In this amazing BBC Horizon episode “The Secret You” from 2009, Professor Marcus du Sautoy takes a deeper look into these questions and tries to show us the evidence of consciousness and its effects on ‘being’.

True, there is no direct link between my blog, on how to gain practical insights into online optimization, and this BBC Documentary (although I will try to make this link later), but the Neuroscience element is simply intriguing and I am confident many of you will find it interesting, too.

The most interesting evidence shown, was from an experiment that proves that we subconsciously make decisions long before we are consciously aware of them. In this specific experiment up to 6 seconds!

The Edge of Awareness

The presenter, Professor Marcus de Sautoy, takes the viewers on a journey into real world experiments being conducted that help answer these questions.

Program Synopsis: “With the help of a hammer-wielding scientist, Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. So, in order to find out where they come from, Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.

He learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait. Next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anesthesia. Having survived that ordeal, Marcus is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self.

In Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain. Finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is.“

6 Seconds

As I mentioned before, the experiment I find the most interesting is the last one. In the experiment, Professor du Sautoy is given 2 controllers, one in each hand and is asked to lie down in a MRI scanner. The controllers are to be clicked at random. Professor du Sautoy thereby has full control and can click a controller, left or right, at his own command.

While the Professor is being monitored in the MRI scanner, the scientists go on to show how they can predict which controller the Professor will be clicked… in most cases up to 6 seconds prior to the Professor consciously knowing himself.

So while the scanner tracks when the brain makes the decision, the controllers track the actual moment the conscious decision is made, in essence proving that our subconscious is actively making decisions to situations that are not directly obvious to us long before we are aware of the decision needing to made. [direct link to last experiment]

The eCommerce Connection

Let me try and make this post relevant to my blog… How does this effect online behavior. Is the decision to purchase/sign up being made prior to a visit, during or only prior to the actual conversion action itself? Do the findings from the BBC Horizon documentary debunk conversion optimization to some degree? Is conversion optimization only affecting those who have the intention to purchase/sign up? In another article on my blog, I displayed the insights gained from an exit survey using iPerception’s 4Q with which you can measure the leaks in conversion based on visitors who had the intention to convert.

So how do we go about influencing a visitors’ subconscious, to drive them towards converting? I believe that Robert Cialdini has pointed us in the right direction with his ‘Influence‘ approach, but we must all realize that even influence has its limits. So what will be the next step, beyond influence? How do we go on to predict? I will try to dive deeper into this question in a follow up blog post.

The Secret You

For now, and if you have time, watch the Horizon episode in question and be amazed. I have always been a big fan of BBC Horizon, but this episode is definitely one of my favorites.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Inspiration can be hard to come at times. I am always reminded of this fact when I listen to Faithless where Rollo sings ‘You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision‘.

Physically Creative

To me, vision and inspiration are related. Where the latter forms the catalyst of my ‘visionary moments’. Alright alright, I have to admit that my visionary moments are subjective, but I am just building up to the real purpose of this post.

So, if you are like me, human, it might not seem too unfamiliar to find yourself desperately in need of some inspiration, a push towards a vision to help you get back on track. We might not be doing much physical labor behind our computers, but being inspired and/or inspirational can take a lot out of us.

Regenerate Inspiration

Thank goodness there are some great iPhone apps out there that will help us regenerate some of that inspiration for us. Give us ideas on what to try or do next. Creative inspiration, exercise suggestions, quick recaps or simply taking a step back to see the whole picture again.

I have been using the following apps for quite some time now to help me keep sharp while working. Leading a UX team can be a challenge but I find that the apps generate plenty of options for me and my team to keep our ideas fresh, our minds focused and our opinions objective.

Critical Aspects

The five apps cover some, definitely not all, critical aspects of User Experience and I am sure that many other practitioners will benefit, too, from using them. Those five aspects being:

• collaboration
• empathy
• creativity
• methodology
• influence

1. Gamestorming Card Deck (Collaboration)

The Gamestorming Card Deck app is based on the popular book ‘Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers‘ by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and Dave Macanufo.

