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thoughts on iPad

April 30th, 2010, posted in Design, HCI, User Experience

So I’ve had an iPad for the last two weeks, the wifi 32GB model.  Because we need the money for something much more worthy, I’ve decided to sell it, and because they are not generally available here yet in the Netherlands, making a few bucks on it will be easy.

I’ve enjoyed making great skype calls when I was abroad, there are a number of fun games, Harbor Master in particular I’ve found addicting.  I’m a bit vain so I’ve enjoyed the looks I get from people when I pull the iPad out, and it’s especially fun to let people play with it.  I thought the keyboard would suck, but honestly I was able to use it in short bursts and a fairly high speed without too much to learn.  The WiFi reception is better than my 1st generation iPod touch, but not a lot, and not nearly as good as most laptops.

There seems to be a few things that stand out to me about the iPad and why I think it will have a decent amount of success: The User Experience (UX) of getting to the content you want to consume or create is fast, applications are so easy to get and buy, and there are a lot fewer problems of upkeep.  There are a few problems though and a lot of that has to do with it’s size and form factor.  Overall though it’s a win.

From though to action in seconds

From the moment that you think you may want to do something online to the time you are doing it is just a few seconds depending on how close at hand the iPad is.  For those coming from a windows environment this is especially astounding and appreciated.  How does it take your windows based laptop to start up from being closed (which means either sleep or hibernation as a state)?  The fastest I’ve ever seen is 30 seconds.  With most OS X products it’s 5 seconds or less.  This is why smartphones are being used more and more for quick sips of internet content and certain content creation tasks that are fast and easy (like twitter), it’s just easier.  Letting people do what they want to do quickly and easily is a key to a great user experience and has been a key tenet to usability for 20+ years.  Apple has understood that, many others have not.

Yeah there’s an app for that

The app store makes it easy for people who see needs, both large and small, to be able to fill them and make money doing so.  Creating the AppStore and demanding that you link your device to your itunes account in order to use the device (which I personally found very annoying) makes a tremendous amount of business sense.  The experience of the user is seamless and easy.  The experience of the developer is not so much so, but the rewards can be great so people are willing to do it, and once you’ve jumped through Apple’s hoops and given a third of the money to them you have the chance of having your app catch on like wildfire in your chosen market.

I hope my mom gets this

And my dad, and several of my friends who often look to me as tech support.  There are fewer ways in which to do any kind of software damage to an iPad.  Losing files is an impossibility, messing up the OS is really hard to do for most people, and malware and its ilk don’t yet exist and even when they do pop up eventually 95% of it will all be theoretical vulnerabilities.  If all the worlds computing devices were like the iPad (not that I’m saying they should be) then I think we’d see a lot fewer tech support calls and a lot less frustration.  For those concerned about user experience making the life of those who use your product easier because they have fewer problems with it is a big thing.  The balance between the power user who has a certain list of demands and those who just want something to work has been played out many times and in many products.  There have been countless technology oriented pundits who have predicted the failure of this device because of this.  These are a certain brand of techies, geeks, and engineer.  This device, by and large, is not for them.  They will be happier with their android phone, the rumored android based tablets, and their netbooks.

But how do you hold it

I sat playing a game or two or checking my email for 20-45 minutes, constantly shifting the way I held the device or trying to balance it properly on my lap, on a pillow on my lap, on the table so it’s tilted in the right angle, or holding it in one hand and having it get tired and switching.  If I had a cool keyboard this would solve some of the problems, but what about when I want to play a game for a while, and not just 3 minutes?  What about when this is my main computing device for several days and I need to be productive (which generally means reading, writing, and email for me)?  Reading is fine, it’s comfortable, but doing anything more than swiping pages or scrolling and after a short while you’ll get tired or uncomfortable.  My wrists started hurting in strange places.

Thoughts for the UX designer

If you’ve identified, as Apple has, the three top tasks they think people will do (you can’t do user studies on a device that doesn’t exist) then you need to make that experience as pleasurable as possible.  Apple thinks photos, email, and web browsing are the three big things.  Making it fast to get to those things is key.

