At first glance, the terms personalization and customization
may seem like they are the same, but in terms of content tailoring they are
quite different. Personalization is content tailoring where websites track user’s
likes and dislikes, and automatically show more of that content. An example of
this would be on an e-commerce site, where the site tracks the products the
consumer has already looked at, and shows them more products like those. Customization,
while ending up with a similar effect, requires more time and direct action
from users. Customization is a form of tailoring where users enter information
that they are interested in and the website becomes centered on those
interests. An example of this would be on a sports website, where users can
enter in their favorite sports teams, and they are shown the most information
and articles about those teams. The agency of customization in the reading is describing
that the psychological effects of customization technologies are based on
whether the user is the source of sender of the content.
Power Users prefer customized content, while non power users prefer personalized content
One of the studies from the text was a comparison between a
personalized news site and customized news site. Students were given fifteen
minutes to browse Google News and then told to take a break. For the
personalized group, researchers customized the page for the students so it
would appear automatically personalized. For the customized group, students
were asked to spend a few minutes customizing their news page to their liking.
After this, both groups browsed the site for another fifteen minutes, rating
the quality of the content they read.
As shown in the graph above, power users much preferred
customized news pages, while non-power users preferred the automatically
personalized news. Power users are by definition more comfortable using
technology and therefore feel more comfortable being in control of their
content. What was most surprising from this study is that power users had no
preference between the control and personalized news pages. There is a chance
that this is due to power users being wary of the privacy concerns that can
take place when your actions are getting tracked for personalized content.
Non-power users only barely preferred their customized
content to the control, which could be due to a few different reasons. The
major issue could be that since non-power users are not constantly using
technology, they might not have been able to correctly work the customization,
causing the content to be different from what their goal content was.
Power Users Have Privacy Concerns with Personalized Tailoring
In a technology based society, users must always be wary of
their privacy. In order for personalization to work correctly, users must be
tracked across singular sites as well as across the Internet. To see the
effects of this privacy loss, another study was conducted. In this study, users
were either told they website MAY share your data or WILL NOT share your data.
The rest of the study was conducted in the same way as the first study. When assured high privacy, power users were much more willing to use the
personalized tailoring. Since power users are very knowledgable about technology, it makes sense that they would be more willing for websites to collect data about them when they are assured that the data will not be shared. From these results it can determined that the previous assertion
that power users often prefer their own customization due to privacy concerns
is true. This is also backed up by the fact that when given low privacy, power
users preferred customization even higher to personalization.
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