something in the way

[Thanks to Yaniv Sarig, who translated this post into Hebrew.]

Back in the early days of PC computing, we were interested in how people used all those options, controls, and settings that software designers put into their applications. How much do users customize their applications?

We embarked on a little experiment. We asked a ton of people to send us their settings file for Microsoft Word. At the time, MS Word stored all the settings in a file named something like config.ini, so we asked people to locate that file on their hard disk and email it to us. Several hundred folks did just that.

We then wrote a program to analyze the files, counting up how many people had changed the 150+ settings in the applications and which settings they had changed.

What we found was really interesting. Less than 5% of the users we surveyed had changed any settings at all. More than 95% had kept the settings in the exact configuration that the program installed in.

This was particularly curious because some of the program’s defaults were notable. For example, the program had a feature that would automatically save your work as edited a document, to prevent losing anything in case of a system or program failure. In the default settings for the version we analyzed, this feature was disabled. Users had to explicitly turn it on to make it work.

Of course, this mean that 95% of the users were running with autosave turned off. When we interviewed a sample of them, they all told us the same thing: They assumed Microsoft had delivered it turned off for a reason, therefore who were they to set it otherwise. “Microsoft must know what they are doing,” several of the participants told us.

We thought about that and wondered what the rationale was for keeping such an important feature turned off. We thought that maybe they were concerned about people running off floppies or those who had slow or small disks. Autosave does have performance implications, so maybe they were optimizing the behavior for the worst case, assuming that users who had the luxury to use the feature would turn it on.

We had friends in the Microsoft Office group, so we asked them about the choice of delivering the feature disabled. We explained our hypothesis about optimizing for performance. They asked around and told us our hypothesis was incorrect.

It turns out the reason the feature was disabled in that release was not because they had thought about the user’s needs. Instead, it was because a programmer had made a decision to initialize the config.ini file with all zeroes. Making a file filled with zeroes is a quick little program, so that’s what he wrote, assuming that, at some point later, someone would tell him what the “real defaults” should be. Nobody ever got around to telling him.

Since zero in binary means off, the autosave setting, along with a lot of other settings, were automatically disabled. The users’ assumption that Microsoft had given this careful consideration turned out not to be the case.

We also asked our participants for background information, like age and occupation, to see if that made a difference. It didn’t, except one category of people who almost always changed their settings: programmers and designers. They often had changed more than 40% (and some had changed as much as 80%) of the options in the program.

It seems programmers and designers like to customize their environment. Who would’ve guessed? Could that be why they chose their profession?

(Big takeaway: If you’re a programmer or designer, then you’re not like most people. Just because you change your settings in apps you use doesn’t mean that your users will, unless they are also programmers and designers.)

We’ve repeated this experiment in various forms over the years. We’ve found it to be consistently true: users rarely change their settings.

If your application has settings, have you looked to see what your users do? How many have changed them? Are the defaults the optimal choice? Does your settings screen explain the implications of each setting and give your users a good reason for mucking with the defaults?

Kickstarter - Click the scissors icon three times and the footer falls down.

/via gorazd

Yes, there’s a big connection. Just watch. And share with your designers, developers and clients.

An analogy, by John Boykin, seen at Johny Holland

Content under a Creative Commons License. (Digital Fingerprint: bfff8c3002d3e0f3f95495bddf32fef0)

Also of Interest

• ComScore measures Internet Audience in Portugal
• DraftFCB represents Portugal at Young Criatives
• Frozen Rua Augusta

Designers do a lot of work engineering the experience of creating compelling sign-up forms for a variety of reasons (joining communities, requesting more information, age-gating verification, etc.). I’d like to take a closer look at how the Thank You page of the conversion flow can be leveraged more effectively for experiences that aren’t necessarily tied to joining a social network. That said, social networking sites are full of awesome examples where the Thank You jumpstarts the user’s uptake, so if you’re:

• Tumblr, you have your user create her first blog post
• Twitter, you have your user find cool people to follow
• LinkedIn, you connect with your email address book
• Meetup, you have your user join a group

But, let’s say you’re a more traditional (perception = less fun) business like a university, can you do more than guide your user towards more descriptive content about the program or services offered (where bounce rate will be high)? How can you make the most of that transaction? How can you parlay the validation “Thank You” into action that can be both inspiring and measurable? Thank You messaging is not supposed to feel like the awkward end of a first date “Do I kiss him?” moment. The user has shared her information with you, triggering a response and follow up campaign. She’s staring at the Thank You page, confirming she submitted her information correctly. This is a powerful moment to turn your Thank You into more than:

• a data verification step
• a reiteration of your brand’s identity and tagline
• a jumping off into content (where the bound rate will be high and not super effective in terms of engagement, relationship development, etc.)

