Should persuasion be left to marketers?

[Robert Hoekman Jr]

>
> I hope I am not skewing or shifting the point of this argument. But I
> think the question I am hearing Robert ask is. "who does the designer
> work for?"


That's not at all what I'm asking. We work for both the user and the
business.

I'm concerned with the details—those tiny, subtle details that influence
people (ethically, of course). The words you use in your value proposition
statement and/or tagline. The numbers you choose to show on the homepage.
Which bullet points you use to entice the most people. And so on.

A good marketer should know how to craft these elements really well. Should
an IxD know, too?

-r-
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[Josh Powell-2]

So, is persuasion a part of what we do as IxD, and if it is should we seek
expert opinion from those who are experts at persuasion?

I think that a large part of what we do is persuasion, but in a different
way then a lot of marketing seems to do it.  A lot of marketing is just
getting in people's face to build brand awareness.  Marketing is responsible
for pop up ads, a terribly unpersuasive and unproductive user experience.
Marketing is responsible for sticking advertisements on the top or left side
of pages that nobody clicks on.  Marketing is responsible for those horrible
ads that when you roll over them expand to cover most of the page.
Marketing is often responsible for wanting splash pages in front of the
content.

Marketing does not yet understand interactivity.  They persuade through
projection.. TV, magazine ads, radio, billboards, the thing they all have in
common is that they are passive experiences.  If you want to build a passive
persuasive experience, seek out marketing.  If you want to build a
persuasive interactive experience, and everything on the web is an
interactive experience, I think that most marketing departments and people
are not up to the task.  There are exceptions, of course, but for the most
part not.  Even these company sponsored Alternate Reality Games that attract
a ton of hard core users because of their interactivity, imo, fail at their
marketing message.  No one buys McDonalds because they hired a company that
created a fun ARG.

Josh Powell

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Robert Hoekman Jr <robert@...> wrote:

> >
> > I hope I am not skewing or shifting the point of this argument. But I
> > think the question I am hearing Robert ask is. "who does the designer
> > work for?"
>
>
> That's not at all what I'm asking. We work for both the user and the
> business.
>
> I'm concerned with the details—those tiny, subtle details that influence
> people (ethically, of course). The words you use in your value proposition
> statement and/or tagline. The numbers you choose to show on the homepage.
> Which bullet points you use to entice the most people. And so on.
>
> A good marketer should know how to craft these elements really well. Should
> an IxD know, too?
>
> -r-
> ________________________________________________________________
> Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
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>

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[Daniel Szuc]

"A lot of marketing is just getting in people's face to build brand
awareness." - Agree.

What does marketing get rewarded for today? What are their KPIs?

Side note -- Have seen more marketing departments over the last 2
years take more notice of terms like UX and CX which is a good thing
...  but they are not entirely sure how to create a holistic CX.

Has anyone seen similar trends in your respective markets?

rgds,
Dan


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[mark schraad-2]

In my little world, we see corresponding trends towards SEO and away  
from Brand and Marketing as tools for finding customers. But it is  
difficult to determine if that is caused by market conditions,  
industry trends or corporate agendas.

Traditionally I have looked at marketing as long term and very  
difficult to metric, and sales as short term and very metric driven.  
But in the 'what have you done for me this week' world of portals and  
online advertising, if you can not metric results (favorable) in the  
next 15 days, month or quarter, the resources will not be there for  
you. As a result, investment in deep research and long term vision is  
missing from the landscape of recent years.

Mark


On Jul 8, 2008, at 5:22 AM, Daniel Szuc wrote:

> "A lot of marketing is just getting in people's face to build brand
> awareness." - Agree.
>
> What does marketing get rewarded for today? What are their KPIs?
>
> Side note -- Have seen more marketing departments over the last 2
> years take more notice of terms like UX and CX which is a good thing
> ...  but they are not entirely sure how to create a holistic CX.
>
> Has anyone seen similar trends in your respective markets?
>
> rgds,
> Dan
>
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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>
>
> ________________________________________________________________
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[Oleh Kovalchuke]

On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr had a

> Purely philosophical question:
>
> Should the persuasive elements of a site design be left to marketers?


No, if you care about the outcomes of the marketing efforts.


> Assuming you work for a company who has a marketing department and a UX
> team
> that are separate from each other, how much should the UX team be involved
> in the design of persuasive elements?
>
Enough to understand business (marketing) goals to address them in design.
If you wish to define those goals, you should add another title to your job
description.

--
Oleh Kovalchuke
Interaction Design is design of time
http://www.tangospring.com/IxDtopicWhatIsInteractionDesign.htm
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[Elizabeth-18]

Hello

I have to do a proposal including timings for a solution in which
there will be 300 end users of a new system aimed at improving
efficiency in the work place(!).  

What percentage of these 300 do I need to observe in their place of
work, interview and so on for the information to be representative of
the whole?

Many thanks!



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[Sebi Tauciuc]

Yes, it sounds to me too that marketing should know a lot about persuasion.
Of course, they may not know very well how to translate their knowledge into
a web page design. Maybe this is where close collaboration helps - they know
more about persuasion, we know better how to translate it into the design.
Does that make sense?

