Considering the Social Context!

Think about how and where you learn about digital technology, say the Web/Internet. Where usually are you – in work, at home? Why were you learning or using it – for work, personal reasons? Where you expected to use the technology by your employer, school or friends? What influence do you think the social context, such as work has on you, your view of the world, and of digital technology?

The evolution in digital technology is not only altering user/consumer expectations of their interaction with the technology in general, but also placing extra demands on our confidence – ‘what we think we know about technology’ – and it’s value to us for effective participation. One thing that requires more exploration is on knowledge of digital technology, is the moderating effect of the social context within which we ‘learn about’ and ‘use’ [are socialised] about a given digital technology.

In a paper under review, my co-authors and I profile the moderating effect of the social context of ‘learning’ and biological context of the ‘user’ on the knowledge-value relationship with digital media. As such, does my confidence in my knowledge of technology X, influence the value I place on using technology X, any differently based on a) the social context within which I learn’t about/user technology X (professional/work vs. personal/non-work) and b) my biological context of being male or female.

The Professional-Personal Social Context

Our interest here, is especially the professional-personal context in how we are socialised to think, feel and use technology. Often in mass survey research about technology usage and literacy this social context is ignored or in the least not captured. But the social context of learning is very important. For example, the difference between mandated [where usage is explicitly expected] and non-mandated [where usage is more about free choice] usage contexts such as education, professional [work] and personal contexts.

Education Context: In educational institutions we often ‘expect’ students to use email, the universities intranet system (or virtual learning environment), the library catalogue, or access journal articles through electronic databases. So if one then conducts a study on knowledge, perceptions and usage of these systems, well the data is inherently biased by this being a mandated context for usage.

Professional Context: Similarly in a work-context, the profession you have and do, might have more or less expectations with technology usage and the types of technology. For example, a web designer has a very different social context of learning and technology usage than say a creative director of an arts organisation or a plumber, school teacher or university professor in Chemistry science.

These social contexts of ‘learning about’ and ‘using’ technology, in my belief are important considerations in our study of technology knowledge, perceptions and usage, and our expectations of them. In short, “I am a factor of the environment within which I live, work and play, as is my environment of me!” … Interdependent, co-evolving and emergent in how we see and are in the world. So we decided to consider it.

The Professional Context of Technical Web Design

For sample of 2077 web users we survey and profile three core things:

1. How confident the users are in their knowledge about how to use the technology and how easy or valuable they find it for specific tasks;
2. The technical/mandated social learning context within which they use or have learn’t to use the technology. We use a ‘web design’ or ‘no web design’ proxy here; and
3. Their biological context, given our belief that men and women are socially conditioned differently from a very young age and throughout their working lives when it comes to digital technology.

The results highlight the importance of the social context of learning and sex in explaining why some knowledgeable users find the web more (or less) easy or useful to use. The results suggest that this ‘professional’ and ‘technical design’ social context within which web usage occurs, be it work-related [mandated] or personal [non-mandated], and how men and women are socialized towards technology over the course of their life has implications for the development of their beliefs about how much they think they know about the web and how this knowledge influences their perceptions of the web’s usefulness. To summarise:

• Confidence in ones knowledge of the technology has a positive impact on perceptions of usability;
• Users with design experience have more self-belief in their knowledge of technology; and their perceptions of usability become more focused on the web’s utility for achieving their goals—how effective it is for the task at hand—and less on how easy it is to use. i.e., how a web designer sees the digital world, is much different to a non-designer of the same channel – this gives increased focus on the importance of talking to non-technical users of a system in digital channel design, especially if designing for less experienced users].
• Past Research has identified that women use the web less, are more focused on social (not instrumental) cues, and report lower levels of confidence and knowledge and take less risks on the web, than male consumers (Garbarino & Strahilevitz, 2004; Rodgers & Harris, 2003). However when they have design experience, this profile is altered with rising levels of technical web knowledge confidence than the average female web consumer. In fact, the effect of confidence on technology perceptions was stronger for female web designers than male designers.

Situated Digital Technology Knowledge & Learning

Our results reveal the importance of the social context within which men and women learn about and use web technology in professional contexts and what we expect of them. Often the rationalization of conflicting male/female technology usage results focuses on the ‘length of usage experience’ each group has, as opposed to the social context within which their ‘learning’ and ‘usage’ takes place. So lets avoid stereotypes about men and women and digital media – it depends!

Furthermore, when coming from a digital technical design perspective, be it male or female, we need to recognise that we [designers-more technical users] do see the world differently to many other users of technology. As a result, we will learn about and use the technology differently, but we will also design, talk and expect different things of the technology and ourselves [and potentially others].

This study gave rise to my interest in understanding more the ‘situated’ or ‘social contexts’ within which we learn about and use technologies, and the perspective of knowledge and learning about digital technologies, being situated within practices, processes and people … the ‘doing & using’ of digital technology, as opposed to just confidence and technical competencies.

