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I just came back from an extended trip to Las Vegas, a fascinating city for a multitude of reasons. Not only is it the fastest-growing city in the US, it is also constantly transforming and reinventing itself, a Disneyland for grown-ups, gambling capital of the world, vacation spot for one and Sin City for others. It became evident to me that this city offers more than just pleasure, it teaches us how to attract, entertain and keep us happy despite the fact that we are loosing our money, which means they must be doing something right. Here are my 10 Webpage Design Lessons learned from a trip to Las Vegas… seriously:

1.) Don’t Listen to Users

“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”, the motto of Las Vegas is a true #1 (who ever came up with that slogan is a genius in my eyes)! When asking your fiance/fiancee about his/her bachelor party … pardon … when designing an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Jacob Nielsen states that self-reported data is typically three steps removed from the truth:

• People bend the truth to be closer to what they think you want to hear or what’s socially acceptable.
• In telling you what they do, people are really telling you what they remember doing.
• In reporting what they do remember, people rationalize their behavior.

Lesson: Perform user tests as early as possible (e.g. design phase).

2.) Optimize your Top Task

Marriage is wonderful and so is the wedding day, at least mine was. Of course I blacked out the six months of preparation and swet that lead to that event. Now, Vegas wasn’t Vegas without finding a way to optimize the wedding experience: A 24-hour drive-thru wedding chapel called A Little White Chapel Tunnel of Love. “Ahem, yes, Combo 2 with two wedding rings, a bouquet and the Elvis… can you make it ‘Love me tender’ please?” – “120 Dollars at the first window please.”

Lesson: Identify and optimize your top task.

3.) Direct your Users

Once inside a Casino it is incredibly difficult to find your way out – I’m not certain but I would take any bet that exactly this is the purpose of a Casino designer. More than once I found myself in a maze of slot machines surrounded by their ringing noise and flashing lights. Whatever I was looking for (except ATM’s) seemed always to be at the other end of the Casino.
Design your page in a way that helps users find their way around but at the same time support your business model, e.g. Amazon has perfected the process of returning articles and submitting online or email support request but made it really difficult to find a phone support number which would seriously compromise their business income.

Lesson: Create a logical Information Architecture; add links to related items; cross-reference articles.

4.) Make it Easy to Learn

Casino games are mostly very easy to learn, don’t you agree? It can’t get any easier than inserting your bills, hitting the main button on the front panel or operating the lever to the side, wait until the reels have stopped spinning, compare the pattern of symbols on the reels with the possible winning combinations stated to the top of the machine and cash in the jackpot.
The actual difficult part is to get the people to play or use the machines. That’s when the Casino offers free lessons and sections with machines that pay well, everything to get you started.

Lesson: Help novice users to learn and avoid frustration by offering easy entry tasks.

5.) Provide relevant and attractive Content

Vegas has realized very early that sex-appeal and show makes a great combination, but it was limited to mostly the male population and that’s when the city started to transform itself into a family-friendly, theme-park like vacation destination with Castles, Musicals, Rollercoasters in and around the Casinos, 3D rides and more. Free drinks, cheap buffets, Day-Spa’s and a variety of other promotions added to the perfect experience. Attractive entertainment options could still be found at any corner in the form of bars, clubs and shows but lately I recognize a shift back to more go-go style entertainment in newly created bars in between the slot machines and tables. I guess the family-style hasn’t really worked out.

Lesson: Create attractive content that is relevant to your target audience; test and adjust if necessary.

6.) Make it Easy to Enter

Casinos do everything to get you into their building. Almost free (two dollar tip is ok) valet parking allows you to drop off your car quickly and one-directional moving walkways (obviously you need to walk back) shovel you inside, that’s where the music plays… Get the people where they want to be as quickly and easy as possible, show me the money!

Lesson: Avoid splash screens and flash intros; keep page sizes small.

7.) Avoid Windows and Clocks

There are two things you will never find in a Casino: windows and clocks. Right, nothing should distract your focus on the slot machines to the other wonderful Casinos outside and nobody wants to encourage you to make time-sensitive decisions (leaving the Casino early) by realizing how much time (and money) you have already spent during your visit.

Lesson: Avoid popup windows and time-sensitive triggers or forwarders.

8.) Make Sign-up Easy

Even though 100% of players think they can win only 1% will win. The only safe way to win in Las Vegas is to sign up for a Players Club. Handing over your name and address to the Casino will in many cases give you an immediate bonus of 5 or 10 bucks in free slot play, discount coupons for drinks and shows as well as little Thank you presents (wink-wink, Tropicana gives you a free T-Shirt and a deck of playing cards). Gambling itself is then rewarded through comps like more gifts, free buffets, free hotel rooms, free show tickets and more. I’m 11 cards richer now
Well, the sign-up process was easy enough, the only interaction with the clerk was handing over my drivers license and entering a PIN twice. Guess what, sure enough I always hit the Enter key after entering the PIN which wasn’t very well received by the system and the clerk. I don’t even know why I ended up apologizing. Why in the world can’t the system take care of that? Another day, another Casino, another Keypad, yes, another keypad, it was an actual computer keypad which is reverse to an ATM keypad and thus reverse to ALL the other keypads. Try your ATM PIN on your keyboard right now … exactly!

