Location is Irrelevant for Usability Studies

Usability testing in multiple locations not important ...

"You get the same insights regardless of where you conduct user testing, so there's no reason to test in multiple cities. When a city is dominated by your own industry, however, you should definitely test elsewhere.

As long as you're testing within a single country, there's no reason to expend resources traveling to multiple cities and conducting the same usability study again and again. You'll simply observe the same behaviors repeatedly, and learn nothing new. Better to save your budget and spend that money on new tests of either additional design ideas or your competitors' designs.

This conclusion -- that the test location doesn't matter -- is different than the usual lesson from market research, where you find different results in different regions of the country. It's therefore common to conduct focus groups in 4 to 5 cities, or more if the budget allows.

Because traditional wisdom recommends conducting research in multiple locations, we've done so for many projects over the years. But, except for the few special cases discussed below, we've always identified the same usability findings, no matter where we tested. By now, we can clearly conclude that it's a waste of money to do user testing in more than one city within a country.

Behavior vs. Opinion
Why does usability differ from market research when it comes to the number of required study locations? Because with usability, we test behavior, not opinion. Further, we test that behavior with a defined artifact (i.e., a specific user interface).
People obviously have different attitudes in different regions, including differences in what they'll pay for a given product and in how many people will want the product in the first place.

But when it comes to reacting to a set of interaction design options, people usually interpret the screen elements the same, no matter where they live. What's easy in one city is just as easy in another city. For example, breadcrumbs facilitate navigation of hierarchical websites equally well in Los Angeles, New York, or Boise, Idaho. You don't need to test your breadcrumb design everywhere. Similarly, many Web users rely on search, not because they live in a rural or an urban environment, but because search is an inherently useful way for users to gain control of a vast and diffuse information space."    (Continued via Alertbox)    [Usability Resources]

Methods of Understanding and Designing For Mobile Communities

Results of a Ph.D. thesis gives insight into mobile device design ...

"Society is increasingly on the move, mobile devices are commonly being used to coordinate group actions, and group communication features are rapidly being added to existing technologies. Despite this, little is known about how mobile groups act, or how communications technologies should be designed to augment existing behaviour. This is partially due to minimal research being done on the topic, but also to the lack of research methods available to study the topic with. Mobile groups are challenging to study because of frequent and long-duration movement, frequent distribution, and the rapidly changing environments they operate within. To address these issues, this research focuses on methodological issues surrounding the development of mobile devices for mobile groups and communities. More specifically it addresses backpackers, who are a relevant example of this type of community. The research primarily explores the convergence of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and the field of mobile device development. This enables the combination of emphasis on designing technologies for groups, social implications, mobile device design, and mobile settings.

Major research outcomes presented in this thesis lie in three areas: 1) methods, 2) technology designs, and 3) backpacker culture. Five studies of backpacker behaviour and requirements form the core of the research. The methods used are in-situ and exploratory, and apply both novel and existing techniques to the domain of backpackers and mobile groups.

Methods demonstrated in this research include: field trips for exploring mobile group behaviour and device usage, a social pairing exercise to explore social networks, contextual postcards to gain distributed feedback, and blog analysis which provides post-hoc diary data. Theoretical contributions include: observations on method triangulation, a taxonomy of mobility research, method templates to assist method usage, and identification of key categories leading to mobile group requirements. Design related outcomes include: 57 mobile tourism product ideas, a format for conveying product concepts, and a design for a wearable device to assist mobile researchers.

Our understanding of backpacker culture has also improved as a consequence of the research. It has also generated user requirements to aid mobile development, methods of visualising mobile groups and communities, and a listing of relevant design tensions. Additionally, the research has added to our understanding of how new technologies such as blogs, SMS and iPods are being used by backpackers and how mobile groups naturally communicate."    (Continued via Mobile Community Design)    [Usability Resources]

Mobile Community Design

Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015

Web Pages That Suck presents the biggest Web design mistakes ...

"Next to e-mail, your web site is one of the most important marketing tools you have. Too many people are using their web sites in the wrong way and are hurting themselves.

I’ve gathered what I think are the biggest web design mistakes committed during the period 1995 to 2015. Yes it is a little facetious to say these mistakes will be made in the year 2015, but it’s human nature to repeat your mistakes over and over. But it’s human nature to repeat your mistakes over and over.

I've rewritten parts of the article and put in some videos of sites that have changed. I have the proof of how bad they used to be.

Some mistakes I’ll discuss aren’t actually design mistakes in the classical sense — ugly graphics, bad navigation, etc. — but serious big picture problems like our Number One Mistake:

1. Believing people care about you and your web site.

2. A man from Mars can’t figure out what your web site is about in less than four seconds.

3. Mystical belief in the power of Web Standards, Usability, and tableless CSS.

4. Using design elements that get in the way of your visitors.

5. Navigational failure."    (Continued via Web Pages That Suck)    [Usability Resources]

Getting In Way of Visitors

Personas and Storytelling

Using personas to tell the story ...

"Personas work because they tell stories. Stories are part of every community. They communicate culture, organize and transmit information. Most importantly, they spark the imagination as you explore new ideas. They can ignite action.

Like many people in usability or user experience, this is a second career. I started as a theatrical lighting designer, working in dance, theatre and even the occasional opera. Instead of wireframes, I worked with cue sheets, I programmed lighting boards instead of web sites, but most of all, I was part of creating a story. For an hour or two, our goal was to create an experience that would leave the audience just a little bit changed.

