Paul Rouke and PRWD on User Centered Design

Following the recent launch of our UCDcommerce platform, we’re now beginning to brainstorm potential straplines for the platform, which will feature on the new logo (hold your horses, we’ve not got to that yet!) and website (when designed and developed).

Straplines Following My Blue Chip Retailing Background

To recap on my reasons why I decided to begin developing UCDcommerce 12 months ago, this came off the back of my 7 years commercial experience in User Centered Design for Shop Direct Group, the UK’s biggest shop at home group. PRWD certainly wasn’t going to settle for any off-the-shelf or mid level e-commerce platform, instead we were going to be in complete control of how our platform will evolve, based upon client, but most importantly users, requirements.

With a continual evolvement of UCDcommerce planned, my initial strapline ideas very much revolved around our aim to deliver enterprise level e-commerce solutions to blue chip clients (both existing and new), and I must admit I was very happy with these 1st ideas.

If you’d like to see my ideas 1st hand, download a pdf mindmap of my initial strapline ideas for UCDcommerce.

Alternatively I’ve listed them out below:

• blue chip e-commerce intelligence
• user centered enterprise e-commerce
• remarkable e-commerce solutions
• harnessing consumer intelligence
• user driven e-commerce
• where business goals meet user goals
• consumer driven e-commerce
• engage, convert and retain customers
• results driven e-commerce
• enterprise level intelligence

What do mean they are corporate and boring!?

Following my personal initial brainstorming the team got together, and although the consensus was that these straplines certainly encompassed the vision and strategy for UCDcommerce, they have a strong leaning towards being corporate and ultimately boring. In addition Katie felt that although users/consumers are key drivers for our platform, these straplines lacked more of a commercial focus. To quote Katie,

“Most of these straplines aren’t selling the benefits to the seller, only the user, and they could be more fun!”

Not one for ignoring constructive criticism, I embraced our teams views and we swiftly moved on to thinking of how to combine the user benefits and the commercial objectives for our User Centered Designed e-commerce platform.

Oh and adding some fun and personality into the strapline where high on the agenda!

Straplines Following Group Brainstorming

You can download a pdf mindmap of our group strapline ideas for UCDcommerce.

Alternatively, they are listed out below:

• converting shoppers to buyers
• driving shoppers to buy
• from shoppers to buyers
• from surfing to spending
• user experience drives sales
• more than a shopping solution
• selling, the right way
• consumer driven e-commerce
• engage and convert shoppers
• because happy users spend more
• because satisfied users increase sales
• because users want to enjoy shopping
• if they enjoy shopping they’ll buy

And the new strapline is…

We’ve not decided yet! Alongside the strapline we are developing the long term strategy for UCDcommerce, and therefore we’re making sure that we don’t rush in making the right decision.

We’d be interested in finding out your views on which straplines resonate best with you, knowing that UCDcommerce is all about delivering user centered shopping experiences which provide engaging shopping experiences, resulting in increased conversions, referrals, basket sizes and repeat visits for our clients.

We have recently begun a business streamlining and modernisation process with a client, and running alongside our standard User Centered Design (UCD) process we are adopting the DMAIC framework.

The DMAIC framework is an essential guide in conducting process improvement projects, and DMAIC is used by Six Sigma Black Belts. It is an acronym for Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control.

What soon become clear when we conducted the pre-analysis of our clients business is that the combination of the UCD process and the DMAIC framework will provide us with an exceptional process improvement model which will deliver ROI on a complete range of Key Performance Indicators that will be affected during this project, from both our clients internal processes to their customers relationship with our client and their account management.

Below I have visualised how the UCD process and DMAIC framework will be used simultaneously by PRWD for this and many more clients.

I’d be interested to hear of any other software development and usability companies who are using UCD and DMAIC together during projects to deliver lean manufacturing processes for your clients.

This article is Part 3 of 4 focussing on User Centered Navigation and Findability within PRWD’s E-commerce Platform.

Dynamic Categories and Shop by Situation

To reference the introductory article on user centered navigation and findability, “No two web users will exhibit exactly the same browsing behaviour when navigating an e-commerce site”.

Similarly, different visitors will have different reasons for visiting the site, and therefore their ’situations’ can be very different.

