A Blink Usability Protocol

I mentioned last time in the Relevancy, Search Marketing and Usability article about a Blink Usability methodology or protocol that we have been using.

As more or less dyed in the wool usability folk, we will typically spent our time carefully listening to what users tell us. We listen to their thoughts, their expectations and their surprises. We try to dissect those ramblings, extracting the insights and ignoring any co-operative behaviour if we can.

But what we can’t easily measure through this Think Aloud Usability protocol is gut feeling, instinct and emotion. Sometimes the strength of a response will provide us with an insight, but most often we don’t do emotion, we do rationality. And this works pretty well for most things.

But as usability research broadens out to encompass more areas and figures more strongly in customer experience studies and marketing research, then we need more methods, we need to cover more ground, we need new ways to get insights.

140 words in 6.4 seconds? That’s fast, and that’s not subject to rationality

To some extents this requirement has begun to manifest. For example, eye-tracking was once considered a laughable technique because of the unnatural requirements of the apparatus – head clamped and immobile – who could act natural like that?! But now, the eye-tracking kit is embedded as part of a pair of spectacles and can give us great insights into where people look on, for example, a Google Search Engine Results
Page.

And Blink protocols will be next, I suggest, because eye-tracking only tells you where people look, not about the decisions they make. Blink is interested in decisions. ‘Blink’ is Gladwells’ term for not thinking – the rapid cognition that happens in a moment, without rationality, where decisions get made.

Our Blink Protocols are based on psychological research methods using into memory and perception typically carried out using a tachistoscope in the 1970s. A stimulus (words or pictures) flash up very quickly … What is seen? What is memorable? What part of the stimulus ‘works’ and what does not?

We use this ‘Blink’ Usability protocol with Ads, Google results page and Homepages to ascertain effectiveness. Which ad/page is most memorable? Which get clicked through? Most importantly, why? Which part of the stimulus (ad or page) creates a ‘yes’ blink moment rather than a ‘no’ blink moment. By manipulating the stimulus, rules can be derived that start to make sense of why some ads and pages perform better than others.

An unnatural task? Maybe, but eye-tracking report referenced above states that users look at a Google results page for an average of 6.4 seconds before clicking on one of the results and in that time they read 3.9 individual ads. That’s an average of 140 words in 6.4 seconds. Now that’s fast, and that’s not subject to rationality. This is decision making done in the Blink of an Eye.