Our “Lady Luck” has rolled the dice and Dominik Schwarz is the winner! Congratulations! The ticket is right on the way to you! For the others: There will be another DfC.

We’re sold out for the 6th DfC. We are very happy about this and are looking forward to a great conference on Friday. But there is one last chance for you to join us. Our premium sponsor Cortal Consors is giving away one last ticket!

What do you have to do, to claim it?

Easy thing! Just comment on this blogpost, why you should get the ticket! Tonight, tuesday the 28th June, at 22:00 we’ll do a lottery among all who commented. Please note, that your comment won’t appear instantly, as we have a very strict spam-check.

What do you wait for? Comment!

08:30 Onsite Registration and breakfast
09:30 Opening Speech

09:45 Martin Kupp – Organizational Creativity – Learnings From the World of Arts
10:30 Team Setup – nobody is left behind
10:45 Workshop-Session 1: Getting to know the challenge and going wild

12:15 Andy Budd – Persuasive Web Design
13:00 Lunch break and open discussion (let you settle down and get real)

13:30 Dan Lockton – Design, Mental Models and Behaviour Change
14:15 Workshop-Session 2 – Off the wall ideas (decide on one idea and develop it)

15:30 Eric Reiss – Of buttons and brains: four keys to successful conversion
16:15 Workshop-Session 3 – Making your ideas stick (prepare your idea for presentation)

17:30 Semi finals: Presentation of ideas to casestudy-owners
18:00 Short entertainment

18:15 Grand finale: Presentation of ideas to Keynote-Speakers
18:45 Special Talk: Arjan Haring & Maurits Kaptein- Persuasion Profiling

19:00 Closing Speech and announcing the winners
19:15 Barbecue and open discussion
22:00 Afterparty

The case owners, coming from the user experience team of Cortal Consors, will be present and introduce the challenge and the themselves to you. Be ready to drive them nuts with your questions. So, please welcome our premium sponsor and casestudy-owner Cortal Consors! We’re very happy to have them with us.

If you missed out before our first casestudy – it will be coming from the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). They’re also up to a true conversion challenge. Hits me, that I can’t be a participant. Let’s see, what you will make out of these two casestudies.

Ich liebe herausforderende Konzepte und so fiel die Entscheidung nicht schwer, selber herauszufinden, wie wild der Vortrag wird, wenn man versucht die Design for Conversion in 20×20 Sekunden einem sehr gemischten Publikum zu erklären. Vorweg, es wurde “charmant” und wer die korrekte Zahl meiner “Ähms” rausfindet, bekommt auf der Design for Conversion Afterparty von mir ein Bier ausgegeben.

Zählen könnt ihr die “Ähms”, wenn ihr euch den Vortrag samt O-Ton hier anschaut und -hört: Pecha Kucha Vortrag Design for Conversion. Auch alle anderen Vorträge sind mit O-Ton digital verewigt und in diesem Blogbeitrag über die Vorträge der 10. Pecha Kucha Köln zusammengefasst.

Souverän moderiert von Annette Pfeffer und Steffen Bärenschläger war der Abend großartig, nicht zuletzt wegen des sehr gut gelaunten Publikums, dass nur bei der Nasen-OP-Präsentation schwächelte (Gore, Blood, Black Humor, NSFW). Die Gute Laune blieb auch im Anschluss erhalten und obwohl drinnen schon die Silberschwein-Party tobte, redete ich draussen noch mit vielen Leuten und konnte einige für die Design for Conversion begeistern. Danke an das Orga-Team für diese Gelegenheit!

Ich freue mich auf die nächste Pecha Kucha Nacht im September in Köln und empfehle jedem dringend dabei zu sein. Das Pecha Kucha-Team sucht immer neue engagierte Redner. Wenn ihr also etwas habt, worüber ihr die Welt schon immer aufklären wolltet, dann meldet euch und euren Vortrag an.

Editor’s Note: Sorry, for the German only. But as the Pecha Kucha presentation was also in German, it made sense to blog about it in German, too.

As someone who loves to learn new things, I have become enamored with persuasion design and online media lately. Working with Arjan Haring and Maurits Kaptein after connecting over their PersuasionAPI has really opened my eyes to the vast possibilities that await us all when we combine marketing and technology. So, as a person who thrives on generating new ideas, after hearing about Design for Conversion, I must say: I am envious.
 
