The Official Fluid Blog

The recent re-design of The North Face web site has been featured on Ecommr, a site that identifies and highlights a collection of ecommerce interface and design elements that represent excellent, new, and innovative design.

The new North Face design elements featured are:

• Product listing index
• Recommended items
• Color and size selector
• Rich mini-cart
• Full shopping cart
• Billing and shipping page during checkout

The design of The North Face site contributes to an engaging and rich customer experience, and few of the ecommerce sites featured on Ecommr have as many design elements highlighted, which speaks well to the quality of the design and experience.

This is the second in a series of posts based on my presentation (”Can I get that in pink and eggplant?”) about the future of customer experience online at the Web Experience Forum in Boston on 14 October 2008.

Mass Customization and Manufacture-on-Demand

Customized products are the ultimate in personalization: customers can select from many options for many attributes to create a product that is unique. This level of customization is made possible my manufacture-on-demand processes. Finished products are not stored in inventory to be picked, packed, and shipped – they are actually manufactured when the order is received.

A potential hazard of customization is that it creates more choice, possibly too much choice, for the consumer. Much has been studied and written about the paradox of choice and decision paralysis, but it boils to situations where there are so many options from which to choose that the consumer is overwhelmed, and it is actually easier to make no choice (and abort the purchase) than to make any choice. When customers are presented with many customizable components, each with many configurable options, the number of combinations may be overwhelming. Therefore we need to design customer experiences that help customers get started, make decisions, support their choices, and encourage them to proceed and complete the process.

One way we can craft more inviting experiences is to manage the number of choices people are given and how they are presented. A manufacture-on-demand process does not need to be transparent to the customer – they do not need to know when products are stocked in inventory versus made when an order is placed.

At the discreet end of the continuum, customers never even know that they are ordering a custom product, because the merchant has pre-defined all of the options and choices (e.g., notebook color, binding, and cover image) and presents the product as a ready-made item. Even though the customer makes no choices beyond selecting a quantity, when the order is placed that product is manufactured.

At the limited level of the customization continuum, consumers realize that they are ordering a customized product, but they may not realize the extent to which that product may actually be customized, because the merchant has pre-defined some some of the options (e.g., ink color and envelope interior pattern) but left a few for the customer to specify (e.g., text on the notecard and the font.) The product is still manufactured when the order is placed, but the number of choices has been controlled to make the personalization process simpler and faster.

Finally, at the level of full customization, consumers realize they are are ordering a customized product, and they understand that it will be manufactured just for them when the order is placed. (Curiously, some customers still think that all variations on custom products have been manufactured in advance and stored in a warehouse awaiting selection and shipment when an order is placed, because they may not fully realize the number of combinations possible and that it would not be feasible to make every possible version of a product.) The choices and options are numerous, and the messaging about the product and customization service typically makes it clear that a product is being made just for the consumer according to their specifications.

There are web sites already offering mass customization of products, and we are likely to see more and more as the ability to manufacture-on-demand becomes more widespread. Today, manufacturing-on-demand is often limited to a base set of products (e.g., photo mugs and mousepads) to which a custom pattern, color, or text may be applied, or to products that have manufacturing processes that lend themselves more easily to mass customization (e.g., custom shoes.)

Cafe Press and Zazzle both offer a set of base products from which to begin. Customers then add their own personal touches and select from a few options to create products that are uniquely their own and which are manufactured-on-demand.

Reebok offers full-customization of shoes, and consumers have the ability to design their own shoe selecting from so many choices that there are literally trillions of possible combinations. A unique product is actually possible, and there is no way that Reebok could manufacture and stock all possible variations of the shoes – this is made possible only my manufacture-on-demand processes.

The manufacture-on-demand process and the ability to create custom products also quickly and easily opens up the opportunity for online, digital equivalent of “pop-up stores.” Pop-up stores are temporary physical retail stores that open for a short time in a previously empty location, generate buzz and attention, respond to a trend or community need, sell for a limited time, then close and disappear. Companies that have the ability to manufacture-on-demand could respond quickly to current trends, fads, and styles by pre-defining products, opening a temporary web site, and selling those products either under their brand or as an ephemeral brand. They could offer limited edition products, different products for different geographics regions, or even products that are offered only to existing customers. Once the ephemeral brand has run its course, the web site disappears.

