amount of dopamine was released during the pressing phase. When getting the treat was unpredictable, the amount of dopamine went up. Unpredictability increases anticipation. In the 25- and 75-percent situations, there was actually more predictability. If the monkey got a food treat 25 percent of the time, it meant that they mostly didn’t get one. If they got a food treat 75 percent of the time, it meant that they mostly got one. Getting the food treat 50 percent of the time was the least predictable situation.

Figure 76.3 shows what the dopamine chart looked like with the 25-percent and 75-percent condition included.

FIGURE 76.3 All three conditions.

Instant Gratification Isn’t Always The Answer

So what do monkeys pressing a bar have to do with online shopping? When people place an order for a product online, they don’t get the product right away. They have to wait. And in the waiting is anticipation. As designers, we tend to think that instant gratification is of the utmost importance. But we should think instead about the entire shopping experience. It’s important to find the right spot on the anticipation/instant gratification continuum. If you go too far on the side of instant gratification, then there’s no dopamine-fueled anticipation. On the other hand, if you make people wait a really long time, they may be more annoyed with your brand than delighted. People are unlikely to be willing to wait three months for the shirt they ordered without your brand eroding.

Why Free Overnight Shipping May Not Be The Answer

I’m aware that when I talk about these issues, some of this is not logical and some online retailers don’t agree with me. But remember that these feelings that your customers are having aren’t necessarily logical either.

In interviews I conducted about online shopping, I was surprised to discover the following:

People didn’t necessarily want free overnight shipping. They wanted control over when the item(s) would arrive more than they wanted it overnight. For many urban people who didn’t have a car, it was especially important for them to be able to control the day and time of the delivery as much as possible.People commented on the excitement of waiting for the product to arrive.People wanted online shopping to be fun. They weren’t just looking for a quick and efficient way to shop.

Takeaways

You can make online shopping as exciting as in-store shopping if you build in anticipation.Give people as much control as possible over the day and time of delivery of their online purchases.

100 More Things #175: PEOPLE ARE AFFECTED BY ARBITRARY NUMBERS

Look at the numbers below. Don’t actually multiply them—just estimate what you think the answer would be:

1 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 5 X 6 X 7 X 8

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman showed people the numbers the same way I’ve them displayed above. When they asked people to estimate the product, the average answer was 512. However, if they showed the numbers in the reverse order:

8 X 7 X 6 X 5 X 4 X 3 X 2 X 1

then people estimated that the answer would be 2,250. (The actual answer is 40,320.)

People Anchor On Numbers

Whatever number people see first affects their perceptions moving forward.

Tversky and Kahneman researched this idea of the effect of numbers in many situations. For example, if a store advertises that soup is on sale, the average number of cans of soup that people will buy is three. But if the store advertises that soup is on sale and that there’s a limit of 10 cans per customer, then the average number of cans of soup that people will buy is seven. Kahneman writes about their experiments in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011).

People will anchor on a particular number, and that number will affect their reaction (largely unconsciously) to other numbers that appear later, even if the later number has nothing to do with the original numbers.

Number Order Effects
This number effect has practical implications for how you display pricing. Let’s say that you offer three levels of service. Should the levels be presented in this order:

Silver: $15.99
Gold: $25.99
Platinum: $45.99

Or in this order:

Platinum: $45.99
Gold: $25.99
Silver: $15.99

Tversky and Kahneman’s research shows that people are more likely to purchase a more expensive service or product if the higher price is presented first, since they’ll anchor on the higher number.

Takeaways

When you want people to spend more, show them high numbers before they get to the point of making a purchase decision. These numbers don’t have to be related to the price. You can show the number of people who have purchased your product (“over 10,000 customers”) before you show the price of your product ($199).When ordering prices for products or services, place the higher-priced items at the top of the list. This sets the anchor.

100 More Things #174: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE MAKES PEOPLE BUY

Research on cognitive dissonance in relation to shopping and purchasing often focuses on the post-purchase reaction. But the studies show that cognitive dissonance is just as relevant, and maybe even more relevant, in the pre-decision process.

