Interaction10 – Rob Nero – TRKBRD: From Idea to Conception with Physical Prototype

Rob Nero’s presentation at the Pharmacy during Interaction10 was so packed that Todd Zaki Warfel, Brad Nunnally and I all ended up sitting on the floor in the very front of the room.

We may have had the best darn seats in the house. This presentation blew our minds. TRKBRD is far from a perfect nor finished device, but it’s a clever prototype that was fun to learn about.

Hands-down, more of our conferences need more talks like this. We learned of failures and successes and hacks and end-runs, and there was energy just in watching the story. This was definitely one of the highlights of an outstanding conference.

TRKBRD: From Idea to Conception to Physical Prototype Description:

Physical prototyping allows you to see and touch your design. You don’t have to pretend to use your design in order to test it, you can touch your design and feel the interactions firsthand.

My final project, in my first year of grad school, started as a theoretical idea for a brand new way to interface with a portable computer. The interface had never been done before, so there wasn’t hardware available for me to realize my idea or even test it with people. The only way to realize my idea physically was to use the Arduino electronics prototyping platform and create the interface device myself. With a lot of research, testing, and talking with other Arduino users, I brought my idea to fruition, the TRKBRD (trackboard) was born!

Read more of the TRKBRD Description >

Rob Nero’s Bio:

Rob is currently working on his Master’s thesis at the Interaction Design Masters program at Malmö University, in Malmö, Sweden. Before deciding to move to Sweden, he designed enterprise web applications for large and Fortune 500 companies for 10 years. Rob’s design projects while attending the Masters program include a music remix web site that was used in a national campaign for refugees, a Bluetooth-enabled music distribution box for an inner-city hip-hop club, and multiple physical prototyping projects with the Arduino platform.

After graduation in 2010, Rob is seeking employment opportunities in the physical and tangible interface areas. He hopes to continue his work in rapid physical prototyping, electronics, and people interaction in every adventure and future employment.

My Notes on the Session:

• Rob is a student at Malmo, Sweden and the last bit of his work for his degree was “Anything”. Yep, anything he wanted, but he had to create something.
• He was at a coffee shop doing work; his laptop barely fit on the table, as usual, and couldn’t use his mouse–hates the trackpad.
• He found a spatial problem to solve with his laptop and the space to work in–and trackpads keep getting smaller, and they’re a pain in the ass to use.
• The only way to make a smaller netbook is to sacrifice the trackpad space.
• Had the idea and the tools, wanted to make this new thing.
• Thought of: TrackBoard (keyboard and trackpad?)
• Combining keyboard and trackpad so as to create more available space.
• Recognized “zones” on the keyboard based upon where your hands sit on a keyboard for typing.
• Checked out the Arduino board (Arduino Duemilanove) – www.arduino.cc
• Rec: Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi
• Sparkfun.com is a good electronics site to check out.
• Built it
• Put 3 sensors around the board – Left, Top, Bottom
• Put 2 lasers–bottom-left, bottom-right
• Used Infrared lasers to avoid issues with light in the area
• He was able to get the x & y coords through this simple set up.
• Problem with Infrared: you can’t see it!
• But, you can hack a webcam and you can then see infrared – you can remove the lens or you can add over some exposed photo film (seems almost like an antique to find!)
• The Arduino programming language is pretty simple, some basic background in coding may help you.
• The memory on the Arduino is really small
• Arduino forums really helped to optimize the code and queries to make it much smaller in memory size.
• The end solution was 110 light sensors. The laser in the corner was to create the plane of light.
• Problem: He showed a professor, professor posted to Arduino blog, MakeZine.com picked it up….
• Then Engadget picked it up! Rob nearly died.
• Big exposure: 11,000+ video views (10-50 a day), 90,000+ links
• Now a Russian wants to rebuild as the equivalent of what Smart Boards/Walls are in the US (at my kid’s school)
• Final Prototype
• 
• Tested & Iterated
• Did “Man on the Street” Guerrilla User Testing
• Gave lots of demos, too
• Had focused feedback from the demos that he gave; felt people gave him real loves & hates
• trkbrd.it is the website, @TRKBRD is the twitters.
• He’s only doing this for his Masters; it’s not anything beyond that (at this point).
• He does some “faking it” in Flash since he doesn’t know Windows or Macintosh coding.
• Can double tap to open
• Single tap [X] to close it
• Independent control of both interfaces
• Can select/highlight text
• Can type without moving the cursor – but on the entire trackboard, not a real keyboard
• Also: This was awesome.

Interaction10 – Kevin Cheng – Augmented Reality: Is it Real? Should We Care?

