Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Forced Attention Seeking - unethical/irrelevant way of stealing attention

We are again back to the media buzz period, where the user rights are taken for granted. The forced push of Ad's and other media materials are coming to limelight again. After some time where we were speaking much about permission marketing, user requested campaign, high conditions on the buzz for rolling credit cards and personal loan offers without users interests... NOW, EVERYTHING IS BACK. In the scene of economic recession, every company want to be alive and get some business. In the midst of this, the user rights and user privacy is completely violated.

This doesnt stop just with products of generality, this also goes to products like Viagra, Candom being forced by the adservers unbeleivably to sites which never has seen those before. Interstitial ad's which was a smart way of making people to see that till the page in the website was loaded was not there for few days, but now, almost many of the top sites are now again with loads of interstitial ad's in almost every section. The awareness and sense of user privacy and permission based system are definitely spreading across the globe, but the usage of those are seriosly coming down. The economic recession is bringing back those days of traditional forced marketing structure that proved economic to these companies some years back.

The streets are again crowded with people asking your phone numbers by handing over brochures which says fill it and we will get the world free. And this to the economy of the normal user is also coming to a substitute, anything given free of cost is money saved, so the mobile number db owners are again starting to spread their business by selling it to corporates who can flood their marketing campaigns. When i say this, there is no constructive marketing happening, Any constructive marketing comes with a very proper research, process and procedure in place.

I can give you an excellent example (ofcourse not related to internet), dont want to name a credit card company, one of the executive of company X got a card, and seriously got calls and pestering from the Credit card call centre guys to refer friends etc.. after a point in time, he lost his temper and referred few of his friends, one being his boss (VP) of that company. The CC company has rejected VP's request saying he is not eligible for applying for that card. Knowing that VP myself, he is a independent person, without any debt and a very strong financially backed person. All he could do when the CC company told him that he is not eligible is to take photocopies of cards (foreign club cards) where he can get credit worth USD 100,000. Such is the haphazard process these companies carry out. Not all corporates fall in this category.. There are few genuine corporates who have a great rating system.

In the name of econimic recession, companies are again trying to make use of their parasitical marketing system and again make the consumers victim of this. Any change and imbalance happening anywhere would affect the consumers - This time is a perfect example for the same.

Since the traditional mediums are going this way, can we save atleast the internet media not becoming cluttered and wrongly prepared during such times. I would finish this by quoting one website (without naming it) where it has published the jobs which are called in the layoff list and also giving a heading if you dont have job now and if you are looking for one pls submit your resume here. and in the top of it goes a banner of a company that is in matrimonial business and in the right there is a vertical ad of a "yatch company - saying Live your life in luxury".. the worst part is this Ad would come to the full page and only after seeing this flash the ad goes to the right. So a job seeker has to see a matrimonial ad, then a Yatch sellers Ad and then see the page and put his resume, because he is laid off by his company.. Can you see the irony or the pathetic situation and feeling that a user might have to undergo dealing with such sites. A total sixer to online ethics

Lets bring back those days again, where in online user privacy and rights are protected and forced attention seeking is completely taken out.

Sathish Sampath
www.sathishsampath.com

UX Everywhere

The Awareness of the User Experience based design is now spreading everywhere. We as people who keep talking about the UX based designs both from intrinsic and extrinsic perspective are extremely happy to see the world moving towards a friendly and comfortable design. As it grows, more awareness is spreading among the starters of the internet to start thinking wise and compete with already existing giants.

i read an article recently that combines the fact that design easeness is not only thing from outside but its a deep facto starts from the code itself. I was one the the happiest seeing this as these are the basic which i am proclaiming for few years now. And i am sure well architected design from within is also a beautiful design however the outlook might appear.

I want to share the url with you.. its an excellent article that shares the view of UX engineers and Software Engineers are related taking the Agile Development Methodologies - Refactoring as an example.

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/05/refactoring-the-user-experience.php

Sathish Sampath
www.sathishsampath.com

Friday, October 17, 2008

Analyzing user involvement/intention during his presence in Websites

“In every aspect of Web, what we require is the focus. The focus of entire web design should be in getting the user viewing efficiency to the maximum. The layout also has another dependency basically the viewing screen, the resolution. More to this is the entire concept of the site. I can remember the site of Leo Burnett when they entirely concentrated on the Signation of Leo Burnett and inturn the entire site revolves round that. That’s the focus. What would be essential to focus on the site. What’s the eye-ball sequencing, as we saw in our previous posts on Web Semiotics and Web Attention. This is a new angle or dimension of our analysis based on the User’s Presence in the site and psychological reasons behind it”


There are various types of representation that a corporate or an individual or a brand has, in the classification of employees, assets, financials, marketing etc... in the evolution of the technology yet another presence has taken a big mileage and now growing to the fullest of its length and breadth. Internet. This not just gets the fullest power when it’s fully in operation but also gets to the control of the webmaster to manoeuvre the user dynamics of the web audience.

