Reviews: Product Reviews

It’s important for Web site visitors to be able to easily and comfortably find what they’re looking for. A better user experience translates into better conversion rates, as well as happier visitors and customers.

You can use A/B testing tools to support these goals. A/B testing is about putting multiple versions of a page up on a Web site and comparing their performance. How you measure performance is up to you. You can prioritize conversions, downloads, or some measure of user experience such as engagement, time on site, or user satisfaction.

In other words, A/B testing doesn’t have to be just about sales and conversions. As long as you have something to measure, A/B testing is a tactic you can use to support your goals for improving a Web site’s user experience. Read More

I recently bought a Toyota Prius and was surprised to notice my driving behavior change to a more economical style of driving. Doing some research, I learned that I wasn’t alone in this. Much has been written about “the Prius Effect”—how the Prius and other hybrid vehicles change driving behavior by providing feedback that shows drivers how their actions affect their gas mileage. Some people view this as a positive effect, while others, who are annoyed by slow Prius drivers, view it negatively.

What causes Prius drivers to change their behavior? I believe that it’s the feedback that the Prius’s Multi-Information Display provides to drivers. This display consists of several screens, showing the current gas mileage, average gas mileage over various periods of time, and whether the gas or electric motor is currently powering the car. In this column, I’ll discuss the Prius’s information displays, in terms of the effects they have on drivers, the usefulness of the information that they provide, and the effectiveness of their design. Read More

Since our clients require an ideation phase before looking at a product’s visual design, I’ve been looking at a lot of wireframing and other prototyping tools lately. To find out more about prototyping tools, I’ve combed several mailing lists—such as SIGIA and IxDA—looking for discussions about the latest tools that are available to us. As a result of what I’ve found out, I’ve been exploring Justinmind Prototyper, a prototyping tool that serves the ideation process well and, more important, generates HTML code for the prototypes we create. Read More