We don’t think about it as it’s second to what we do. I design something then I create this document then it’s huge and I have to condense it and then the client has to extract it then there might be problems and he has to go through all these troubles then gets

Two most effective ways of communicating is talking and drawing. Drawing it out on the white board

But how would I communicate differently if I were right next to the client. I would probably just reach over the wall and talk to him. Create insights on a list and post it up on your wall to live in their space all the time and know them. It immerses you in what your are designing and their needs. Pretend your client is part of your team.

Analog crowd source: a wall of different concepts and then the developer and you can sit down and talk about what you do. Then the developer can feel like they are part of the design process and add the issues with the technical side. The more you talk about your ideas the more you can flush them out. A lot easier on a white board to get ideas across quickly about issues or the emotional appeal on the project.

IDEAS – We’ll make more! If you have to redraw it then it may create a new and better idea after the next iteration.

Clients don’t understand your process if they are new to working with you so you’ll need to educate them that this is a process. Instead of presenting ideas, sketch with the client. Start broad and iterate down to the solution. Like spiraling down from the top of a tornado to the bottom of it.

Don’t turn your website into an app. You just failed if you are going create an app. How are people going to use it and for how long? Sketched in the wrong direction will usually lead to the right direction. Depending on the client… drill down into their logo and how their audience views them. Might open a conversation in direction. Such as BET’s star which is seen as “hope” for up and coming pop stars and rap stars. Utilizing the story of BET we personalized the app with relevance for the audience. Don’t build an app. Build a brand experience. We implemented ways for the audience of the shows to interact with the stars.

Turntable.fm is a music streaming & sharing application that allows users to create rooms with up to 5 DJ’s to rotate songs within their own particular music genre(s) of choice. It was recently featured in TechCruch as the latest early adopter addiction.

Words cannot do justice to explain just how addicting this app is especially when you’re at the tables in a room full of people. You find yourself feeling that anticipation a DJ must feel when they are up on the tables, beat matching song after song, hoping to see the floor moving. “Will they like my song? Will they hate it? Oh no, they aren’t dancing! They must hate it. Oh wait, there’s one person dancing now, now another… Ok, ok, this is going to be ok.” Now you may wonder “but how do people ‘dance’ virtually?” I’m glad you asked for Turntable.fm has thought of that. Users dance when they click the awesome button on the application. DJ’s can get booted if the audience clicks lame enough times. Awesome clicks win you DJ points which allow you to get bigger and bigger advatars.

Like most things social, human behavior factors into the enjoyment of the app. In this case, users have created their own rules for some rooms. One of the most popular rooms “80′s Play 3 & Step Down”, was started by one user with the rule that you can only play 3 songs then you must step down. The moderation of the room passes from one person to the next to ensure the queue stays constant and consistent with new users stepping up and stepping down based on whether or not they have already played 3 songs. This rule started because users found that many of the DJs would just stay on the tables even long after rooms would fill up, never giving others a chance to step up and spin.

On the flip side it was interesting to step into some of the other rooms which were less considerate. I stepped into the country room and watched as one DJ got “lamed” out of their seat at the tables including chants from the crowd, “Lame her out. Click lame! Do it. This is miserable. Lame! Lame! Lame!” Crowds can be brutal. But I imagine it to be no different in some ways to being a real DJ in a real club. All you can hope for is that people like what you play.

Turntable runs on the Amazon EC2 servers and occasionally has trouble with lag, songs won’t play or will play a different song then the user has queued, and could use some way of customizing rooms a bit more by adding rules around how many songs you can play so more users get a turn. I’d also like to see other ways of integrating my music to the DJ queues (uploads don’t always work so perhaps a partnership with iTunes &/or Youtube. In fact, might be fun to have a Video DJ in the same room spinning video). Private messaging would be nice too if they can also create a way to block a user from communicating with you. A random button would also be quite nice so when you add your songs in you can click random and they will shuffle.

Much like Guitar Hero played to our dreams of being rock stars, Turntable, plays into our dreams of being a DJ, and it does it really well. I’d love to see it affect the real world with DJ spin offs in the clubs. Would be quite fun I think.

