ItsDevelopmental - content + technology + people

As psychology and technology move closer together . . .

This is an area I'm becoming increasingly interested in - why we do things and act in certain ways online.

The Positively Media blog at Psychology Today looks like an interesting read. In particular I like the article on techno-cultural trends for 2011.

In it, Pamela Rutledge argues that this year will be the year tools will take a back seat to human experience ie the focus will be on understanding how we use tools.

A couple of trends stood out for me:

Shifting Psychology = Shifting Power
2011 will bring a psychological shift in individuals and groups. Social media, social networks, and mobile technologies have caused a fundamental change in the core assumptions about how the world works. People are more publicly expressive and vocal.  The hurdles for producing and publishing are almost nonexistent, defining new norms of participation, content production, and message facilitation. Expectations of having voice don't exist in a vacuum. If you speak, you want to be heard. This will redefine relationships at all levels of society: between business and consumers, governments and people, teachers and students, and social and cultural groups.

This redefining of relationships will be really important for anyone who produces content. As content becomes a prompt, a start of a conversation so our expectations of how we engage around the content will change.

The Old Spice and Tippex adverts last year were a good example of how relationships are changing. Both used narrative to enable the brands to start a story and let users finish it.

Aesthetics Matter 
2011 will place new premiums on aesthetics in physical and technological environments.  Usability won't just be about function. It will become more broadly defined to include the qualitative sensory foundation of user-experience. Aesthetics and design will finally make the leap from luxuries to necessities, driving improvements in productivity, innovation, and general well being.

Designing for mobile and apps has changed the game for user experience - efficient, fast interactions through apps means the user has higher expectations from web sites. This should see greater focus on design and UX.

Psychological Content Ownership
Ownership isn't just physical property rights. Psychologically, ownership comes from a different type of investment: emotional.  Interaction comes from motivation and emotion manifested as behavior. The act of engaging creates ownership.  Whether it's forwarding a joke, making a mashup, or creating a mixed media novel for mobile devices, each step of participation puts skin in the game. Each act of participation is an act of individual agency and creates empowerment.

If engagement does leave us with a sense of ownership (it certainly leaves us with a sense of connection) then anyone working on content needs to understand how to engage with users - looking at it from this perspective you can see how time consuming it can become to effectively engage with your readers, customers, potential customers. I think this has very interesting implications for the job design of anyone who creates content.



/blog/positively-media

Focus on the overall experience, not just the niggles

A few days ago I posted a comment on occupational psychologist Sukh Pabial's blog about feedback from training sessions. 

Sukh's post was timely as I am currently reading Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice. Although the book is focussed on the psychology of decision making and the complexity of choice in decision making it offers up some good psychological insights on behaviour based on research by social scientists and psychologists.

The quote I added to Sukh's post was this:

" . . . neither our predictions about how we will feel after an experience nor our memories of how we will feel during the experience are very accurate reflections of how we actually do feel while the experience is occurring."

This chimed for me both in the training context and also in the usability context too.

In the past I have attended usability labs which have involved eye-tracking. At such sessions, a user is guided through some tasks and their eye movements are tracked. A video also records the user's behaviours at the computer screen. Both the eye-tracking and the video are streamed into a separate room to be viewed by the site owner.

What I noticed from watching these sessions is that users' assessment of how they found the tasks at the end of the entire session (having completed all the tasks) varied from how they experienced the tasks as they happened ie a task they said was fairly straightforward was experienced as being more complex.

Users were also asked for feedback immediately after each task - this feedback seemed more in tune with what they had just experienced ie if they experienced a task as fairly straightforward they said as much.

So if I had just seen a report from what the user had said after completing all tasks it would have been quite different to what they had actually experienced.

However, in these labs, the research teams pull together both the eye-tracking/video footage and user comments about how they felt after each task and all tasks to provide a full view of the research findings. Pulling all this information together is vital for an accurate view of the user's experience.

In his book, Schwartz finishes the above quote with this line:

And yet it is memories of the past and expectations for the future that govern our choices.

What matters most, when it comes to web sites or training sessions for example - is that the memory - what the user or attendee takes away from the experience is all that counts. If it is positive then they will come back for more (and recommend) - be it more site visits, another training session etc.

If there were problems during the experience then 'in the moment' feedback would be really valuable - on sites this could come from on site feedback services/ethnographic studies etc. In usability, this 'in the moment' feedback is key, which is why usability labs using eye-tracking are so important.

Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook provide  'in the moment' feedback.

But it is creating an overall positive experience that arguably matters most - users will forgive you usability issues if they can see the overall value in what you are doing and what they are getting ie they like what your site offers and find it useful, relevant etc.

But don't rest on your laurels - those usability issues will need to ironed out because at some point they will affect the overall experience.

 Here is Schwartz talking about his book (5 years ago!)

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Behaving like ants

Interesting little experiment to see how people act - very ant like, as Scott Berkun says.

 

People Watching Plus from Rune Madsen on Vimeo.

Designing systems for the realities of human nature

And the realities are:

We are lazy - we want to be able to do things as easily as possible. So keep it simple.

We are social - we are pack animals. So, make sure what you design and build leverages that fact.

We are creatures of habit - Don't design against the grain  - go with what we know and have learned about what works well on the web. The most successful sites and services have grown through adaptation.

 

 

Mappiness, motivation and behaviour change

Mappiness looks very interesting in terms of getting people to participate. At a recent conference, Design for Persuasion, persuasive technology guru BJ Fogg talked about the behaviour change equation ie what is required to prompt people to change their behaviour.

This is the equation . . .

Behaviour change = motivation + ability + trigger (all at the same time)

Motivation = is the person motivated to do the 'behaviour' (eg I want to play tennis)
Ability = are they actually able to do the behaviour (eg I have a racket, trainers, kit and balls)
Trigger = the prompt to make the behaviour happen (eg tennis partner comes to collect you on route to court)

Motivation, ability and trigger have to happen at once to spark a behaviour change. If one of these elements is missing, there is no trigger for example, then behaviour change will not occur.

It looks at first glance, and I have not yet used the app, that Mappiness is providing the trigger - my phone will prompt me when I need to make a note of how I am feeling, it is giving me the ability to make a note of how I am feeling by letting me use the phone app to do this and I have the motivation to do this as I am interested in the project.

As an aside, I was triggered to find out more from this link in my Twitter stream.

Will start using Mappiness today so will see how it goes. I think it is important to note the role of mobile in this - without this as a mobile app, the triggers and ability would not be there.

For more on BJ Fogg's behaviour change work check out his behaviour grid.