I recently gave a presentation at the 2010 IA Summit entitled “Better Faceted Navigation: Advanced Design Techniques”. Here is a description:

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The majority of my time over the past 6 months have been spent working on the new release of the website for the company I work for. As I rule I do not talk about that here, but after everything we did, I feel the need to at least point out what we did. As with everything else, there are things I like and things I don’t.

[the site]

An article I wrote was recently published as a two-part blog post on the Notes on Design blog.

Read part 1, then click “view Mike’s next post” at the end to read part 2.

I am currently guest blogging on “Notes on Design”, the blog of sessions.edu.

I’ll post all the links within this post.

• Placing Blogs on a Retail Site
• Staying User-Centric in the Maze of Web 2.0, Part I
• Staying User-Centric in the Maze of Web 2.0, Part II
• Rehashing the Fixed vs. Liquid Width Debate

Check back for more soon…

How have we not come up with a better way to build vending machines than with those stupid coil things? Have we all not lost our money only to watch our desired snack selection hanging by an edge and out of grasping distance? With all the technology in this world we can’t come up with something better?

One of the things people talked about this holiday season was how the high gas prices would improve online shopping. The theory goes that since gas prices are so high, people will turn to online shopping in order to save gas and therefore money. I do not buy this theory.

Around the same time that this idea was being discussed, I saw a news story about high gas prices. They interviewed several people and asked them what the were going to do about these prices. The common answer? “What can I do? I don’t have a choice.” Basically, people are going to pay whatever they charge (within reason, obviously — if it was $20 a gallon that might change things) because driving is just part of everyday life.

Maybe I’m completely underestimating this, but I just don’t see people staying home because gas is 50 cents or a dollar more a gallon. Online shopping, however, offers many more benefits than just saving money on gas…

Just back from Shop.org’s First Look 2006, where I attended the conference and acted as a roundtable facilitator on Customer Experience Day. It was great to work with the folks from Creative Good and to share my knowledge of usability testing with some marketing folks who didn’t know too much about it but were eager to learn.

Every year my company (a multi-channel eCommerce co.) invites some of our customers to a tradeshow style event, which features mostly vendors showcasing new, upcoming products, giveaways, etc. At this event we have a “.com” booth where we teach customers about how to use the website, showcase new site features, etc.

Last year, a lot of the customers who attended were not that familiar with the site — either they didn’t use it or had only used it sparingly. We had a great time showing them how easy and great it was to use, and the response was overwhelmingly good. Most people walked away from our booth really excited about using the site in the future.

This year — same event, same concept, mostly different customers — there was a noticable difference with the people who came by our booth: almost every single person used the site regularly and was familiar with most of the features. It was very difficult to find someone who didn’t know all about the site and who was blown away by our great features (they certainly haven’t gotten any worse, but these people now use them every day).

Our customers tend to be a little less tech-savvy than your normal blog-reader, but it is amazing to me how in the past year their knowledge of our website had changed. Its almost as if last year the web, at least to many of our customers, was this new thing that was just starting to catch on, and this year it is something that is just part of everyday life.

For me, of course, the web has been part of every day life for almost 10 years, but I’ve struggled to see others accept it the way I have. The difference from last year to this year in our customers really drove home the point that it is finally being accepted by those people who might have taken a little longer to realize the power and importance of the internet.

One of the interesting concepts starting to emerge is the idea of going to a store but placing what is essentially an internet order.

Ecko Unlimited has experimented with web kiosks at their stores where customers can browse for products not carried in that store, then print out an invoice and pay with cash (or charge) at the register. The product is then sent to the customer as if they had made an internet purchase. This allows Ecko to essentialy sell their entire line from every store without having to stock every single item, and also allows customers to make an internet purchase with cash.

A new mall concept called Epicenter takes this idea even further, creating an entire shopping complex based on the idea that customers will browse and try out products in a mall-type setting but will have their orders shipped to them as if the were completed online. Rachel Thorner from the New York Times describes it well:

*****
The nucleus of Epicenter will consist of two parts - the Buypod, a hand-held electronic device, and electronic kiosks located throughout the mall.

Under the concept, customers will enter the mall and register their credit card information, which will then be put into their Buypods. As customers browse merchandise, they can use their Buypod - which, as the name suggests, looks something like an Apple iPod - to scan the labels of items they want to buy.

Although a small number of items will available to take home, most orders will be sent directly to the warehouse, where they will be filled and shipped. The electronic kiosks will print receipts and can be used to cancel orders, if needed.”

(from NYT article 5/23/05 — full text available at corpwatch.com)

*****

The goal with these ventures is to bridge one of the major gaps that online commerces faces — the fact that consumers cannot hold the items. With many items, testing/feeling/using is paramount to the buying decision, and the internet will not be able to provide this in the forseeable future.

Of course the other major hurdle for internet shopping is shipping charges, which I imagine would still come into play in kiosk-warehouse shopping.

Lastly, the major benefit to internet shopping, at least from my perspective, is completely lost. Convenience! Epicenter is an interesting concept, but the main reason I shop online is because I can do it without having to go to the mall. I hate malls, and I doubt Epicenter will change that. (I also can’t believe they want people to pre-register before going to the mall — that seems like too much work for lazy America!)

(File Under: Yes, these are the things I think about)

During a presentation at eTail Philadelphia, one of the speakers was talking through some year names — oh-five, oh-six, etc., when something he said startled me. He said “oh-ten” (as in 2010). Although technically it seems correct, it was completely unexpected to hear someone say three digits of a year name (or is it number?).

It got me thinking — for my entire life, year names have had a certain rhythm: seventy-six, eighty-five, ninety-four, etc. “Year two-thousand” totally bucked the trend, but that seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and the millenium hype only fueled that thought. “Oh-one” and “oh-two”, followed, quickly returning the cadence of year names back to normal. Even “oh-ten” seems like it might be usable, but “oh-eleven” sounds completely preposterous. Then again, saying just “eleven” sounds ridiculous too!

The bottom line here is that a paradigm shift is upon us — the way we say year names will have to change, if only for a few years. It will be quite intereting to observe how people adjust to it.

I recently visited Hawaii and was struck by the idea of Tourism Usability, which is my way to describe the way a tourist destination ensures that visitors are able to get around easily, find what they are looking for, and generally have a great time when they visit. Obviously there are tourism boards and the like that focus on these ideas, but I’ve never heard of actual usability concepts being applied in this arena. Giving “usability tests” to vacationers, although perhaps tricky from a logistical standpoint, just might yield some really useful results. Beyod that, studying the ideas that we apply to the web and beyond could be quite applicable to building great vacation destinations.

As is probably not all that surprising, this idea came to me based on some bad experiences, most notably with regards to Hawaiian street signage. On two seperate occasions, a road that we wanted to take was closed with no explanation and no detour instructions… Just a “Road Closed” sign! We were forced to get onto a different HIGHWAY with no idea of whether it would take us to our destination. Another time, as we were headed to Honolulu, we discovered that following signs that said Honolulu actually took us nowhere near where we were going. It occured to me that since tourism is Hawaii’s number one industry, they really should take more care that their signage be easy to understand and follow for people driving these roads for the very first time. Getting lost a bunch of times doesn’t really add to the quality of a vacation. (Of course, Hawaii has so many other things going for it, this didn’t really take too much away.)

Oh, and one other thing — If someone from the Hawaii tourism board is reading this and decides that they need a usability expert, you, um, have my email.

I’m a bit of a grammer nut (a dangerous thing to say on a website — I’m just asking for trouble), and it has always bothered me when people write the word website like web site or Web Site or Web site. I think it should be website.

So does Oxford… I feel better now.