Jen Consalvo, Making it Personal: Designing 'My' Web

Making It Personal
designing my web

Jen Consalvo
AOL, Personalization

What does it mean to deliver a personalized
experience?
• From simple customizations…
• Local/zip code
• Rearrange a page
• Choose from a few views or customize a couple elements
• Tell us what they like or don’t like

• Evolving to a more efficient & useful online world for individuals…
• Everything is about ME the user (and my network)
• Personalization = Relevance
• Bring me what I want, how, where and when I want it

Personalization is a philosophy for how we will
deliver the most relevant possible experiences to
our customers, driving satisfaction and loyalty.

(C) 2007 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved. AOL, the AOL Triangle Logo, and myAOL are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of AOL LLC. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

Interesting things are happening in this space
My Yahoo!®
Customization
Google™ IG
Personalized experiences based on explicit, user-provided
Netvibes™
preferences, inputs and actions.
iTunes®

Amazon®
Collaborative Filtering:
TiVo®
Identifies relationships between different items, and then uses
StumbleUpon™
these relationships to compute recommendations for users
(people who like this, also liked this). Netflix®
iTunes® Store
MyStrands®
Behavior-based:
Findory™
Monitors user behavior (tracks clickstream) and infers interests
to make content recommendations suited to individual interests
Yahoo!®
and needs.
Recommends
Google™
Recommends
Social Network
LinkedIn® contact
Leveraging trusted social network for recommendations.
recommendations


Amazon®

• Personalized
Recommendations
• Wishlists
• Ratings
• Privacy Controls


iTunes®

• My playlists
• Personal ratings
• Customized view

• Recommended
Songs (store)


Facebook®

• Widgets, Feeds
• Privacy & Controls
• Personal Network
Feeds/Updates


iGoogle™

• Widgets, Feeds
• Simple design
customization
• Create your own
widget to share


LinkedIn®

• Contact
Recommendations
• Job Opportunities


The New York Times® - My Times™

• Customization
• Some 3rd party
widgets
• Add content from
other sites!


Why is Personalization Important?

It’s about engagement.

Content Personalization & Customization, Jupiter, Aug 2006


And that’s the Goal!

• Users who customize leverage more applications and services, visit
sites more frequently, are more engaged in marketing, and influence
their peers, versus users who do not customize.
• My Yahoo!® - 25 percent of its users
• Frequency is high (almost nine days per month)
• Only sections such as e-mail and the home page produce relatively more
frequency

•Young users were notably more likely to say they increased use frequency
(38 percent).
• Far more of these users (61 percent) said they customized a site, compared
with users in the age group (i.e., ages 35 to 44) with the next-highest
customization experience (48 percent)—customization directly correlates with
age, dramatically dropping off as an audience ages.

Content Personalization & Customization, Jupiter, Aug 2006


Getting Personal at AOL…

AOL® IQ Session, C&R
• User Feedback
Research, 11/06
• comments gathered from the beta
• Interest in customized pages is strong
area, customer service, the product
• 96% of participants likely
blog
• 81% like or love the option to
customize
• Competitive Analysis • High desire to make personal choices
about content, features, look & feel of a
• product and design team, usability frequently used page.

• Customizing “saves time” by allowing
• Focus Groups them to:
• have everything they need in
• live, online focus group one place
• find what they’re looking for
quickly


Problem Solving

• Problem: so many websites, so many things for me to
check/do; time is a scarcity.

• Solution:
• Build the best possible “personal dashboard” – your jumping off
point for the web.
• Make it comfortable, familiar, yet full of options so it can change and
grow with me.
• Innovate around automation – find me things I like or want without
me having to do the work


Introducing the myAOL™ Product Suite

The new myAOL™ is a convergence of more mainstream (yet fun and useful)
personalization features, savvy feed reading tools and an innovative content
discovery service – all layered on a portable, personalization platform that
will be ultimately coupled with social networking components (to come!).

• myAOL™
– Fast, customizable, inward-facing (private) product that will provide users with a single
interface for quick access to their favorite web services, preferred content and buddy
network.

• Mgnet
– Content discovery and recommendation service with multiple inputs (passive and active) and
a differentiated design focused around innovative “image cloud” of topics.

• Favorites
– A feed reader that promotes reading, sharing and managing a user’s personal, portable, list
of feeds and bookmarks.


myAOL

• Customize with content and functionality modules like AOL® Video,
Engadget™, TechCrunch™, Netflix®, Picture Gallery, Horoscopes, eBay® -
as well as your own feed
– Thousands of content feeds available to users – from AOL and across the
Web

• Check multiple email accounts right on your myAOL homepage, including
AOL® Mail, Gmail™ and others

• Drag and drop modules to rearrange your page, change it’s color and
personalize the tab names

• Add additional tabs so your sports headlines don't have to compete with
your tech industry news or gardening tips


Mgnet

• Mgnet (pronounced Magnet) is something totally new, fun - and somewhat
addictive. The more you use it, the better it gets.

• It's a content discovery service, like a personal assistant that scouts the
Web for new sites and content you'd enjoy

• Click on images and stories you like, rate what you see, and Mgnet delivers
personalized recommendations to help you discover new sites that you
might not have found on your own

• Use Mgnet search for specific topics
• Browse your personalized recommendations
• Check out quot;What's Hotquot; to see what others are looking at right now.
• Click “What else ya got” to get a new set of recommendations at any time


Favorites

• Favorites is our updated feed reader that brings together your feeds and
bookmarks in one place.
– View and quickly access your favorite news and content from the web whether
it's from ESPN.com® or USAToday.com.
– Add as many news and blog feeds as you want.

• Easily organize your items and even import your local bookmarks as well as
your feeds from other readers via our OPML import/export option.

• Favorites are for sharing! Favorites lets you mix and share your favorite
feeds and bookmarks.
– Easily email and IM your favorite feed items or bookmarks to friends
– Create your own feed or bookmark “mashups” (via simple folders) and share
them with individual friends or your entire Buddy List® feature using AIMShare™.

• And it’s FAST!


Check out the myAOL™ Sneak Peek at
http://myaolblog.aol.com

Questions?

Contact me at Jennifer.Consalvo@corp.aol.com
.


Jen Consalvo, Making it Personal: Designing 'My' Web

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