What users want: Functional user experience. John Sandler Telstra Corporation Melbourne, Australia

Transcription

1 What users want: Functional user experience John Sandler Telstra Corporation Melbourne, Australia Abstract Increasingly, consumers of all product types and services demand and expect ease of use and functionality in day to day experiences and undertakings. If users can t find a product or use a service to achieve their goal, they become frustrated and go searching elsewhere. So we need to look at how best to design engaging and common sense functionality and experiences to retain users. The purpose of this paper is to best understand who end-users of web sites, applications, products and services are, and what they want to achieve when using these web sites, applications, products; and what their expectations of services might be. After this process of discovering what the users really want and need, the challenge is to then design web sites, applications, products and services to meet those needs. This paper will investigate and discuss the most effective methods to apply to gain valuable insights into user and customer needs and their contexts. Keywords-ethnographic research, journey maps, user experience. I. INTRODUCTION Despite best intentions and mountains of data, many organizations continue to offer lackluster experiences for their customers. Until organizations and their design teams have a fuller level of understanding of the expectations and needs of the target audiences they are designing for, there will continue to be customer and user frustration, resulting in negative user experiences. More often than not, emphasis is on the speed of getting sites, applications, products and services out to market, rather than ensuring they are designed to fully meet the needs of customers and users. The results are often frustrated customers and users, on the end of poorly designed web sites, applications, products and services. Applying investigative processes are critical steps to building a better understanding of who users are and what their expectations and needs are. Development of web sites, applications, products and services based on this investigative approach will ensure that more seamless and satisfying experiences are enjoyed by customers and users, who will be able to achieve their needs without frustrations. II. WHO ARE USERS? We need to find out our customer and user needs what do they actually want and expect from the websites, applications, products and services we will be designing for them? What are their goals, and why? To discover this information, a process of user research has to be planned and undertaken. III. USER RESEARCH There are different ways to collect data for user research, depending upon the product or service, budget and timeframes. Review all relevant user research, including both qualitative and quantitative findings to provide insights into the customer experience. Some effective research methods include: Ethnography Site visits and contextual inquiry Cultural probes Customer interviews and conversations Site visits Customer surveys Touchpoints Usability tests. Timeframe and budget will be impact on the research methods that are chosen. A. Ethnographic Research One of the most powerful ways to gain insights about users is via field study or Ethnographic Research. It usually involves observing target users in their natural, real-world setting, rather than in the artificial environment of a lab or focus group. The aim is to gather insight into how people live; what they do; how they use things; or what they need in their everyday or professional lives /15/$ IEEE September 2015, Florence, Page 1 Italy of 6

