By: Gord Hotchkiss
翻译：jams
I thought the easiest way to share the results of the Chinese Eye Tracking study might be in a Q&A format, as that’s what most research programs tend to be anyway. I’ll cover off some of the highlight findings in this column, but the full report will be available on our site next week.
我认为问答形式是分享中国人机交互报告结果的捷径。这也是绝大多数的研究课题所采用的方法。本专栏中我会就一些热点问题进行叙述，但是整个的报告将会在下周在我们的网站上po出来。
On to the questions:
以下即为问题：
Q: Why the Chinese market?
问：为什么选择中国市场？
Every time I present results from our eye tracking study (as a side note, I just returned from SES Toronto and saw at least 4 or 5 presentations that showed our heat maps or referred to the research. I should have started a royalty program!) the question I most often receive is, “Have you done this in any other cultures?” And the most common request is China. As Westerners, we have a curiosity about the world's largest market but very little insight into the actual nature of their online interactions. When the opportunity came to present in China, we realized we could actually do a eye tracking study fairly easily.
每当我在做我们的人机研究报告的时候，人们经常问我的问题就是：“你在其他国家做过相同的调查么？”(顺便说句题外话:鄙人刚刚从多伦多市的SES回来，在那里我看到了至少4到5份与我们的搜索热图或相关研究的报告。我应该做个专利性项目才对。)当然提出这些问题的大多数人都是中国人。对西方人来讲，我们对于世界上最大的市场(中国)很感兴趣的同时对中国人的网上交流的内在本质却稀有所窥。当去中国做报告的机会来临的时候，我们意识到实际上可以在中国很容易的进行这样的研究。
Our local University has a popular English as a Second Language program for Chinese students so we had a sample available that had only been in North America for a few weeks. We set up our Tobii eye tracking station to be as native an experience as possible for them, with a Chinese keyboard, Chinese character sets and all prompts in simplified Chinese. We also were fortunate to be able to work with Piewen Li from Microsoft, a certified Chinese translator and research manager for the Microsoft Digital Advertising Network. Piewen helped with study design, translation and interpretation of results.
我们当地的一所大学里面有一个很受欢迎的--第二外语是英语--这样一个针对中国学生的计划，因此我们对这批刚刚到北美几周的中国学生进行了分析。我们将我们的Tobii眼球跟踪平台设置的尽可能合这些中国学生的习惯，我们使用了中国式键盘，中文字体环境，给出的各种提示也都是中文简体的。我们也很幸运的与来自微软的李培文先生进行了合作。李先生是微软数字广告网络的研究经理，也是一名合格的中文翻译。李先生帮助我们进行了研究的设置，承担了翻译和记录实验结果的工作。
But it was more than just the fact that we could do the study. It was that we should do the study. I cannot overstate the importance of the Chinese Market in the global marketplace. One number that I found mind boggling was the fact that Chinese is the world’s 2nd largest online market, with 150 million users. That puts China only slightly behind the US at 154 million users. But that represents 68% penetration in the US market, and only slightly over 10% in the Chinese market. Obviously, the potential in China is huge and barely untapped.
但问题不仅仅是我们可以进行这样的研究，而在于我们应该进行这样的研究。中国市场在国际市场的重要性自不必多言。使我感到震惊的是中国是世界第二大在线网络市场，用户达到1.50亿。稍稍的落后于美国的1.54亿用户。而在美国市场中在线网络用户的份额占到了68%，而在中国市场仅稍微超过10%。很明显中国市场潜力巨大，并且几乎没有被打开。
China presented another interesting question. Why has a home grown engine, Baidu, captured 62% of the market, compared to Google’s 20% share? Baidu’s claim is that it understands the Chinese market better. Was it true? Did Baidu offer Chinese users a more native experience?
