Disney.go.com SI 658 IA Strategy Report 25 April 2008koparkar/DisneyIAStrategyReport.pdf · pages reviewed Reputation, Search Engine Optimization, and Credibility are also addressed.

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Disney.go.com SI 658 IA Strategy Report 25 April 2008 Project Team Gaurav Anand Ashutosh Kaushik Saurabh Koparkar Matthew Rubinstein

Disney.go.com Strategy Report 1

SI 658 | Information Architecture | 25 April 2008

Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................2

1.1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................................21.2 Strategic Focus........................................................................................................................21.3 Analysis ...................................................................................................................................2

2 User Experience (UX) Audit............................................................................................................32.1 Branding ..................................................................................................................................32.2 Content ....................................................................................................................................32.3 Functionality.............................................................................................................................42.4 Usability ...................................................................................................................................42.5 Summary .................................................................................................................................5

3 Findings and Recommendations ....................................................................................................53.1 Reputation and Performance...................................................................................................53.2 Gateway...................................................................................................................................63.3 Site Map(s) ..............................................................................................................................83.4 Search .....................................................................................................................................93.5 Search Engine Optimization ..................................................................................................103.6 Shopping................................................................................................................................113.7 DXD .......................................................................................................................................143.8 Credibility ...............................................................................................................................16

4 Wireframes....................................................................................................................................174.1 Gateway.................................................................................................................................184.2 Navigation..............................................................................................................................194.3 Search ...................................................................................................................................20



1 Executive Summary

1.1 Introduction

The Disney brand works to achieve high standards in the marketplace for quality in family entertainment. Their web presence serves to inform and delight guests simultaneously; providing an opportunity to explore both the artistry and the entertainment products that the Walt Disney Corporation has to offer. The quality of their main consumer site at Disney.go.com has evolved over the past few years to set new standards in the realm of infotainment realms on the web. The current implementation of the main Disney site is a product of the Walt Disney Internet Group who maintains the overall design of the site and oversees its hosting. The newest implementation of the site features great interaction design and has been quite successful in the marketplace; quantifiably dawning record numbers of new users into the first few months of the 2008 fiscal year. The Disney.go.com site exists as a high yield, fully functioning product and is far into its post-implementation stage. Understanding the contexts surrounding the design, development, and maintenance of this domain is crucial in order to be able to provide appropriate and focused strategy. For example, WDIG is responsible for the main Disney.go.com site, but may not have control over the content that appears on sub-domains within the Disney realm. (Despite the fact that they host it). Given this context, making recommendations that could be implemented on the live site was quite challenging. As we embarked upon this project to analyze and improve the user experience of Disney.go.com, we the strategists have kept in mind the most important design strategy for our client: Magic as a guiding rule for the feel of the user experience and the design of the information architecture. Some of the most efficacious interaction designs truly feel magical in the hands of end users. The continued success of the Disney.go.com site and the company itself continually demonstrates this principle both in design and practice. 1.2 Strategic Focus

The strategy in this document has been geared towards quick fixes that could be applied to a site that is far into its implementation stage. We the strategists understand that major redesigns may not be possible to implement considering the intentions and desires of our client. Our strategy is focused around the enhancement of findability for the Disney.go.com domain in addition to the improvement of navigation and the resolution of several issues with consistency in the user experience. Additionally, we believe that reviewing the impact of the Prominence Interpretation Rule in terms of how content is displayed on the site could greatly enhance the length of stay for new guests and improve the number of return visits to the domain. Lastly, our strategy will also incorporate elements of credibility analysis. We believe that by patching up a few small credibility concerns and improving consistency in the user experience (possibly through the enhanced use of session cookies for example) the site’s performance may be improved and its appeal broadened. 1.3 Analysis

Our analysis combines a number of methodologies to tease out issues within the site that negatively impact the user experience. We believe that a solid relationship between context, content, and users allows for highly efficacious designs that are both simple and powerful. Our analysis focuses primarily on the visual and interaction design of the Disney.go.com site. Both interface design and navigation design are analyzed herein. We feel that a focus on the surface and skeleton levels of the site will yield the most useful strategy for our client given the context outlined in our introduction.