2 Ethnographic research relies on techniques such as observation, video diaries, photographs, contextual interviews, and analysis of artefacts such as devices, tools or paper forms that might be used as part of a person s job. Observations can be made at home, at work, or in leisure environments. Ethnographic research can provide extremely rich insight into real life behaviour, and can be used to identify new or currently unmet user needs. This approach is most valuable at the beginning of a project when there is a need to understand real end user needs, or to understand the constraints of using a new product or service by a particular audience. B. Qualitative research Qualitative, contextual research, where user behaviors are observed while interacting with a product, service or process, gives a most effective overview of users and their behaviours in the context of their real environment. C. Quantitative research Many insights can be drawn from reviewing web analytics and digging deep into data sources that reveal what current customers are doing when they interact with your organization. D. Cultural probe Cultural probes (also known as diary studies) provide a way of gathering information about people and their activities. Unlike direct observation (like usability testing or traditional field studies), the technique allows users to self-report. Information gathered from cultural probes is particularly useful early in the design process. Some variation worth considering: 1. Give users a paper diary and ask them to complete it whenever they are doing stuff in the domain you re designing for. Provide a list of specific questions so they know what to pay attention to. Send a text message reminder every few days. 2. Instead of a paper diary, create a Wordpress blog where users can type their entry every day or so. Or ask people to send you an with their diary entry. 3. If your users have smartphones, get them to complete the diary on their. If your users hate typing, get them to dictate voice memos. 4. Ask your users to create a photographic or video diary by taking pictures or recording videos of the domain and then uploading them to a designated URL. 5. Ask people to fill out their diary whenever a critical incident occurs: this could be making a purchase, having to reboot the system, needing to access online help whatever your domain of analysis. E. Interviews and conversations Having conversations with customers is a common and reliably successful method used to gain insights for an experience map. The focus should be on a story that is relevant to the product or service area that is being investigated. When possible, interviewing or observing customers in their natural setting will provide the richest data. Participants should be encouraged to share their story and experiences, both positives and negative ones. An engaging conversation, rather than pointed questions, is more likely to achieve meaningful responses. It is important to obtain a sense for the customers lasting impressions of their experiences, and make sure to document fully. Combined with findings from the discovery process, customer conversations and observations will form the backbone of the story the customer journey and experience map will tell. Users should be interviewed to find out if the problem is a genuine one. Describe the problem to them, ask them to rank its severity to them on a scale of 1-10 and then ask them how they try to solve it now. This approach will soon help to establish if the problem is really an issue for users An interesting variation to the interview is to take photographs of someone experiencing the various phases of the product or service being investigated. These can be printed or viewed on notebook computers, tablets or smartphones as discussion starters with real users. Ask for a story about the user s context. Begin with a question that establishes the activity to be discussed. This question can be simply answered with a Yes or No. Then ask questions that build up a picture of how this activity fits into user s work or life. Then questions can be asked to have users think about a specific example. Once users have a specific event in mind, repeat the situation then ask for the whole story. F. Site visits Carrying out a site visit or series of visits and contextual inquiry or field study - is one of the most powerful ways to gain insights about users and their issues and needs. By making direct observations, the design team can identify and gain important insights they may have never discovered by applying only the conventional usability discovery processes. Field studies, or contextual inquiry activities, allow the design team to be immersed in the environment of their users and to /15/$ IEEE September 2015, Florence, Page 2 Italy of 6

3 observe critical details which there is no other way of discovering or fully understanding. By observing users in their specific environment, design teams can quickly identify and begin to understand specific problems and needs of their customers. A very useful tool to assist the design team and stakeholders later on is to create a photographic day-in-the-life narrative. Spend a day, or more if needed, with users in their environment and create a photo story that captures their experiences, goals and frustrations. This will become a valuable piece of user data. learnt from qualitative studies, or yield insights that help prioritize the focus of customer interviews. It may also make stake holders feel more comfortable that the experience map is based on a large enough sample size of customer data. The data from user research activities described above, together with other techniques that may be judged suitable, is then used to create a Customer Journey Map, the vital artifact in understanding customers and their needs, and a tool for improving customer satisfaction and experience. It will also help the design team to represent the customers perspective their experiences, issues, and needs. G. Usability tests There are a number of usability activities that can be completed much faster than the full, more traditional usability tests. These can include: Creating and testing a paper prototype. Loading the prototype on a laptop with screen recording software and performing a usability test in the participant s environment. Telephone a user and set up screen sharing using appropriate software. Ask them to walk the design team through a typical transaction with the product, process or service. Let s say you want to know if people have a need for a product or service, but don t have anything to show right now. Create a fake landing page for a web site and see what percentage of people sign up. Run a pop-up usability test: recruit people as needed in a library or public location. Run a hallway test: leave your system running with a sign to encourage people to take part in a 10-minute usability test. Ask people to perform 10 tasks (or a number to suit) from the home page of the web site and see where they click test. Show users a page from the proposed system for 5 seconds. Then ask them what they can remember. Run a usability test with two participants and encourage them to discuss the way they are working. Run a 30-minute usability test and then ask participant to stay behind and talk through the video of them doing the tasks. H. Surveys In addition to analyzing existing data, it may useful to create a survey targeted at existing and prospective customers or users. A survey can answer basic questions, help validate what is Fig. 1. Customer Journey Map courtesy Joel Flom I. Touchpoints A touchpoint is the point of interaction between a user and an organisation s product, process or service. User touchpoints or interactions occur in a channel, or location. This is the context of use for the customer and the organisation. A touchpoint describes any moment a customer interacts with a specific brand, product, or service on any channel or location. So a "customer journey" is always a sequence of touchpoints. Some examples of common touchpoints are: Call centre Store Showroom /15/$ IEEE September 2015, Florence, Page 3 Italy of 6

