Paul Rouke and PRWD on User Centered Design

*Update 5th September - I must commend Kodak (in particular Thomas Hoehn, Director, Marketing and Customer Experience) for not only being quick to provide their feedback to my comments in this post (see the comments) but in also providing insights into the scale of the Kodak online operation - anyone for 100,000+ pages! - along with some of the new functionality they are looking to roll-out. Although in my comments below I have been quite critical of the current user experience of on the Kodak website, this isn’t an umbrella view of what Kodak are doing online, rather specific comments on just the product listing facility currently in use.

Now back to the original post…

Comparing and researching hundreds of digital cameras to find your new companion for the next few years should be an enjoyable, user friendly and visually rich experience - here are how 2 of the major manufacturers, Fujifilm and Kodak, are providing significantly different experiences.

For anyone who may also be interested in researching cameras online, at the end of this post is a variety of sites I have found most useful, constructive and informative, along with some of the digital camera models I have been looking at.

What I expect to get from the manufacturer websites

1. Enjoy a more interactive experience, to take me as close to handling the cameras as possible without going to a high street specialist
2. Ensure that I am aware of the latest models available
3. Determine which digital cameras fit within certain budget and specification brackets

This is where I have experienced 2 significantly different user experiences which I felt compelled to write about here.

Fujifilm - Intuitive, Customer Focused and most of all Useful

Summary of the Fujifilm user experience

Utilising Ajax functionality to provide immediate product availability updates based on user selections, this product comparison tool allows users to quickly and intuitively update the products to show which ones fit within the users shopping criteria.

User experience benefits

• Product filtering controls displayed in standard web form format ie. simple checkbox buttons, to ensure immediate user recognition
• Users can filter products by key product data, such as price ranges, zoom levels and movie functionality
• Users see immediate page responses as they check the various options on and off
• Product comparison functionality has been included in the tool for an enhanced and more useful user experience
• Irrespective of screen resolution the tool fills the available space, rather than being fixed width and potential cutting off on smaller resolutions

Recommended user experience improvements

Although when you view the Kodak user experience below, it is clear that Fujifilm certainly have the competitive advantage, to further improve the user experience, flexibility of the tool and usefulness to the more serious photographer, I would recommend some of the following:

• Providing greater amount of filtering control, and group the controls ie. photo specifications (to include megapixels, max resolution, size of LCD, lens range, ISO sensitivity), phone specs (to include weight, battery type, storage types) and more special features (to include image stabilisation, face recognition)
• Expanding on this customisation and filtering, provide distinct user experiences for different camera user types ie. the casual camera user, the prosumer user and professional users - therefore a user, by perhaps answering 1 simple question, can indicate which type of customer they are, and the shopping tool can be tailored with specific product filtering attributes - again all this can be achieved on the same page using Ajax to provide a seamless and attention holding user experience
• Consider the use of slider tools, which allow a user to slide bars to specify ranges of a particular feature that they are interested in ie. choosing between 5 and 10 megapixel, or choose between 300 and 400 grammes for example). View an implementation that Amazon uses for its diamond search facility
• As a user hovers over a camera, provide a small window which features a snapshot of the camera, possibly featuring a snippet of an external review to further entice the user to consider the camera
• For more instant explanations of specific features, rather than clicking to view more info, again a small window could be displayed above the shopping tool

Kodak - Traditional Product Display, Not User Friendly

Summary of the Kodak user experience

Adopting a more traditional product listing style, Kodak allows the user to sort the range of products (all 70-80 of them) by one of the featured specifications (megapixels, zoom, display, memory, price).

User experience downfalls

• No ability to filter the products means that you are always scrolling up and down the list of 70+ cameras
• Price confusion - some products have prices, others doesn’t - does this mean the phone isn’t available or obsolete? Can I buy this phone online? What is the price I can expect to be charged by the retailer?
• With no product filters, significant scrolling is required to view products in the mid or lower ranges of your chosen sorted column
• There is significant amounts of duplicated product specifications, but with no filtering option I still have to read the details for each camera, even though its spec may be identical to the previous camera
• The user experience (and attention levels) are interrupted each time you wish to sort the list, as the site uses standard page refreshes compared to Fujifilm dynamic page updating
• There is no visual indicator as to which column the products are currently filtered by, which can be an issue if you are moving back and forth between specific camera product pages and this list
• No comparison facility, which is crucial when shopping for technology products, where slight difference in specifications can be a decision maker for lots of shoppers

Summary of my online shopping experience at Fujifilm and Kodak

1. Fujifilm are harnessing some of user experience enhancements possible with web 2.0 functionality
2. Kodak provide a more traditional product listing which requires significantly more time for a user to interact with and identify their ideal camera
3. Based on the above brand perception is much better for Fujifilm
4. I would be much more inclined to recommend Fujifilm to friends looking for cameras with specific specifications from the main manufacturers
5. One advantage Kodak has over Fujifilm is the integrated shopping experience, allowing you to purchase some of the cameras direct - again as mentioned earlier as this isn’t a facility offered for each camera it could in fact be detrimental to the brand and user experience - for instance a user may wonder why Kodak are willing to sell only some cameras direct
6. Although Fujifilm certainly have the competitive advantage over Kodak with their current shopping comparison tool, as I have idenfied there are further enhancements that they could make to create an even richer and useful tool for all levels of digital camera shopper

As promised, useful links for online camera shopping!

• Digital Photography Review - highly detailed, independent reviews
• Trusted Reviews - very comprehensive digital camera reviews
• Digital Camera Resources - more in-depth digital camera reviews
• Photography Blog - advertiser intensive but useful reviews

And some of the digital cameras I have been looking at…

• The Olympus SP560-UZ - the strongest contender yet for my cash!
• Fujifilm Finepix S9600
• Fujifilm S6500fd
• Olympus E-410
• Nikon D40

I would welcome your comments on any aspect of this post, whether its the camera models I am considering (and your recommendations), other manufacturer websites providing good or bad user experiences, as well as comments on my comments and recommendations.