While at the v21 conference earlier this year, I was reminded of how the NBN roll-out will enable downloads of 1GB per second over the internet, almost ten times faster than it is today.  What does this mean for the everyday user?  It means you will be able to browse your favourite website, whilst downloading a movie or your favourite album and uploading your holiday pictures to Facebook without any delay.  Exciting?

However, in the words of Spiderman and Barack Obama said, ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’.

With an increase in power usage across our broadband network it means we need to use more energy to operate it.  This in turn leads to much greater carbon omissions which need to be offset.  Has this been taken into account?

Just because we will have the capability to reach this kind of power, does it mean we should? Your thoughts?

iPad meets user: UsabilityOne tests the iPad

The iPad has finally landed in Australia. Here at UsabilityOne, we’ve been following the commentary on the iPad from afar, and decided to get our hands on one so we could make up our own minds.

iPad – user testing:

So just how usable is the iPad? To find out, we conducted some usability research of our own. We asked users to complete a number of tasks that use the native apps, as well as some browsing activities.

Our preliminary findings indicate that the iPad is inherently usable. The average score attained by iPad users on our UsabilityOne Task Completion Index (TCI) compares extremely favourably with the average score for the hundreds of interfaces we have tested here at UsabilityOne.

The reaction to the iPad amongst our testing participants, which include a mix of iPhone and non-iPhone users, has been overwhelmingly positive. Users thought the device looks very slick, providing a good overall experience. The web browsing experience was particularly positive, as it feels more immersive due to the touch interaction.

Downside? People are struggling to see exactly how it will fit into their lives. It clearly is not a replacement for a desktop or laptop computer. In fact, you require one of these devices to transfer and manage content on the iPad. Mostly, the iPad has been perceived as a luxury device rather than a must-have. The most common use-cases our participants have put forward include: web browsing while sitting on the couch or using it to watch video content, things that you can already do with a laptop or netbook. Other scenarios suggested include use of the iPad in the kitchen as a recipe book or as an electronic photo frame. The touch QWERTY keyboard is seen as reasonable for typing in search phrases, URLs and short emails, but no more than that. Nobody could conceive of using the iPad to create or edit documents.

We also observed that the way in which people held the iPad is likely to impact on how they use it. Users commented that it is actually much heavier than it looks. In order to use it to watch video or read e-books for a long period of time means that – unless you have forearms like Popeye – you will need to put it down or prop it up in some way. Obviously this will impact on the most common usage scenario suggested by our test participants (i.e. sitting on the couch).

UsabilityOne’s take on the iPad

So what do we think of the iPad? Whilst a nice piece of kit, the iPad has several obvious limitations.

The keyboard limits the iPad’s potential as a business tool, and the inability of the iPad’s Safari browser to display Flash content clearly impacts on its utility. Whilst it is great as a video device, the continued decision by Apple not to support Flash means the iPad is not compatible with catch-up TV services such as the ABC’s iView. The same goes for all of the other free-to-air broadcasters’ catch-up TV services. In the UK, the BBC created a version of their iPlayer which is compatible with iPhones, and it is interesting to see that the ABC has just announced the release of an app for the iPad that will allow users to access ABC content such as iView.

Given the boom in mobile browsing, many websites are now presented in a format which is compatible with mobile phone browsers, providing an optimal experience on those devices. Our experience thus far with the iPad indicates that websites presented on its Safari browser are not modified in any way; they are the same as you would see when accessing them on a laptop or desktop computer. As touch provides the only means of interaction with websites on the iPad, there are some question marks over the compatibility of traditional website design and the iPad. Just as with the iPhone, target areas (i.e. text links, navigation) can be difficult to hit on the iPad without first zooming in. However, a consequence of zooming in is that some content drops out of view, which suggests that it is important to be even more conscious of ensuring proximity between related controls and content. Perhaps there is even an argument for creating iPad versions of websites.

Like our participants, we think the iPad would be nice to have but the fact that it does not replace your desktop or laptop computer makes it hard to justify outlaying the cash to buy one.

So, is the iPad a game changer? Its immediate success, and the fact that competitors such as Microsoft, Dell, Sony and HP are preparing their own releases into the tablet market suggests it may well be. There are great hopes that the iPad can save the newspaper industry and that it will find a niche in education as a replacement for traditional text books. It is a lot of expectation for one little tablet device. The true success of the iPad, as with the iPhone, will lie in the development of apps that exploit its capabilities and fit into people’s lifestyles. We will be eagerly watching this space.

Want more info on the usability of the iPad? Keep an eye out here for some detailed findings on this research in the near future.

There’s a clever little ad campaign being run on the telegraph poles on my walk home at the moment. Lost dog posters have been appearing all around Melbourne, and I assume in other capital cities, offering a $250,000 reward for a lost dog (living in Melbourne’s inner north, I actually didn’t give the reward a second thought the first time I saw it; people really love their dogs around here). In place of a phone number, the posters give a link to wheresroger.com.au. It’s pretty obvious that it’s an ad campaign straight away, but I liked the approach they had taken and the posters made me laugh, so I promptly whipped out my iPhone as I walked home and headed over to the site to see what the campaign was for.

Of course, the posters are part of a larger competition being run by Schmackos dog snacks. I thought this was a pretty neat campaign really; Schmackos have a pretty fun brand image, and the funny posters sat nicely alongside that. What I didn’t like so much is the website. It’s not optimised for mobile browsers. When running an ad campaign that is targeting people walking around the streets, surely it’s a fair expectation that, as I did, they will take the bait and follow the URL straight away. What use, then, is a website that can’t display some of the key content for getting people to interact with your campaign? When the site loaded on my phone I had not idea where I should go next, and I had difficulty discerning which elements of the page where interactive and which were not. Call to action? Video? Not there either.