2 User Experience (UX) Audit

Our project team conducted a User Experience (UX) Audit of the Disney website, using a framework for heuristic evaluation derived from the work of Jakob Nielsen, Robert Molich, and Robert Rubinoff. The UX Audit determines how well the website meets a set of reasonably objective user expectations in the following categories:

• Branding – How well and how consistently does the site cultivate its image, mission, and character?

• Content – What is the quality of the content hosted by the site? How well is it organized? • Functionality – Does the site provide functions and features that achieve user goals? • Usability – Is the site’s architecture, design, organization, labeling, and navigation clear,

minimalist, intuitive, and sufficient to the task of meeting the needs of a broad user population? The four (4) sections below contain the results of the heuristic UX Audit, along with comments on the implications for site architecture. 2.1 Branding

Disney’s branding is very strong throughout the website. The Disney logo is visible everywhere on the web pages and the user is never given a chance to forget the Disney magic which they experience while browsing the site. Overall, the website definitely delivers on the perceived promise of the brand to a good extent.

Global Navigation bar with Disney branding highlighted

Statements Score The website provides visitors with an engaging and memorable experience

19

Visual impact of the site is consistent with the brand identity 19 Graphics, collaterals and multimedia add value to the experience 12 Delivers on the perceived promise of the brand 18 Leverages the capabilities of the medium to enhance or extend the brand 17 BRANDING TOTAL 85

2.2 Content

The overall content of the website definitely helps the users to achieve their goals. A good example of this is the Disney.go.com Home page which is very functional. The content also appropriately serves the customer/user needs and goals. It was surprising to note that the content across Disney’s international sites is very comprehensive and the interaction design of these websites is equally or more so excellent than Disney.go.com.



Statements Score Link density provides clarity and easy navigation 14 Content structured in a way that facilitates the attainment of user goals 15 Content is up-to-date and accurate 8 Content is appropriate to customer needs and business goals 17 Content across multiple languages is comprehensive 19 CONTENT TOTAL 73

2.3 Functionality

While evaluating the functionality of the Disney website, we did not specifically consider the DXD website. The website offers consistent feedback almost every time the user performs an interaction but the feedback may be slow due to the heavy Flash content used. The shopping functionality is well integrated into the whole website which is a good example of how the online functionality is integrated with the offline business processes. The website does not contain administrative tools that enhance administrative efficiency in any way. Overall, the website could definitely improve upon its functionality to help the users better achieve their goals.

Statements Score Users receive timely responses to their queries/submissions 13 Task progress is clearly communicated (e.g. success pages or email updates)

12

The website and applications adhere to common security and privacy standards

13

Online functions are integrated with offline business processes 18 The website contains administration tools that enhance administrative efficiency

10

FUNCTIONALITY TOTAL 56 2.4 Usability

The website certainly guides the users in achieving most of their goals and completing specific tasks while using it and is thus usable to a large extent. Yet, for a first time user, the website offers a multitude of content and functionality which may have an overwhelming effect. The overall page weight is optimized for a large target audience which is children in a good way, but it may be too much for their computers to handle. The website is not consistent in certain ways. For example, the website sometimes displays interstitial ad-warning pages while navigating from one navigation section to another and this is not consistent. There is no content for users with disabilities provided by the site as ALT tags are absent.

Statements Score The website prevents errors and helps the user recover from them 10 Overall page weight optimized for main target audience 15 The website helps its visitors accomplish common goals and tasks 13 The website adheres to its own consistency and standards 9 The website provides content for users with disabilities 0



USABILITY TOTAL 47 2.5 Summary

From the Spider Chart shown below, it can be seen that Disney.go.com places a lot of importance on the branding aspect of its website and its offerings. The branding of the website is excellent. The content of the website is also readily navigable and is structured in a way to help achieve user goals. In terms of functionality and usability, the website does a good job in supplying the user with timely feedback on actions as well as directing the user to fulfill their purpose with using the website.

