KBar, a frequent correspondent, sent me Sniff browser history for improved user experience because he knew it would interest me. Considering the conversation going on over at The Future of Web Analytics, it is yet another wonderful example of "Experience" meaning...something else, I think.
<UPDATE>
That blog no longer exists in its original form. The blog name is still there and it's no longer what I'd hoped it would be. All of my FutureOf contributions can now be found on TheAnalyticsEcology.
</UPDATE>.
I don't know Niall Kennedy, the author of the sniff browser history post, nor do I know anything about programming, javascript and people who know me know I'm not a social animal.
That offered, I did read Mr. Kennedy's post with great interest. I'd like to focus on his statement, "Intelligent websites should tune-in to the content preferences of their visitors, tailoring a specific experience based on each visitor's favorite sites and services across the social web."
What is meant by "Experience"?
It took me a few reads to understand what Mr. Kennedy is talking about and I'm sure I don't follow it all.What I do follow is that Mr. Kennedy is working at a method of making life easier for people. "Easier" is subjective, of course. The goal is to increase their pleasure by decreasing the amount of effort they have to expend in order to achieve a goal.
Took me about three rewrites to get that last sentence to something I'm comfortable with. I took three rewrites because I wanted to get it into something I know I can measure, and yes, I'm willing to call what one of the things NextStage measures "experience". And (surprise!) the sentence above fits pretty much what we measure and call "experience.
For example, this figure charts overall visitor experience across all sites we're monitoring for the past 7 days as of 5pmET, 11 Feb 08. The green is the number of people having an experience they would identify as "good", the yellow as "so-so" and the red as "bad". You can cut the data just a little differently and get...
...this chart. This is the same data considered from a slightly different concept. The chart above answers "Are visitors enjoying themselves?" and this chart answers "Are visitors doing something they enjoy?" These are two very different questions.
Now let's ask these questions about a specific site, this one, BizMediaScience. Have the majority of you, dear readers, enjoyed reading this blog over the past seven days?
Well by golly, yes you are. Must have been those travel pictures from Quebec City. It seems that literally half the visitors to this blog during the past seven days enjoyed themselves, one quarter weren't sure and one quarter didn't. I can even tell you why one quarter weren't sure and another quarter didn't but that's for another post sometime.
Ah, but did the majority of you enjoy what you were doing while reading this blog during the past seven days? Definitely not and I will share the reason; having to open a second page, the "Continue Reading" link, it seems, is anathema to many of you. About three-quarters it seems.
And this ties into Mr. Kennedy's concept of experience. That little extra effort pulls most people out of the act of reading and enjoying the blog post. Anything that pulls the individual away from achieving their goal decreases both performance and experience.
Mr. Kennedy's onto something, I think.
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