中国也代表了一个很有意义的问题。为什么本土搜索百度占据了市场62%的份额而谷歌仅占20%的市场份额呢？百度公司对此的解释是它更了解中国市场。事实真的如此吗？百度为中国人提供的服务更加本土化么？
The blah blah blah stuff
题外话
So, let’s cover off a little housekeeping first. We brought 50 Chinese students between the ages of 18 and 25 into the Enquiro lab. They were given a number of tasks, including free searches and some that we used in our North American study, including looking for online information about a digital camera. We kept this task because we wanted to see if scan patterns were significantly different in China than North America. We also had them look for information on the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After the tasks, we asked them a few questions about where in China they lived, their internet usage and some other basic demographic information. The data collection happened in April.
下面我们不妨来看下我们的研究是怎样进行的吧。我们挑选了50名年龄在18到25岁之间的中国学生到Enquiro实验室。我们给他们分配一些任务，包括任意关键词的搜索，以及我们在北美研究时所使用的例如使用搜索引擎来寻找有关数码相机的信息等等。我们保留了在北美研究时所使用任务的目的是为了看下是否这些人的搜索模式与在北美的中国人的有根本性差异。我们也要求他们搜索有关北京2008年奥运会的信息。任务完成后，我们还对参与实验的学生进行提问，问题包括他们在中国的住所，使用网络的情况以及其他一些基本的人口统计信息问题。这些数据收集的时间是在4月份。
Q: Do Chinese searchers interact differently than North American searchers?
问：中国人的搜索行为与北美的那些中国人有差异吗？
Yes. A lot differently, in a number of ways. Let’s look at a heat map comparison for a similar task on Google in North America and China.
有。在不少方面都有不少的差异。让我们来看下在Google上中国本土的和北美的中国人针对相似的任务的热度图比较。
Notice that there doesn’t appear to be a Golden Triangle or an F Shape scan patterns in the Chinese example. While Google China’s heatmap has the typical upper left orientation hot spot, it doesn’t have the vertical scan down that creates the “leg” of the F. And horizontal scanning is much more spread out. In North America, scan patterns have largely standardized into this F shape. Variations to the norm are minimal.
可以看到在右边的中国人的结果并不符合黄金三角或者F型搜索模型。谷歌中国的热图非常典型，热点都源自左上方。但是它并没有垂直延伸从而形成F型搜索模型的F字母的尾巴。而相反在水平方向的延拓则非常明显，比垂直方向要多的多。北美中国人的这组搜索模型则非常符合F字母的形状。离均值的数值偏差最小。
But in China, other than the upper left orientation and some predisposal to the first listing, we identified little in the way of standardized behavior. We did see (especially on Google) the tendency to scan results in groups of 4 or 5 at a time. This “consideration set” scanning was consistent with what we’ve seen in North America. But the interaction in North America is pretty predictable. A scan down the left side, looking for information scent, then, if scent is picked up, a horizontal scan on the title. In China, after the initial orientation, the eye bounces around the total area of the listing consideration set. There appear to be no consistent patterns.
但是在中国，除了热点源自左上方和中国人受到前面所列出的这些先天的影响之外，我们发现它并没有形成标准的行为方式。我们确实(尤其是在Google上)也看到了有那么4到5组表现出了典型的搜索模型的趋势。这种‘’补偿集“搜索与我们在北美的结果相吻合。但是在北美搜索行为的交互性很容易预知。首先沿左面向下搜寻，看有没有所要的信息踪迹，如果有的话就水平方向展开去看标题。在中国，除了热点都源自左上方外，人们在整个的页面上跳来跳去的寻找信息。两者之间没有任何通用模型可言。
Another difference is the way we interact with the information in the listings themselves. In North America, we scan and pick up word patterns. We recognize words quickly and determine if they fit in our “semantic maps” (another term covered in our eye tracking studies), but we don’t read the listings.
