Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

UPDATE****

Thanks to Hakan at Bazaarvoice for pointing out a 2nd libel story for Yelp to contend with. This time its dentist Yvonne Wong who feels the ‘lies’ about her should not be posted on Yelp.

In addition the Eisenberg/Norberg case looks like its reached an amicable conclusion:

On Friday, a San Francisco chiropractor, Steven Biegel, settled a libel case he had filed against a former patient, Christopher Norberg, after Norberg posted a review complaining about Biegel’s billing practices.

Details of the settlement are confidential. Norberg replaced his post on Biegel’s Yelp page with an apology that reads, “A misunderstanding between both parties led us to act out of hand. I chose to ignore Dr. Biegel’s initial request to discuss my posting. In hindsight, I should have remained open to his concerns. Both Dr. Biegel and I strongly believe in a person’s right to express their opinions in a public forum.”

Now back to the original post!

Having very recently posted some comments about the value of user reviews on the UK version of Yelp, I have read with much interest a post by Bryan Eisenberg referring to the US version of Yelp, where one of their users faces a lawsuit for leaving negative reviews of a service provider.

The negative review (make that 2 negative reviews in response to the comments he got back!) was by Christopher Norberg and he is being sued by a San Francisco chiropractor, Steven Biegel.

A couple of quotes from the main article on the San Francisco Chronicle are as follows:

In a case that could chill free speech online, a San Francisco chiropractor has sued a local artist over negative reviews published on Yelp, the popular Web site that rates businesses.

When the chiropractor complained about the review, Norberg replaced it with a new entry a few weeks later that read in part, “I think that he is trying to scare me into removing a negative post (that might explain why he has only positive ones). I believe that he has been harassing me into shutting up, and I feel as a consumer I have a voice and that I can use it on forums made for sharing it, especially when I feel that the experience was unsatisfactory.”

The case raises questions about whether people can use the Internet to express negative feelings about others and also about the long-term viability of businesses like Yelp that publish third-party reviews, even though Yelp – under the federal Communications Decency Act – is not responsible for the content it publishes.

“When people try to pull down unflattering material, it has the absolute opposite effect” of what they intend, he said. “It’s very difficult to silence speakers on the Internet – it’s a culture of people who don’t like those kinds of attempts.”

My views

As you will see in my comments on Bryan’s page I am a big advocate of free speech online (providing people sharing their views have a clear conscience) and our recent partnership we have been putting in place with Bazaarvoice for UCDcommerce is a testament to our views of the importance of allowing users to review, positively or negatively, a company or individual providing a service.

Your Views

• have you ever left a negative review online?
• do you feel you should have the right to leave a negative review?
• when you see reviews which are all 100% positive, does this make you wonder how genuine the reviews are or does it just prove how good the service and/or provider is?
• which sites do you leave feedback and star ratings on, if any?

It would be really good to get some debate going on this subject as its one which plays a vital role in affecting conversion rates of online websites and e-commerce sites.

We’re recently added a new page to our main business site which you may be interested in looking at, which provides an overview of UCDcommerce, our best practice driven, user-centered e-commerce platform.

Usability Testing and Usability Evaluations for Retailers

The new page also features links to our e-commerce research services, usability testing and usability evaluations, which can be invaluable for existing retailers who are looking to develop the business case to replatform.

As part of a fiscal stimulus package designed to boost the UK economy, the British government has announced a reduction in the rate of Value Added Tax from 17.5% to 15%, effective from Monday December 1st, to last 13 months. This is the first time that the VAT rate has changed in 18 years – a whole generation has grown up knowing no other rate.

Retailers and consumers alike will be pleased to see a reduction in costs and prices as a result of the VAT cut, but there is a problem – retailers will have to update their prices in response to the change and they have only a week to do it. Receipts, invoices and direct debits will have to change, as will calculations made by e-commerce websites and online billing systems. As pointed out in the article linked to above:

The British Retail Consortium welcomed the cut, which will last 13 months and cost £12.5bn in a full year, but warned that getting the price cuts in place by Monday would be “a mammoth and costly task”.

…

“Shops will cope, but implementing a new VAT rate in just a week will be exceptionally difficult for customers and retailers at their busiest time of year.”

…

The logistical problems stores will face include changing IT systems that read barcodes, and shopfloor staff will have to change prices on store shelves, change swing tags on goods and put stickers over prices pre-printed on packaging. The BRC said there would be “rounding issues”.

Fortunately for our clients using UCDCommerce, we’re already prepared for the possibility of a change in the VAT rate and will automatically update their e-commerce sites for them. Automatic adjustments to listed prices and billing mean that there’s no difficulty at all in keeping up with the VAT rate change.

But the story might not be the same for everyone. The rate has been the same for so long that many software developers may have simply built the 17.5% value into their programs, making it costly and time-consuming to change. And some smaller retailers may lack the knowledge or expertise to modify their software, so may be forced to pay for a software developer to make the modifications or risk charging the wrong rate of VAT. Not only that, but the rate has to be set back again in January 2010! The government has managed to create a whole new ‘Y2K’ bug and has given the British retail sector a week to fix it – good news for retailers who have well-managed e-commerce operations, bad news for those who don’t.