3 Findings and Recommendations

The following sub-sections have been designed to provide an overview of open issues on the Disney.go.com site and pose both quick fixes and strategies to improve upon the surveyed sections and features. The analysis within is geared towards patching up open issues with the site that hamper findability and impede fluid navigation through the Disney domain. In addition to the features and pages reviewed Reputation, Search Engine Optimization, and Credibility are also addressed. 3.1 Reputation and Performance

Disney.go.com has well-established reputed credibility. www.alexa.com which is a web information company, has a traffic history graph for the website which shows statistics like the number of unique pages viewed per user per day for this site increased by 6% in the past 3 months. Alexa.com gives Disney.go.com a traffic rank of 290. The Alexa website also indicates that 32% which is the majority of the users go to tv.disney.go.com which is the TV section of the Disney website making this section a popular site destination.



Another website Common Sense Media www.commonsensemedia.org provides interesting reviews about Disney.go.com: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/Disney-Channel.html The website’s content is rated and reviewed according to the category of users like adults and children. The content is broken down into sections such as sexual content, violence, language and message in terms of social behavior, commercialism, educational value, etc. Overall, the Disney website is given a four star rating. The reviews are divided into Common Sense Media reviews which are reviews given by the experts from Common Sense Media, reviews by adults and children who rate the Disney website on certain parameters. It can be seen from these reviews that the website is doing an excellent job in terms of its branding and functionality towards catering to specific audiences and at the same time being commercially successful in its offerings to the customer. 3.2 Gateway

3.2.1 Open Issues The Disney.go.com Gateway page represents the arrival point for any guest who wants to visit the Disney Corporation on the web. This page exists to convey the brand and provide an all in one layout to represent the myriad of entertainment products and services that the Disney corporation offers. The design of this page reflects its purpose and serves to simultaneously entertain, inform, and sell product. Unfortunately, this landing page is designed entirely in Adobe Flash and no alternative is provided. While Flash has become quite standard in the marketplace and across the web, it may not be available on all systems and platforms. Versioning troubles, the lack of Adobe Flash for x64 OS’s, and restrictions on the installation of 3rd party apps on public terminals may prevent many users from accessing the Disney realm in its entirety due to this strictly enforced requirement.

Disney.go.com landing page without Adobe Flash 9 installed

Overall, the visual presentation of the Gateway page fits in context with the goals of the



Disney.go.com site, but due to extensive use of animation and emphasis, guests could become overwhelmed and abandon the site after only a first visit. Unfortunately, no particular element on the page stands out above another. Navigation on the Gateway page is reflected in the top bar. Categories include: Movies, TV, Games, Music, Live Events, Search, Travel, Shop, Mobile, Characters, and Disney XD. Considering the vast amount of content that the Walt Disney Internet Group must wrangle, these categories sufficiently encapsulate the breadth of the content. While these categories are strong, no context or scope is provided to inform users as to what type of content they may find in each of the sections. Findability is thus limited by the lack of scope notes on the Gateway page. One feature that stands out as incredibly effective as a navigation tool on the Gateway page is the Character Worlds Monocline. This UI element allows even the most fastidious luddites to quickly and efficiently navigate to sub-sites within the Disney realm. Given the efficacy of this UI element, it may be prudent to expand its use. Content panes on the Gateway page are updated continually to include a sampling of new multimedia content on the site. While this slice of Disney media serves to entertain guests and provide a sampling of what is in the domain, these panes on the Gateway do not provide enough insight into the structure of sites contained within Disney.go.com realm. More context is needed to help users associate a product and its related media with a section or sub-domain within Disney.go.com. While most content on the Gateway is quite dynamic, the overall feeling of viewing this page on different occasions is in effect an experience of receiving different flavors of the same static context.

Disney.go.com Gateway page with Global Navigation, Character World Monocline, and Footer



