The Magic of Multidimensions: Synthesizing Views of Customer Data
Lately, almost ever high tech product -- be it device, web site, or software product -- is instrumented to the gills with ways to collect usage data. This is great for those of us in the business of designing and improving products for our customers, because we can see what how people are using things, at least in aggregate. But it also gives us a lot of data to wallow through. Ad it's just one dimension of the data we have on products: On top of all the usage data, there's also lots of other quantitative
information (ratings, surveys) and qualitative information (usability
observations, interviews, etc) to map onto the picture.
And as you might know, converting data into wisdom is a difficult job. There are data visualization tools, of course, but they're complex.
Nancy Shepard, who does user research for several of our Sun.com project, recently came to the rescue with a simple technique. Nancy found it difficult to map the mix of metrics, usability, and survey data coming in on recent projects, so she created a simple chart that enables us to look at key data points together even though they come from many different sources. (This is a generic version of a chart from a real project).
What are we looking at here? On the chart you see key notes on usability observations, web site metrics, page footer ratings, and surveys. The chart gives us a way of overlaying different kinds of information onto a single model of usage for part of the site or for a specific experience. Sometimes we'll add other information, such as conversion data for each step.
If you have a rough model for how customers flow through particular steps on your site, you can build something like this an annotate it with data and observations to build a more complete picture of the plusses and minuses of a given experience.
Oh, and here is a StarOffice version of the chart you can use on your projects.
Simple and effective.
Tunes: Atmosphere: Vampires
Technorati Tags: Design Web-Design CustomerExperience
And as you might know, converting data into wisdom is a difficult job. There are data visualization tools, of course, but they're complex.
Nancy Shepard, who does user research for several of our Sun.com project, recently came to the rescue with a simple technique. Nancy found it difficult to map the mix of metrics, usability, and survey data coming in on recent projects, so she created a simple chart that enables us to look at key data points together even though they come from many different sources. (This is a generic version of a chart from a real project).
What are we looking at here? On the chart you see key notes on usability observations, web site metrics, page footer ratings, and surveys. The chart gives us a way of overlaying different kinds of information onto a single model of usage for part of the site or for a specific experience. Sometimes we'll add other information, such as conversion data for each step.
If you have a rough model for how customers flow through particular steps on your site, you can build something like this an annotate it with data and observations to build a more complete picture of the plusses and minuses of a given experience.
Oh, and here is a StarOffice version of the chart you can use on your projects.
Simple and effective.
Tunes: Atmosphere: Vampires
Technorati Tags: Design Web-Design CustomerExperience