If you’re a retailer and you find that you’re having problems with the VAT change, it’s worth considering a few options:

• Talk to your e-commerce provider and make sure that they are updating your site with the new VAT rates
• Your IT department may have access to the e-commerce software and may be able to adjust the VAT rate
• In situations where the original developers of your e-commerce platform are no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the site, you may need to contact them for assistance
• If you’re using an open source e-commerce platform, you may be able to contact a freelance developer with knowledge of how to update the software

Of course, none of this is necessary for people who have well-maintained e-commerce systems. PRWD’s clients won’t have to spare a moment’s thought to consider the implications of the change because we take care of these issues for them. But this issue does highlight the importance of being able to react to changes far beyond your own control and it may well end up exposing many businesses who are not able to keep up.

If you would like to talk to us about your e-commerce operation, you can find our contact details here.

As part of our continual improvements to the UCDCommerce platform, I’ve recently been working on implementing some improvements to the checkout process. One of the most interesting pieces of work involved with this was the implementation of additional credit/debit card validation checks. Validation is the process of establishing whether or not a given piece of data is valid – that it meets the forms and standards expected. In the case of e-commerce checkout processes, it is important to ensure that the details that the user submits are correct, and to give feedback to the user as they are submitting them.

Handling of credit card data is of paramount importance for trust and security, so it’s a good idea to check, as much as possible, that the user has entered the details correctly before submission. If the user does accidentally submit invalid data, this can lead to payments failing to go through, which is potentially worrying for the user and may also be an overhead for the retailer if they need to respond to any user support requests on the subject.

Fortunately, there are a number of checks that can be done to ensure that credit card data is valid, before submitting the data to the card issuer for payment processing. This can’t ensure that the user made no mistakes at all, but it can catch most errors before submission. Amongst the possible checks are:

• Number of digits
  An obvious check is to ensure that the number of digits is correct, for the given type of card.
• Card prefix
  The first few digits (normally the first two or four digits) of a credit card number depend on the type of the card (e.g. MasterCard, Visa, AmEx). It is possible to check that the prefix digits match the user’s selection of card type.
• Luhn algorithm check
  The Luhn Algorithm is a simple formula which can be used to check the validity of many different types of ID number, including credit card numbers. If there’s a mis-typed digit in the number, this check is likely to catch it.

When combined, these checks all act to ensure that any errors in the input of a credit card number are detected before submission, giving the user an opportunity to double-check and correct their input before submission. What we have implemented is a simple system which gives visual feedback to the user, showing a green tick symbol when they have inputted a valid credit card number which conforms to all of the rules mentioned above. Here’s how it looks on one of our clients’ sites:

When the user begins entering their payment card number, no feedback is given until a certain number of digits have been entered:

If the user enters an invalid number, they get this immediate feedback:

And if the number entered is valid, the user is encouraged by this feedback:

For more information, Wikipedia provides a good run-down of the various credit card numbers and their rules here.

We have recently produced a downloadable 1 page process overview for User Centered Design (UCD). I felt that it will be good to share this with our blog readers rather than this just been part of our consultancy process with our direct clients.

Below I have pulled out all the definitions of each phase in the UCD process, along with a summary of the services which are delivered during each phase.

Please note, some of the terminology used may not be too familiar to some readers, but rather than describing each service I wanted to keep this post more to the point. Feel free to call us for further information on a particular service or terminology used.

The 4 Phases of User Centered Design

• Analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Deployment

You will notice that there isn’t an order assigned to the 4 phases, as UCD is a process of continual improvement. For the development of completely new business systems, applications and e-commerce platforms, the process would start with the analysis phase and work through the remaining 3 phases, but during the deployment phase on-going evaluation of the system and the users does mean that the process can then be continued, back in to the analysis phase (but to a lesser extent).

The Analysis Phase

Definition

This phase ensures all business and user requirements are taken into consideration, prior to the start of the design phase

PRWD Services

• stakeholder analysis
• competitor benchmarking
• persona development
• defining user scenarios
• conducting field studies
• defining usability goals

The Design Phase

Definition

This phase provides a comprehensive approach to the design of the system, ensuring the design meets all user and business requirements

PRWD Services

• navigation models
• screen flow samples
• information architecture
• card sorting
• paper prototyping
• wireframing
• interaction design
• user testing

The Implementation Phase

Definition

This phase takes the user tested system and interaction designs and implements them into working systems ready to go live

PRWD Services

• object orientated design
• user interface integration
• server implementation
• heuristic evaluations
• user testing
• documentation

The Deployment Phase

Definition

This phase involves continuous evaluation of the new system, monitoring the performance against usability objectives

PRWD Services

• user/customer surveys
• field studies
• performance analysis
• improvement scoping
• continuous analysis

And finally, a UCD definition as seen on our UCDcommerce site

In broad terms, user-centered design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

Further Reading

Below are a range of links which will provide additional information on User Centered Design

• User Centered Design and Web Development Article
• What is User Centered Design – from the Usability Professionals Association
• Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User Centered Design
• The Role of User Centered Design and Usability in a Project

Variations in UCD methodology- what are yours?

There will always be slight variation’s in the process with other usability and software development agencies, and I’ll be interested to hear comments on these differences.

On saying this, one thing is for sure – when following User Centered Design principles, users need to be an integral part of the complete design and development process.