Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference that took place in Nashville last month.
For today?’s podcast, I have the pleasure to be interviewing Robert Hoekman, Jr. Founder of the Web design and strategy company Miskeeto. Robert us also an author of two titles for Web designer published by the New Riders organization.
I caught up with Robert an requested that he summarize his session: “How to improve Each and Every Page on Your Site.” Robert reveals a couple of his design test and principles that you can start using today. Check out the seven minute podcast interview with Robert Hoekman, Jr. on the WOW Technology Minute website.
Check out Robert’s websites at: Miskeeto.com and his Blog
Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProtraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training.
Transcript of Robert Hoekman Interview
BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web Professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference that took place in Nashville last month. For today?’s podcast I have the pleasure to be interviewing Robert Hoekman, founder of the Web design and strategy company, Miskeeto. Robert is also an author of two best selling titles for Web designers, published by the New Riders organization.
Robert, you presented on the topic of “How to Improve Each and Every Webpage on Your Website.” Can you summarize the session and can you also provide the subscribers of this podcast with a couple of walk-aways that they can use today?
ROBERT HOEKMAN: Definitely. Well, I came up with that incredibly catchy title hoping that it would fill the room.
BILL: I agree, it?’s a catchy title.
ROBERT: It seems to have worked, so success there. But basically the presentation was mostly about pretty much the same points that are in my first book, DESIGNING THE OBVIOUS. It covers those same seven guiding design concepts, principles, guiding web application design principles. Sort of over-arcing stuff like “build only what?’s absolutely necessary” and “make sure to refine each one of the interactions and reduce it to its absolute essentials.” But really, I think the thing that was interesting, I think the major take-away for that session was that the design principles themselves are actually the result of…they?’re sort of born out of human psychology. So during the presentation I presented stories where I tried to reveal a certain aspect of human psychology and how people actually think and act and then extrapolate a design principle from that, and then show an example of where that design principle has been applied in a real site and how it helped.
So one example of that, there was a cheeseburger story, this is actually the first story I told in the session, there was a fast-food chain that went out at one point and had done all this market research to determine whether or not their customers would buy a low-carb version of their best-selling cheeseburger. And through their market research they managed to determine that “Yes, our customers would in fact buy a low–carb version of a cheeseburger.” So they went back and set their steps into action and sent their marketing department into action and they rolled out this huge campaign and put it out on the menu and there were commercials and billboards and all that stuff. And within just a few weeks of them launching this new product they ended up having to take it back off the menu and scrap it entirely. And it was because basically, the researchers went out and asked a whole bunch of hypothetical questions and what they found, or what they didn?’t find, what they discovered later was that people will answer hypothetical questions with hypothetical answers. People are very, very bad at predicting how they?’re going to act in a particular situation or how they?’re going to think about a particular situation. And so the design principle to extrapolate from that is to understand your users, but then to ignore them. Basically you want to be able to read between the lines of what they actually mean and not what they say that they mean, not what they say what they want.
BILL: Yeah. That?’s fascinating. And I know that you cover a lot of these principles in your book that?’s been out for some time?
ROBERT: That?’s true, yeah. All of the points that I talked about during the session are covered in much more depth in the book DESIGNING THE OBVIOUS, which has been out I think about getting close to two years.
BILL: Two years. You know it?’s really amazing that we take a lot for granted being in the Web design space and it?’s obvious that giving it some thought and understanding your clients?’ needs and understanding the user audience is a very important thing. But at the same time, as you said, reading between the lines and giving some analysis I suppose, to their responses, is really in effect what you?’re saying, right?
ROBERT: Yeah, definitely. There are far, far too many companies and applications that I?’ve seen and websites that I?’ve seen where developers are, they?’re doing a very, very good job of listening to the customers, but they?’re listening to them in a very, very literal way. So a customer says, “Well here?’s a problem that I have every single day and if you just added this button here I wouldn?’t have this problem anymore.” But then the developers go into action and they say, “Okay, we?’ll add this button here and this button will do XYZ.” And they end up pretty much putting a Band-Aid on a problem instead of actually solving the problem. So they?’ve come up with a solution based on what the end-user said what was the problem.
BILL: Right.
ROBERT: But they didn?’t actually analyze it to figure out what the real problem was, that this button was missing, maybe it was that the task flow was all wrong in the first place.
BILL: Interesting.
ROBERT: And that if the feature was designed differently this would have been a mute point.
BILL: Yeah, very insightful. I appreciate that and I look forward to getting a link up on the book. I?’m assuming that Peach Pit and Amazon still offers the book. Can we reach out and get the book there?
ROBERT: Oh yeah, definitely. It?’s still actually selling very, very well, which is great news. I?’m very happy about that. It continues to get very good reviews. I actually have a newer book out, in fact, called DESIGNING THE MOMENT, which is, I don?’t want to call it “Designing the Obvious Part Two” but it is very much built on top of DESIGNING THE OBVIOUS. So it kind of follows what DESIGNING THE OBVIOUS was. Where as the first book was kind of about these seven main guiding principles of web application design, DESIGNING THE MOMENT, the second book, is about much, much more specific design principles. So it?’s a collection of 31 stories from actual design projects that I have worked on or have worked on with other people. And basically each chapter is done in a story-telling format where I tell the story, I say, “Okay, here?’s what the situation was. Here?’s the problem we were faced with. Here were the constraints.”
BILL: Interesting.
ROBERT: “Here?’s how I started the design. And then I didn?’t like this and here?’s why.” And so I basically walk through all the justifications that I made for arriving at the design solution that I chose. And then within each chapter I tried to touch on one specific principle that I used to kind of solve that design problem. So it very much builds on the first book.
BILL: Some real-life examples from the trenches.
ROBERT: Right, exactly. They?’re all from real projects. In fact, I didn?’t really think about that all that much when I was writing the book but then when the book came out I got all nervous all of a sudden. I thought, wow, this is kind of almost a journal of these little bits of design that I?’ve done over the past couple of years. And suddenly I got very nervous. I was like, wow, if this gets bad reviews it?’s like, personal.
BILL: Yeah, well I know everybody at the Pearson organization speaks highly of you so I look forward to taking a look at the book and learning more. And we certainly appreciate your time, Robert, today. Obviously you?’re a very accomplished person and we appreciate your perspective on this very important topic. And we look forward to future interviews and maybe peeling back the layer of the onion on some of those 30 principles and examples that you?’ve learned. We certainly appreciate your time today. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), the WOW Technology Minute, on the phone with Robert Hoekman interaction designer and usability specialist at Miskeeto. Thanks for your time today Robert.
ROBERT: Thank you.