Then, I started working on an early hypertext program, and left theatre behind. I went from a forty foot wide stage, to a fourteen inch wide screen.

One of my frustrations with user profiles was that they were often mostly lists of demographic data. It was hard to see how to use this information to make good design decisions. What do we really learn about users when we know that the average user for the product we are designing is:

• Aged 30-45
• Well educated
• 45% are married with children
• Use the web 3-5 times a week
• 65% use search engines

What if, instead, we learned about a prototypical user, Elizabeth. She is 35 years old, married to Joe, has a 5 year-old son, Mike. She attended State College and manages her class alumni site. She uses Google as her home page, and last used the web to find the name of a local official. It's the same information, but given some specificity and context. We can begin to think about Elizabeth as a real person, someone we can design for.

That's the heart of a persona. There are lots of formats and guidelines for doing the analysis to create them. We can argue about whether a picture is important or not, and how many personal details are needed to make a good portrait. But the germ of the idea is that personas bring users into the design team and make them as real and compelling as the technical details and our own design concepts."    (Continued via Whitney Interactive Design)    [Usability Resources]

A Prototypical User

Yes, you should be using personas

The value of personas ...

"Personas seem to go in and out of fashion. Not long ago, people were advocating hyper-researched personas done in painstaking detail, these days designers seem more inclined to leave them out of the process.

So, are personas actually useful or should we stop wasting time and ditch them?

I first came into contact with personas in an academic context. They seemed like a nice idea but I tended to use them to justify my design rather than to guide design, which seemed kind of back to front.

Since then, I’ve worked in places where personas are more or less embraced as part of the process, and then longer I use them, the more I’ve come to the opinion that personas are incredibly valuable, but not for the reasons that many people think they are.

If I’m working on a UCD project (and thankfully, these days that is pretty much every project I do), then I would much prefer to include persona development in the process than not.

But, having said that - I find personas virtually useless when it comes to design, and I very rarely reference them in making design decisions. For me, personas aren’t about design, but that doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly powerful in other ways.

Personas communicate the user centred process like no other method

Having your clients view user research and testing is incredibly powerful in helping them realise that there is a problem in the way they’ve been approaching things to date (if you’re not encouraging stakeholders to actively participate in observing research and testing you’re missing out on a lot). But to get them to actually understand what user centred design is about - you need personas."    (Continued via disambiguity)    [Usability Resources]

Five Reasons Why Apple's iPhone is Better Than the Rest

A view of iPhone benefits ...

"Paul Kedrosky submits: Having now wandered in the wilds of various cellphones over the last few months, I am re-reminded why Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is underestimated. I have a Palm (PALM) Treo 700, a Research in Motion (RIMM) Blackberry 8800, and a Samsung TV phone, and they all suck. Here are five things that bug me about the abovementioned trio, and that favor the iPhone:

Mobile browers are awful. The Treo isn't bad, and it's the best of the above three, but the Samsung and Blackberrry browsers should be outlawed. They are that bad. They are so bad that Blackberry users' opinions about mobile services, mobile startups, etc. should be summarily dismissed.

iPhone: Browser is reputedly very good.

Touch screens rule. Once you've gone touch you'll never go back. Treo has it, Blackberry doesn't, and it drives me nuts. Trying to use a thumb wheel to touch a specific screen element is like dancing about architecture. It's briefly mildly entertaining, but ultimately stupid.

iPhone: Touchscreen. 'Nuff said.

Big screens rule. The Samsung screen is teensy and irritating. The Blackberry and Treo screens are bigger and better, but I want more. I hate having online real estate so crunched. It feels so ... 640x480.

iPhone: Big, bright mofo screen.

Mobile fonts are shit. The Samsung and Blackberry have fonts that only an MS-DOS fan could love. They are clunky, brain-battering and largely unreadable. The Treo fonts are marginally better, but they're still woeful.

iPhone: Lovely fonts, at least in pictures. Would design-obsessed SteveJ ever have it otherwise?"    (Continued via SeekingAlpha)    [Usability Resources]

On Why Apple is Bad For Design

How Apple affects the design world ...

"The Design Observer recently featured a sloppily-written article on why Apple is bad for design. Seeing the post’s title, I eagerly expected a thoughtful critique of that most vaunted of companies — nobody’s perfect, and there must be reasonable things to comment on. Instead, the DO article is an incoherent rambling on issues of form, style, and rounded corners, and ends up as much ado about nothing.

I thought, well, I could do better than that. So here I go.

The main reason why Apple is bad for design is that they’re a highly idiosyncratic organization. As such, it’s nearly impossible to copy them, because no other organization has the elements that allow Apple to product great design. This means that when others do try to copy them, they focus solely on the superficial aspects of the design.

I would argue that the main reason Apple is bad for design is because they’re so secretive about their work. So, while they benefit design because they demonstrate the value and power of design in the marketplace, they prove a detriment to design because they don’t share how they achieve such brilliance.

And because they don’t share, they make it look too easy. If you dig deeper, and listen to the stories of what it took to get iPod (all the iterations on form, as mentioned in Steven Levy’s The Perfect Thing), or iPhone (two and a half years to get it to market), you know that it’s not easy. But that hard work is lost on many, and the seeming simplicity of the end product suggests simplicity in the process. Which leads to people coming to Adaptive Path, and saying, “We want to be the iPod of [product category],” without any understanding of the deep commitment that it takes to get there.