Custom products are more than just choice for the consumer, they are also opportunities for the companies that are able to manufacture-on-demand, who want to differentiate their product offering, and who are able to quickly and nimbly respond to styles, fads, and market trends.

This is the first in a series of posts based on my presentation (”Can I get that in pink and eggplant?”) about the future of customer experience online at the Web Experience Forum in Boston on 14 October 2008.

Video is the next JPEG

Just as static images are seamlessly incorporated into web pages today, we are going to see more seamless integration of video that moves beyond the use of an inline video player. Video will become integral to the content and not be a separate piece of content meant for independent interaction.

In the Harry Potter films, the Daily Prophet newspaper has “magic moving pictures” printed on the page as part of the news article. There is no separate video page and no video player off to the side – the moving pictures are simply integrated into the content of the page.

The Ralph Lauren site Rugby.com integrates video into the page content in a similar manner: the video, the images, and the text all live in the same space as part of a single experience. The brand experience is enhanced and strengthened by using simple yet high-quality video to supplement the information.

Video has the benefit of being able to convey more information than a static image. Seeing clothing on a walking, moving, breathing person tell us much more about fit and finish than a still image on a white background.  We can understand much better how a product might, work, or behave by seeing it in action.

At Martin & Osa the models take turns moving, walking, and turning around to demonstrate how the clothing fits. There is a great nuance to the customer experience: when you select a filter to narrow down your selection, the models wearing clothes that do not match the filter literally walk off the screen. Video is being used not only to show products, but to verify and acknowledge customer interactions.

Video can also tell a story much better than a single image. Would you rather watch a short film or view a single frame from a short film? And the story does not need to focus on the product – it may be used to enhance the brand, to inspire people, and even to set a mood.

The North Face uses video in several ways: demonstrate products in use, educate about the professionals who use the products, show the environments and usages for which the products were developed, and show how the company supports athletes, indigenous peoples, and environmental causes.

And of course video can be used to facilitate shopping, but rather than showing models wearing clothes or salespeople demonstrating products, we can also shop from the same video we see on television and in the movies.

“Shopisodes” take video from popular television programs and provide images, details, and links to buy the products that appear in the video. You can buy the clothes and accessories worn by favorite actors, furniture and decorations from their homes and rooms, and even the items they are using. Each video segment is created to provide information and a link when that product is visible.

Video for product merchandising falls into two categories:

• “Fast” video is meant to be watched like a short film; it provides context and information, and it demonstrates products in use; “fast” video is not clickable, and it is more likely a passive, entertaining experience.
• “Slow” video is meant to provide information while remaining clickable; it focuses on the products and provides ample opportunity to interact with the video while it plays.

Video may also come in a range of quality levels. Low fidelity video has an amateur appearance, may be customer-generated (although professionally produced video may intentionally take on this style), and generally focuses on product information and usage rather than brand enhancement (e.g., product reviews submitted by real customers.) High fidelity video has a professional appearance and may convey a much wider range of information, from product usage to brand ideals to corporate social responsibility.

Although video is becoming increasingly important to the online experience, it is not yet ubiquitous, and there are some issues to be resolved. Video requires much more bandwidth, and although more and more people have broadband access, web pages with integrated video still have longer load times, so visitors wait for content. Additionally, there are still many video formats. Even though Flash Video is perhaps the most common format for inline video today, there are competing formats that offer higher quality video and audio but with a different customer experience, and there are differences across browsers and operating systems that mean that some formats may not be viewable to all visitors.

Nevertheless, the movement toward integrated video is certainly underway, and we are seeing more video being used to provide information and content in more places than ever before. Although we cannot yet walk to the corner and buy a copy of the Daily Prophet, it may not be long before we commonly have similar experiences when browsing the web.

We’ve been using Fireworks CS3 for wireframing and prototyping since May 2007, and it has been an important tool in our overall design process. As interactions on web sites become more complex, we need stronger tools to help us design, demonstrate, and test those designs.

Adobe recently announced upcoming release of their new CS4 design software, and I’ve had the opportunity to work with the Fireworks CS4 beta team for the past year and one-half to help test and refine the new version. As part of their release of the new tools, I recorded a series of tutorial videos for Adobe demonstrating how to use the new Fireworks CS4 to create effective wireframes and interactive prototypes more efficiently than ever before:

Using Fireworks for Information and Interaction Design

Creating Interactive Prototypes with Fireworks

Rapid Prototyping with Fireworks

Fireworks As Part of the Complete Design Process

Each video runs about 10 minutes and covers a different set features of Fireworks CS4 for information and interaction design.

