Strategy Blog: Viget Labs

If you accept sign ups for your website, there will inevitably come a time when some of your users no longer desire to use their accounts. Sometimes, this is because they've moved on with their lives and don't need your services anymore. Other times, it might be because they've found someone else. No matter what the reason, the way in which you handle the break up can be the difference between an angry tweet and a recommendation to a friend; afterall, you're likely not going to know why they left in the first place. The following three rules will hopefully give you some guidance for how your website might handle breakup situations in the future.

• Rule #1: Let them retrieve their data

  In the words of the faux boy band, 2gether, "The hardest part of breaking up is getting back your stuff." If your website allows people to publish podcasts, manage photos, create contact lists, store bookmarks, etc., it's a good idea to provide a method for bulk exporting this content into a format that can reused. For example, Wordpress provides an export feature that generates an XML file with all blog content - posts, tags, categories, etc. This XML file can be imported into other blogging platforms.

  

• Rule #2: Provide a way to cancel or delete accounts

  Having lingering accounts floating around the web with names and email addresses potentially associated can be worrisome to certain people. While you could argue that changing a username and email address is effectively the same as deleting an account, to me, there's a pleasant feeling associated with deleting an account I'm no longer using - like I picked up after myself. This is especially true in cases where I've inadvertantly created multiple accounts on the same site. As an example, I once had multiple accounts on GitHub and was pleased to discover how easily they allowed me to Cancel my account. The process involved two clicks with no questions asked and I appreciated them for it.

  

• Rule #3: Don't call or write

  Once I've signaled to a website that I no longer want to use my account by either deleting the account or becoming inactive, I really don't want to receive emails asking me why I left or trying to entice me to come back (a confirmation email after an account is deleted is obviously fine.) Some may disagree with this one and argue that it's good follow-up marketing to send out an email after a user has gone inactive for a certain period of time. I disagree. While it might be possible to lure a small percentage of former visitors back to your site by following up with them down the road, you're likely annoying a larger number of people (some of whom may still be using your website through a different account) with un-solicited emails.

In the end, if someone wants to stop using your website, there's nothing you can do about it - and that's okay. Give people a nice experience on their way out and there's a better chance they'll come back to you if they do in fact need your website again in the future. Even more importantly, if you you see a trend of users becoming inactive or deleting their accounts, find out why and improve your website.

"It's just a big iPod Touch."

"Exactly," I say. "Isn't it great?"

There's been a lot of criticism of the new iPad around here at Viget.  With most of the office working on MacBooks and living out of their iPhones, you'd think the Mac FanBoyism would be strong, but on the whole the lab rats don't seem to be impressed. But I think i think it's a fascinating product offering.  Why?

As a user experience designer, I love the way Apple evolves their user interfaces. Apple warms its users up to new ways of interacting with their products by introducing simplified versions of an interface and gradually add more features and apply it in more contexts as users become comfortable.  Let me give you a few examples.

Case Study: Cover Flow to Quicklook

Apple first introduced the Cover Flow carousel in iTunes.  It was a clever idea that made your mp3s a little more "physical."  An OS update or two later, the Cover Flow appeared in the Finder as a way of looking previewing files.  Apple continued to iterate on the idea of giving you larger previews of your files by introducing Quicklook, where you can actually scroll through PDFs, documents and spreadsheets.

Case Study: Keyboards to Touch-screens

I'm always hearing people say that they'll never transition to a touchscreen keyboard, but I think those who use Apple laptops have been doing just that without knowing it.  Over the last several generations of its notebooks, Apple has reduced the travel on its keyboards considerably.  While at first it looked like Apple was compromising tactile feedback for form-factor, I think they've been training their users to happily use touchscreen keyboards by gradually reducing the tactile feedback they expect.  Now, the iPad introduces a nearly laptop-sized touch-screen keyboard. It's like the parable of the frog in the pot.

Case Study: Two-finger Scroll to Multi-touch and Gestural Control

Two-fingerscroll wasn't necessarily the most innovative feature Apple ever introduced, but I've seen it change the way people navigate on their lappies. Whether we knew it or not, it also changed the way we thought about our trackpads, showing the concept of gestural commands to users who don't spend their days geeking out on how people interact with their computers.  With the introduction of the iPhone, Apple was able to give users a more direct way to use multi-touch and gestures to interact with their information.
http://www.apple.com/macbook/features.html#trackpad

On to the iPad

Yes, the iPad is a big, and I dare say, horsey-looking (thanks for the adjective, @graphicsgirl), iPod Touch. And yes, I'm a little disappointed that my next laptop purchase won't be an Apple Tablet with a 2.4GHz+ Intel Core 2 Duo processor. But when we step back from our unrealistic consumer expectations for a minute and look at the iPad next to the iPod Touch, there are two important things to note.  First, size does matter. With a 9" screen, not only can we really read on the thing, but I can get most of my 10 fingers on there at once. The possibilities for multi-touch interfaces are much more compelling when you have room to use two hands and see what you're pointing at (see the Jazz Mutant Lemur for an example). Second, the iPad is aimed at entertainment and netbook consumers. The iPad is the not-so-missing link between the iPhone and a true Apple Tablet.  As users become familiar with multi-touch as their primary input method the UI designers at Apple have time to identify and overcome the limitations of multi-touch for more complex and critical tasks (as @crnixon says: "It's not a computer if I can't program on it").

As for me, I'm pretty happy with this evolutionary step.   As an electronic music nerd who got on the waiting list for one of the first-iteration monome and has more music-making or midi apps than info or organization apps, I'm downright giddy at the idea of having a 9" multi-touch screen I can use to control Ableton Live and Max/MSP.