The following is a mini-interview I conducted with Nanqian (Nancy) Xu, a design researcher who studied design strategy in the U.S. and now works for Samsung in China. I asked her to describe her work and interests.

PB: Please describe your current job role.

NX: My current job is the product researcher of Samsung Design China. Which my output will be linked to the design part. Mostly we do ergonomic research and sometimes quantitative and emotional research. We are trying to understand the local market and comparing with global market, to see what are the key driving factors of localized product usage.

PB: How design research similar, and how is it different, in the US and China?

NX: 1. Do be conservative. people in China are more conservative specially in less developed part or in higher income level (premium). Using camera (DSLR) is very disturbing while doing home visits. Not mentioned about the video. Best way to do it is to inform the people ahead, then use your iphone to take photos or videos. Do not point it to the user.
2. Do not bring foreigners. People in China will be more cautious, or curious about your peer than the topic.
3. Do check with the interviewee before your interview. Their availability, time length….Best is talk to them in person(phone), make them understanding you are not selling things or spam…
4. Methods? keep it simple. either direct or indirect, do not use complex tools. They will be frustrated than u do.
5. Gender? it really matters, or not. If you are going to a single lady’s home, might be good to bring only girls. (at least ask them before you go, to see if they are Ok with the group of people)

PB: What are the biggest things on the international design horizon that you’re interested in?

NX: To keep updated with the most best things, in every field of design.
We all know that youtube, facebook, flipboard or those good & fresh media are banned in China. Then I really need to know, and keep the social network and knowledge as a global level. To be localized in the research insights. but not be localized with the vision.
If you guys are having really good resource, like organizations, conferences,…etc, can be both online or in reality. Just let me know and I will try my best to make it spreading in the design field in China.

And last, dont get scared when I say do not bring foreigners. In a different type of research, like double mirrored room, market visit, focus group, you guys who are interested in China are highly welcomed. And with the help of local researcher, you can also peak into the real life of Chinese. People are open-minded in megacities.
Anytime in China, let me know. I will introduce some nice spots to enjoy the original Chinese living.

Cabela’s added several UX features in the past few months. The main enhancements we found in the “Summer 2011 Retailer UX Audit” were the addition of Facebook Like, product videos, and more product views (illustrated in the image below). The Facebook Like is a simple addition that every retailer should add to their product pages. It simply lets customers tell their Facebook friends that they like a particular product, and links back to the product page. It also establishes a link between the person who likes the product, and the retailer.

The other major features, videos and more product views, help Cabela’s customers get a better feel for the products they are interested in. The videos talk about features of the product and show them in usage situations, which anchors the attention of customers in the product more significantly, and gives them more confidence that if they purchase the product, they will not be surprised to find that it doesn’t meet their expectations.

These added UX features are a big step forward for the Cabelas.com user experience. Based on our review of 100 top retailers, some UX features that Cabela’s should consider adding in future releases are: Shopping Lists (different from wish list), Expert Advice/Chat, Product Combinations, Price Drop Alert, and Spanish Product Pages.

In Usography’s recent UX Audit, we reviewed the e-commerce sites of 100 top retailers. We were looking for the presence or absence of 30 features that we had derived from previous site reviews across a wide spectrum of e-commerce sites. A summary of the results are provided at http://www.usography.com/audit.

One result that surprised us is the absence of top tier e-commerce sites that have the option of viewing a product detail page in Spanish. The only sites that we were able to find Spanish product pages on, of those we reviewed, are listed below:

- Newegg

- Lumber Liquidators

- Victoria’s Secret

- Rooms To Go

- Sears

Rooms To Go link to view product page in Spanish

I don’t want to list the sites that didn’t have Spanish product pages, but they are easy to find in the list of sites we reviewed in the audit summary (http://www.usography.com/audit ). The audit summary also has a link to the product detail pages of all 100 sites reviewed.

