I still remember the good ‘old’ days in which I would go weekly to the library, sit there for hours and bring home a huge pile of often non-fictional books. I would get caught in the narrative, loose myself in the material and read the books I borrowed in less than a week. Unfortunately this isn’t the case anymore. Nowadays I don’t seem to get through a book easily. I get bored, can’t focus myself, get frustrated when in my opinion the author doesn’t seem to get to the point fast enough, loose the author’s argument(s) and miss CTRL+F so I can search on keywords in the book. What has happened? Let’s face it: we aren’t used to reading anymore
Why don’t we actually read anymore?
Increase recruitment mail conversion by 330%
Often the first phase in recruiting test participants for either on- or offline research is send a mailing with a screening questionnaire to potential participants. The goal of the mailing is to get as many responses as possible. In other words: you want a high conversion rate.
Recently halfway through mailing a limited set of potential participants, the desired response was far below target. Focusing on the e-mail’s subject, body text, call to action and the incentive we were able to increase the conversion rate of the mailing by a whopping 330%. Here is what we changed.
How to: Squeeze your test users till the last drop
Do you recognize this?
Moderator: What’s your impression of this page?
Test user: Yeah, I like it.
Moderator: What do you like about it?
Test user: Well, you know. The colours are nice.
Google Wave: A new way of creating dialogue
Google Wave is an online communication tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more [1]. In detail a wave means that:
Why are we using Twitter anyway?
The last couple of years online communities have been developing applications for users to share daily updates about their life, thoughts and whereabouts. Hyves provides a ‘WieWatWaar’ and Facebook has it’s own ‘Wall’ where users can update their friends. Twitter does it the light-weight way. It allows an easy and light-weight form of communication and enables users to broadcast and share information about their activities, opinions whereabouts and status. But why are we using Twitter anyway? Is it a tool that nourishes our social needs or is technology increasing our needs to keep track of out ‘friends’ every minute of the day?
Icons: the art of design and implementation
Icons seem to play a small and humble role on websites, but they can have a huge influence on the comprehensibility of certain information. They need to work as a whole together in a set. But why are they so essential and how to get started on designing them the right way?
Mind over matter: Responsive Environments
Responsive environments like the Wii aren’t new. They go way back in time. Starting in the 70s Myron Krueger - known for his work in responsive environments and virtual reality - has been exploring ways in which humans can interact with machines on a more interesting, deep and meaningful way.
Little things: solving the repeat email address form issue. Maybe.
I’ve always wondered whether the repeating of an email address in form actually reduces the likelyhood of mistakes. And if so, if this is all we’ve got? Many people just cut, copy and paste. Often without seeing a mistake. Or just retype. And sigh. Userglue proposes some interesting alternatives
The ‘fun’ in ‘funnel’
While reviewing the car insurance funnels from some Dutch online insurance companies I found a nice little trick that made me grin. All companies use your license plate number to retrieve information about your car. Nothing special (or fun) there.
Little Things: pause 4 seconds and ask “how”
Chriss Noessel (Cooper) explains how pausing for four seconds can get you more information or additional detail. It’s difficult though:
Especially with a stranger, we don’t want to leave the conversation “hanging,” preferring instead to offer up some response or reflection on what the other has said.