100 Things You Should Know about People: #5 -- Decisions are Made Largely By the Unconscious

You are thinking of buying a TV. You do some research on what TV to buy and then you go online to purchase one. What factors are involved in this decision making process?

It's not what you think -- I cover this topic in my book Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? You like to think that when you make a decision you have carefully and logically weighed all the relevant factors. In the case of the TV, you have considered the size of TV that works best in your room, the brand that you have read is the most reliable, the competitive price, whether you should get blu-ray, etc etc. But the research on decision-making that has been done, especially the recent research, shows that although you want to think that your decision-making is a conscious, deliberate process, it's not. Most decisions are made through unconscious mental processing.

Unconscious decision-making includes factors such as:

What are most other people buying (social validation): "I see that a particular TV got high ratings and reviews at the website"

What will make me stay consistent in my persona (commitment): "I'm the kind of person that always has the latest think, the newest technology."

Do I have any obligations or social debts that I can pay off with this purchase (reciprocity): "My brother has had me over to his house all year to watch the games, I think it's time we had them over to our place to watch"

and on and on.

Don't Confuse Unconscious with Irrational or Bad. I take exception with Dan Ariely and his book, Predictably Irrational. Most of our mental processing is unconscious, and most of our decision-making is unconscious, but that doesn't mean it's faulty, irrational or bad. We are faced with an overwhelming amount of data (11,000,000 pieces of data come into the brain every second!) and our conscious minds can't process all of that. Our unconscious has evolved to process most of the data and to make decisions for us according to guidelines and rules of thumb that are in our best interest most of the time. This is the genesis of "trusting your gut", and most of the time it works!

So What To Do? -- The next step is to think about what this means for people who design things like websites, where you are providing information and/or engaging customers to make a decision. This is, of course, the topic of my book, but let's hear from you. If we know that people are making decisions unconsciously, rather than consciously, what are some strategies we should employ at the website to encourage them to engage?

And for those of you who like to read, great books on this topic are:

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer -- The BEST book on the topic of decision-making in general.

Strangers to Ourselves: The adaptive unconscious by Timothy Wilson -- A little bit more academic, but still a great book.

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

and of course

Neuro Web Design: What makes them click?

100 Things You Should Know about People: #4 -- The Canonical Perspective

Warning: A Kind of Long Preamble -- Whenever I talk about "old" research some people start right away to dismiss it. It's easy to think that research done in the 1990s or 1980s, or heavens! the 1970s! couldn't hold any interest for us now. I heartily disagree. If the research is sound and it's about people, then the chances are high that it still has relevance. Certainly if you are talking about research from the 1980s showing that it is hard to read text on a computer screen, then more recent data is important --  the quality of computer monitors has changed so dramatically from the 1980s till now (believe me on this one, as I was around to see the screens of the 1980s. I am aware that many of you reading this blog have only seen a screen from the 80s in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, or maybe you saw it in an old black and white movie (joke), or, as my daughter likes to say to me, "that must have been when you were younger and the dinosaurs roamed).

Have an Open Mind -- So the purpose of the above long preamble to ask you to have an open mind about the following research that was done and written up in a book from 1981.

Draw a Coffee Cup -- If you ask someone to draw a picture of a coffee cup, chances are they will draw something that looks like this:

Everyone Drew A Similar Picture -- In fact, a researcher named Palmer went all around the world and asked people to draw a coffee cup and the pictures above were what people drew. Notice the perspective of the cups. A few of them are "straight on", but most are drawn from a perspective as if you are slightly above the cup looking down, and offset a little to the right or left. This has been dubbed the "canonical perspective".

Why Not This? -- No one he studied drew this:

which is what you would see if you were looking at a coffee cup from way above and looking down. Of course not, you say, but.... why not? And if you are going to say that the first perspective is the one that we actually see most of the time, when we look at a coffee cup... that it is the angle we are used to seeing the cup on our kitchen tables, I will tell you that this research has been done on many objects. For example, people were shown pictures of horses from various angles and perspectives and they most quickly recognized it as a horse when it was from this same canonical perspective. Yet I am fairly sure that most of us have not looked at horses from above most of the time. And the research was done with people recognizing a very small dog or cat. The canonical perspective still won out, even though when we see cats or very small dogs we are mainly looking at them from high above, not just slightly above. In fact the research shows that when we imagine an object we imagine it from this canonical perspective.

So, Why Care? -- It seems to be a universal trait that we think about, remember, imagine and recognize objects from this canonical perspective. Why care? Well, if you want to use icons at your web site or in your web or software application that people will recognize, then you might want to use this perspective. This is probably not so critical if you are using a well known logo, for example, the logo for itunes or Firefox, but becomes important if the icon is not as familiar, such as recognizing below that one of the logos is of a truck, or a photo printer.

What Do You Think? -- Should we continue to use the canonical perspective?

And for those of you who like to read research:

Palmer, S. E., Rosch, E., and Chase, P. (1981). “Canonical Perspective and the Perception of Objects.” In Long, J., and Baddeley, A.  (Eds.), Attention and performance IX, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

100 Things You Should Know about People: #3 -- The Magic Number 3 (or 3 to 4)

7 +  -  2???

3 or 4???