The basics of attention still deals with the appearance but more to it would be the effort how the sheer presence gives a reasoning to it. The concept that would explain and keep him to the loop of his presence gather more inference when the same is being presented back as a case study to him wishing him thanks for his visit. Here are some ways where user feels the need to come and stay in the website.

1. The need satisfaction
When the user comes to the site, either direct or thro the referring site or thro the search engine what he looks for is first satisfying what he needs. Or atleast gets the satisfaction of the need to stay and scroll round the website.

The need factor makes another dimension to the layout as discussed in the topic “Web Attention” but more than that what the hotspot message that’s being portrayed.
2. Stay Factor
Only few of the site has this capability to keep the user to them, this can be a direct hold based on the content of relevance, or design. Or can be the brand that takes a major hold in the reach out. We can also assume there are some intrinsic variables that actually catch power when the user drives them towards the area of research. That’s what its for me…

3. Recall Factor
Even though there is lots fictitious things going behind factors that can lead into Recall, still the recall can be quantified based on the emotion and the psychological experience factor that people have during their stay. There can be lots related to the hotel stay when we talk about Web site. The first impression that brings people to the satisfaction and the reinforcement of the impression thro the service and the after service will get the max when people are going to think about the process

4. Psycho Metric Calculator – Site Experience
This is the factor which I feel would be the key to all the above we discussed. The psycho metric calculator has lots of psychosomatic aspects that multiplies the emotion, the presence, experience etc.. into consideration the simple Freudian System talking about dreams can be taken as a vital example of how a presence in intangible or fictitious world can make a difference. The entire concept can revolve around what makes the perception to make the reality.

Perception Vs Reality Factor: This is a subjective realization of factor that could bring people’s experience in concentration towards whats been developed towards the impression.

• Phenomenology:

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

Relating Phenomenology to our concept here: This study gives us a great meaning and reference for us to compare and evaluate the system being dependent and get the evaluative influence and its consequence to what we are discussing as the Focus factor or the recall Factor. This psycho metric calculator would determine the user relationship to the schema and also tell the resistance or the flexibility level of the user towards his presence in the medium. This can be evaluated thro the analytics of the site.

i. Check the bounce rate of the website – how it gives an alarming boom of people visited and their tolerance towards the system and the loops and bounds that the site offers them to crawl
ii. The ratio of the loyal user to the bounce rate will also give a greater amount of difference of the intolerant user of the system and dynamics. Means the schema attraction factor did not comply its effort for those people
iii. The page views and the average page view timing can also tell us how much the user gets his mind to view and understand the system and try to get the use of it. If the user page views are high and traffic high, but the Page view timings are just in seconds average, you would notice that people just hate the schema of their landing.
• Noema:
As every one knows Noema is “Noema (plural: noemata) is Greek for the meaning of something. It is the mental equivalent of a schema or schematic of something. It is the "representation" of an experience of a meaning based system through its own self-referential process. It could also be considered as the projection of one's own experience onto oneself.
Noema is employed in phenomenology to refer to the terminus of an intention as given for consciousness. The mind breaks down external experiences into what we know as external reality. Noesis is the "thinking" process in such a manner that detects the meaning of the object itself (noema). It is the intentional thinking act which is directed upon the noema. In contrast to noesis (ability to sense or know something immediately), a noema is the object itself of perception or thought.[1]
Something noetic has to do with something involving intellectual activity (from the Greek nous, "mind"). One can speak of the noetic faculty as the "intellect proper." Another Greek word for mind is novhma (noema), which translates as mental thought or perception: that which thinks of an idea.
There is a noema corresponding to every act of memory, expectation, and representation.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noema
Relating Phenomenology to our concept here: The meaning based system that’s being referred and the reaction towards the same offers a count on the logical side of the analysis of the system under discussion. The logical entry could have been thro a proper channel of reference or thro a material source that could get a meaning to user landing or to their presence in the schema or the system as we call here. The concept of having these used to analyze the intention of their presence for the given set of the system, or the consciousness as it referred to. Means the realtiy score of what people like that takes the external score and the internal score of their experience to make them be available to the setup of the same. This activity would give a huge way of analyzing not just a meaning for someone who has come to the site or the system or also a meaning for the consciousness of his landing in the page where he is.

