At MidwestUX, I gave a shorten version of my upcoming STC Summit presentation. For those of you that came to my talk, thank you for your time and attention. For those that were not able to make it, below you will find a recap of the material I provided to the crowd. Really quickly, I’d like to thank the MidwestUX team for putting on a great conference, and for allowing me the chance to be a part of the event.

One of the best ways user experience professionals can build an empathic link with people, is to interview them in their homes, or their personal environments. Doing this comes at a risk though. Not a physical risk per se, but an emotional and mental risk. You learn about extremely sensitive information and you hear such emotional stories that it can eventually take a lot out of you, not only as a designer but also as a person. 

Midwest UX Slides

STC Summit Slides

The research that provided the content for this presentation came from my own experience doing user research with cancer patients and their caregivers, and interviewing people about their personal finance, specifically their retirement funds. Supplemental material was provided thanks to Whitney Hess and Erin Jo Richey, based on research they performed as well. After going back and reviewing all the various interviews I’ve done in the past, I found that many people fell into certain themes. The best way to describe these themes is by using the movie genre metaphor to categorize them.

Suspense

These are people with engaging stories that just capture your attention. Interviewing someone that falls into this genre really requires you to engage with the participant. You want to follow their story, going as deep as it may go. This may require you to go “off script” sometimes. It’s important to remain focus though, and don’t go down too many rabbit holes. You’re there to collect a certain amount of specific information and you don’t want to miss your chance.

Drama

These interviews are very emotional, and they leave you with a lot of baggage. They will haunt you for years to come, and in certain respects they can over-shadow the other participants in the study. Because these stories stick with you so strongly, I encourage you to develop some method that allows the other participants to stand out. My method was to give them nicknames based on an interesting aspect of their life, or something I noticed while sitting at their dining room table.

One important factor about interviews that are very dramatic, is the fact they are extremely emotional. It’s very possible that emotion will begin to effect you during the interview, even to the point they make you start to cry. This is totally acceptable, but at this point the interview is over for the most part. You can continue asking questions, but your way of thinking, and the way you process the information you are collecting will be affected by your emotional state.

Comedy

These interviews are just down right fun. You’ll quickly find yourself not only enjoying yourself immensely, but engaging with the participant on a whole new level. Because these in-home interviews have such a fun factor associated with them, time just flies by. So it’s important to keep an eye on the clock, and ask all the necessary questions to collect the appropriate data.

Participants that are good at telling funny stories can be a life saver though when you’ve already been exposed to very dramatic session. These remind you that not all is bad in the world and to not take everything so seriously. It’s easy to want to become buddy-buddy with these interview participants, but I would caution against it. It’s ok to joke around and laugh, but you still need to maintain a barrier between you and them to ensure you maintain your researcher role.

Thriller

You’re in for a shocking time with these types of in-home interviews. People will mention things very candidly that can be really off base, or you might notice something around their house that puts you on edge. It’s vital to never act surprised when these things happen, or to draw attention to them. However, if it gets to the point where the overall interview has become so uncomfortable, it might be necessary to put an end to it. Thank the participant for their time, give them their honorarium, and simply leave.

Documentary

Interviews that focus on a shared event or experiences are unique. This genre comes from the experiences Whitney Hess had while performing user research for the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. This is another time where emotions can run wild, especially if the focus of the interview is a traumatic event. Whitney recommends that you build an emotional wall up on the inside, and that the time to deal with your personal emotions is when you are reviewing all the data that was collected.

Foreign

Cultural difference can wreck havoc on your research if you aren’t properly prepared. Erin Jo Richey ran into this problem while performing user research in Italy. When it came time to provide the participant with their honorarium, they would refuse it. This was because the Italian participates thought of their participation as an honor, and not something they should get paid for. This is just one example of a cultural difference causing issues during user research, but it is something that can easily pop up numerous times if you are interviewing people abroad.

General Takeaways

I also provided some generic advice and steps other user experience professionals can take to best prepare for doing in-home user research. These included:

The Buddy System – Never go alone, not just for your own safety but for the participants as well. People actually feel more comfortable welcoming two people into their home rather than just one.
Be “On Time” – Being late is a huge taboo when you are meeting with someone at their home. I recommend showing up about five minutes early, and if you KNOW you’re going to be late call ahead of time.
Welcome Packet – Prepare a little welcome pack and mail it to the participants a few days before the actual interview. This should include pictures, bios, project background information, and supervisor/client contact information.
Humanize Yourself – This is best done by taking a glass of water if offered one. By doing this, you become a guest in their home rather than some stranger coming to study them.
Be 100% Honest – Never lie or deceive someone who is inviting you into their personal space. You need their trust to collect good information, plus doing otherwise is very unethical.
No Loitering – Once the interview is over … leave. Don’t debrief outside on their sidewalk, or in the car while still parked on the street. Drive to a nearby coffee shop and do it there.