Those of you who have been in the field of usability or user experience for a few years have probably heard the phrase "The Magic Number 7 Plus Or Minus 2". This refers, actually, to what I would call an urban legend. Here's the legend part:

Legend: "A guy named Miller did research and wrote a research paper showing that people can remember from 5 to 9 (7 plus or minus 2) things, and that people can process 7 plus or minus 2 pieces of information at a time. So you should only put 5 to 9 items on a menu, or have 5 to 9 tabs on a screen".

Have you heard this? If you've been reading about usability for a while I'm sure you have. Well, it's not quite accurate. Another guy named Baddeley questioned all this urban legend. Baddeley dug up Miller's paper and discovered that it wasn't a research paper, it was a talk that Miller gave at a professional meeting. And it was basically Miller thinking out loud about whether there is some kind of inherent limit to the amount of information that people can process at a time.

Baddeley conducted a long series of studies on human memory and information processing. And what he concluded is that the number is 3 to 4, not 5 to 9.

You can remember about 3-4 things (for about 20 seconds) and then they will disappear from memory unless you repeat them over and over. For example, let's say you are driving in your car and talking on your cell phone (ok, you shouldn't be doing that) and someone gives you a number to call. But you don't have a pen handy, and anyway you are driving. So you try to memorize the number long enough to hang up from one call and dial the new number. What do you do? You repeat the number over and over (putting it back into short term memory each time, which buys you another 20 seconds). The interesting thing about phone numbers is that they are more than 3 or 4 numbers long. So they are hard to remember for more than 20 seconds.

712-569-4532

We also tend to chunk information into groups that have 3-4 items in them. So a phone number in the US is: 712-569-4532. Three chunks, with 3-4 items in each chunk. If you know the area code "by heart" (i.e., it's stored in long term memory), then you don't have to remember that, so one whole chunk went away. Phone numbers used to be easier to remember because you mainly called people in your area code, so you had the area code memorized (plus you didn't even have to "dial" the area code at all). And then if you were calling people in your town each town had the same "exchange" -- that is the 569 part of the phone number above. So all you had to remember was the last four numbers. No problem! I know I'm "dating" myself here by telling you how it used to be back in the old days. (I live in a small town in Wisconsin, and people here still give their number out as the last four digits only).

But that's not all! Researchers working in the field of decision-making tell us that people can't effectively choose between more than 3 to 4 items at a time.

So, what does all this mean? Can you really only have 4 items on a navigation bar? or 4 tabs on a screen, or 4 items on a product detail page at an e-commerce web site? No, not really. You can have more, as long as you group and chunk.

Here's an example: At the Upton Tea site they have lots of tabs, but the tabs are not chunked into groups of 3 or 4.

So people will tend to do a partial scan and not even look at or read all the tabs. (I love their teas, by the way.. just wish they would do some work on the layout and emotional aspects of their site, but that's probably another blog!).

I've covered more than 4 items in this blog post, so I'll stop now! For those of you who like to read research here are some references:

• Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Baddeley, A. D. (1994). The magical number seven: Still magic after all these years? Psychological Review, 101, 353-356.
• Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97

Help Me: Take this short survey so I can learn what you want in this blog

Thank you to everyone who is reading my blog. I've been monitoring the analytics and the readership is growing every day. It's exciting, and I appreciate everyone who stops by.

I'd like to get an idea from you about what it is you would like most to see at the blog, so I've put together a very short survey (it's like only 3 questions) and I would appreciate it if you would take a moment to fill it out. I'll share the responses I get in an upcoming blog if you are interested in what everyone said.

So here goes, my first ever survey at the What Makes Them Click? blog! And thanks in advance for taking the survey.


Click Here to take survey

100 Things You Should Know about People: #2 -- Line Length

Have you ever had to decide how wide a column of text you should use on a screen? Should you use a wide column with 100 characters per line? or a short column with 50 characters per line?

It turns out that the answer depends on whether you want people to read faster or whether you want them to like the page!

Research (see reference below) demonstrates that 100 characters per line is the optimal length for on-screen reading speed; but it's not what people prefer. People read faster with longer line lengths (100 characters per line), but they prefer a short or medium line length (45 to 72 characters per line). In the example above from the New York Times Reader, the line length averages 39 characters per line.

The research also shows that people can read one single wide column faster than multiple columns, but they prefer multiple columns (like the New York Times Reader above).

So if you ask people which they prefer they will say multiple columns with short line lengths. Interestingly, if you ask them which they read faster, they will insist it is also the multiple columns with short line lengths, even though the data shows otherwise.

It's a quandary: Do you give people what they prefer or go against their own preference and intuition, knowing that they will read faster if you use a longer line length and one column?

What would you do?

Dyson, M.C. (2004). "How Physical Text Layout Affects Reading from Screen." Behavior & Information Technology, 23(6), pp. 377-393.

100 Things You Should Know about People: #1-- Inattention Blindness

I've decided to start a series called 100 Things You Should Know about People. As in: 100 things you should know if you are going to design an effective and persuasive website, web application or software application. Or maybe just 100 things that everyone should know about humans!

The order that I'll present these 100 things is going to be pretty random. So the fact that this first one is first doesn't mean that's it's the most important.. just that it came to mind first.

I hope you enjoy this series. Make sure to let me know by posting comments.

So here's #1 -- Inattention Blindness

First let's start with a little test for you to take. Watch the video below:




This is an example of what is called "inattention blindness" or "change blindness". The idea is that people often miss large changes in their visual field. This has been shown in many experiments. Here is a description of an experiment that was recently conducted:



So what does this mean if you are designing a website or something on a computer screen? It means that you can't assume that just because something is on the screen means that people see it. This is especially true when you refresh a screen and make one change on it. People may not realize they are even looking at a different screen. Remember, just because something happens in the visual field doesn't mean that people are consciously aware of it.