Some of the new features in Fireworks CS4 we’re looking forward to:

• Export directly to PDF and support for interactive PDFs
• Enhanced grids and guides for accurate layout
• Enhanced rich symbols that support CSS / HTML export
• Enhanced styles and live previews
• Improved page, layer, and state functionality
• Improved workflow between Fireworks and Photoshop

These updated tools will help us create better design documents and more interactive demonstrations and prototypes for our clients, and they support the increasing importance of complex interaction design in the visitor experience.

Two and one-half years ago Fluid began a design project for Charles Schwab to craft a whole new web experience and look-and-feel for their customer account management portal. The design project coincided with a significant effort on Schwab’s part to update, enhance, and extend the entire back-end system responsible for account data, security, transactions, and content management, so the new site had to accomplish a few key goals:

• Create an experience that inspires trust, confidence, and credibility in all customers.
• Provide quick and easy access to consolidated account data and all transactional functions.
• Offer improved and new functionality without displacing or deprecating existing functionality customers had come to expect and rely upon.
• Modernize the site’s design to leverage new interaction patterns to provide access to deeper content without overwhelming or alienating customers.
• Consolidate the site’s research data and information into a more logically organized structure to improve findability and usability.
• Integrate the many marketing and awareness campaigns into a single, rule-guided system for presentation within the account management center.
• Extend the brand guidelines from the print, broadcast, and online marketing to the customer account center while crafting a reliable, efficient, and focused customer experience.

Schwab’s previous site (which is still available during this transition period) has been serving their customers for more than six years. During that time browser technology and customer expectations have changed, the site (like all web sites) grew organically to accommodate changing business needs, and the customer experience become fragmented and occasionally unfocused. Fluid was charged with helping Schwab craft a new, unified vision for the customer experience and then defining a design system that would essentially be everything to everyone, because in the world of finance the margin of error is zero. Mistakes in the customer experience cause customers to doubt the reliability of a system, and when that system is responsible for their money customers have no tolerance for mistakes.

The design process lasted ten months, starting with six weeks of stakeholder interviews and customer research. We crafted wireframes for hundreds of distinct pages and screens for six months, and during this time we went into the usability labs with click-through prototypes for eight rounds of testing with actual customers. Any feature or function that did not test well would be re-designed and tested again – only when an interaction was successful in two consecutive rounds of testing would it be removed from the task list and marked as “validated.” At the same time we were crafting and testing prototypes, we were also working closely with the internal brand group to establish a look-and-feel for the entire customer account management center, and in the last three rounds of testing we presented prototypes that incorporated the updated visual design, because the way a web site looks can actually have an effect on usability.

When all of the core and essential functionality and the new look-and-feel had been tested and validated, we moved into a refinement phase to extend the design to the remainder of the account management center. The project culminated in the delivery of a pair of extensive style guides that defined the design system and patterns for the interaction, information, and visual design.

Now, more than one and one-half years since the end of the design phase, the new Schwab Customer Account Center is being rolled out to all customers.  How well has the design been implemented, and how well does it hold up? I’m happy to say that it has been implemented very well – the design and experience are true to the vision and to what was tested so successfully with so many real customers.  Compare for yourself:

The previous Schwab Customer Account Center:

The new and improved Schwab Customer Account Center:

The new design increases content density, the organizational structure is actually flatter and makes it easier to find information, functionality has been made more efficient, and the entire experience from account data to transactions to market research is now consistent and on-brand.

Congratulations to everyone at Charles Schwab who had a vision for excellent customer experience and service, who demanded exacting standards, and who maintained focus while seeing this project come to fruition! Fluid is proud to have been a partner in this effort and in your continued success.

Jared Spool recently wrote that pretending and roleplay in usability testing is not as effective as recruiting people with an actual need or real interest in a product or activity.

We routinely ask participants in prototype testing to pretend they need to complete an action by creating a believable scenario for them (e.g., you just bought a new MP3 player and want to download some new music for it.) Jared Spool’s research has found that people who are not really interested in an activity behave differently on a web site than people who are genuinely interested in that activity.
What we need to be aware of (and what Jared Spool nearly alludes to) is that the bigger the difference between what people want to do and what we ask them to pretend to do, the greater the possibility that they will not behave accordingly. So, asking a Wall Street executive to pretend to be interested in The Jonas Brothers will probably be less accurate than asking female highschool students to pretend to be interested.

