I know the majority of my readers are UX designers, so most of this will preaching to the choir. But, I promised the attendees an online version of my slides with what I wanted to say during the presentation. For you seasoned presenters I look forward to any feedback you might have on the quality of the presentation and the content. Hope you enjoy!
Slide 4 – This presentation is not meant to take up the entire time slot, mainly because I don’t want to be a talking head for an hour and fifteen minutes. The big topics I am going to cover is what the true meaning of UI is, and give an overview of what user experience isn’t and what it is. Finally, provide a high level description of what entails a user experience process. One cavet I would like to put out there is that none of this should be taken as gospel as it is my view on the subject, and the subject is widely debate every time it is brought up. During the course of the session I ask you to think of any questions you wish to ask and bring them up at the end of post them on twitter.
Slide 6 – It would be wrong of me to show up to a developers conferences without proving my street cred. The path that lead me to where I am today started back in college as a Computer Science student. The course work at SIUE requires all CS students to take a couple of HCI classes, and it was these classes that showed me the light of usability, user experience, and design. The one advantage I have today with having a CS degree, is being able to talk to the talk with the developers I work with.
Slide 7 – Getting into the world of UX as a CS grad wasn’t easy. Luckily, I landed a killer internship at Perficient working in their UX Group, which lead to a full time consultant position following my internship. During my time there I worked for a variety of clients in the financial district, health care management, and cable television. More recently I have filed the role as a User Experience Designer at MiTek in the residential construction industry.
Slide 8 – So what made a wanna be programmer turn into a User Experience Designer? I really care about people, in a total altruistic way.There is a lot of pain and frustration in the world, and User Experience does a great job easing some of that. Second, I remember being 5 plugging in floppy disks into a computer in my basement. Typing all the right DOS commands to play the games my dad would let me play. One of my fondest memories is staying up all night writing Qbasic code to make a colored square move across the screen. Finally, the challenge was just too hard to resist. Nothing beats figuring out how best to help someone complete their goals.
Slide 9 – A user interface is a pretty flat thing. It can contain many messages that a user will need in order to properly interact with the application. Many of these messages are important and if they are not understood correctly than the user will be mislead or confused. This is probably one of the only cases where users feel justified in shooting the messenger, because it is the interface they see. It may not be the interfaces fault that the user was mislead, since it is limited to what is shown on the surface.
Slide 10 – Someone only interacts with an interface when they need to. If you think about all the interfaces a person uses over the course of the day, it is easy to lose count. Some aspects of the various interface people interact with may be similar, but that is simply because of the patterns that are used. These patterns are recommended based on the operating system being used, or simple best practices that have been recommended for use. Each interface is meant for a particular purposes, especial the ones designed specifically for the intended contexts. For each context out there, many interfaces exists. Only the relevant are the ones being used though, and will be easily thrown aside once something better becomes available.
Slide 11 – Through the graphical aspects of a user interface, much meaning can be conveyed. Proper reading, or process, order is easily controlled by the types of graphics used and their placement. The visual design is the proverbial doorman for any user that has come to interact with. It can either provide a warm and comfortable welcome, or give the user the cold shoulder making them feel ignored. The reason so much emphasis is spent on the visual design of things is because of all the flaws it can hide, especially with a talented visual designer. While the iceberg methaphor is a good one when comparing user experience and visual design, it is just over used a bit.
Slide 12 – Another proper metaphor about the user interface is it being a treasure map for the user to explore. Through the use of good affordances that allow the user to have a good idea on what they are able to do with it. These affordances provide hints on what paths are available to the user and give fair warning for where they shouldn’t go. It supports the happy path that the intended audience should use, and any alternative paths for other supported audiences. It is ok for some of these paths to be hidden, and open for the user to stumble upon them. In many cases, these hidden paths provide a sense of enjoyment to the users while they are out exploring. Users also gain some insight on how difficult it will be to follow these paths so they understand the amount of effort needed to get through the most dangerous of jungles.