If Apple were to share, we’d understand the tradeoffs that go into the decisions they make; the countless attempts before settling on a solution; the obsessive attention to detail, often at the expense of the bottom line; and doubtless other things that I know nothing about. And other organizations would then appreciate what it really takes in order to be a design-led organization, and, hey, that would be great for design."    (Continued via peterme)    [Usability Resources]

iPods

Windows Aero User Interface

A discussion about Windows Vista Aero UI ...

"Windows Aero is the premium user interface available in most mainstream Vista versions. Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, it is also the most likely user interface you're likely to see with Windows Vista, regardless of your hardware. Yes, Aero does require specific minimum hardware specifications, which we'll discuss. But most PC hardware produced in the past 3 or 4 years, excluding some budget laptops with older integrated graphics chipsets, is powerful enough to display the Aero interface.

Unlike other Vista user interface types--Windows Vista Standard, Windows Vista Basic, and Windows Classic--Windows Aero utilizes the graphics processor in your video card to composite and render the display. This design leads to two main advantages over the other Vista interfaces. First, the display is more reliable and seamless, with none of the weird tearing effects that mar the other interfaces. Second, by offloading the display from the system microprocessor to the GPU, Windows Aero frees the microprocessor to perform other tasks, leading to better overall performance.

Visually, Windows Aero provides glass-like graphical elements, which you'll see on window frames (or "chrome"), the taskbar, the Start Menu, and the Start button (or "Start orb" as it's sometimes called). These elements are translucent by default, allowing you to see other graphical elements are logically arranged below."    (Continued via Windows Supersite)    [Usability Resources]

Windows Aero vs. Vista Basic

User-centered design game

Learning UCD through a new game ...

"The UCD game allows human-computer interaction practitioners to demonstrate the key user-centered design (UCD) process and methods to those who are unfamiliar with UCD. The game teaches how to incorporate user-centered design into every step in the software development process. Overall, the purpose of this game is to promote a better understanding of a good design process by demonstrating the importance of understanding and focusing on the end user.

The target audience for this game is those unfamiliar with UCD, yet whose work relates to the definition, creation, and update of a product or service. In other words, everyone involved in the software development process.

The UCD game is structured in 4 sections mimicking a standard user-centered design project: defining the users, analyzing the users’ characteristics, designing and evaluating the designed artifact. The last station – evaluating the process – requires the participants to look back on the three previous stations and reflect their design process."    (Continued via Putting people first)    [Usability Resources]

User-Centered Design Game

Helpful distortion at NYC & London subway maps

Using distortion to clarify information ...

"Eddie Jabbour, graphic designer for Kick Design, is obsessed with replacing the confusing NYC subway map (below: originals on left and Kick maps on right — click for larger versions).

The logic behind the changes
“Can He Get There From Here?” profiles Jabbour’s quest. Here he explains the reasoning for his changes:

Mr. Jabbour pinned two maps to the wall, then pointed to the different renderings of the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Brooklyn, which he says is the most difficult station to represent because so many subway lines converge there. In Mr. Jabbour’s map, the subway lines run parallel to one another, making the map easier to read, if slightly inaccurate. Each line is marked with a circle bearing the route’s letter or number, instead of the oblong station markers used on the current map.

There are other differences. Unlike the official map, Mr. Jabbour’s map does not have a single line representing all the trains in a “cluster” route, like the 1, 2 and 3 trains in Manhattan. He used the same type font throughout, and words travel left to right, rather than diagonally, as on much of the official map. The lines bend only in 45- and 90-degree angles, to create a gridlike pattern.

In the eyes of Mr. Jabbour, the New York system is too complicated to layer on information like commuter rail and bus routes, as the current map does. He would like to see a map that is singularly devoted to the subway.

Distortion vs. accuracy
Jabbour’s map looks like a winner. (Thankfully, the navigation on it is a lot better than the messy Flash interface at Kick Design’s main site). He wisely recognizes that usability is more important than geographic accuracy here. Subway map readers want to know how to get from A to B a lot more than they want to know the exact curve of the tracks along the way. Sometimes truth is less important than knowledge.

It’s also interesting to see how he increases the number of lines on the map yet decreases the overall noise created. That change means riders can put their finger on a line and trace it all the way to their destination. That’s not always an easy task on the current map (multiple trains run along a single line until veering off)."    (Continued via 37signals)    [Usability Resources]

Brooklyn Subway Line Comparison

Interfaces That Flow: Transitions as Design Elements

Using design considerations to control the feel of a website ...

"Actively influencing a person’s emotional state throughout an experience—in particular, his or her sense of anticipation, involvement, and desire for a certain outcome—is still an evolving concept in the realm of user interface design. However, this is very familiar territory for makers of music, film, television, and video games. While UX designers may not be storytellers, we can create more engaging product user experiences by learning from their examples.

Many UX designers—myself included—approach projects from a combination of information architecture, information design, interaction design, and visual design perspectives. These disciplines and their methods are fundamentally different from those people use to construct the continuous linear narratives we see and hear in film, video, and music. However, as the technologies for creating interactive user experiences become more robust—especially in the realm of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)—we have an opportunity to draw upon a much wider visual vocabulary. This will also make narrative elements such as timing, pacing, and rhythm increasingly important. Using such design elements may enable us to move users from mere understanding to engagement and, ultimately, to immersion in our digital products and services.