Sebi

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 8:19 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr <robert@...> wrote:

> Yes, I design these things, and I'm confident in my ability to do it well,
> so why am I asking if I think persuasive elements should be left to
> Marketing? Well, because it seems like — and maybe I'm just dead wrong —
> that marketers would/should know more about persuasion than IxDs. I mean,
> their whole careers are about persuading people to do things they may or
> may
> not realize they want to do, right? So it seems like they would need to be
> masterful persuaders to succeed.
>
> -r-
> ________________________________________________________________
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--
Sergiu Sebastian Tauciuc
http://www.sergiutauciuc.ro/en/
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[Robert Hoekman Jr]

Interesting observation:
I've picked up several books recently about designing for conversions and
ROI, and they were all written from a marketing perspective. It seemed the
authors were all marketers of some sort and were coming from an advertising
and/or sales background.

None of them came from an interaction design perspective. They all talked
about online conversions exclusively, but only from a marketing perspective.

-r-
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[Christine Boese]

Uh, I may be stupid here, but how is it that consumers (users) mentioned
below do not contribute to the profitability of the site?

Their eyeballs quite literally ARE the profitability. Or is this a which
came first, chicken or the egg question?

Without eyeballs, do you have profitability? Let me amend that: Without
Happy Eyeballs, do you have profitability?

Chris

On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 4:22 PM, mark schraad <mschraad@...> wrote:

> IMHO - different tasks require different perspectives and different goals
> for the site. In my situation where we have consumers (users) that do not
> contribute to the profitability of the site other than to attract the
> eyeballs for advertising, the user experience group's mission is somewhat in
> conflict with that of the ad sales group and to even some extent with the
> SEO group. Our goal is to match up the site to consumer's research and
> buying process, not to force them into what the industry or advertiser might
> be driving. We believe that if the site is compelling, the users will find
> their way to it, and the CPM's will happen over the long run. The ad folks
> often want us to design pages to accommodate and attract the advertisers.
> Meanwhile the SEO staff is wanting to make the page optimal for search
> engines. While there are similarities, designing for SEO, designing for
> advertisers, and designing for users will render different pages. Each of
> these three groups needs to bring their expertise to the table... and let
> executive management take on that 'god's eye' perspective and render
> judgement that balances those separate agendas.
>
> One of the most disturbing trends that I see is designer's rolling over on
> the user experience. I see designers that are all too empathetic with the
> pure goals of profit and the business... trying to take a short cut to
> immediate and short term profit that only destroys brand awareness, consumer
> loyalty and inevitably, the longer term sustainability and profitability of
> the site. This trend can be seen sites like about.com (and plenty of
> others) that used to have great information and now focus on attracting
> visitors from search engines and deliver very little value to users.
>
> Specific to your question, yes the design team should work to not only the
> constraints of the business, but the goals within reason.
>
> In our case I am using some extensive background in consumer behavior
> (research primarily from the psych field) and mapping our sites'
> functionality to typical consumer behavior in our target market. It effects
> both the interactions and information architecture. So far it has helped in
> managing the business model in a way that works for both the consumer's
> goals, and the monetization goals of the business (paper and conference talk
> to come soon I hope).
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 6, 2008, at 3:57 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote:
>
>  Purely philosophical question:
>>
>> I've been studying social psychology a lot lately, and have become
>> incredibly interested in the persuasiveness of sites and applications—how
>> to
>> make them more persuasive, what makes them so now, etc. But it makes me
>> wonder:
>>
>> Should the persuasive elements of a site design be left to marketers?
>> Assuming you work for a company who has a marketing department and a UX
>> team
>> that are separate from each other, how much should the UX team be involved
>> in the design of persuasive elements?
>>
>> -r-
>> ________________________________________________________________
>> Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
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>>
>
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[Scott Bower]

I don't know, when I make purchases, I am not thinking about the
artificial constructs of corporate culture represented as a Venn
diagram.

I think the best comment on "Persuasive Elements" (Robert, are you
thinking about wwriting a book?) was the first from Will Evans. And
an aside to Jeff Howard's post, I prefer the "Good Cop: Bad Cop"
method personally.

When I walk into the meeting between the Marketing Requirements
Document and the User Requirements Document I whip out the Powerpoint
deck that has the figure "$14,000,000 USD saved" in 85pt Helvetica
bold. The next slide is the math equation that has the before and
after figures of target acquisition times with current interface and
proposed interface designs. The customer, and his thousands of
internal users, has just saved his organization millions of dollars
in lost productivity.

The business could care less about my obsession with "Persuasive
Elements". Their eyes would roll if explained to them that the UX
team consolidated interface taxonomies, as part of a user workflow
within a SaAS upgrade process, between the application, the operating
system, and the help desk. We just did it as part of the design
process.I hope that it translates into increased sales, cause that is
what pays my salary.

So here are some more things to consider. My apologies for
potentially pushing this way off topic.

