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Imagine that one day you are reading an article in a magazine that describes an account that is rather worrying. In fact the article is written in such a compelling and engaging style that it arouses a strong response in your emotional feelings. On finishing the article you turn the page and see an advertisement for a product billed as "The #1 Market Leader". Could the emotions you are still experiencing from the story you have just read effect the persuasiveness of the ad you are now looking at?

Thank you pages typically don't receive much design or marketing attention. After all, by the time a site visitor sees a Thank You page the chase is over, right? The visitor purchased a widget, filled out the signup form, or downloaded a white paper - in other words, the web site has won, and another conversion stat has been chalked up in the company's analytics package. Success! Check out our positive ROI!

The next big thing doesn't have to be a new big thing. Neither Google nor Facebook were pioneers. Yet, Google searched better than the rest, and Facebook adopted a friends-only approach to profile viewing that helped the site grow more quickly than open-house competitors. Which is good news, because it means you don't have to invent the wheel to make it in the web-billionaire stakes, as long as you know how to overturn the established giants. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen, principal at Nielsen Norman Group, whose clients include Google and the BBC, is in no doubt regarding the secret. "The answer is easy - by being better," he told us. Of course, it's not that easy to be better than big companies that have clearly shown they resonate with customers. "There's always something that the market leaders do poorly, and with careful research, you can find the chink in their armour,"

Try to learn as much as you can about the business that you are advising, what drives it, and the changes that it is capable of making. Be user-centred, in the widest sense: the users who will use the product, the staff who will help them to do so, and the client who is commissioning all of it. Involve users as much as you possibly can. If you're forced to do an expert review, at least try to do a 'persona-led heuristic inspection' to bring some users into it.

Did you know that the images of faces that capture people's attention can be used to guide people around a website or an ad? I thought it was obvious! However, when I was at ad:tech Sydney 09 last week I mentioned it to people, and they were amazed! I realised it was worth posting about it!

What is fundamentally different about the recession, except for the ones we had in the 1930s, is that we're putting bookmarks in our brains. When icons that we defined as stable, like Lehman Brothers, fall apart, you are suddenly questioning everything around you. So consumers now, if things start to get better, will not run into the stores and start consuming like there had never been a recession. That will not happen. At the end of the day, consumers will want something practical that will enhance their lives in concrete ways. And that's really a fundamental change from the past, right?

instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need "social media marketing" after all.

when designing eye tracking research be careful what task you give to the participants, and when drawing conclusions from eye tracking outputs be aware of the task given. It is not easy to control your eyes, but it is actually fairly easy to control what people look at during an eye tracking exercise simply by giving particular tasks. That said, you need to be careful that the outputs are not a result of inappropriate tasks.

how can you be sure that the car you order will live up to your expectations? European and Asian researchers are using immersive virtual reality and emotional design to offer a solution.

The neuromarketing takeaway is simple: a face in your ad will attract attention, but be sure the face is looking at what you want the viewer to see!

The neuromarketing takeaway is simple: a face in your ad will attract attention, but be sure the face is looking at what you want the viewer to see!

What should marketers take away from this research? For one, marketers should be very suspicious of market research that claims to uncover the "why" behind a decision, such as "Why did you buy that Budweiser?" This isn't big news, but the research underscores why it might be difficult or impossible for a consumer to explain the thought process behind a purchase (since most of that process occurred subconsciously).

eyetracking can solve the problem of asking the conscious why because we can derive it looking at perception.

Since some people tend to think more rationally and others tend to think more intuitively, different people will have greater success and happiness with different activities. However, everyone is capable of thinking both ways, and sometimes just nudging yourself to think in a different direction can help you be more successful and feel more satisfied

Of course, a part from taking the pictures the analysis and annotation might have taken some time, but you'll manage doing that within one day. I think his report is a great example that even an unexperienced 'user researcher' can produce a wealth of design information in a limited amount of time, given the fact that he or she is in the right place at the right time.

There are three things that are "rolling" about the list. First, the team adds issues to the list as they see new things come up (or that you didn't notice before, or seemed like a one-off problem). Second, the team adds participant numbers for each of the issues as the test goes along. Third, the team refines the descriptions of the issues as they learn more from each new participant.

One of the most important things about improving is making it a way of life, so that it happens over and over. What's keeping you from using analytics to optimize your marketing?

The biggest challenge to better design isn't getting better designers. The problem is organizational, and the hub-and-spoke decision-making process that was originally created to slash bureaucracy--that is, to create more decentralized decisions and less hierarchy. But the overriding weakness, which design thinking makes manifest, is that good design is necessarily the product of a heavily centralized structure. Great design at places such as Apple isn't about "empowering decision makers" or whatever that lame B-school buzzword is. It's about awarding massive power and self-determination to those with the most cohesive vision--that is, the designers. Those are the people with the best idea of what customers want. That's the essence of "design thinking." If you were to summarize just how ugly--and self-defeating--the alternative can be, AA's Web site would be a smoking gun.

Mention the product or subject in the headline and don't play coy. The headline should flag people down. "If you are selling a remedy for bladder weakness, display the words Bladder Weakness in your headline; they catch the eye of everyone who suffers form this inconvenience."

Choosing among products can be more difficult if you tend to think more about the process of using an item rather than the outcome of the purchase

Even when you ignore environmental stimuli, your brain may still be sensitive to their content and store information that will influence subsequent decisions,