The Pause That Refreshes

The concept of a pause is lacking in many user interface designs. I’m not referring to an option to halt playback in midstream—as in an audio or video system—or the kind of delay users experience as a microprocessor churns through its calculations, but to a brief rest before the next step in a task. There is nothing more inorganic and unnatural than a system that has no state of rest.

Without question, the influence of the information age has decreased our attention span. We jump from link to link, from screen to screen. As UX designers, we may have a picture in our minds of the users of a Web site or application—people who are harried and busy and just trying to get their tasks done. And it may be for such a person that we design user interfaces. At some point in their tasks, though, users must pause to take a breath.

When used appropriately, a pause can create anticipation, clear the decks, and remove the clutter that competes for a user’s attention, enabling a user to more effectively focus on what comes next. The pause contributes to the effective pacing or flow of the user experience.

A great example of pacing at Design by Fire, the blog of Andrei Michael Herasimchuk, uses a well-timed fade out/fade in transition between content selections (shown in Figures 1 and 2). Once a user clicks a menu item, the current content fades out, then the new content fades in. The transition provides a pause in the action."    (Continued via UXmatters)    [Usability Resources]

Fade-out Controlling Pause

Logical spreadsheets

Paying attention to spreadsheet design ...

"In the last 20 years, spreadsheets have become essential tools. Still, they have some limitations. In particular, if they handle mathematical computations, they're not designed to deal with logical formulas. Now, computer scientists at Stanford University have developed a prototype of a logical spreadsheet using logic instead of math to help us with data management in an innovative way. The U.S. Army would like to use the technology to organize troop deployment and training. And Stanford is already using it to schedule classes, events and rooms. The next step will be to integrate this technology on the Web to replace the forms that we routinely fill by "websheets."

On the left is an illustration showing a room management system created using such a logical spreadsheet (Credit: Stanford University). This research work has been led since 2001 by Michael Genesereth, an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and the current director of the Stanford Logic Group, with Michael Kassoff, doctoral candidate in his group and part of the Logical Spreadsheets project.

Here are two quotes from Genesereth about this project.

"There are many cases where traditional spreadsheets are just not sufficient," says Associate Professor Michael Genesereth, whose group in the Computer Science Department is developing this new method of data management. "Why not have a spreadsheet that looks just like a regular spreadsheet except it has the ability to encode and use logical formulas? That's what you can't do with Excel in any way today."

Genesereth gives the example of trying to use a logical spreadsheet to plan a meal. "You enter the main course, and let the spreadsheet suggest greens and carbohydrates that are gastronomically compatible and satisfy nutritional requirements," he says. "Or you can do it in the other order." Traditional spreadsheets fail in such applications because they are more rigid and cannot represent logical constraints."    (Continued via ZDNet.com)    [Usability Resources]

Logical Spreadsheet

Appealing to the Buyer Head and the User Head

How UX influences purchases ...

"Lately, I’ve been getting really interested in the underlying psychology that drives people to buy. Are people interested in impressing others? Following a fad? Keeping their life simple? Obsessing over gadgets? Satisfying a need?

Jeff Patton has a really cool article outlining what he thinks are the two aspects of human behavior that surface when encountering new products, which he calls the buyer head and the user head.

The buyer head looks at the product objectively, considering how its features will help to achieve specific goals, address certain needs, and rectify various problems.

The user head looks at how effective the product actually is in achieving those specific goals, addressing those certain needs, and rectifying those various problems. The user head also evaluates ease of use and the emotional response the product generates.

Sometimes the buyer head and the user head agree on a purchase decision. The customer is satisfied with the value, features, and experience that the product provides. But other times, the buyer head and the user head end up in conflict, especially when the product does not provide a pleasant experience, even though it provided the best value.

By learning how to appeal to these two sides of potential buyers, design teams can create products that have great value in terms of money, time and goal achievement, are easy to use, and provide a delightful experience. While these aren’t the only two “heads” to consider, designing for the buyer and the user in all of us may prove to be an effective way to drive sales and create satisfied customers. I think you’ll find Jeff’s article extremely valuable."    (Continued via UIE Brain Sparks)    [Usability Resources]

User Head and Buyer Head

Xerox Refocuses On Its Customers

Getting users to design new products ...

"Three years ago, a team of Xerox researchers dreamed up a commercial printer with two engines instead of one. Rather than following the company's standard development process—build the prototype, get customer feedback—they decided to hold focus groups with customers and potential customers to find out what they thought of the idea.

In a video clip of a session in Boston, one of eight Xerox held in the U.S. and Europe, seven men sit around a conference table. They look a bit dazed. Heads rest on hands. Panelists lean far back in their chairs. Until a question comes that snaps them to attention. What would they think, they are asked, of a high-speed machine that wouldn't have to shut down if a problem arose, but could operate at half-speed?

"This thing would go down, but down means it's still functioning while service is on the way?" asks a young man with unruly hair and a boldly flowered tie. Yes, he is told. "Sweet!" he sings, rocking back in his chair. As the video fades, another customer's voice explains the group's bullish reaction. "You're dead if you're down," he says. "You're over." Bingo!

A New Sway for Customers
But back at research headquarters in Webster, N.Y. where 30 Xerox engineers and scientists were watching via live Webcast, there was surprise. While they'd suspected that customers would like the second engine, they had the reasons all wrong. They'd imagined the second engine would be used for fancy inks or special colors. Not to help a broken machine limp along until help arrived.

"The team had had a certain idea of what customers wanted," says Stephen Hoover, vice-president of Xerox's research and development hub. "Going out and actually talking to them&that really changed that." The new focus became building a machine that would both run fast—pumping out 288 pages per minute with both engines working—and keep on running if one engine conked out."    (Continued via Business Week)    [Usability Resources]

Apple sued over vague user interface patent

Apple user interface design patent challenged ...

"The patent holding company IP Innovation, LLC, has filed a lawsuit against Apple, Inc., that alleges the Cupertino-based company has engaged in "willful and deliberate" violations of US Patent #5,072,412. The patent describes a computer operating system interface with "workspaces provided by an object-based user interface appear to share windows and other display objects." Filed in the patent litigation sinkhole of Marshall, TX, the lawsuit accuses Apple of "directly infringing at least claim 21 of the '412 Patent through, among other activities, the manufacture, use, sale, offer for sale and/or importation into the United States of its Mac OS X v10.4 'Tiger' operating system."

IP Innovation is asking for $20 million in damages, an amount that appears to leverage the "treble damages" clause of federal patent infringement law. The company has filed at least 32 other patent infringement cases over the past several years against companies as varied as Daewoo, Samsung, Dell, Thomson, Brother, Sony, and RealNetworks.

The patent in question was originally filed by Xerox back in 1991. It referenced that company's earlier patents, dating back to 1984, that dealt with graphical user interfaces. This specific patent describes a "workplace" that consists of multiple windows and "other display objects" on the screen, and describes each window as potentially containing a "linking data structure." If a user clicks on one of the links in each window, it can cause the contents of said window to change, reflecting a different "workplace."

The language of the patent is interminably vague and could apply to any one of a dozen different user interface elements that are found in all modern operating systems, but seems to be most closely related to the idea of "tabbed" dialog boxes, like the ones seen in both Windows and Mac OS X. Ironically, the company to first release a modern-looking tabbed dialog box was none other than Microsoft with early versions of Office, although Apple had a Control Panel with similar functionality as early as Mac OS System 4.2, circa 1987. It remains to be seen whether or not IP Innovations will go after Microsoft and other system vendors after they are finished with Apple.

Apple is no stranger to user interface patent lawsuits itself, the most famous being the landmark case against Microsoft over the user of Macintosh user interface elements in Windows. Apple eventually lost that lawsuit due to imprecise wording of the cross-licensing agreements that they had signed with Microsoft in exchange for the development of the original Word and Excel, which appeared first on the Macintosh. Apple also sued Digital Research, the inventors of CP/M, over its GEM operating environment for the PC, with much greater success: DR caved into Apple's legal demands and crippled the user interface of GEM, removing the wastebasket icon and other Mac-like features."    (Continued via ars technica)    [Usability Resources]

Easier Learning: interaction design patterns for classrooms

Applying HCI to the classroom ...

"Have you ever wondered (or meditated during long long classes) why the typical classroom or university study setting can be so incredibly dull that you just won’t get stuff into your head? Welcome now Berlin-based Henning Breuer that specializes in interaction design patterns: his current research is about what kind of tools and interfaces we need to engage best in learning environments today. After four months of research at the Waseda University in Tokyo, PingMag grabbed him for a talk about his interaction works (like new software for interactive tactile whiteboards he was developing…)

Henning, you deal with interaction design patterns for learning environments. You don’t only research at your own company Bovacon, you also part of the Interaction Design Lab at Potsdam University and for the last four months you enhanced your research at Waseda University in Tokyo. Can you quickly sum up what you do?

My work is basically about human-computer interaction, meaning the design, the implementation and the evaluation of interactive systems for human usability and analyzing the contexts of these usages. It is a mix of computer science, psychology and design, concerning everything connected with interactive interfaces, from recording devices to mobile phones and computers.

And the practical approach of your work would be…?

…about the design of technology from the user’s perspective. Interfaces should be useful and usable, helping instead of hindering people in what they want to do. With computerized systems this tends to get difficult, so my task is to design the things in a useful way according to cognitive and cultural psychology. This may include a shift from a purely task-oriented towards an emotional design and user experience.

“Interaction design and information architecture sound like esoteric, highly technical areas, but these disciplines aren’t really about technology at all. They’re about understanding people, the way they work, and the way they think. By building this understanding into the structure of our product, we help ensure a successful experience for those who have to use it…”From Jesse James Garrett: The Elements of User Experience."    (Continued via PingMag)    [Usability Resources]

Classroom Interaction Architecture

The Evolution Of The Mobile Phone User Experience

Frank Tyneski, Senior Director of Design and Human Factors for Kyocera Wireless discusses evolving UX of mobile devices ...

What are the biggest challenges to making a mobile phone easier to use?

I believe the biggest challenge is constantly reminding yourself (as a manufacturer) that you’re not designing phones for your industry technology peers. Mass market consumers -- and this includes business users as well as consumers -- who purchase mobile phones are seeking simplicity. Anything beyond the basic functions can compromise what is really important to them. The real challenge lies in understanding what customers want within various user segments and then inserting increased functionality without compromising their core usability desires. We're solving this equation by putting a heavy emphasis on the integration of research and design. In many cases, we are placing designers in the field and actually designing on location with target consumers to develop a better context of understanding for particular user groups and the environments in which they live, work and play.

