A little bit of everything...

Last Tuesday, 6th March, I headed over to City University to attend the first LightningUX event of the year. There was five speakers in total and each person spoke about a topic of their choice.

Sophie Freiermuth began by talking about the many job titles that we hear in our industry ranging from UX Designer to Dev-igner(?!) and how this ambiguity can cause confusion for people who want to employ us.

Francis Norton then spoke about using business strategy as a driver for UCD and suggested that we use metrics to communicate how the services we offer can add real value in terms of the things that businesses care about and can relate to such as risk reduction and return on investment.

Next up Mike Atherton talked about domain modelling. I really enjoyed Mike's presentation at UX Brighton last year so I was looking forward to hearing more. According to Mike, domain modelling is where IA meets Content Strategy. Rather than classifying content by document type, domain modelling breaks down a subject into it's component parts and allows for abstract connections to be made. Content is aggregated and the subsequent cross-linking adds value both for users and SEO. Data is enriched by creating journeys across domains e.g. music can be broken apart into subjects like artist, genre and releases which leads to related topics like tours, venues, set lists and promoters. Through natural, social or editorial curation we can add context that makes information structures meaningful and easy to navigate. My favourite quote from Mike's presentation (and the evening) was "Curation brings human love to a cold, robot heart."

Tim Caynes shared his personal experiences about the UX challenges in designing a mobile wallet and the limitations regarding the framework and infrastructure that is already in place. There are also other matters to consider such as understanding the complex and varied contexts of use and how we can overcome the lack of confidence that users have when they don't yet fully understand how a service actually works.

Lastly, Daniel Soltis talked about designing unfamiliar interfaces and how designers can improve usability and understanding by using clear explanations and familiar patterns, allowing for accidental inputs and providing feedback. Challenges for users include understanding the cause and effect of their actions, physical dexterity (can I actually use this thing?) and determining how much time and effort they are willing to invest in order to overcome the learning curves associated with using novel interfaces. People must be willing and able to learn a new system and this in itself is a challenge for designers.

Thanks to Lee McIvor for organising and to Propel London for sponsoring. Looking forward to next time!

For more information about future events check out the LightningUX website.

All of the presentations have kindly been made available on SlideShare.

Fuelled by a fabulous Brick Lane beigel (cream cheese and bacon - amazing!) myself and Holly Kennedy attended What's Next… in Experience Design, organised and hosted by LBi last Wednesday, 29 February 2012.

The event was focused on looking ahead and trying to identify future trends in user experience design based around five themes: Businesstrategy, Creativitech, Gamentertainment, Mobilemergent and Politicsociety.

Mobilemergent

The first Mobilemergent talk was 'Mobile needs in emerging and submerging economies' by Priya Prakash, Head of Mobile Phone User Experience at Nokia. Priya said that services and tools designed for a global market should be useable regardless of gender, income and location as although people in people use different tools in different locations their needs are universal.

Priya debunked some of the myths about designing for people in emerging economies:

• Its not about the culture or the device. It's about the context.
• Its not about the data. It's the need for entertainment and meeting new people across the globe.
• It's not about being a smartphone alone. It's what it enables you to do faster and easier with longer battery life.
• It's not about spending money for always being on. It's the value you get when you can connect as needed.

Next up I attended 'Mobile Health: Will your design help or harm?' by Sam James, Consultant Psychologist at Harku. Sam said that although self tracker health apps can bring real and meaningful change into the lives of consumers in these situations poor UX can not only be frustrating but potentially harmful.

We need to be aware of who we are designing for and the situation they could be in. Other guidelines included design for feelings of control and reducing fear, design for coping, allow for automated and manual data collection and design for simple ideas of cause and effect - the app may simply allow people to identify a positive trend in exercise and mood.

Businesstrategy

In his talk 'Disruptive digital business models. Darwinism goes digital' Alexander Grünsteidl, Director User Experience at Method, talked about the demise of products that we own and the explosion of services that we use. This trend has shifted our perceptions of value and ownership and access is everywhere at anytime, consequently what has more value - access or ownership?