Social marketing channels have helped turn Thank You pages into opportunities for secondary levels of conversion where you can experiment with Facebook Fan Page and/or Twitter acquisition. This brings me back to the use case at hand, while our lead gen page had a number of design constraints, we found that we had a lot of artistic leeway in creating a Thank You page, so we decided to make the number one goal of the page to excite the user to join our Facebook Fan page. First, let’s look at the original Thank You page, which did include Facebook & Twitter opportunities: (Note: I apologize for striking through the brand name, my client is a major university and getting approval to share the brand is a bit of a juggernaut.)

Now, let’s look at the redesign of the Thank You page, which puts primary focus on Facebook Fan acquisition v. promoting both Twitter and Facebook equally:

The design:

• Inspired by the idea of the excitement around an “acceptance letter”
• Focused on the fun of university life and community
• Featured access to current students, faculty, and admissions through Facebook

The results:

• Increased Fan Page uptake from 28 fans per week (a consistent rate for one year) to 300+ fans per week (2+ weeks of ongoing data)
• Increased the quality of interactions on the Fan Page, where we were encouraged to see prospects asking questions that were fielded by students, admissions, and faculty
• Increased interaction with blog content, driving traffic to the parent site and making better use of all editorial collateral

As You Design Conversion Experiences Thank You Messaging is:

• Integral—A necessary part of the conversion experience, it’s no longer just a simple hello/goodbye world
• Instantly Gratifying—If you’re testing a conversion experience the results are ongoing and take time. Adding a secondary conversion exercise like Facebook Fan acquisition is an immediate way to leverage (in real time) effects of your messaging
• Social—Leverages warm fuzzies in innovative ways and gets users connecting with one another
• Sticky—The last thing the user will remember about your brand, and can have the added possibility of taking the conversation even deeper into her personal network

Perhaps, the biggest takeaway from designing a great Thank You experience is that the more you can leverage the Thank You, they more you can get your users to connect with your app and with each other the less money you’ll need to spend on post conversion campaigns, marketing, and more. I’d love to hear your experiences around the “Thank You” in your designs, examples, etc. Thank you! *Design by my brilliant partners at jjomedia.com

The rapid growth of RIA technology into the lives of every day people just a few years ago has carried both the usability and user experience industries to a new high in popularity. The success of software (particularly on the web) has driven both of these terms into our vernacular, and yet they are still often confused or thought to be synonymous. This post is meant to help those new to the field or unfamiliar with the intricacies of design to understand the differences between the terms.

When you start your own company, there are lots of small decisions that you need to make. What do you splash out on, and what do you pinch pennies on? It’s tricky to decide.

One of the common ways to reduce your initial outlay is to opt for free or low cost software if you can get away with it. For example, maybe you’d consider using a bug tracker like Sifter or Jira, but you’d finally opt for Bugzilla. It’s not pretty, but it’s free – and it has all the features you need.

With a cluttered, unintuitive UI, Bugzilla has a learning curve – but it’s not insurmountable. Plenty of companies use it.

Next on the list for your company is mobile phones. iPhones would be nice, but they’re too expensive. Better to opt for last year’s Windows Mobile handsets, the ones that come free with the contract. You can’t argue with free.

Older versions of Windows Mobile have been widely criticised for poor usability and “toothpick” interaction style, but what the hell – lots of people have learned to live with it. It packs a lot of features in for the price, that’s for sure.

What’s next on the list, then? What about a wiki? Knowledge management is, after all, pretty important. Maybe you could use Confluence or PBworks – they are nicely crafted packages, and not too expensive either. But hey, there are plenty of free solutions out there, like Mediawiki.

Mediawiki may have an interface that only its mother could love, but if it’s good enough for Wikipedia, it’s got to be doing something right.

But let’s stop and think for a moment. Everyone in your company will spend most of their days looking at this software. They’ll probably spend more time looking at these UIs than they spend looking at the faces of their loved ones. Without realising it, you’ve set a standard. You’ve taught everyone in your company that UIs like this are ‘normal’, and are the right way of doing things. When someone needs to design a new advanced search UI, what do they think of immediately? Why, Bugzilla of course. That’s a typical advanced search UI – everyone knows how to use it, right?

Wrong. That’s the classic egocentric fallacy in action, the lynchpin of all bad design: “Other people see the world how I see it, and think how I think. Therefore if I find it easy to use, everyone should be able to.” According to Piaget, humans grow out of this phase at age 7. If only that were true!

You can’t expect all of your staff to be great UI designers. But if you surround them with great UIs, you improve their ability to discern quality, to recognise bad design, and to point the finger and say ‘this doesn’t seem right’.

There are lots of good reasons to use free software, and many more reasons to use open source. Raising the bar for your own UI design is rarely one of them.