Jared also finds that asking people to pretend to shop for something they do not want or need is less accurate then asking them to shop for something they do want or need. At Fluid we sometimes find ourselves in this situation in prototype testing where not all of the participants actually need the products being sold on the site being testing, but there are a few things we can do to improve the accuracy and relevancy of our testing observations:

1. Recruit from real customers who already visit and shop on the site, because they are already interested in the content, products, and features,
2. Recruit for the appropriate demographics and interests in participants to improve the probability that even if they are not actual customers they will be still be interested in the content, products, and features of the site,
3. Recruit for specific needs (e.g., recruit people for customizing wedding invitations right at the time they are planning a wedding and need invitations.) Obviously this is more difficult, but it should produce more accurate observations.

One of the limitations we have with prototyping testing is that we cannot adapt the task to the participant after they arrive. Prototypes typically have a pre-defined set of tasks and available options, which means we need to be careful and recruit the appropriate participants who will match the prototype tasks rather than adapt the task to the participant.

If we were testing a fully functional and available web site, we would have more opportunity to adapt the tasks to the participant (e.g., ask someone to shop for a backpack rather than shop for a dress), but we still need to recruit participants who would be interested in the available range of products. If the only products a web site sells are shoes, then we cannot recruit for just any shopping need; we should try to recruit people who need and like to shop for shoes.

When we are preparing for prototype testing, we ask all of our clients to provide actual customer lists for participant recruitment so that we know our participants are at least interested in the content, features, and products of the sites and prototypes being tested. If we cannot recruit for a specific need, we are at least able to recruit for characteristics that make that need more likely to be present in participants.

I will be presenting at the Web Experience Forum in Boston on October 14 and discussing the future of online customer experience in a session titled “Can I Get That in Pink and Eggplant?”  Here’s the blurb for the session:

“As more and more retail purchases occur on the Web, the ability to portray products as if they were in the buyers’ hands will become one of the key drivers of an excellent Web experience. Color change, product configuration, magnification, rotation, and personalization are already mainstream features expected by and familiar to consumers. What will online customers want next, and what do they not even realize we can offer? What is the next level of Web experience we need to attain to drive growth in Web transactions? This presentation will look at how emerging technologies and innovative design will transform the Web experience in the coming years.”

I don’t want to give everything away before the session (and I don’t think the folks at the Web Experience Forum would appreciate it), but here are some hints about what we see in the next two to five years:

• Video is the next JPEG,
• Sites will be smarter and more aware of who we are and what we like,
• Mass customization of products, whether or not we realize it,
• Sites will relinquish total control of the experience and become deconstructed,
• Mobile devices will be links and keys in much larger experiences,
• Social, social, social!

Check back the week of October 20 for start of six installments summarizing each of these future directions in online customer experience.

Today Fluid announced the immediate availability of Fluid Social, which allows retailers to offer the same level of interactivity and control in social networking widgets and Google Gadget Ads as they have over the merchandising on their own site. While there have been a recent flood of announcements about retailers deploying widgets to social networking sites this announcement is notable in that this is the first productized offering that allows merchants to publish and update gadgets as they see fit, using the same visual assets and interactive technologies that they use to merchandise their own site. No longer will merchants worry about a gadget that was embedded months ago featuring products that are no longer in stock. They are in complete control of both the featured content and products.

The specific implementation for The North Face is available for users to embed as a Google Gadget and is also being served to highly targeted snowsports sites in the Google ad network. The gadget offers a mix of brand experience – a fresh snowsports-focused video each day that is user contributed or one that features The North Face’s athletes – and interactive shopping. While shoppers watch a video they can explore The North Face’s Defy line of snowsports gear, including the ability to interact with the products.

At Fluid we believe this merging of compelling brand content and merchandising is one of the under-utilized opportunities available to retailers and branded manufacturers. Allowing brand advocates to enhance their own personal pages with this content is a win-win for consumers and brands. We have already heard a range of great ideas from our other customers for how they plan on using our tools to extend the reach of their brands beyond their online stores in unique and brand appropriate ways and we can’t wait to hear more.

The North Face gadget features a fresh video every day.

Shopppers can explore The North Face’s Defy product line while watching the video, without leaving the site they are visiting.