Slide 14 – Yes, Design is part of the term but it is only a small part. The current commercial war between PC’s and Mac is a perfect example of how UX mean much more than the design of a product. Microsoft wants to the paint the world as either being a Mac or a PC, one to many in other words. Apple makes it all more personal, they know you’re not a brand but a person. One of the latest Mac commercials showcases this with a women expressing her needs and the ‘PCs’ falling out of line. At the end the Mac guy goes ‘Hi, I’m a Mac.’ Which she responses ‘Hi, I’m Megan’. Yes, it is a lifestyle to associate yourself with one of these brands but it transcends the product you are currently using.
Slide 15 – Believe it or not, you can have a good user experience and retain some fundamental usability flaws. Metrics like the number of clicks do not directly translate to the quality of the experience. Now, enough usability flaws will lead to a bad experience. But, starting out with a good user experience allows the user the forgive the small stuff and gives you the time to fix them in order to really knock it out of the park. There are a few exceptions to this rule, the iPhone and World of Warcraft. The iPhone relies on learning and exploring, majority of the features are not apparent. Fred Beecher recently wrote an article on Johnny Holland about the how the iPhone isn’t usable and what it might mean for the future of User Experience. WoW is like many blockbuster games, it has a really high fun factor which gives users the tolerance to learn the workarounds. Games are always laden with flaws, but that doesn’t always hurt them if the fun factor is high enough.
Slide 16 – One size doesn’t fit all in the world of UX. Each company that does UXD has a defined User Experience Strategy that fits their process, culture, and environment. Once a strategy is defined and in practice, it is possible to segment it a bit. However, you pay the price for doing this piece-meal work and is normally only done for certain circumstances. If you only do piece-meal UX, than all you’re doing is putting Usability Bandaids on your product. It’s important to remember that bandaids are only meant for minor injuries, and will only slow down the major bleeding on the big wounds.
Slide 17 – Experiences have the ability to evolve over time if they are carefully cared for. It takes tender love and care in order to do this successfully. Palm has done this with its main product line. Palm’s user experience has built a great customer loyalty that has keep them afloat all this time. V1 sets the stage, all other future iterations either build upon that initial experience. If you carefully maintain this experience and gain enough loyality, your users won’t mind if you take a 180 and do something completely new. Ala the Palm Pre. Want to keep your customers around, give them a good user experience. They will know you care about them and want to fulfill their needs, with this knowledge they will be less likely to try a different product.
Slide 18 – Again, the word is part of the term. But, it only makes up a small part of the whole. Word of mouth is on the rise again thanks to advances in social media. When people talk about your product or service, they are expressing the personal experience they had with your brand. Fancy slogans or brands don’t always come to mind, but their pleasure and pains. In other words, it is the emotional baggage that they are left from the interaction. These are the things that sum up your actual brand, and sometimes a company is able to mash up its brand and its user experience. eBay did a great job with the ad campaign ‘IT’. The campaign successfully expressed the experience of finding that rare gem by using eBay’s service.
Slide 19 – User Experience done alone runs the risk of becoming too close to the design. You can’t see the alternative possibilities, or you make minor mistakes that another set of eyes would have been able to catch. Doing things solo also runs the risk of you becoming too personally connected with the design, and when mistakes are pointed out it effects you personally. Running solo, it is possible to lose site of the problems you’re trying to solve, and open to try something cool or flashy instead of the right thing. Designing a user experience is, by nature, a collaborative effort. Many people with many viewpoints add special view points that uncover possible solutions that could have been easily missed. Designers can build off each others ideas, and possibly reach that golden idea that no one as expecting. If anything, it gives you an outlet to ask someone ‘Why?’.
Slide 20 – An experience is made up of the emotions one has while interacting with something or someone. Is it possible for us to directly invoke an emotional response without the help of some legally questionable material? The answer, at least for now, is no. The experience someone has is personal, and unique. It can be compared to others, but there are still minor differences that makes it something special. Roller costers are a perfect example of a product that contains a variety of experiences. In this picture we see joy, excitement, and boredom all at the same time. Not seen are the people too scared to even get on the roller coster, that fear is an experience in itself. It’s next to impossible to design this.
Slide 22 – The number of roles that make up User Experience can make you dizzy over time, unfortunately the design of a user experience relies on all of them. Remember, a role doesn’t equal a person, in the end a role is just a different hat that needs wearing. For small projects it is possible for a single person to fill all of these roles, larger projects require more specialized placement. Freelancers can’t even fill all the necessary roles sometimes, at which time they rely on the client to fill in the gaps. This has the benefit of involving the client in the process and creating lots of buy in. The variety of roles can cause some contention on project teams due to overlapping responsibilities. At this point it is up to the team to work out the details and determine who gets to do what.
