Thought for the week

"Sight is a faculty; vision is an art."

Visualising stuff

I've always prided myself on my ability to visualise things. Whether it's a proposition, a project vision or some data. I'm not exactly a natural and I have to work hard at it. I've studied the art, and I've tried to develop my understanding of what does and doesn't work. And I've got to a place where I feel comfortable with my ability to get it right, but I'm always trying to improve.
 

I've loved the fact that others seem to be picking up on this art-form in ever increasing numbers. A picture really can speak a thousand words. However, I've now got to admit I come across more pointless info-graphics and visualisation that simply doesn't work than I come across best practice examples.

 

I have some feelings and views on why this is happening:

1. Not everyone can do this well, but a lot of people can use software that creates nice visual outputs - so they just give it a go.
2. People don't get the fact that it is a skill and you really need to understand visualisation techniques to get it right - so they just give it a go.
3. It's got to work for the audience its intended for. Therefore to get it right you've got to understand your audience. People don't always invest the time to achieve this - but they just give it a go.
4. Only a few people really ever understand the breadth of a subject (sometimes no one). People aren't often honest with themselves - so they just give it a go.
5. It's not always the answer and it isn't always needed or helpful. It is, however, a fashionable thing to do - so they just give it a go.

There are probably more reasons why this is happening. I hope people ultimately don't think the benefits of visualisation are in any way reduced by the sometimes awful examples they come across. When it's done well it really can enlighten people and keep a vision in the front of everyone’s mind.

Thought for the week

"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to be in the first group; there was much less competition."

Thought for the week

"Your legacy should be that you made it better than it was when you got it." - Lee Iacocca

Thought for the week

"People are not against you; they are merely for themselves." - Gene Fowler

Using Data to Drive Online User Experience (a quick look at some of the opportunities)

Cloud Computing, the Semantic Web, Linked Data, Web 2.0, Web 3.0...

...all this coupled with other data you've got e.g. web analytics, BI, MI, Research etc. means that there is probably increasing amounts of data available to you and your E-business team. Unfortunately there probably isn't that much increasing insight. Why this is the case is for another article, perhaps by someone else. For my part I'm just interested in talking a little bit about tapping into this data (how) and doing something with it (what/why) to improve user experiences (UX) and/or to sell a bit more online.

Lets start by chucking all the data sources you can think of at this point into one data pot, and perhaps ignore data sources completely. I'm not just suggesting this to make it easier to write this article. I'm also doing it because that's all it is, really - a big load of data. Until you start to work out what it means that is.

How you get at this data is through technology (services, API's etc.) but from an E-Business perspective that is just a necessary mechanic (albeit a very important mechanic and one that that will require very smart people to be involved). For me though it all starts to get a bit more exciting when we start to explore how we can turn the data into insight or start to put further mechanics in place for using insight to shape an online presence for prospects & customers.

An obvious starting point (but surprisingly little used in E-Business) is to explore your data world without looking at the data first. For example, taking a look at how it is already being put to good use in other channels, and thinking about how you might do the same. Or by taking a further look at your customer and your 'total customer experiences' (e.g. a multi-channel, full life-cycle view). You probably do this all the time in your organisation. If your not already, perhaps this time make sure that instead of looking at the 'what' start to explore the 'why'. If your customers are doing certain things when you ask them to, it is important to know this, but perhaps more important is to know why, so that we can think about how we might apply this to your digital opportunities as well. For example, if in a DM campaign customers are successfully taking up a second credit card when a particular promotional APR is applied across both. Is it the offer that makes the campaign successful or also because it is aimed at people who are more likely to be in a relationship, or who have a good 'referrer' profile? If it is both then you can think about how you might identify these people when they are browsing online and target the same message at them. This will have a few benefits:

1. Maybe obvious - but you will improve the relative performance of that campaign.
2. You should improve your cost per acquisition (CPA) and possibly budget for other campaigns.
3. You'll reduce the noise for people who are more unlikely to be interested / be able to take-up the offer.
4. By virtue of 2. & 3. you will be able to offer those people something that's more relevant to them

WIN WIN.

From a purely customer or user experience perspective this use of data can be applied in different ways. For example, if your business objective is to only drive calls where they can be defined as 'value adding' (generating some kind of value contribution) then to achieve this perhaps only offer this channel at particular points in a journey e.g. when a difficult purchase decision needs to be made. Or perhaps offering this service to different people at different times, where you know there are likely differences in these types of people e.g. people of xyz demographic exit at this point online but we know they buy this successfully offline. These sorts of solutions can also be put in place until you have properly identified 'why' certain things are happening, and until you can change the experience online to overcome those problems. Until then though, making the sale can still be achieved using the data in this way.

To supplement this, digital channels can provide even further data/insight opportunities and to a degree 'self optimise' using various technologies e.g. Omniture Test & Target. These optimisation tools are often used to help determine optimal outcomes e.g. web pages, that generate the best KPI's. This is good at telling us 'what' works best, but it often doesn't really tell us 'why'. It therefore becomes important to start to look at why. Who is it working for and who isn't it working for? What could be driving this? These are the sorts of questions we answer all the time in User Centred Design (UCD) and through various research studies, and this insight is essential to driving the best outcomes. It then also becomes really important to identify all of the relevant moments in your user experience and start to optimise them all, but also to move the experience forward we perhaps need to make web experiences more semantic and start to offer different people, at different times in different places different things. The potential of infinite combinations of outcomes is scary, and I'm not suggesting this end point is easy, or always necessary to get to, but to a degree it is already happening in sites like Amazon and will be become increasingly common and should be a consideration when thinking about data and online experiences.

These are just some of the ways we can start to apply data to improve user experiences online. And perhaps thinking about it in these terms rather than as a full blown, company wide, fully intelligent use of data (and the 'cloud') from day one, we can just start to use some of the insight data can generate a little bit more often and build our E-data world to further improve online experiences.

Thought for the week

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." - Bill Gates, Chief Systems Architect, Microsoft