Yet as a gamer and one that has been doing a lot of research on Facebook games of late, I find a lot of the games have little things that drive me up the wall. Some are slow to respond. Others have pop over layers that fly in my face constantly. In one case in particular, I could be in the middle of picking up goods, xp, or coins I need to keep my city alive and, “POOF”, yet, another annoying popover. Still, I keep going back because there’s an emotional element of accomplishment within the game that keeps me tied to it. “I must become mayor today!”, I think as I clear trees, build businesses and housing, working tirelessly to build my city into something I am proud of.

Thus if you take this emotional element and combine it with user experience you get nirvana! Which makes me curious, why then are UX professionals fighting over what we call ourselves when what we need to be focused on is, why even hire us? We are after all, information architects, content strategiests, visual designers, librarians, business strategiests, interaction designers and more. UX is a melting pot of an industry full of creative, intelligent, amazingly talented folks who offer solutions to common business problems. Therefore, shouldn’t we focus more on results and what we can deliver to our clients then trying to figure out what to call ourselves.

Just my 2 cents, anyway.

They then drilled into, “What does it mean to be a master?” “You have to start at the beginning. Being a beginner sucks but you need to practice, practice, practice. Once you learn how to complete tricks then you can mimic the masters. Once you figure out how to mimic the masters then you can innovate. Take baby steps on innovation.” In other words, “Observe, mimic, practice, practice, practice, innovate, and repeat.” Be willing to fail at something. Be willing to experiment. Be willing to just simply try.

Next up they asked, “How do we get on a plan to mastery?” Let me preface this with Jane McGonigal’s TED talk. In it she said it takes 1000 hours to master something. One thousand hours. Reed speaks about how the more “I know about anything, the better prepared I am to handle what comes up. The more I know, the better I become at my art.” What surprised and delighted me if as a performer he even claimed to understand the behind the scenes tech. As a former stage hand and sound technician who has worked with such names as Ugly Kid Joe, Corrosion of Conformity, Richard Marx, Steven Curtis Chapman, Coolio to name a few, I was taken aback repeating on twitter several times just how much this impressed me. As most of those named cannot make the same claims. Jared added that we need to consider the “Broken Comb Model”. Gain expertise in various areas. Some will be stronger than others but look to gain understanding not just in UX but in game, business analysis, strategy, IA, etc. Practice by continuing to build on that knowledge. Practice is not work. Practice makes us a better person. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. No one will make a game out of it for you so try different routines and different things to keep it fresh. Magicians talk about what it takes to practice but we as an industry never talk about the time, space, & budget that it takes to practice.

Great talk guys! May just end up my favorite of the conference.

Inspired by the chat, I opted to try to bring it in within Startup Weekend. It was the first time I had run a session and had about 30 minutes to do it. Let me start by saying that simply wasn’t enough time and I failed miserably. However, that meant that I had a lot to learn. Here’s what I figured out:

1) When working with startups whom are not well versed in business lingo, simplify the language. Make it accessible to your audience.

2) Encouraging people to draw is actually far more challenging than I expected. You may need to lead with examples of what they can do.

3) Sometimes breaking down the language and getting the conversation going can help if you are willing to illustrate the conversation and start adding in the components into the model.

4) The model can feel complicated and overwhelming. Make it more approachable to the non-business user.

5) For encouraging people to share ideas, encourage the ideas to be posted/sketched to the model first. Don’t allow conversation around the ideas just post them first. Then go back and see what works and what doesn’t.

Alright that was my rapid fire thoughts; back to work on the prototype.

“I haven’t done a wireframe in 2 years.” starts Todd Zaki Warfel in his talk about his intensive, iterative ideation sessions with clients followed by prototyping and discusses in this video why you should prototype. (Hat tip to theuxworkshop.tv.)

The process goes as follows:
1) Sketch: Start with quantity over quality. In about 5 minutes sketch 6-8 ideas.
2) Share: Throw them up on a wall side by side and present to the team. (Three minutes to pitch. Two minutes to critique. Four to 6 cycles in a day.)
3) Prototype: Figure out what to prototype (top 3-4 ideas).
3) Build: Bring it to life.