I have not been to any of the previous conventions, so I can not judge Design for Conversion. Yet from the impression I get from reading about past events, I would love to be a part of the open-forum, brainstorming typhoon that is Design for Conversion. But alas, I am just a humble writer (and office assistant) in Michigan. I can’t afford to hop a plane to Cologne for a day to join the competition. I can only daydream of being able to join the dynamic workshops, the free-spirited experts, and the attendees hailing from all different disciplines and walks of life. I am a huge advocate for generating and sharing ideas, and I am passionate about creative thinking and problem solving. Those attending Design for Convention will be able to work with like-minded people — under the guidance of industry experts, no less. To have the opportunity to participate in consecutive workshops, facilitated by high class, world-renowned experts, while reflecting on design process and persuasion technology? It is sure to be an intellectual utopia.
 
The best part, in my opinion, is the competition that weaves its way into the Design for Conversion conference. Having just read an article on using contests to spur creativity and innovation, I can definitely see how competition can bring out the best in people – especially if you have to present your ideas and solutions on stage. Not only would you be presenting your ideas to the case owners, but you would also be competing in the semi-finals, in hopes of presenting to the conference speakers in the grand finale. To witness these industry experts competing against one another to present comprehensive, compelling and behaviour-changing solutions is a treat in and of itself. Competition always engages people even further, because no one wants to present anything less than stellar work to their peers and case owners.
 
If only there was a way that I could participate in the Design for Conversion workshops. I already have a list of speakers that I want to meet. And I’ll be watching the DfC news feed to find out more about the case studies. I’ve already started brainstorming solutions for the WWF case study. Part of the motivation may have been my obsession with pandas, but can you blame me?

A little more than a month away from the nicest conference I have ever been to, I asked the keynote speakers what they think is the biggest challenge in their field right now. This is what they told me. And I will add some thoughts of my own to make me look good ;-)

Andy Budd: Designing for the ever increasing number of devices and platforms

I’d say that one of the biggest challenges is designing for the ever increasing number of devices and platforms. Back in the day we only really had to worry about the website or web app. Now we have to consider the mobile experience, the tablet experience and the app experience across several devices. Pretty soon we will have to consider the interactive TV experience as well.

Some of the troubles include how much functionality to replicate across platforms and how much UI consistency do you need. Should you consider all of these platforms and simply different UI into the same service, or should you consider them separate products in and of themselves. All very tricky questions and all with the same answer, “it depends”.

Source: Logic + Emotion

Arjan’s commentary: excellent choice of challenge. Start mixing this up with a multichannel persuasion strategy and you know what lies ahead. Every device has it’s own role to play. It can be the case that a mobile phone app is a great start to connect with your brand the first time. And the app can be used to persuade you to register to the email newsletter and so on and so on.

Dan Lockton: What really works when you design for behavior change?

The biggest challenge overall in design for behaviour change is really “What works? When, where, with whom, why? And for how long?” But there are a lot of challenges wrapped up in that. Some would start with trying to understand the ‘why’ and going from there. Others with the ‘whom’, looking at profiling and segmentation. Others would prefer simply to look at what works – a kind of ‘many crummy trials’ approach – and go from there.

There are two areas I’m involved with at present. One is about the design process – helping designers and other stakeholders develop ‘design for behaviour change’ concepts in response to problems identified through research. The challenges there are maybe not so interesting – they’re essentially about trying to organise design patterns in a way that can be applied by people with diverse backgrounds. The other area is specifically around energy use – can we use design to help people change their behaviour so they use less energy? The challenge which I’ve been concentrating on here is to try to understand the why – why do people use products in the way they do? How much interaction involves actually thinking about what’s going on, and how much is simply due to usability issues?

The intention is that through understanding the context, and with a better window on people’s mental models of the systems around them, the ‘many crummy trials’-type interventions we’re designing will start from a better informed position. And actually change behaviour, of course.

Arjan’s commentary: I love this challenge from Dan. He underestimates what he accomplished with his Design with Intent cards. This has had a great impact on our field and of the worldwide acceptation of it’s principles. But I think he is right when he says that the “many crummy trials” is a bigger challenge. My PhD will be focused on criteria that designers can use to choose the right behavior change models for their projects.  And next to that I will try to find out how organizations can setup experiments that will start a learning curve in behavior change. Many crummy trials indeed.

Eric Reiss: Ubiquitous. Wireless. Now.

I have the undeniable advantage of answering last in this post. So let me say at the outset that I fully agree with Andy and Dan – they both address critically important issues. Which is the most important? That’s like asking, what is more important in a good German beer – hops, malt, yeast, or water. The truth is they are all important.

