Users are People Too

Good evening, WebVisions!

Meagan Fisher @owltastic on twitter

Previous “Clients”

Previous “Clients”

“Become a beloved business with loyal

customer advocates.”

The Goal of Service Industry Companies

Trying to create that “Potato Patch” feeling

Show customers they are welcomed,

supported, & valued.

But… service is so annoying.

Software

• Consistent

• Streamlined

• Efficient

Software

• Consistent

• Streamlined

• Efficient

Software

• Consistent

• Streamlined

• Efficient

• Mundane

• Forgettable

• Joyless

“Become a beloved business with loyal

customer advocates.”

Online businesses

Show customers they are welcomed,

supported, & valued.

“We must be more than user-centered, we must be human-centered—to know people first as people, not as users or customers or clients. Our designs are conceived from a deep understanding of humanity and with the desire to help individuals accomplish their goals.”

https://www.ibm.com/design/language/

framework

Putting the humanity back in software

• Have a welcoming personality.

• Put a face on your business.

• Speak like a human being.

Have a welcoming

personality.

“Everything has a personality: everything sends an emotional signal… Even where this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view the website infer personalities and experience emotions… Horrible personalities instill horrid emotional states in their users, usually unwittingly.”

Donald A. Norman, Emotional Design: Why We Love or Hate Everyday Things

Accidentally Horrible vs. Beloved Personalities

“The major dimensions of personality are dominance and friendliness… positive emotions are associated with a friendly demeanor… while negative emotions are associated with unfriendliness.”

Dominant vs. Friendly

Angular Curved

LightHeavy

Aa High Contrast Aa Low Contrast

Dense Whitespace

Bold Regular

Uppercase Lowercase

abc abc

XYZ xyz

Yikes.

Personality in online travel

booking services.

Dominant vs. Friendly

•Angular vs. curved

•Heavy vs. light

•High contrast vs. low

•Caps vs. lowercase

•Bold vs. regular

•Dense vs. whitespace

Dominant vs. Friendly

•Angular vs. curved

•Heavy vs. light

•High contrast vs. low

•Caps vs. lowercase

•Bold vs. regular

•Dense vs. whitespace

Dominant vs. Friendly

•Angular vs. curved

•Heavy vs. light

•High contrast vs. low

•Caps vs. lowercase

•Bold vs. regular

•Dense vs. whitespace

“Our main philosophy is that we want you to spend as little time on our site as possible with the least amount of pain.”

Steve Huffman, Hipmunk cofounder. via Forbes, “Why Hipmunk Is The World's Best Travel Site”

Does this design show dominance or friendliness? Is that what’s intended?

What is the user’s emotional state? Does this design hurt or help it?

Consider your personality.

Put a face on your business.

“As we gaze at the world, we discover ourselves looking back… This instinct is guided by our primordial desire for emotional connection with others. We are hardwired to seek emotion in human faces. For this reason… photos of human faces in a design can profoundly influence an audience.”

Aarron Walter. “Designing for Emotion.”

twitter.com/facespics

Friendly faces

create trust and

belonging.

Cute mascots aren’t right for every business.

“We want people to think of Dropbox as a place to collaborate, and a big part of that is elevating the people you connect with. One way we're doing that is thinking about places we can surface user's faces on the web.”

Daniel Eden, dribbble.com/shots/1972358-Faceholder

You can start small & keep it simple.

Sprout, the emotional little video.

Speak like a human being.

“How can we leverage our content to identify, target, and engage top

innovative pinfluencers?”

cipsum.com

sansbullshitsans.com

“Publishing content that is self-absorbed in substance or style alienates readers… you might not see the effects of narcissistic content right away, but someone will eventually come along and eat your lunch by offering the exact same thing in a user-centered way.”

Erin Kissane. “The Elements of Content Strategy.”

“Publishing content that is self-absorbed in substance or style alienates readers… you might not see the effects of narcissistic content right away, but someone will eventually come along and eat your lunch by offering the exact same thing in a user-centered way.”

Erin Kissane. “The Elements of Content Strategy.”

This could be any business to business service!

✓ Take control of your online channel

✓ Take advantage of enterprise-class features

✓ Scale and grow your business – now and into the future

✓ Flexibility to meet your unique needs

“Only NetSuite’s customer service software gives everyone that interfaces with the customer access to complete, key customer data in real time empowering them to better support your customers while driving upsell and cross-sell.”

what the hell.

Believe in Something

“Words don’t always need to be pressed into service for functional needs; sometimes they can be used simply to satisfy our emotional needs. We’re emotional creatures… bringing a smile to your users’ faces can make a world of difference.”

dribbble.com/mariusz

dribbble.com/ LumenBigott

“Let’s think of our designs not as a facade for interaction, but as people with whom our audience can have an inspired conversation. Products are people too.”

Aaron Walter, “Designing for Emotion.”

Show people they are welcome, supported,

& valued.

• Have a welcoming personality.

• Put a face on your business.

• Speak like a human being.

Thanks! @owltastic on twitter

owltastic.com http://bit.ly/webvisions-nyc