Why Prototype:
1) Work through our designs: Does it work? What doesn’t work? Where’s the hole(s)?
2) Communicate concepts: People are visual. They grasp what they see.
3) Sell an idea
4) Gauge technical feasibility
5) Test concepts with customers

What happens if you don’t (prototype)?
You get a domino effect. You think it’s going to work and testing shows otherwise. Yet you are in the middle of development. Or you have users screaming at the screen.

Six Guidelines:
1) Know your audience and intent.
2) Plan a little. Prototype the rest.
3) Set expectations.
4) You CAN sketch.
5) It’s not the Mona Lisa.
6) If you can’t really make it. Fake it.

I have to ask all UX professionals everywhere, “Why the divide?” Aren’t we as professionals in User Experience supposed to be about the design of that experience no matter the medium?

You could argue, much like Marshall McLuhan, “The medium is the message!” After all a content rich site is going to need a good IA to wrangle all that content but then that IA needs to also create the interface for the user to interact with all that content. Isn’t the interaction design?

On the flip side, you may have an interaction designer working on a content rich site such as CBS News is going to need to know how to wrangle all that content in order to increase find-ability. Isn’t that Information Architecture?

How much are we really different from each other? And does it really matter? In the end isn’t it all about the user and their experience anyway?

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.

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?

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.

Most of us in the industry design with carousels all the time. Smart Experience says they have become very popular because of their ability to provide a bunch of information visually. The mind processes information visually a lot faster than data.

If you plan to design with carousels then the first thing someone should know in designing carousels is that it is about imagery.  In fact, designing the imagery in a straight line allows the user to know just how many images there are within a carousel such as the example in the video.

Carousels create depth of field, much like flipping through several documents stacked on top of each other.

Always keep in mind that carousels are about browsing information, not searching.

Finally, Victor points out that carousels should be fun.  I don’t know that I agree with this last point of his. After all, some information found in carousels is hardly fun such as buying an appliance but then again what can we do as designers to make it interesting and unique? Can we allow the user to move in and out and around the object? Zoom in on certain features they need to learn more about? Add visualizations wherever needed to help explain features that may not be easily understood without a visit to a store?  As designers, we get to create those experiences in those modules.  To that point, it’s not just about creating a clean interface that gets the information the user needs to them but taking it a step further and helping the user to gain understanding when needed.

So you’re thinking about becoming a designer? If I could tell you only one thing about going into the field, my advice would be ___________ .

They can be summarized as such:
- Be empathetic towards all (the team, client, etc). Understand behaviours.
- Think about more than just the design
- Know how to express yourself. “It’s the sign of an organized mind.”
- Differentiate yourself by understanding the big picture
- Learn for yourself and create your own opinions
- Have undying passion for what you do
- Use a camera as your visual sketchbook
- Nothing better than knowing something you have changed someone’s perspective
- Focus
- Seek out, embrace, and solve for different perspectives
- Constantly tackle problems at the edge of your ability
- Find the middle ground between clever and stupid
- Constant and consistent iteration

If I were to add my own it would be:
So you’re thinking about becoming a designer? If I could tell you only one thing about going into the field, my advice would be know your client’s business. Know their competitors and then know their users. Ask for specifics get inside their heads. Then solve for what their heart and soul asks for not for what they think they need. Also, know how to talk to people in other fields and backgrounds.

But what if the sign says “we will serve you later”?

The Jumbi-chu or sometimes Shitaku-chu – “we will serve you later” or literally “we are in preparation” signs are commonly seen at the front door’s of Japanese restaurants outside of their business hours. The other day I read an article of a Westerner living in Japan talking about this sign and he thinks it’s a very considerate way of saying “closed” because the guest feels the people working behind the door will welcome you later.

