February 12, 2002

Jared's wombat??

Just received Jared Spool's latest UIEtips enewsletter: "Determining How Design Affects Branding." Lately Jared has been annoying me with his spam all about attending some conference on the west coast (once is okay. Three times is NOT okay). But aside from that, methinks he should start selecting more substantial stuff for his newsletter if he has any hopes whatsoever of selling my company reports on his research. These examples just won't do it:

"The more shoppers could purchase their desired products, the more their positive attitudes about the site's brand increased."
Duh.

"The usage of certain design elements correlated very strongly with people's brand attitude changes. For example, shoppers who used size charts while buying apparel were more likely to show brand strength increases on those sites. While shoppers who used Search correlated strongly with decreases in brand strength."
Correlations do not a conclusion make. How strongly correlated? Was it a statistically significant correlation or just a line moving on a chart? What were they searching for? Why were they searching? What's a brand-strength increase, anyway? And the only reason to use a size chart is if you're already committed to buying - otherwise, it's a pain in the ass to figure them out. So if someone IS ALREADY committed to buying, of course his or her brand awareness is going to be higher.

"These two findings tell us that when we create designs that focus on ensuring users accomplish their goals, we are likely having a long-term positive effect on the strength of the brand."
As opposed to what, deliberately designing sites to be user unfriendly and to thwart user goals? How much money was spent on this study? Time?

If you want USEFUL web-building information, go here: Criteria for optimal web design (designing for usability) from the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University.

Posted by Lee at February 12, 2002 10:01 AM
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