There is a delicate balance in design between the scientific approach and intuitive approach. Proponents of each philosophy must push for their argument but the real genius is quite likely found somewhere in the middle.
I am reading two books right now. One is Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. The other book is Web Analytics Demystified, A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business, by Eric Peterson. It humors me, because the content of each of the books almost cancels the other out. Web Analytics Demystified is a comprehensive discussion of the concept of website analytics and its practice. It tells you why the data should be important to you, how to collect and measure the data, analyze the findings and associate the results with key performance indicators (KPIs). It is a very relevant, extremely helpful read for my field.
The other book, Blink, is about how in a few seconds our unconscious mind can tap into what our conscious mind has not discovered, and how this is an experience that makes us be foolish in our decision-making if we base our actions only on the conscious. When you “listen to your gut” or “follow your instincts”, it will be more likely right than wrong, and for a reason. It shows how all the science and marketing tests in the world can still go terribly wrong if they are taken out of context in the analysis. The author talks about “thin-slicing” as something human beings do all the time. This is a process of using the unconscious mind to pay attention to the details of a very thin slice of a situation, and gathering in that moment, everything necessary to read deeply into the experience, get an impression, and be able to act on it with full certainty.
This thin-slicing happens all the time. Investors do it, art critics do it, basketball players do it, consumers do it, we all do it, all the time. Take a situation discussed in the book, when the Coca-Cola company was completely thrown off by the results in the Pepsi challenge. The results were real data, and pointed to people liking the taste of Pepsi more than Coke. They were worried. In response, they spent a lot of money on market research and product research and development and launched New Coke. Consumers hated it. Everything pointed to this being the right course of action. Except… that the taste someone has in a taste test is a different sense than you get about a product over time, using it daily. Once tested, Daily use of Coke showed that it was liked better than Pepsi. The author of Blink argues that it is really very hard to know with certainty what people think unless you examine the results specifically in context.
And that is precisely where the authors of both books agree. In website design and development, we can gather data or not. We can use our intuition, watch user’s first impressions, or conduct usability testing to seek answers to specific questions and monitor analytics. The results of anything we do needs to be considered within its context. If a user finds their way and places the order on their first visit, fantastic, but it is the trend, the ability to observe the performance of the site among all visitors over time, that matters most.
A website is not an experience of one moment. It is a living, changing media. The question of its performance is not a question of a moment with one person, but of many moments with many people, using the site, leaving and returning to use it again.
When a visitor comes to a site, she is going to “thin-slice” and get an impression of what the site is about, it’s quality, characteristics and effectiveness to help her do what she wants to do. This thin-slicing is about a 3-second impression. The visual design and information architecture craft that first impression. What does the visitor see to help her thin-slice? She immediately decides to stay and try it out or jump ship.
If she stays on the site, the next part is the “how do I get from A to B?” question. The visitor decides on the best path to take in the site. This is user experience. How do you lead the visitor from just looking, to doing and following the path you want them to take?
I think these first two parts, without monitoring trends in your website analytics, are dependent on the ability of a skilled designer and observer of human nature. The designer has to be able to thin-slice the situation, to have the information about the site and it’s expected visitors, to make an educated guess on what they’re habits and desires would be, and pull together a design that makes this work.
Once the site is in use, an analytics program should be set up so we can use the analysis of the data to guide us. What is the trend? Are your visitors jumping ship for some reason or moving on to the goal conversion? What is really happening? Don’t make your website’s success be entirely dependent on the user experience or interaction design alone.
If you want the greatest advantage from monitoring your website analytics, let the data lead you back to the user experience once again. Optimize your content for improved goal conversions. Test out changes to the user experience to see that the visitors actually are doing what you hope for them to do.
We have the benefit of understanding that there is this human ability of thin-slicing, and we also today have the ability to observe the website analytics and help provide the answers so that first impression can work to the advantage of the site and build business. Data is meaningless if it isn’t analyzed in context, and it isn’t useful unless you actually make the subtle but necessary changes to improve the site based on what the findings show.
