For software going forward, help will be built into the user interface. It will be a part of the infrastructure, embedded in normal interface elements instead of being an add-on.  (via 52 Weeks of UX)

When a customer is using your website, in order of preference:

1. The customer understands everything and knows exactly what to do.  The colors, imagery and micro-text are so clear and intuitive that everything happens at the sub-conscious level.  Questions never even arise in the customers mind.  It’s as natural as walking down the street.
2. Small questions arise in the customers mind but strategically placed help links or hover text quickly answer these questions and keep the customer moving forward.
3. Questions arise in the customers mind that are not answered seamlessly.  The customer has to stop what they are doing and go to a special help, how-to or FAQ page to answer their question.
4. Questions arise in the customers mind that are not answered seamlessly and, even after digging around on the website, the customer still cannot figure out what to do.  They eventually come to the contact-us page and either email or call customer support.  (Or they just leave your website entirely).

Ideally, every interaction would fall into category #1.  However, depending on the complexity of what you’re doing, interactions in the #2 and #3 categories are probably inevitable.

Category #4  changes things though.  It’s expensive for the business and exceedingly frustrating for the customer.  It lacks elegance.  It is a hack.  Internet businesses are exciting primarily because of their intrinsic scalability. Customer service centers are not scalable like software.

Some great businesses have been built claiming their core strategy is “customer service”.  A lot of times this means they have invested heavily in a call center full of friendly, well trained customer service folks.  I wonder if once you’ve invested heavily in a customer service center, do you spend as much energy trying to perfect your design?

It’s two very different ways of solving the same problem.  One is infinitely scalable, but trickier to get right.  The other is easier to get right, but more expensive to scale.  Which solution would you choose?  Is it possible for a new company with good design to disrupt an established company with a large customer service team?

Just fantasizing about technology a bit today… Consider the following trends:

1.) The internet is coming to our TV’s.

2.) TV’s are getting 3-dimensional displays.

3.) Gesture control technology is becoming a useful interface.

Put those three together and what becomes possible? Well, lots of things, but one of them would be an entirely new e-commerce experience.

Picture mom shopping for shoes online.  She is sitting on the couch in front of your 65″ television looking at the latest shoe styles.  Except, the shoes are not just flat images.  They are visually popping out of the screen thanks to 3D imaging.  Ands mom doesn’t need a mouse or a remote or a keyboard.  With gesture controls, she is rotating the shoes so that she can see them from different angles and really get a feel for them, or waving past them to get to the next product, or adding them to her shopping cart for purchase…

Wild.

It’s probably a bit early to start building this sort of thing now, but…

In pure technology companies and research, product development should be driven by technology. When I was an engineer developing consumer satellite modems every decision was based on technology.  We only considered performance vs. cost.

More and more though, I think companies that focus only on technology are failing.  Technology is still important.  It doesn’t hurt if your product is faster, lighter or more accurate than your competitors.  But more and more technology is not enough.  In a lot of areas, technology has progressed to the point that customers receive little marginal benefit to the improved technology.

If you’re a digital camera user and you take pictures to post them on Facebook, you don’t really benefit if the camera goes from 10 mega-pixels to 12 mega-pixels.  You’re only going to share your pictures at VGA resolution anyways.  You also don’t care if the battery life increases from 24 hours to 28 hours because you only need the camera for a few hours at a time.

It’s when technology reaches these inflection points that companies with technology-driven culture find themselves disrupted by companies that driven by design.  Apple’s iPod did not win market share because it plays music better than the competitors.  It won because of its emphasis on design.

In general, good design can have the following effects:

• Enable a customer to capture the value technology creates.
• Makes a product emotionally desirable.
• Using the product makes someone feel positive about themselves because they feel connected to something beautiful.
• Makes a product easier to use, decreasing the users stress that they are doing something wrong and shortening the learning curve.

So to all the so-called technology companies out there.  Think critically about how critical your technology really is.  If major technology improvements produce minimal user benefits, your priorities need to shift.  Design should not be driven by technology.  Design should be driven by people – and people are your customers.

Cognitive styles can be measured across several different dimensions. Some examples include: impulsive (makes decisions quickly) vs. deliberative (explores options in depth before making a decision), visual (prefers images) vs. verbal (prefers text and numbers), or analytic (wants all details) vs. holistic (just the bottom line).

As we are better able to determine what sort of customer is viewing an advertisement, we will not only be able to show them an ad of something they may be interested in (geographic, demographic, contextual), but we can present the advertisement in a way they are most receptive to it.

For example, if it is determined that a customer has a verbal cognitive style, they will be more interested in an advertisement listing impressive specifications of a product than they would be to a picture of the product. This will ultimately lead to higher click through rates.

Additionally, we’ll see these ad’s take users to the advertisers website in more intelligent ways. For example, take an impulsive buyer to a purchase page, and a deliberate buyer to a product details page. This will ultimately lead to higher conversion rates.

When most people are casually internet browsing, they don’t scroll down to see what else is on the page, just below their initial field of view.

Thus, if there’s any critical content “below the fold”, it’s likely your users won’t find it.  Confusion and frustration will set in, and they’ll end up on your competitors site.

Now, to get technical: according to the presentation, 92% of the population has a screen height of 768 pixels or greater, while only 38% of the population has a screen height of 772 pixels or greater.  I’m not sure where the information comes from, and how recent it is, but this does serve as a pretty convincing argument to optimize your site for a 768 pixel screen height (or at least make sure it provides a great experience at this resolution).

In my Firefox 3 browser, with two toolbars shown, and multiple windows open, a 768 pixel screen height leaves about 584 pixels of web page height viewable in the browser without scrolling down.  Basically – it’s not much.  Fitting all critical content into this 584 pixels puts a lot of pressure on a UI designer to be as efficient as possible, but ultimately shuld pay off with more satisfied users and a higher conversion to sales rate.