Kevin Cheng was one of the first folks I met at the IA Summit in 2008 in Miami, and I’ve been a fan of him ever since. Besides being a bright chap and an all around good egg, he’s recently become a Product Manager at The Twitters (and they’re hiring, folks!), but you may also know him from such online comics as OK/Cancel. He’s also getting married on 10/10/10, but you’ll have to ask him some questions around that, yourself.

Augmented Reality: Is it Real? Should We Care? Description:

This year, we’ve seen the mobile market make incredible strides in technology. The iPhone, Android and Palm platforms have increased their functionality well beyond just being a phone and have added critical functions such as faster internet connectivity, video cameras, GPS and compasses. Handheld gaming devices have also converged, adding cameras and accelerometers to their devices.

The combination of all of these pieces have made Augmented Reality—overlaying information and technology virtually over what you see—become a true possibility. Suddenly, science fiction has become much less fictional.

This presentation will:
- share my personal experiences and insights from developing a game for this new medium
- cover some of the challenges and considerations when designing for such an experience
- the viability of this medium
- how we could apply aspects of augmented reality to projects
- include other examples of such projects on the market ranging from entertainment to practical applications

Kevin Cheng’s Bio:

Kevin Cheng splits his crayon time between many endeavors. He is a product manager at Twitter, the co-founder and artist for OK/ Cancel, a webcomic on user experience, and the author of the upcoming book, See What I Mean: How to Communicate Ideas with Comics. Most recently, he is also co-produced an iPhone augmented reality ghost hunting game. Kevin blogs at kevnull.com and has been known to Twitter as @k.

My Notes on the Session:

• Kevin saw a video on AR and thought about how this would be a cool ghost-hunting game.
• ARGH (Augmented Reality Ghost Hunter) is the app he built.
• Tom Caudell coined the term AR when he was working at Boeing on a project. 18 years ago. That’s right–18.
• Wikipedia def: Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view. The term augmented reality is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, an employee of Boeing at the time[1].
• Our reality is already being augmented–look at the 1st Down line overlay in football games, HUDs in video games, etc.
• AR is possible via LBS, Audio, etc.
• AR is here to stay; it’s main stream now, but not meeting it’s potential just yet.
• Why is NOW the right time?
• Google trends show it skyrocketing in 2009.
• Mobile seems to be a key reason for it to take off–especially cameras/video cameras.
• Reasonable Internet Connectivity
• GPS
• Compass
• Accelerometer – less, but you can do some cool things like running/motion, etc.
• What’s it being used for now?
• It’s being used in Art.
• Toys – Lego has a cool app where you can hold up the box and see the 3D version of what your end result will be.
• Topps baseball cards has some “attempts”
• Zombie killer game by Skittles–skittles are bombs for killing zombies
• USPS postal service demo – see if your item fits in the box.
• There’s a “live tweeting” app–Kevin pointed his phone to the room to see who is tweeting and got heat points. Pretty cool.
• Problems:
• Lack of design patterns
• And none of the existing ones are good
• The usage of AR is pretty immature
• Need to get some standards created for AR
• What if you wrote a “BurglAR” app? If objects are tagged and shared in the cloud and I see that you just bought at Plasma TV, I could know which house to watch and steal from!
• Clearly, no one is thinking about the deviant side of AR Design!
• GPS is not that accurate again. It’s not going to show you in exacting measurements where “things” are.
• Image recognition
• Processing on mobile – it’s just not there yet.
• RFID proliferation – not everyone (or enough people have all of the features to make this work well)
• Technology is not there yet!
• Looking Ahead for AR
• Jupiter Research: “The market for mobile AR services is expected to reach $732 million by 2014″. Was less than $1 million.
• Annual # of Mobile DLs featuring AR content is expected to rise to less than 1 million in 2009 to MORE THAN 400 MILLION by 2014.
• Smartphones are becoming more common
• Someone’s actually working on AR Contact Lenses!
• BMW and AR for Training of mechanics/engineeers.
• Google Goggles is an app that could have legs, too.
• Kevin says, “What’s interesting is that we (UXers) appear to be not all that interested”
• I don’t think we’re not interested, I just think the good ideas aren’t getting to US!
• Our technology consumption isn’t as fast as Japan, for example.  When I (Russ) worked in mobile, the US was at 18 months for a phone lifecycle and EMEA was more like 6 months.

Interaction10 – Livia Labate – Ceci n’est pas une KPI

I’m proud to call Livia Labate a good friend and a fellow board member for the IA Institute, so I’ll admit having bias here. That aside, she gave a great presentation and everyone learned a bit more about Key Performance Indicators, as well as the challenges and struggles that Livia went through in her journey to be able to share this information with us.