Watch Out For Spending More Because of Habit

When I go to fill up on gas I always use the middle grade of gas... (this is the principle of contrast, by the way... when faced with choices of varying prices many people will pick the price that is one down from the most expensive... but that is a sidebar... it's not even what this blog post is about!). And the middle grade of gas is supposed to be in the middle, right?

I don't know if I'm getting paranoid these days or if this is a random occurence, or if some companies are actually trying to get me to spend more money, but here's what I've been noticing: Instead of having the middle price in the middle... the HIGHEST price is actually in the middle! By habit I put the nozzle in the tank and always push the middle button... And I am therefore, unwittingly, choosing the most expensive gas.

Here are some examples:

And as we all know, once a habit is formed, it's hard to break.

Anyone else been noticing this type of "switch" at gasoline pumps or in other ways?

Case Study: Applying Neuro Web Design to a web site for "Creative Wealth Building"

Nick Pfennigwerth took his old site:

and applied some of the principles in my book Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? Here is what Nick wrote to me:

"What I found most interesting and what I applied the most was activating the old brain. If you go to, www.creative-wealthbuilding.com/what-are-smart-goals.html , I used your methods for activating the old brain by telling a dangerous story with a picture of danger in the first couple of paragraphs. Then, I used other photos such as the beautiful woman holding money and the creative art of the human mind.

I also tried to activate the mid brain and new brain by making time sensitive offers and "limited time only". Under the picture of the man mountain climbing, you can see a yellow box with a "jump link" to the bottom of my page. My most wanted response for that page is for my reader to sign-up for my wealth builders club. So, I used your techniques of limited offers, exclusive, and instant."

The major changes I made:
New color format. I decided to use a blue format to create more of a trusting look and feel
Pictures. I use pictures that have some sex appeal, food, and danger.
I tell more stories. I use story-telling to create images and get people engaged.
I use limited time, exclusive, and time sensitive appeal.
I create solid and practical value.

After reading your book and implemented your ideas, I've received extremely positive reviews that I've helped others increase their lives and that my website is fun."

Here is one of his re-designed pages:

You can see Nick's site at: http://www.creative-wealthbuilding.com/what-are-smart-goals.html. 

Thanks Nick for sending me your case study!

If you have read the book and applied some of the principles, send me your case study with before and after pages links or screenshots and a list of the changes you made.

Case Study: The Psych Files applies Neuro Web Design

A few months ago I did an interview for Michael Britt's podcast called The Psych Files. Michael has a loyal following (there have been 10,000 downloads of this particular podcast). Michael was "taken" with my book and decided to apply some of the things he learned to make changes in his own website. 

Here's part of his original website:

Michael wrote me an email that said:

Changes based on the recommendations in your book:

1) Added in user feedback (chapter 2: social validation)

2) added in data (Chapter 2: Added data: number of views on YouTube, Google search result info)

3) Reciprocity (chapter 3: "The Psych Files podcast offers.....completely free audio and web resources.")

4) Emphasized scarcity (chapter 4: "The is the ONLY place on the web where you'll find this"...)

5) Drew on the idea of fear of loss (chapter 9: "Don't be worried about getting a low grade...")

6) Added in a success stories (chapter 10: "I went back to school after 15 years, and my daughter.....")

I also did these things:

1) Made it more clear what problem the user had that my product would solve (instead of emphasizing how great I thought the product was)

2) Created visuals that are a) amusing, b) reinforce what the product will do for the potential buyer.

3) Bolded the important words

4) Decreased the amount of text overall

And here's the "after" web page:

You can see the web site at: http://www.thepsychfiles.com/brain-mnemonics-for-sale/.


Thanks Michael for sending me your case study!

Chase Makes A Miracle Happen Part II

In my last post I talked about the chase blueprint site (http://www.chaseblueprint.com/#/home) and asked readers to write in with their ideas about why this website is so persuasive. Here's a summary of what you wrote in:

-- The use of the word You frequently (activiates old brain)

-- Using attractive people who are "like me" (principles of attractiveness and similarity)

-- Use of stories

-- Use of animation to grab attention

-- Use of trigger words such as "free"

Here's what I think Chase could be doing to be even more persuasive and engaging:

-- The stories are good, but with the use of stories there is a lot of use of "I" rather than "you". So Chase should consider interspersing the "I" with more "you".

-- Tell me how many people have signed up for blueprint. (Social Validation principle).

-- For even more social validation, have more people telling stories rather than just the one couple.

-- Using close-ups would be better at least some of the time, so that we can see the person's face more clearly and closely.

Thanks to everyone who wrote comments and sent in emails!

Chase Makes a Miracle Happen With Persuasive Design: Part I

An impossible task: I don't know about you, but these days I'm not used to thinking of a credit card company as "my friend" or "on my side". And the last thing I'm interested in is getting another credit card. Then how is it that in less than 5 minutes Chase convinced me that I absolutely have to have their credit card, and not only that, that I will want to use it as much as possible rather than any other card I have?