Navigation highlighted. Lastly, the Footer Navigation appears inconsistent throughout the browsing experience. It appears that a fully expanded version of this navigation is provided on the Gateway page, but as users begin to navigate, items disappear from this navigation. Most notably: International Sites, Switch to Disney Online Lite, and Disney Rewards are missing from the sub-sites, but are present on the Gateway page. 3.2.2 Strategy: To address the open issues covered above, some quick fixes may be applied to the Gateway page to enhance consistency and improve the experience for first time users. Wireframe 4.1 surveys these changes. Foremost, it would be excellent to see a non-flash version of the homepage utilizing AJAX to mediate between Java and HTML content. Even wrapping the Flash content in an AJAX layer provides an opportunity to enhance accessibility by simplifying the process of including metadata tagging to the page. It is understood that a redesign of such a major corporations landing page might be out of the question, but it is within the realm of possibility to redraft the Gateway page utilizing AJAX while preserving the visual design and reducing load times. The Disney Online Lite Site appears to be a project that was not seen through to its completion. When navigating to this Lite Site, a similarly looking, but lighter weight Flash rendition of the original page is loaded, but as soon as a user navigates away they will find that no additional “lite” pages exist within the Disney realm. It is clear that this Lite Site needs to be redrafted and as a strategist, it may provide a perfect opportunity to test out a design that incorporates an AJAX layer. If it proves possible to preserve the look and feel of the Gateway while reducing the bandwidth overhead, this proof of concept test may provide the buy-in required to order up a rewrite of the main hi-fi Gateway page. In order to increase the desire for guests to return to Disney.go.com it is recommended that an additional temporal context be added to the Gateway page. While there are rotating panes with “hot content”, adding a news ticker that displays new offerings of Content, Products, and Events may give guests a reason to return to the domain after their first visit. It should be noted that while the content on Disney.go.com and the flavor of the skin is continually updated, the overuse of emphasis may hamper users from returning to the site if they are not visiting with a specific goal. Adding a temporal context gives guests a reason to check back with Disney.go.com to quickly see what is new in the world of Disney and not just be given a sampling of multimedia content that could be considered relatively new or fresh. Lastly, to improve findability on the Gateway page, the content panes could be made dynamic and express the scope of the sections displayed in Global Navigation as a user mouses over them. This would give additional meaning to the content panes on the Gateway page and provide guests with a preview of what they will find as they navigate away from the Gateway and into a sub-site or Character Realm. Additionally, alternate monoclines could be added in this fashion so that when a guest mouses over “Games” for example, they will see both the monocline and content panes update to reveal content specific to this sub-domain. 3.3 Site Map(s)

3.3.1 Assessment The Disney website is very large and has many sub-sites. The Disney.com sitemap link is present on the web page footer: http://home.disney.go.com/sitemap/ This sitemap contains links to the sections



of the website which are shown in the global navigation such as Movies, TV, Shop, Games, etc. The Disney XD (DXD) section of the website is not present in the sitemap. The sections in the sitemap are limited to sub-titles. For example, the ‘Disney Movie Club’ sitemap link contains sub-titles such as ‘Bestsellers’, ‘Animated’, ‘Preschool’, etc. But the sub-categories of these sub-title links are not present in the sitemap. For instance, the ‘Shop’ section contains the ‘Disney Books’ sub-title link but the categories under this sub-title such as ‘Books by ages/stages’ or ‘Books by characters’ which can be included in the sitemap are not present. The existing sitemap does not contain any metadata about the amount or type of content present in the sub-sections of the site. Disney does not control the content of its sub-sites like Disney Shopping, for instance and that affects the way the sitemap is currently represented. Due to this lack of control, the Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG) has no idea of when and how the content in its sub-sites is updated or changed and hence the same cannot be reflected in its sitemap. The Disney sitemap is not searchable and that restricts accurate find-ability within the search of the website. Lastly, the sitemap link on the footer of the website takes the user only to the sitemap which shows the global navigation. The corporate sitemap is accessible only from the Disney Corporate website and not from the Disney.go.com website. 3.3.2 Strategy Dynamic generation from metadata on indexed pages would be a very effective strategy to optimize the use of the website’s sitemap. It would be a worth exploring the possibility of achieving a content inventory which can help to show where the bulk of content is situated in the website. Including and using more metadata about the type and amount of content in the website like showing the amount or quantity of pirate games present under the Games sub-section of the website would definitely help in the improvement of the sitemap’s functionality. It would help if the Consumer, Corporate and Shopping sitemaps are aggregated in one place for improved findability. We have tried to conceptualize this change by suggesting scope notes or rollover previews of these sitemaps in the footer of the web pages. This will be an effective and usable way of information visualization about the site content. 3.4 Search