Senator Jay Rockefeller finally introduced the long-awaited Do Not Track bill that is likely to wreak havoc on data-driven design strategy. The bill restricts the ability of companies to collect information on consumers who have indicated they want to opt out. The bill creates a universal legal obligation for companies to allow customers to opt out of being tracked on web sites and mobile devices, and authorizes the FTC to punish companies who don’t abide by the regulations.

For retailers, the bill could have significant consequences, especially if it functions like the “Do not call” legislation of a few years ago, with one call covering all the possible companies involved. It’s not clear what the final bill will allow and disallow. I agree with the need for privacy, but I think retailers should be able to track people anonymously without restriction, meaning that all personal identifiers are left out of the record.

We’ve conducted quite a few interviews with millennial females about privacy (see video about location tracking at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1kOFVY3Bw).

We’ve found that, once people understand the benefits of being identified, they are usually in favor of surrendering a limited amount of personal information. Retailers will have to find a formula that incentivizes the opted in customer in order to be granted permission to track them. I think the best way to do this is also the best way to gain long term relevance: Provide value-add content that engages customers on a topic of common interest related to the product or service offering of the company. This path not only supports various programs like opt-ins and social media campaigns, but also helps SEO/SEM and long-term loyalty in the Attention Economy.

“Recent reports of privacy invasions have made it imperative that we do more to put consumers in the driver’s seat when it comes to their personal information,” Rockefeller said in a statement. “I believe consumers have a right to decide whether their information can be collected and used online. This bill offers a simple, straightforward way for people to stop companies from tracking their movements online.”

After a user makes a request to stop being tracked, the companies in question would only be able to continue collecting certain information on customers if it’s absolutely necessary in order for the site or service to function. That information must still be anonymized or destroyed after its usefulness expires, and the user must still give explicit consent for the information to be used that way.

For more info about the bill, see: http://tinyurl.com/5u8kxp2.

Today we published the Spring 2011 Retailer Social Commerce Scorecard. The Scorecard reflects retailers’ efforts to expand efforts to take advantage of the social commerce phenomenon that has taken the digital world by storm over the past two years. It gives retailers a quick, easy to use tool for evaluating competitive offerings in the area of emerging Social Commerce feature sets.

The Scorecard lists the 100 retail sites reviewed, and links to their product detail pages that were current in March 2011 when the evaluation was done. The Scorecard can be found online at http://www.usography.com/scorecard.

Many retailers are getting on board with social commerce, but there are still many gaps, despite the attention social commerce has received in strategy blogs like this one.

To create the Scorecard, we reviewed the e-commerce web sites of 100 top retailers in March 2011. Retailers were assigned a total score based on the presence or absence of 15 social commerce features, which are listed in the Scorecard. Buy.com came in first place out of the 100 top retailer sites evaluated for the Scorecard, with 9 out of 15 possible points. Buy.com was followed closely by Urban Outfitters, who came in first place in the previous Social Commerce Scorecard.

Our research with Gen Y and multichannel shopping has shown us that a large percentage of younger, Facebook-oriented shoppers want to share their finds with their peers, and have a specific approach that they want to use. They vary for different people, but individuals typically have one preferred method. If retailers don’t support that particular method, then they may miss an opportunity for a trusted referral. If this happens over thousands or even millions of customers, then we’re talking about a sizeable amount of lost revenue.

The Retailer UX Scorecard is the basic version of more extensive competitive and best practice reports produced by Usography in the area of multichannel retail. More detailed reports are available on a monthly or quarterly basis, filling the need for an inexpensive way for all team members and executives to stay current in the state of the art of digital retail user experience. Contact me for pricing information.

Customers have been telling me for years, during interviews in stores or in their homes, that they want to have a simple method for collecting products into a quick save bin as they move around a web site – without having to sign in or provide other information. Super quick, super easy. Then they want to decide to add all or some of the items to cart and checkout. Amazon introduced a new feature that does just that, in the apparel section of the site. It’s called QuickList.

