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By rphillippi, January 18, 2010 3:10 pm

As a designer, I am responsible for the experiences I create for my users. Whether creating a financial web site or a game, I need to consider how people will interact with that information. What excites me about this video is it takes an everyday object and creates a new and unique experience which changes the behaviour of the user. Interesting.

Another example is Mint.com.

Most people would say that they 1) do not understand finance and/or 2) find it rather boring. I am included in that population. Until the day I found myself working in finance, I can honestly say I didn’t understand it. No one spent time explaining it to me. School never had a class in it. How was I ever to understand it? I was frustrated with money.

Enter Mint.com and all of a sudden you have users who say, “Mint.com has changed the way I view my finances.” Really? Why is that?

Mint adds color and graphics. It talks to you about your money. Shows you where you are spending, where you can cut, helps you budget, watch your investments grow, etc. It provides a simple interface for ease of use and understanding. It has changed behaviour and the user’s understanding of their money.

How much more as designers can we help our users understand things they do not and affect behaviour within applications, web sites, games, and other digital means? What can we look to, to help us explore new forms of interactive understanding? Every project differs. In the case of JunoBaby it simply needed to be a simple module to help users understand the company. In the case of AEG (redesign live soon), it was an interactive flash piece that explained the historical timeline of the company through imagery and video while matching with the historical periods in time to help users better understand the time periods the company was making such decisions.

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By rphillippi, January 11, 2010 2:01 pm

I was watching Top Gear on the BBC and they were discussing the design of the road signs for the highways (Fast forward to 4:45 within the video).

In the 1950’s when the government was developing the motor ways in the UK, they realised that the current signs were not going to work. Thus a professor and his former student got the job to redesign all the road signs around the UK. They utilized colors and upper and lower case lettering for faster reading. They also changed up the design of the “children at play” sign to look like the student and her brother when they were young. Their objective was to make the signs clear and easy to read while moving at traditional speeds in the UK. You can find the final product here.

I remember my design classes at design school taught the importance of clean & clear design. Not to mention with road signs you need to consider not only your local audience but the tourist who may read the imagery of the sign differently than you intend. How then does this translate to the web or other forms of digital media?

Road signs in digital media are usually navigation based. Interaction Designers and User Experience Specialists will recommend things like breadcrumbs, as well as, utilizing colors and font sizes to help users figure out where they are within a site. For example when I worked on the CBS News redesign we explored colors like yellow for the Early Show, red for 60 Minutes, and blue for 48 Hours. These visual clues give users an immediate (unspoken) impact which says I am in X section of the site. It’s the way the users find their way or what UX professionals call wayfinding.

Though with that in mind, I ask my fellow UX pros if perhaps when talking about UX with people whom don’t know or understand what we do perhaps we need to use road signs to explain how people find their way through a site. What road signs will users look for when they come to your site? Will the signs say move forward?  Dangerous curves ahead? Stop? What does your site say about you and will users manage to find their way?  Will they find your site a nice drive in the country?  Or a dangerous rocky road ahead?

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By rphillippi, January 8, 2010 3:29 am

I came home today from playing soccer, injured.  If you know me, then you know that is not all that uncommon. I may regret this in the morning. Or perhaps not as it got me inspired to blog.

First I want to state that for 2010 I think I will be talking about User Experience in a more generalized way.  I find I put too much pressure on myself to say something profound in my blog. Like every blogger in the blog-o-sphere must say something profound that has massive universal impact rather than simply saying, “I think this about that.” Thus in order to take the pressure off and to encourage more blogging, I will blog about anything I think impacts experience or technology. I’ll ask more questions. I’ll talk about stuff that inspires my thinking. Speaking of, my biggest inspiration lately has been gaming.

Girls and Games.

Ask most females and they would tell you they are either 1) not a gamer or 2) there aren’t enough “girl games” out there for them. What does that really mean though?

Let’s start with point one: “I’m not a gamer”

Any girl who tells you this is simply lying. Truth is they have probably played several games as a kids. As a member of the female gender, they play games with their friends, lovers, and others they come across. They are just not the “normal” type of game we might think of. Girls are competitive in nature.  If you don’t believe me, watch females play soccer or volleyball. (Or fight over a man.)

That brings me to point two: “The games out there aren’t interesting to me.”

I had an interesting conversation with the people at Playdom during an interview a few weeks back. It turns out the game, “Sorority Life“, has a strong appeal to women in their 30/40/50’s whom have the desire at the end of the day to “kill”. (In other words they love the fight feature where they can challenge other women and win battles for money, power, status, or game items.) It is a release of stress for them.

While I was not a fan of Sorority Life (because it felt too girly),  ”Mafia Wars” (by Zynga) appealed to me for much of the same reason. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Why then aren’t more games built for girls that allow us to play to our competitive natures? The game industry is missing a key component to the type of experience girls would want in games. Perhaps there would be more peace in the world if we could take out our aggression within games?

Then again, probably not.