The analysis of such also increases a greater loyal users and increases the traffic density from particular sect of people or community. So if the website which we are discussing be something like Blog or Blog directory, it would be ideal to get the Noema score, (its very difficult to analyze and rate it, as there is no visible research in this field nor a rating structure available – but its not something impossible). This would make the community feel whats the best place to be and hows the noema score be adopted to get the consciousness of the presence.
As we get across the internal research of not just the traffic or how they come, we should also start analyzing why they come and how they like schema or the system and how they react to our available platform. We will see more in postings that comes in future.


Sathish Sampath

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Web Semiotics - user psychological metrics on the web Layout

Seeking Attention – Analogy of Website’s Layout effectiveness

The Web Semiotics angle of persuasion for Web Design/Web layout Design and its persuasion factor (captology)



With the above statements clearly mentioning about the net persuasion of the net users, we are indeed thrown in aspects to the user experience dynamics with regards toe the Web site. This can be taken up for the study perspective and inturn augmented for their aspects of relevance and their nature of attention seeking nature.

Attention Seekers – Humans always loves to be get noticed and like people who are doing the same. The concept of subsidies advertising and permission marketing is still in the verge of getting its pace, but people love getting surprised in whatever they do and whatever they get. That’s the world and that’s how the system works too. Such an attention seekers are a bit of challengers who will be encountered when a site is logically segmented. Find below two examples of a same category product or related category but they use a different technique to attract and get the user to get over the website influence.

Type 1 –




The Approach of this is set to hit the attention seekers eyes for puzzle and surprise.
Formula - User is expected to get excited and then see the product.

Type 2 –




The approach is to give information about the product and make the user to get impressed with the product.
Formula – User is exposed to product and product impresses the user.

Gamble Analogy –

In the situation like above, the client is forced to play the psychological game “Gamble Analogy” – As it can be decided that the player has to take a decision that’s a gamble and he uses his past historical experience to choose to move thro the coins of this game. Here when we talk about the users who are going to view the site. The first analysis that we are doing is the “Attention”

Whats that he takes as his input to proceed with the site. Interms of
1. purpose
2. relevance
3. need
4. motivation
5. anxiety
6. worthiness of time spent
7. speed of the site
8. what he feels as his kind of..

These are the factors that would go inside the basic engineering concepts of user experience. But it all starts with the “Attention”. What type of Attention you wanna take to make the user stop by your site. And Where will you make these impact upfront.

The study of eye ball and the people attention of the websites reveals 4 different zones of the website as it can be with relevance to the site’s nature.

For e.g in the same blog http://webanalogy.blogspot.com the halfs can be split as




In this case the appeal that we give the user is a rational analytical appeal as it’s a material published for people to read and understand and not any fancy material. But these are the basic information that will be making the user to decide on the website and the appeal that someone gets to that. In this case the trajectory is

Q1 > Q2 > Q4 – that’s linear and matches with the appeal of the site. But incase audience of the site is a person who looks for information out of hand and not interested for a linear appeal then the site actually becomes a boredom to their expectation and so they leave.

Increasing the Eye ball exposure Density to one point increases Anxiety - As an example to this the site which we took as example for the Attention Seeker can be taken as classic case for how they do it. The eye ball density falls exactly in the conjunction point of Q2 and Q4 towards the ZERO point. By this the entire attention of the user is taken in control and that’s the appeal of anxiety, excitement and waiting for surprise to happen occurs. This is when the web developer wants the user to get into his control and inturn try to market the product or give the information. We can probably name these users are “Controlled User”.



User from the point of this is being controlled by the web developer for the fact that he has already won the user with his expectation, anxiety. So the outcome can be occur in two possibilities
1. User get extremely happy and inturn increases possibility of favourable actions what a web developer would expect.
2. Or users get rejected for their expectation and anxiety and leave the site out.
There is no intermediary user expectation for this kind of appeal.

Psychology view of Controlled User: typically now seeing the situation behind these kind of users or the layout based on the product, its imperial that the web users are hit by the anxiety quotient of the site for being different. This implies that the layout has the first buy in. but also puts up a threat of limited information that could either make the brain unanswered and unsatisfactory. The user gets attached the the layouts and the schemes rather than the content and the information. So the recall quotient of these sites can work for the Layout of the site what user saw, and not for the content or the information portrayed in the site.