4 Sales staff Website Newspaper TV Radio Contact web form Help desk/support Phone Live chat Comments section of blog posts Core channels such as brick and mortar locations, websites, call centres and post orders are all common channels for interacting with customers. Depending on the nature of the product or service, we would look at health care (hospitals, medical services), home maintenance, car maintenance etc., as channels. A channel defines the opportunities or constraints of a touchpoint. From the user s perspective, they expect their specific needs to be met or fulfilled irrespective of the channel (location) where the interaction is taking place. Some examples of common touchpoints are: Call centre Store Showroom Sales staff Website Newspaper TV Radio Contact web form Help desk/support Phone Live chat Comments section of blog posts These could be categorised as: IV. CREATING CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPS The information previously gathered through user research activities and studies now needs to be reviewed, so the design team can commence the process of using it to populate the Customer Journey Map. The information available should now consist of: A collection of preliminary insights gained from user research and studies A list of touchpoints A list of channels A list of activities that a user performs during the journey, such as: o researching the product or service through an appropriate channel, o obtaining the product or service through an appropriate channel, o getting help/support/customer service for the product they bought through an appropriate channel, o or service delivered or performed. A. Build a research wall A very effective approach to make research findings tangible and accessible is to create a research wall in a location convenient to the design and project teams. Simply pin up photos, screenshots, post-it note quotes from customers or employees, observations, collected artifacts, quantitative data, previous research, etc. on a wall. This will allow for an easier overview and to quickly establish if there are any gaps in the data. V. CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP The Customer Journey Map, or sometimes it may be called an Experience Map or Touchpoint Map; visually details the path, from a user s perspective, that is taken over time, displaying touchpoints (interactions) users have with a specific brand, product, or service across channels, to fulfill their needs. In other words, how users use a product or services, and their experiences, both positive and negative. Marketing channels o ( , postal, telephone, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, TV, radio, etc) Order fulfilment channels o (delivery, payment, returns, etc) Research channels o (website, consumer forums, store, showroom, customer services, sales staff, etc) Customer service channels o (helpdesk/support, call centre, etc) At each touchpoint users attitudes and feeling will vary with their experiences of the product, service or process. These emotional states need to be understood, recorded and incorporated in the Customer Journey Map. The end customer journey model should depict the range of interactions customers have across channels, touchpoints, time and space in pursuit of satisfying their needs /15/$ IEEE September 2015, Florence, Page 4 Italy of 6

