Archive for the ‘User Experience’ Category

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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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Social Media Design

February 19th, 2009, posted in Design, Social Media, Twitter, User Experience

So I’ve started musing about social media design lately.  I place social media design as a subset of communication design.  I’m making these terms up as I go, but I think it shold make a fair amount of sense.  Commnication design is the process by which you design your communication strategy & infrasrtucture.  Social Media obivously is much the same but focused on social media.  Social media if you wanting a definition is are technologies that connect people.  They usually involve a profile, and the ability to connect with people in some way, prototypical examples of the day are twitter, facebook, myspace, & linkedin.  You can design communications for an organization as well as an individual.

What I’m proposing is that just like any other design situation what you do should be intentional, and should serve the real human needs of those involved.  What I mean by intentional is that it is not haphazard or something that simply grew up over time.  I’m all for organic growth of systems, as long as there was some intentional starting point, and preiodic review of those systems to make sure they are still serving the needs of those using them.

So many organizations today are saying both internally and externally: we want to blog, we want to get out there and get into this whole social media thing.  I say, for the most part, that is probably a good thing, but you shouldn’t do it just because it sounds cool, you should do it to serve some purpose, whether that be to further the bottom line, open the lines of communication with your customers, enahnce your brand, or some combination of the three plus many of the other possibilities.  Blogging for blogging’s sake is silly and may be counter productive.

Here are my initial recommendations to organizations that want to get involved in social media. You need to:

  1. Identify what you want to accomplish with social media
  2. Identify people within your organization that already feel comfortable with social media
  3. Get an understanding of what your stakeholders/clients would want via social media
  4. Find some way to measure your efforts, i.e. we’ll be successful when:____
  5. Make sure 1&4 align.

I’m going to write about this more, but this is a first shot.

My next step is to look at how traditional design process fit into this model.

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Apple gets User Experience

October 14th, 2008, posted in Design, User 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.

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Google to get it’s cut of music and video game sales- but what about UX?

October 14th, 2008, posted in Games, New Media, User Experience

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..

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