1) Patron Value Optimization software by SAS. It  allows marketing
departments to replace HCI, Human Factors, and Anthropology by
controlling the entire marketing and design process with system
generated tasks that are fully automated. In the context of a Vegas
Casino, it a mashup between CMS, CRM, physiognomy analysis, and
direct-to-press technology.

2) The design story of the Aeron Chair.
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1858

3) The controversy over using Statistics to validate  "The Art of
Design" (my words)
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/112/open_next-essay.html


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[Christopher Fahey]

On Jul 6, 2008, at 3:57 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote:
> Purely philosophical question:I've been studying social psychology a
> lot lately, and have become incredibly interested in the  
> persuasiveness
> of sites and applications—how to make them more persuasive, what
> makes them so now, etc. But it makes mewonder:
> Should the persuasive elements of a site design be left to marketers?

I'm getting on this thread a little late, but I am delighted by the  
discussion.

I want to throw a word out here and see what kind of reaction it  
inspires:

Merchandising.

*Marketing* is how you get people to know about your product and to  
desire it and to want to buy it. *Merchandising* is how the product  
itself is _presented_ to customers to make them want to buy it. In a  
Venn diagram, I think, merchandising would be the overlap between  
marketing and product design. Some merchandising, of course, has  
nothing to do with product design (for example, a life-size cardboard  
cutout of Tiger Woods in a drugstore has little to do with the design  
of the razor he's shilling), but other forms of merchandising fall  
squarely in the realm of product design (for example, the inclusion of  
a gratuitous vibration feature in the design of the aforementioned  
razor).

It seems to me that we are talking about merchandising in this thread.  
Are we? If so, why is the word so rarely used in the world of IxD when  
it has been such an integral part of the product design vocabulary for  
a hundred years?

I am working on a presentation on this topic (see me deliver it  
September at Euro IA 08 or the O'Reilly NYC Web 2.0 Expo), so this  
thread has been extremely helpful to me. Thanks!

-Cf

Christopher Fahey
____________________________
Behavior
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com
me: http://www.graphpaper.com



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[Scott Bower]

One last comment from the peanut gallery.

Should marketing be left to the Neuroscientists?

What Makes You Click?
Susan Weinschenk, Chief of Technical Staff, Human Factors
Lecture Abstract
Internationalhttp://www.internetuserexperience.biz/Presentation_Click.htm


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[Matthijs Rouw]

Hi all,


I've been thinking about (especially online) marketing for a while now.
Personally, I feel it has a tight connection with social behaviour and
target groups. There is also strong link between UxD and marketing, in the
sense that they both work with a target group in mind. However (note the
polarization here) the one works for the target audience, the other works
for themselves.

I've seen marketing people (wanting to) try to create an 'online community
around a brand or a product'. I've done a thesis on online social
communities and I've always discouraged them to do this, since an online
community exists for the community itself, not for someone who is trying to
make money of it. The people in the community can smell the marketing
strategies.

To continue on that smell of marketing strategies, I am convinced people
have developed a sense for detecting situations when marketing is trying to
push products or services through one's throat (disrespectfully speaking).

In that perspective, shouldn't it be wise for marketing to peak over
shoulders of UxD people, to see how they address the client in a way that
the client would respect (love!) your way of communication.

One thing is for sure, marketing was indeed smart to realize that
communities are very strong channels for selling products - take viral
videos for example. But when people detect fakeness (marketing) in your
viral - you're sorry you've tried. Marketing should truly and sincerely
believe in their product and their audience and stand amongst them, instead
of looking down on them as if they were ants in a petri dish. Apple has done
an awesome job for that matter! I am not getting into product quality
discussion but people actually sell Apple products for them, even when the
product lets them down for whatever reason. Someone once said to me that
"they've bottled forgiveness" - I think that's indeed an awesome way to
express it. Of course through marketing, but there are other (maybe most?)
factors accountable for the success.

So does that make sense? Marketing should be more like user centered design?
Could a traditional marketer even be losing ground here?
 
 
Sincerely,


Matthijs S. Rouw, MA
Interaction designer

TEMPEL
Bureau voor Interaction Design & Usability
Nieuwe Gracht 74-76
2011 NJ Haarlem
T [phone]
F [phone]
I www.tempel.eu


 
 
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[Robert Hoekman Jr]

>
> (Robert, are you thinking about writing a book?)


Usually, but not on this subject. :) It's just something I've gotten a lot
more interested in lately.

-r-
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[Andrei Herasimchuk]

For some reason... my latest emails aren't getting posted. So I guess
I have to use the website.

----------

"Graphic design which fulfills aesthetic needs, complies with the
laws of form and exigencies of two-dimensional space; which speaks in
semiotics, sans-serifs, and geometrics; which abstracts, transforms,
translates, rotates, dilates, repeats, mirrors, groups, and regroups
is not good design if it is irrelevant.

Graphic design which evokes the symmetria of Vitruvius, the dynamic
symmetry of Hambridge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good
gestalt generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a
system of coordinates is not good design if it does not
communicate."

-Paul Rand


--
Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei@...
c.  1 408 306 6422


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