Dynamic categories centered around user driven situations and customer groups provide a unique way for our client to group products across their whole catalogue which suit the wants and needs of particular customers.

Using Persona’s to Target Groups of Customers

During the initial analysis phase of the User Centered Design process with Contact Packaging, it became clear that there were specific situations which their existing (and potential) customers are in. From here we were able to develop a series of persona’s to reflect the customers in these different groups, enhancing the effectiveness of the User Centered Design process that was underway.

With this customer analysis and persona’s we developed a method for Contact Packaging, using the PRWD tag engine, to create dynamic categories which specifically target groups of potential customers.

Objectives for Providing Dynamic Categories to Target Customer Groups

• There should be no limit to the number of customer groups that can be created
• Customer groups can be created and put live within 1 minute
• Customer groups should drive conversions from Search Engine Marketing campaigns
• Customer groups should be visible throughout the store, encouraging usage
• Customer groups should enhance the effectiveness of the tag engine, including the tag cloud available under the search facility
• Customers fitting any of the ’situations’ should be encouraged by how they are being recommended a range of products which may suit what they are looking for, which in turn provides a more personal and intelligent shopping experience

The key to the dynamic categories and shop by situation interactive tool is that it isn’t intend to suit all visitors, and even for visitors which fall into one of the situations, it isn’t expected that they will be interested in buying all of the product suggestions.

Instead, the shop by situation is intended to compliment the wide range of other navigation methods available, whilst providing a more intelligent and personalised way for visitors to browse products from a wide range of categories which may well match their buying wants and needs.

The 1st Step on the Ladder for Shop by Situation

The 1st iteration of our Shop by Situation functionality certainly meets all the objectives set out above, but from our business perspective this is simply the 1st step on the ladder for this type of functionality. As we strive to enhance user engagement and provide even more personalised product suggestions, the flexibility we intend providing our clients will provide even more intelligent ways to target customer groups and increase relevancy for these customers browsing the store.

Comments please…!

Have you seen this type of navigation method used? How effective do you feel this method of grouping products could be for different types of products? I’ll look forward to hearing any views and comments on this post!

The business website for PRWD, our user experience consultancy and web application development agency, has recently been updated to provide potential and existing clients with detailed information on PRWD’s key services and facilities.

Key services PRWD provide are:

Improving User Experience

From expert usability critiques, eye-tracking and usability testing, through to wireframing and delivering full user centred design processes

Building Innovative Web Applications

Harnessing expertise in user interface design and leading edge web development, PRWD deliver innovative online applications and develop partnerships with businesses looking to engage their visitors and increase their market share.

Providing Online Marketing Strategy Consultancy

Using their extensive commercial experience PRWD work with businesses looking to innovate in their industry, providing expert consultancy services to deliver engaging, long term online marketing strategies.

Further key pages from PRWD include:

• How PRWD deliver Return-on-Investment
• User Experience and Customer Engagement Training Courses
• User Testing and Research Facilities
• User Experience Resources, including white papers, case studies and links

If your business is looking to improve its online user experience and subsequently the effectiveness of converting traffic into customers, feel free to give me a call at our Manchester office on 0161 918 6729.

At the recent Information Architecture Summit 2007, nForm, providing user experience consulting and based in Canada, created a set of 16 trading cards for delegates to trade with each other for prizes.

The trading cards were split into 3 clearly defined areas:

• understanding
• solving
• evaluating

Each area provided keys steps of information architecture, although that isn’t to say that all steps are necessary for every project undertaking information architecture changes and optimisation.

Information on each of the steps can be seen at the UX Methods website which was developed specifically for the 2007 summit, and I would encourage you to take a look at their intepretation of the key steps of information architecture as they make for clear, if not short, explanation of each step.

For instance, find out details on some of the less commonly documented tasks such as:

• What is Kano Analysis and why use Kano Analysis
• What is the Alignment Model and why use this in your project
• What are Swimlanes and why are they useful

Naturally there is information on the most widely recognised information architecture steps such as card sorting, personas, process flows, site maps, wireframing, web analytics and usability testing.

I’d be interested in your feedback on this simple but effective definition of information architecture, and links to to other more comprehensive definitions would be useful also.