Let's hear from you: I'm actually not going to tell you how they did it --  yet! That's why this blog is labelled as Part I. I thought it would be more fun if we have everyone go to this site: http://www.chaseblueprint.com/#/home, spend some time looking at all the features of the card, etc, and then come back here and leave a comment with all the effective persuasive design techniques you noticed that they have used. Or if you are more comfortable with just sending me an email, send your comments to weinschenk@gmail.com. (Those of you who have read my book Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? may have an advantage when it comes to coming up with a list of persuasive design ideas they incorporated, but I'm sure everyone will be able to come up with at least a few of the concepts they are using).

I'll compile the ideas: I'll wait a few days and see what everyone has to say and then I'll write Part II and summarize what everyone found.

Trust Lesson #2: Building Trust Is Not Enough

I choose the vendor I trust and have a "habit" for:  I saw the movie Julie and Julia and now am reading the book. I got inspired, therefore, to try making a souffle and a quiche. Except I don't own a souffle dish or a quiche dish. So, time to do my part for the economy, and actually purchase some kitchen wares. I happened to be in a Williams Sonoma store and even looked at and picked up both a quiche and a souffle dish. But I didn't purchase them. I was thinking about a news story I had read recently that Amazon is positioning itself to be the major retailer of everything. I'm an Amazon fan (I actually bought their stock when they first went public and then stupidly sold it about 3 months later!), so I decided I'd buy my souffle and quiche dishes online at Amazon.

Uh, oh, something goes wrong: I quickly found what I wanted and ordered with "one click". Two days later they arrive -- each broken into little pieces.  Next I go online to let them know and get a refund. You can't talk to anyone when you have a problem at Amazon, and the refund process is NOT easy. I have to find the right form online (took several tries). I have to fill out the form correctly (several more tries). I have to print labels (they want the broken dishes back). I have to send the dishes back separately. One has to go back via UPS and the other through the US mail (why is this?!?).

Trust is gone: I am a loyal Amazon fan. I buy hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise from Amazon each year. But I can tell you I will not buy anything breakable from them again, and I will think twice about buying anything that may have to be returned. This experience has eroded my trust, and not because the dishes arrived broken, but because it is so hard to get things rectified if there is a problem. Not being able to talk to a person makes me feel like Amazon doesn't care about my experience as a customer.

Building trust isn't enough: It's one thing to miss out on an opportunity to build trust with a new customer. But it's even worse to erode trust with someone who was loyal. Pay attention to the customers you have now. Make sure you evaluate your website, not only in terms of building trust, but in terms of keeping trust.

The Secret Ingredient to Web Site Loyalty

Here's the Answer: I'll state right up front -- The Secret Ingredient is .... FUN!

The Scenario: Recently I was researching a trip for my son. He's in Cairo for a semester abroad, but rather than coming straight home from there for the Christmas holidays, he's decided he wants to go to London for two weeks (ok, I can't blame him). But he's a poor college student, so he has to do this as cheaply as possible. I was on video chat with him, and we're discussing possible dates, itineraries, etc. I had to be able to search all these different options quickly. First I used Expedia, and then I used Travelocity. They were so slow, and ponderous, and had numerous usability issues. Why is it so hard to choose one-way or multi-destination? Why are the date pickers so hard to use? I was getting more and more frustrated and then somehow (I don't even remember how or why), I ended up at Kayak.com.

Is it Usability or is it Fun?: Now Kayak is much more USABLE than the other sites. And that was wonderful, but that's not what made me stay at Kayak for the rest of the research. And that's not what made me go to Kayak since then to look up all other kinds of travel. Kayak is FUN. If you don't know Kayak, then go try it out right now and then come back and finish reading the blog. Really. Go now and then come back.

So What's So Fun?: When you enter your search criteria into Kayak and press the Search button things happen... you don't just go to a screen with a progress bar, or an hourglass, or a funny picture of William Shatner... you stay on the same screen, but there are things happening... there is some kind of word unscrambler that is scrolling through word combinations. I don't even know what that thing is, but I swear I can feel excitement mounting as it is cycling through until a word or phrase appears. And the results! The results of your search, with cities, and prices starts populating right away. It starts at the bottom of the screen and works up. So first you see a bunch of flights for $775, and then the price dips and you see a bunch of entries scrolling by of $585, then $356, and WOW, it stops at $272... I WON! Now I'm not a gambler, I don't play slot machines, or even the lottery, but I"m telling you, this gets me every time. I find this website fun. Instead of dreading checking out flights I look forward to it. After I find the flight I want I am just one click away from Expedia or Travelocity or whomever else I want to use to actually BUY the flight. It will come up immediately with my flight info right there and I can purchase right away. This is great.

Fun + Usable = Trust?: There's another subtle psychological shift: I trust the info at this site. I used to go to Northwest or Travelocity or Priceline, or all of those, because I didn't trust that I was getting ALL the flights. But because Kayak.com is EASY and it's FUN... I trust it.

The secret ingredient: FUN.

Trust Issues -- A Sure Way to Kill a Marketing Campaign

Today I received a Linked In message from someone I don't know describing a free assessment tool for using social media to generate leads. The word FREE was used 3 times in all caps, so it caught my attention, of course, (FREE is a trigger word), and I clicked on the link to the web page. The page itself had some good persuasive design, but Trust alarm bells started ringing, and before long the entire interaction had gone down the drain.

Three critical Trust factors were violated in this interaction:

Trust Issue 1: Insincerity -- The original linked in email started with: "I think you attended one of our free training classes on Generating Leads using LinkedIN and or Facebook in the past."... I don't remember attending any training classes on this topic, and the author even says "I think"... so it's an amazing testament to the word FREE that I even went the next step and clicked on the link. But my Trust alarms were activated by that first sentence, and that colored the rest of my experience.