I will be giving an expanded version of this talk at the STC Summit next month. If you have done extensive user research in either people’s home or some other personal environment, what are some lessons learned that you might have for user experience professionals preparing for this type of study?

Based on several articles I’ve read over the past months, and the session Eric Reiss gave at last years IA Summit on ‘ROI: Speaking the Language of Business‘, I wrote out this mind dump of how I think about selling User Experience. These ideas are fairly rough and are intended to see how closely my thought process aligns with that of my peers. Hope you enjoy!

Begin mind dump

They just don’t get it?

This is the wrong approach and leads to over discussing the variety of methods and techniques that exist in the world of user experience. Rather, we should be asking why we don’t get it? The people that have the ability to hire our services don’t care about paper prototyping, usability studies, or ethnographic interviews. They care about the value these activities can bring to their organization and how quickly they will be able to see that value manifest.

Defining the Value

Every project has a goal, and it’s that goal that determines what type of value needs to be provided by the project.

Examples of Project Goals (Reference):

• Insight into how the site/application users will think, act, and react when using the site/application
• Confidence that their site/application will function as a cohesive whole.
• Stakeholder consensus on what will be built and why it is being built.

The particular methods and techniques needed to discover, define, and provide the appropriate solution for any of these goals is dependent on context, environment, and culture. With this in mind, the sales process should be focused on defining what the client’s goal is for the project, and delivering a plan in which to accomplish that goal. Activities should be talked to at a high level until the project has been landed and the initial problem space explored.

Discovering Problem Space

The exact method in which a problem will be solved should never be defined until the problem space has been explored and defined. This can be accomplished either during the sales pursuit, or as a phase 0f a project. Defining the problem space is done by conducting internal stakeholder interviews, relying on past user research, or referring to research done by others. The outcome should be a detailed plan of user research, analysis and modeling, time to design, and validation. This can take the form of a follow up proposal, or as a set of recommendations for them to internalize and use as they see fit.

Yes, there is a danger of losing the project after this proposed initial phase, but the likelihood is low as the team will have established themselves as partners and give the client a clear understanding of how the end solution will deliver the value they are looking for. The pay off for this risk are longer and more in depth projects.

Planning UX Activities

There are a variety of possible activities that can be performed to design a solution for a given problem. Some activities are better than others however, given a particular context. In fact, the final set of activities should be laid out only after the team has a clear understanding of the client, user base, and problem space. There is no such thing as the silver bullet in User Experience, and it would be a mistake to act any other way.

When pitching proposed activities, the overall process and end deliverables shouldn’t be the topic of discussion. Rather, give a detailed explanation of the value each activity brings and how that value will assist with the next stage of the overall process. Speak the language of the client, industry, and user base when expressing the value. Don’t bog it down with professional jargon that needs to be explained.

End mind dump

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.

Later this month I will be speaking at Day of .Net, a local developer conference here in St. Louis. The topic of my presentation is ‘UX != User Interface’. I hope to clear the room on what User Experience is and how it helps developers effectively do their jobs. Since I don’t have nearly all the answers, I am hoping the User Experience community will provide me with a few talking points that are important to them.

What are some of the top things you would want to get across to a room full of developers? What are the common pain points you have when working with developers? How would you ‘define the damn thing’?

Thanks in advance!

Seeing Things Differently – It is always best to keep in mind the people that always need a little help.

Designing A Unified Experience – Kim Goodwin gives an outstanding overview of design. Great video to check out.

Todd Zaki Warfel – redUX DC ’09 – Todd gives us a great run down of the workshop he gave on prototyping at the IA Summit back in March.

So You Wanna Be A UX Designer Part 1 – Beginning of the roadmap to success for any UX Designer. If you care about UX and haven’t seen this yet, check it out!

Being An Experience-Led Organization – Johnny Holland delivers up yet another gem.

Understanding Critical to Being Understood –  Rather than playing the give and take game, converse with each other and great something great.

247 Web Usability Guidelines -  Monster list of heuristics to consider when reviewing a design.

It is obvious to say that times are tough financially. Every business is trying to control its costs in order to best weather the storm, which makes asking for money difficult. What can you do to convince your manager that it is worth the time and money to send you to a conference like IDEA 09? Here are some tips to help you sell the idea of going to a conference.

