My latest column for UXMatters offers 10 practical tips, or recipes, to help anyone who touches content bake in some influential goodness. Check out 10 Recipes for Persuasive Content.
One tip is to create a distinctive tone. Bliss is one of my favorite examples.
One of my heroes is B.J. Fogg for recognizing the value and potential of persuasion in the interactive space. He defined a discipline called persuasive technology (aka captology), which you can study in the excellent book Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think or Do. I love this work. My issue? Often the “persuader” is the content, not the technology.
Why should you care? It’s critical to understand what exactly is persuading so that you invest time and resources appropriately in a persuasive effort. If you invest completely in the technology and ignore the content, your persuasive effort will not succeed.
Allow me to explain further. First, let’s look at the definition of captology. The diagram below from Persuasive Technology illustates it as the intersection between computer devices and persuasive purposes.
This diagram defines persuasive technology, aka captology. Is technology getting the credit when the content should?
Is a PDA persuasive? Does a kiosk influence you? How about a website? If you’re like me, the answer is “it depends on the content.”
Now let’s take this a step further. Captology identifies three possible persuasive roles that technology might play: tool, medium, and social actor. A tool might be an application that analyzes your fuel efficiency to help motivate you to use less gas, such as Fuelly. A medium is not so much a medium as an environment where an experience is recreated or simulated. An example is a game such as SimCity, where the player plans a city and watches the effects of his or her decisions carry through the game. (For more on persuasive games, see Ian Bogost’s work.) A social actor persuades more in the way a person would—and in the way I think most people associate with persuasion. A simple example is an e-commerce website congratulating and thanking you for completing a purchase. This polite encouragement might influence you to shop at the website again later.
The three persuasive roles as defined in captology. Content is important to all three roles.
In my opinion, all of these persuasive roles depend highly on content. The content in the tool interface must support and clarify the tool’s function, as well as offer motivating messages. The content for a medium must accurately and compellingly create the environment or tell the story. Who better to tell stories than content experts? (In fact, Ian Bogost’s background is as much in literature as it is in technology.) The content for a social actor must be well-crafted, use appropriate language, have personality, employ appropriate psychological principles, and more. The social actor role is especially critical to persuasion in interactive business. As interactive self-service continues to grow, our content needs to act like our company’s engaging salesman, helpful customer service representative, and efficient technical support representative.
Am I saying the technology is not important? No. Fogg articulates well the advantages and capabilities of technology as a means for persuasion. But I fear the technology has overshadowed the content. We need both.
Over the past several months I have explored the topic of content, especially persuasive or influential content. Along the way, I discovered a movement toward defining a discipline called content strategy. This discipline is about giving content the respect, resources, organization, and time it deserves.
Persuasive technology needs more focus on content. Content strategy offers a keen focus on content. They’re a perfect fit. I look forward to exploring the intersection of persuasive technology and content strategy in a space I’m calling “influential content.” Stay tuned.
Any company with a mobile interest is creating new customer experiences faster than you can say “iPhone.” An interesting one is American Airlines’ mobile boarding pass. In this experience, innovative mobile bar codes allow customers to check in board using their only phones—no paper needed.
An example of a mobile barcode
Kudos to American Airlines for trying to take the mobile experience to the next level. This approach sounds excellent in theory and, indeed, mobile bar codes have tremendous potential across many industries, including travel. But using a new technology does not replace the need to plan and design the user / customer experience appropriately. As this UX review from Data Collection Online suggests, the American Airlines experience has many kinks to work out. Perhaps the most important kinks are
Working out these kinks is very possible. I wish American Airlines good luck in refining their innovative mobile experience into a winning one.
The American Airlines mobile boarding pass
You have a mobile website. How do you know whether it’s successful and why? Tealeaf has released a new tool as part of its CX offering to help. Similar to its website offering, this tool “replays” a mobile session so you can see exactly what users experienced as they used your mobile website. Tealeaf’s highly successful CX offering provides deep insight into the regular web experience. I look forward to seeing how the tool works for mobile.
