Category Archives: User Experience

Resist!

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Resist, resist I say! Do not succumb to the temptation to save a few seconds worth of effort by making acronyms.
Resist, resist I say! Think about how silly that new business program or process name will sound in a few months or years.
Resist, resist I say! Avoid jargon as if it would slowly poison you and turn you into a quivering mass of buzzwords.
Resist, resist I say! Adding more process, programs, and controls when what you need is people who are willing to be human and humane to each other united in a common goal that is worthy of them and their time.

RESIST

Image courtesy of Amnesty International

I’ve just managed to read through some of the “management approach” pages on an intranet. There are lots of good ideas and intentions there, and people who have clearly put thought into this. Command & control systems are a relic of the past. Perfecting them is, as Marty Seigel often said to us in our Interaction Design I class, “like polishing plywood.”

In this age of the creative professional, of empowered employees, and certainly in a research or design environment we need fewer processes and management and more people passionately doing what they’re best at and working together.

This is the user experience of an employee and it’s important. This goes to corporate culture and it’s important.

RESIST!

 

 

As usual this post represents my own views and not of the organizations I’m affiliated with. This is not a condemnation of an organization but a call to action by individuals of all organizations to change the way they think about work and their actions in their own work and in their own organizations and groups.

Thoughts on conferences

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In the last several weeks I’ve attended a few conferences, and this year I will have attended a total of seven of them. There are some basic rules of conferences that seem to get broken all the time, to their detriment.

Badges

Back of Badges

These are the back of the badges, I'm now in the habit of hacking the back to make the whole thing better.


Don’t screw this one up.  The most important part of a name tag is the person’s name. In western cultures it’s the first name, and it should be BIG and readable from at least several feet away. Don’t get too creative with the font. Affiliations are great to have in there, or alternately country/state (depending on the crowd), but these shouldn’t be so big as the name.  The name of the event is the least important element of the badge. INTERACT this year managed to really mess this up, with the name of the conference and silly logos taking most of the badge, and of course turning it to portrait is an awful design decision.
Front of Badges

These are the front of some of the badges. Look at INTERACT on the left.

Some things that are “nice to have” but really should be standard in my opinion: Double sided badges (never have it be the wrong way round), a way to identify different roles (such as presenters, exhibitors, organizers), a URL/twitter handle/QR Code (of the person’s choosing).

Programs

Programs should give you a quick overview of the conference on the first page. This should be easy to read and not create more questions than it tries to answer. Give the smallest amount of information you possibly can on this summary to still have it be useful. Again don’t get too creative, INTERACT again made some mistakes here. Look at the picture. I had dozens of people ask me when things were, and where they were located.  One person literally had their program was looking at the daily overview page and had no idea how to read it, handed it to me and asked where a session was.

Electronic versions in the form of an iOS/Android app are a great idea, but obviously only make sense if the conference is of a decent size. I was at IBC (International Broadcasters Conference) and they had these beautiful large touch screen displays in portrait mode that people could come up to and touch and interact with for programs/maps/information. When people weren’t using them (most of the time) they continually had QR codes for both the iOS and Andriod apps (and I think blackberry…) just scan and get it. Built into the back of the displays and hidden in the cabinet was an open wifi router that allowed one to easily download the apps along with big prominent instructions on the screen on how to connect to it. Apps should have daily overviews, and for goodness sake, make them searchable.

Food

Food is pretty easy to mess up, and people remember and complain about it long after the conference is over. At INTERACT lunches were only provided to Student Volunteers, and everyone else had to scatter and find something. With only a few hundred people this wasn’t too bad, but I know some people didn’t like having to go out and walk a ways to get something. When I was at EGOS this summer they fed all 1500+ of us, and it was good food.  I’ve been extremely impressed by most of the conferences/events I’ve attended in Denmark this year.  The food is consistently good and available in sufficient quantities. Sure there was lots of fish, but there were other things too. To this American at least it felt fairly gourmet. Avoid boring sandwiches, yes I know the Dutch LOVE boring sandwiches, but not everyone does. That is a lesson learned from DESIRE’11 just last week.
When it comes time for that conference dinner/reception/gala then don’t skimp. Personally I don’t care if it’s free unlimited alcohol (I don’t drink) but I know that most people want at least a few drinks.  Pacing things out is important but don’t keep people waiting too long.