Smiles
Kelly

p.s. This paper entitled: The Social Context of User Web Knowledge and Web Usability, is under review, but am happy to share copies of the draft manuscript, so just DM me on twitter with your email address: @drkellypage

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This is an interesting question and one often debated!

Alot of the research tells us that in fact although how easy to use something is is important, its the value you get out of something – it’s utility – that really influences our behaviour.

Let me put it this way. If you think about your own behaviour, think about your responses to the following questions:

• Why tweet on Twitter?
• Why connect with friends on Facebook?
• Why share photo’s on Flickr?
• Why talk to your family through Skype?

Isn’t the phone, a BBQ, a photo album, a conversation over coffee technically easier? Yes!

But there is something of value in these technolgies that we connect with, especially over time and geography! Although ‘ease’ is important, especially in system design, it is tapping into the value your market get’s out of them and their functions compared to other channels or technologies is what really matters.

Let’s think about social networking!

According to report published in March by Nielsen (2009), two-thirds of the worlds Internet population visit a social network or blogging site and these technologies now account for almost 10% of all internet time.

Social networking has overtaken personal email to become the world’s fourth most popular online sector after search, portals and PC software applications Nielsen (2009).

Why do you think this is?

They provide a real human value over traditional modes of social interaction, especially email!

The scary thing for marketers (and somewhat for designers) is that this rising trend to co-create, share and comment on content alters our expectations.

It not only alters our expectations of interactions in general, but places more demands on our expectations of the ease of use and especially the value of the web (be it social or linear web). It changes our expectations of the offering you provide through the web and your brand overall.

So perhaps we need to ask less questions about the measurement of the use of these technologies by our communities – yes there are over 6 million registered people using twitter, So!

Why are they using it? What value is it? Let’s focus on figuring out and tapping into what ‘value’ our communities really get out of them and then work this into content and design to engage dialogue within the community.

So points to consider, what ever technology, tool or channel, if you use it in your marketing:

• Make it easy to access, use and read
• Make it easy to download, share, and participate
• Understand what value your community get’s out of these technologies
• Most importantly – make it’s use of real human value!

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A basic model of usability developed by Davis in the 1980′s is the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) – (some 62,000 Google search results!). Based on years of research on what influences an individuals propensity to accept or adopt a technology, it’s basics parameters are still fundamental today. There are many others, but let’s start here.

It identifies two core elements for usability:

• Ease of Use – how easy something is to use – the level of perceived complexity or simplicity
• Usefulness - how useful something is – the core value it delivers over another channel, technology or tool!

What is the difference between ease of use and usefulness?

These two are not one in the same.

It is like saying that a push bike (cycle) is easier to use compared to a car (automobile) in how complex it is to use, however a car has more value (usefulness) to us in terms of distance travelled, number of passengers and protection from the weather than a push bike (cycle).

It sounds quite simple, but usability, especially in terms of complex interfaces such as web sites, social network sites etc is not that simple.

But how usable a technology is perceived, especially in terms of how much value they deliver compared to other channels, technologies, tools will most certainly have an impact on your brand and your market’s tendency to revisit and reuse your site.

What do we need to know about usability?

Now we understand the very basics. It is important to develop insights in the very least about what ease of use and usefulness means to the users of our websites, systems, networks and technologies! Do they find it useful for communication, information search, transactions? Of Perhaps none of the above!

We also need to profile what influences these perceptions – is it age, income, education, gender … or is it more complex, such as experience, knowledge, usage context and user aspirations.

Don’t just skip over these questions until after your site is launched, ask your market, your users of the technology before, during and after system design and launch and ensure you listen to them, document their language and how they feel!

How do you gain this insight?

Very simply – talk to users, conduct a survey, hold a focus group or workshops during the system development stage and profile their usage of your site or other related technologies.

In this day of social web technologies, there are loads of technologies that can facilitate a dialogue about what makes a useful and easy to use technology or channel.

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Is Usability a Marketing Thing?

No longer just the domain of web designers, system developers and the technological proficient. For marketers this area is of increasing interest as our communities (consumers, clients, buyers, customers, our fellow marketers), and even ourselves are facing greater technological interaction.

In my mind, this should be a core skill-set of the marketing profession not just tomorrow, but today, and yesterday! We are using technologies in customer service, communications, marketing research, service delivery … nearly every function of marketing, nearly every activity touches human-technology interaction. And if we are not using it, the people we are trying to reach surely are.

Yet overall, as a profession who knows our products and our markets very well, and can sell and promote to them, we are not that proficient in understanding the core basics of what it means for a technological interface in a hypermedia world is to be ‘usable’.

We measure trafffic, monitor sales and collect survey’s on satisfaction, but whose domain do we leave ‘usability testing’?

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