Here’s an interesting article that a colleague sent my way. The article explores Obama’s plan to continue using the Internet, especially social networking, as a tool to influence.
Obama ready to embrace Internet as tool for persuasion and participation
That’s the first question I tackled for UXMatters’ new “Ask the UXExpert” series. It’s a doozy, eh? In fact, several UXMatters columnists decided to answer it, and the editors did a wonderful job of weaving the answers together. I think readers will find this new content offering from UXMatters very useful.
Also, the editors put together a handy, extensive list of resources. I suggested several, including voices from content strategy. I did not include all the articles I wrote in blantant SSP—just two in moderate SSP. 
The editors added many more of my articles. I am grateful, though perhaps a bit embarrased. The editors also included an abundance of other excellent reads.
Read the full question and answer at UXMatters: Choosing the Language in a User Interface.
Cooper has shared an interesting conversation about voice interactions. The conversation articulates some of the interaction challenges very well, especially with speech recognition. Some in the conversation posit voice interactions are by nature flawed, implying we shouldn’t design them. Others say the flaw lies in the implementation. I wholeheartedly agree with the latter. Voice can be the right interaction for certain contexts. For example, I see a brilliant future for integrating voice with mobile interfaces, where speech can enhance a small visual interface in a constrained context.
Voice interactions require good design using one of my favorite things—words. The words quite literally are the interface. Often the people developing voice interactions do not have the grasp of language, conversational norms, tone, and so on that word lovers do. Word lovers, here’s another opportunity to create a winning experience. Get on those voice interactions, stat.
After 10 years in interactive design and communications, I have decided to join two wonderful, talented partners—Matt Sartor and Darnell Clayton—in starting an interactive design consultancy, threebrick.
Do we need another consultancy or agency? I thought about that question for more than a year. My answer is yes, and here are a few reasons why:
Many agencies and consultancies claim expertise in these three foundational areas but do not actually have it. It’s one thing to talk about them and another to do them successfully. My partners and I have more than 30 years of experience combined. We also LOVE what we do! We constantly keep up with the latest trends, techniques, and innovations. And we have a tendency to write or present about them, which forces us to stay extra sharp.
Too many times, by several different agencies and consultancies, a casual disregard for deadlines and commitments has shocked me. If it continues, it will damage the credibility of the entire interactive industry. My partners and I love this industry too much to let that happen. I also have been dismayed at how often the people selling the work do not understand what it truly entails, so they can’t offer realistic promises. Making a responsible promise and keeping it should not be optional. We need a consultancy that does what it says.
People turn to agencies and consultancies for advice, so agencies and consultancies do need to talk. But often the people with the expertise and useful ideas do not do the talking. Also, my partners and I understand the art of listening—to the client, to the client’s stakeholders, to the customers, to the data. We know that it’s impossible to truly understand a problem or a need, and consequently offer the best solution, without listening. We call our approach “conversational design.”
Sound obvious? If an agency or consultancy has ever burned you, you know this isn’t as obvious as it should be. My partners and I understand that clients have better things to do than put out fires due to poor planning or bad execution. With our experience, we have taken what works and what doesn’t work to develop a “fireproof” process.
The Silicon Valley is still start-up land, but there are plenty of great interactive business ideas beyond it. We’re willing to work with new businesses that have good ideas to help bring their dreams into reality.
In these lean economic times, we think clients will want the absolute most for their money. We think they’re less interested in box seats at the game and more interested in high-quality deliverables that win customers over and garner business results.
I want to thank some special people, in addition to Matt and Darnell, for helping make this a reality. Kevin, Karen, Greg, Ron, Nick, Erik—I can’t thank you enough. I also want to thank my husband, Chris, for his kind support and patience with my loooong work hours!
Miraculously, I received permission from all four panelists to post their slides from CHi*Atlanta’s content strategy panel on October 22. Enjoy!
When your brain gets tired, check out some of the event photos!
It’s been a BUSY couple of weeks!
Content about MobileMe draws on a container metaphor. For more, see my UXMatters column.
