User Experience | Jeremiah Owyang

User Experience June 2, 2009June 3, 2009

Is Your Website SNOWED? (Stakeholders’ Needs Overwhelm Web Experience Design)

Having too many stakeholders on your website results in forcing your users to trudge through a confusing experience, where each laborious step results in frustration then abandonment. Like poor Jack N on the left, you have frozen your own users, your website is SNOWED. Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen Result in Mush I’m sure you’ve seen it, websites where there’s such a jumbled mess of content on a webpage, you know it’s a battle from internal stakeholders. Typically, you see this jumble of information on large corporate websites, in particular, large tech companies with HW and SW products. (I know this as I used to do it) Being SNOWED is far worse than Avinash’s acronym of HiPPO (Highest Paid … Continue readingIs Your Website SNOWED? (Stakeholders’ Needs Overwhelm Web Experience Design)

Feedback, User Experience September 11, 2008September 11, 2008

Do I need a blog redesign?

I’ve had this blog redesign for a few years now, and it may start to show its cracks. For some, they like the simple layout and design, easy to scroll, for others, they may want a more updated look and feel. I’ve noticed quite a few blogs have been changing their designs lately, they are more media centric, have more of a front page newspaper look, esp for high volume blogs. Who’s done it? Techcrunch, Scoble, Teresa Valdez Klein, Shel Israel, I think I first noticed this a few months ago from Ars Technica. In fact last night I was evaluating quite a few premium wordpress themes that are available for purchase. Curt Monash of Network World reviewed a few … Continue readingDo I need a blog redesign?

User Experience February 26, 2008

What’s on my mind?

New to reading me and want a hundred word summary? Sam Lawrence of Jive Software has compiled tag clouds of 10 bloggers he reads and has done a quick and dirty analysis of what we frequently talk about. What’s a tag cloud? It’s a collection of terms or keywords found in content or vernacular. It looks like he’s using IBM’s many eyes software to compile the cloud, which shows the heavier weighted or frequent terms in larger font. The cloud is comprised of words that aren’t necessarily in my wordpress categories, so it appears to be crawling and analyzing text. While tag clouds certainly are interesting, not everyone agrees they are helpful such as expert Thomas Vanderwal, Brian has the … Continue readingWhat’s on my mind?

User Experience, Web Marketing February 25, 2008February 26, 2008

Demographics, Psychographics, and Technographics

The job of a Marketer is to connect products with customers. While it’s often native for marketers to know their products, they often fail at truly understanding their customers. Today, customers are much more than just recipients of messages, they create their own messages, share with their peers, and in some cases, are working very hard to keep marketers out of the picture. Demographics In business school, I learned about understanding your customer, we learned about the concepts of Demographics (people’s lifestyles, habits, population movements, spending, age, social grade, employment). The goal was to create a model to understand who these people were, where they live, and what they do. Psychographics We also learned that beyond understanding the who, we … Continue readingDemographics, Psychographics, and Technographics

Enterprise Web, Intranet, User Experience January 4, 2008January 4, 2008

The Challenges, Evolution, and Success Factors of the Enterprise Intranet

Enterprise Intranets are an often overlooked corporate asset. These powerful tools represent the knowledge, relationships, and processes of a company, yet for the most part they go under-resources, under-appreciated, and given third-class citizenship to the public site and customer or partner extranet. We know they are important as they are a direct reflection of your corporate culture. If a company’s competitive strength is it’s employees and how they work together, the intranet is a valuable tool. Secondly, with many baby boomers in the United States retiring in the near future a great deal of corporate knowledge will be lost, how will you capture and distribute this tacit knowledge? The Challenges of the Enterprise Intranet: There’s a few major reasons why … Continue readingThe Challenges, Evolution, and Success Factors of the Enterprise Intranet

Community Marketing, User Experience, Web Theory November 19, 2007November 19, 2007

Your Next Customer ISN’T buying –how Ted’s Fly Fishing Shop treated prospects

This blog often talks about the tools and technologies that companies can use, the same principles apply to real-life, and how we treat the next customer. Last night, I had dinner and drinks over at my Uncle’s friend’s place. Ted, who’s already retired, shared some of his wisdom with me regarding running a business. His business? he launched a silicon valley startup right in the heart of the valley, but the thing was, it has nothing to do with tech. In fact, he had run a fly fishing shop in San Mateo for 15 years, and knows what it’s like to run a startup. Like most startups in the valley, it’s a combination of ambition, risk, and all passion. The … Continue readingYour Next Customer ISN’T buying –how Ted’s Fly Fishing Shop treated prospects

Interview, User Experience, Video, Web Tools November 9, 2007November 9, 2007

Video: Developing in Flex vs Ajax with Randy Fong (2:20)

Click To Play A few weeks ago, I met some SF folks at Lunch 2.0 in SF (see pics of this rooftop party. Randy Fong is a Flex champion and evangelist and gives us his reasons why he prefers to develop there. He tells us about the differences between Flex, Ajax, and Silverlight, and answers which one he thinks will have a faster development time. I probed him about measurement, which has been a point of contention for many web strategists, he gives his response. There’s a lot of web strategists reading this blog, tell me about which technology you’re using for rich user experiences and why.

Forrester, Microformat, User Experience October 18, 2007October 18, 2007

Usage of Twitter? Scoble questions, Peter responds

My antennae are being retrained to watch what people are saying about Forrester, my new employer. I’m starting to understand the conversations around the company and am actively starting internal conversations about what you are all saying. Yes, we are listening. I woke up this morning to see that Robert has challenged Pete’s data in his post entitled: “Where did Forrester get its Twitter data?” Peter (Analyst) and Cynthia (Researcher) have data on usage of microblogging. His relationship with the Obvious folks gave him suspicion about the numbers. In just a few hours, Peter has responded via his blog, and Cynthia provides details on the methodology (read comments). If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my three short weeks here … Continue readingUsage of Twitter? Scoble questions, Peter responds

Citizen Journalism, User Experience, Web Marketing, Web Strategy Show October 3, 2007October 3, 2007

Web Strategy Show: Josh Hallett on Citizen Journalism and Effective Blog Design

Here’s one of the last Web Strategy Show videos that will be published on this round (new readers: I interviewed the top web and marketing leaders in the industry at PodTech, see archives). Josh Hallett is known in the web marketing and social media fields, and is frequently seen at conferences speaking, sharing, or just taking pictures. Based out of Florida, he’s become a personal contact of mine, and he recently visited me at PodTech in Palo Alto. Josh shares with us at the WeMedia conference on the topic of Citizen Journalism, (1:10). He discusses how we both witnessed Shel Israel pissing off the traditional journalists in the room who are holding on to the old publishing model in a … Continue readingWeb Strategy Show: Josh Hallett on Citizen Journalism and Effective Blog Design