My non-Japanese friends often remind me that in Japan we enjoy “good service for free” and the typical Japanese service is:

Punctual and precise
Detailed
Not to tell people what you want because most of the time people know and will do it automatically
Living away from Japan …
When living in Canada for 2 years, I missed the Japanese parcel-delivery service. One time I could not receive a parcel and I was surprised to know that there was no re-delivery no matter how big the parcel is. In Japan you can request the re-delivery for free at your desired date and time, and although it’s not recommended, even if you miss the second delivery the parcel is re-delivered again and again until you receive it. While such a service mind-set usually provides much convenience to Japanese, it may cause “too much of a good thing problem” causing Japanese not to think consciously about our users.

As a usability consultant I conducted many web site competitor analysis and find that US companies seem to know what to provide their users and how to approach them. The common problems of Japanese websites:

Too much information is provided at a time – In usability tests we see users who are overwhelmed by the amount of information they see and they are unable to find what they really need.
Regardless of how much the users know about their services/products – The service/product information starts from their real names and content is dominated by business terms or technical features that users would not understand.
Writing how good their services/products are and not about the user benefits – Even if we read all the information, we are still left feeling “so what?”
In short, they just stick to explaining all the little features they think is good and not clear about who they are talking to and what/how information should be communicated clearly.

Why does this happen?
The Japanese are generally very good at providing services that take the customer’s situations into account. But why not on the websites? I think a major reason is that Japanese companies are behind in marketing compared to the western companies. The process of marketing usually starts from defining the target users first then the business goal is broken down into action plans (inductive). But most Japanese companies’ websites seem to do the reverse, starting from the small pieces of service/product features and not getting to the conclusion which communicates the benefit to the users (deductive). Seems like they force users to figure out the benefits and next steps themselves.

Different way of thinking?
As professor Richard Nisbett agues in “The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why”(2003), Asians are context and setting dependent and allow multiple causes, while Westerners are focal object/outcome oriented and pursue single cause and effect. Even in daily conversations Japanese tend to avoid taking a pronounced standpoint and expect others to read between lines, because it avoids conflicts with others and protects from unwanted counterarguments. This way of communication works if you can expect the middle or long term relationships. However, the nature of websites as media only allows “Treasure every encounter, for it will never recur” type of relationship. So, if websites are unable to catch the users at the first glance, they leave the sites very quickly.

In my 2 years in Canada I was “trained” by my Taiwanese friend to be more assertive to deal with different situations living a Western life. Years later, I joined the global usability community, and interestingly, I feel I do not need to be so assertive among usability professionals, no matter where they come from. Perhaps because the nature of usability work is empathetic i.e. to be “in your user’s shoes”, adaptive to different approaches across cultures and considerate before its demanded by others. The Japanese in general are good at considering other people’s situation and for Japanese companies to be more successful in the online communications, they need to provide the information in the shape so users can easily understand them in seconds not minutes or hours.

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What I really like about this article is that goes beyond a local culture and says we need to consider the needs of users beyond our own spectrum. I have worked for far too many firms who say, “We don’t need to consider accessibility as that’s only 2% of our users. Yet that 2% is millions of potential customers that organizations are missing out on. If you are truly an organization that cares, that means you care about ALL your customers not just the majority.

Whitney Hess has posted the following:

Jess Bezos’s, the founder of Amazon.com, says, “Obsess over customers“. More importantly:

Obsess over customers: “When given the choice of obsessing over competitors or obsessing over customers, we always obsess over customers.”

Invent: “Any time we have a problem, we never accept either/or thinking. We try to figure out a solution that gets both things.”
Think long term: “It requires and allows a willingness to be misunderstood.”

It’s always Day 1: “There’s always more invention in the future. Always more customer innovation. New ways to obsess over customers.”

What I like about this video she has posted is it gets back to a point I have made about never losing touch with the customer. In all my experience with Six Sigma, Change Management, and User Experience, I think the only thing that really touches the customer is a culture of asking and consistently testing and iterating on your product line with your customers (or users). Hence why I have fallen into User Experience as a career.

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On top of this Business Week recently posted an article about the IDEA 09 Design Awards calling the article, “Designing a Better World” where they said, “Business leaders should care about design because it hits the bottom line… more than anything else, design builds a business.”

——

Steve Portigal was up first to walk us through his sold out workshop called, “Well, we did all this research … now what?”