For some reason, retailers seem to be very resistant to incorporating this feature into their sites. The IT team says they can just add them to cart, that its the same thing. No, it’s not the same thing. Having to add items to cart in lieu of a quick save bin is simple in terms of site development LOE, but has cognitive barriers that the quick save bin doesn’t have. First of all, the cart is known as the items that customers have decided to buy. Second of all, they have to delete them one by one in order to buy what they actually want to buy. Also, the running total of the cart is scary, and wrong. They’re not buying all those items.

Amazon’s QuickList functionality lets customers click a QuickList icon without any knd of authentication, and the items appear in a QuickList panel across the top of the page. I guess this takes some IT and catalog magic to make this happen, because it malfunctioned many times when I was trying it out on Amazon’s site. The items in QuickSave suddenly were erased and an error message appeared.

Despite the challenges, I think this UX feature serves a valuable mental model function. Customers want to browse and keep track of items painlessly for consideration, and then after looking around choose what they actually want to buy by adding them to the cart. Since sites don’t let them do it, they inevitably use the shopping cart for this function, as we know, and then delete items later or abandon the cart. As I described above, this raises a cognitive barrier to shopping the way customers naturally want to shop online. It also causes chagrin and anguish in my web analytics friends, although they know what’s causing it. So I’m eager to see where this shopping enhancement goes in terms of other retailer sites.

If you know of other sites that do this – save items to a temporary holding bin with one click near the product and no login – please let me know!

A study on mobile search and digital commerce by Performics showed that 49% of mobile searchers made a mobile purchase in the past six months. Furthermore, 84% of respondents who use mobile web say they use search to find retailers. These data points indicate that paid mobile search and mobile SEO should be a major component of retailers’ mobile strategy, and not just an extension of the approach used in other digital channels.

Performics conducted the 2011 Mobile Search Insights Study with ROI Research. The study, which focused on people who use a web browser on a mobile device, also concluded:

- 57% use the mobile web more than once per day

- 77% have used mobile search more than five times in the last month

- 75% said that mobile search makes their lives easier

- 63% said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information

- 32% said they use mobile search more than search engines on their computers

The study found the following usage patterns of mobile usage:

- 74% while running errands

- 56% while attending social events

- 47% while commuting

The prevalence of mobile usage during these types of activities underline the importance to retailers of reaching customers through a mobile search experience. Statistics about mobile tasks emphasize this point further:

- 84% look for local retailer information (phone, address, hours)

- 82% find online retailers

- 73% find a specific manufacturer or product Website

- 71% learn about a product or service after seeing an ad

- 68% find the best price for a product or service

- 63% search before purchasing offline in a store or from a catalog

To read the Performics press release, see: http://tinyurl.com/5vajkhm

Chompon measured the value of the most common social commerce interactions and produced a report with the findings. Their original research question was: “What is the value of a social action in online commerce?”

The values (in gross revenue per action) from different social commerce actions were:

*Chompon believes the true value for likes and follows to be much higher due to creation of long-term loyalty, which were not measured in this exercise.

For Shares and Tweets, Chompon was able to directly attribute sales to the original action, so they took the total revenue attributed to each action and divided it by the total number of shares/tweets. For Likes and Follows, they had to estimate attribution by looking at their traffic references and subtracting out purchases made through shares/tweets as well as purchases made through direct traffic.

Chompon intends to broaden the research by evaluating the following factors and actions:

- Pricing perception when bundling products/services according to social/demographic data

- Incentivizing social actions with discounts

- Showing friend purchases and analyzing effects on conversion rates

- Product/service conversations’ effects on sales (e.g. experimenting with Facebook’s new commenting widget)

- Scarcitymanipulation through limited/blackoutdates

- Credits’ conversion rates and ROI

To obtain a copy of the original prez, go to:  http://tinyurl.com/4s7h552

• Discovery of products, availability, and prices
• Engagement in details, comparisons, checkins and bargain hunting
• Transaction

• Limited screen size for viewing details
• Limited data input speed and ease of use
• Lack of an easy-to-use, unified folder system for saving the information found while shopping
• Difficulty sharing experience with other people present
• Limited bandwidth for videos and rich media
• Incompatibility among services