“The hard part first” is a post I came across via Designer Depot. Now, there’s not research into it but as soon as you read it it makes complete sense. Basically, what Chris Coyier proposes is that when doing form design, we should put the actual action that the user requested first.
This might sound obvious at first and you might not know what the hell I’m talking about but think about the form for leaving a comment on certain websites. First thing you’ll get requested for are your details, and then you can leave a comment or send a message. We’ve been doing it like that for so long that we haven’t even questioned the way it works. What Chris suggests is that we put the actual comment box first and then we go into the annoying details which make the process more cumbersome. That way you commit to filling the form and, for whatever the reason, it seems like an easier experience.
Anyway, he has more examples in hist post so take a look.
and you thought you made your own decisions. Psst.
Dan Ariely is a researcher in Behavioral Economics. He has this brilliant presentation which questions if we really are in charge of our own decisions.
This video is very insightful. He talks about things such as why people in certain European countries have a 95% of people of participation in organ donor programs as opposed to others having 10%. The reason is not because some countries are just selfish bastards and the others generous. Some Nordic countries, for example, have different results although their cultures are very close.
The difference was the way the government forms, where you would be offered to participate, approached the person. I won’t give it away, though. You have to watch it. ;-)
Great speakers today.
Stephen P. Anderson and Matthew Milan did great presentations. Erin Malone and Christian Crumlish showed up with this amazing Social Patterns Card Game. It’s quite difficult to play, but it’s worth it.
Stephen Anderson is the reason I attended, basically. “Wow, the guy who writes those nice articles in A List Apart is going to be there? This must be good”.
Anyway, he gave a nice presentation about how the way you approach the user can make a huge difference in the collaboration you’ll get from them. Things like the profile completeness gauge from Linkedin or the music games of iLike. They use techniques from the Gaming industry to make it a fun thing for you to fill out information which otherwise would be a daunting process. Instead of forcing you to do it, they kind of challenge you. The idea is to seduce your curiosity and drag you into playing trivia games or making you fill up information to raise your status which will then yield a reward.
It’s a hell of a lot better than presenting the user with the typical 5 or 7 pages of input fields an insurance company would t request a quote, only to take you into a final page that would say something like “We’ll let you know”.
Matthew Milan gave the most engaging presentation of all. I don’t know how he compares in terms of content but he’s definetely a kick ass presenter. It was all about innovation, which is a great topic. He used parkour as a metaphour of innovation. He was talking about using obstacles as portals to new stuff, innovative stuff. Not to flow on the path already designed for us but find a new one where there seems to be none.
He then tried to explain how to train our minds to innovate. The more you practice the better you get and according to his theory, to innovate, you need to be resoponsive in critical situations. You should be so well trained that you don’t have to think in those situations. You should just be able to fix the problem by scanning your environment and finding a solution quickly.
Critical thing for this, according to him, was not panicking in this critical situations. He compared this to the way pilots get trained to deal with this kind of dangerous situations. They can’t panic, otherwise you can’t think clearly. To find a solutions you must remain calm or know how to cope with fear.
Tomorrow I’ll post more on the card game.