Email: I admittedly have not used the mail client because the custom iPad gmail interface made me not ever want to attempt that.  Why? Because I need my archive button.  Sure moving things into folders isn’t the best thing ever, but it’s still decent.   In the past we would have talked about number of clicks to a page, now I’m talking time from pushing the power button to being in my email.

Photos: It’s really easy to imagine using this device in the house or in the office as a lightweight computing device that is kept on display as a photo frame, then you just grab it and do something.  The button that turns the iPad into a handsome digital photo frame is prominent.  Syncing to iPhoto is painless and with a fairly large storage, putting many if not all of your photos is very possible.  Sorting through them and looking at them is fun and interesting.  It connects people and puts your photos in a place where they are MUCH more accessible than your computer.

Browsing: Mobile Safari is no Firefox (which is not a compliment) and because it identifies itself as a mobile device and there is no way to turn that off, some sites may not show up as you would like them to.  This is the techie in me speaking.  I don’t think my mom would ever care that she couldn’t change options in google checkout and update her credit card for payment there.  Windows phones have the option of turning this on and off, I would suggest the same here.  Getting rid of tabs and having a palette of open windows seems like a good idea, but there are problems with this for the way I use the device.  First is the button one uses to open other windows or a new one.  It’s totally baffling.  I struggled with it for a minute, pushing every button to see get it.  Even after I knew which one it was I constantly had to remember it as the icon is SO generic and doesn’t indicate what it is.   It’s also placed in an awkward position, and as far as I’m able to tell you can’t move it.  There is also no visual indication of how many other windows are open.  All of these relatively easy to fix problems are not the case on my iPod touch.  I have to say that when I compare the experience to a “real” computer I find it lacking, when I compare it to my iPod, I don’t find it much better besides having more space on the screen.  To me this is not “the best web browsing experience.”  Add to this the fact that content creation is significantly harder in many cases and this becomes a major point of failure for the iPad.

Thoughts for User Researchers

Of course Apple doesn’t really do a whole lot of user research, or if they do it’s not publicized, but what if you were approached by a company launching a product that is really “blue ocean” creating a new market, and they wanted to know what they should do?  It depends on which stage of the product development phase they were in, but let’s assume they have a working prototype.  Do what Apple did: find what you think the top three things are and make those three things amazing.  Post-launch pay A LOT of attention to the way people use the device.  Set up expectations with both product managers and engineers that there will need to be a number of small incremental and very fast updates to the product once you see the device in action.  User observation and studies will reveal a number of issues quickly.  Find ways to funnel all of the feedback on the product back to you and those involved so it can be acted upon.  Your role will be 30% curator/collector of that information and 70% interpreter and evangelist of that information.

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The field without a name

March 17th, 2010, posted in Research, Usability, User Experience

After speaking with my friend and co-conspirator Matt Snyder about how his job search and how he’s selling his position (see his post on design thinkers not design keepers here).  He said he doesn’t think people will be talking about UX in a couple of years, but we’ll call it something else.  If historical trends are any indicator then he is right.

Then today I had a request on our Philips Yammer network about “how do I get started in User Experience?” In response to that question I wrote this overly long response.  So the context is responding to a newcomer who was ready to jump in but had no idea how, and he needed to continue in his current job function while jumping into it.    This is the context of the post.    I am cutting and pasting that response wholesale as the rest of this blog post.  here it is:

——–

So you, Sridhar, are now enterering a field that doesn’t have a proper name.  Right here we call it user experience design (or at least that is one of the very highly popular names).  You could draw venn diagrams of the following “fields” or “schools of thought” and while there is a lot of overlap, it’s not total.  Some people use them interchangably.  Here they are. IxD (interaction Design, see http://www.ixda.org) UCD (user centered Design), Usability (try http://www.nngroup.com for the best known company/people, you mentioned don norman, the other partner is Jacob Nielsen), UXD has already been mentioned, UI Design (user interface), HCI (Human computer Interaction), IA (information architecture), and I think I must be leaving some out.  Then there are the variants like Human-centered design or human-system interaction or what have you, mostly differences in semantics.  To those outside the field all of these things may seem very much the same, and to some extent that is true.  I would say that each has their own distinct personality though, and some are more distincly academic so it may be less helpful for you.
I could talk about how UI Design is more about the look/feel of an interface, or how IxD is more about how an interaction works and how it fits into a flow of work, IA talks more about site or application wide standards and structures, but it also clearly talks about consistency of look and feel etc.  Usability focuses on testing users, usually in very specific ways and it’s fantastic for coming to design decisions, but this approach has shortcomings for unfamiliar designs or introducing new interaction paradigms (they basically say to avoid it, which in some measure is not bad advice).  I think you get the picture.
In short there are a lots of ways of approaching this whole big bundle of methods, but I really think it all boils down to an attitude, and that attitude is that people are more important that technology.  If a person can’t figure it out, if the thing being used for a purpose constantly calls attention to itself and interrupts the task, if it forces people to conform to the system and not to the other way round then there’s a problem.  What part of that you want to approach is up to you.
One way to do that will be to start reading books and blogs and talking to people who are doing it.  I guess it’s the kind of career exploration advice anyone could give you.  Let me say this though: there is a great demand for people who still retain “hard” coding skillz who also have an appreciation and some experience with user-centered methods.  I see job openings every day for such people.
Getting involved with a community can help.  The IxD community for example has a lot of active discussions on their website as well as their linkedin group.  There are a number of popular blogs that have good discussions, or at least a very thoughtful and well written posts.  By becoming an active member of a community in a thoughtful reflective way you will start to understand all the terminology, the “important people” to have read, and get an understanding of the trends.  This community within Philips is not terribly active, in fact your thread is the most active one and it’s just the three of us contributing to it.  THat’s fine, but you may find other more active communities that will be better.
Nielsen and Norman are some big names in my opinion, and worth reading.  Observing the user experience by Kuniavsky is a very good hands on book (http://www.orangecone.com/ is his blog)  If you are interested in other ways of studying users I have some other recommendations.  Dan Saffer’s books on designing interactions are recommendable as well, though he is not as well known.  And the really really short version of why usability is important and how you can implement it and get a better design NOW and without much time is indeed “don’t make me think” by Krupp.  Bill Moggridges book is big and expensive, but gives a series of vignettes and interviews that can give you a good overview.
OK clearly this has gotten out of control on length.  I’ll be the first one to admit I can be long winded (which is not terribly usable sometimes). I’ll post the blog list sometime later.

So you, (newcomer to UX), are now enterering a field that doesn’t have a proper name.  Right here we call it user experience design (or at least that is one of the very highly popular names).  You could draw venn diagrams of the following “fields” or “schools of thought” and while there is a lot of overlap, it’s not total.  Some people use them interchangably.  Here they are. IxD (Interaction Design, see http://www.ixda.org) UCD (user centered Design), Usability (try Nielsen Norman Group for the best known company/people, you mentioned Don Norman, the other partner is Jacob Nielsen), UXD has already been mentioned, UI Design (user interface), HCI (Human computer Interaction), IA (information architecture), and I think I must be leaving some out.  Then there are the variants like Human-centered design or human-system interaction or what have you, mostly differences in semantics.  To those outside the field all of these things may seem very much the same, and to some extent that is true.  I would say that each has their own distinct personality though, and some are more distincly academic so it may be less helpful for you.

I could talk about how UI Design is more about the look/feel of an interface, or how IxD is more about how an interaction works and how it fits into a flow of work, IA talks more about site or application wide standards and structures, but it also clearly talks about consistency of look and feel etc.  Usability focuses on testing users, usually in very specific ways and it’s fantastic for coming to design decisions, but this approach has shortcomings for unfamiliar designs or introducing new interaction paradigms (they basically say to avoid it, which in some measure is not bad advice).  I think you get the picture.

In short there are a lots of ways of approaching this whole big bundle of methods, but I really think it all boils down to an attitude, and that attitude is that people are more important that technology.  If a person can’t figure it out, if the thing being used for a purpose constantly calls attention to itself and interrupts the task, if it forces people to conform to the system and not to the other way round then there’s a problem.  What part of that you want to approach is up to you.

