AnswerLab: Inside the Lab for December 2008

Our expertise has been recognized by clients and the press

	December 2008

Welcome to our first edition of 'Inside The Lab'.

You asked and we've delivered. We're sharing some of the insights that we've gathered from our various research projects. We’ll be publishing Inside the Lab every 2 to 3 months.
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Tips for Mobile Application Design

With millions of iPhones and other next-generation mobile devices on the market, many of our clients have been exploring opportunities to connect with mobile consumers and introducing new mobile applications. AnswerLab recently conducted iPhone user experience studies for several new applications and wanted to share a few best practices related to 1) the horizontal vs. vertical display orientation, 2) the back button and 3) real estate dedicated to advertising.

Mobile application designers face a huge challenge – their end users' expectations are built on many years of browsing interfaces 5 or 10 times the size of a mobile screen. Here are some tips from the Lab to help designers beat this challenge:

Tip #1: Provide visual cues for break-thru functionality.
Mobile devices present new challenges (and opportunities) for visual designers accustomed to developing for personal computer-based interfaces. For example, in an iPhone, a user can flip content on its side at any moment, potentially unlocking a new range of functions. In one application we tested, the vertical iPhone position allowed the user to simply scroll down the page to read more content. However, when turned horizontally, the interaction allowed users to page through content, as if browsing iTunes album covers. Most users did not notice that the horizontal mode would unlock additional browsing features. We recommended providing a visual indicator of the horizontal browse capabilities.

Tip #2: Back buttons should always appear in the upper left-hand corner, following browser-based navigation convention.
Users rely heavily on the back button, especially when learning new applications. AnswerLab recently tested a consumer iPhone application that allowed users to keep track of key tasks. In the prototype application, the back button was often missing or located on the bottom of the page. Users complained – and some become frozen in indecision while trying to complete key tasks. When you see this kind of hesitation, you risk your users abandoning your application altogether.

Tip #3: Even within an advertisement, control the ego of the logo – make sure that the message is the star.
Be thoughtful about promotional content. In user research sessions participants let us know they don't particularly like advertising but they accept it's necessary. Users consider ads to be more valuable if they convey useful, relevant information and don't detract from the core application function. An iPhone with a 3.5-inch 480-by-320-pixel display gives you less than 20% of the pixel space of a 1024x768 computer screen. Ads cannot waste even a few pixels. From a user standpoint, the percentage of real estate dedicated to advertising is critical; users are highly sensitized to the amount of space that a "useless logo is wasting."

Nokia, Yahoo!, AnswerLab and Spike Lee

Nokia Productions has created the world's first social film built entirely by everyday people using their mobile devices to generate and submit original content. Using the best content, Spike Lee then combined the footage into one artistic multimedia film. Participants were able to upload and edit videos using Yahoo's! Jumpcut site. Since this project's success relied heavily upon user contributions, AnswerLab tested the prototype in its earliest working stages. Now we're proud to say that we played a part in the latest Spike Lee film.

Practicing What We . . .

All businesses must understand how their offering is positioned in customers' minds in order to succeed. AnswerLab recently conducted a survey among clients to solicit feedback about how we're doing. Thanks so much to all of you who participated! This quick summary offers more insight into AnswerLab and introduces a new tool for communicating qualitative data.

Below we've summarized a few of the interesting survey findings, which answer the kinds of questions that most businesses need to improve and grow:

What are customers' top-of-mind impressions of your offering?
What do customers value about your offering?
Is your pricing competitive?
Do customers fully understand what you offer?
What can you do to improve?

Factors used to choose a research provider
When considering a research partner, a variety of factors drive the decision making. From post-project surveys we've been glad to earn very high satisfaction and intention-to-recommend scores. But we wanted to know more about what specifically drives the selection of a new research partner.

We asked clients what factors they consider when choosing a research provider. Here's a summary of the results:

Factors considered when choosing a research provider

Factors considered when choosing a research provider

We learned that the quality of the insights provided is the top consideration, followed by flexibility and responsiveness. In a separate question later in the survey we asked how AnswerLab rates on those same attributes. We were happy to learn that that the 5 areas where we score best are the same top 5 determinants that clients use to select research partners. This information lets us know that we've been investing in the right places.

Understanding of Offerings
We also learned that we could do a better job communicating our offerings. We asked clients to select the services AnswerLab offers from a list. Only about half of the respondents were aware of our core offerings. For example only 29% of respondents knew that we conducted RITE studies (Rapid Iterative Testing & Evaluation), which is one of our core offerings. In addition, when asked "what could AnswerLab do to improve?" we heard feedback such as:

"I would only like to learn more about what they offer."
"Would love to stay abreast of new trends/methods in research. If AnswerLab can provide discussions, case studies, etc to talk about innovations in the field... That would be really helpful and a reminder that AnswerLab provides perspective that others can't."
"Provide an overview of services they offer that goes beyond what our group uses already - increase awareness of services."

One of the ways we're addressing these requests is to start our Inside the Lab update emails. We're also taking more time to understand the full spectrum of research needs that could be valuable to clients.

Colorful Comments
Gathering open-ended qualitative feedback is a great way to bring color to quantitative data. In our study we asked clients the open-ended question "what three adjectives would you use to describe AnswerLab?" Here's a visual depiction of the results. The larger the word, the more often it was mentioned.
Colorful Comments

This representation of the data was a great way to share findings with the full AnswerLab team - who wants to look at just bar charts?

Tip: If you'd like to create similar graphics with your data, go to Wordle.net. It's free!

Thanks again if you participated in the survey – the results have been valuable in informing our decisions of where to invest and improve.

AnswerLab Wins Honda Premier Partner Award

American Honda Motor Company CEO Tetsuo Iwamura presented the company's Premier Partner Award to AnswerLab for excellence in user experience research. AnswerLab was one of 15 award recipients selected from 53 suppliers nominated by American Honda associates nationwide. The Premier Partner Awards were established in 1998 to recognize suppliers who embrace American Honda's philosophy of exceeding customer expectations.

In This Issue:

Tips for Mobile Application Design
Nokia, Yahoo!, AnswerLab and Spike Lee
Practicing What We...
AnswerLab Wins Honda Premier Partner Award