The latest on digital design trends and consumer behavior from Avenue A | RazorfishIA Summit 2008: Do Real People Really Use Tag Clouds?
April 11th, 2008 by Garrick SchmittTags: cbs, cnn, dell, facebook, flows, ia summit, interaction design, netflix, nytimes, page design, red bull, rss feeds, Social Media, starbucks, user experience, Web 2.0, yahoo
Here’s the presentation that I’m giving at the IA Summit in Miami on consumer behavior and Web 2.0. It’s called Do Real People Really Use Tag Clouds?: Research To Help Separate Web 2.0’s Hits From Hype and is an evolution of the consumer behavior research we did late-last year. From the program:
Much has been said about how the Web 2.0 era has fundamentally altered the way consumers interact online. But to what degree is today’s digital consumer really changing her online behavior? Are the hallmarks of Web 2.0 site design (tag clouds, wikis, social media, etc.) on the way to becoming mainstream hits or just techno-hype? And what are the implications for us, as experience designers, as we strive to create more useful and usable digital products?
These are some of the fundamental questions our design research team set out to answer when we surveyed 475 U.S. consumers about their digital behavior in 2007. In our study we found that today’s mainstream consumers are enthusiastically adopting some Web 2.0 behaviors: they are increasingly personalizing their digital experiences with simple tools; snacking on highly specialized content through blogs and interactive video; and using search engines for almost every conceivable task. On the flip side, a surprising number of today’s consumers are skipping some of the most innovative and buzz-worthy totems of Web 2.0.
I’ve posted the presentation on SlideShare and embedded it below:
Here are a number of links that I referenced in the presentation:
Consumer Behavior Study – The full study with questions, answers and quantitative breakouts.
AARF Digital Design Outlook — Our book, published last fall, that previews digital design trends.
AARF Digital Outlook Report – Our recently released book on digital media and advertising trends.
Please feel free to let me know your thoughts below and if you have any ideas for our next study please (e.g. burning questions about consumer behavior, social media usage, etc) — please share them and we’ll try to work them in.
9 Responses to “IA Summit 2008: Do Real People Really Use Tag Clouds?”
In your Consumer Behavior Study you do not make a distinction between personalization and customization. A small correction; personalization is based on implicit (most read for instance) data and customization on explicit (modify page lay out). Think it is a important distinction in our communication…
Thanks for the note, Jacob. I definitely understand the distinction but we’ve found that consumers (e.g. those who don’t work in the industry) don’t. For them the phrases are interchangeable. I will look at making this more clear for our next study.
Unfortunately I had to miss the IA Summit due to the American Airlines fiasco. So this should read the “presentation I was supposed to give at the IA Summit”…
your rss feed is excerpts only
you fail at the internet
Anon, that’s a bit harsh, eh? We tried full RSS feeds but found that the analytic options were not great. Given that, we felt that using excerpts wasn’t too much to ask until we get the data worked out. Thanks.
I’m not surprised that tag clouds show up with a low adoption rate as they tend to be static, flat, and offer limited jumping off points for new user searches and discovery interactions. Your assessment that Web 2.0 features need to evolve to support greater user participation and navigation is spot on. Two questions for you: 1) Any theory as to what the heavy users (4% all the time and 8% most of the time) are getting out of tag cloud usage as primary benefits? 2) Have you seen any innovative implementations (and evolutions) of the tag cloud construct that support UGC navigation and discovery. The two examples you site as interesting focus on showing currently popular tags versus enabling user interaction or content navigation.
Thanks
Thanks for the comment, Chris. Regarding your questions, my assumption — and it is purely that — about heavy tag cloud users is that they use the feature to navigate a site via content depth or popularity (or both). As for your second question, popularity seems to be the first step of progress today online, but I would anticipate breakthroughs in user interaction and content navigation soon. Perhaps within 6 months or less….
What would you say are good examples of ‘mainstream’ sites that use tag clouds?
Amazon.com and Flickr.com are both great examples. CBS.com too. A Google search using the word “popular tags” + a property brings up some interesting sites.