Trust Issue 2: Mispellings and grammatical errors -- At the web page itself there was a grammatical error and a mispelled word. I know this sounds small, but these are Trust issues. I was already on alert because of the original email, and seeing these errors in the copy of the web page made me wonder how legitimate these people were. STILL the copy at the web page was persuasive and I was willing to fill out the form for the free assessment. Willing, but not able! Read on...

Trust Issue 3: Usability issues and errors -- I tried to fill out the form 4 times! There were numerous unexplained errors... One of them said that Field #6 requires numbers... well, none of the fields are labelled as Field #6, but I counted and I think this was the phone number field... I did have a number in it... Another error was that there was a text box labelled "Additional Request". I had no idea what to put in there, but I got an error message saying it was required! I tried 4 times to fill out the form, but kept getting errors. Now my trust had eroded down to zero. Not only will I not be getting my free assessment, or buying their service for $199 -- I will have a hard time trusting the company, and I even have written this blog post, passing on my trust issues to others.

Lesson -- Make sure you aren't violating trust. Although each of these trust issues is small on its own, together they create a Trust 3-alarm fire that chases away potential customers.

5 Ideas -- How To Use Brain Science To Create Persuasive Presentations

How many BORING presentations have you attended in your lifetime? If you are like most people the answer is "too many"! Recently I gave a talk on how to use brain science to create compelling and persuasive presentations. Here are 5 ideas from the talk:

1) Talk to the emotional brain with photos. Forget text bullet points on your slides. Those bullet points are your outline. Don't bore your audience by showing them your outline! Use colorful photos to capture the attention of the emotional brain. But don't overdo it. You don't need a different photo every 10 seconds for every thought you have.

2) Tell stories. Our brain processes information best when it is in the form of a story. Use stories throughout your presentation. These can be true stories or allegorical stories that make a point. Stories make the information easier to understand and process, and they also get people's attention. Everyone loves stories. Research shows that when you tell a story the brain is reacting as though you are the character in the story. You are, in essence, experiencing what the person in the story is experiencing.

3) Talk to the "old brain". The old brain is the part of the brain that is most interested in survival. The old brain is all about ME ME ME ME . So make sure that you start your presentation with something that is interesting to the people in the audience. Tell them a story or make a point within the first minute of the talk that is about them, not about you. That will grab their attention and their old brain will say, "I'd better pay attention to this. It's all about me".

4) Look people in the eye. In order to be believable you've got to look people in the eye while you are talking. Pick out someone in the audience and look at them for about 5 seconds, then pick another person and look at them while you are talking for about 5 seconds, etc. Even if you are not looking directly at each person, just the fact that you are looking up and making eye contact with someone gives the (largely unconscious) message that you are telling the truth and you are reliable. Looking down at your notes all the time makes it seem that you are being shifty and not telling the truth.

5) Say what everyone else is doing. Make sure to use social validation during your presentation. Don't say "Only 10% of the departments at our company are following this policy". That tells everyone that hardly anyone else is doing this activity. The principle of social validation says that people tend to want to do what everyone else is doing. So try to word this as "There are now departments at our company who have tried this new policy and have had great success".

I've got even more ideas, but I'll save them for another post.

Let me know: What are your ideas of how to make a presentation persuasive and compelling?

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scragz/

What Makes a City Usable?

Last week I was in Portland Oregon for the Usability Professional's Association Conference. It's my second time in Portland, and I was struck again with how comfortable Portland feels. A common phrase I kept hearing on this trip while talking with people from the conference was, "Have you been to Portland before? It seems like such a nice city." So I've been thinking in the last few days about the concept of a usable city. What makes Portland seem so nice? What makes it feel "usable". Here are some ideas:

1) Manageable scale: Portland is a manageable city and has a "usable scale". Meaning, it's not too big and not too small. You can get a handle on it, but there's still lots to see. There are some nice looking larger buildings to look at, but it's not overwhelming.

2) Balance of urban and nature: Portland has a good mix of urban life (sidewalks, stores, cafes) and green spaces (parks, places to sit outdoors). I was especially struck with the idea of a small square in the middle of the downtown that had flowers and Adirondack type chairs where people sat reading.

3) Diversity of people: As you walked the streets there were people young, old, hip, square, all different colors.

4) Get to the airport in 30 minutes for $2.40: OK, I was REALLY impressed with the light rail system... I walk out of my downtown hotel. I walk one very short block with my backpack and roller luggage. I get to the corner and buy myself a ticket for the light rail (the machine for purchasing a ticket is NOT very usable, especially early in the morning by a first time user... that they can improve on). I don't have to go down an escalator or a set of stairs... so it's easy with luggage. I just get my ticket from a machine on the street. The light rail train arrives even before I've gotten my ticket. It says AIRPORT in big letters. I get on (no steps, just roll the luggage right on) and ride the train about 30 minutes to the airport. It's quiet enough that I talk on my cell phone without any problem. Best of all, when I arrive at the airport and the door opens I'm IN the airport with the ticket counter in front of me. THAT was impressive. A cab to the airport costs $40... light rail $2.40...same amount of time...

