Multi-session Interaction Requires New Approaches to User-System Communication by Mark Resnick & Azilah Baker, Bentley University Information Design and Corporate Communication

 

Traditionally, usability has focused on the design and evaluation (D&E) of systems designed for single session interactions. The target was the user who would come to a web site, application, or device to accomplish a particular task and continue until the task was either completed or abandoned. Advanced usability D&E projects may look at complex tasks with many steps and possibly multiple users, but in general they were completed in a single session. This led to designs that were optimized for these single session tasks.

 

This is no longer the case. Many of the activities that characterize current system use have become much more complex. Multiple users are the rule rather than the exception and the activities span not only multiple sessions but may be ongoing for extended periods of time. Social networking is an obvious exemplar of this transition. Most activities on Facebook, LinkedIn and others are intended for long term interactions. But e-commerce sites are also making this transition. Amazon is not targeting single purchases of books or other products, but creating a long term relationship with users that will allow them to make more effective and efficient purchases on later visits. They have instituted wish lists, recommendation systems, ratings and reviews, and other functions that users interact with over time. Search engines are not only indexing the web to provide optimized searches, but also storing profiles of users to make intelligent recommendations over time. Both e-commerce and search sites are linking to social networking systems to include additional features that increase the quality of their recommendations.

 

In response, the usability profession is developing new tools and techniques to address these long term interactions. But more development is necessary. Reviews of current books, whether academic or practitioner-focused, describe D&E methods that are best suited for single session projects. A series of case studies we conducted at Bentley University illustrate some of these issues. In the interest of space only two cases will be presented here, but they represent several others which found similar results.

 

An investigation of travel reservation aggregators (such as Expedia or Kayak) presents one challenge. The case study looked at a user who had made a hotel reservation, including confirming it with a credit card, but had forgotten at which hotel and had no record or receipt. Upon returning to the site, there was no way to find out. Even redoing the search with the same search criteria did not identify the correct hotel because hotels change their prices daily based on supply and demand and because recoloring links to indicate past navigation is not helpful for these applications. The user could have stored the reservation on the site if he had created a profile, but many users prefer not to do this. And the original D&E of the site looked at tasks such as searching and reserving, but not finding lost reservations. 

 

Another case study looked at the design of the newsfeed interface of a popular social network. The case focused on usability although admittedly the company’s design tries to balance marketing and usability requirements. But neither was particularly effective. User tests of single-session tasks showed that these were supported at acceptable levels, but tests of long term activities were much worse. 

 

The message of these case studies is that the practice of usability D&E must be extended to include more long term activities. Anecdotal discussion with other professionals indicates that some are doing this already. But it does not seem to have become the standard practice. And more publications need to promote multi-session D&E methods so that we can share best practices.