In fact, one could argue that marketing and advertising are all about trying to induce a feeling of cognitive dissonance in order to encourage someone to make a purchase. For example, let’s say that you have two opposing thoughts, feelings, or ideas:

“I’m the kind of person who likes to dress well.”“My wardrobe is starting to look dated.”

These two thoughts could be contradictory. You’ll start to feel conflict because the thoughts are not coherent. According to Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory (1957), you’ll want to take action to reduce the conflict. One way to reduce the conflict would be to buy some new clothes (or buy the new pair of shoes).

There are actually two states: dissonance and coherence. Dissonance is when there’s a conflict; coherence is when there’s no conflict. You might feel dissonance or coherence before or after you make a decision. In order to remove the uncomfortable feeling of dissonance, you basically have two choices:

Take action to remove the conflict (for example, buy the new shoes to update your wardrobe).Change your internal belief about one of the conflicting items (“Actually, I’m not a person who cares much about how I dress” or “My wardrobe isn’t really outdated.”).

When you want to encourage someone to make a purchase, a powerful way to do that is to introduce a conflict and propose the solution for removing the conflict.

Creating Or Highlighting A Problem

One of the ways that cognitive dissonance can be used to encourage buying behavior is to highlight a problem. People may not realize they have a conflict. Advertising or marketing can make people aware that there is a problem—and therefore make them aware of a conflict: “I didn’t know that eating too much meat puts a strain on the health of the world’s environment.”

Some would say that sometimes marketing and advertising create a problem where none existed before: “I didn’t realize that using the generic brand of shampoo was making my hair dull and lifeless.”

Creating and highlighting the problem sets up the cognitive dissonance. Now that you recognize there’s a problem or conflict, you’ll be uncomfortable. You’ll want to reduce that dissonance, and one way to do that will be to purchase the product or service being offered. One role of marketing and advertising is to create messaging that induces pre-decision dissonance and messaging that advocates purchase of a product or service to restore coherence of that particular conflict: “I guess I’m not eating well and I’m overweight, but if I join this gym I can do something about it.”

Takeaways

When you want to encourage people to take action, stimulate cognitive dissonance by introducing the idea that they are being inconsistent with their beliefs or behavior. This creates or highlights a problem.Once you’ve introduced a conflict, position your service or product to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

100 More Things #173: PEOPLE COMMIT TO PURCHASES BECAUSE OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

You just bought an expensive pair of shoes. You have a very brief pang of regret. Did you need another pair of shoes? Did you need these shoes? Should you take them back?

After about 10 seconds, you let go of the regret. “They’re great,” you say, “and they’ll be just right for the wedding I’m going to at the end of the month. It’s been a long time since I bought something nice for myself.”

You just experienced and overcame cognitive dissonance.

Post-Purchase Cognitive Dissonance

In the mid 1950s, psychologist Leon Festinger (1957) formulated the idea of cognitive dissonance. People like to be consistent in their thoughts and actions. When people act in a way that’s inconsistent with their beliefs, when they hold two contradictory beliefs, or when they encounter new information that conflicts with their existing beliefs, then they feel uncomfortable. They’ll try to change either their beliefs or actions so that they’re cohesive, or consistent, again.

Cognitive dissonance is relevant in many aspects of how people think and behave, and shopping is one. After you make a purchase, you justify it to yourself. If there’s anything wrong with the product or service, that may actually strengthen your commitment to the purchase, since feeling that you made a poor choice in the purchase increases your cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance And Rating And Reviews

One way that people can reduce the possibility of cognitive dissonance, or reduce its effects if it occurs, is by telling others what a great purchase they’ve made. This means that people are more likely to leave a positive review, rating, or testimonial right after they’ve made a purchase.

Takeaways

The best time to ask for a rating, review, or testimonial is right after a purchase has been made.To lessen the likelihood of post-purchase cognitive dissonance, send a message to people who have just purchased a product with social validation data—quotes or ratings from others who say how glad they are that they made the purchase.

100 More Things #172: PEOPLE SPEND LESS WHEN THEY USE CASH

Budget and financial counselors often advise people to withdraw cash each week and use it to pay for daily and weekly expenses rather than putting purchases on a credit card. The theory is that if you see the money leaving your wallet, you’ll spend less.