Lesson: Anticipate input errors and handle them gracefully; use common and widely accepted interfaces.

9.) Monitor User Behavior

There is no way one could walk into a Casino and cheat undetected. The famous ‘Eye in the Sky‘ is omni-present. 24/7 ‘Surround’-Surveillance captures every movement, every face and every deal. That doesn’t really worry me as long as they keep on bringing the free beer. It is clear that this kind of monitoring helps the Casinos to optimize their winnings not only by preventing cheats but also by detecting patterns in playing behavior and machine pay-out/malfunctions. I don’t see a threat in it as long as my face isn’t connected with the data collected.

Lesson: Use Server Traffic Log Analysis and Search Log Analysis to optimize your website.

10.) Make it Sexy

Sexy is probably the attribute I hear most often lately, it’s not ’slick’ or ‘beautiful’ anymore, it’s ’sexy’ now. That’s fine with me if only I knew what that means. Any ideas? Send them to me…
Anyway, what would be a blog about Vegas without mentioning sexy at least twice, huh?

Cheers and good luck!

This is the first in a series of blogs describing User-centered Design Methods. My goal is to summarize my experience, insights and findings across multiple literature and compile them into easy and quick to digest pieces for you to consume. I want to encourage you to comment your own experiences and give me feedback on why your company applies certain methods differently or not at all or something else altogether.

I personally don’t like the term Usability too much, it’s an empty buzz word. It means SOMETHING to everybody but isn’t scientific enough to be taken serious. It’s often interpreted wrongly and purely misunderstood by most. It’s kinda like Psychology, we know it is important to understand fundamental human behavior, their problems and remedies, but I wouldn’t pay a dime to go to a Psychologist. But who knows, just as Psychology got its scientific relevance and acknowledgment – partly maybe through the ‘invention’ of the IQ – hopefully Usability rises up to similar levels (Jeff Sauro offers interesting metrics via SUM (Single Usability Metric).

That’s why I like the term User-centered Design. It works wonders with Project Managers and the-like, probably because Design is such an important term in their daily work. And when asked about Usability testing I can conveniently point out that this is only one tool of many in my UCD toolbox. But the really important sales trick is to know which UCD method is best used at what time in the project management cycle.

The following chart compares the most common user-centered design methods, outlines their cost and shows when to use them:

Overview of user-centered design methods

Comparison of User-centerd Design (UCD) Methods

Method	Cost	Output	Sample Size	When to Use
Competitive Studies	Medium	Stat. & Non-Stat.	5	Requirements
Focus Groups	High	Non-Statistical	6-9	Requirements
Field Studies	High	Non-Statistical	2-3	Requirements
Heuristic Evaluation	Low	Statistical	2-3	Design
Paper Prototyping	Medium	Stat. & Non-Stat.	5	Design
Card Sorting	High	Statistical	15-20	Design
Participatory Design	Low	Non-Statistical	n/a	Design
User Testing	Medium	Stat. & Non-Stat.	5	Design & Evaluation
Surveys	Low	Statistical	20+	Requirements & Evaluation
Interviews	High	Non-Statistical	3-5	Requirements & Evaluation
Server Traffic Log Analysis	Low	Statistical	n/a	Evaluation
Search Log Analysis	Low	Statistical	n/a	Evaluation

Not long ago, after having completed a full project management cycle (requirements, design, implementation and evaluation) the PM proudly announced to perform a Focus Group with his stakeholders. Showing the ready application, he thought, would surely impress them and lead to valuable feedback for the next milestone. This impulse isn’t uncommon but has to be fought before it becomes reality. Does he really want to produce MORE and EXPENSIVE requirements? Because that’s the output of Focus Groups. Wouldn’t he be better off running 2 iterations of User Testing to reveal usability issues or a Survey to receive input from outside the development environment?

Recommendations

• Requirements:
  • Competitive Studies
  • Interviews
  • Field Studies
• Design:
  • Heuristic Evaluation
  • Paper Prototyping
  • User Testing
• Evaluation:
  • Surveys
  • Server Traffic Log Analysis
  • Search Log Analysis
  • User Testing
• The Usability effort is NOT proportional to the size of the project. Bigger projects spend less percentage on UCD with same effort. Regardless, as a rule of thumb assign 10% of the projects budget for UCD.
• Faster iterations of prototype design require less testers

References

• Fidgeon, T.; User-centered design (UCD) – 6 methods; Nov. 2005; http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-usability/user-centered-design.shtml
• IBM; User-Centered Design Principles; https://www-01.ibm.com/software/ucd/
• Nielsen, J.; Field Studies Done Right: Fast and Observational; 01/20/2002; http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020120.html
• Nielsen, J.; How Big is the Difference Between Websites; 01/19/2004; http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040119.html
• Usability in Practice: Three-Day Intensive Camp; Nielsen, J. et. al.; April 2006; Proceeding, Usability Week 2006