Ceci n’est pas une KPI Session Description:

“What are the Key Performance Indicators of a succesful user experience?” asked the business stakeholder, “It depends” answered the wise interaction designer…

Inquiries about measuring or managing anything seek to answer an underlying question: How do we know we are doing a good job?

(So, how DO you know you are doing a good job in the work that you do?)

While many UX practitioners like to answer this question with ‘when we achieve our goals’, we have struggled as a community to identify and articulate approaches and measures to assess how successful our solutions are.

More at the Interaction10 Website >

Livia Labate’s Bio:

Livia Labate is a user experience designer practicing in Philadelphia at Comcast Interactive Media. She also currenty on the IA Institute Board of Directors and co-chairing the 2010 and 2011 IA Summits. In other words, she loves the UX world and enjoys giving back to the community.

Here are my notes from Livia’s awesome session–I hope she’ll continue her exploration on the topic so we can learn more!

How do we value success in UX?
- Livia promises us she has more questions than answers

How do we KNOW we are doing a good job?
- Livia asked all the designers at Comcast “How do you make decisions?”
- The theme was that people were wanting to know how they were doing a good job throughout the interviews.

How do we MEASURE UX?
- She had to put the question aside; couldn’t get a definitive answer.
- Felt it was a lot like asking someone to measure love.
- Do I have to deal with all those NUMBERS?
- We’re really consumers of data, but we’re not analysts

NUMBERS
- When people hand numbers that were meaningful for them, they really didn’t want to investigate <the problem> further.
- Numbers by themselves don’t express meaning–context really help us understand the way to answer a question.
- Jared Spool made her read “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.
- “Statistics do not have the power of language, it’s just numbers.”

METRICS
- “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” – W. Edwards Deming (or Peter Drucker)
- We need to focus on the outcome
- “You can’t improve what you don’t understand.”
- A metric is a unit of measure. It’s a quantitative measurement that describes events or trends.
- A KPI is a metric that helps you understand HOW you are doing against your objectives.
- Context really sets the frame for what KPIs make sense. A competitor will most likely have different KPIs.
- KPIlibrary.com is a good resource for finding–big surprise–KPIs
- KPIs will help us play the game, as soon as we know what they are?
- He who knows the KPIs can direct the conversation(s)

USER EXPERIENCE
- How can we measure the undefinable?
- Focus on the outcome
- The task completion rate
- The time a task requires
- The error rate
- Users’ subjective satisfaction
- Morville created the honeycomb to help clients move beyond just usability.
- Livia talks about “Linking Elephants”; references Adaptive Path’s 2005 report on Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience
- Livia tried to do this, but it was difficult/impossible for her in the projects she tried it with.
- It’s not a KPI in it’s own right, but it can be useful for framing a conversation.

Why KPIs?
- KPIs are concrete metrics
–quantifiable and measurable
-KPIs are relative measures
–to predefined objectives
-KPIs are understood in context
–circumstances in which they are measured
-KPIs are about behaviors
–and this is why we like them!

Designing for Inaccuracy?

I know it might come across as crazy, but I think there’s something to be said about designing for inaccuracy. And, of course, someone else has already probably thought of this and there’s a fancy (or simple) name for it.  That’s okay; it’s on my mind and I’d like to rattle it out.

The Back Story

The day before Thanksgiving, the family was all loaded-up into the (sigh) minivan and as I started backing out of the driveway, my wife punched the magical button on the GPS that would get the trip routing started.

We both looked at the estimated time of arrival and took deep sighs, knowing that we were in for a long trip with a 20 month old and a 6 year old in the back.  This isn’t the type of trip we look forward to as everyone gets restless.

Fast forward a few hours.  My wife and I both look at the GPS unit again, and we both kind of sigh out loud.  We both started to talk about the same thing at the same time–this damn GPS is accurate.

Accuracy is Good!

Absolutely.  However, in my Trailblazer’s GPS, it’s frequently (translation: always) not accurate.  So, after driving for a little while, the estimated time of arrival / length of time left to drive shifts enough to feel like we’re “making good time”.  In fact, I could argue that every time I (allegedly) (unknowingly) take some liberties with the speed limit, I feel as if I’ve accomplished something when the time shifts to my favor.

Who’s Fault is This?

At first, I wanted to blame Microsoft.

Why not, right? Everyone likes to blame Microsoft.

We’ve all seen that Windows file download / transfer dialog box that starts out telling you that you’ve got 18 years, 4 months and 12 hours remaining that quickly jumps to 45 minutes and then continues to shift as something magical happens to the various connections to your machine.

It’s annoying.

But, if I’m being honest, my Mac does the same damn thing. The various flavors of Linux I’ve used have done it, too.

So, it’s the fault of those who create operating systems?

Or, it’s the fault of those who simply create mathematic formulas. I think.

I’m not sure it matters, really.  It’s just that Garmin does one hell of a job in getting it right.

And that’s frustrating.

So What?

Exactly! So what does this have to do with anything?

Part of what’s been interesting to me about this is that I’ve been frustrated at not being able to beat the clock, or beat the game and arrive ahead of schedule. I looked forward to beating the clock and arriving “ahead of time”.

Look, it’s my quirk, but I highly doubt I’m alone here. We all like to win, even the little subtle victories like not stopping for restroom breaks so you can beat someone else’s best time.

Psychologically, each of us wants to win. We want to beat the machine. We want to be better and smarter than “that damn device in the dash”. We want to beat the computer at chess.

It’s how we’re wired.  Survival of the fittest? Kick the ass of SkyNet? All the above?

I don’t know, just yet.  I’m still pondering this, and I know it’s not new–the “winning” aspect is part of building engaging design.  We don’t want to dumb something down so much that it turns away our audience; instead, we want to provide them with enough stuff to figure out and learn along the way that they’re feeling successful and intelligent as they move through.  Perhaps this is part of what Stephen Anderson calls “Designing for Seductive Interactions”.

Perhaps it’s slightly different.  I don’t know yet, and like I said, I’m sure it’s already out there, so I welcome some direction and feedback here from the smart folks that you are.

Thanks!

Solving the “Repeat Email Address” Form Issue. Maybe.

One of the mailing lists that I’m on had a question posed today about using “Repeat Email Address” in form validation.

I actually cringed as I typed that just now–that particular part of form validation is pretty annoying (to me, at least). I find it amusing that shift-tab, copy, tab, paste as a method for handling doesn’t cross anyone’s mind when creating these types of “validations” in forms.

There were a number of responses to the thread, but Steve Krug (yeah, that Steve Krug) put out the notion that he suspects most of the email address typos may originate in hasty typing, and they end up getting submitted because the user doesn’t realize that they’ve made a mistake.  Krug identifies that it’s possible, from his perspective, that the font used in many forms is fairly small and that makes it so that errors don’t actually jump out at the users.

Krug also suggested that it may be possible to help users catch the errors by displaying the email address in larger, clear monospaced font–possibly next to the or below the field where the typing occurs.

This stuck with me, but I wasn’t quite sold.

I pinged my friend Jonathan “Yoni” Knoll to see if he’d loan me about 15 minutes of his time to prototype something.  Lucky me, he had just that much time to spare.

We (and by we, I mean Yoni) put together a really quick prototype form–it’s important to note that we didn’t put much more than 15-20 minutes into this, and this is only to see how the form “feels”.  It can grow a number of different ways, styles and placements of elements can certainly be shifted around to your heart’s content.

The form looks pretty, uh, form-y:

Note at the bottom of the form the tiny little text letting you know that you should check your email address. In reality, I’m pretty sure most of us wouldn’t read it.

Also note that there was no “Repeat Email Address” text field in the form.

Instead, once you fill out your email address and tab away from it…

Notice that now my email address appears right before the Submit button.  Krug initially suggested that the re-display of the email address might work best in a larger font next to the field where you entered in your email address.

The way this placement works now, in the prototype version that Yoni and I worked-up, the last thing you see before you submit is your own email address.  I think this works particularly well in longer forms–it gives you the opportunity to re-check the most important piece of information in the form (to marketers, at least) right before you hit submit.  The little “edit” link jumps you back to the field where you can make edits quickly and continue on with the submit action.

See this live in action here: http://infinityplusone.com/form-test.html

Remember: this is a prototype.  One of the reasons that the edit link is to the left of the email address is because, after a couple attempts at placing it, this made the most sense to Yoni since email addresses are variable and that could cause the placement of the link to not always be in the exact same place.  Your mileage may vary; something may work better for you.

The important piece of this prototype is seeing how it works in action, and how it potentially solves for having the “Repeat Email Address” field in your forms.

Tinker with it–and let us know what you think!

IDEA 2009 – Social and Experience Design in Toronto, September 15-16

As Director of Events and Marketing for the Information Architecture Institute, I’ve been more than a little busy diligently working with a fantastic team of people to put together this year’s IDEA Conference, which will be held at the MaRS Centre in Toronto.

Everyone–and I do mean everyone–on this team of exceptional individuals–has been burning the midnight oil to bring you an outstanding program at a gorgeous facility.  Oh, and at a price that is reasonable given our economic climate.  I am more than a little proud of this conference, and I really hope you’ll join us!

IDEA 2009 runs September 15 and 16 in Toronto where the world’s foremost thinkers and practitioners will share big ideas that inspire and practical solutions that improve the way people’s lives converge with technology.

Whether you’re a designer, strategist, writer, UX professional, IA, or working in anything interactive, you should attend IDEA 2009.

Create the future now

You see it at Starbucks. People gather, but they don’t talk with each other. They communicate with their networked public. Facebook could be considered the fourth largest country in the world, yet it’s dwarfed by the over 300 million Chinese who use Qzone.

IDEA 2009 explores how to design these experiences. From the psychology to create more loyal users, to the design strategies and practices that bridge the physical and virtual world. This new world is already becoming a reality for your clients, employers, and customers.

Speakers you need to see

Social and experience design isn’t your typical design issue. IDEA gathers leaders from a multitude of disciplines and perspectives to provide inspiration and practical take-aways on creating valuable experiences. Some of the speakers include:

• Jeff Dachis – CEO, Dachis Group, cofounder of Razorfish
• Christina Wodtke – Principal Instigator at LinkedIn
• Mary Newsom – Associate Editor, Charlotte Observer
• Michael Fassnacht – Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chief Strategy Officer, Draftfcb
• Christian Crumlish- Curator, Yahoo! Design Pattern Library (and co-author of the forthcoming Designing Social Interfaces)
• Luke Wroblewski – Director, Product Ideation & Design, Yahoo! Inc.
• Stephen P. Anderson – Product Strategy and Design Consultant
• Leisa Reichelt – Design Researcher & User Experience Designer working with Drupal’s open source community on Drupal 7
• Thomas Malaby – Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Erin Malone – Principal, Tangible UX (and co-author of the forthcoming Designing Social Interfaces)

Beyond the speakers, many of today’s brightest minds will attend and share what they know. In the intimate setting of the MaRS Centre, you’ll have the opportunity to exchange ideas and connect with leading practitioners from all over the world.

Built for today’s economy

IDEA presents the greatest combination of accessible industry leaders, valuable topics, and companies looking for professionals in the social and experience design space. You can talk directly to representatives from Critical Mass, Mad*Pow, Sapient, Usability Matters, Rosenfeld Media, and more.

All the information you need to know about the program, speakers, and sponsors can be found at the IDEA 2009 conference site. Hope to see you there!

Peachpit Interview Transcript – A Project Guide to UX Design with Russ Unger

Peachpit did a podcast interview with Carolyn Chandler and myself a couple of weeks ago, and I was fortunate enough to be able to transcribe my parts it. Below are my answers to the questions that were asked of us.

You can also listen to this online, or download a copy of the interview from Peachpit Author Talk.

What is user experience design?
In the book we define it broadly as “The creation and synchronization of the elements that affect users’ experience with a particular company (or product), with the intent of influencing their perceptions and behavior”.

That’s true–but I think that most people today tend to focus on the more digital aspects of user experience design; websites, software applications. But really, it gets down to considering all the pieces of the whole. That includes business goals and objectives, user expectations, desires and needs–oh, and what can be done within technical, time and budget constraints. All of this wrapped in the context in which the users would be interacting with it.

That’s not to say that we’re making trade-offs, per se, but that there’s rarely an environment without some degree of friction that presents you from doing what you’d do in a “perfect world”. It’s not just boxes and arrows, mind you. There’s a lot of thinking in the work that user experience designers do.

It’s almost never a perfect situation, but then again, that’s what makes it interesting!

What are some of the problems that arise when considering UX design? What challenges might other team members present?
The biggest problem that I see is when aspects of UX design aren’t considered necessary. In many cases, clients want an “expert on user experience design” to make all the decisions for them, and when they don’t agree with the proposed solutions, they sometimes may strongly suggest that a design behave a certain way–against the advice of the UX Designer. Good UX Designers know what opinions are like, so they’ll recommend that designs should be tested with users–and that step may get overlooked, resulting in a design that is either ill- or uninformed.

As far as other team members, the most frequent challenge that I’ve seen and hear of is lack of collaboration. User experience design doesn’t end when a designer is handed a wireframe, a developer is handed a functional spec and design files–it evolves. User experience designers know this, and they need to be engaged throughout the rest of the phases of the project–we’re flexible and we’re working toward the best end result, not laying down the law in document format. Collaboration helps us improve the experience and presents opportunities for us all to continue to learn from each other.

Who do you think really “gets” user experience design? Who is doing it right?
At the risk of seeming like a fanboy, I’d say that Jesse James Garret and Jared Spool really “get it”. I’ve been fortunate enough to speak to both of them over the course of the past year or so, and if nothing else, they really help me understand how far I have to go.

Jesse and Jared both have spent a lot of time observing and sharing information outward–if not pushing it to us–to pay attention beyond what’s directly in front of us. If you’ve been fortunate enough to see presentations from either of them, not only will it blow your mind, but you’ll find your way of approaching problems a bit different. Jesse and Adaptive Path have put together some pretty fantastic, well-thought and forward-thinking prototypes of web browsers and medical products and Jared has shared the findings of years of research to help us understand “real” behaviors, and the real value of research in the user experience design process.

For good measure, I have to throw in Stephen Anderson, who has given some pretty fantastic presentations around the influence and persuasion of design. He’s also a speaker at the IDEA Conference in Toronto in September this year.

You know who else? Dr. Temple Grandin. She’s written a few books that deal with her experience with Autism, but also how she puts into practice her visual thinking in order to be able to “test run” anything she’s designed. She has a great ability to put empathy into practice, and that’s something user experience designers should all strive to emulate.

Finally, Paul Arden, author of “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be“–it’s a quick and easy read and has so many tenants that are so simple and that just sort of smack you upside the head.

What is one of the most common errors people make when designing for user experience?
There are a couple of things here–for me, when I first started out, I spent a lot more time opening a tool and getting started and then revising the heck out of the product. Now, I’m notorious for walking around with pencils and paper–I sketch everything, several times, prior to even opening up a digital tool and getting to work. And, even then, I find that I make enhancements from my sketching when I’m transferring to digital.

I also think that we tend to forget that our work isn’t about US, but it’s about the work–that is, we should not be taking offense at criticism, but taking feedback that drives us to better designs for our users. I’ve been saying it a bit more lately, and Peter Merholz mentioned it a few years back: The crit–being very critical of our designs, beating them up, taking no prisoners and attacking them, these are the things that will make our designs better in the end. We also get to be the gatekeepers of what we do with the critiques, but there’s a lot of value in even the most negative of comments. We’ve got to be able to face those head-on, and get to the point to where we request, if not require, the feedback prior to putting anything in front of a user or a client.

What advice would you offer others who are just beginning to tackle user experience design?
I believe that all user experience designers are “rotten with imperfection”–every time we get something we lust for, we choose something else to want. User experience design is similar; it does NOT end–once you’ve turned over a great finished product… well, it’s not finished. It’s time to evaluate, update and repeat, because users are pretty “rotten with imperfection”, themselves.

Embrace the rotten-ness. Don’t look forward to the end of a project, look forward to the next opportunity to improve.

Tackle the things you’ve not done before–Robert Hoekman, Jr. asked me what I think “we” are, and I said, “adaptable”. User experience designers need to be just that–it’s a young field. There’s always going to be something you’ve not tried before. Dive in. Fail, fail well, and hopefully fail in the right direction, but don’t stop asking questions and don’t stop learning from your mistakes.

Oh, and get involved in the user experience design community–the Information Architecture Institute, Interaction Design Association, UX Net, Usability Professionals Association and a whole slew of UX Book Clubs are all great organization and are all continually looking for volunteers to support their efforts. Volunteering is a great way to get experience and work with some of the top minds in the field. I can assure you I wouldn’t be where I am today without them, and I doubt I would have found my way to writing a book without being involved.

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A Project Guide to UX Design: Why We Wrote the Book

This is the unedited, unabridged version of what started out as the introduction to the book, but a lot of it got edited out–it made sense to do so, but I think the story is worth telling. –Russ

I’ve been a mentor for the Information Architecture Institute for a couple of years now, and I started to notice a pattern (go figure) amongst the people that I was helping.  Most were either in positions where they were having difficulty landing jobs or they were not aligned with the expectations of prospective employers.  Some had outstanding education, but not always enough practical application of their UX design skills in a project-based setting to help them find ways to become engaged.

Then, I attended the Information Architecture Summit in 2008 and met a lot of new people, including a few people who stopped by the IA Institute’s Mentoring Booth.  The same themes seemed to resonate.  As I spoke to more and more people, it made sense to me that a book like this could be useful to many in the UX design field.

While at the IA Summit, I skipped a session and attended a focus group-like session with Lou Rosenfeld (Rosenfeld Media) and Kevin Cheng to discuss Kevin’s upcoming book “See What I Mean” that will teach you the process of using comics to communicate ideas.  My mind kicked into overdrive and I recall sitting there, trying to add value to the conversation while trying to jot notes onto my phone for future reference.

As is usual when people return from a conference that they got a lot out of, I returned back to Chicago exhausted—and fully energized and ready to take on the world again.  I reviewed my notes and I started creating an outline of what the project process has looked like to me over the years.

Out of the blue, either Carolyn Chandler or myself sent an email to the other, and the topic of my outline came up.  I shared it.  Carolyn sent a response with her own views and opinions.  The outline was revised.  Then descriptions started being created so that the outline made sense to us—and to other people who were kind enough to review what we were creating. Eventually—and by eventually, I mean a few months into the book with Peachpit—we came up with our final outline that became the book that is in your hands today.  Instead of trying to tackle the project alone, I found a very willing and capable co-author who was up to the task.

It was clear to me that Carolyn and I had a degree of overlap and very clear areas where one had more depth and focus than the other.  As you’ll see from the chapters, it was clear to us who fit where.  We set out to create a book to help you move through many of the steps of the project process, including some additional information to help you understand just what the heck the project process is, and a few other morsels that should help you if you are setting out to do this on your own as an independent consultant or a freelancer.

As you’ll see in many chapters of this book, we’re not trying to be everything to all people.  You’ll also see that we’re trying to provide you with the core information and knowledge that you should have to perform many of the duties you’ll be assigned as a UX designer.  You’ll see that beyond our own examples, we’re quick to provide you with examples that help you identify ways to jumpstart the basic materials and allow you to mash-up the information and create something newer, better, or even more suited to your own purposes.

We hope that we’ve done a decent job of articulating that this is a pretty good project approach toward UX design based upon the collaboration of a couple of people who received input from other people to get to where we are today.

We’re nothing, if not constantly trying to learn and improve <whatever we do>, with each iteration.  It’s why, to a degree, we’re in this field.

Welcome to “A Project Guide to UX Design”.

(Coming in March, 2009 on Peachpit Press’ Voices That Matter series)

(Check out the Facebook Group, too!)

Experiencing the Misconceptions of User Experience Design

Information Architecture Institute’s Advisor and UX “it girl” extraordinaire, Whitney Hess authored an article on Mashable yesterday that’s gotten a lot of buzz.  My description of Whitney isn’t facetious; she does a lot for our community to expand awareness and help make splashes where they aren’t being made.

We could all take a page from her book, frankly.

Sometime around Thanksgiving, I got a twitter Direct Message from Whit asking me what I thought was “the biggest misconception in UXD”.

I chuckled because I’d been working through this for a very long time, and I’d been having a number of conversations with Matthew Milan about this very same topic and how I really believe that we sell ourselves short by locking ourselves into “just” the user.

Whitney’s quote from me in the article as follows:

…just about the user

---

Russ Unger, experience design strategist, likes to say that the biggest misconception of UX design is the “U.” “There are a set of business objectives that are needing to be met—and we’re designing to that, as well,” he explains. “We just can’t always do what is best for the users. We have to try to make sure that we are presenting an overall experience that can meet as many goals and needs as possible for the business and the users.”As user experience designers we have to find the sweet spot between the user’s needs and the business goals, and furthermore ensure that the design is on brand.

Whit did a great job of distilling it down; I didn’t expect that what I had sent her would be carved in stone, but I definitely feel that the lengthier version gives a bit more insight and further explains my perspective (and as I mentioned to her, gives me something to blog about, too!).

I sent Whitney the following response:

Biggest misconception?

One of the biggest misconceptions I see is that people are getting too deep into “User” Experience Design.  That is, most times, we are solving a business problem and wrapping something useful and usable around it. There are a set of business objectives that are needing to be met—and we’re designing to that, as well.  In many cases, this forces “User” Experience Designers to choose between the lesser of evils and not really put forth what might be considered (by them) as the best possible solution.  I believe any of us in the field could nitpick on any site or application and make a snap judgment—but we would not know what business objective forced that design decision.

As an example:  I once worked for a large media company that identified banner ads as a revenue stream.  This required a large “island” ad to be placed on the page, and forgive me for even saying this, above the fold (not my requirement).  Some designers rebelled against this, but the way I saw this was that there is an ad on a page that had the potential to bring in enough revenue to pay multiple salaries each year—that’s ultimately a good thing, right?