Let me start by commenting on Andy’s concern about building effective cross-platform experiences. I think one of the challenges we, as designers, face is that it is neither necessary nor desirable to provide the same experience across all of these platforms. Among poorer populations, the mobile phone has replaced the PC for access to basic social tools such as Facebook. And in truth, many users do not want the sophistication of a full-blown, big screen experience; sales of smartphones have already surpassed those of PCs (including netbooks). Yet, as designers, we somehow feel compelled to give people a Steinway concert grand experience across all channels, even if our users might be perfectly happy – or even happier – to have a simple Casio keyboard.
We, the design community, need to be thinking about why people choose the channels they do and give them the best possible experience based on their needs and usage patterns. I’m not sure we’re doing that yet.

The move to smartphones also addresses Dan’s energy concerns to some extent as phones use less energy than PCs. That said, the networks themselves require more energy as we must add a layer of cell towers and wireless routers to an existing wired infrastructure.

If I have to come up with a challenge of my own, I’d say that it is the need for ubiquitous wireless. Yet this need is being thwarted by greedy telcos. Because international data roaming charges are so exorbitant, I turn off my smartphone when I leave my home in Denmark. I think the answer lies in creating new business models that separate the physical infrastructure from the service layer. The telcos are not going to do this voluntarily as they usually own both. But free wireless at Starbucks and McDonalds is already starting to force the issue in the United States and the smartphone manufacturers and app producers are going to actively support free connectivity, too. We’re back to the classic networking dilemma of the 1990s – who’s going to pay for “the last mile”? As always, the users will. But in the future, I think costs will be indirect and distributed.

Arjan’s commentary: Hear hear! Can’t wait until the 1st of July when you all get a chance hear them speak, but most importantly to work with them on the case studies.

Martin Kupp: Close the Gap

I have time for a short answer only: In my discipline the greatest challenge is to close the knowing doing gap. Typically people know what they should do but do not know why they are not doing it. So I am constantly on the search for formats, methods, stories or other tools to close the knowing doing gap. Looking forward to yet another try at the design for conversion!

Lutz’s commentary: That’s a challenge I like and second the notion. I agree, that there are many professionals out there, that really needs more help on decisioning and acting appropriately. Something that mostly doesn’t come out of the books – even if there is a gazillion of them. Maybe practice can help. Let’s see, if we can go along this path with the 6th DfC.

4th Design for Conversion - Greenpeace casestudy

Wrap up

Oh boy, I did it again and couldn’t find an end, so before we get to the details, here all you wanted to know about our casestudies in short:

• Casestudies can come from everyone. Just ask us.
• Karma police check will happen. No bad karma allowed.
• Commercial interests require a sponsorship.
• One charity casestudy to make the world a better place.
• They are made of real life questions, with real life insights.
• They are created to challenge and entertain you.
• They are open in the result – your team’s decision.
• Use the open space a DfC provides to ignore your daily business grind – that’s the way to get the best ideas.
• Take the ideas with you, because ideas are free.

Casestudy who?

A casestudy describes a real life challenge from one of our humble case owners. These case owners can be actually everyone, as long as the karma police doesn’t say stop. So you won’t get through with a weapon-of-mass-destruction-online-shop. Otherwise we’re open to everybody (really, just ask us).

But talking about karma, I should mention, that we require a sponsorship from our case owners if they have a commercial interest – we think that’s just fair. But we always use the DfC to do something good – with your help. That’s why we always have one charity case. In the past we had for example change.org, Greenpeace and soon we’ll introduce the WWF casestudy. They try to make the world a better place, we gladly assist – you hopefully, too. So, this is were the cases come from. No secret abracadabra, no secret society. First come first served. Nothing else.

Casestudy what?

The casestudies in the past had a wide range. From onlineshop optimization for O’Neil trying to sell wetsuits online, to find ways to reach older usergroups for Real Networks’ gaming community, finding features to get people faster engaged in their business network for XING, thinking about how a mobile crime watch app should work for Nokia or how Coop could convince on an emotional level, that they are a very sustainable corporation – what is surprisingly complicated, even if you actually are one. And so many more casestudies from others. Every single casestudy a unique insight in a company or institution you otherwise would never have – and you can prove and expand your skills on these new challenges.

Casestudy how?

