All great inventions emerge from a long sequence of small sparks; the first idea often isn’t all that good, but thanks to collaboration it later sparks another idea, or it’s reinterpreted in an unexpected way. Collaboration brings small sparks together to generate breakthrough innovations.
~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Blog
Iteration, Collaboration & Innovation
May 24th, 2010 | by Brie Anne Demkiw
Designing for Situations
May 12th, 2010 | by Brie Anne Demkiw“When we think only in terms of inherent traits and forget the role of situations, we’re deceiving ourselves about the real causes of human behavior.” ~Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Whether you call it user experience design, user-centered design, or human-computer interaction, there is always a strong emphasis on the person and how they behave. This makes it very easy to get caught up in demographics and perceived consistent behaviors. By “consistent behaviors” I mean that we tend to think that behavioral traits in a person, such as introversion, are present regardless of the situation. However, there are numerous studies that indicate the exact opposite — that our behaviors are incredibly inconsistent and very sensitive to the situation and environment. The situation we are in not only effects how we think about things, it also plays a major role in how we conduct ourselves and how we make decisions.
In user experience design, making blanket statements about behavioral traits (e.g. “Jane is an introvert”) can lead to wrong assumptions about how this person will use a product you are designing. All you have to do is look at the self-proclaimed introvert who is extremely active on social networks to see how situational changes can drastically effect behavior. It is incredibly important to design for situations, not just for demographics or so-called personality traits. Don’t just design for user x, design for user x in situation y.
Eliminate Jargon?, or Use Jargon to Eliminate?
May 6th, 2010 | by Brie Anne DemkiwRead almost any list of “top 10″ usability mistakes and you will most likely find a warning about using jargon. This is one of the first usability issues I learned about in college when I was studying (jargon warning) Human-Computer Interaction. But like most usability rules, this one does not apply in all cases.
Enter Rockstar Group, a management consultant firm that goes out of their way to use marketing jargon — many terms coined by industry leader Seth Godin. Their website includes terms such as “The Dip”, “Magic Quadrant”, and “Tribes”, with no noted definition or explanation. What’s interesting about these terms/phrases is that Rockstar uses them to their advantage, weeding out users who most likely don’t fit the audience they are targeting. If you don’t understand what “The Dip” is, you would likely be wasting both your time and their’s by contacting them. They don’t want to educate their clients on these terms and ideas, they instead focus on simply providing results. Rockstar Group’s ideal clients already know these terms, and are therefore more likely to be in line with their business philosophy. Users who don’t know these terms will likely be confused enough to not contact them, disqualifying themselves from the targeted group.
The lesson? You know those times when are contacted about your product or services by people who are simply not a good fit? That’s most likely your fault. Use your website to help those people eliminate themselves as a potential client before they bother to contact you. Rockstar Group found a way to speak to their real target audience in a meaningful way, while making it clear to other site visitors that they would not likely be a good fit for the services they provide.
UX in the Real World
March 11th, 2010 | by Brie Anne DemkiwAlthough the concept of “customer experience” or “service design” isn’t particularly new (except in terminology), it is a very rare pleasure to find companies that really embraces this idea.
One such company that I often refer to when giving an example of UX in the “real” world is Stone Brewing Company. During my most recent visit to their bistro, I tweeted a picture of my amazing dessert (Strawberry Blue Cheese Jalapeno Cheesecake). Minutes later, the CEO and co-founder of Stone Brewery, Greg Koch, came up to our table asking if I was the one who had just tweeted about the cheesecake. He explained that he was on his way out of the office and had seen my tweet, and wanted to come over to say hi. We chatted for a few minutes, took a fun picture, and, after he left, our server informed us that he had just comped my dessert!
Although Greg has now provided me with a concrete example of the power of Twitter (which I definitely intend to continue using), the more important concept here has nothing to do with Twitter. Twitter was not the reason this happened, it simply acted as the medium which initiated it. This experience was really the result of Stone’s strong business values, including a true and authentic appreciation of their fans — a model that other companies should strive to match in everything they do, both online and off. (Like we needed another reason to drink Stone beer.)
Bridging the UX Gap
February 9th, 2010 | by Chris BourgaultWhat happens when your company/industry leaves a gap in the User Experience of their products and/or services?
Often, a “bridge-builder” seizes the opportunity to step in, and rightfully meet the demands of the users. Indeed, if there is enough demand for this bridge to be built, whole companies can sprout-up and thrive from its daily use.
Companies such as Mint Software Inc. and 37 Signals have, in a sense, become bridge-builders, building the bridge between offerings of existing industry software and those distinct needs and expectations of software users.
Any bank small or large, had an opportunity (seized by Mint) to offer clients useful and intuitive budgeting, expenditure/investment tracking, and debt-reducing features. In fact, such a bank, through such an offering, could have significantly enhanced its competitive strength. Now – such banks are literally paying Mint to advertise to their users.
