The Duckrabbit

I wrote about beauty last year and linked to a great article in the Washington Post on how our perception of art and beauty is shaped by our readiness for it. In the article, a world class violinist plays in a train station and is largely ignored.

The Gestalt school of psychology tells us that we see things as a whole. We try to make sense of a photo (or a painting or a website) not by breaking it down into individual parts but by mentally grouping them all together into a whole - hence the expression "the whole is more than the sum of its parts."

Studies regarding perception have been done for years such as the duckrabbit experiment. The conclusion drawn from these experiments is that we do not merely see a set of lines, we see them as a duck (or as a rabbit). Experiments like this show us that, even when people are seeing the same thing, they can see things very differently.

I used to repeatedly go ten rounds with a co-worker over an issue related to our website. We were both looking at the same metrics but drawing completely opposite conclusions. I think she was seeing a rabbit and I was seeing a duck.

The same can be true when designing (or redesigning) a website. The design and organization and usefulness of the site should not be just about your organization and your perception. If it's going to be successful, it needs to reflect and incorporate the perspective of your website's users.

Our job is to see the duck and the rabbit.

Analyze this

Read an interesting article about TV viewership and advertising on CNN yesterday. Particularly this paragraph:

"Television has made billions based on how many people watch a show at its regular time. That idea may already be obsolete. So should the industry use DVR viewing when setting ad rates? If so, how quickly must people watch the shows -- within two days? A week? What about people who watch shows on their cell phones or on network Web sites, which Nielsen doesn't measure yet? Later this month Nielsen will begin measuring how many people watch commercials. Should those be used to compute advertising costs?"

It's funny that TV is now suffering the same fate the Web has been suffering since its inception: figuring out what to measure. What metrics are important and how do we measure and compare them accurately?

For years we reported how many "hits" our websites received. Then everyone realized hits was meaningless. Then came user sessions, page views and unique visits. Add in other measurements like sales, repeat visits, impressions, and user satisfaction, and the picture gets even murkier.

Even after years of refinement and technological advancement, I think there remains a lot of confusion around what websites should be measuring and much to be done before the picture is completely clear. Not that you should just throw up your hands and wait. On the contrary, you should work hard to understand what it is you are trying to accomplish on your site and look for ways to measure your definition of success.

Here are some good resources I recommend for more information about web analytics:

Wikipedia - Good overview
Google Analytics - recently redesigned and free
Web Analytics Association - representing the industry
Chris D'Allesandro - his blog has lots of excellent information.