My Twitter Feeds on SP:

“Who cares about terminology. Examine, infer and apply to business or design.” I’d say apply to both. Why should they be different.

“Stay out of solution land. Try different methods”

When stuck come up with really bad ideas to encourage creativity.

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Second was Kumi Akiyoshi with “Feeling: What Makes an Engaging Product?“.  The slides from the presentation are below:

Third was Ian Swinson with “Postcard Patterns”.

Postcards = simple straight forward messaging

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Fourth was Nadya Direkova with “What’s in a game? A look at game design best practices as prime influencers of interaction design.”  The slides from the presentation are below:

Twitter:

Is google a single player or multiplayer game? How many of us get to design apps in 3d?

This is review so far. It’s all about the same from my game design class at Parsons.

Simply controls. Friend invites to play with friends. (AdverGames)

Create a reward in health. Physical Therapy… Doing # of exercises = whatever

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Kim Goodwin “each one teach one” – people are now saying I experienced good design. This is easier than that.

Twitter:

“Nothing special about the iPhone. Technology is simple. It’s design they are selling. And we’re paying a lot of money for good design.”

“Corporate Americas new found belief in design is fragile.”

A lot of good ideas end up collecting dust. “It’s someone else’s fault. We need to take responsibility.”

Sales people understand progressive commitment. Get people involved in the research and so on to understand reasoning. Pushes commitment.

Even those who are use to rational decisions can be susceptable to emotion. (Ie the Mini Cooper)

Bargaining a normal part of Change Management. “I’ll have the salad with the cake.”

Ixd = generation creation

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In summary -

Personal gripe: Another thing about less is more on presentation slides… Less information focuses the audience on you and what you are saying. Avoids info overload

At the bar afterwards: “We’re designing behaviour”

This slide opened my eyes to how vital it is that we define user experience. After all if we do not define what we do then we risk not being heard, understood, or taken seriously. With standards and definitions then we can pass down our knowledge to younger practitioners and build credibility in the marketplace.

Other images from the IXDA Redux are found here

Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry demonstrate a “Minority Report” type of interactive gaming. How would this change the way we interact with the web and games in general. User experience of the future goes 3D?

In process my computer crashed and on reload Firefox reloaded all my open tabs. Then as if from no where, there was music filling the air on a constant loop. I started going through each tab scrolling up and down frantically looking for the off switch. It was no where to be found. Instead I find myself reminded of Eddie Izzard’s skit about trying to get the printer to work:

No matter where I turn. I cannot find the off switch. Finally after 10 minutes of this frustration, I find the switch at the bottom of the home page!

Don’t get me wrong, there are definite distinct advantages to using sound in the right places at the right time. Jakob Nielsen points out that sound can “enhance the user experience substantially”. He adds that testing within a game environment using the same graphics but higher and lower quality sound led users to believe that the game had better graphics when better sound was utilized. However that was a game environment not a website.

When exploring the web most users are looking for information. In this case, I was looking for the amenities, price, and any reviews on the hotel. I didn’t care whether or not the hotel had a good atmosphere. After all in a hotel you mainly sleep. You aren’t looking for a home. Thus the music only frustrated me when I couldn’t locate the module to turn it off.

If you would like to use sound to create an experience than use it wisely and place it where the user can find it. The top right or even the right rail work beautifully for this purpose. The worst thing you can do to your user is frustrate them because you will lose them as a customer. Remember you never get a second chance to make a good first impression and on the web that is even more vital.

The short version that UXD is not is as follows:

Dan Saffer, founder and principal at Kicker Studio, agrees that it’s common for design to be mistaken for being solely about decoration or styling. “I’ve had clients tell me not to worry about what their strategy is,” he says, “because why would a designer care about that? UX is more than just skin deep.”

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UX is more than just skin deep. As UX designers we should be buried in the process from step one, the concept, to assist with feeling and experience around a certain product. We can mesh that with strategy and business needs and goals throughout the project lifecycle to ensure a win win for all involved. After all without an engaging product that is a feel good experience from start to finish your marketing will fall flat and your customers will slowly walk away.