Exam Flashcards
Digital analytics does encompass…
Collection, measurement, analysis, visualisation and interpretation of
digital data illustrating user behaviour on:
• Web(site) / mobile analytics
• Other publication outlets
– Social media
– Newsletters
– Panel data
• Transaction channels
• Relevant contexts: always on, quantified self, Internet of things, big data…
Online tracking
Practice by which websites/app identify and collect information about user interactions during the course of their web browsing
Mapping: usability
Part of the user experience. Functionality, people must be able to use it
What is meant by specified “context of use”?
User interface. Field of human-computer interaction
User interface
Space where interaction between humans and machines occur. Digital space where digital interactions occur
Top down: expert inspection
Heuristics
How to measure_3 metrics
- Effectiveness (Completion Rate)
- Efficiency
• Time taken on the first attempt
• Time to perform task compared to an expert
• Time correcting errors - Satisfaction. Ease of use es. Likert scale from 1 to 5 or visual scale
How to report_Techniques
Concurrent Think Aloud (CTA):
is used to understand participants’ thoughts as
they interact with a product by having them think
aloud while they work. The goal is to encourage
participants to keep a running stream of
consciousness as they work.
Understand participants’ thoughts as
they occur and as they attempt to work
through issues they encounter. Elicit
real-time feedback and emotional
responses
Can interfere with usability metrics, such as accuracy and
time on task
Retrospective Think Aloud
(RTA)
the moderator asks participants to retrace their
steps when the session is complete. Often
participants watch a video replay of their actions,
which may or may not contain eye-gaze patterns
Does not interfere with usability
metrics
Overall session length increases. Difficulty in remembering
thoughts from up to an hour before = poor data
Concurrent Probing (CP)
requires that as participants work on tasks—
when they say something interesting or do
something unique, the researcher asks follow-up
questions
Understand participants’ thoughts as
they attempt to work through a task
Interferes with natural thought process and progression that
participants would make on their own, if uninterrupted
Retrospective Probing (RP)
requires waiting until the session is complete
and then asking questions about the
participant’s thoughts and actions. Researchers
often use RP in conjunction with other methods—
as the participant makes comments or actions,
the researcher takes notes and follows up with
additional questions at the end of the session
Does not interfere with usability
metrics
Difficulty in remembering = poor data
Heuristics:
Mental shortcuts that help with the thinking processes in problem
solving / intuitive judgement
1: Visibility of system status
The design should always keep users informed about what is
going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable
amount of time.
#2: Match Between System and the Real World
The design should speak the users’ language. Use words,
phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than internal
jargon. Follow real-world conventions, making information
appear in a natural and logical order.
3: User control and freedom
Users often perform actions by mistake. They need a clearly
marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted action without
having to go through an extended process.
4: Consistency and standards
Follow platform
and industry conventions.
5: Error Prevention
Good error messages are important, but the best designs
carefully prevent problems from occurring in the first place.
Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and
present users with a confirmation option before they commit
to the action
#6: Recognition Rather than Recall
Minimize the user’s memory load by making elements, actions,
and options visible. The user should not have to remember
information from one part of the interface to another.
Information required to use the design (e.g., field labels or
menu items) should be visible or easily retrievable when
needed
#7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
Shortcuts — hidden from novice users — may speed up the
interaction for the expert user such that the design can cater to
both inexperienced and experienced users.
Allow users to tailor frequent actions
#8: Aesthetic and Minimalist design
Interfaces should not contain information which is irrelevant or
rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in an interface
competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes
their relative visibility.
9: Help users recognize,
diagnose, and recover
from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no
error codes), precisely indicate the problem, and
constructively suggest a solution.
#10: Help and documentation
it may be necessary to provide documentation to
help users understand how to complete their tasks.
Domain- or goal-specific heuristics
• Are based on an extensive benchmark of given domains / functionalities (+ user
testing)
• Aimed at identifying problems and good/best practices
• Answer following questions
– What should be taken into consideration?
– Which alternatives are available?
– Which pros./cons. can be seen connected to different solutions?
Components of an Expert Review
- List of usability problems, mapped to where they occur in the design (10 heuristics)
- Severity ratings for each usability problem
- Recommendations for fixing each usability problem
- Examples of best practices to guide improvements
- List of usability strengths
Severity ratings
The following 0 to 4 rating scale can be used to rate the severity of usability problems:
0 = I don’t agree that this is a usability problem at all
1 = Cosmetic problem only: need not be fixed unless extra time is available on project
2 = Minor usability problem: fixing this should be given low priority
3 = Major usability problem: important to fix, so should be given high priority
4 = Usability catastrophe: imperative to fix this before product can be released
User testing: advantages
• Advantages
– Common users might see different problems if compared against experts
– Helps improving understanding of usability issues
User testing: whom to involve
• Which type of users?
