Everything you ever wanted to know about UX

(*but were afraid to ask)

Andrew Hinton | @inkblurt

Patrick T Quattlebaum | @ptquattlebaum

Andrew and I have been in town attending the IA Summit, which is an annual gathering of information architects and other UX professionals from around the world. It is a very passionate community of practitioners and leaders who have a lot of value to add organizations, and our goal tonight is to give you some insights into how we think about the problem space we and BAs work within in, as well as some thoughts about how we can better partner to do great work.

A question

First, a quick question. When I say “user experience”, what are some of the first words or phrases that come to mind?

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A couple of years ago I asked Macquarium employees to define “User Experience” and “User Experience by Macquarium”. (Note some of the unique brand attributes).

Note “Design” is at the center, and this is the term that most UX professionals would say is at the heart of what we do. However, many UX professionals define “Design” differently than you may think.

source:http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/enwiki/Release_Management#uxba

Design is often defined as a step in an SDLC that occurs between solution definition and implementation. In this definition, user experience is associated with the user interface, look and feel, usability and aesthetics.

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like... People think it’s this veneer—that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”Steve Jobs in Design Is How It Works: How the Smartest Companies Turn Products into Icons

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User experience and design are much broader than that definition, however. As Steve Jobs notes in this quote, design is concerned with the entirety of a product or service, how it works inside and out. It is the process, not a part of the process.

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An example of UX design is the Kindle, which encompasses not just UI or even the form factor of the device, but the design of the entire experience around the activity of reading. That includes finding, purchasing, reading, annotating, and lending texts across numerous devices and different contexts. Designing the Kindle product to be seamless and pleasurable takes great skill and approaching the problem not as a collection technologies and features, but a holistic experience.

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The accumulation of the interactions a person has with a product or service.UX

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So, when I talk about UX in this presentation, my frame of reference is that UX is the accumulation of the interactions a person has with a product or service, that design is the process, not a step, and that the role of UX practitioners is to help craft that experience from day 1 in the process.

A story

"We taught them about yacht design so they could participate in the design."

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A different approach: I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the America’s Cup, but it is the premier race in sailing similar to the World Cup in soccer. For over 100 years, the country of New Zealand had participated in the cup but had never won. In 1993, designers Doug Peterson and Laurie Davidson were given the opportunity to design the boat for the 1995 cup. Traditionally, there had been little interaction between the designers of boats and those who raced them, but Peterson and Davidson decided to take a different approach, collaborating closely with the crew to design every element of the boat. The involvement of the crew lead the team to refinements in the design that were not innovative in terms of new technologies but in how they approached using existing approaches. The final product - Black Magic - was dubbed by the press as “unusually fast” and resulted in New Zealand not only winning the 95 cup, but also the successful defense of the cup in 2000.

The system shall...#uxba

The Black Magic is an example of focusing more on people in design process. Too much of our industryʼs work focuses on the systems we develop instead of starting with the experiences we want to create for people that technologies help us deliver.

source: http://www.theaeonsolution.com/security/?p=190#uxba

Historically, users and how they behave has been considered very late, if at all, in many SDLCs. Thereʼs the old joke that issues with a system are a training issue.

source: cruciality.wordpress.com/category/humour/#uxba

Many UX professionals think of our work as deeply humanistic. This means thinking about the needs of users early and often, as well as the effect of technologies on human behavior.

culture

behavior

psychology

context

people

Cognitive Psychology and its Implications

UX emphasizes

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Many of the methods UX professionals use, therefore, are about getting to the root of user behavior and the context in which the products and services we designed will be used. This is the more “scientific” side of UX that is blended with the “art” most people associate with user experience design.

Emphasizing human needs and behaviors means thinking about how people interact with companies, products and services more deeply than at a functional level. User experience design is about creating enduring relationship between companies and people, objects and people, and people with other people. This is as emotional as it is functional. Understanding what makes people tick is necessary to design and maintain these relationships.

Empathy

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There are many schools of thought, such as user-centered design or design thinking, that share this focus. Empathy is a common goal of these philosophies and processes as they stress the importance of understanding who we are designing for and bringing those insights in the design process.

“We’re here to make things that improve people’s lives. In doing so, our companies profit in both senses of the word... We should judge our industry by the happiness we create.”

Cennydd Bowles, The fall and rise of user experience

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#uxba source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

I love this example of smart experience design. A few things to note:1. The results are measurable (and impressive)2. The solution taps into a fundamental human behavior: play3. The solution uses a familiar pattern that communicates how it works immediately

You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

As much “what” than “how”

source: http://uxbooth.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/05UXBooth_Goliath2.png#uxba

Say we want to build a product. A typical process would elicit requirements from business stakeholders, looking at the competitive landscape, and marketing research. The IT team or technology partner might also provide a list of the features that can be built given the project constraints, such as budget or available technology. The BA is left with quite a long list and the project team is facing the realities of time and budget. What features do you build? How do you sequence these features in releases?

source: Jared Spool, User Interface Engineering#uxba

An example of “featuritis”.

source: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/7/4/the-freemium-business-model-and-viral-product-management/#uxba

Often, less is more. Features that map to core user needs and deliver business value is the sweet spot.