The collateral damage of a closed ecosystem

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There are lots of people willing to engage on the debate between iOS devices (iPod touch, iPhones, iPads) and Android devices (phones and tablets of all kinds).
For me it comes down to this: the closed technological ecosystem of iOS provides a better user experience for the majority of users. Apple’s tight integration of both hardware and software create something that is beautiful to look and is seen as highly desirable. For all iOS devices there is only one UI, once you get the hang of it (and for many people it doesn’t take more than a few minutes to do all the basics). More importantly though is the fact that there is only one official application (app) store. There are others out there, but in order to use them you have to jailbreak your phone, something most people wouldn’t do anyway.  By keeping this tight control Apple exerts control over what is available, approving not only apps, but updates to them, as well as asking developers to drop some parts of them. One reason (though there are others) they do this is that every purchase made, whether for the app itself or for in-app purchases brings revenue to them. Apple takes a cool 30% off the top of all revenues.

One reason this makes for a better UX is that users know that any app in the app store will work for their device. This is not the case with Android with several different flavors of the OS available, and of course a multitude of different hardware platforms and screen resolutions. This has advantages for those creating the apps as well, but I won’t get into that.

But what happens when a well known product, and brand such as Audible (owned by Amazon) has an app that even links to their mobile site to go and purchase more audio books?  They were asked to remove it as evidenced by the email I received:

This is what I received from Audible. They present a workaround, but I wonder how many people will do it?

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes thought Audible was flouting the rules, but as one commenter said the link has been there for months, indeed for as long as I’ve had the app (since early this year) there has been a link to the mobile store.

Ideally one could search and make purchases in-app, but I can see why Audible wouldn’t want to give away 30% of it’s revenue to Apple.  The most ironic thing though is that Audible subscribers pay a monthly fee in return for credits. So I’ve already paid audible for the credits, why not be able to spend those in-app.  I suppose though that would open up the flood gates of games where you buy credits outside on the web and then bring them back into the game.

In an ideal world one could have the great UX of a closed ecosystem and situations like this wouldn’t arise. Given that it has I wonder what I would do if I were in the strategy team at Apple. Would I allow it? Where does one draw the line?

From a UX or User-centered perspective I would say it makes a lot more sense to let people buy in-app, and any who don’t want to pay the Apple tax have to deal with it. This grates against my idea of fairness though. This is a great example of how design always offers alternatives that often are in conflict with each other. This example also shows how business decisions and strategy come into play in design.  Typically designers consider the people and the materials (technology), but increasingly we need to be mindful of the business considerations involved.

user-centered design ignores some people

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User-centered design (UCD), while not perfect, stands a chance to help improve the world fairly dramatically. How many times have you bought a product that looked great, but the moment you actually got it home and tried to use it you realized the people who designed it never ever had actually tried using it themselves? You end up throwing it out, giving it away, or returning it. We’ve all seen products that make you wonder why the company that made it even bothered. Enter user-centered design (UCD), a set of ideas, methods, and really an attitude about how to create things.

Crowd, from Flikr-Victoriapeckham

Crowd, from Flikr-Victoriapeckham

Yet those who practice UCD often become SO incredibly focused on the user that we can forget about all the other important people involved in a product, service, or experience: those that need to approve the decision to make that thing. We are so intent on making beautiful useful things that people love that it’s easy to forget that we have a whole slew of internal and possibly external stakeholders that we need to convince. Some of the top people who practice UCD have the skills to sell their designs, but many many others do not. We know how to study people, but we only really want to study and understand users. That engineering guy, that management type, that head of a business unit? No way, we study people but not those people.
When will we start to understand not only those who will use the thing we are designing but those who must help create it and those that must approve it, then we are becoming more inclusive and dare I say it–more effective because those things we design are more likely to actually make it into the hands of those that will experience them.

This post is inspired by lots of conversations I’ve had with people and in fact is part of the basis of my PhD research.

thoughts on iPad

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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.