– Users should belong to the groups the application is aimed at
– Should include as much diverse members as possible (e.g.: sex, age, ICTs
experience, previous experience with the application, motivation, …)
– There are not «general users»
User testing: user scenarios
User testing is usually done through user scenarios
– User profile. We need to create «Personas»
– Overall goal
– Tasks
Effective personas:
- Represent a major user group for your website
- Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups
- Give a clear picture of the user’s expectations and how they’re likely to use the site
- Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality
- Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values
Benefits of Personas:
- Stakeholders and leaders evaluate new site feature ideas
- Information architects develop informed wireframes, interface behaviors, and labeling
- Designers create the overall look and feel of the website
- System engineers/developers decide which approaches to take based on user behaviors
- Copy writers ensure site content is written to the appropriate audiences
Think about scenarios as stories. Main benefits:
- Scenarios help to keep a design grounded in reality
- Scenarios help you to focus on the ‘what’, rather than the ‘how’
- Scenarios help identify required features
- Scenarios help you to consider the bigger picture
- Scenarios help to communicate
How to create a scenario
For each persona > DEFINE THE MAIN GOAL
How? Ask yourself:
What are the most important activities (goals) that your “PERSONA” (user) must be able to accomplish on the site?
DEFINE THE RELATED TASKS of scenarios
- Make the Task Realistic
- Make the Task Actionable
- Avoid Giving Clues and Describing the Steps
What kind of questions can we answer with the help of analytics?
- What products are people viewing?
- Where do users come from?
- How long do they stay on the site?
- How do new visitors behave in comparison to old ones?
- What content is the most/less viewed?
- Where do people exit the site?
- How is the performance of the website in comparison to the
previous year/season?
Google analytics: three main families/group of info
- Audience
- Acquisition
- Behavior
Audience: general overview
Eight metrics:
1. Users: Users who have initiated at least one session during the date range
2. New users: The number of first-time users during the selected date range
3. Sessions: Total number of Sessions within the date range. A session is the period time a
user is actively engaged with your website, app, etc. All usage data (Screen Views, Events,
Ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a session. If the page is inactive for 30 minutes or a
user leaves the page, or midnight, the session expires (thus, one visitor can create multiple
sessions ). A session timeout can be modified
4. Number of Sessions per User: The average number of Sessions per user.
5. Page views: Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single
page are counted.
6. Pages / session: Pages/Session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages
viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.
7. Avg session duration: The average length of a Session.
8. Bounce Rate: leave your website after 1 page viewed. The percentage of single-page
sessions in which there was no interaction with the page. A bounced session has a duration
of 0 seconds.
segmentation
Grouping your data into sub-sets for a deeper analysis
Examples of data segmentation
- date and time
- user’s device
- geographical location
Types of «traffic» ( and in turn analytics)
- Analytics of organic traffic (is used for referring to the visitors that land on your website as a result of unpaid (“organic”) search results)
(Specific tools: Google Analytics, Facebook Insights..) - Analytics of paid traffic
(Specific tools: Google AdWords, Facebook Ads Manager…)
Types of analytics:
- Internal analytics: analyzing the data from own website and
properties such as social media pages in order to improve the
likelihood of decided business results (e.g. Google Analytics) - External analytics: analyzing competitors or the market
(online reputation, business intelligence, competitive
intelligence) (Google trends)
How to Inspect an Element on Chrome
- Right-click the mouse button and Select Inspect or Ispeziona
- Select sources
Beside providing a general overview what do digital analytics do?
Digital analytics are used to test hypotheses:
to inform specific (improvement, promotional, …) and actions
Connection with the Online Communication Model P1
• Operate on the content (Pillar I)
– remove pages/sections that were never or poorly accessed; optimize
content to make it more suitable for human readers and for search engines (SEO: Search Engine Optimization).
• Data: The section with the Italian translation of a destination’s website is almost never visited.
• Hypothesis: People are not interested.
• Decision: It is discontinued to avoid useless translation costs
Connection with the Online Communication Model P2
Operate on the structure or on the publication outlet
(Pillar II)
– distribute contents on different publication channels, reorganize the navigational structure to ensure more internal visibility to under-used sections, or to remove obstacles against the completion of relevant processes (e.g., booking funnel).
• Data: The section with the Italian translation of a destination’s website is almost never visited.
• Hypothesis: People landing on pages other than the home do not realize that Italian translation is available.
• Decision: The website is re-engineered in a way so that in every single page it is possible to move to a different language.
Connection with the Online Communication Model P3
Operate on the managers (Pillar III)
– Promote / upskill… HR
Connection with the Online Communication Model P4
Operate on the users themselves (Pillar IV)
– putting in place adequate promotional
activities (online marketing, online PR, SEM:
Search Engine Marketing) to invite the right
users.