The theory is correct, as several research studies have shown. But it’s not exactly using cash that’s important—it’s the transparency of the payment.

The Lower The Transparency, The More People Spend

Payment transparency refers to how tangible the payment is. The more real or tangible a payment is, the more transparent it is. Here’s what we know about methods of payment:

Cash is very tangible. You can touch it and put it in your pocket — it’s real— which means you don’t like to see it go away. It’s very tangible and very transparent.Writing a check is a little less transparent than cash, but it’s more transparent than credit cards. When you hand over a check, you don’t get it back, like cash.Credit cards are tangible since there’s an actual card, and if you’re using it at a store, you do hand over the card, but then the card gets handed back to you, so there isn’t a reinforcing sense of loss. Credit cards are less transparent than cash or checks.Using a credit card online is even less transparent. If you have your credit card number memorized or if the retailer you’re purchasing from has your credit card information stored, then you don’t even have to touch the credit card. The transparency is lower than cash or handing over a credit card in a store. You’ll likely spend more.One-click purchasing lowers transparency even further, since all you have to do is click the Buy Now button.Subscriptions for products and services where you sign up once and then money is taken from your credit card automatically are less transparent than any of the other methods.

Takeaways

If you’re a designer working for a company that sells products or services and you want people to spend more money, use the least tangible (least transparent) method possible.Make it easy for people to store payment information.Make it easy for people to use the stored payment method. Build in default payment amounts if possible.Set up your products and services on a subscription basis.Ask people to pay for a subscription once for an entire year instead of billing them monthly.

100 More Things #171: PEOPLE DON’T SEPARATE SHOPPING ONLINE FROM SHOPPING IN A STORE

If you talk to major retailers in the US, it quickly becomes clear that online sales and store sales are two very different things. Several of my retail clients have online shopping operations and staff headquarters in one location, and store operations and staff in a different location, often thousands of miles away. From the retailer’s point of view, there are two very different ways to buy stuff from them.

But people don’t make those same distinctions. They buy from a brand. The big decision for the consumer is not whether to buy online at the Apple website or to make a trip to the nearest Apple store, but whether to buy an iPhone from Apple or whether to buy one from AT&T.

In fact, the act of shopping in a store now regularly includes shopping on a smartphone while shopping in the store. Here’s a common scenario:

A shopper goes to the XYZ store and finds a shirt that she likes. But the store doesn’t have the shirt in her size or in the color she wants. So, while she’s in the store, she uses her smartphone to order the shirt from the XYZ website, which ships it directly to her home.

Is that sale counted as an online sale or an in-store sale? It’s not necessarily one or the other.

Going Omnichannel

Retailers are learning that to succeed in retail today, they need to be true omnichannel retailers.

People think shopping is fun and entertaining. They often want to go to a physical store with other people for a social experience.Most shoppers of all ages prefer to buy in a brick-and-mortar store.Even if people make their purchase online, they have often visited a store to do research before they buy.About half of all online sales are purchased from retailers that also have physical stores.People will often research a product online and then purchase it in a store. Their research includes looking at products at different websites, reading reviews, and comparing prices. This researching online and then purchasing in a store is called “webrooming.”People will sometimes go to a store and then, while in the store, use their smartphone to look for a better price for the product they pick out. They may then order that product online. This going first to a store and then checking out prices in other places is called “showrooming.”

Takeaways

Break yourself of thinking of online shopping versus store shopping. Think omnichannel instead.Make it easy for people to shop your entire brand, whether in a store or online.Conduct research with your target audience to discover what makes shopping fun for the products you sell.Conduct research with your target audience to discover what the entire shopping process looks like for your customers. Evaluate whether you have a seamless online/store experience.

100 More Things #170: DISTANCE FROM THE SCREEN IS CRITICAL

Some designers have always designed for situations where people are at varying distances from the display, for example, signage in public places like train stations or airports, or displays on a factory floor or a hospital operating theater.

But many designers are used to designing for people who are sitting in front of a desktop or a laptop. If that’s true for you, then it may be new for you to think about the user’s distance from the thing you’re designing, and how that should affect your design.