3.4.1 Assessment As briefly mentioned in our discussion on Site Maps, not all content in Disney.com is indexed, and hence not easily findable. This is often apparent on Google search, as well as within Disney.com, as the search results only lead up to a landing page or section of the site, and not to specific content items within the section. The problem exacerbates as the search behavior is also inconsistent – sometimes leading to accurate content items, and at other times only to landing pages. For example, while all sub-sections of Corporate Information are searchable, but similar level of granular search is missing for most other content domains. This inconsistency thwarts the formation of appropriate mental model or expectation from the search system, and hence contributes to poor user experience. On closer observation, it was also revealed that the site content, and hence site search, not only suffers from lack of indexing but also from poor design itself. Content and search design is more product-centered rather than user-centered. In other words, regardless of what the users’ search query is, the search results force the users to refine search around one or the other product domain. For instance, a query for “Donald Duck character archive” results in 10 matches in ‘Disneyshopping.com,’ and refinement is offered only in terms of ‘Disney Products’ and ‘Disney



Music.’ Furthermore, the same query when performed on Google leads to exact matching page on Disney Archives site. The fact that content exists on Disney site, but the search site itself fails to find it certainly questions the design and indexing of content. That said, design issue is also attributable to the fact that most content is embedded in Flash containers, thereby making it difficult to be findable. Product-centered search function also leads to poor user control. Although there is a ubiquitous search box that allows natural language query, but the results are not necessarily expressed in response to users’ natural information seeking behavior. What is even worse is that there is no option for a user to refine natural language query, nor is there any assistance to disambiguate the users’ queries. For example, both incorrect spelling and impertinent content query sometimes lead to same, but worthless, results. 3.4.2 Strategy Much content can become more findable if roll-over scope notes and bread crumbs are utilized across the site. Simple card sorting techniques with sample target users can be adopted by Disney web team to arrive at logical groupings of how users perceive the content. Adding more contextual navigation can achieve and enhance the same effect, and can reduce the need the need for the search box itself. However, when used inevitably, search results can also be augmented with bread crumbs of the target page or content sections. Sub-sites and sub-sections, and various content categories within each, need to be improved. For instance, for the gateway page, we have proposed that all the content sections should change dynamically depending on mouse position on the main tab. New content categories should be defined, which can be derived from the card sorting exercises with users. Similarly, selective searching of specific sub-sites should also be supported. We have proposed one way of collapsible option controls with check boxes to let users search or filter results from within selected sub-sites. However, regardless of how the control is implemented, selective searching within specific sub-sites is critical for improving the findability of enormous and ever-growing content at Disney.com. Search results page should be revamped to include metadata. Article count, relevance rating, users’ or Disney’s recommended links for a particular searched item would definitely contribute a great deal in improving the findabilty and selectivity of the content. 3.5 Search Engine Optimization

Lack of metadata results in minimal findability for content in sub-sites and in flash pages (In-Site search works better) There are a few sub-sites that don’t have search options. This is a possible issue, as the sub-sites of Disney is quiet large at times and it becomes difficult to search for something in particular if you want. Adding metadata sharing index data or by adding tags to the html or AJAX wrapper would result in better findiability of information of content in sub-sites but Disney does not allow that. The in-site search option on the other hand is quiet good and gives desired results. There are times when searching for some Disney product on Google you would get 2 or 3 results but the same search in the Disney website would give you 100 – 500 results.

Old content is Page-Ranked above newer things: most of the old content is page ranked over the new content and so while searching for some particular content or information there is a probability that you would end up with some old information which is not applicable anymore leading to loss of credibility for the website. Archiving and removing dated content could be useful in avoiding obfuscation.



3.6 Shopping

3.6.1 Open Issues Disney.com does not ‘always’ warn when the user is entering an external system or site. For example, if one wants to purchase movie tickets, the site takes one to www.movietickets.com but with no intermediary pages or warning notices telling that the user is about to leave Disney.com. Lots of issues pertaining to online shopping arise here: Errors in orders, order cancellations, missed payments, errors in credit card bills, and customer emails and phone calls pertaining to these errors, etc. Since the site does not explicitly warn that the user is entering into an external system, it might be unclear who the user should report such issues to – to Disney.com or to the Movietickets.com?