After years of talk and endless hype, we know that people are using their mobile phones to do all kinds of tasks including text messaging, checking their e-mail, downloading ringtones, and even surfing the Web. But many users still complain about the user experience on their handsets. Many wireless industry insiders claim we're hitting a glass ceiling of mobile usability -- i.e. that the devices can't really do more than they do now (if they can even do that). Do you agree with this assessment?

Five years ago, the wireless shows like CTIA and 3GSM were peppered with forward-thinking concepts – essentially, non-working appearance models showing grand visions of the future. Back then, the industry’s future trajectory was visible to the general public. We've since realized those original visions, climaxing today with mobile music, TV, GPS, and more on relatively small devices. Now, manufacturers have shifted their vision and strategy toward convincing consumers that they can, in fact, deliver a complex group of wireless utilities with more grace and expertise than their competitors.

With future wireless concepts being less celebrated, there is a perception that the industry has hit a flat spot. However, in this case, perception is not reality. The mobile communications industry continues to be the equivalent of our 'jet age.' In comparison, I think we’ve only developed the propeller. This is not to say that mobile communications won't evolve to reveal some common denominators, but I think we're many years away from that.

The key is that it's not just about manufacturers advancing handsets in a silo while content providers and infrastructure providers make advancements in their silos. We, as an industry, need to pay particular attention to developing holistic user experiences, where devices, applications and infrastructure work harmoniously. This is the glass ceiling we’re pressing against, with much compression. I suppose it’s a good thing the glass is not in a fixed frame. It's continually being pushed upward, just not as quickly as some would like."    (Continued via InformationWeek)    [Usability Resources]

Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing

How to get stakeholders to buy-in to usability testing ...

"For more than seven years, I’ve been teaching and coaching design teams on how to conduct usability tests and gather user feedback early on in the development process. One of the questions that comes up time and time again from clients is, “How can we get buy-in for usability tests from management and other team members?”

Through our own research at UIE, and in our ongoing discussions with expert usability practitioners, we’ve identified several proven techniques for getting stakeholders onboard.

1. Start Testing Right Away
Start testing. Start doing it right away. We’ve found there isn’t any one experience more beneficial to design teams than running a usability test. I’m still amazed by how quickly development team members recognize the benefits of usability testing once they’ve actually seen it in action.

When I’m teaching courses on usability testing, I’ve found that no amount of lecturing about the benefits of testing gets development teams onboard and past their skepticism. Instead, people only truly comprehend the power of testing once they’ve observed a user interacting with a design.

If you’re struggling to communicate the value of testing to your management or fellow team members, stop explaining the benefits and start demonstrating them. I’ve yet to see a test where the design team fails to gather some new piece of valuable information about the users’ needs.

When development teams start watching users interact with their designs, they’ll typically see two possible outcomes, both positive. In some instances, usability tests confirm the team’s existing beliefs about how users will use their products. But, in the much more common outcome, teams observe users experiencing problems with the design and identify gaping holes in their assumptions."    (Continued via UIE)    [Usability Resources]

Measuring the success of a classification system

Improvements to card-based classification ...

"When working with government and large private organizations on complex information systems, project managers and business representatives often demand early-stage validation that the proposed classification system provides the user-friendly solution they are charged with delivering. They also require this validation in a format that will be engaging for senior business stakeholders.

I developed the following enhancement to Donna Maurer’s card-based classification evaluation technique as a direct response to a client that wanted to engage with the process of restructuring their content-heavy intranet. My client knew the current classification structure was ineffective at enabling users to find the information they required, but they felt the process of developing an alternate structure would be complicated and contentious due to differences of opinion between senior stakeholders. My client requested quantitative data to validate that the proposed classification system was an improvement on the existing structure. They also had tight timescales and budgetary constraints.

Having previously used card-based classification evaluation to obtain qualitative insights into labeling and the general effectiveness of a classification system, I felt there was an opportunity to enhance the technique and deliver just the kind of information my client demanded without breaking their budgetary constraints.

Key differences between this and standard card-based classification evaluation

The two key differences between this and standard card-based classification evaluation are the way in which the captured data is analyzed, and that the technique should be conducted in a number of rapid iterations throughout the development of the classification system so that any improvements can be identified.

How to conduct card-based classification evaluation

Card-based classification evaluation should be conducted in exactly the same way as described in Donna Maurer’s article. For those unfamiliar with the technique, what follows is a précis of how the technique is conducted. For more detailed instructions see Donna’s article.

1. Transfer the top 3 or 4 levels of the classification system you wish to evaluate onto index cards. On the first card, put all of the top level categories. On each subsequent card place the next level of classification labels."    (Continued via Boxes and Arrows)    [Usability Resources]

Top Level Categories

Techsmith's Morae 2.0 ups the ante for Usability Testing Software

Morae usability testing software upgraded ...

"If you ever carry out web or software usability tests then you'll have come across Techsmith's Morae software. Techsmith has just released a major upgrade to the software, now at version 2.0. As we were just about to run a usability test for a client, we did something we'd never normally advise - we installed the new version of Morae on top of the old one the night before the test. Installation was a breeze and there were no hiccups during our test, allowing us to focus on what's new in Morae. So is it worth taking the plunge if you haven't yet invested in this software?