© 2010, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited May 10, 2010

Business Analysts: Seize The Opportunity To Deliver Compelling User Experiences For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

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Keep in mind that it is common to have more than one persona, each representing a segment of your user population.

· Empathize with users. You have listened and observed. Now you can take a walk in your users’ shoes — feeling their pain and their joy — to truly understand them.12 What upsets them? How do they make decisions? Empathize broadly but also in context. A nuclear reactor operator’s concerns will be di!erent from those of a 16-year-old music lover. To empathize with your users, pick a persona to impersonate, and get into character. Do a mental walkthrough of the user waking up in the morning, going through her day, and, at some point, using your application. What motivated her to use the application? What was she thinking? What tasks did she want to perform, and how easy was it to do them? What other choices does she have for achieving her goals, and why did she choose your application?

If you get the user research wrong, you are not going to get your user experience design right. But if you get it right, you have the building blocks for a great customer-focused user experience.

Figure 2 User Research Is Where UX Design Begins

Source: Forrester Research, Inc. 56758

EmpathizeWalk in your users’ shoes to understandhow they may — or may not — engage emotionallywith your Web site or software application.

ListenDirectly interact with the application’s usersthrough interviews and surveys to understandtheir needs.

Users can accomplish their goals.Observe Look over your users’ shoulder while they aredoing their job to fill in gaps in your understanding.

PersonifyCreate research-based personas — vivid, narrativedescriptions of fictitious people — to represent theattitudes, goals, and behaviors of your users.

source: Forrest Research, “Business Analysts: Seize The Opportunity To Deliver Compelling User Experiences”#uxba

Forrester recently published a paper that recommends that BAs learn UX techniques like user research. Report: Business Analysts: Seize The Opportunity To Deliver Compelling User Experiences

User Research

MarketResearch

Analytics

Behavioral(what people do)

Attitudinal(what people say)

Quantitative Qualitative

Lab Usability Testing

Ethnography

Diary Studies

Card Sorting

Contextual Inquiry

Intercept Surveys Desirability Tests User Interviews

Demographic Studies

Surveys Focus Groups

Analytics Review

Split of Multivariate Testing

Design Research

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There are numerous methods available to us in the UX toolkit for eliciting user requirements. Each has its strengths and relative budgetary impact. Some are quantitative and some are qualitative. The key is to get data from as many sources that you can to paint a complete picture of your user segments.

http://flickr.com/photos/spcoon/1606694538/

User interviewsConduct one-on-one or group interviews to explore, uncover and understand issues and opportunities facing users.

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The method we use most consistently in our research is interviewing. This method is quick and, when done well, precise in understanding the psychology behind user behavior and what users need to perform their work more efficiently and satisfyingly. Interviews focus on user goals, tasks, needs and expectations.

http://flickr.com/photos/podtech/398080624/

Contextual inquiry and observationObserving users in the context of use can provide invaluable insight into what affects user behavior and can provide realistic scenarios to drive more effective design solutions.

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We often augment user interviews with contextual inquiry or similar techniques that explore the context of use. While user interviews can be performed in a conference room or over the phone, contextual inquiry is performed where the target audience will use the product or application being designed. We recently used this method in helping a major hospital in Chicago move from a page-based intranet to a role-based portal. During the planning and strategy phase of the project, we interviewed dozens of employees to understand their needs and those of their peers in their role. Hospitals are complex environments, and how different roles interact with technology varies greatly. So, we spent a lot of time studying the where different roles would use the intranet and how it fit into their daily routine. We met with administrators in their offices, nurses in the ICU, followed doctors on their rounds. In each case, we saw challenges and opportunities for improving the requirements and design of the portal so it would support the employees. This insight gave us more confidence in our design decisions.

Filling in the gaps about the usersField research provides insights into context of use that typical requirements elicitation does not provide.

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Here’s an example from a recent project. What is great about this clip is that you can literally hear how hectic her workplace is and she was constantly interrupted during our interview with little emergencies.

This clip discusses her concerns about saving money through conserving product (food) and training her employees constantly. During the interviews, we learned that this audience had a universal set of concerns.

source: http-//www.blogcdn.com/www.kitchendaily.com/media/2010/02/cooking-without-measuring-456#uxba

In Design Is How It Works: How the Smartest Companies Turn Products into Icons, the author gives a great example of design innovation. If you think about measuring cups, they have not changed much in decades.

source: http-//houseoffraser.scene7.com/is/image/HOF/I_107848688_00_20081211#uxba

OXO, however, came up with an innovative design by watching people use measuring cups. They noticed that they were bending over constantly and looking sideways at the cup as they filled it - an awkward position that puts strain on the back and neck.

source:http-//www.abetterbagofgroceries.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/OXO-measure-cup-from-top.jpg#uxba

This observation lead to the design in this slide, in which the markings on the cup can be viewed while standing over the cup and looking down. An obvious solution once you have the right lens to find it with - the user lens.

source: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/content_images/fig/2880300205002.png#uxba

True solution alignment requires an understanding of user needs and goals.