When developing anything for the online space, it is important to remember that it does not exist in isolation. Ask yourself why people are coming to your site, what they have come to do, where are the coming from and how did they hear about you? If you are running promotion for a site, does the website meet the expectations set by your campaign? If you don’t ask these fundamental questions before development, you may find that your hard work misses the mark. What would otherwise have been a really fun, seamless campaign for Schmackos misses a great opportunity for engagement just through one decision that wasn’t well thought through.

Business owners and marketers need not feel uncomfortable about asking their customers to serve themselves online.  We are finding in testing that consumer acceptance of a self-service model is high across a wide range of consumer target groups and industries.

The reasons for this high level of acceptance includes some obvious ones such as market maturity and increasing comfort with the internet, but in some cases the sad fact is that poor experiences with a business’s other contact channels are sending users online by default.  Customers have told us that they’re happier to transact online, even as it relates to sensitive information such as health records or financial services, than face dealing with a poorly trained and surly call center employee or store front attendant.

The online self-service model suits Australians’ increasingly busy lifestyles, as the ability to control the time and place where interactions occur means that tasks that used to be conducted on a business’s schedule can now be completed in the consumer’s own timeframe.

There are, however, areas in which many organisations offering online transactions still make it harder for their customers.

Expecting your users to interact with your business on your terms is probably the most basic but common reason why self-service systems fall down.  Often, self-service systems are designed to adhere to a business’s own internal processes, and attempt to ‘force’ customer interactions to mirror these processes.  For example, your CRM system may assign customers a unique account number which identifies them to the system.  Naturally, the simplest way for you to identify the customer when they return is to have them remember their account number.  This may be simpler for your business, but unless your customer interacts with you nearly daily or at least weekly, it’s unlikely they will remember that number.  Your user wants to interact with you on their terms, not on yours.

Being mindful of a few basic rules when implementing a self service interface will go a long way to building users’ comfort and confidence.  These include:

1. Locate the entry point for self service in a prominent and easy to find position on your website. Typically, users will look for sign in options in the top right hand corner of a page.  While in testing users are usually able to find the sign-in when it’s placed on other parts of the page, they still expect to find it in the top right hand corner location, so whenever possible it’s good to locate it in that expected location
2. Do not force users to register. Allowing users to complete a transaction without having to first register on your site can increase conversions dramatically. Wherever possible, offer users the option to register should they wish (to speed up future transactions) or to conduct the current transaction without registering first.
3. Allow users to choose their own usernames and passwords. If users must register, consider whether requiring users to remember a customer number or system generated PIN is really necessary, and whether either can be replaced by a username and password of the users’ choosing.  Users will likely have several usernames and passwords for multiple websites, and unless they transact with you on a near daily basis the chances are that they may not remember the necessary unique details required to access your site.  It’s also recommended that users be allowed to use an email address as their username
4. Make security cues and signals be prominent on the interface. On ecommerce websites, the names and logos of recognised security infrastructure providers are essential to help reassure users that they are using a legitimate website.  We would also recommend that a business provide a link to a plain English privacy policy that is free of legal jargon.
5. Alternate contact information (such as a phone number and physical address) should also be easy to find. If you think a strategy of making this information difficult to find will work to encourage your users into using self-service, think again.  Concealing this information will not build trust with your users.  Worse, you risk alienating those users who are happy to use self service but have had a problem with the process that they need resolved.  You may get away with this strategy if your service is truly unique and can’t be replaced, but you won’t be doing your relationship with your users any favours.  And as soon as they find a comparable service that’s easier to use, they’ll be off.
6. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Remember that your user is saving you money by using self service, so be respectful of their time when they visit.  It may be tempting to cross promote your other services to the users when they visit, but don’t impede their ability to complete what they intended to do.  If a user is visiting your website to check their account balance, providing a call-out box located near that information which suggests other products is the right way to introduce them to your other services.  Requiring users to click through a marketing splash page prior to reaching their own account information is not.

Improving online self service processes can be a win for everyone. Your customers can access your services when and wherever they want, whilst you can increase efficiency and conversions by moving more of you business online.

Meeting with clients in Canberra recently reinforced our belief that the topic of website consolidation is a hot issue right now. Should government departments – and to a lesser extent, corporate bodies – have a proliferation of websites for each campaign and project? Or should their online presence be consolidated in the form of one main website containing all the disparate elements of the business or body.

There appears to be somewhat of a standoff between government and bodies on whether to create – for example – campaign sites, or to incorporate these into department websites.

Creating separate campaign sites has its benefits. These sites can be designed around one focused message, cutting through the noise of the rest of the Department’s activities. However, they also introduce confusion, as users must find a separate site rather than finding all content on the parent Department site.

The Department of Health and Aging (health.gov.au) has individual websites for many of their campaigns, such as How do you measure up?(measureup.gov.au); Alcohol-related harm (drinkingnightmare.gov.au) and the national tobacco campaign (quitnow.info.au). The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (dbcde.gov.au) has lots of information about the switchover to digital television on their main website but have also developed a campaign website, Get Ready for Digital TV (digitalready.gov.au).

Whether or not to create a stand-alone campaign website  is the question. This is a question that has been increasingly prevalent lately, and we’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences…