Don't take your random() for granted...

In my current project, we use a functionality which chooses a random colour for a machine. To do this, we need to select a colour from a set of 8 colours. In our Flex application we use a function called randomInt, which generates a random integer between a and b:

public static function randomInt(a:int, b:int):int {
return Math.round(Math.random()*(b-a))+a;
}

Usually we look for functions like these on the internet, but I’d like to emphasize that you also should unit-test functions which are made by others.

So I’ve generated 5000 integers between 0 and 20 in a test application, and put that in a graph:

Note that the numbers on the boundaries, 0 and 20, are significantly chosen less times than the others (1-19). This would mean, that if this function is used for picking a random machine colour, the colours 0 and 7 have only a 7% chance to be selected, while others have a 14% chance!

I’ve talked about this to someone who knows a lot of these mathematical things. The problem is the rounding. Since Math.round() returns a pseudo-random number n, where 0 <= n <>

We need to include the boundaries to produce a evenly distributed random integer. This is the new function:

private function randomInt(a:int, c:int):int {
var b:int = c + 1;
return Math.floor(Math.random()*(b-a))+a;
}

Doing the same test, produces this graph:

As you can see, each integer is chosen about the same number of times. Now we know for sure that colours 0 and 7 won’t stay in storage, but are also sold!

Nomads in IT...

Yesterday I was present at a job interview at IT.

I represented the technical guys, though I'm more a User Experience Consultant with technical background, but my job is mostly technical right now.

The guy who had the interview was somewhat the same, only a bit more with a designer's background.

It was suprising how difficult it is to find the right position for a User Experience Consultants, especially in the technical department!

They belong nowhere...

Customer Experience Is Usually Very Poor

(I didn't finish this article, and to engage myself in finishing it, I post it as such.... Yes I will finish it soon!)

this article will be translated to English


Uit een onderzoek van Forrester uit 2008, waarin zij aan klanten vroegen naar hun ervaringen met verschillende bedrijven op het gebied van bruikbaarheid, usability en plezier, bleek dat ANWB winkel, Esprit en de Bijenkorf aan de top staan in Nederland.

Forrester stelde uit die gegevens de Customer Experience Index samen. De lijst omvat 57 bedrijven, waarvan er slechts 6 een waardering "excellent" kregen. Daarentegen kregen 30 bedrijven de waardering "slecht" of "zeer slecht"...

Wat valt er op aan deze onderkant van de lijst? De bedrijven uit de lijst waren grofweg ingedeeld in 5 branches: retailers, banken, energiebedrijven, internet service providers en mobiele telefonie bedrijven. Wanneer je gaat kijken wie er aan de onderkant van de lijst staan, valt het wel op dat de energiebedrijven het wel heel slecht doen:

25e plek: Greenchoice
45e plek: Essent
47e plek: Eneco
48e plek: Nuon
52e plek: Energie:direct
55e plek: Oxxio
56e plek: E.ON
57e plek: Nederlandse Energie Maatschappij

Alleen Greenchoice krijgt een waardering "okay". Wanneer je in deze lijst onder nummer 37 staat, is het niet best met je, de waardering is daar ronduit "zeer slecht". Valt het u op dat het 2e energiebedrijf op de lijst Essent op nummer 45 staat? Niet zo best dus.

De energiebranche in Nederland doet het dus het slechtste op het gebied van Customer Experience. Overigens doen de Internet Service Providers het net iets beter, maar worden nog steeds gewaardeerd als "zeer slecht".

Waarom zit het nou in die specifieke branche zo slecht? Ik ben 2 jaar gedetacheerd geweest bij één van de genoemde energiebedrijven, dus op basis daarvan kan een ik kleine analyse doen.


The Experience Economy


Het draait erom in hoeverre het belang van Custromer Experience meespeelt in de bedrijfsprocessen. En dat begint met het erkennen en willen dat het bedrijf zich onderscheidt in Customer Experience. Vanuit de gedachte dat je niet in alles de beste kan zijn, moet je in alles even goed zijn als de concurrent en in één ding uitblinken. En aangezien de economie nu steeds meer draait om Experience (zie: The Experience Economy [Pine & Gillmore, 1999]), laat dat dan dat ene zijn waarin het bedrijf uitblinkt. Uiteindelijk zal het voor energiebedrijven zeker zo zijn dat de tarieven overal net zo scherp zijn, de stroom net zo groen en de energiemeters net zo slim.


Als je de volwassenheid (maturity) van Customer Experience in de organisatie in de volgende niveau's verdeelt:

1. Interesse


2. Er wordt in geinvesteerd


3. Toegewijd


4. In ontwikkeling


5. Opgenomen in de organisatie

Kunnen we met zekerheid zeggen dat energiebedrijven niet veel verder komen dan niveau 1. De interesse is er in die zin, dat er veel over gesproken wordt en dat eigenlijk wel iedereen er het belang van inziet (85% van de bedrijven bevestigen dat zij het belang van een goede Customer Experience inzien). Uit mijn ervaring kan ik zeggen dat die interesse er eigenlijk nu zo'n 2.5 jaar is. In de 2 jaar dat ik bij het bedrijf werkzaam ben geweest is er ook echt wat mee gedaan, maar dat kwam voornamelijk omdat ik daar persoonlijk de focus op legde, maar niet omdat dat door de organisatie gevraagd werd. Dat ze nog niet bij niveau 2 waren, was duidelijk doordat er geen ruimte voor was in planningen en allocaties.

Daarnaast wordt vaak Usability, User Experience en Customer Experience over één kam geschoren. Wat zijn dan die verschillen? Mijn definities zijn deze:

Usability

De gebruiker wordt goed ondersteund doordat de best-practices in het design zijn toegepast. De interactie is consistent, navigatie is duidelijk en indien nodig wordt de gebruiker op weg geholpen. De gebruiker raakt niet in verwarring, vindt wat hij zoekt en begrijpt waar het over gaat doordat het intuitief werkt of goed wordt uitgelegd.

User Experience

De gebruiker krijgt ook een bepaald gevoel tijdens en na het contact met de website of applicatie. Dat gevoel dient prettig en passend te zijn. Hij moet aan zijn vrienden kunnen vertellen dat het gebruik van de website makkelijk en leuk was. Omdat de resultaten naar verwachting waren en het "servicegevoel" in lijn met de norm van het bedrijf.

Customer Experience

Hier verandert de gebruiker in een klant. Op dat moment spelen er subtiele andere gevoelens mee dan in de User Experience. De klant moet overtuigd raken, onderhevig zijn aan bepaalde emoties en vertrouwen hebben (zie: How to Design for Persuation, Emotion, and Trust [Human Factors International]). Een gebruiker moet gewoon de dingen kunnen doen die hij moet doen, een klant moet daar ook zo'n positieve ervaring bij hebben dat hij ook terugkeert en beter nog: het bedrijf aanbeveelt bij zijn vrienden en kenissen op verjaardagen (zie: Net Promoter Score).

Waarom zijn dan de energiebedrijven hier zo slecht in?

...

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I would call it a duck.

Just a few days ago my Nokia Phone Suite application told me there was a new version available. And the installation surprised me again. It's the year 2008 and the most simple usability rules are still unknown to some software developers.

Let me show you the dialog:


It is really simple. If you suggest I can click YES the should be a YES button. Not a button with a green V. Same for the NO button. Not a red X.

Call it what it is.

I understand: it it obvious, everyone can figure out that the green V is the YES and the red x is the NO. But it takes (a little) time to figure that out. And that, only that, can kill the trust users have in your application. Dr. Eric Schaffer of Human Factors International talks about PET design. Design for Persuation, Emotion and Trust. I believe it's a fair point. Especially the fact that there always is tension between that and Usability. In the Nokia case, the designers probably wanted to make a trendy flashy application (it's a lot of young people who use mobile phone applications, not?).

I think Nokia went wrong here in the installation of the application. They don't do what they promise: offer a YES and NO button. Bye bye trust.

Will the end user regain his trust and trust the application itself or will they quit using it at the first failure?

I leave you with this question, but I can make a guess...

Customer Experience and User Experience

"The customer is always right"

"Know thy user, for he is not thee"

A marketeer looks differently at an online customer than a web designer. A Usability Analyst looks differently at an online user than a web designer. So do marketeers and Usability Analists look the same way at an online user?

In the real world: they don't. But I think they should. We all know that a website is not a pure technical thing, neither a pure marketing and sales thing and neither a pure user thing. These three forces work together and since the beginning of the internet, the technical forces always been stronger than the others and in the last few years the marketing and sales force has become one of the strongest forces: we need return on investment!

Lately, organisations start to realize that Usability of a website is very important. If your website is not usable they will leave. And even worse: if your competitor's website is more usable, they'll use that one because the User Experience is better!

And a good user experience is the basis for a good customer experience. For a good customer experience you need to look at the whole customer life-cycle. Huub Esten, my collegue at Capgemini says: "You need to be the best in one part and at least as good as the others for the other parts of the process". Especially when your company does online business, awareness of Usability and User Centered Design is key.

In his latest "Alertbox", the Usability guru Jakob Nielsen told about a research where they found that if your webpage has about 111 words on it, about 50% will be read. With more words that percentage drops fast. So tell that to the marketing people: your customers will read only half (or less!) of what you need to say to them.

References:

• "Wat doet de Customer Experience Methodiek?" (dutch), Telecommerce Magazine, Jaap van Sandijk
• "How little do users read?", useit.com Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen

A new era: Rich Internet comes to your desktop!

A lot of people will say it has been there for years/awhile, but I think that with the launch of Adobe AIR 1.0 in combination with Flex 3 and products like Mozilla's XULRunner, Rich Internet is coming to your desktop.

In fact, that is a funny thing! Over the last few years desktop applications have moved to the internet, loosing richness but gaining reach. The next move was gaining richness with the introduction of Rich Internet Applications.

But now!

By bringing Rich Internet to the desktop, we complete the circle and combine all those things. It adds the availability of local data to the whole thing. Things like this have been there for a bit for a time already, but now these big players like Adobe and Mozilla truly believe in the future of bringing web applications to your desktop, a new era has truly started. And not forget Google Gears.

Read the article by Technology Review on Adobe's Kevin Lynch about Offline Web Applications. Check the O'Reilly blog about Mozilla, part 1 and part 2.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades...

P.S. I'm very curious who will extend the picture above to support these new technologies.

Are users getting more experienced? Should we drop Usability Design Guidelines?

Jakob Nielsen, the famous Usability guru, wrote an article about Usability enemies and the counter arguments they have against design guidelines:

• "You're testing idiots — most users are smarter and don't mind complexity."
• "You were right in the past, but users have now learned how to use advanced websites, so simplicity isn't a requirement anymore."

In a recent research, they concluded that user skills are improving, but slightly. Still a lot of guidelines still apply...

(Quote) For now, one thing is clear: we're confirming more and more of the old usability guidelines. Even though we have new issues to consider, the old issues aren't going away. A few examples:

• Email newsletters remain the best way to drive users back to websites. It's incredible how often our study participants say that a newsletter is their main reason for revisiting a site. Most professional users are not very interested in podcasts or newsfeeds (RSS).
• Opening new browser windows is highly confusing for most users. Although many users can cope with extra windows that they've opened themselves, few understand why the Back button suddenly stops working in a new window that the computer initiated. Opening new windows was #2 on my list of top-10 Web design mistakes of 1999; that this design approach continues to hurt users exemplifies both the longevity of usability guidelines and the limited improvement in user skills.
• Links that don't change color when clicked still create confusion, making users unsure about what they've already seen on a site.
• Splash screens and intros are still incredibly annoying: users look for the "skip intro" button — if not found, they often leave. One user wanted to buy custom-tailored shirts and first visited Turnbull & Asser because of their reputation. Clicking the appropriate link led to a page where a video started to play without warning and without a way to skip it and proceed directly to actual info about the service. The user watched a few seconds; got more and more agitated about the lack of options to bypass the intro, and finally closed down the site and went to a competitor. Customer lost.
• A fairly large minority of users still don't know that they can get to a site's homepage by clicking its logo, so I still have to recommend having an explicit "home" link on all interior pages (not on the homepage, of course, because no-op links that point to the current page are confusing — yet another guideline we saw confirmed again several times last week). It particularly irks me to have to retain the "explicit home link" guideline, because I had hoped to get rid of this stupid extra link. But many users really do change very slowly, so we'll probably have to keep this guideline in force until 2020 — maybe longer. At least breadcrumbs are a simple way to satisfy this need.
• People are still very wary, sometimes more so than in the past, about giving out personal information. In particular, the B2B sites in this new study failed in exactly the same way as most B2B sites in our major B2B research: by hitting users with a registration screen before they were sufficiently committed to the site.
• Non-standard scrollbars are often overlooked and make people miss most of the site's offerings. The following screens show two examples from last week's testing.

(End Quote)

Read the whole article "User Skills Improving, But Only Slightly", by Jakob Nielsen.