A view of Movietickets.com where the user landed from Disney.com with no intermediary page or

warning; also there are no VeriSign or PayPal authentication symbols. We also applied B.J. Fogg’s Prominence-Interpretation Theory in order to evaluate shopping sections of the site. The site gives equal emphasis to all content items with all of them designed in flashy graphics. For instance, on a shopping page, Disney’s own shopping brands such as Disney Store, Disney Shopping, and Disney Outlet etc compete for users’ attention. With equal graphical prominence on all shopping brands, it is difficult for users to select or interpret one brand which is more distinguishable or promising of satisfying users’ immediate purchasing need. The same problem was observed for individual product items as well. Bestselling new stuff, classical successful products, or new additions to a series of products, for instance, are just not distinguishable, and hence not helpful in establishing the credibility of a particular shopping or product brand.



A view of various shopping sections making prominence-interpretation difficult for a user

Poor show of Prominence-Interpretation Rule is also applicable when we observe that shopping site-map is all-together hidden from the user. Unless users what all is available to shop, no credibility assessment of the product, and hence of decisions to buy them, is formed. On a positive note, however, we observed that Disney store, Disney outlet, Disney shopping, and various other sub-brands are integrated with single shopping cart. Shopping cart experience is consistent across different brand names. If a user adds something to cart using Disney shopping and then goes on to buy something from Disney Outlet, he gets to see the items he added from Disney Shopping. He can thus shop at various sub-stores but use one-stop check-out system applicable to all. There are some sections of the site, however, that are not integrated with this one-click check-out system. Movie tickets and Disney park tickets, for example, through an entirely different and disintegrated experience. What is even worse is that some check-put systems are implemented in Flash which sometimes just stops to function, after the entire shopping experience, if a user does not have flash installed.



An example of Check-out system entirely implemented in Flash

3.6.2 Strategy It is important to provide shopping ‘warnings’ when the user is about to leave the site to enter into an external one. Providing a simple disclaimer about who will be responsible in case of erroneous transactions can increase the credibility here. Also, adding commercially important logos such as ‘VeriSign Security’ or ‘Pay Pal Authentication’ can help a great deal in improving the shopping experience.

An example of Warning that is only present inconsistently on the site

In light of Prominence-Interpretation, it is also important to re-evaluate the use of emphasis on the main page and shopping gateway page. The central link called ‘Shop’ should connect everything possible that can be purchased from Disney.com e.g. movies, movie tickets, games, Disney world tickets etc, but it is important to play with prominence by means of providing prioritized granularity and categorized browsing and searching of available contents on different e-shops. Lastly, in order to avoid missed sales or simply to enhance shopping experience, it is extremely important to convert all flash-only check-out systems to HTML sites. If flash-like experience is absolutely important, newer AJAX-like methods should be employed.



In our assessment for shopping, another positive thing that we observed was a disclaimer for mobile shopping: “This mobile site is data intensive. Standard messaging, airtime, and data charges may apply. Upgrading to an unlimited text or data plan with your mobile service provider may help you avoid additional charges. Check with your mobile service for details. You must be 18 or have a parent’s permission before texting, streaming or downloading mobile content.” And, “Purchasing and downloading Disney games, graphics and tones results in a charge on your mobile phone bill. If you are under 18, please ask your parents’ permission before purchasing and downloading.” We feel that such messages are extremely helpful, particularly for a kid shopper. We believe such simple techniques are quite effective, especially for kid shopper, and similar disclaimers should be adopted across the site. 3.7 DXD