5) Cacao liquid chocolate shoppe: I have to admit that Portland seemed most wonderful and usable after we found the Cacao shop across from our hotel. It's a small place, with only room for 3 people to sit on stools looking out the window. You order a "shot" of liquid chocolate in one of 3 flavors and sip your warm thick chocolate while watching a soft mist fall outside and talk with friends. It changes your perspective on your day.

I'll visit Portland again!

So what do you think? What cities would you nominate as being usable?

7 Ways Mr. Fire Can Use Neuro Web Design to Turn Up The Heat

Dr. Joe Vitale is Mr. Fire and when I got an email from him saying "I love your book" we talked first by email and then by phone. Joe interviewed me for his subscriber base, and during the interview he asked if I had looked at his site from a Neuro Web Design point of view. I told him during the interview that I would review his site in my blog, so here goes!

What is Joe doing well in terms of principles from the Neuro Web Design book, and what could he change to make his site (www.mrfire.com) more persuasive?:

1. Use More Pictures That Tell a Story: Joe is using photos and videos and that draws attention, but he needs to use more pictures that tell a story. On his home page there are pictures of him, but where are the pictures of all the people he has helped? There are lots of testimonials and stories from people (that's persuasive) but a picture of these people in action would be more persuasive. And how about pictures of people doing all the things we all want to do that Joe's books and ideas will help us achieve? Especially attractive people doing interesting, worthwhile, and fun activities.

2. Use Scarcity: At the web site there is a page announcing his upcoming seminars. He should consider using scarcity. If they are filling up fast he can have a note with a color background saying, "This seminar almost full" or "Only 3 seats left".

3. Use Social Validation: There are many places where he could use social validation. How many people have attended his seminars? How many books has he sold? How many people are estimated to have watched The Secret (he's in that movie) or any of the other movies he's been in? How many people have sent in testimonials to him (he has lots and lots at his website). It would be powerful to show these numbers.

4. Tell More Stories in the 3rd Person: Joe has many fans and they write in telling about how his books, mentoring, and courses have changed their life. But these stories would be more compelling if they were told as stories. Rather than all the stories being told in the person's own words in the first person, it would be more powerful if some of the stories were told in the 3rd Person narrative form as true stories: "Amber had been struggling for eight years in a combative relationship with her mother, but after coaching with Joe she was able to change their relationship in only a few days...."

5. Use More YOU YOU YOU: Joe's content is all about individuals reaching their goals. So his website is full of all the wonderful things you will have come into your life when you practice what he is teaching. A lot of the content is written in paragraphs, and this will put the old brain to sleep. The web site would be more persuasive it if would really focus on the word You more, and point out (to the old brain) in short bullet points and pictures exactly what You are Going to Get by reading the book, watching the movie, or signing up for coaching.

6. Reduce Fear of Loss: On the home page Joe has some FREE! offers. I'd like to see more FREE offers on the inside pages, especially when he wants to get someone to spend money. The FREE on the home page is to subscribe ... but it's actually not totally clear what I am subscribing to (a newsletter?) FREE works best when it has to do with a purchase, as it mitigates fear of loss.

7. Limit Choices So People Will Choose: Joe does so much... he has books, movies, seminars, coaching... his site is rich and full of things to read and check out -- too many things. Research shows that if you give people too many choices they choose nothing at all. I wonder how many people come to the site and leave without purchasing anything or signing up for something. Sure, you can have all that info at the website, but Joe should consider making only one or two or three at the most actions really clear... make it seem that the first decision is just amongst three alternatives. That would get people to take an action.

There you have it... 7 ways for Mr. Fire to turn up the heat. Joe Vitale has great content. I hope some of these ideas will help his ideas get out there even more persuasively than before.

5 Steps to More Creativity Using Brain Science

Want to be more creative? Whether you are an artist, writer, scientist, web designer, marketer, sales person or business executive, being more creative means you'll come up with more and better ideas and have more fun while you are doing it.

If you want to have more creative ideas you need to work with, not against, the part of your brain that comes up with ideas: the pre-frontal cortex. This part of the brain focuses on finding answers and solutions. It combines separate ideas from the rest of your brain and makes connections between them. But the pre-frontal cortex has some interesting and idiosyncratic ways of working, so there are things you can do that help it do its work, and things that hinder. Below are 5 things you can do to help the pre-frontal cortex, and thereby help you be more creative:

1.Find "your spot" and go there:  In order for the pre-frontal cortex to connect up different ideas in your brain, and come up with that great creative idea, it has to be quiet, still, focused and not distracted. This means you have to be doing an activity that does not require much conscious thought. Everyone has a certain activity/place that is where they get their most creative ideas. For me it is water... if I am in the shower, or washing dishes, or swimming laps my mind kind of "spaces out" and then all these creative ideas pop in. For some people it is when they are going for a walk, for others when they are gardening, or in bed about to fall asleep... Figure out the activity/spot where your creative ideas come to you and then make sure you do that activity regularly.

2. Forget about it: In order for the pre-frontal cortex to work you have to consciously forget about the "thing" that you are trying to be creative about... So if you are trying to solve a business problem, come up with a new design for a web page, or decide what to write in your blog, the best thing to do is to forget about it entirely. This allows time for your pre-frontal cortex to go combing around your brain for ideas. If you stay focused on the question and keep mind chatter going on about it, then the pre-frontal cortex will be too distracted to go solve the problem.

