Designing for Experience

Of course all the apple fans were waiting with baited breeath and yes all the details on the new models are very cool for those considering upgrades, but I am impressed that even if Apple is reliant on so-called expert design, (not really doing user testing until after the design is done, and hey they have some of the best experts working for them) which is contrary to the more participatory methods I would recommend, they also seem to understand what people want.

What does your typical laptop user want when they are in the offce? quickly plug in and use a larger display, hence their LED Cinema Display.  Connect the three plugs that are all combined from the display, USB, mag-safe power, and the new mini display port and it seemlessly brings your computer onto the larger display.  No one likes having to have a separate hub, and power cord.  To me this is low-hanging fruit, a basic insight that any UX professional would get within minutes of speaking with or observing laptop users, yet Apple is the first to really do this… Why?

One reason is that Apple is constantly thinking in terms of systems, how each device, service, and piece of software fits together.  While at any given moment not every piece of their line fits together visually (the super mouse for example retains the last generation look and feel) they make every effort to make them all look similar and the white look was with us so long that anyone familiar with Apple will recognize it as part of the family.  The primary reason why ipods are ther #1 mp3 player is because it’s not just a device, it’s a service and software too, the itunes store is flawless when it comes to how easy it is to plug in a device and get music on it (although my readers will know I have never and will never for the forseeable future purchase from the itunes store for other reasons). The new LED Cinema Display matches the new MacBook Pro completely which follows this theme.

I could write much more on this topic, but I couldn’t resist this small post.

While doing some youth research earlier this year I was surprised to see many teenagers on YouTube, but not really to watch, but to listen to music.  A free way to listen to a ton of interesting music.  I hadn’t really thought about doing that, but here they were all doing it. I’m not sure if the fine people at Google knew about that kind of emergent user behavior, but they are sure going to profit from it.

So I’m not sure how I didn’t notice this when it came out last week (oh yah I was sick in bed) but you should read this: Official Google Blog: I clicked to buy and I liked it.

Essentially viewers on YouTube will soon be able to click over to Amazon and the dreaded itunes store and buy music used in a video, or if the video is of a video game, you can buy the game (presumably from Amazon).  No word yet on how much they will get from this, and if they will share with the video creator (not likely).

Many have wondered how Google would monetize it’s massive purchase price of YouTube, aside from a relatively small attempt at ads in the videos in a non-obtrusive way, they haven’t done a lot.  Here it goes, but how will it affect the experience of YouTube?  Let’s wait and see..

It wasn’t part of the new facebook, but recently facebook enabled you to group your friends into different lists.  This is a natural part of someone with a growing list of friends that they may want to keep track of.

Now I don’t even have that many people I follow on twitter just 150 (nice round number, shame to have to add more) but still I wouldn’t mind being able to sort them, and in theory I may want to just message some of them about some events, say some local stuff that is happening here in Bloomington.

This is a natural progression and something that users are expecting, but how does one implement this given the complete fragmentation of the user experience given the tremendous number of clients that have sprung up around the great open API that Twitter has supported from Day 1? This presents a very different set of problems than a more closed network.  I suppose though that in the larger scheme of things as featuers are added to the service and API that because of the huge numer of developers and clients that good uses will catch on quickly as they have in the past.

Comments?

The disclaimers to the short post are many: I love what IDEO does, I think they do great things.  I have VERY MUCH enjoyed the clarity of Tim Brown’s recent article in the Harvard Business review, an excert of that is:

“Design thinking is an approach that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods for problem solving to meet people’s needs in a technologically feasible and commercially viable way. In other words, design thinking is human-centered innovation.” —Tim Brown

WOW is all I can say to that. I have Bill Moggridge’s book, Designing Interactions, and it is reccomendable. Yes IDEO and the people who work there are awesome.

All that aside, I must protest to their new homepage.

IDEO just launched a new website. Here is a portion of the homepage here:

As you mouse over the text boxes it highlights certain of the other pages by taking away the pink.  If one should click on a text box it keeps those pages highlighted as well as bring up some other links you can click in those sections.  You may then click on any one of those highlighted pages or those links. You CANNOT click on those boxes themselves to go to that section.

I don’t understand why one would want to click on one of those teeny tiny pages.  With the exception of the one with the bikes it is totally unclear what those things are.

The whole look and feel of the site is radically different once inside the site creating more of a mismatch.  The whole thing is a confusing and not very usable, I sincerely hope that IDEO is using human-centered methods to test the website.  If it turns out that people love it, then more power to them, but I just can’t imagine that this is the case.
EDIT/UPDATE on 8-12-08:
I had someone comment that they loved the website (See trackback below) so I went back to the website with a fresh pair of eyes, and most notably a larger monitor.  The big plus is NOW I can see the navigation elements on the bottom, which helps make the site somewhat more friendly.  Even on the larger monitor (22″ widescreen) the lower navigation elements disappear on many pages throughout, giving rise the the disjointedness between homepage and the rest of the site.
I understand going for fresh, new, unique, but only time will tell if this will actually be appreciated. Leave feedback below.

For those of you who don’t know, a formal usability test involves a person sitting down at a computer and doing predefined tasks on a website and the screen as well as the person being recorded.  We look at how fast it takes to do a task, where they did well, and where the website failed to help the person.  It is a huge eye opener for many. For an overview I recommend Steve Krug’s fine book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.

So I’ve been doing a major usability project for a client and happily using screenflow for recording my sessions on my MacBook Air.  I really prefer taking the testing to the person’s own environment or at least a neutral environment where they will feel less like a ginea pig and more like just a person using a website, albeit in a structured way.  Let me say that unless you are going to use Morae (which is highly recommendable especially for large scale testing where you want statistically relevant time to completion and failure rates on tasks, although windows only and fairly expensive) I would go with screenflow instead of camtasia. There is at least a couple reasons for this.  One is that recording is super simple, and even on me less-than-super-powered air it never hiccups, slows, or has any problems with recording the WHOLE screen as well as the webcam.  The real beauty of Screenflow though is when it comes time to watch or edit videos.  You can move around the two media sources (the screen and the camera), you can easily zoom in on part of the sceen if you want, make clicks visible and audible, blur parts of the window, change opacity and I’m sure more.  Some of this is possible in Camtasia, but it is really straight forward in screenflow.  The other thing I really like is using it on a mac laptop with built in isight.  It is VERY unobstrusive.  The participant is less likely to be self-conscious, even at the start when most people are without a visible camera pointing at them.  I understand you can even hook up another camera, though I have not attempted to do such.

OK now for the big tip, something I’ve learned which has helped, and would apply to any screen recording: Use a monitor that is larger with higher resolution when reviewing footage and editing video.  This makes it much easier to see al the fine textual details on the screen as well facial expressions that can be very small otherwise.  I do this quickly and easily by plugging in an external monitor, but you could conceivably put them on a share on the computer and open it through the network or copy it, though these are large files and that would be cumbersome and tiring.

I like to take notes as I watch, and taking notes on an open document one the smaller sceen is a nifty way to keep it all there, plus I type much faster than I can write by hand.

That is all for now, carry on.