As in the other case for the descriptive appeal in the site for the similar product for the site given below



In this case of appeal, the user is perfectly augmented to get the first attention towards the image, which is the attention seeking factor. Then the user is looking exactly on what he is intended to see and for what he is here. So if we say the eye ball movement is Q1>Q2>Q3 then the user is basically a rationally logical user, who wants to get the information step by step and measures his exposure to the website.

There is yet another movement possible where in the user is in a hurry looking for information and so rolls the eyes straight from Q1>Q3>Q2. In this case the user is getting the approach to take what he wanted and to see if he has landed up in the right page and website. He is not bothered about the product overall description, but he looks for the functionality or the netigrities of the same. So this approach and layout can also be useful for the audiences where the information is backed up with. The product which is having unique accolades to its front can use such an eye ball exposure to keep the user to their use and inturn market the product thro the web layout. In both of these the user patterns are predictable. So the outcome and the possibility of the predictive turns are large.
The outcome can be
a. user likes the product and manoeuvres to the sections of it to read it
b. User doesn’t like the product but still he will be around looking for the other areas for getting information inside the site, as he is brought inside the rational logical appeal.
c. user tries to source information thro the site by either using the search or someway as he feels staying back in the site is worth
d. user quits the site as he feels the information what he needed is not available

Psychological View of Controlling User:
The user of this nature is life a galloping horse. It takes a little time for them to get on to the touch of the site and its content as they are more stable. They are not instinctive and they always depend on the proof of existence. They believe in concrete results and details for the product’s performance. The layout of these nature would allow them to get that confidence as it maintains the corporate look and also makes the base context of product and their description as its primary explanation.
There are other eyeball exposure which we can bank on for other types of sites, basically the layouts of the sites that deals with lots of news and education, and other news paper site etc.. The layout can be portrayed that gives the comprehensiveness of the coverage and the diversity of the topics. That’s where the 2 columns and 3 columns layouts help us to do the trick. The eye ball for these kinds of things is so random that user likes to move the eyes more on to the headlines. So the user is kept on to the site by having more of the snapshot headings etc..




These can be dealt in full detailing as it involves a completely different analogy study of minds. The client will be expecting more information on the home page rather than the subpages.

There are other different formats of layouts which I am analyzing on their impact. So these are a never ending discussion. But layouts before being executed has to definitely see the impact analysis and then get its birth.

Web Psychology – Behavioural study thro UX and IA concepts

The 4th dimensional user who determines the decision and effectiveness of the website - apart from search engine driving them inside – a puzzle when unfolded yields millions

As the user experience (UX) and information Architecture (IA) gaining importance and millions of domains getting sold as day progresses,The puzzle for every web designer and developer is to make the best site in the world. this is not just for website but for every action in the world is moved with an intention towards this. the learning curve of the user is not the major factor governing these decision. the critical factor being what goes in their Mind and brain and which stays longer.

I could remember the website of "X" better than "Y". but the factors cannot be listed as its psychological after the production is done. hence the technical of What i could term as the leverage of cognitive psychotechnology will be the evolving strategy for the days to come.
1. the first being the user experience, which tries to get the user to their easeness while coming inside the browser - this is the term and jargon that every website company utters every day in and out
2. Where does this user experience takes us and where does this stops.. and what will take the user to take from there for an ever lasting delight on the experience of the site? - the Answer is the web psychology or the cognitive perseverance of psychotechnology which is built in the website during its layering in the content and structure and design.

The idea can more be interpreted as the marriage between most discussed subjects of three major fields. The behavioural aspects of the brain and its decision making (Neuro Sciences), the reciprocation of the activities thro technology (Artificial intelligence or Technology Determinant) & product (Website) or strategy or plan and its permutations leading to the experience recall.

These concept ensembles the indication thro lots of psychological preview by manoeuvring the concepts that companies like Google, yahoo, AOL uses for their online UX and Information Architecture preview.

The entire world is now moving towards a cost wise economy where the exposure vs the cost spent algorithm is facing a huge economic change. Higher the cost of promotion greater the visibility, now its not the case. Viral marketing and web marketing techniques have made those thumb rules to go extinct. The newer age techniques has gained its weight pretty soon and their concepts going inside every nerve of business is showing the greater strength and adaptation.

Sathish Sampath