Usually our case owners have a idea at hand, what challenge they want to throw into the crowd. As they’re also professionals they often think about budgets and timings – and then we stop them. We help them to develop a case, that actually can deliver ideas and insights to them, but in the same time really pushes the teams and give them the chance to take a breath from the daily struggle of cutted budgets.

We want everybody to have fun and let loose, because that’s the situation where the great ideas actually come from. And sometimes you may go crazy and try to prove the briefing wrong in the first place – well, you’re welcome! Just make it good. And you want to make it good – you’re a winner type, I can see it from here!

Where do all these ideas go to?

Well, the case owner will take it, that’s sure. But you, too. There is no rule, that the case owner will also own the ideas. Ideas were meant to be free in the first place – before patents were invented. You won’t be allowed to take the casestudy outside, but your ideas will go with you anyway. Let’s see who is faster.

Ask what can’t be asked

As fascinating all this stuff is, we won’t just through some papers on you. That’s boring. The case owners will be present, and you will have the opportunity to interview them. They left some internals intentionally out? Nail them! See them sweat!

I’m getting lost so easily

On the other hand during your workshops you’ll be guided by two team captains, that have quite some experience on creative workshops, so you can focus on the challenge – let them do the facilitator stuff. They love it. Oh, and they are experts on their field of work, too.

My first contact with the DfC was in 2009, the 2nd DfC in Amsterdam. And it blew me away. What an energy and inspiration in just one day. Read my blogpost at uxzentrisch.de (in German) about it. I was hooked.

And after my first DfC I really questioned the value of usual conference formats. So, I had to bring the DfC in 2010 to Germany to give more people the chance to experience this better way of doing a conference. That was the 4th DfC in Cologne and it worked out quite well, even with a new crew. Later, I even jumped to New York City to help out on the 5th edition last November, to bring the DfC experience to the States. This worked also very good and were well received. And now we’re heading for the 6th DfC – the 6th!. I’m quite sure, nobody thought the DfC would get that far. And we’re definetly not finished with it.

It does help winning to smile even more.

There is always something powerful going on

It always starts in the morning with a bunch of participants, that are tired (getting up early) und irritated (what will happen) and it will always end with a cheering crowd, that is quite exhausted, but totally happy about the achievements of the day – even if they didn’t win. Everybody is smiling. That must be good for something. And that happend at every DfC since we started. We must be doing something right.

Long story short: Namedropping

But before I really get into storytelling mode, I stick to some facts about DfC history, you might be interested in. Our speaker line up featured so far:

BJ Fogg, Director Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University,
Andrew Chak, Author of Submit Now!,
Steve Jackson, Author or Cult of Analytics,
Karl Blanks, Co-Founder Conversion Rate Experts,
Hannah Donovan, former Creative Lead last.fm,
Eric Schaffer, Founder Human Factors International,
Scott Weiss, Author of Handheld Usability,
Priya Prakash, Head of Mobile Phone User Experience at Nokia,
Jerome Nadel, Executive Vice President of Marketing and User Experience at Sagem Wireless,
Paul Hughes, Partner at Lava Design Agency,
Kath Straub, Director Usability.org,
Peter van der Putten, Worldwide Director Decisioning Solutions at Pega Systems,
Nicolas Mohr, Manager Marketing Strategy & Analysis at Sapient Nitro,
Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather UK,
Dan Goldstein, Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo Research,
Todd Kashdan, Associate Professor of Psychology at George Mason University.

Take your breath for the cases

Hope you liked the names so far. Now, take some breath again, before we got into the next list. The list of case studies that required heavy thinking and a lot of team work to succeed upon. Please note, that the list is not complete currently (Should have asked Arjan before I started writing this post). Case studies came from O’Neil, SNS Bank, Real Networks, PIF-World, Nokia, Greenpeace, XING, Coop Switzerland, The Ladders, Change.org and some more. I’m especially lost on the first DfC, as it was before my time. My humble apologies.

Want more names?

Still not enough? Well there were some team captains I could mention and you could know. Some of our speakers liked the DfC so much, they returned as team captains to dive into the action: Andrew Chak and Kath Straub did this for example, Peter van der Putten will for the 6th edition. We had Stephen Anderson, Camilo LaCruz, Karen McGrane, Michael Klazema, Jeffrey MacIntyre, Christopher Fahey, Whitney Hess, Joshua Porter, Michelle Miller, Tom Prakke, Sean McLeary, Arno Bublitz, Pieter Jan Troost, Stefan Wobben, Jens Scholz, Marian Steinbach, Thijs de Vries, Florian Weiss, Daniela Hammel, Koen Koppens and many many more as team captains with us. Some you might now, some you’d wish to know, if you would know what great persons they are. Some will return for the 6th edition again.