I see us as Experience Designers, who truly try to provide what is best for a user—while making sure business objectives are met.  Unfortunately, we just can’t always do what is best for the users, so we have to try to make sure that we are presenting an overall experience that can meet as many goals and needs as possible for the business and the users.

Whitney edited this down to fit into her pretty lengthy article–which, by the way, had my name listed amongst people that I’m fortunate enough to be able to say that I’ve met, I’ve had conversations with, I’ve become friends with and who are my heroes in the industry. Author, of course, included, and ranking right up there near the top.

I’m more than a little honored to be amongst those people listed, and I’m flattered to have given a response that was considered insightful enough to be listed.

But, I have to say, I very specifically meant that the U–the USER part–of User Experience Design is one of the misconceptions that I see.

We don’t always have the fortune of working for the Users. We sometimes work for the Business requirements and the business objectives.  We are creating experiences for their users that are compelling the users to buy something.

Look, we’re a cost to companies, and they see it as a needed cost because we have the potential to save them money downstream by working toward the best interests of their users–to meet goals and objectives of the company.

We’re working with all that stuff. We’re working to simplify processes. We sometimes have to pick the lesser of many evils–and we do that, to a degree, for the user.

And the user isn’t always a customer, either.

cus·tom·er

1. One that buys goods or services.
2. Informal An individual with whom one must deal: a tough customer.

That’s far too narrow of a focus–for me.

Sometimes, the user is just a visitor. Sometimes, we identify business processes and/or communication processes (think to yourself how the editorial process might work for a large-scale CMS). Sometimes it’s a consumer–and that doesn’t have to be a customer. Sometimes the user is someone looking for information, and you can rationalize that however you’d like, but it’s not a customer.

Otherwise, it would be often called Customer Experience Design.

From where I sit, and from where I’ll be sitting soon, it’s Experience Design, Experience Strategy and/or Experience Planning. Who we do it for…  That may vary.

We’re always going to try to connect the dots with as much efficiency and clarity as possible, and that’s what is important.

IDEA 2008: An Interview with Andrew Hinton

My second interview with a speaker for the IDEA Conference is with Andrew Hinton. The IDEA Conference is in Chicago from October 7-8 (just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months–or in case this is the first time you’ve ever seen anything I’ve written, as an alternative).

Andrew Hinton, on the other hand, spends most of his time in the Philadelphia-area. I’ve mentioned a few times–to Andrew and others–that he looks astonishingly just like his photo. In this day and age, there are a lot of photos out there that often capture a best side of people that doesn’t seem to exist, but Andrew’s pretty captures exactly him.

It’s really not that big of deal, and I’m not sure why this has amused me for so long, so I’ll apologize and move on to more interesting things–like my interview with Andrew.

For starters, you should know that Andrew Hinton is one of those guys that I often refer to as “so damn smart it that the things he easily discusses often makes my head hurt”.  That’s a compliment, and I consider myself lucky to get to work on this project for IDEA.

Andrew is also a father, and from brief side conversations with him since I’ve had the fortune to make his acquaintance, it is very clear that that particular part of his life is the most important and the part he cherishes the most.  Parenthood is difficult enough with all the rest of life getting in the way, and to be good at being a good parent and finding ways in a world that constantly tries to divide our attention, it can be next to impossible.  This is not only one of the biggest compliments I can pass along, and it is also reason enough for him to earn your respect.

And if you’re fortunate enough to get to see him present, he will sufficiently handle the rest.

I feel as if I’ve lauded enough praise, so now I’ll tease the interview that will be live on Boxes & Arrows later.

RU: What would you recommend to people who are just getting started in the field and who are interested in becoming more active in the industry—or who just want to follow in your footsteps.

AH: It means a lot to get involved in your community of practice. You don’t realize what an impact it makes on people around you, but it’s huge. Find some problem that needs solving that tickles your fancy, some skill or service that the community could benefit from that you get a kick out of working on, and dive in. Lurking is fine at times, but if you want to be “active in the industry” you have to engage. You can engage the conversation at any level, as long as you have a sense of humor & perspective about it. And read all kinds of stuff—don’t just read “design” crap all the time. We all breathe each other’s air way too much, and it’s important to get ideas from outside the UX bubble.

As for my footsteps, I don’t recommend them—mainly because I don’t know that I could’ve walked those steps on purpose if I’d tried. Which is to say, follow what obsesses and excites you, whatever crazy path that might take you down, and there’s probably somebody somewhere willing to pay you for doing it well.

Andrew Hinton will be speaking at the IDEA Conference on the topic of “Context”. You’ll probably want to be in Chicago from October 7-8 to learn more about that.

First 30 commenters get invited to the IDEA BBQ FTW.