Now, as the site states, the cards will not show you how to play, but how to stack them for meetings, so make sure you have at least one copy of the book lying around.

Gamestorming is a 101 lesson in visual communication. When words or long ‘everybody-should-read-it’ reports just don’t suffice, try games and improvisation to solve those real problems.

Gamestorming will change the way you conduct meetings forever. So make sure that you’re the one leading the pack and organize those meetings with the useful app today!

• Book: http://amzn.to/slYHsU
• App: http://bit.ly/ai_gamestorming ($4.99)
• Website: http://www.gogamestorm.com/

2. IDEO Cards (Empathy)

In the talks that I give, I mention this aspect the most… EMPATHY. Unless you are someone working for 37Signals, you don’t need to conduct much research to understand the product you are working on.

If however, you are like the rest of us, understanding how the user experience’s our products will take some effort from our end. We need to wear the user’s shoes. We need to understand the user mindset, what makes them want to use our product, what makes them want to through Molotov cocktails at us for having created such a poor experience?

Quoting from the IDEO website: “IDEO’s human factors specialists conceived the deck as a design research tool for its staff and clients, to be used by researchers, designers, and engineers to evaluate and select the empathic research methods that best inform specific design initiatives.“

Again, just like many of the other apps presented to you here today, this methodology will help you dust off the creative thinking caps. Not just yours, but everyone you involve. There is no limit to your vision as long as your vision doesn’t limit you!

• App: http://bit.ly/ai_ideo (Free/$3.99 in-app)
• Website: http://www.ideo.com/work/ideo-method-card-app/

3. Roger von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack (Creativity)

Roger von Oech, although the name make me think of The Sound of Music, he is probably more popular among Americans as an author, inventor and speaker.

Roger created the Creativity and Innovation Whack Packs quite some time ago and since around last year, the card has been available in the form of an iPhone app.

The original 83 cards included in the iPhone app are divided into four sixteen card suits: Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior. These represent the four roles or types of thinking of the creative process.

The cards are to be used to, as a figure of speech mind you, whack you out of your creative slum. The purpose of the cards are threefold:

• Understand and remove mental blocks
• Shift focus and changing any generally accepted perspective
• Break habitual patterns

Edward de Bono: “…the mind is habitually uncreative – it is usually preoccupied with organising masses of incoming data into convenient patterns. Once this pattern is established, then the mind tends to rely upon that pattern in future situations, in order to facilitate decision-making & action in an otherwise complex world…” (The Use of Lateral Thinking).

So get up, use the app and break those old habitual patterns. Let’s get creative once again!

• App: http://bit.ly/ai_creativewhackpack ($1.99)
• Website: http://www.creativethink.com/

4. Luke Perman’s UX Techniques (Methodology)

Luke Perman’s app, UX Techniques, turned out quite nifty. Although the app focusses less on the creative side when compared to the other apps, Luke’s app reminds of of the various UX research methods we can use at work.

The app is a quick reference guide for all to use, breaking down the methods into 5 main categories containing 9 methods each:

• Gather
• Organize
• Understand
• Explain
• Test

Each method is described briefly on the ‘virtual’ back of the card, explain ‘What’ the method is used for and Why/When/How it should be used.

• App: http://bit.ly/ai_uxtechniques (Free/$4.99)
• Website: http://www.uxtechniques.com/

5. Dan Lockton’s Design with Intent (Influence)

101 cards group into 8 sections, or lenses as Dan calls them. Cards for inspiring, generating and challenging creativeness with the sole purpose of influencing behavior.

Quoting Dan from his personal Wiki: “All design influences our behavior, but as designers we don’t always consciously consider the power this gives us to help people, (and, sometimes, to manipulate them).

There’s a huge opportunity for design for behavior change to address social and environmental issues where people’s behavior is important, but as yet little in the way of a guide for designers and other stakeholders, bringing together knowledge and examples from different disciplines, and drawing parallels which can allow concepts to be usefully transposed.