5 A. Types of Customer Journey Maps There are various forms of journey maps. The scope of a journey map can be high-level showing the end-to-end experience (e.g. visualizing 30 years of a life insurance)) or it can be focused on a detail of such a high-level journey (e.g. the sign-up process of the life insurance)). A journey map can be used to visualize experiences through storyboards (a sequence of photos or sketches) and emotional journeys (a graph showing the level of satisfaction at each touchpoint from negative to positive). For easier orientation, many journey maps combine several touchpoints to stages (simple and high-level sections of an experience, such as "inspiration, planning, booking, experience, sharing"). It can also include swimlane maps (a visualization on which channel a touchpoint takes place) or backstage processes (alternatively to a service blueprint: a visualization of backstage processes helps to visually connect front- and backstage processes) as well as dramatic arcs (a graph showing the level of engagement at each touchpoint. definitely represent the user s perspective over the timeframe of the interaction. There is no specific layout that should be used. Final layout is a choice for design teams in consultation with clients. Simplicity and ease of use are the important criteria. For each touchpoint decided as relevant, a user will complete several actions and activities, which will be different for each industry and business, but could be summarised into the following classic types: Awareness Discover Purchase Use of product of service Bonding with product This can be expanded to cover key areas for the specific industry or business (e.g. For a Hotel chain the use of product/service may want to be expanded to look at key elements such as check-in, use of amenities, check out & departure), but is best kept simple to begin with to allow initial customer journeys to be mapped and additional activities discovered and defined. Now that the gathering of research material about customer touch points and activities has been completed, Fig 3 displays a simple table can be used to map the customer journey with activities listed across the top and the touch points down the left hand side. Finding and understanding user s pain points,points in their journey where they are not happy, are most important, as these represents the opportunities for designing and implementing improvements in the particular process and interaction. Fig. 2. Customer Journey Map courtesy pdf B. Mapping the customer journey There are many potential layouts of the final Customer Journey Map, depending on variety of factors. There is no prescribed look or feel, but it is important that the final product is simple to understand, not too cluttered, and should Fig. 3 Simple table This can then be used to map & record typical customer and real user data to map their journey from initial awareness and /15/$ IEEE September 2015, Florence, Page 5 Italy of 6

6 need for a product or service, through the stages of their journey to bonding and sharing their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the final outcome. Fig. 4 displays a recent journey completed when choosing a new mobile phone. VII. SUMMARY Customer Journey and Experience Maps make visible the endto-end experience from the customer s point of view, showing the significant interactions, pathways and expectations we need to understand along that journey. They enable the design and development team to really understand what it is to be in the customer s shoes. This insures that the customer s voice is easily represented and referenced during development and building maintenance of products and services. The use of this artefact as a major design and analysis tool to provide evidence of what customers and users of products and services actually think, want, do and use enhances the ability to design ever increasing pleasing experiences for them. Fig 4 table displaying influence & decision points The table displays key points of the journey and identifies influence and decision points, such as: Decision to stick with existing Mobile Operator (Step 3 Review of available phones and costs); Influence on phone selected (Step 4 Review of phones and opinions & Step 5 Trial of potential phones at store and recommendation); Purchase Decision (Step 6 Purchase at Store). VI.BENENFITS OF CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPS A Customer Journey Map is a graphical representation of the service journey of a customer. It displays the customer perspective about the emotions, interactions, triggers and touchpoints from the beginning to end of their journey as they engage a product or service to achieve their goals. It helps to identify crucial touchpoints that have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction It helps us focus our website, product or service towards the user (user-centred design) It helps us to better identify the user s potential needs and wants It can summarize the information that we already have about users and their behaviour It helps us locate additional improvement opportunities, as well as the areas where there s a risk of dissatisfying the user. REFERENCES [1] Sandler, John Designing for users: creating the best user experience Proceedings ICL 2012, Villach, Austria. [2] Sandler, John eproject User Experience: The Reality, Vol.3, No.4 (2010) p.35-40, ijac. [3] Sandler, John eproject User Experience: the reality, Proceedings ICL 2010, Hasselt, Belgium [4] Sandler, John Project Usability: Schmoosability...what does it matter? Proceedings ICELW 2010, New York, USA. [5] Sandler, John The Usability of elearning: Designing for effective performance or not. Proceedings ICELW 2009, New York, USA. [6] Sandler, John QR Codes: tagging for learning performance, Proceedings ICL 2009, Villach, Austria. [7] Krug, S. (2005) Don t make me think! Indianapolis: New Riders. [8] Sandler, John Scenarios and Profiling for Useful and Usable Web Sites, ForUse 2002, Proceedings First International Conference on Usage-Centered, Task-Centered and Performance-Centered Design pp , Portsmouth USA, August [9] Neilsen, Jakob. (2000) Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. Indianapolis: New Riders. [10] Norman, Donald A. (1998) The Design of Everyday Things, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. [11] [12] [13] nance.pdf [14] [15] [16] /15/$ IEEE September 2015, Florence, Page 6 Italy of 6