Transitions: “Giving customers one sensation and then transitioning to another causes a change customers will recognize and are surprisingly likely to remember. Transitions need a clear end and a new beginning, which will trigger the right-to-left-brain transition and form a memory.”

Wow Moments: “Very little of what you create for a customer will ever be remembered by them. They will only remember the peak experiences they have and refer back to them to sum up their feelings about your product.”

Endings: “Endings can put a positive spin on a negative experience or take a positive experience and ruin the whole thing. People remember endings.”

For me, the Wow Moments is most important but also most difficult. It requires new idea + good user experience + nice design. All three have to impress people in first few seconds. Nowadays, there is nothing really original idea. The new idea is combined two or more ideas together.

~yuwei

“Foodspotting is a site where people share photos of their favorite dishes. Rather than review a restaurant, you can see and share favorite dishes at a restaurant. You like the Pad Woon Sen at that Thai place? Let people know by taking a photo of the dish next time you eat there. Foodspotters, as Foodspotting users are called, love sharing these photos. In fact, before there was Foodspotting, there have been photo groups on Flickr where people shared interesting photos of dishes.

So how is Foodspotting using scarcity?

If you’re making the effort to photograph your dinner, you probably at least enjoy that dish. But what about your favorite dishes—the ones you rave about to your friends? For these, all users get “noms”—special ribbons reserved for those dishes you’ve tried and loved best. But there’s a catch: Foodspotting states, “You only get 5 noms to start with and must earn the right to nom more foods after that!”

Foodspotting using restricted Noms
“Noms” are reserved for my favorite dishes.

By limiting noms, Foodspotting encourages people to be more selective about which foods deserve special recognition. The site claims “the blue ribbon (the ‘nom’) means more because it’s hard to get.” People won’t give every dish a nomination lest they have no remaining noms to give to a dish that really is exceptional.

This idea could be applied in other, more familiar contexts. Imagine YouTube limiting each person to a handful of five-star ratings per month. Or what if Facebook limited the number of “likes” a user can use per day? While this isn’t the behavior Facebook wants to encourage, introducing a limited supply would change how people use the “like” button.”

I have been thinking to apply Meetup Everywhere API into G0Hitchhike for Travelers and Requesters meet more people, share info and items, and help each other.

~yuwei

Recently, I read two articles about Better User Experience Using Storytelling part I and part II from Smashing magazine. They use different examples to talk about how storytelling can make user experience well.

Back to GoHitchhike, the storytelling bases on the users post stories of their emotional objects and trip experience. When other users read these stories and feel themselves doing the same things, they will be more into the interaction of GoHitchike physical and virtual.

~yuwei

For those you can’t make it, I will post my ppt latter.