Pictures and profits

1
Pictures and profits


The ROI of visual information design
Patrick Hofmannpatrick_at_designpH.comLondon
Sydney Toronto
2

• Welcome!
• ? My name is Patrick Hofmann
• ? I studied technical writing but have spent the
  last 13 years as a technical illustrator, visual
  interaction designer, and usability consultant
• ? I like pictures

Patrick Hofmann
?
3

• Warning
• ? We have a lot of material to cover in the next
  hour
• ? Please try not to talk while Im talking, or

4

• Warning
• ? We have a lot of material to cover in the next
  hour
• ? Please try not to talk while Im talking, or

? Im joking! Ask me questions, heckle me,
whatever
5

• Agenda
• 1 Project 1 a visual online help poster
• 2 Project 2 phone feature guides
• 3 Project 3 wordless computer setup manuals
• 4 Tips Affordable usability testing

6

• Project 1
• ? visual onlinehelp poster

1
7

• Overview
• ? My client manufactures laser projection systems
  to aid leather-cutting at footwear factories
• ? Leather cutters use system to scan hide, mark
  defects on hide, and calculate/ project the best
  combo of shoe parts on hide

8

• Challenges
• ? Remote control used to operate system was
  difficult to use
• ? Key combinations and sequences were difficult
  to memorise
• ? Client was losing money providing two-day
  training usually four days
• ? Client wanted 10 page online help tutorial as
  solution, with no budget for customer insight

9

• Solution
• ? Visited footwear factories to observe
  multi-ethnic users in real setting
• ? Recognised real objective create a visual
  omnipresent reminder of remote key combinations
• ? Ignored request for word-heavy online help
  tutorial
• ? Displayed all remote button sequences on a
  single visual poster

10

• Result
• ? My client contact had a heart attack
• ? Convinced them to wait for customer feedback
  happy
• ? Site visits and customer insight treated with
  much more value
• ? It paid to take a risk go on a gut feeling

15k 7k in customer insight and design
over 4-week duration
250k 120k in first year Increased efficiency
led to new orders for system Training cut from 4d
to
11

• Project 2
• ? phone feature guides

2
12

• Overview
• ? My client enjoyed a leadership position as
  Canadas cheapest provider of international long
  distance
• ? A majority of its customers were recent
  immigrants with neither English nor French as
  their mother tongue
• ? Wanted to educate and sell its advanced phone
  features to these customers

13

• Challenges
• ? Translating and printing multilingual versions
  too costly
• ? Visualising the calling features and abstract
  concepts like long distance without words
• ? Cold-calling and recruiting multi-ethnic
  participants while keeping costs down

14

• Solution
• ? Used temp agencies to recruit participants
• ? Create storyboard boxes and write in them to
  create brief caption text
• ? Evaluated a combination of purely wordless,
  highly visual, and textual instructions in two
  rounds of iterative design/ usability testing

15

• Result
• ? Published visual instructions with English and
  French text captions
• ? Achieved immediate sales improvements after
  launch
• ? Increased brand recognition cultural savvy
  and international

70k 37k in instruction design and
usability testing over 2-month duration
160k 83k in first year Downsized original
text by 60 saving 7k in translation Achieved
75 increase in calling features in 1st month
Users much more satisfied
16

• Project 3
• ? wordless computer setup manuals

3
17

• Overview
• ? My client manufactured thin-client/network
  computers for big corporations like Dow Jones,
  Nikkei, McDonalds
• ? Wanted to create a new, cheaper,
  easy-to-assemble terminal
• ? Wanted a setup/ quick-reference guide that
  would enable customer sites to set up/upgrade
  terminals with ease

18

• Challenges
• ? For every product release, they
  translated/recreated their 200-page assembly
  guides into 16 languages
• ? They wanted to cut costs
• ? They dabbled in wordless manuals, but wanted a
  traditional documentation solution

19

• Solution
• ? My team and I were convinced the product and
  manuals needed improvement
• ? We videotaped HP technicians trying to assemble
  the unreleased computer
• ? We showed our tapes to the VPs
• ? We were invited to join the engineers in
  developing the new manuals with the new product

20

• Solution
• ? My team and I were convinced the product and
  manuals needed improvement
• ? We videotaped HP technicians trying to assemble
  the unreleased computer
• ? We showed our tapes to the VPs
• ? We were invited to join the engineers in
  developing the new manuals with the new product

21

• Result
• ? Users said the wordless instructions were
  easier to interpret and the product easier to
  assemble
• ? Customers in Japan and China were particularly
  happy with the new wordless manual
• ? The success of this manual encouraged HP to
  pioneer wordless document-ation in their other
  divisions

130k 70k in document design, illustration,
and usability testing over a 6-month duration
450k 230kin first year Nearly eliminated all
localisation costs (120K) Reduced per-unit print
costs from up to 6 to 45p Ongoing savings from
single part number and simplified distribution
22

• Result
• ? Resurrected our unique way of developing
  caption text use original storyboarding text
• ? Resurrected our unique way of recruiting
  international participants temp agencies
• ? Made our clients aware of the value of
  guerilla customer insight gathering

23

• 4
• Tips
• ? affordable usability testing

24

• Test, test, test any wayyou can
• ? Gather customer insight from friends, family,
  acquaintances
• ? Any feedback is better than none
• ? Not just testing questionnaires, field
  observation, interviews, informal try-outs

25

• Conducting remote tests
• ? No lab? Use free tools or cheap tools to view
  participants remotely
• ? MSN/Yahoo IM are perfect for viewing webcam
  video
• ? WebEx is ideal for seeing and recording
  participants are doing on their system
• ? Use your standard phone line (or your computer)
  to hear and record their comments

26

• Rewarding participants
• ? For remote tests, offer a WebCam as an
  incentive
• ? Courier the WebCam along with their
  confirmation letter and installation instructions
• ? Even a cheap 10 WebCam is seen as an
  exceptional incentive for their opinion

27

• Recruiting participants
• ? Temp agencies have comprehensive databases of
  prospects in various fields, skill levels,
  languages, ethnicities
• ? Temp agencies recruit for free, unlike
  recruitment vendors
• ? You pay the recruiter the minimum salary of
  the recruited participants usually 4 hours
  minimum for 1-2 hours testing

500 240 To pay the Recruitment Vendor to
find an average participant and then to pay the
Participant for their time
70 40 To pay a Temp Agency for finding and
providing a temporary employee at a minimum
half-day wage
28

• ?
• In closing
• Who here has learned something about the ROI of
  visuals usability?

?
Who here thinks Im out to lunch?
29

• Thank you!
• Any questions?

patrick_at_designpH.com
61 422 023 797
44 7949 203 029
UPA Austin TX 10-13 Jun
STC Cambridge UK 23-24 Jun