The Design with Intent toolkit (the cards and wiki) aims to make a start, however small, on this task.“

Dan’s Design with Intent toolkit has been around for several years now, all for FREE! That’s right, you have to pay *zilch* to make use of it all.

James Christie took it one step further (with Dan’s permission of course); he turned the cards into an iPhone/iPad app for all to use.

• App: http://bit.ly/ai_designwithintent (Free)
• Website: http://www.danlockton.com/dwi/Main_Page

User Research allows us to create hypothesis that are aimed at improving the website’s user-friendliness, but more common, conversion. Usability testing allows us to test those hypotheses.

The resources needed to research, document, setup and execute usability testing are not dramatic, but they aren’t effortless either.

How can we validate intuition and optimize our websites without even testing? Is this sanity speaking? In the real world however, and I think this is the situation for many companies, internal processes just don’t allow for the more in-depth approach. Insights need to come quick and solutions need to be agile.

Should we even consider anything non-scientific to tell us what to test? Will intuition based decision-making make up lost ground on the scientific approach to online optimization? Maybe we should skip testing all together and lead by intuition alone.

Trumpin’ it

As conversion rate optimization specialists [or enter whatever fancy title you have here] we face the daunting task of fighting that uphill battle against the vested rulers of e-commerce.

In all honesty, how many of you have had the conversation in which you ended up defending your optimization hypothesis against a manager’s argument in which he recalls some advice his next door neighbour gave him during a BBQ last weekend?

I have lost count. I have shown my trump card in the heat of the battle many-o-times, that’s when I take a moment to explain the necessity of performing usability testing to prove a user research based hypothesis. I don’t think that I stand alone.

History Repeating Itself

Are we the first of our kind to run into this problem? When did people first try to get rid of the ‘gut feeling’ motives? Believe it or not, people have been at it for at least 5 centuries…

As far back as the 16th century scholars and scientists have been pushing for a more scientific approach to finding out ‘how nature operates’.

As Leonard Mlodinow write’s in his book ‘The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives’:

“Galileo’s was a precise and practical observation, and although simple, it signified a new approach to the description of physical phenomena: the idea that science must focus on experience and experimentation – how nature operates – rather than on what intuition dictates or our minds find appealing. And most of all, it must be done with mathematics.”

Let’s be clear, I am not a mathematician. You won’t find me doing a Good-Will-Hunting at MIT any time soon, but I am confident that many of us have the basic skills to appreciate the effects of intuition when discussing website optimization processes with the powers that be, even if we know that testing is the only way to prove a hypothesis.

Maybe intuition is just ‘how nature operates’. The irony is mind-boggling.

We might need to face the fact that even though scientific research can give us proof, trusting intuition might give you the business advantage in this cut throat, fast moving digital age.

Intuition based optimization can be a better balance between time, resources and money than user research and usability testing can ever be…

What is intuition though? Shouldn’t we simply be avoiding it?

The Compulsory Wikipedia Quote

As any other self respecting blogger, I feel that is my duty to in some way incorporate a Wikipedia quote…

“Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. The word ‘intuition’ comes from the Latin word ‘intueri’, which is often roughly translated as meaning ‘to look inside’ or ‘to contemplate’. Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify.”

‘Cannot necessarily justify’… can you hear those scientists cheering? But alas, while the statement was being cheered on, it got challenged…

Based on experience, be it personal or professional, we prime our unconscious minds to react to situations. It is possible to know the right solution to any problem, which can validate making that quick decision and avoid using up valuable resources on user research.

In other words, with enough experience, of a subject matter expert of course, intuition could be justifiable. [cheering dies down]

Recognition Primed Decision

The Recognition Primed Decision model, developed by Gary Klein [and others] in 1998, proved (scientifically, ironically enough) that people can make relatively fast decisions based on prior experience avoiding the need to compare/weigh options.

Gary Klein states in his research that pressured by time, shifting scenarios and personal responsibility [sound familiar?]; specialists called on their vast experience to identify similar scenarios and choose the most valid solution.

This process is driven by complex pattern recognition capabilities in the brain. In the red corner, supporting the scientists Neuropsychologist and neurobiologist Roger Wolcott Sperry states that “intuition is a right-brain activity while factual and mathematical analysis is a left-brain activity”.

What is the right way to go, left or right? How reliable is intuition? Does the amount and type of experience matter?

Operating Blind

In short, subject focus, proven experience in time, practice and insight translation seem to be the ideal recipe for recognizing reliable intuition sources.

I think we can all agree that to put a brain surgeon in charge of your car’s maintenance or vice versa does not feel reassuring at all. *Although I would rather have a brain surgeon work on my car than the other way around.*

So, when taking intuition into account, the key is to match the relevant intuition source to the problem at hand.

To Change Is To Err

“To err is human, to get positive results in every single one of your tests is highly doubtful”

Changes to the website can effect all visitors, both positively and negatively, we just tend to shout ‘Victory’ whenever the positive outweighs the negative.

It seems unrealistic that every single usability test performed will result in a positive gain, even after having performed extensive user research. So where do we draw the line between ‘to test’ and ‘to bypass testing’ when using intuition as our source?

In my opinion there is little harm and with the effects of common work floor time pressure, I think that in many occasions, it will be an acceptable way to go.

Conclusion

So don’t be too hard on intuition. It’s a short cut, but a short cut that could possibly be more beneficial than we might think. We can seriously cut back on time, money and resources as long as we trust the sources of intuition.

Let me be clear though, if I get the chance to test, I’ll test, but I am realistic enough to bypass testing if business [deadlines] dictates it.

We should always try to promote the more scientific approach to online optimization, but we are not in the Land of Oz anymore, we are back in Kansas. We need to make sure that we do our best to support the company and our customers in any way we can, with proper research or just gut feeling.

Sources

• Mark Plant ‘Agile UX’
• Gary Klein ‘Recognition Primed Decision’
• Leonard Mlodinow ‘The Drunkard’s Walk’ (shameless affiliate link included)

Disclaimer: This is not a scientific study, rather an ad-hoc attempt to gaining some actual insights.

Using several great tools to set up a guerrilla research study I took it upon myself to get some sense of the recognition of trust logos among consumers and its effect on online purchasing. See it more as a conversation starter for you and your colleagues or you and management.

Let’s get started!

First off, I started with a visual test using Usabilla which I followed up with a short Wufoo survey. In the Usabilla test, I wanted participants to answer 4 questions:

• Which trust logos do you recognize?
• Which trust logos do you trust?
• Which single trust logo gives you the best sense of trust?
• Which single trust logo gives you the least sense of trust?

So which trust logos did we test?

Question 1 - Which trust logos do you recognize?

As far as recognition goes, many brands seem to do well. McAfee (79%) leads the way with Verisign (76%) coming in a close second and Paypal (72%) third. After that, the recognition levels drop significantly with BBB (37%) and TRUSTe (28%) picking up the trail in fourth and fifth place respectively.

Question 2 - Which trust logos do you trust?

On the topic of trust, there is only a slight difference between the first three brands, but we do see that recognition does not equal trust. Paypal (66%) leads the pack ahead of Verisign (63%) and McAfee (62%).

Question 3 - Which single logo gives you the best sense of trust?

This is where the test got interesting. When asked which single brand gave the user the best sense of trust between the top 3 and the rest shifted from being as wide as the North Sea to being as wide as the Atlantic with the percentual difference between Paypal and BBB being a staggering 22%. Paypal got 29% of the ‘votes’. Verisign (25%) and McAfee (23%) followed closely behind. BBB and TRUSTe scored 7% and 3% respectively.

Question 4 - Which single logo gives you the least sense of trust?

So the last question, well, what can I say. Of course there are many brands out there, even with this question the top 3 brands from the questions 1 thru 3 (tongue twister alert) scored so ‘non-love’ points. SynergyDetox and Comodo scored the worst. For those of you familiar with the brands in the test, you will see that Comodo is present with 3 different logos. Comodo had a combined score of 26% (13, 11, 2) on the last question.

Survey time

With Wufoo I set out to ask a few additional questions after the Usabilla part of the test was complete. Now, I would like to re-iterate that this is in no way a scientifically approach research project. The results of the following questions do give some food for thought though. One questions that arises is… how much potential income are you missing out on by using less recognizable trust logos?

Question 1

Ok, so it is clear that trust logos have an effect… but then again, we knew this already. Just checking…

Question 2

Interesting. According to 2/3 of the participants trust logo recognition has an added affect to their sense of trust.

Questions 3

Ok, again another verification of the affects of the presence of trust logos. 61% of participants said that they have at one time NOT completed a purchase because there were no trust logos present.

Question 4

Ouch, this one does have to hurt, especially if it can be scientifically proven. 75% of the participants stated they have at some time NOT purchased a product or completed an online purchase process because they did not recognize the trust logo. Even though a trust logo was present, it seems that recognition precedes presence.

Question 5

This question was in reference to this screenshot. It seems that a significant amount of users do pay attention to the https status in the URL address bar in browsers. This is great news!

The browser URL address bar seems to be a hot item according to the open end feedback we got in the survey:

• “I look for the browser clues to a secure location — eg, padlock icons, https url — rather than the logo on a page.”
• “For the payment itself, I always seek some trusted logo and the URL bar logo and the url address.”
• “I look at https…if I know it has a s than it’s a secured site.”
• “If there is no logo or if on the tool bar it doesn’t show https I won’t buy!”
• “There is no security built into web browsers to verify that images displayed come from a trusted source, so I only rely on the browser’s security information (info in the bar, security certificates, use of https, etc).”

Conclusion – Recognition Precedes Presence

So, the next time you need to review your SSL license, I would suggest digging a little deeper into who you are doing business with and how this can potentially affect your bottom line. In this case with trust logos it seems that recognition precedes presence.

Demographics you say?

For those of you interested in where all the 150+ participants came from, here is a small break down:

• 70.63% came from the USA, 12.7% from Canada
• 86.51% were Microsoft Windows users, the rest Apple OSX
• 59.52% of the participants used Microsoft Internet Explorer, followed by Firefox with 20.63%
• Usabilla conversion rate (finishes/starts) was 100%, Wufoo 67.4%
• 4 Usabilla tasks took on average 1 minute to complete, the Wufoo questionnaire 1 minute and 42 seconds

This short video was taken during a UX Bookclub meeting in Delft, the Netherlands on June 25th 2009. Since I work as a User Experience Designer in my daily life, I thought that it would be nice to meet some others by attending these meetings and giving us a chance to talk shop.

Our chapter was set up by Jeroen van Geel and Bette Burger. Jeroen and Bette who both work for Fabrique were so kind as to invite everyone over to their office. After a quick round of introduction from the co-ordinators and a cool beer to beat down the heat, the meeting got started. We took took tuns introducing ourselves. There was a nice mix of people attending ranging from interaction designers to industrial designers. As far as experience was concerned, it was nice to see the professionals mix with recent college/university graduates.

As discussions got livelier a decision was made to move the talks to the garden of the Frabrique office. A, still, warm summer’s evening was a great setting for the first UX Bookclub meeting in Delft and after having decided which book to focus on for our next meeting the meeting slowly came to an end. We drank another beer, talked off-topic and then we parted our ways. A big thank you to Fabrique‘s Jeroen and Bette for hosting the meeting and for supplying the beer…

If you are interested in joining a UX Bookclub in your area, take a look at the UX Bookclub website for more details or follow @uxbookclub on Twitter.

Music in the video “City Lights at Night” by Revolution Void used under Creative Commons license and downloaded from Jamendo.

Gone are the days where web- and product developers (and the many other job titles surrounding this topic) determined what was best for their website/product. A popular and much needed trend has been discovered over the past few years where the focus on design and development has shifted to the users. But how do you break down the barriers between you and your users in order to hear what they really have to say?

Note: For the purpose of this article, a “user” will be defined as a website visitor, customer, product user, general internet user et al.

Social Networks

With the introduction of main stream social networks several years ago, users have started to learn how to use their voice. In the beginning where irc and chatting were all the rage, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and for us Dutch people Hyves have given users a tool to connect with friends and share their thoughts, compliments, disapproval and media on a larger scale.

“To what level can companies benefit from this?” By asking this question, I am implying that all companies want to benefit from hearing what their users have to say. This is definitely not the case, but for the purpose of this article let’s just pretend it is.

Social networks and in particular Twitter give companies the opportunity to seek out information about themselves and their products. By using the search function on Twitter, or by using online tools like Monitter or offline tools like Tweetdeck to monitor brand and product names companies can gain insights to the word on the streets.

Website feedback, why not?

It is a simple fact that input from your users is worth a bag of gold. Social media does allow users to share their thoughts but approaching them is an entirely different story. Another slightly anonymous method to collect input from your website visitors is by conducting Voice of Customer surveys.

Companies such as iPerceptions and ForeSee Results are specialists in this field. To be honest, I do see some restrictions in the use of this method as it only focusses on visitors to a website. It does, however, give these users a chance to share the experience with the website owners.

Since usability is a hot topic these days, users are learning to share their thoughts on that subject too. I think everyone has had a bad or a ridiculously irritating experience on a website before. Where do you voice your concerns? Sure, a voice of customer survey would help, but what if the website in question is not conducting one?

This is where a website like the Dutch ReviewIt comes into play. ReviewIt, like the word suggests, allows users to share their joy or disappointments about a particular website by reviewing it. Companies are free to communicate with the reviewers via the website and thus break down the barriers.

If many websites like Amazon allow users to give feedback about a product, why not give feedback about the website itself? Constructive criticism never hurt anyone and could even help improve a user’s experience of your website.

Let’s enjoy some quality time together!

So what other ways are there to get in touch with your client base? Focus groups? In the past forums were a powerful tool for companies to get feedback, offer support and inventory feature requests (if users were so lucky). Forums became difficult to manage, prone to misuse, service costs were involved and companies would never understand the annoyance that arose with users who had to sign up for yet another forum.

GetSatisfaction, a San Francisco based company, made use of this situation and even added a new dimension to online customer service. On the website you can search for companies and products that you have a question or comment about. The power of GetSatisfaction lies in the sense that if the company and/or product is not known to the website, it will allow you, the user, to leave a comment anyway, because according to the owners ‘anyone can create a free customer community’.

With this approach any visitor can always leave their comments on the site, ie. complete their goal. The second powerful feature of the website is that anyone can respond, be it a company representative or another community member (often another customer). In all fairness, GetSatisfaction truly defines ‘People Powered Customer Service’. Similar to the Review-it, albeit not free, companies can reach out to their users via the website and communicate in a forum type fashion.

Yes, you can!

I know it, I just used a cliche expression as the title for this paragraph. Without going too deep into politics, I would like to say that democracy has finally arrived online!

Who doesn’t want to turn good products into great products? Who doesn’t want to capture feedback and ideas and even let users vote on them? UserVoice, a Santa Cruz based startup, has developed a nice online application that allows companies to gather users feedback on products that can help them in future development.

Users can also share ideas which, when offered as possible new feature, they can later vote on. This will allow developers to focus on those ideas which are (perceived as) the most important to the end users of the product. True democracy at work!

Conclusion

As you might have noticed I did not go into much detail about the benefits and possible pitfalls of using users feedback in all of its forms. This is a tough subject to cover as every company has there own policies concerning development and user research.

On a brighter note, I honestly think that companies should get more involved in bridging the gap between users and themselves. Users are your #1 source of feedback which, when analyzed properly, can seriously help you improve your product and services, which could in turn help you increase your market share.

So, don’t be shy and get in touch soon, because if you don’t, your competition will!