#20846
Personalization vs. Customization
The concept of personalizing for customers is certainly not new. But the Web elevates it to a near art form. The Web is the perfect marketing environment for precision marketing, because individuals can be uniquely identified, and a message can be tailored specifically to them.
Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2003). Design>Web Design>Personalization>Marketing
#14829
Dans ce mémoire, nous abordons les spécificités liées à la personnalisation des sites Web. Nous avons souhaité étudier ce sujet après avoir remarqué que l'époque où il était possible de construire et d'héberger un site pour une somme dérisoire semble révolue. La création et l'exploitation d'un site se sont désormais tellement professionnalisées qu'elles ne peuvent se faire que dans le cadre de budgets conséquents. Pour s'engager dans de tels investissements, une organisation souhaite désormais s'assurer que son site touchera bien la ou les cibles recherchées en leur délivrant à chaque fois un message adéquat.
Vanderdonckt, Jean. Universite Catholique De Louvain (2002). (French) Design>Web Design>Personalization
#27443
Progressive Disclosure: The Best Interaction Design Technique?
Progressive disclosure is an interaction design technique that sequences information and actions across several screens in order to reduce feelings of overwhelm for the user. By disclosing information progressively, you reveal only the essentials and help the user manage the complexity of feature-rich sites or applications. Progressive disclosure follows the typical notion of moving from 'abstract to specific'; only it may mean sequencing interactions and not necessarily level of detail (information). In other words, progressive disclosure is not just about displaying abstract then specific information, but rather about 'ramping up' the user from simple to more complex actions.
Spillers, Frank. Demystifying Usability (2004). Design>Web Design>Personalization>Interaction Design
#19311
Pros and Cons of Personalisation
If there is one subject guaranteed to get two web designers arguing, it is almost certainly personalisation. The promise is obvious - a website tailored to each individual who uses it, highlighting items that will be of interest to his or her particular profile, and consequently saving the users time and providing a superior user experience.
Farrell, Tom. Frontend Infocentre (2001). Design>Web Design>Personalization
#29441
The hardest part of communication lies in the many options we have available, and how tricky it can be to pick the right option for each individual member of our audience. When we write something, whether in print or online, we try to produce something that satisfies as many readers as possible because we require a 'one size fits all' solution: we're not physically present to tailor our approach to meet each individual's needs, and so must meet a range of needs in a single document. With print, we're stuck with static text: the text can't change until we rewrite it and distribute a new version. Moving information online makes it easier to revise and distribute information, but actually updating the information still requires a writer. Are there alternatives that make it easier to reach customers with our messages?
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (2001). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Personalization
#13365
Providing the right combination of options for each individual member of our audience through a single online document (or online document set) would be tricky indeed, but consider the potential of being able to do so--the potential for providing flexible information. Users could quickly obtain the information needed, in the medium that suits them, with the appropriate level of detail right at their fingertips. An unobtainable utopia? Perhaps not.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. TECHWR-L (2002). Design>Web Design>Personalization
#20991
Tailoring Your Site to Your Visitors
Consider using one of the technologies to tailor the look of the home page and recognize each time a visitor returns to your site.
Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2003). Design>Web Design>Personalization
#24107
Traces of Previous Use: The Communicational Possibilities of Interaction Histories
In the digital environment, human presence leaves no trace; every user of an electronic collection is in effect an isolated user. Some researchers in computer interface design have suggested that a useful strategy for reducing this isolation might be to provide a means for a collection to retain an interaction history. If the system creates and makes accessible a record of activity, subsequent users may be able to derive meaning from the record. One well-known implementation of this strategy is in the amazon.com lists of books that were also bought by people who bought the book currently shown. This strategy holds promise for a wider implementation, and is particularly promising as a tool for interfaces designed for information browsing, where user structuring of the items represented can be a significant indication of how they have interpreted the collection. Issues include the role of intention in communication – clearly purchasers at amazon.com are not buying books primarily to create a message for subsequent users – and the significant effects of presuppositions in any communication process – subsequent users must assume that previous buyers were not collecting a set of "worst books" on the topic. Drawing on previous research on interaction histories, as well as Suchman's ideas on situated activity and the phenomenological approach to interface design proposed by Winograd and Flores, this paper examines the means by which interaction histories might be designed specifically to play a role as a communication tool between users of full-prospect browsing interfaces to electronic document collections.
Ruecker, Stan. University of Alberta (2003). Design>Web Design>Personalization>Interaction Design
#21992
Web Application Technologies - Surveying The Landscape
ASPs, Java Servlets/JSP, Perl, ColdFusion, PHP. The landscape is filled with languages and technologies to make dynamic web applications. This talk contains a survey of the pros and cons of each technology as well as where to get good examples of key applications most every website needs on each platform.
Birznieks, Gunther. Extropia (2001). Presentations>Web Design>Server Side Includes>Personalization
#20844
Web Personalization for One-to-One Web Marketing
Web personalization allows you to have a Web site that tailors Web content to a Web user's preferences and other profile information. In addition, a personalization system logs every Web page displayed to every user so you can develop a "clickstream" view of what they saw, when they saw it, and for how long. Just imagine what you could learn about your audience with a complete understanding of their Web usage.
Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2003). Design>Web Design>Personalization>Marketing
#30078
You and Me: Making Technical Communication Personal 
Personalization lets us pinpoint our information for a particular person, small group, or niche audience. Using object-oriented databases and content management software, we are learning to answer individual questions, offer multiple menus leading to the same information, improve the precision of searches, respond individually to email and discussion questions, and allow users to customize the contents of their own personal manuals. In these areas, E-commerce and commercial information sites show technical communicators the way to customize information for each visitor.
Price, Jonathan R. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Web Design>Personalization
#19963
You and Me: Making Technical Communication Personal
Personalization lets us pinpoint our information for a particular person, small group, or niche audience.