One way to do that will be to start reading books and blogs and talking to people who are doing it.  I guess it’s the kind of career exploration advice anyone could give you.  Let me say this though: there is a great demand for people who still retain “hard” coding skillz who also have an appreciation and some experience with user-centered methods.  I see job openings every day for such people.

Getting involved with a community can help.  The IxD community for example has a lot of active discussions on their website as well as their linkedin group.  There are a number of popular blogs that have good discussions, or at least a very thoughtful and well written posts.  By becoming an active member of a community in a thoughtful reflective way you will start to understand all the terminology, the “important people” to have read, and get an understanding of the trends.  This community within Philips is not terribly active, in fact your thread is the most active one and it’s just the three of us contributing to it.  THat’s fine, but you may find other more active communities that will be better.

Nielsen and Norman are some big names in my opinion, and worth reading.  Observing the user experience by Kuniavsky is a very good hands on book (here’s his blog)  If you are interested in other ways of studying users I have some other recommendations.  Dan Saffer’s books on designing interactions are recommendable as well, though he is not as well known.  And the really really short version of why usability is important and how you can implement it and get a better design NOW and without much time is indeed “don’t make me think” by Krug.  Bill Moggridges book is big and expensive, but gives a series of vignettes and interviews that can give you a good overview.

OK clearly this has gotten out of control on length.  I’ll be the first one to admit I can be long winded (which is not terribly usable sometimes).

——

So my only comment on that post I made is that of course we do have a name, but it’s not something everyone agrees on.  The other quandary is explaining what you do to your family.  Yes, grandma I’m a user experience designer…. Then the last part is the part Matt originally brought up in his job hunt, but is something we dealt with in our Internal special interest group meeting again this morning: How do we explain and sell our value to the other parts of Philips?  Coming up with a good, easy to understand answer to that question would be extremely valuable.

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Please steal this idea

November 11th, 2009, posted in Conferences, innovation

Do you ever have a variety of disparate deadlines and you would like to keep track of them in a very visual way?
Quite often academics have this problem in that there are a number of possible conferences or journal issues that have deadlines not only for submission of your paper, but if accepted you then have a deadline on “camera ready” editions of your work, a deadline for registration, and of course the conference itself.
What if you could see how many days you had left in a countdown kind of style until the deadlines of these various conferences?
This could be a customized webpage or a “widget” associated with igoogle, yahoo, google toolbar, or something native to your OS. Though you could of course enter in your own deadlines, you could however search for conferences and other things by keyword or tags assigned to them as others upload their due dates. One could also create lists of conferences and journals and you could import a list wholesale.
I imagine there are a number of ways this could be used, but this is the one I can think of most readily.
Who wants to make this one? Go ahead and steal it, attribution would be nice, but hey, in this game execution counts for a lot more than the idea.

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Innovation Methods

October 12th, 2009, posted in Conferences, Grad School, innovation

I have begun my PhD journey into the world of innovation methods.  I have been thinking about what I think innovation is.  My first working definition is the creation of a new experience.  I should first qualify that I am using the word experience as a port-manteau kind of catch-all term that envelopes everything from products or artifacts, to systems, or services to something that can only be described as an experience such as cirque de soleil or Disneyland (for one take on types of innovation see doblin’s ten types).  When I say new I mean some facet of it is new, it may only be the packaging, or branding, or it may be a feature, or it may be the way it is marketed or a combination of some of these or other things I haven’t mentioned but are equally applicable.

Methods are activities, processes, or tools used while innovating. I haven’t worked on a good working definition for methods, and am open to suggestions of course.

One of the first challenges of my project is that innovation happens all over an organization, and Philips is certainly no exception to this.  There are people in traditional R&D functions (like where I am in Philips Research) and people in various business units (or sectors as we like to call them at Philips) as well as people in strategy, marketing, marketing intelligence, and design.  Just getting a handle on what all these various departments are doing is a massive undertaking, so I’ve begun interviews all over Philips to start understanding what is happening and to digest this information.  At the same time I am trying to make sure that my present work adds some value to my department before I am ready to start producing some kind of intervention into a process with a new process or training or whatever it is I will choose to do.