Slide 23 – One of the best qualities of a user experience is the relationship it creates between a project team and the users. The quality of the experience brings meaning to this relationship, and in the end we all want to have good relationships with other people. Over the years, the term actor has become common for us to use when describing the people that use our products. This term is counter productive and does nothing but dehumanizes the group a people we serve. The time has come for us to be more akin to mechanics, or family doctors. We need to build trust in the people we serve, and better yet learn to trust them. They will tell us what they want, or need, if we listen just right or watch out for the right behaviors.
Slide 24 – User Experience is also the right thing to do in most cases. Though the ethical implications of user experience is a bit hazy and only recently been explored, it’s hard to go wrong when you are trying to improve someones quality of life. While it can be argued that making certain things easier to use, like the AK-47, it relies on the designers shoulders to ensure that the products they design only have positive outcomes. What makes user experience such a gray area when discussing morality is the ability for a designer to influence or manipulate a persons behavior based on the stuff that they use. This can be a challenge sometimes, especially when you are trying to avoid an established ‘bad’ behavior. With great care and an altruistic spirit it can be accomplished though.
Slide 25 – We all have problems, or goals, some of which have been around forever. Even our caveman ancestors needed a method to get to ‘work’, granted their work was simply kill that beast over there. New goals are able to be introduced by technological advances, such as being more green. The great thing about goals is they can be solved in a variety of ways. Going back to the ‘get to work’ goal, you could walk, ride a bike, take the bus, or drive your car. In the future, who knows how you would be able to accomplish this goal. Both old and new goals require a deep understanding in order to fulfill them in any meaningful way. It is necessary to understand the environment, and more importantly the context, in which these goals need to be accomplished.
Slide 26 – No one likes to fail, and this fear of failing has killed more good ideas than any other. Creating a user experience is rooted in failure. This sounds backwards, but stay with me. If you are redesigning a product, it’s because something is fundamentally wrong. Where as, new designs are the by-product of failing early and failing often. That’s the key though, with either an existing or new solution. Aim to fail before you get into detailed design, and try to fail some more before a programmer starts to program any functionality. We can all learn how important failing is from Edison with his pursuit of the lightbulb. He wasn’t scared of failing, he did it a 1000 time supposedly, and we shouldn’t be scared of it either.
Slide 27 – If fear is the serial killer of great ideas, then competition is the greatest motivator for them. A product that provides a great user experience ensures that competitors will strive to one up them. A positive user experience also helps to educate people on how products should be behave, which raises their expectations for new products. I wouldn’t be too far off the mark in saying if it wasn’t for the iPhone, the Palm Pre wouldn’t be what it is. Now, it’s up to Apple, or someone else, to raise the bar again. By performing User Experience, you learn about what isn’t meeting people needs and gain insights in how you might be able to fulfill those needs like no one else.
Slide 28 – A truly great design simply sets the stage for a good experience. Since we have already identified that without the help of drugs, an emotional response is spontaneous and unique to the person involved. However, if the team involved in producing the product, or service, does a good job they can confidently predict the type of experience a person will have. Disney World is a really a poster child for designing for an experience. Each person that walks through those magical gates has a unique experience, but many elements are shared among the visitors. Buildings are set up to appear larger than they are, lines into rides are extensions of the actual ride. All of these aspect of the design of Disney World attribute to a person having a good user experience. It is easy to set the stage for a bad experience, our industry has a long history of doing this. In order to set the stage for an rich and meaningful experience like Disney World, it takes lots of skill, talent, and a dash of luck.
Slide 30 – Though Research is sometimes that hardest selling point, it is also the cornerstone of any User Experience process. Executives tell us they know exactly what the users want, maybe because at one point they used to be in the trenches. Marketing departments argue that they have all the market research we need to start designing. These stakeholders possess valuable information that is key to the success of any product, and accepted practices exist on how to glean that information from them.The real sticking point is that only users can tell us about users. User Research techniques allow a project team to gain a deep understanding of the environments and the contexts which our users find themselves in. There are many techniques one can do, each of which could take up an entire session like this. The best piece of advice I have though is to perform a mixture of techniques, and make sure those techniques fit your companies process or culture.
