Personalization allows a system to identify a user as a specific type or individual, and to deliver appropriate content and functionality to that user. Personalization targets experiences to users with the intent of delivering what they need when they need it. However, personalization needs to be carefully implemented to ensure ongoing success.
Here are some guidelines for creating a successful personalized experience:
1. Assign roles carefully.
When done well, personalization can enhance an experience by presenting the right information to the right user at the right time. However, if a user is tagged as the wrong “type,” personalization can result in a frustrating experience that might annoy the user at...
Conservative use of graphics does not imply boring pages. Much can be done by colored table cells and creative (but restrained) use of different fonts. In particular, style sheets can be used to improve page design without incurring a download penalty. If you are using style sheets (and everybody
Another example of indirectness is based on a complaint by a user (Westland 1988) who reviewed the upgrade of a drawing program in a user group magazine: To perform the task of drawing a rectangle filled with text in the earlier version, one could just draw the rectangle and then immediately start
In some instances, there may well be good reason to use personalization to remove access to certain information. Examples include restricting a minor’s access to particular content or limiting employee access to a site section intended for employees in other areas of the world. An employee in
5 Ways Blockchain Startups Can Appeal to Enterprises
Bold startups are taking on that status quo and offering new solutions built on blockchain that use a decentralized approach, eliminating the need for intermediaries. The unparalleled transparency and trust that blockchain provides are creating new flexibility in how the business operates. The
9 Blockchains Transforming the Way We Pay, Play, and Work
Look past digital currencies’ nosebleed pricing volatility, and you’ll discover a robust, decentralized, secure database. Brands and technologists are quickly figuring out how to put this powerful ledger to good use. Here are several real-world examples that demonstrate cryptos’
Can Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies Alone Save $2 Trillion in Preventing Cybercrime?
It’s through smart contracts that transactions can be made whilst their details can be kept both transparent and secure. Writing about their new smart contracts-based Ethereum trading platform, Confideal stated: “To put it simply, code is not law, but smart contracts created on a platform
When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods
On the other end of this dimension, methods that focus mostly on behavior seek to understand "what people do" with the product or service in question. For example A/B testing presents changes to a site's design to random samples of site visitors, but attempts to hold all else constant, in order
6 tips for successful personalization
Experience Design: Bridging Brand Intention and Brand Interpretation
When approaching a problem or project, designers should be able to break Brand down into core components that inform design decisions. (However, this is admittedly often difficult, because Brand often starts and stops as a presentation deck in a board room, with only logos and guidelines made
Large Devices Preferred for Important Tasks
Typing on mobile devices is still a pain. Even alternative input options like swipe keyboards and voice-to-text are often inaccurate and slow users down. Users fear making mistakes and anticipate the interaction cost of data entry on their mobile devices. Particularly if the activity is personally
Infinite Scrolling is Not for Every Website
The success of infinite scrolling on social media sites such as Twitter have made this technique popular, but that doesn’t mean you should do it too. Continuous scrolling is advantageous for content that streams constantly and has a relatively flat structure, where each unit of content belongs at
The Attention Economy
In ordinary conversation, we often say “pay attention.” This expression implies two important characteristics of attention: that it is limited and that it is valuable. When we “pay” attention to one thing, we deplete our budget of mental resources so that we have less attention available to
UX Research Cheat Sheet
When deciding where to start or what to focus on first, use some of these top UX methods. Some methods may be more appropriate than others, depending on time constraints, system maturity, type of product or service, and the current top concerns. It’s a good idea to use different or alternating
WP Engine Culture Recognized at Greater Austin Business Awards
The annual Greater Austin Business Awards competition, presented by The Austin Chamber of Commerce, is designed to honor excellence in all aspects of business. In order to promote awareness and perpetuate good practices, the Awards recognize companies and organization in the Austin region for
6 tips for successful personalization
WordPress for Good: Relieving Fatigue .
In this segment, we highlight Untire, an application that helps cancer patients and survivors reduce cancer-related fatigue (CRF) symptoms and regain life. CRF is a common side-effect of cancer and related treatments; patients describe it as a paralyzing level of fatigue that leaves patients
How to Recover Abandoned Shopping Carts for WooCommerce Stores
Many of those abandoned carts are probably lost for good because you don’t have any contact information from the shopper to try to win them back to checkout. But for a percentage of the carts, your shopper will have gotten far enough along in the process that you’ll have an email address (or
Front-end style guides are becoming one of the most useful UX deliverables. They are especially important in Agile environments, where enabling more efficient design workflows is critical to keeping the fast pace of development. When developed rigorously, style guides promote consistent design
Beware Horizontal Scrolling and Mimicking Swipe on Desktop
Dennys.com: This design offers obvious global navigation in addition to arrows to advance through content. In testing this site, a user never used the arrows to swipe between pages. Instead, he relied entirely on the global navigation and was able to complete all the tasks successfully. Note, too
Design Thinking Builds Strong Teams
The inability to communicate efficiently is at the core of many teaming issues. Individuals often have different interpretations for the same concept or idea, due to their varied backgrounds and experiences. For example, team members who are experts in different disciplines may bring clashing
Data Legislation Is Coming. Can You Get Compliant?
Additionally, Apple came out in favor of federal data regulations. The company supports giving users the right to control what information is stored, who it is shared with, and why. Considering that consumers, Congress, and now big tech are all in favor of stricter protections, companies need to
The Key IoT Security Questions You Need To Ask
More to the point, when you’ve got a bunch of devices talking to each other over the internet, how will you safeguard data confidentiality and integrity? When choosing an IoT monitoring and connection solution, make sure that it is using industry-proven data encryption. Solutions like the Azure
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
CSS conversion of my Radio weblog
I’ve done a re-design of my Radio weblog, using CSS. Look ma, no tables! Yes, it’s now a tableless design. I’m doing my bit for the web standards cause, although I haven’t yet achieved 100% XHTML validation. For my re-design I used a CSS Zen Garden design by Michael Landis
6 tips for successful personalization
Trademark Protection for Startups
Now that you have a trademark you need to make sure that no one else adopts and begins use of a confusingly similar trademark. Trademark infringement costs businesses hundreds of millions of dollars each year in lost revenue. Even if a competitor begins use of a similar, albeit not identical
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
6 Tips for Successful Personalization | Visibility of System Status
Visibility of System Status
For instance, when you drive a car, you need to continuously see its speed to decide if you need to go faster or slow down. Those who have ever driven a car where the speedometer was broken can attest to the fact that it’s quite difficult. When this happened to me, I felt at the mercy of the cars
Banner Blindness: The Original Eyetracking Research, 10-year research overview
For example, unskilled researchers often ask users to simply look at a page, rather than have them encounter it as part of a task flow. Users naturally look at things differently depending on the context. For example, if you want to know how users look at the elements of a form, you can't just
We recently ran a usability study in the U.K. where one user was attempting the following task: "Does Siemens have any special deals on washing machines?" Without much trouble, the user arrived at this homepage for Siemens Appliances in the U.K.: User task: "Does Siemens have any special deals on
