Remko Mantel
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Posts by Remko Mantel
KC Contingency Design
Last week I have given my first KC presentation within AMIS on the subject of Contingency Design. Some 15 people were present and even 2 outsiders showed up! It proved to be a very interesting evening and apparently this subject caused strong feelings with the contenders, causing lively discussions! In fact, my presentation triggered Arjaan, AMIS colleague, to present his own KC in the near future on the subject of usability especially for webshops. On top of that, Reinier, one of our account managers, has asked me to come up with a plan for a contingency scan product plan for AMIS. So hopefully soon AMIS will be offering the AMIS Contingency Design Scan! 
Contingency Design is designing websites for when things go wrong. The thought behind contingency design is that there is no such thing as a perfect website, how carefully designed even. Visitors will always get into trouble by either their own fault or because of the website itself. Contingency design offers visitors help to solve their problems.
In our day to day live we are daily confronted with contingency issues, though we never seem to notice them as such. Think of spare parts or an emergency aggregate. They help us when we get into trouble. Or even think about traffic signs. They help us to prevent getting into trouble. So how come contingency most of the times is not incorporated into websites? How many times have you had the following feelings or thoughts?
- This is not what I was looking for!
- Did I place that order or not?
- How do I get back to the starting page?
- I have lost all my filled in data in that form!
- Where is the page I clicked on?
My presentation contained a lot of guidelines and examples of good contingency design but most of all many examples of poor contingency design. So feel free to download my full presentation and use it to your advantage!
Contingency design
Contingency design is intercepting and preventing error
scenarios. These are situations where website visitors get in trouble, for
example on a 404 Error – File Not Found page. It is designing for when things
go wrong. It is the process of making sure that when something goes wrong, you
inform the user in an understandable and friendly manner.
The thought behind contingency design is that there is no
perfect website, even if you undertake thorough testing. Visitors of websites
will always run into trouble, by their own acting, or by a fault in a website.
Contingency design offers visitors help to solve the problems that they have
run into. It is about the error messaging, graphic design, instructive text,
information architecture backend systems and customer service that helps
visitors get back on track after a problem occurs.
The advantage of contingency design is that it will not only
improve the usability of a website. It is mainly aimed at reducing the
frustration of visitors. A website that offers help at the moment a visitor
runs into a problem can count on a higher satisfaction en loyalty, thus
improved conversion rates and revenues.
Some examples:
Error pages
404 error – This is one of the most important contingencies
to cover. It is wise to spend a lot of time on your 404 error page to ensure
that it does an excellent job of helping your misguided visitors get back on
track. This page should be a nice design which fits into your overall site
theme. It’s goal is to tell your visitor what happened (or what may have
happened) and provide some alternative ways to find out what they want. It is
very wise to create individual error pages for each and every one. Other error
codes can be especially confusing to some visitors so it’s best to go out of
your way to help them out.
Search failures
If you have an on-site search engine, be sure and spend some
time on your search failure page. You want to help your visitors when they
search but find no matches.
Helpful Forms
This is a little tougher, but when someone includes
incorrect data on the form it’s quite common to simply say "bad data"
and force them to re-enter everything or guess what is incorrect. It’s much
smarter to clearly show exactly what is incorrect, and to allow the visitor to
enter only the incorrect data again instead of the whole form. When errors
occur (especially in forms) it would be better to make the mistakes stand out
when you redisplay so they can be easily picked out from the rest of the page. It’s
also a good idea to include helpful hints on how to correct the problem.
A simple but good example of how filling in a form can be
made easier can be found in this story on signing up for My Yahoo.
37signals has written a very nice white paper on contingency design, with good real life examples of what can go wrong or how it should be done. The most important part of the white paper is simply a list with 20 important rules for providing successful contingency
design. In my opinion this white paper is a must read for designers,
programmers, copywriters, and any other site decision-makers who want to
increase usability and customer satisfaction. It proves that
optimization of websites to become more profitable does not have to be very
expensive!
Web 2.0: social networking
‘The network is the computer’ is an old saying from the hardware company Sun. What used to be a prediction is now becoming a fact. Internet services are slowly replacing software. People organize and share their lives on new innovating and interactive websites. Soon you will no longer need specific computer programmes to do so. Just having a web browser will be enough.
To prevent confusion I should first give you a definition of what Web 2.0 is. Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that let people collaborate, and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages. Web 2.0 is therefore a generic term for innovative websites, where everything is aimed at sharing, sharing links, pictures, contacts, lists, interests, personal data, etc.. In short: sharing your whole life. It has become a sort of social interacting that is unlocked and stimulated though the internet in a smart and interactive way.
This is not new you might say, internet has indeed been a big social place for many years. Much communication nowadays takes place online (e.g. email, MSN, weblogs) and sharing stuff you like through peer to peer networks or a having wish list at Amazon or Bol.com is very popular. The new thing about Web 2.0 is that sharing all these bits of personal information is now getting easier and more attractive. Information coming from different websites is getting easier to join and easier to find. New information based upon you personal preferences is even coming directly towards you.
How this works can be seen by examples of the new, Web 2.0, websites that have conquered the hearts of internet users:
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