Thursday, March 27, 2008

Two UX Trends: The Gradual Engagement & Caring

I came across this great entry written by Sarah Perez on ReadWriteWeb about two UX trends.

The first trend is called "Gradual Engagement." It's simply a try before you buy tactic. Let customers use your app before they give up their information. If they see value from your site, they will sign up and probably give you their real email address rather than the typical here's-my-Hotmail-address-cause-I-don't-know-if-you're-going-to-sell-my-info type of sign-up. There are plenty of other benefits such as users to adopting your app more quickly and them telling their friends about it.

But, I'll admit, it's hard to convince clients to do integrate a Gradual Engagement strategy. I've already incorporated the idea into the concepts of two projects I worked on over the past year. And, even though I coupled my visuals with a compelling argument (they agreed to it initially), it wasn't implemented at the end of the day. I got a number of reasons later stating that it didn't fit it with the revenue model or someone told them it wasn't "standard."

My advice to anyone trying to incorporate a Gradual Engagement UX model is to evaluate if the business (and the leaders) respect UX enough to consider it. If not, it'll be an upward battle. You'll be better off designing a standard login feature.

The second is a trend called "Caring for your Customers." Seems obvious, right? Well, if the content of the site, the technology, and UI design doesn't demonstrate a respect for the visitor's time, then the application/online business doesn't really care about users. And that reflects poorly on the brand you are trying to help your clients build. In my book, BRANDING TO THE POWER OF 5, I state that customers (people) have the ability very quickly sniff out a business that doesn't really care (Malcolm Gladwell's book, BLINK, covers this more). Much of this "sixth sense" evaluation has to do with the little things about the business. The same goes for online applications. The success of the online brand has everything to do with the value it provides and how easy it is to get that value.

Sarah points out that some sites have started using emotion indicators. This is a good concept that I will keep an eye on, however, simply watching how users interact with the site and how many times they return is just as valid (if not more) than if a customer were to tell you how they actually feel.

Give the article a read. Sarah spells things out pretty well:
Good UI Design: Make It Easy, Show Me You Care

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