Morae has three separate software components. The first, ‘Recorder’, runs on the participant's computer and does the donkeywork of recording mouse clicks, keyboard presses, screen video and webcam video. The second used to be called ‘Remote Viewer’ but has now been christened ‘Observer’, and allows observers to monitor the test from another room or indeed another country (so long as you are on the same network as the recording computer) and log data. The final component, ‘Manager’, allows you to analyse the data and put together highlights videos.

As well as sporting a colourful new interface with snazzy icons, each of these components has undergone a major feature overhaul.

RECORDER: NEW SURVEY FEATURE PLUS DATA LOGGING REFINEMENTS
The most noticeable change to ‘Recorder’ is that it now allows you to present an end-of-test survey to the participant. Built in to the software is John Brooke's 'SUS' questionnaire. Brooke’s original paper described this as ‘a quick and dirty usability scale’ and unfortunately Techsmith appear to have followed this description in their implementation. The survey looks like one of those HTML emails that doesn't quite render properly in your mail reader. The radio buttons are small and close together and begging to be wrongly selected. If you don't like 'SUS', Morae allows you to create your own survey but we would have liked to be able to customise the look and feel of the survey as well. Much more useful is the extra data logging features built into ‘Recorder’, for example, you can now assign a success score for each task and a severity rating for each issue logged."    (Continued via Usability News)    [Usability Resources]

Morae Example

Yes, you should be using personas

Why personas should be used ...

"Personas seem to go in and out of fashion. Not long ago, people were advocating hyper-researched personas done in painstaking detail, these days designers seem more inclined to leave them out of the process.

So, are personas actually useful or should we stop wasting time and ditch them?

I first came into contact with personas in an academic context. They seemed like a nice idea but I tended to use them to justify my design rather than to guide design, which seemed kind of back to front.

Since then, I’ve worked in places where personas are more or less embraced as part of the process, and then longer I use them, the more I’ve come to the opinion that personas are incredibly valuable, but not for the reasons that many people think they are.

If I’m working on a UCD project (and thankfully, these days that is pretty much every project I do), then I would much prefer to include persona development in the process than not.

But, having said that - I find personas virtually useless when it comes to design, and I very rarely reference them in making design decisions. For me, personas aren’t about design, but that doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly powerful in other ways.

Personas communicate the user centred process like no other method

Having your clients view user research and testing is incredibly powerful in helping them realise that there is a problem in the way they’ve been approaching things to date (if you’re not encouraging stakeholders to actively participate in observing research and testing you’re missing out on a lot). But to get them to actually understand what user centred design is about - you need personas.

Personas should always be developed collaboratively with key stakeholders - as many as possible. They can often be derived from existing marketing personas or profiles (but, don’t be mistaken that personas that the marketing department gives you are personas you can use without any work). You should try to validate your personas with some kind of user research if at all possible - this can be in the form of some contextual interviews, lab based studies, or by talking to people in the company who interact with user directly on a regular basis (I’ve found people who work in call centres can often provide invaluable insight to what users are really like)."    (Continued via disambiguity)    [Usability Resources]

Cool Visualization: Alberto Gonzales’ Testimony

Even the news can benefit from visualizations ...

"Many Eyes is an interesting research project at IBM, allowing users to upload data sets and produce interesting visualizations.

The following is a visualization of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ 4/19 Senate Testimony, as rendered in a tag cloud:"    (Continued via UIE Brain Sparks)    [Usability Resources]

News Visualization

What is Web 2.0 Content Management? (Part 1)

Describing Web 2.0 ...

"With all the hype that Web 2.0 has gotten, many companies are now looking at their existing Web CMS and wondering whether it meets the new paradigm’s needs or merely traps them in an earlier age of the Web, thereby missing new business opportunities and making them appear dated.

Companies currently looking to acquire a new CMS want their new software to be “Web 2.0 enabled”. But what does this mean in real terms?

This article is the first in a three-part series that addresses content management technologies in the context of a Web 2.0 world. This first article establishes our foundation and a working definition of Web 2.0.

... Principles of Web 2.0
The following 6 principles are our working guidelines for what it means to think and be Web 2.0.

1. Be Informal; Embrace the Bottom-up Model.
The popular ClueTrain Manifesto states that “markets are conversations.” Your audience doesn’t want to be talked at with marketing gloss. They want an honest dialog with real people behind the firewall and with other community members who understand and are active in the site or service context.

If the Web 2.0 world could be characterized one way, we would call it a hairy, grammatically incorrect, often irreverent and sometimes downright offensive conversation.

Loosen the tie and drop the canned answers. The Web 2.0 world embraces organizations, content and services that are candid and accessible.

2. Data is the Application.
Owning unique content is more valuable than owning the software. Your content is even more valuable if you can open it up for broad and creative use.

O’Reilly said “Data is the New Intel Inside”, others have said “SQL is the new HTML”. Boil this down and it means people come for the value living inside your data, and they want to leverage it in ways you may never have imagined.

Don’t let the limitations of your own imagination constrain the value of your content. Open the front door and give ‘em all the side doors they want.

3. Participation is Key.
O’Reilly described this as harnessing the collective intelligence. Get your community of users to participate. This will create the true value of your service or content and keep that value vibrant and dynamic.

Keep in mind that the people that become participants are typically the types who act on a larger stage. They are frequently more avid consumers, better employees and perhaps also the squeaky wheels that affect the opinions of others.

Let interactions be flexible. Trust the crowd. Embrace participants. Give them the tools to share what they know.