Of course the other thing that is constantly on my mind is that this is not just about Philips, but rather any organization, so I am working on reaching out to other organizations to see how they are doing this and how it works for them.  I certainly will need help to do this, so anyone reading this, if you work in an organization and would be willing to talk to me about innovation methods, please contact me.

The last thing of course is targeting my findings for publication in various places.  Of course various design-oriented venues come pretty high on my list, I’ve considered some communications venues (as communication between parts of an organization are so important in innovation), and I’m still actively looking for other high quality venues for either journal articles or or conference presentations (and certainly for the next 2 years or so doctoral consotiums or other similar venues where the feedback and interaction is high would make a lot of sense).  Again I welcome any all all suggestions for these.

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The big move, working at Philips, and CHI

September 11th, 2009, posted in Conferences, Internal Stuff, Research, innovation

So it’s been a long while since I’ve taken the time to blog.  I never thought it would let it go this long, but here we are with a big several-month-long gap in blogging.  Essentially the 3 big things that have and are happening are what are in the title, the move, working at Philips, and working on CHI2010-2011.

I blogged previously about being the preferred candidate, and when I was later offered the position outright I accepted.  Then, even after buying tickets and scheduling movers we got the news that my visa/work permit had not come through.  This was in late April with a May 15th starting date.  It threw us back into limbo while Philips tried to work things out.  After much travail we were able to get everything worked out by Late June, so we chose August 1st as a start date.  So we flew out on July 29th and stayed in a temporary apartment for a few weeks while we found a house.  There was much hullabaloo about finding the right place, and then our stuff was stuck in customs forcing us to stay in the apartment longer, but in the end we’re finally settled in more or less.

Working at Philips has been an interesting experience.  Some of the bigger challenges are involved with the fact that I started on Aug 1.  For those who are not familiar with how much of western Europe works late July and August are the vacation (though they are more like to say holiday) period.  My supervisor here was gone for the entire month plus some, my line manager here also gone for most of the month.  As I walked down the hall of my floor in building 34 on the beautiful high tech campus I saw many of them empty each day.  I’ve never worked at one of the really large corporations or one that has been around for decades upon decades.  While I’m sure they’re not all like this, it’s pretty crazy how much bureaucracy there is.  In many ways one part of the company has no idea what another part is doing.  A very funny thing happened where I corresponded with the human resources department.  As a series of people from different departments came and went from vacation,  and changes in job function a huge misunderstanding came about.  A concerned HR supervisor type person asked me for a meeting over in the building not too far from mine.  After a few minutes of chit-chat he came down to the question, and in a matter of perhaps 15 seconds the whole thing was cleared up and we both laughed.  We both kept on laughing as we thanked each other for a fun and easy meeting, and we did it again via email.  Almost all these kinds of incidents have happy endings, like when I called the IT helpdesk “engineer” who insisted that the exchange server name I needed to set up mail on my ipod touch didn’t need a top level domain (tld) in order for it to work.  Of course that is true on a local network, but I would certainly be taking my handy portable device many places, and even on campus the wireless is outside of the intranet here so yah nice.  He insisted that the iphone was not supported so there was little he could do but he pointed me to a site that was designed to help Windoze mobile users set up their phones after 10 mins on the phone.  Within a minute I found the super secret information I needed (www.mail.philips com, shockingly difficult stuff) and it worked perfectly.  So yes it all does work in the end, but I ask at what cost?  I guess that is part of my research, which I will certainly blog more about in the future.

CHI, the premiere venue for those working and researching the topic of Human Computer Interaction is a fun dynamic conference.  One visit in 2006 to the annual conference in San Jose and I was hooked.  Now I’ve been asked to help organize the student volunteers for the conference in 2010-2011  (Incidentally you can now register for the lottery for 2010).  It’s been a blast to be on the organizing committees for these two conferences and get a peak at the tremendous amount of work that it takes to pull a conference like this together.  Of course with all that organizing I have perhaps let my own preparation for my submissions suffer a little, but hopefully I’ll still have something to present.

So these are the three things that have been taking my time lately, keeping me away from blogging, but I am sure to be more prolific in the near future.

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