What is the conference?

Provide a general overview of the conference, topics being covered, and how it differs from other conferences. Some managers haven’t been exposed to the many user experience conferences, so giving them a bit of history helps put everything into context. The best selling point though is pointing out how this conference differs from others. For example, IDEA is relatively low cost compared to similar conferences of the same quality.

What do you get out of it?

Many companies are starting to focus on the continued education of their employees. In some cases, there isn’t any formal education for user experience professionals continue to grow, and conferences are the best we have. Highlight some of the key topics or talks that directly relate to your responsibilities and how you will be able to improve your skills. Anything you can do to point out the ROI for you by attending the conference helps your case.

What does <Your Company> get out of it?

This conference trip can’t just be about you, it’s important to also point out what your company gets out of it. Showcase some speakers, or even other attendees, with expertise that directly relate to your industry. How can meeting or learning from these people benefit your company? If you are a member of team, offer to do some lunch and learns when you get back. This is one of the best forms of ROI you can provide to your company, and a great way to give back to your team.

How much is this going to cost?

Now that you have shown what you get out of the conference, and what how your will company benefit, it is time to talk dollar signs. Detail what the early bird costs are, and what it will cost once the early bird date has past. It’s also good to point out important dates here too, so your manager knows how long they have to approve your request. Pull up current prices for travel costs, I recommend Kayak for finding the best prices for flights or hotels. Extra fees and food costs are going to be an unknown, but still offer a reasonable ballpark figure.

Selling the trip can be hard, especially if the coin purse is tight. But, this shouldn’t stop anyone from asking, you just need to make sure your argument is solid. Even if they come back with a ‘No’, don’t give up. Start negotiating by offering to cover some of the costs. It never hurts to put a little skin in the game.

How do you sell conference trips to your company? What are some other methods you have used to go to conferences? I look forward to your comments.

photo credit: RobotSkirts

Ghost in the Pixel is one of my favorite Interaction Design blogs. Last May, Uday Gajendar posted some insightful questions to guide young designers on the path they want to take professionally. I found this helpful in allowing me to better define the type of designer I want to be when I grow up. Below are my answers.

What kind of Questions intrigue you?
When I start out trying to solve a new design problem, my mindset is normally around what does a person need to do in order to accomplish their task? What kind of tools can I put into their hands that make their job/life easier and more fulfilling? One of the aspects that make us all human is our ability to create and use tools. It is my responsibility as a designer to create the tools in such a manner that the person it was meant for can easily pick it up and run with it.

The process of designing new tools easily leads to exploring new and exciting ways of doing something. It is common to assume that you can never be 100% sure how a person is going to use a product. During the design process, I want to explore the ‘what ifs’ to see if there is any missed opportunities or something completely unexpected. You never know how far the rabbit hole can lead you sometimes.

What kind of Problems and Domains excite you?
I love helping small businesses solve their problems. Normally, they don’t have the resources or money to hire a designer, even though they sorely need one. They are experts when it comes to the products and services they provide, but when it comes to branding, user experience, and web presence it’s unchartered territory for them.

My other interests make me out to be a masochist. The constraints the come along with working in heavily regulated industries or in the education field fascinate me. If you can create something revolutionary with so many factors working against you, then there is nothing keeping you from being a rock star. The challenge of it all just draws me in, regardless of the emotional and mental stressors that are abound to occur.

As if I haven’t stretched my interests out enough, the way people use products inspire much of my daily voyeurism. Watching someone struggle with something gets the gears turning and starts me thinking how it could have been improved and why certain decisions were made about the products design. Many times I start to curse the ‘designer’ for either missing something obvious, or just being lazy.

What kind of Artifacts do you like to work on?
There is a special place in my heart for prototyping and wireframing. I constantly try to learn about new methods of creation, or tools to use. The earlier a design can be looked at, played with, or tested helps get to a better design. My process always starts with either a piece of paper or my moleskin where I can do a complete brain dump of all the possible ways to solve the problem I am tackling. Once I am happy with a sketch, or series of sketches, it is off to whatever prototyping tool I have handy. (Recently it has been Fireworks.)

Though I love doing prototypes, wireframes, and sketches, it is hard for me to do them effectively without some visual documentation to guide me. Getting a clear understanding of the domain though site maps, flow diagrams, and user task flows help me understand all the minor nuances which spark the creativity needed to get to the actual design. I would be lost without these tools and sometimes find myself in a very Zen state while creating them.

