A familiar situation

Will you donate $1000 to our organization? [Response is no].
Oh. Well could you donate $10?”

- or how about this one -

Can you help me do all this work?
Well can you help me with this bit?”

- from Wikipedia -

Many of us will reluctantly answer yes to the second question, due to an effect called “door in the face” by social psychologists. We’ve fallen victim to this powerful technique which is readily employed by salesman, fundraisers, and even our friends.

But, are you familiar with the opposite effect, called the foot in the door? It’s another trap which is less known and trickier to pull off. Used correctly, it can help you design a survey that creates increased conversion rates.

The foot in the door effect

This technique is employed by salesman and studied by experts in persuasion. Here’s how it usually works in practice:

*doorbell*
Salesman: Hi ma’am, I hate to bother you today but could I have a glass of water from your sink?
Resident: uhhh.. sure. (I’m a decent person)
*resident leaves and returns with a glass of water*
Salesman: *gulp* Thank you. And my isn’t that a difficult stain on your rug over there??….

This is something slightly different than the door-in-the-face. Here we have a person who is asked for a small request (glass of water), followed by a large request, instead of vice versa. In this case, it is likely the request-ee will comply with the request-er if the request is structured with the larger favor asked for second.

My venture into making and taking surveys

What makes us more or less likely to complete a survey?

First of all, the initial survey question should be so easy to answer that no person will have trouble or be baffled. “Are you familiar with such and such website?” is a question that a reply of yes or no easy to provide.

More importantly, a survey would do well to leave the rest of the questions on a separate page. By allowing the survey taker to click the “next” button early on, you get them to make a psychological commitment to the survey. This is GENIUS!

It plays off the foot in the door, an effect we are familiar with! Answering the first survey question is the small, easy request. Once completed, its like a foot in the door and cognitive dissonance kicks in (’I already gave the survey writer this much of my time, it wouldn’t be THAT much more to continue’). By agreeing to a small request, it would be a form of contradiction to disagree with a larger request.

Although clicking the next button reveals the hidden questions (which are potentially more complicated and time-consuming), the user has already made an action that is buying what the survey-writers are selling.

A survey may take a lot longer to complete (and even includes a re-direct to another non-survey page — a usability no-no) but if the questions are put onto separate pages, it is more successful than a survey design that is a wall of text. Theirs is brilliant in their deceptiveness – KEEPING IT SIMPLE ON THE FRONT PAGE.

After discussing the two effects, which work in opposite ways, I pose the question: which is more effective?

When I’m asked what line of work I’d like to get into, I tell people I would like to design interfaces or be a usability engineer. Often times, I am met with confused looks and the question: What is usability analysis and how are you qualified to do that work?

Usability analysis is a piece of the design process, performed upon a version of a product to evaluate how effectively a customer interfaces with the product.

source: Usability Professionals Association

Some common questions in a usability analysis include:
Does the product serve its intended use (or perform additional unintended but useful functions)?

———————-

Is the customer able to easily determine how to perform the intended functions?

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Are the interactions with the product pleasant for the consumer to the point they would want to repeat them or recommend them to a friend?

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Will the product facilitate or impede the user in their goal?

Other questions might include: In what environments is this product going to be used and does the product adhere to that environment’s contingencies? Does the product adapt to trained users or experts by providing advanced functionality?

User testing versus product testing
We can already see with these example questions how usability research differs from another related endeavor often confused with usability analysis: product testing. Whereas software or product testing focuses on bugs or errors –does the “upload photo” button upload the content successfully?– user testing focuses on the human side –will a person be able to find that upload button easily and is its function clearly articulated?– and focuses on factors such as social context, expectation, interpretation, pleasure, emotion, and other aspects of cognition in general.

Where is usability analysis used?
Virtually every software or technology company must consider usability at some point, if they are to market the product to everyday users, untrained or unfamiliar with particular technologies. I can recall a girl I used to date who had problems using her PC because she refused to explore menus (she even went so far as to refuse to right-click anything due to fear she might do something damaging and irreversible) To some extent, products should accommodate all levels of user knowledge and technical prowess by being intuitive and inviting, though maybe this girl was beyond the help of usability.

Usability analysis is also pivotal in making decisions when comparing two design specifications. With physical products, this can include the shape and placement of handles or switches. In software, I might ask myself whether my links attract more clicks if they were in bright pink, rather than orange? (probably not) or what if they were in a slightly larger font? Many features of a design can be targets of usability analysis: layouts (both physical and on the web), colors and styles, tactile features, how directions are phrased, and customization features. An interesting conversation came up last night whereby a friend complained about the length of a battery’s life in a smartphone which impeded its usability. Depending on who you ask, areas where the user cannot intervene (such as batteries) might be considered a usability concern.

Thanks!
That’s my take on usability. I hope this was informative to those who have posed the question raised at the beginning of the post: what is usability? I’ll save the answer to the second question I posed for another day

Other resources for finding out more about usability:
Usability resources from UPA
Useit.com, usability resources from an industry leader, Jakob Nielsen
top usability books, courtesy of Smashing Magazine

I invite you to comment by critiquing this post: Perform your first usability analysis!!! how “usable” was this blog post? Did the formatting attract you to the right information? Were the pictures informative or distracting? Was the language put in understandable terms? Did you get all that you expected?

And who thinks that battery life should be an issue of concern for usability professionals?