此外对于列出的搜索结果的响应也各不相同。在北美，人们浏览扫描，并选出词组。我们很快的挑词出来看他们是否适合我们的”语义图“(语义图是我们研究的一个专用名词)，但是我们并不去管具体列出来的是什么。
Because Chinese is presented as symbols, where concepts take their final meaning from a group of combined symbols, it’s much more difficult to scan this information quickly. To try to put in a Western conceptual framework, imagine how difficult it would be to scan meaning from this paragraph if our alphabet was extended to 2000 characters, presented in block letters and all the spaces between words were removed. I can’t do anything about extending the alphabet, but I can change it to block letters and remove the spaces:
TOTRYTOPUTINAWESTERNCONCEPTUALFRAMEWORK,IMAGINEHOWDIFFICULTITWOULDBETOSCANMEANINGFROMTHISPARAGRAPHIFOURALPHABETWASEXTENDEDTO2000CHARACTERS,PRESENTEDINBLOCKLETTERSANDALLTHESPACESBETWEENWORDSWEREREMOVED
由于汉字由符号组成的，许多不同的符号组合在一起来最终显示他们的意思，所以信息扫描起来比较苦难。如果放到西方理论下来打比方的话，就好比将我们的字母表延伸至2000个字母，全部都用黑体，并且去掉单词之间的空格，然后从中挑选我们所要的内容出来。字母表我没有办法增加，但是我可以将字母都写成黑体并且将单词间的空格去掉，结果就像这样子：
TOTRYTOPUTINAWESTERNCONCEPTUALFRAMEWORK,IMAGINEHOWDIFFICULTITWOULDBETOSCANMEANINGFROMTHISPARAGRAPHIFOURALPHABETWASEXTENDEDTO2000CHARACTERS,PRESENTEDINBLOCKLETTERSANDALLTHESPACESBETWEENWORDSWEREREMOVED
One can begin to understand why it might be difficult to scan and pick up individual concepts quickly.
这也许能够使人理解，为什么要浏览和挑选单独的词义会比较慢些。
One other amazing comparison was the amount of time spent on the page before the first click. In our North American studies, we saw an average interaction with Google lasted about 8 to 10 seconds. In our study, an average interaction with Google.cn lasted about 30 seconds, and with Baidu over 55 seconds. In interactions with Google, it looks like a the same number of listings are scanned, but in North America, where a quick vertical scan will suffice to determine the degree of relevance, in China, it needs a scan of the entire listing. Using the example again, notice the difference of scanning concentration, particularly on the left side, in the North American example on the left, compared to the Chinese example on the right.
另外一个令人吃惊的相异之处在于点击第一下前人们在页面上所花费的时间的不同。我们在北美所做的研究中，使用Google.cn搜索的时长大约在8到10秒钟左右。但是用在Google，浏览同样的条目使用的时间相同。但是在北美，人们只需要垂直的浏览就足够看出搜索条目(和关键词)的相关度了。而在中国则需要浏览整个条目。同样是上面的图，左边的北美的例子和右边的中国相比较而言，可以看出很明显的浏览焦点的差异。
Q: What’s the difference in user experience between Baidu and Google?
问：在用户体验上百度和谷歌有何差异？
When you compare a 62% market share (Baidu) against a 20% market share (Google China) you would think that there should be a significant difference in user experience behind those numbers, right? Well, there is, but not in the way you would expect. Based on North American standards, Google should present a better user experience.
当你看到百度占据62%的份额而谷歌仅占20%市场份额的时候，你一定以为在这些数字后面，用户体验也会非常不同，对不对？但是实际并不像你所想的那样。按照北美的模型标准来看的话，Google给用户的感觉会更好些。
In the comparison above, you can see the difference in degree of scanning for the same task on Baidu and Google. On Google, users found what they were looking for in literally half the time (30 seconds vs 55) and with half the real estate. In Google, most users didn’t scan behind the fourth listing, whereas on Baidu, they scanned right to the bottom of the page. It should also be noted in the Baidu example on the left, the large number of red X’s (indicating mouse clicks) on the top search query box and the suggested searches at the bottom. This indicates that there wasn’t a very high success level on Baidu. So,why the difference?