Price, Jonathan R. STC Proceedings (2001). Design>Web Design>Personalization
#32444
From Switches to Targets: A Standardista's Journey
Version targeting allows browsers to much more easily develop new features and fix bugs and shortcomings in existing features, which has the potential to speed up the evolution of web design and development. That alone is reason enough to give it a chance.
Meyer, Eric. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Personalization
#32454
Keep Browser Lock-Out a Thing of the Past
Browser sniffing and deliberately preventing people using a so-called unsupported browser from entering a site is a thing from the past that we do not need these days.
Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Personalization
#32554
Browser name sniffing, using scripts figure out which browser is used and then provide different content to them, is a widespread practice with a long history. Unfortunately these scripts are usually static, while browsers keep evolving.
Steen, Hallvord R.M. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Personalization>JavaScript
#33172
Information Architecture and Personalization
This white paper demonstrates the use of information architecture components as a foundation for thinking about personalization. After defining the information architecture components, it describes a model that combines the components into a complete personalization system. This model could be used to guide your personalization system development methodology, evaluate a set of personalization systems, or merely to give you the terminology to help you communicate about personalization.
Instone, Keith. Argus Center (2000). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Personalization
#33278
Why Personalization Hasn't Worked
Personalization hasn't worked because most people don't have a compelling reason to personalize. It hasn't worked because the cost of doing it well usually significantly outweighs the benefits it delivers. It hasn't worked because managers have seen it as some Holy Grail of content management.
McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>Personalization
#33440
An Information Architecture Perspective on Personalization
Information architecture is the structural design of shared information environments (AIfIA, 2003). In terms of e-commerce web sites, the information architecture encompasses the organization of the content and functionality, the labelling system and the navigational scheme (Rosenfeld & Morville, 2002). Users interact directly with the user interface of a web site: scanning a list of links and selecting one, clicking on an icon to add an item to their shopping cart, and filling out a form. Users also interact with the content directly: reading introductory text to determine what each category is about, studying product details descriptions and pictures to see if this is what they want to buy, and comparing specific product features. The information architecture is the “invisible” layer between the user interface and the content.
Instone, Keith. Instone.org (2004). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Personalization
#33441
Designing Personalized User Experiences for eCommerce: An Information Architecture Perspective
You can think of the information architecture as the “glue” that holds a web site together - the part that hooks the content up with the user interface. It provides the large buckets to place products into and that users can browse by. It specifies the meta-information that ties pieces of content together and enables things like cross-selling.
Instone, Keith. Instone.org (2003). Articles>Web Design>Personalization>E Commerce
#33442
Information Architecture and Personalized User Experiences 
The information architect focuses on how things are structured within the user experience: looks “up” to the user interface – how the navigation and page layout convey the structure; looks “down” to the content management to make sure it can enable to right user experience.
Instone, Keith. Instone.org (2003). Presentations>Web Design>Information Design>Personalization
#33443
The Trouble With Personalization
Personalization has rarely been implemented well. Its failure is usually because of a lack of understanding of customer behavior.
McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2006). Articles>Web Design>Personalization>User Centered Design
#33444
Usability wins over Personalisation in Cost Effectiveness
Jupiter Research reports that only 14% of consumers say personalised offers or recommendations on shopping Web sites lead them to buy more often from online stores, and just 8% say that personalisation increases their repeat visits to content, news or entertainment websites. By contrast, the majority of consumers said that basic site improvements would make them buy or visit websites more often - 54% cited faster-loading pages and 52% cited better navigation as greater incentives.
Light, Ann. Usability News (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Personalization
#33445
Personalizing the User Experience on ibm.com
In this paper, we describe the results of an effort to first understand the value of personalising a website, as perceived by the visitors to the site as well as by the stakeholder organisation that owns it, and then to develop a strategy for introducing personalisation to the ibm.com website.
Karat, C.M., C. Brodie, J. Karat, J. Vergo and S.R. Alpert. IBM (2003). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>Personalization
#34236
Homepage Live: Automatic Block Tracing for Web Personalization
The emergence of personalized homepage services, e.g. personalized Google Homepage and Microsoft Windows Live, has enabled Web users to select Web contents of interest and to aggregate them in a single Web page. The web contents are often predefined content blocks provided by the service providers. However, it involves intensive manual efforts to define the content blocks and maintain the information in it. In this paper, we propose a novel personalized homepage system, called “Homepage Live”, to allow end users to use drag-and-drop actions to collect their favorite Web content blocks from existing Web pages and organize them in a single page. Moreover, Homepage Live automatically traces the changes of blocks with the evolvement of the container pages by measuring the tree edit distance of the selected blocks. By exploiting the immutable elements of Web pages, the tracing algorithm performance is significantly improved. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithm.
Han, Jie, Dingyi Han, Chenxi Lin, Hua-Jun Zeng, Zheng Chen and Yong Yu. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Web Design>Personalization
#34237
Open User Profiles for Adaptive News Systems: Help or Harm?
Over the last five years, a range of projects have focused on progressively more elaborated techniques for adaptive news delivery. However, the adaptation process in these systems has become more complicated and thus less transparent to the users. In this paper, we concentrate on the application of open user models in adding transparency and controllability to adaptive news systems. We present a personalized news system, YourNews, which allows users to view and edit their interest profiles, and report a user study on the system. Our results confirm that users prefer transparency and control in their systems, and generate more trust to such systems. However, similar to previous studies, our study demonstrate that this ability to edit user profiles may also harm the system’s performance and has to be used with caution.
Ahn, Jae-wook, Peter Brusilovsky, Jonathan Grady, Daqing He and Sue Yeon Syn. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Web Design>Journalism>Personalization