4. The Interface Must be Rich, Yet Simple.
When having what we might describe as a Web 2.0 Experience, you no longer have the sensation of clicking from one page to another so much as you have the feeling of being on what Immediacy’s John Goode called an “ergonomic journey.”

Now, we love John’s description, but that may be setting the bar a little high. The bottom line is that the browser-based experience has evolved. You can call this AJAX infiltration or point to the maturation of JavaScript libraries, but regardless of the root, the fact is that end users now expect a significantly more sophisticated client interface.

To be considered a modern web UI, the interface must be functionally rich, response times must be fast and a careful balance must be struck between features and simplicity."    (Continued via CMS Wire)    [Usability Resources]

RobotReplay looks pretty neat!

New usability testing tool for seeing webiste visitor's every mouse movement ...

"Andre Charland's startup just launched RobotReplay, which is a really cool!

It's a javascript nugget that you drop on your website. The javascript records user actions. So far pretty standard web instrumentation. But the cool thing is that it lets you watch your users actions as a movie. This is AWESOME, because it lets you gather insights about your users in a very unorganized fashion. Just drop the code into your site, and then watch movies whenever you have a spare minute.

I'm not clear on whether it ACTUALLY grabs mouse position in real time, or if it just does interpolation (you need to grab mouse position in order to be useful. Clarification from someone who knows?). And I'm not sure about what the performance implications are of this code: I'm always very careful about adding 3rd-party javascript to my site, because I've seen problems in the past (with stuff like google analytics, for example). But for a site that's in early alpha / beta / pre-techcrunch mode, this is a great way to keep an eye on what the heck people are doing when they visit your site. You can do user research, without really doing user research!"    (Continued via Jonathan Boutelle)    [Usability Resources]

Technology Breakdown: The Paradox Of Complexity

Can localized software be on the way out? ...

"I was writing an article on user interface design and started thinking about the recent release of Windows Vista and how it is playing out in the market.

Looking at where the world of software development is going along with other technology developments, the idea that Windows Vista may be the last desktop operating system that Microsoft ever releases is not a far stretch.

... For years now, the guiding principle that I base user interface design on is the acronym, AFCDI, which stands for “any fool can do it”. Arguably the biggest problem facing the software industry is that developers are producing programs capable of doing amazingly complex functions. The sad fact is that many of these programs are also a real pain in the butt to use -- which brings me back to searching for files in Vista.

... Herein lies the paradox of complexity. As hardware technology advances, it has become possible to present [display] information in richer formats than what was available previously. However, the emerging trend to provide software as a service (SaaS), means that the PC becomes a client, as all of the processing of data takes place remotely, and all of the data is stored remotely as well. The ability to use advanced technology to display data means that client programs can be developed that could allow you to do desktop publishing from your cellphone (don’t laugh, you can already run PowerPoint from a smartphone). While the new hardware makes it possible for PC software to do more complex tasks, high speed internet communications coupled with the faster hardware will eventually make localized PC software irrelevant; turning the desktop operating system primarily into a graphics rendering engine with a networking layer attached. This phenomenon leads to a number of wildly interesting, potentially disruptive possibilities. Maybe Einstein was onto something when he said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Ah, the paradox of complexity."    (Continued via EURweb)    [Usability Resources]

Usability vs Discoverability

The distinction between usability and discoverability ...

"I got into another spirited debate discussion on IRC today, this time about application usability and discoverability. We were talking about books and someone mentioned Don’t Make Me Think. I accidentally started the brouhaha by saying that it was a decent book, but that I disagreed with its core point of view. Wow, was that a bad idea.

But, I think I have some valid points to make, and what better place to rant than my own blog, right?

For a while now, there has been a rallying cry of “usability” for the web. It may seem like this is a Web2.0 thing, but it’s been around since at least Web1.5 (CSS) and maybe even longer. My argument was and is this: there is a very important distinction between “usability” and “discoverability”, and secondarily that one does not imply the other. But, too many people confuse the two. Just to be clear, let’s define our terms.

Discoverability
In a web application context, this equates to how long it takes a user to figure out how to perform a specific task without any previous training or documentation. If you said “buy me a boat”, can the user figure out how to do it? It also covers finding new things you didn’t even know you wanted. Note that we are not talking about the ability for the user to find your website in the first place, such as via Google.

Usability
Can the user continue to efficiently use the application over long periods of time? Or are they constantly stumbling over things? My favorite counter-example here is Microsoft Word and its hatred of bulleted and numbered lists. Anyone who has ever fought with lists in Word will understand this."    (Continued via No, I am better than that!)    [Usability Resources]

Web 2.0 Expo: Designing for Web 2.0

A summary of talks given at Web 2.0 Expo ...

"In my Designing for Web 2.0: The Visual Ecosystem talk at Web 2.0 Expo I discussed the changing role of visual design in today’s social, distributed, user-generated, and interaction-rich Web.

In the presentation I point out how the ability of visual communication to express core customer and brand messages across multiple forms of media has not changed much. However, shifts from locomotion to services, from pages to rich interactions, from sites to content experiences, and from content creation by webmasters to everyone online have introduced unique opportunities and constraints that the presentation layer of Web applications needs to account for. Check out the slides (PDF) for lots more details.

Notes from others:

• Lessons from Game Designers
• Web 2.0++
• From Desktop to Device
• Web 2.0 for the Enterprise
• Built To Last Or Built To Sell"    (Continued via Functioning Form)    [Usability Resources]

Web 2.0 Expo Presentation