通过上面的比较你可以看出在Baidu和Google上搜索同一事物的搜索差异度。使用Google时，用户用一半的时间进行语言类搜索(55s中有30s),一般时间用来搜索一些生活用品相关的东西。使用Google的用户仅仅将搜索结果锁定在第4项搜索结果之前，而使用百度的用户则会一直搜索到搜索结果的末尾。同样需要注意的是，在左边的百度的例子中在顶部的搜索栏和底部的备选搜索项中出现了大量的X(x说明了鼠标点击数）。这说明了在成功高度上也许百度并不怎么样。但是原因何在呢？
One of the reasons has to do with the quality of results themselves. The Baidu results page is a pretty murky prospect. There’s virtually no transparency on what’s sponsored and what’s not. There are “preferred listings” that are paid listings, pushing true organic listings down the page. And the preferred listings are cluttered with affiliates and spam. By North American standards, Baidu would be a horrible search experience. But the fact remains, they’re still the preferred choice for the vast majority of Chinese users.
造成上述结果的因素也搜索结果本身也有关。百度的搜索结果比较含糊。实际上对谁是主体谁不是比较模糊。搜索结果中也有推荐结果，这些推荐出来的结果都是付费给百度的，这就破坏了搜索结果的有机性。并且这些推荐的搜索结果往往都附带有广告和病毒。按照北美人的观点看来，百度带给用户的体验无疑是糟透了。但是这并不妨碍百度成为绝大多数中国人的首选的这一事实。
Q: Why choose Baidu?
问：为什么选择百度作为研究对象？
The answers to this question are complicated. There are a number of aspects that could be part of it.
这个问题的答案很复杂。我想可能包括以下好几点：
Home grown vs foreign
内在增长和外在刺激
There’s a strong preference for a true Chinese search experience. Baidu’s media advertising positions them as a suave Chinese native vs the clueless foreigner (Google). The message is clear, East is Best, and what the ads lack in subtlety, they seem to make up for in impact and have to be considered when looking at Baidu vs. Google factors. I noticed in a blog that picked up our very early findings that several Chinese users commented that they use Baidu because it is Chinese.
中国人都非常迫切希望有自己的搜索引擎。百度的媒体宣传使其成为一个温和的中国本土企业，相比较而言Google则毫无作为。这传达出来的信息非常明显，中国的就是最好的，而广告宣传的差别则很微妙，在研究百度和谷歌的时候实际上需要将这些考虑进来。我曾经在一片博客中看到了几个中国人的留言说他们之所以会使用百度的原因就在于百度是中国的，而这也证实我们的最初的想法。
The MP3 factor
MP3因素
Baidu is the primary vehicle to locate and download free MP3 files. This generates a huge amount of traffic, as this is one of China’s most popular online activities. There’s no way of knowing what Baidu’s search share might be if you separate the MP3 traffic out, but my suspicion, backed by a conversation with Piewen at Microsoft, is that it would drop dramatically. In fact, Piewen ventured that if the Chinese government decided to crack down on the downloads (something they’re being pressured very heavily to do) it could be an irrecoverable blow to Baidu. Imagine combining all the activity on Napster in its heyday with all the search traffic on Google and you start to understand why the market share is so heavily biased towards Baidu.
