Allaland

At the UPA Boston conference, Colleen Roller discussed why seemingly insignificant aspects of information presentation can have a surprising effect on people’s perceptions and behavior.

• People like to make easy choices
• Cognitive fluency is how easy or difficult it is to think about something. Cognitive fluency is subtle and pervasive.
• People tend to be attracted to what is: average, familiar, symmetrical.
• The mere exposure effect – Exposing people to stimuli more than once increases attractiveness
• What impacts how people determine the truth of unfamiliar statements? The size / color of text, frequency of exposure, rhyming words.
• Rhyming words are an easier cognitive load / mental ease
• People apply the sensation of mental ease to statements
• Fluency of perceived truth is as follows: easy to decipher => must be familiar / safe => must be popular  (reply on social consensus when unsure) => must be true
• People perceive things with names that are hard to pronounce as: risky, new & novel, exciting and full of adventure, likely to make them sick
• Something that feels hard to decipher => is not familiar => must be risky
• Rhyming text is easily remembered and seems more accurate
• How its worded / appearance changes perception of statement (rhyme as reason effect)
• People will postpone difficult decisions when the fond size used is difficult to read.
• What can help people be more careful and prevent silly mistakes on tests? Using a font that is difficult to read.
• A personal questionnaire that is less legible causes people to answer less honestly
• To boost student morale, ask them to list a few reasons why they’ll succeed, many reasons why they my fail. It raises moral because the amount of mental work needed to come up with a long list of reasons for failure changes perception.

At the UPA Boston conference, Janelle Estes discussed how she used a variety of user research methods to assess how people use postings from companies and organizations on social networks.

• Estes conducted a usability study and a diary study
• She recruited people  who used 2+ social networks for 3+ months, as well as folks that were willing to access their social network accounts during test sessions
• The usability study revealed that users often have a difficult time finding where to sign-up to receive postings. They will search on keywords such as “friends, connect, social”, and many sites don’t have results on those common terms.
• The diary study was a 4 week study. Estes sent out assignments 3x per week, and asked for responses using a Google spreadsheet. She sent the assignment on a consistent schedule. Estes suggest that its important to make a connection with participants over the phone prior to the study, and it might be a good idea to vary assignments or shorten the study with more participants.

Estes was able to glean some design guidelines from her study as follows:

• Users had varying expectations on message types, it all depended on the org. News: top stories, Consumer: new products, sales; Non-Profit: Initiatives: upcoming events
• Place important information at the beginning of the message, as people only scan the first few words
• Clearly describe where a link take users
• Users expected companies to be personable, informal, have more personality
• Engage in two way conversation
• Initiate conversation about relevant topics
• Send messages regularly, but not too regularly
• Choose a meaningful and eye-catching profile picture
• Place calls to action on the homepage, footer navigation, and pair them with appropriate logos
• Provide social network information in email and newsletters

At the UPA Boston conference, Bryn Dews and Thom Brando discussed their open-source prioritization game.

It is often difficult to get users to prioritize a list of features. In order to set priorities, Dews and Brando came up with a monopoly like game.

• Provide users with “money” and have them “buy” features.
• Ask users, “What’s it worth to you?”
• Utilize 100 dollars in “bills”
• Pilot tested the game using a physical board, then created an open-source online game
• The game allows you to input and describe features, let users “buy” features, and write-in features as well as suggestions.
• The game and installation instructions can be found here: http://mysite.verizon.net/thombrando/features