With the evolution of the web we have seen the extinction of businesses that failed to evolve and meet the changing needs of the current market (this reminded me of Peter Drucker’s ‘Theory of the Business’ in which he states that business assumptions must be frequently reviewed and tested due to the dynamic nature of markets, consumers and technology and that business models, however sound they once were, can become obselete).

Along the way niche opportunities can be uncovered such as The Million Dollar Homepage (a website that sold 1 million pixels of internet advertising space for $1 each) and the One Red Paperclip (whereby one red paperclip was traded up 14 times for a house over a year). There are also game changers like Square (a service that allows you to accept credit card payments with a mobile phone and card reader) and Khan Academy (a service offering free educational videos to anyone anywhere).

Food for thought

My main takeaway is that our role as UX designers is becoming much more strategic and to understand design we must understand business.

We should not be afraid to ask awkward questions to get right to the heart of design challenges. Successful UX designers are curious and have an innate desire to solve problems. The pace of change is relentless and we must adapt and evolve along with new trends and technology.

We need to break down silos and and speak the languages of people around us: the language of design, the language of technology and the language of business.

This is an exciting time to be doing what we're doing and Marcus Mustafa summed it up nicely when he said: 'We should have fun, be engaging and encourage emotions'.

Image: Alexander Grünsteidl talks about disruptive digital business models under the watchful eyes of one of the LBi UX Badgers!

They're not written in a language that I understand but that's OK because they're not talking to me. That said, I still enjoy trying to "read" them!

1. Create stories that unfold over time. Don Norman expressed the value in designing systems rather than components. What we want now is beauty, pleasure and fun, things that we can engage with - a total experience. Moments are quickly forgotten but experiences stay with us and if we enjoyed them we want to repeat them.
2. Design the spaces inbetween things. Kelly Goto suggested that we think the spaces in between things, the connecting components that make a system that creates an experience. People develop attachments to brands and products. Think beyond usable, think emotional.
3. The most powerful tools are the ones that allow us to create something new. People don’t always want a perfect end product, they want something that they can put their own identity on, something that can be personalised and made unique. People like to play and create. As Stephanie Rieger said, there will always be somebody who puts a gnome in your zen garden!
4. Collaborate and keep your perspective. Get input from all around, work in a cross-platform team. The tools we are shaping now will define the future, have your say and contribute.
5. Make constellations out of stars. Frank Chimero left me thinking about everything I favourite, like, star or bookmark and how all of this contributes to my trail on the web and it's potential value if I could just retrieve the data from it's various silos and connect it somehow. The web is very good as helping us to information get in, but how do we get it back out?

Lots of food for thought and I'm still processing everything that I heard. Oh, and the after party beers, wines and discussions were pretty awesome too!

Last week I attended the first of hopefully many meetups covering all aspects of user and design research organised by The Research Thing and hosted by Fortune Cookie.

The technique covered in this event was Diary Studies and there were three presentations: "Diary studies: A primer" by Boon Chew which gave a good introduction to this method of research followed by a run through of the benefits and pitfalls based upon his own experience, "Diary studies: Alternative approaches" by Lee McIvor which provided further insight into the advantages and disadvantages of carrying out paper versus digital diary studies and lastly Beth Duddy talked about her experience of using Posterous to carry out a diary study.

So, what is a diary study?

A diary study is a qualitative method of research that gathers insight over a period of time. Participants record events or activities in their own environment and this data is then collated and analysed by a researcher. Diary studies can provide an insight into the behaviour of participants and the context and environment that triggers certain activities. They can highlight rare and infrequent events and can be carried out remotely without the need for continuous direct observation.