3.7.1 Open Issues: With DXD, Disney is trying to get more interaction into the website and it is successful to some extent. The feel and look of DXD is good and appeals to the children who are the main chunk of the user base. With DXD the main theme that is magic for the website also fits in well as it magical for the children to see they can change the way the website looks and they can make it however they want it. DXD consists of many application dependent on the theme you want related to Disney characters or movies and these applications are in smaller screens and can be moved around on the main screen. Thus the user is able to customize how his main page should look. In terms of Usability DXD can be and is a pain, a usability expert can have a bomb on it, as it has so many usability issues. Some of the issues are lack of search, lack of feedback and inconsistency in the UI, loading times at interstitial pages between channels, inability to tell what is popular (lack of metadata), and overloading of the visual display. Lack of search: One of the major issues with the DXD is it does not have search functionality. And search plays a really big part in DXD as it is so overloaded with data or information that it becomes difficult to find things in DXD. Also in DXD it takes for ever to surf from one page to another as every page takes a lot of time to open. Leading to frustrated users, who are looking for something specific and have no search functionality to find it. Lack of feedback and inconsistency in UI: With the DXD the other problem is there is no feedback in some of the applications used in DXD like games, music etc. In DXD the rotary menu has a lot of applications like games and menu and if any of those application are already open on the main page and you press the button for that application there is no feedback from the screen which is already open except it comes to the top if it is overlapped with some other screen which is difficult to notice since there are so many small screens open. It is assumed that the user should understand that the arrows at the bottom of the screen is the minimize buttons for the application. As in all other application the minimize button that is used is the arc which by itself is difficult to understand.



Overview of the DXD main channel with areas of inconsistency and incomplete interaction design in

the UI highlighted. In terms of the loading time between interstitial pages DXD takes a lot of time. Making the experience of DXD irritating for a new user irritating as he has to wait for at least a minute for every page he wants to go to. Even some one who is browsing through and wants to see through the applications it is irritating if he presses a wrong button and enter a application he doesn’t want he has to wait forever for that page to open and then wait again for the next page to open. this would lead to users leaving the website all together. Lack of Metadata: In applications like gadgets there are 20- 30 different applications but there is no indication about which application is popular and which application is helpful etc. there is basically no metadata (except for some cases) throughout DXD which could help the users experience. Overloading of the visual display: The overall look of DXD can be intimidating to someone young who is going to be the main user of the application as it is so filled up with visual display and application overlapping each other. It is just too much of information on a single page and there should be only the information that the user wants to see. For that the DXD site uses cookies which is good and so once you customize the page it stays that way the next time you come back to it. 3.7.2 Strategy Correct visual issues with UI:



• Try and use a better feed back for the applications that clicked as there is a lot of applications on the page and it becomes difficult to notice the applications feedback.

• Also using better indication to minimize windows the normal conventional one would help and if not a consistency should be maintained which would help the user.

• Also reducing the time between the interstitial pages also would help the user browse through DXD and help retain the user.

• Also making use of session cookie which would possibly remember the user and recommend or make the experience better by providing information.

• Having a drop down menu type feature which would show what to except of the page you are going to so the user knows what he is going to find on that page and then decide if he wants to go to the page saving him from the amount of time it takes for the loading of the page.

Add article/Item counts and/or popularity measures: Having a better metadata about the applications would also help like having pictures of the gadgets and making the user aware of what to expect with that application or having a popularity chart of which applications are used the most would also help. Thus adding metadata would help the usability of the applications. 3.8 Credibility

3.8.1 Assessment The site fares pretty well on Presumed, Surface, and Reputed credibility. Numerous examples are note-able: Internet safety guidelines, link to GetNetWise, an online resource for families to guide children to a safe online experience, Disney rewards visa card associated with Chase, a familiar financial name, and link to www.controlyourtv.org, another resource for parental controls, among others. Earned credibility, however, suffers from some inconsistencies in user experience. While initial experiences with the site are impressive, users start feeling the inconsistencies and errors as they spend more time with it. For example, Internet safety guidelines, which were at first high on trustworthiness, were dampened when users saw different versions of same information at different pages. The trust established earlier is soon lost as the users cannot rely on any of the versions of this information anymore.

Two versions of Internet safety guidelines

Use of too many advertisements (sometimes more than two on a single page,) and especially flash fold-outs, also hampers trust. At times, there are ads for Disney’s own products, but the content on the site is not appropriately updated in support of those ads. For instance, on one of the pages, an ad for Disney games was noticed but when clicked the system returned the message ”Sorry, this game is currently not available for Windows Vista operating system.”



At other times, however, appropriate warnings are also provided - ‘Hey kids! You are about to go to a page that have advertisements for Disney product and services’ - which enhance trust and experience.