3. Give yourself time: You will need to be patient. You will need the time to forget. So give yourself enough "elapsed" time... you will need at least a couple of hours and sometimes days or weeks to come up with creative ideas. The more you let go and the more you go to your "spot" the faster the creative process will happen. Similarly, if you want others to come up with creative ideas you can't just say, "Quick, I need an idea about XXX!" and expect them to have a good answer. The pre-frontal cortex needs time.

4. Work with others: Multiple pre-frontal cortices are better than one! Give the whole team the problem or issue you are trying to solve, then let each person (each pre-frontal cortex) have time to work on it alone. Then bring the team together and let them share their ideas. And then take some more time to let the pre-frontal cortex absorb the ideas from the group. Then bring the team back and you will have some truly great creative solutions.

5. Act on your ideas: When I'm in the shower I get some really great ideas. The trick is getting them written down as soon as I get dried off! and then acting on them. Don't forget to follow through.

P.S. I had the idea for this blog on creativity... you guessed it, in the shower!

Photo: Creative Commons, http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/

Be Like Obama

An article from Time on April 2, 2009 describes how President Obama used a secret group of behavioral scientists to craft his campaign, and how he continues to use the group to implement policy changes in the government and consumer changes in behavior.

This secret group includes many of the well known names in the field of persuasion, including Cialdini, Ariely, and others. The secret group is advising the Obama adminstration on how to use the principles I talk about it my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? In my book I explain how to use persuasion principles such as social validation, reciprocity, commitment and others to create web pages that persuade visitors to take specific actions.

So now when you redesign your page to be more persuasive you are joining the ranks of people "in the know" including President Obama!

Use Community to Encourage Self Service

I was speaking today with a friend/colleague about their project to try and get people to use a support website for technical help rather than call the help desk. She asked me how they could get people to use the website instead of call in. People will call in if the help desk is really helpful. For example, I have Apple Care for my Mac. They are usually very helpful. I'll pick up the phone and call them. But when I have a problem with my HP laptop at home, I'll do anything to avoid calling the HP help desk (not at all helpful). I'd rather go online and search on my own. But then comes the next interesting question. Which is better? the vendor tech support site or searching on google? Definitely searching on google! Support self-service works well when the user can direct the search... they can refine the search parameters and when the search results have enough detail so the user can see if they will be useful, including telling a story.

Recently I searched for a problem I was having with Powerpoint on my Mac. Entering my search query into Google, I quickly found someone who wrote a story that sounded just like my story. Sure enough, when I looked for more details I discovered they were having the same problem, and they wrote back in with the solution!

Community forums seem to be the best way to get support help. Using the idea of social validation, people will often trust others more than they trust experts these days (especially true of the millennial generation). Really the model is that people are their own expert. They in fact are not searching for someone to give them an answer, they are searching for the "nugget" of information told in a story format from another person -- the nugget that will give them a hint, an "a ha" moment that will result in figuring out the problem and the answer on their own. If you want to encourage self service, use community and others stories to encourage people to solve their own problems.

What do you think? Help desk or vendor support site or community forum from google? Which do you find most helpful?

A Quick Summary of Some Interesting Research

Now that March is here, I thought I'd summarize and link to some great research I found during the last month....

There are gender differences in brain activity when people view something the describe as beautiful. For men it is the right hemisphere that is active, but for women both right and left hemispheres light up. For more information, see:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/24/men-women-beauty.html

Humans and mice make the same assessments of risk says Deric Bownds. I believe this gives more proof that decision-making is unconscious. For more information see:
http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2009/02/similar-risk-assessment-in-man-and.html

If your product name is long and hard to pronounce the product may be viewed unfamiliar. Things that are seen as unfamiliar are also viewed as risky...maybe too risky. For more information:
http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2009/02/if-it-is-difficult-to-pronounce-it-must.html

I hate those smiley face icons, but a utility company is successfully using them to encourage people to conserve power! For more information:
http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/smiley-power.htm

Smell unconsciously affects your judgments of other people. Even if you don't notice that there is a scent. for more information:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/02/smells_--_even_smells_we_dont.php

Have your own favorites of recent research? Let us know....

Sell with Stories

It's all about stories. Finca is a micro loan company. You give them some money and they loan it to people around the world who are trying to improve their lives. It's a great organization doing vital work. Their website has good photos, but they could be even more effective if they would focus focus focus... Here's a snapshot of their home page. There is a block at the top that cycles photos from people and small businesses that they loan to, and this photo block is great. However, they could use it even more... the one liner they have under the photo should start to tell a story about the people in the photo. When you click on the photo it should take you to a page where you get to see (with more photos) and read the story of the people in that photo (it takes you instead to their goal of a 100,000 village banks).

On their home page they also have a picture of some people at an event to open a UK branch... this is not a compelling photo, and it distracts from the photos above which are the real people who are recipients of the micro loan. And lastly, the yellow column on the right is also a distractor... small text, lots of text, small images... it draws attention away from the main STORY which should be the photos of the people.

In Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? I write about how and why stories are so powerful. Finca's home page would be more compelling if they would focus the home page on telling stories of the people that are helped by donating micro loan money, and if you could click on the photos to get the full story. The home page would be improved if they made it simpler, taking off other information from the home page... let it focus on story.

Do you have a favorite site ? or a site that you think is not persuasive enough? Send me the URL and I'll review it here at the blog.

A University Gets Neuro Savvy

With the economy the way it is right now I am guessing that colleges and universities are doing whatever they can to attract and keep students. Perhaps that is why we are seeing what is obviously a lot of effort being put into university websites. Even small, less well known colleges.

