Nielsen Norman Group Usability Week Copenhagen
I have been attending 3 days of seminars during the Usability Week in Copenhagen. The Nielsen Norman Group, short NNG, are an authority on webusability research. The seminars were, as might be expected, of an excellent level.
I followed three seminars:
The first day I attended 'Emerging Patterns in Web Design' by Kara McCain. Kara McCain's session had a clear emphasis on the User Interface and
User Experience. She covered new interface patterns, as wel as evolving
behaviour of visitors.
The second day I attended 'The Human Mind and Usability. How Your Customers Think' by Marieke McClosky. Marieke's session was fully focused on psychological research concerning navigation behaviour, decision making, trust, group behaviour and expentancy, priming, framing, long term memory, short term memory, working memory and so on.
The third day I attended 'Integrating Social Feautures on Mainstream Websites' by Jen Cardello. Jen's session was about features like sharing, twitter, reviewing, and when these features come to full power when combined correctly regarding similar topics like group behaviour, trust and decision making and emotions.
Some of the features Kara covered were:
- Mega Menus; when are they useful, how should the be used, and how should they not be used. Documented with clear figures of usertesting and screenshots.
- Library navigation, where the navigation is 90 degrees turned, to mimic the books on a shelf. The main advice is: do not use, because it breaks the expectation of how a website should work.
- Logging In; about the when and why using login API's of one of the popular social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Windows Live or LinkedIn. This can be very usefull on websites that need a login-system with a low-barrier, thus increasing traffic, while collecting user data.
- Functional Footers, were these footers have preferably a contextual function helping the visitor in his quest for information and fullfilling ones task.
- Library navigation, where the navigation is 90 degrees turned, to mimic the books on a shelf. The main advice is: do not use, because it breaks the expectation of how a website should work.
- Logging In; about the when and why using login API's of one of the popular social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Windows Live or LinkedIn. This can be very usefull on websites that need a login-system with a low-barrier, thus increasing traffic, while collecting user data.
- Functional Footers, were these footers have preferably a contextual function helping the visitor in his quest for information and fullfilling ones task.
Web Shops
Both Kara McCain and Marieke McClosky spent a lot of time diving into product-presentation and webshops. Where Kara had an emphasis on the usability of the interface regarding placement of related products, and creating Shopping Carts that work (with a lot of examples of Carts that don't work), Marieke mostly dives into the psychological patterns visitors will follow. Where for example negative priming (this site is secure) diminishes trust because of the emphasis on security. If a website puts to much emphasis on 'being secure', people start to wonder if they had security incidents in the past.
Reviews
Both Marieke and Jen spent time on the effect of reviews. People use reviews to decide which item to buy. And people always go to look at the negative reviews, so hiding these will have a negative effect on the user behaviour.
It is a pity I did not follow Jens seminar on 'Persuasive Webdesign', though a blog on this was written in Danish by a Danish attendee. Marieke though shed some light on this subject, giving examples of emotion driven behaviour. One example was about a local website, which looked far to professional. Visitor did not trust the website, because it felt to corporate.
It is a pity I did not follow Jens seminar on 'Persuasive Webdesign', though a blog on this was written in Danish by a Danish attendee. Marieke though shed some light on this subject, giving examples of emotion driven behaviour. One example was about a local website, which looked far to professional. Visitor did not trust the website, because it felt to corporate.
Conclusion
It was worth for me going to Copenhagen. I feel loaded with expert knowledge, which I can use effectively to create better websites. Which is my passion.