• Data: The section with the Italian translation of a
destination’s website is almost never visited.
• Hypothesis: Italian-speaking people do not know
about the existence of the website.
• Decision: Several promotional activities, both
offline and online, are done in order to make the
website known to the Italian market.
UsERA (User Experience Risk Assessment) Model
describes the interplay between usability and usages analysis formalizing the interaction between the two approaches and leading to more structured information for website.
Why USERA?
A proper analysis of the user experience risk would inform project managers, communication and web designers in making decisions concerning questions such as:
• what parts of the application require immediate attention for re-design or improvement?
• Are my users exposed to potentially negative experiences?
• How can I optimize the good experiences on my site?
the risk of negative user experiences with the site is determined by 3 basic factors:
- threats
- vulnerability
- resilience
Threat:
a design defect that is a potential threat to an optimal user experience.
Design dimensions Threat
- Content
- Information architecture
- Navigation and interaction:
- Services & transactions:
- Search functionality:
- Labeling and interface semiotics:
Vulnerability:
as the exposure to a usability problems. It is identified in terms of actual traffic (views) or potentially accessible pathways.
Resilience
as the user’s ability to overcome usability problems
Developing UsERA
USABILITY evaluates threats (i.e. usability problems inherent to the design)
Methods: expert review + user test
Both ANALYTICS AND USABILITY provide insights on resilience: as users’ ability to overcome the obstacle (i.e. accomplish
tasks)
ANALYTICS (usage analysis) help in evaluating: vulnerability as the degree of exposure to design (i.e. general visits) how many users are exposed to such
threats…
Panel data
Multi-dimensional data involving measurements over time
Social monitoring definition
Definition: social monitoring (or listening) is the process of monitoring social media channels for mentions and conversations of a brand, competitors, product, and more.
Social monitoring and analytics
Core activities: social mentions and conversations analysis divided in 3 main levels: who is talking // when // what // where
Social monitoring & analytics implications
- Measure performances
- Reputation ( intended as the opinion shared among a group of stakeholders) management Respond to conversations / engagement / manage crises
- Digital strategies // promotion (e.g. identify: trends // USP // pain points // new sales leads // influencers and advocates
Online tracking range of recording
- users demographics // acquisition // behavior (e.g. Google Analytics
- to tracking all mouse movements and keystrokes
Online tracking privacy concerns
- trackers are generally invisible on the pages they appear
- identification of the userbehind the browser navigation
What is a tracker (in the digital context):
To track this information, many websites save a small piece of data that a website stores on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site.
A tracker is:
- present on multiple different websites with a significant
combined traffic (e.g. Google analytics)
- usescookiesordigital/browser fingerprintingor web beacons methods in order to transmit user identifiers
Tracking mechanisms: Cookies
Cookies (most widely known method to identify a user). They use small pieces of data (each limited to 4 KB) placed in a browser storage by the web server. When a user visits a website for the first time, a cookie file with a unique user identifier (could be randomly generated) is stored on the user’s computer.
First party cookies*are cookies set by the website you’re visiting. Only that website can read them.
Third-party cookies: a website might potentially use external services, which also set their own cookie (e.g. inclusion of a video from YouTube on a website)
Persistent cookies
are cookies saved on your computer and that are not deleted automatically when you quit your browser, unlike asession cookie,which is deleted when you quit your browser. These cookies have an expiration date issued to it by the webserver. Basically, this type of cookie is saved on your computer so when you close it and start it up again, the cookie is still there. The most popular persistent cookie is a Google Analytics cookie.
The number of trackers that exist in any website depends on what the website owner has decided.
Tracking mechanisms: browser fingerprinting
The information collected is quite comprehensive, and often includes the browser type and version, operating system and version, screen resolution, supported fonts, plugins, time zone, language and font preferences, and even hardware configurations.
Blockchain
A ledger (libro mastro) like any other, but…
Digital (like a database)
Distributed (like P2P filesharing)
“Safe” (= opensource + private/public key)
Immutable (like a record on vinyl)
Automated (like any SW)
Blockchain definiton
A blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain. Each block in the chain contains a number of transactions, and every time a new transaction occurs on the blockchain, a record of that transaction is added to every participant’s ledger.
The decentralised database managed by multiple participants is known as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
Blockchain is a type of DLT in which transactions are recorded with an immutable cryptographic signature called a hash
Validation mechanism: PoW: Proof of work
PoW is energy-intensive and it limited blockchain networks’ ability to scale. The purpose of proof-of-work algorithms is not proving that certain work was carried out or that a computational puzzle was “solved”, but deterring manipulation of data by establishing large energy and hardware-control requirements to be able to do so.
Biometric definition
Automated recognition of individuals based on their biological and behavioural characteristics.