It is possible to explore The North Face’s products from within the gadget using Fluid Retail’s interactive components.

As web sites and web applications become increasingly complex, they are also becoming decreasingly static. Web sites no longer present themselves as passive, static blocks of text and images. They move on their own and in response to user actions in order to:

• Capture attention (e.g., animated banner ads)
• Provide feedback after user actions (e.g., mouseover and on-click states)
• Provide deeper levels of information and facilitate understanding (e.g., infographics that illustrate complex data, such as planetary orbits)

Unfortunately, too much of this animation and motion is gratuitous and does not serve to enhance the user experience, and in many cases it actually distracts the site visitor. Usability professionals often encounter test participants who use their hands (or even sticky notes) to cover parts of the monitor where animated banner ads appear, because the ads attract their attention and distract from the content they are trying to read.

The animated GIF for banner ads that annoyed us for years before declining are being replaced by slicker Flash ads with embedded audio and video, elaborate animation, and even interactivity. Additionally, web sites and applications are using more motion and multimedia to add value to content and attract attention. In some cases the result is a sensory cacophony that overwhelms visitors and reduces the quality of the user experience.

Is animation bad? Should motion and multimedia be avoided? No, but we do need to consider when, where, and why we choose to use it. Animating a logo or image or infographic simply because we can is gratuitous. There should be value and improvement to the user experience, and the animation should support and enhance the content and goals of the site. Here are some basic principles for effective motion graphics and animation:

1. Remember: motion attracts attention. Using too much animation and motion on a single page results in competition for attention and often frustrates visitors. If you choose to use motion to draw attention, give the visitor control and the ability to stop the motion if it distracts them from their goal.
2. Animated graphics are only better than static graphics when they make it easier to understand complex information by being more visually explicit.
3. The content and format of a graphic should closely correspond to the content and format of the concepts and information to be conveyed (also known as the Congruence Principle.) For example, it is more difficult to understand the variations in the stock market looking at tabular numeric data than by looking at diagrams of value over time. Animation adds the ability to include changes in time and space in a more visually explicit way.
4. To be effective, animations need to be correctly understood by the viewer (also known as the Apprehension Principle.) Animations are often too complex or move too fast to be accurately processed and understood by visitors. Make the animation interactive, and give visitors the ability to pause, rewind, restart, and even control the speed or flow of the animation so that they can better focus their attention and thinking on the important and more complex portions.
5. Avoid clutter and unnecessary complexity. Provide enough information and visual cues to help the visitor understand, but do not include extraneous information or design elements that may confuse or distract.
6. Be organized and focused before starting to create the animation or motion graphics. Write a script, create storyboards, and have a plan to convey the information in a concise and focused way, otherwise you may wander away from the goal and include unnecessary information and/or steps.
7. Use the animation to tell a story. A coherent narrative helps visitors better understand the information in a meaningful context.
8. Support animations and motion graphics with corresponding text. Do not assume that the animations are sufficiently explicit to understand without supporting information. If you are using audio to support the animation, give the visitor the ability to control playback and volume.
9. Consider using visual metaphors to help visitors better understand complex information and concepts and to reduce ambiguity.
10. Avoid design myopia. You already understand the information and concepts, therefore your animation and motion graphics design will make sense to you. Show the animation to other people, test it with your target audience, and evaluate whether or not they understand it correctly. What seems obvious to you may be less so to others.

Apple has rolled out a wonderfully innovative and deceptively simple approach to search on apple.com. As you begin to enter your search term a dropdown window appears below the search box with recommended matching results. As you continue typing, the results list dynamically updates with a refined list of results that most closely matches what you are typing.

There are never more than eight results, and each is accompanied by a clear title, brief descriptive text and either a product image or recognizable icon (a green plus sign in a white circle for support topics, for example). It’s instantly scannable and completely non-intrusive. Most importantly, the performance of the search is impressive. Over a DSL connection it updates in nearly realtime, just a split second behind what you are typing. There is a rarely a lag, and good thing because the experience would fall part if there was.

If you hit enter at any time, you get dropped into a typical search results page, but that was hardly necessary. For 90% of the search terms I tried I was able to find what I needed without ever leaving the homepage. Combine that efficiency with a compelling, quality visual presentation and you have incredibly satisfying customer site interaction experience.

Quite possibly one of the best site search innovations since parametric filtering.