Where are you?

At every DfC we create together something magical. People really get together, learn together, laugh together and have a great time. For everybody there is the great opportunity to dive into real life casestudies with serious background, but in freeform brainstormings and workshops. Just forget one day about your daily business and get something valuable for it nonetheless. All these people mentioned before plus the hundreds of participants of former DfCs had this. So, where are you?

Get your ticket now! Earlybird tickets are only available until May the 15th. Hurry up, we’re looking forward to meet you.

Source: Wired's article, Welcome to the Brave New World of Persuasion Profiling

There are a lot of people out there that are wondering what Persuasion Profiling exactly is.

Maybe you have read Wired’s article Welcome to the Brave New World of Persuasion Profiling. Or you have heard of PersuasionAPI, the startup company that was born at right here at Design for Conversion.

If you will attend DfC in Cologne the 1st of July, the crew of PersuasionAPI will be doing a special session on Persuasion Profiling FOR THE FIRST TIME IN PUBLIC.

But if you won’t be there, here is a first example of how Persuasion Profiling works, as taken from the scientific paper (PDF) by Maurits Kaptein and Dean Eckles Selecting Effective Means to Any End: Futures and Ethics of Persuasion Profiling.


Persuasion Profiling Example

You are just finishing up your Christmas shopping. You surf to an online bookstore and look around for books your family members might like. While you are not so much attracted by the content, as you don’t share your sister’s chicklit affection, you do intend to buy a great present. Luckily, the bookstore provides you with lots of options to base your choices on. Some books are accompanied by ratings from users, and some are sold at a special discount rate just for Christmas. There is also a section of books which is recommended by famous authors, and there are several bestsellers – that is – books that many people apparently chose.

You unknowingly spend more time looking at the books that are recommended by famous authors than the books presented with the other messages. In fact, the present you buy was identified as a famous authors’ selection. The online store takes you through the checkout process. Since you frequent the store there is no need to specify your details. Your account is recognized, and in just two clicks a great gift is purchased.

As it turns out, this is not the first time you have been a sucker for authority: while being presented with persuasive attempts – yes, all of the messages on the bookstore are presented to sell more books – you hardly ever buy the special discount books (you would be a sucker for scarcity) or the bestsellers (consensus) and frequently end up with a book that in one way or another is endorsed by a relevant authority. In the context of book sales alone, authority as a persuasive strategy can be implemented in a host of ways (e.g., selections by authors, critics’ book reviews). You are more likely to buy books supported by this strategy, and its many implementations – than those supported by implementations of other strategies.

Based on your online behavior since you first signed in to the online bookstore, the company is able to estimate the effects of different influence strategies. The bookstore knows you listen to relevant authorities and experts more than friends or just the anonymous majority. And, in comparison to the average effects of these strategies, the positive effect of authoritative sources is larger for you. This latter point holds true irrespective of the context: though for some attitudes and behavior, authorities are more or less persuasive on average, across these contexts they are more persuasive for you than they for others. Perhaps you know this too, or perhaps you don’t. But others can now know this also: the online bookstore sells this information – your persuasion profile – for additional income.

In this case, your persuasion profile has been sold to a political party. In the run-up to the next election you receive mailings to vote for a particular candidate. A number of arguments by influential political commentators and esteemed, retired politicians in the door-to-door mailing changes your attitude about the local party from indifference to approval. That is, the authority figures in the mailing have done a good job of changing your attitudes in favor of their political party. Your neighbor received a similar leaflet, although hers seems to stress the fact that everyone else in the neighborhood votes for this specific party. None of the authority arguments that persuaded you appear on her personalized copy of the mailing…

Welcome to the brave new world of Persuasion Profiling.

If you’re overwhelmed of so many photos, maybe you lean back now, and enjoy three minutes of video footage – made by the awesome guys from Meta-Fusion. They did a great job on covering the 4th DfC and maybe they’ll be back for the 6th DfC if they don’t need to help saving the world. Video right after the jump.

Oh, and while you’re looking at the footage, please keep in mind, that we’ll be back with the same great location (and weather) for the 6th Design for Conversion. If you like what you see, then buy a ticket now. Early bird tickets only available until May the 15th. If you’re still reading, I want to mention, that our sponsor the 6th DfC, the nexum AG, was there at the 4th DfC, also. Great engagement!