It’s Distance, Not Resolution

Most designers are used to thinking about designing for different size screens (large monitor, regular desktop monitor, laptop, tablet, smartphone). And many designers are used to thinking about different screen resolutions. Luke Wroblewski, who has been a product director at places like Google, says that instead of designing for the screen resolution, you need to design for the distance that the viewer is from the screen.

Wroblewski uses the example of someone viewing Netflix to choose a movie to watch. Here are typical viewing distances (Wroblewski gave them in feet, but I’ve added in metric measurements):

Smartphone: 1 ft (~ 30.5 cm)Tablet: 1.5 ft (~ 46 cm)Laptop: 2 ft (~ 61 cm)TV: 10 ft (~ 3 meters)

Why does viewing distance matter? If people are at different viewing distances from the display, then the size of the objects on the display needs to change. When the icon is on a TV that’s 10 feet away, the size of the movie icon needs to be 5.25 inches, or 13.33 cm high.

Figures 70.1, 70.2, 70.3, and 70.4 show the different sizes that the movie icons need to be on the display for the viewer to effectively browse the movie choices.

FIGURE 70.1 An icon on a smartphone needs to be 1 inch (~2.5 cm).

FIGURE 70.2 An icon on a tablet needs to be 1.75 inches (~4.5 cm).

FIGURE 70.3 An icon on a laptop needs to be 2.25 inches (~5.7 cm).

FIGURE 70.4 An icon on a TV needs to be 5.25 inches (~13.33 cm).

Takeaways

Decide how large items need to be on the screen based on the viewer’s distance from the screen.Use this rule of thumb when determining the size of images or targets on a display: for every foot (30 cm) you add in distance from the display, add 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) in size for the item on the display.

100 More Things #169: THUMBS CAN REACH ONLY SO FAR

Smartphone screens have been getting larger over time. Our design and implementation tools let us design the screens without having to know or design for the exact size. If the software, site, or app is designed well, what appears on the screen at any given time varies automatically according to the size of the screen.

What doesn’t vary automatically is the human hand and the human thumb. If you want to design a screen that’s easy and efficient to use, then you have to design for how people use their hands, fingers, and thumbs on a small to mid-size screen.

Myths Of One-Handed Use

Conventional wisdom holds that people mainly use their smartphones with one hand— that they hold the phone in their dominant hand and use the dominant thumb to tap and navigate. This does happen some of the time, but people also use the non-dominant hand some of the time, and sometimes they hold the phone in one hand and use the other hand for tapping.

You may have seen diagrams of a smartphone screen showing parts that are “natural” for the thumb to reach, parts that are a “stretch” for the thumb to reach, and parts that are marked “ow” for the thumb to reach. These are misleading since the thumb can’t stretch that far. It’s not that it hurts to reach further; it just doesn’t reach. When people can’t reach with their thumbs, they shift the position of the phone or use two hands.

Steven Hoober (2014) tested where 1,333 people tapped on a 5.1-inch screen smartphone. He found that:

The center of the screen was the easiest to tap.The center of the screen was the most accurate and fastest target.People often shifted the way they were holding the phone to touch everywhere else on the screen.Most taps outside the central area involved two hands.People held their phones with one hand when they were looking at the phone or carrying it around, but they sometimes switched to two-handed use when they were actively interacting.People held the phone and used the thumb of that same hand for interactions 49 percent of the time.People frequently cradled the phone with one hand and used their index finger of the other.

To complicate matters further, the size and reach of people’s thumbs vary widely.

The “Top-Left” Standard Must Go

Since people are using their thumbs a lot and since the thumb doesn’t easily reach the top left of the smartphone screen, it makes sense to not use the top left as a place for any important controls. Although using the top left, especially to display the “menu” icon, seems to be a standard at the moment, it’s one of the worst places to put a frequently used control and will, most of the time, require a two-hand shift. It’s better to put important controls in the center or on the bottom of the screen.

Takeaways

When you design for smartphone screens, keep the most important controls away from the edges of the screen. Stay in the middle of the screen as much as possible.Consider not using the top left area of the screen for the control that drops down the menu.