Slide 31 -The natural outcome of in depth User Research is a ton of raw data. In order to make sense of everything that was learned, it is best to lock the research team in a room and turn it into something meaningful. Regardless of the deliverables that are required to be produced, the one thing the team should be looking for are patterns. Patterns of behavior, situations, pain points, or positive outcomes are essential to gaining an understanding of the problem and starting to think of possible solutions. These patterns will also point you to the goals your users are trying to accomplish. These goals provide the team with insight on what the product or service needs to be able to do out of the gate, and a game plan for the type of work that needs to be done post-release. Metrics can also be captured during this phase in which to test the new solution against. This is great for those pesky ROI arguments that like to creep up every now and then.
Slide 32 – It’s true that there are many solutions to a given problem, but some are better than others. In truth, any final design is the by-product of many iterations and failures. The methods people use to get through these iterations vary. Some will time box their initial design phases, others sketch and sketch until they stumble across something worth pursuing, while others include user involvement throughout the entire design phase. There are pros and cons for every method out there, and it boils down to your personal process and preferences. The important thing is to work out all the possibilities and create something that may not work for everyone, but at least the majority. I personally go by the 80/20 rule, design for 80% of your users and accommodate for the other 20%. Don’t exclude the minority, but do the right thing and ensure the interactions support their main goals in some manner. It is said that the design phase is where the magic happens, just remember to make the magic as transparent as possible. Include the stakeholders and sponsors, touch base with sample users to validate your thinking. These are all important to keep the team honest and on track.
Slide 33 – We have already talked about how important failure is in a user experience. This is the step where you find out what exactly your failures were and how you can fix them. While this slide appears after the three other ’steps’ of a user experience design process, it really should be spread throughout the process. Small, down and dirty test done early on in the process allows the team to identify the majority of the problems before development ever starts. This not only saves time and money during development, but the tests serve as check points on your design thinking. Tests performed near the end, or after, development allows the team to compare the new version to previous ones. Again, many techniques exist so it depends on makes sense for you and your organization.
Slide 34 – Any user experience process isn’t truly linear, but in the end it shows it self to be more circular. Once release happens and the design has been out in the wild for a time, the team needs to evaluate what is working well and what isn’t. This evaluation lets the project team know what fixes and improvements need to be incorporated in the future versions. It also also the team to gauge other the competition is reacting to the teams product. People change and more importantly the market changes. The project team needs to know what these changes are to ensure if the current product is still viable, or if it’s time to start over and change the game again. If done correctly, the public can even come to look at these updates and a redesigns with a sense of excitement.
Slide 35 – Providing a good user experience begins from the inside of any company. Simply having some user experience designers on staff doesn’t make this a slam dunk. It starts at the top with management, they must accept that quality is what sells now. Not first to market or having the most product available. They have to not only support the theory behind user experience but support it. Once people in a variety of roles of the organization asks the question ‘How does this help the user?’ you know the culture of the company has committed to providing its users with the best possible products available. Being committed to the users is just as important as being committed to the business itself or the products it produces. They go hand in hand after all.
Slide 37/38 – User Experience is a young field, the forerunners of the industry are starting to migrate out of the work place and into class rooms helping to create the designers of tomorrow, or move on to more of a management role. Software Development has been around much longer than us, and for the most part we haven’t gotten along the whole time. I like to describe developer hesitation to user experience like a teenage brother not wanting to take his little brother to the party. Sometimes, Mom has to step in and tell big brother to do it even though he isn’t happy about it. Luckily, I think both of our teenage years are about to pass. The time of bickering is coming to an end and many of us are starting to play pretty nicely with each other. Many of our past problems were mostly territorial, or differences in personality, more than anything. There are many examples out there that show when we effectively work together, great things are bound to happen.
Slide 39 – One of the key goals of User Experience is to improve the human condition. Designers can create perfect flows, the most detailed wireframes, or crazy interactive prototypes, but we still need someone to build the product for us. Over the ages other industries, like architecture and industrial design, has learned the lesson that it takes a creative and builder in order to truly succeed. It appears we are finally learning this lesson together, and the future is going to be a very exciting place indeed.