Baidu是寻找和下载mp3文件的主要的搜索引擎。因为下载mp3是中国人最平常的网络活动，响应的这些就会产生相当大的访问量。如果将MP3业务从搜索引擎中分离出来，百度的市场份额会变怎样我们不得而知，但是据我猜测这样的话百度的市场份额会急剧下降，而这个推测也从我和来自微软的李先生的一次谈话中得到了证实。实际上，李先生大胆预测如果中国政府一旦决定打击这种的非法下载的话(这也是中国政府一直备受压力所要做的)，将会于百度以重重一击。联想到之前全盛时期的Napster的网络活动和同期的Google，我们不难看出为什么百度所占的市场份额会如此之大。
Just a last word on this topic. As part of our study, we gave our participants a completely free task to conduct on their engine to kick off the session. They can search for whatever they want to. We typically do this to get them comfortable with the equipment and also to get a baseline heat map of what typical scanning activity should look like. In the Google group, we saw a pretty even distribution of tasks, including information searches and product searches. With the Baidu group, almost every one of them used their free search to look for an MP3 file. A result of conditioning? We suspect so.
有关这个话题还要在罗嗦几句。作为我们研究的一部分，我们给我们的实验参与者安排了一项自由的任务：就是利用搜索引擎他们可以搜索任意的东西，来度过他们的新学期的开始。我们按排这是实验的目的就是使得他们更适应这个实验，也看下最基本的搜索活动的热图基准线是怎样的。在使用Google的一组，不论是进行信息的搜索还是产品的搜索，我们得到的搜索结果非常平均。但是在使用百度的那一组，几乎所有的人都使用百度免费的来进行MP3文件的搜索。这是由环境决定的吗？我们猜测应该是吧。
Chinese multitasking
中国用户的多任务性
Another factor could be found in the nature of a Chinese user’s typical online activities. This was put forward as a possible reason by someone from Baidu for the discrepancies found in the study, although not to myself, so I pass this along second-hand.
典型中国人的上网活动中也隐含了另一个影响实验结果的因素。这也是根据Baidu工作人员提出来的可能的影响这个研究结果的原因，由于不是鄙人亲自发现的，我将这作为一个参考。
Chinese connections tend to be slower so that load times are longer than what we’re used to. They often have multiple windows open. They’re used to seeing several things, often unrelated, at the same time. Perhaps this conditions them to be more accepting of a search experience that Westerners would find irrelevant and unacceptable.
由于中国的网络链接比较慢，这样就造成了显示结果的时间比我们用的时长要长些。他们就会同时开几个窗口。(长此以往)他们已经习惯了眼前同时有几个窗口，有的经常是不相关的程序。这很可能也使得他们比较容易接受西方人认为完全不相干和没办法接受的搜索体验。
This, together with my introductory look 2 weeks ago, covers off the high level findings and some conjecture on our part about what those findings might mean. You can download a preliminary full report on the Enquiro site. Because so many questions came up that are specific to the culture, we’re still trying to connect with some experts in the Chinese search market (including Google, so far unresponsive) and hopefully Baidu to lend some more insight. We’ll continue to add these insights to the study and notify those that have downloaded previous versions that an updated one is available.
以上加上我两周之前写的，涵盖了研究的热点问题和我们认为的可能的这些结果所说明的问题。你可以去Enquiro网站下载我们初步的报告全文。由于与文化背景相关的问题非常的多，我们也一直在试图联系在中国的搜索引擎市场的专家(包括Google，但是到目前为止还没有任何回应)，同时我们也希望Baidu可以给我们提供更多的内幕。
On a Totally Different Note
Over the coming months, we’re very excited to welcome a number of guest writers to Just Behave. These will include key people from the engines, along with other user behavior gurus. These guest writers will fill in for me every second week. I’m thrilled to bring them onboard and it will move us towards my personal goal of making Just Behave the place to turn to for understanding user behavior in the search space. Here are just a few of the search behavior experts who have agreed to submit a column over the next several months:
- Sep Kamvar – the man behind Google’s personalization algorithm
- Larry Cornett – Point person for Yahoo’s usability team
- Justin Osmer – Product Manager for Microsoft Live Search
- Michael Ferguson – IAC and Ask’s usability lead
- Kara Pernice Coyne – Research Director for the Nielsen Norman Group
- Shari Thurow – Well known search usability expert and fellow SEL columnist
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