I happened upon one of these... this is a midwestern school of about 10,000, and whoever is working on their website is doing a great job at designing for the unconscious. There are lots of bold interesting pictures on the home page at the top... these scroll through as you watch them. They show interesting pictures of real students out in the world. The pictures themselves are stories, and they make you want to read more (as in click the Read More button) to find out the story behind the photo. When you do so you get a story, told as a story. As I write in my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? stories are powerful and get and keep the attention of the unconscious mind, as do pictures of people, which they have a lot of.

With competition for students getting tougher, and with students choosing to stay closer to home and save money, these savvy neuro tactics become important for all colleges and universities. Kudos to UW, Steven Point!

New Research Shows Herd Behavior When Shopping Online

In my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click, I have a chapter on Social Validation: When we are uncertain we look to others to see what our behavior should be.

Now some new research tests this idea online. In a series of research studies by Chen (see end for full reference), visitors to a simulated website were given two holiday traveling books to choose from. Both had similar sounding titles, were hardcover, showed similar number of pages, list price and availability.

In the first study Chen showed different consumer ratings. In some cases people saw that one book had 5 stars and the other had 1, or one had 4 and the other had 2, or both had 3 stars. The books with more stars were chosen signficantly more often. Ok, it's not a big surprise, but it's good to have some actual data. But read on, the rest of the studies got curiouser and curiouser...

In the second study Chen compared book sales volumes instead of star ratings. People chose the book that was selling the best.

In the third study Chen tested consumer recommendations vs. expert recommendations. One group got this info: “Name of Book Here" is the leading book in the tourism area as voted for online by readers” vs. “Our advisors, experts in the tourism area, strongly recommend "Name of Book Here”. People chose the book picked by consumers more than the book picked by experts.

And in the fourth study, Chen tested a recommender system, ("Customers who bought this book also bought") vs. the recommendation of the website owner, ("Our Internet bookstore staff strongly recommends that you buy...") People followed the recommendation of the website owner 75% of the time, but they followed the recommender system 88.4% of the time.

Consumer recommendations are powerful. Social validation at work. Welcome to the herd!

Reference: Chen, Yi-Fen, Herd behavior in purchasing books online, Computers in Human Behavior, 24, (2008), 1977-1992.

Don't Personalize: Cluster Instead!

In a TED video filmed in 2004 and published in 2006, Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink and Outliers) talks about human variability. The talk is entitled "What we can learn from spaghetti sauce" because he discusses the evolution of commercial spaghetti sauces from only a few varieties to hundreds (at the time of the filming Prego had something like 36 sauces).

Although he is talking about variability in people's preferences, one of the things that strikes me in the video is that there are clusters of preferences. If you collect enough data you will find that not everyone thinks/prefers/feels alike. However, you will also find that there isn't unlimited variability, but that there are clusters. Gladwell's point is that if you design for one preference (strong coffee for example) you will miss the preferences of many, if not most, people.

Market researchers and product developers, he would argue, ask the wrong questions. In fact he makes the important point that you can't ask people their preferences at all, since preferences are largely unconscious, and asking them to talk about preferences invokes conscious thought. Most people don't know what they prefer, or will prefer in the future, but they think they do. So they will give you an answer, but it isn't accurate (watch out those of you who conduct focus groups!).

You might feel overwhelmed figuring out how to plan for or design a product for human variability, but there is a practical way to deal with this. You don't have to design for each individual with all their variabilities. What you do instead is enough research to identify variability clusters. If you collect data (not by asking! but by testing and observation) you will find that most people cluster into a finite number of groups. And then you can design for those groups. Instead of designing for a million individual preferences you can design for 5 main clusters.

To apply this to the design of technology: Personalization of web sites and web applications, so that each individual can adjust what they see, might not always be the best way to go. If you've done your homework you should be able to place each person in the appropriate cluster and show them what they need. Then perhaps they can tinker a little from there. How less overwhelming that would be for both designer and user than starting from a generic template that fits no one.

To watch the TED video:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

Irrational or Just Human?

A favorite theme these days when writing about the unconscious mind and decision making is about how bad we humans are at making decisions. A perfect example is Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational.

Don't get me wrong... it's a great book, and I recommend that you read it BUT I take issue with one of the basic underlying and overt assumptions. The book explores human decision making, and describes (in an easy to read and entertaining way) some of the research on how people make decisions. I write in Neuro Web Design about all the myriad ways the unconscious mind guides, decides, affects the decisions we make. No disagreement there. But where we disagree is Ariely's assumption that if we would all pay attention to how irrationally we are making decisions then we would see the light and start to change. He is saying that we can overcome our innate tendencies to be irrational and instead choose to make rational choices.

He's missing the point. We aren't actually irrational. We're perfectly rational -- according to the UNconscious mind. It's an adaptive response (see Timothy Wilson's book Strangers to Ourselves: The Adaptive Unonscious). And we can't change. That's like saying that people should stop seeing color. We can't! It's just the way we're built. Our seemingly irrationality comes from the way the unconscious mind has learned to deal with the huge amounts of data that that logical conscious mind can't begin to process in a quick manner.

I say we accept and embrace the unconscious mind and celebrate what it does for us rather than judging us as irrational. It's not irrational. It's being human.

Creative commons photo: http://www.flickr.com/people/christinasnyder/