An example of advertisement warning which is present inconsistently

Lastly, credibility is also affected when the site forces flash on to users. For certain important sections, most notably the check-out pages, don’t have any non-flash alternatives. For a user with no flash installed, this is definitely a poor experience, more so when after all shopping, browsing and selection steps, the check-out system is presented as a Flash page. 3.8.2 Strategy Given that the pages already so heavy with graphical content, it is imperative to restrict third party animated ads. Disney should be extremely selective in hosting the ads, and whenever hosted, they should be intelligently linked to what users are browsing or should be targeted based on users’ browsing history on the site. Receiving only targeted advertisement will definitely improve Earned credibility. It is also imperative to clean-up duplicate versions of same information, and also to update advertisements, product catalogues and related content in sync. Different departments within Disney web team need to coordinate in putting such synchronous content. Further, it is important to create both flash and non-flash versions for certain important content sections. If check-out system is implemented in Flash, appropriate warnings should be provided beforehand so that the users do not end-up wasting time browsing only to discover later about the Flash requirement. Similarly, as explained above, appropriate warnings and disclaimers should also be provided if the users are leaving the site and entering into third party sites. 4 Wireframes

The following wireframes have been included to provide a visual guide to the recommendations made throughout this strategy report. Wireframes for the Gateway, Global Navigation, Footer Navigation, and Search are detailed below. The redesigns proposed in these wireframes have been structured around improving both findability and consistency throughout the browsing experience. Captions have been included to detail the interaction design aspects of the placeholders. In keeping with the spirit of the Disney.go.com project, these changes utilize some interaction design “magic” to help provide context during navigation while minimizing changes to the overall layout and content of the site.



4.1 Gateway

1. In the redesign, mousing over sections of the global navigation will dynamically change gateway page elements to fit the context of highlighted section. The default state for all content panes that have been adjusted in the redesign will be rotating in nature, as implemented currently in the live site.

2. The “For You” pane will dynamically update as the user mouses over sections in the global navigation, revealing content recommendations for each category. The new “Hot Content” pane will also update in this fashion.

3. Both “What’s New” panes have been reinterpreted as dynamic and based on global navigation mouse overs. The right hand pane will be reserved for products, while the left hand pane will display new content for the section currently highlighted in the global navigation.

4. The monocline has also been reinterpreted as dynamic. The default monocline will fade and be replaced with a context sensitive one per each major site section as the user highlights elements in the global navigation.

5. A news ticker has been added to provide a temporal context for guests visiting the site. This ticker should scroll new: Events, Content, and Products on separate lines.



4.2 Navigation

1. The redesign will feature rollover scope notes for each tab in the global navigation. Note that the Gateway’s global navigation has different rollover functionality in the redesign as stated in 4.1.

2. Rollover scope notes for the “For You” tab will update to reflect the current sub-site’s content, providing audience based content recommendations per site.

3. Sub-site branding will featured here as opposed to the default Disney logo. 4. Footer navigation has been consolidated and made consistent throughout the browsing experience. 5. Rollover scope notes will be included for the footer navigation tabs which include multiple sub-items. 6. Search on the global navigation bar will now offer autofill recommendations in the form of a dropdown

guided search list.



4.3 Search

1. Article counts will be added to the left hand pane to provide users with metadata to improve their search experience by giving an overview of where the most content resides categorically.

2. Filtering options have been improved by allowing users to remove or include categories from their search results. This pane will be collapsible and impact the main results window in real-time via AJAX controls.

3. An extensible guided search pane has been added to the results window to replace the 0 results view. This pane will render collapsed when results are found and appear expanded when 0 hits are found. This pane will provide “did you mean..” suggestions for search disambiguation

4. Icons for search results will be replaced with a visual preview of the content captured from the sub-site itself. This snapshot will expand upon mouse-over.

5. Metadata will be employed to provide a popularity measure for each result found. 6. The truncated link will be replaced with a condensed bread crumb to provide more useful information to guests

and help to improve findability within the search results pane itself. 7. The “Top Searches at Disney Online” view has been included in all search results as a collapsible pane. Its

default state will be collapsed when the view includes results and extended when there has been no search term entered and/or when 0 results have been found.

Disney.go.com SI 658 IA Strategy Report 25 April 2008koparkar/DisneyIAStrategyReport.pdf · pages reviewed Reputation, Search Engine Optimization, and Credibility are also addressed.

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