oneux | designing experiences

Experience Maps

 

The Experience Map is a model that illustrates the complete experience a person might have with a solution, application, etc.

It has its origins in, and has been used extensively in Service Design where customers are interacting with a number of touchpoints. We use experience maps in defining and designing multichannel retail experiences. We have borrowed elements from examples published online  and added elements we feel help us better define these  experiences.

There are  four elements to the experience map:

1. Customer type / persona we are designing for  and their current response to the brand 
2. The journey across all touchopints
3. The Customer's emotional / gut response to each part of the journey 
4. The business response to each element of the journey 
5. Any changes affected to the customer's perception of the brand + how the experience maps against the business principles 

opt in, not out

 image by Tenisha Rawlin on flickr

A recent article in DarkPatterns, discusses how online businesses use trick questions to get users to either agree to sharing their information with them (Wired) or inadvertentdly buy a service (Ryan Air). A more benign, yet sneaky approach employed by online marketers is the use of opt-out communication/registration questions. Typically this takes place when marketers wish to collect users' personal information to later contact them with offers, etc. The opt-out usually takes the form of a check box with negative text, something like: 'tick here if you do not wish to...' see example from Wired: 

 

 Why  is this approach insidious? Firstly it breaks the heuristics governing a check box, specifically that a selected check box equates to a positive, true statement. That is, by selecting a checkbox a users makes a positive statement, which in the marketing world would be that they opt in, agree to a business sharing their information, contacting them, etc.

Secondly, a key feature  of asking users to opt in - apart from legal requirements - is that all emals, materials, letters, any communication made is anticipated by the user. It confirms that the user wants to receive it, which makes it quite different to unsolicited advertisements. 

Finally, opt out questions take advantage of our tendency to not fully read online but rather scan text. Basically they rely on us not noticing and inadvertently opting-in.

All in all this does not make for an honest and fair start to a relationship. Is this really how online businesses want to engage with their customers?

fly-out navigation menus

***still in progress***

... or mouse-over navigation menus, or pull- down navigation, even though users do not pull them down.

Do they work? When do they work? What good practice is being developed?

Some ideas:

Pros:

• Work for catalogue sites
• Provide an overview of the entire catalogue
• Support broader and shallower tree structures
• Can include merchandise and promotions
• Can include visual statements
• Can accommodate fewer landing pages

Cons:

• Cognitive load can be quite significant
• Does not support browsing and discovery
• Can accommodate fewer landing pages (does not support disambiguation)

Examples:

• Walmart
• Hallmark
• Next
• Target
• John Lewis
• Marks & Spencer
• Goldman Sachs
• IKEA
• GE
• Tesco
• getty images