What Activities and Phases do you prefer and excel at?
I got started in the user experience business mainly doing user research and traditional usability studies. Though I have moved on to being a designer, I still remember my roots and find great value in the lessons I learned. Every time I sit down with a new group of people to learn how and why they their thing, I learn something new. I learn about their behavior and expectations, but more importantly I learn something about myself. This leads to so many great design insights that it still amazes me that some companies don’t see the value in it.

The natural next steps from doing all the good ole fashioned user research and analysis is coming up with the conceptual design. This phase normally eats up huge chunks of my moleskine and is by far the most fun. It naturally feeds into the designs I ultimately create and gives me the background to effectively defend my designs.

What Purposes motivate you as a designer?
This question is the easiest to answer for me, improve the human condition. Granted this is a fairly broad goal, but a total worthwhile one. As a designer, I strive to help people with the problems that they have. Another aspect is getting out and helping others in the design community. It is selfish for me to learn all these great things about people, methods of solving possible common problems, and not share that knowledge with others. Since so much about user experience is either self-taught or learn as you go, it is important for me to give back to the community that has helped me grow and learn.

The other aspect of being a designer that motivates me is to try and make the world a bit more playful. Recent devices like the iPhone, Wii, or the proposed Project Natal showcases how much meaning an interaction can have if there is a sense of playfulness to it. Interactions don’t HAVE to be boring. Yes, it may take a little extra time and money to make it playful, but the resulting experience makes it worth the cost.

So that is the type of designer that I am, or hope to become. The real challenge is finding a place in the world where I can do all of this, and also evolve into maybe something different 5 years down the road. Regardless, I have some boundaries I can work within and bring meaning to my career. What are your answers to these questions? Either post them below or put them up on your own blog. Think of it as your own little manifesto as a design.

photo credit: A-dit-ya

10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To – Great additions to your design pattern library. Smashing Magazine never disappoints.

Four Must Read Pieces on UX Matter – You can never have too much reference material.

Visual Decision Making – Investigation on the importance of visuals and how they encourage people to engage at a deeper levels.

The Forces of User Experience – Offers a great diagram showcasing Jesse James Garrett’s ‘Elements of User Experience.’

Web Standards Curriculum – Need to get up to speed with Web Standards, here is your 12 step program

Designing with Psychology in Mind – Joshua Porter gave this presentation at An Event Apart last week. Josh always delivers the goods!

Module Tabs in Web Design Best Practices and Solutions – An amazing analysis of Tabs and how to properly design for them.

The 7 Wonders of Wireframes – An itemized list to convince nay-sayers on the value of wireframes.

photo credit: Mossaiq

This is a guest post by Carol Righi who is waiting patiently for some Card Sort data to come in. Enjoy!

1. Write the report. Make sure to leave a couple of blanks for the actual data.
2. Think of new requirements for Jed to build into WebSort, e.g., “I want to hit a button and have it send my bill to the client.”
3. Do a Google search on all possible anagrams of “Dendogram.”
4. Dig up the 3D glasses you got at the last Disney movie you took the kids to see and stare at the Item x Item matrix.
5. Photoshop out the letters in the Periodic Table of the Elements and try to pass it off as the new IA.

I am going to take some liberty as the author and add one more, get an ex-mentee to make a blog post for you.

Thanks Carol!

photo credit: CannedTuna

During my college years I worked as a Lab Tech at Lenscrafters. Five days a week I would find myself working behind a large plexiglas window helping other people see. This large window is a trademark of all Lenscrafters stores as it allows customers to watch their new eye wear get made, but it is easy to forget that that they are also able to watch you. I can’t recall how many times I looked up and saw a customer looking at me weird due to my behavior. Luckily, most of the time it was harmless laughs and snickers, but occasionally I would get a dirty look.

That simple plexiglas window gave me an illusion of privacy that simply didn’t exist. This is something we try to accomplish with the use of a one-way mirror in a usability lab. It isn’t the same though, because though mentally the participant knows there is someone on the other side of the mirror they can’t see them. I wonder if it would be possible to completely do away with the one-way mirror and show our complete hand. It may be discomforting at first, but speaking from personal experience, it doesn’t take long to forget that the window and people are there.

photo credit: Yandle

The usability laps I have had experience with had either separate rooms or one-way mirrors. Have you seen any other configurations? How would a single see through window effect your tests? Have you ever got caught while thinking you had some sense of privacy?