Jason Fried – Co-founder, 37signals mused recently “I love that small businesses don’t have to use crappy software anymore…I love to be able to build software for them…A lot of big companies, they take their big flagship product and… pull a bunch of sh!t out of it and call it small business software – which is an insult to small businesses… – We get to hear how our products are changing their lives.”
Rest assured, there are significant benefits to meeting the needs of your users, if you are unable or unwilling to capitalize on the opportunity, others will.
UX Health Check: Hacks
November 12th, 2009 | by Brie Anne DemkiwSo…your product’s been on the market for a few months now, and it’s just come to your attention that someone had the nerve to build a hack for it. You may be thinking to yourself: hacks are just “cheats”, work-arounds developed by rogue, fringe users — but if someone went out of their way to create an add-on, shortcut, or alternative use of your product, what’s really going on here?
If people are building hacks, your product most likely has a UX problem in one (or more) of the following ways:
- Usability – Your product is too hard to use, so someone took on the task of making it easier to use.
- Usefulness – Your product is not actually useful to your audience without the addition of certain features, rearrangement of the work-flow, etc.
- Overlooked Target Audience – You may have set out to build a product for group x, but someone from group y discovered that (with a little tweaking) the product works very well, maybe even better, for their purposes.
If you’re in this situation already, consider it a learning experience: a chance to improve your product and/or an opportunity to capitalize on a new market segment. So someone went out and found a better way to use your product, make it more useful, or reinvent it for an undiscovered audience? Hopefully, next time this someone will be you.
Dear Google: please fix your login box
October 22nd, 2009 | by Brie Anne DemkiwThe Google account login has been a thorn in my side for quite some time. It is a usability nightmare and here’s why:
- It breaks the browser password saver – Rather than a simple login form, Google uses Ajax to authenticate your login credentials before moving on to the next page, making it so most browsers are unable to store your password. Note: This is also a completely unnecessary use of Ajax.
- If you have multiple accounts, you have to re-login each time – Like many users, I have a few different Google account logins — a few business accounts and one personal. The thing is, I use one account for Google Voice and Google Wave, and the another one for Google Analytics. This means that each time I switch services, I have to log out of one account and log into another. And again. And again. And again. Oh and don’t forget your passwords are not saved in the browser for each switch. Major fail.
- It forces you to login to all services for an account, but doesn’t make it easy to get from one to the other – If you are going to treat it like an integrated system, treat it like an integrated system!
My suggestions are simple: kill the Ajax and allow for easy switching between accounts (like this GreaseMonkey hack already does).
These are the types of user experience issues you expect from a newbie playing around with Ajax, not Google. Observing just a few users while they try logging into their accounts would make it clear that the current login system is an issue.
Want to create better products? Be open-minded.
October 14th, 2009 | by Brie Anne Demkiw“The greatest designers are those who can change their minds exceptionally well.” – Chris Fahey, quoted in an article for UX Matters by Whitney Hess.
To create great products, you must have an open mind. If you are not willing to accept new ideas — or data that contradicts your current point of view — you will fail to find the best solution. If you are too attached to a particular design, you will fall victim to it and find yourself unable to see the potential of other viable ideas.
In user experience design, we often practice something called “parallel design”: we have multiple designers try to come up with a solution for the same problem, completely independent of one another. The result is a wider array of potential solutions that are uninfluenced by the others. But this exercise requires that each designer can 1) defend their design (“this is why I think this works”), and 2) be open-minded enough to change their mind if another solution (or an element of another solution) is better.
Failure to see the value of another solution will only lead to inferior design, and consequently, an inferior product.
Your job: make your customers feel smart
October 6th, 2009 | by Brie Anne DemkiwAs Donald Norman stated in his book, Things That Make Us Smart, “The power of the unaided mind is highly overrated. Without external aids, memory, thought, and reasoning are all constrained…The real powers come from devising external aids that enhance cognitive abilities.”
Why is usability such a major aspect of the user experience of a product? Because an easy-to-use product makes a user feel smart.
When someone can sit down to a new software application and just use it, without reading any documentation, without watching an intro video, either consciously or subconsciously, they will feel smart. This “smart” feeling creates a positive emotional attachment to your product, creating a better user experience, and helping keep that user as a customer.
Now, does your product or service make your customers feel smart?
Categorization is what the mind does
October 5th, 2009 | by Brie Anne DemkiwIn an article about how infants think before they learn words, Lisa Oakes, a developmental researcher at UC Davis Center for the Mind and Brain, stated, “Categorization is what the mind does. To learn categories is the fundamental way that the mind deals with too much information.”
That said, how much time did you spend thinking about and planning for the information architecture (i.e. categorization) of your website or application?
Good categorization (based on your specific target audience and how they think), lessens the “mental energy” needed to navigate your site, making it easier to use and creating a more enjoyable experience.
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