Here are my takeaways:

1. Paper diaries are a familiar concept to most people so little or no training is required beforehand and people can start recording their activities straightaway. Entries can consist of notes, sketches, diagrams and lists. Paper diaries can be time-intensive to monitor and there is a potential delay before you see any entries so it can be worthwhile asking your participants to return entries back to you on a regular basis so that they can be moderated. The researcher can then provide feedback to ensure that the right kind of information is being recorded.
2. Digital diary studies allows you to gather data in multiple formats such as text, photographs, video and audio. Activity can be recorded and received in real-time which can make moderation easier and has the added benefit of allowing the researcher to feedback directly to the participant as and when necessary using the same tools. Conversely, a purely digital diary study may be a barrier for some audiences and there are limitations in the types of data that can be recorded e.g. no sketches. Data may not always be recorded instantly and recording activities after they happened may lead to important details being omitted and forgotten (this is also a potential pitfall with paper diaries). As such the most rich and insightful diary study may well require a combination of methods that is based upon the type of participants and the activity that is being researched.
3. During the study the researcher can keep participants on track by giving them reminders and feedback. It is often beneficial to provide progressive incentives to maintain participation. On-going moderation will allow the researcher to ensure that they are collecting useful data and allows for opportunities to re-evaluate the format of the study and the tasks being recorded. Having multiple participants means that there will be different styles of reporting so it's important to be clear about what you are looking for in order to get useful material to evaluate.
4. The amount of data gathered could potentially overwhelm the researcher so it is important to talk to participants beforehand, ideally face-to-face. This session can be used to introduce yourself, set expectations, explain when data should be recorded (at random times, specific intervals, based on activity), what sort of data should be recorded (activity, triggers, motivations, feelings, procedures, environment - let participants know that no detail is too small to record) and how the data can be recorded (text, sketches, video, audio, photographs, blog). This is also a good opportunity to make sure that your participants are comfortable with the tools that they will be using and you can also give them some examples of type of information that you are looking for.
5. Once all of the data has been collected stories of interest can be mapped out and patterns identified. This information makes a great starting point for follow-up one-to-one interviews where key events and activities can be discussed in more detail.

I enjoyed the evening and left with an understanding of the benefits and limitations of diary studies and can see how, for the right type of study, they could be used to gather effective insight into behaviour and activity.

Many thanks to the organisers and speakers. See you at the next event!

 I recently attended Speaking About Design, a meetup about Android tablet design hosted by The London Android Group (Londroid) at TechHub on 23 February, 2011.

Presentations and speakers

• Greg Taylor; Head of UX at the digital design agency TigerSpike
• Really fast wireframes - Kevin McDonagh; Novoda
• Honeycomb UI Patterns - Nick Butcher; Android developer advocate at Google

This event was of particular interest to me as it's theme was the partnership between designers and developers. After three very relevant presentations I came away with a new platform and OS to think about.

Here are a few takeaways...

Tablet devices offer immersive experiences

Designing for a tablet is very different to designing for web and mobile. Tablets allow us to exercise our primal urge to move things around with our hands. They are predominantly used at home in the evenings and it's likely that you will be focused on a particular task. This differs from smart phones where we often have lots going on at once and dip in and out of apps as we go. All useful insights to bear in mind when designing.

In addition tablets are:

• Portable; we can use them whenever and wherever we like, unrestricted by the need for tools and other paraphernalia
• Consumable; we use them to absorb visually data such as news, photos and video
• Personal; we might let others have a play but at the end of the day it's our Facebook and Twitter accounts that are linked to the device and our own personal data that's stored on it
• Fun!

Gestural languages

A gestural language is evolving and patterns are developing. People are getting used to certain gestures producing certain results, for example the pinch zoom. It's important to know and utilise these patterns as we expect certain things to happen and it can be very frustrating when a gesture that does one thing on one app produces a totally outcome on another.

Android Honeycomb 3.0

The recently released Android Honeycomb 3.0 has been optimised for tablet devices and includes smoother transitions and animations, support for multi-touch gestures, new widgets (including some great looking stacks) and drag and drop features. Rather than accessing other pages, actions and options from a menu, Honeycomb 3.0 has introduced an "Action Bar" UI element at the top of the screen that can be customised with different options depending on which application you're using.

"Fragments are your friends"

(Some good advice from Nick Butcher!) Tablets can be rotated and used in any orientation that you like so this should be considered when designing. Some orientations are better suited to a task than others and you should optimise your design to make the most of each orientation. When designing think about separating content into fragments, the layout and relative proportion of which adjust on rotation. Fragments allow you to scroll through certain sections of content independently of others, useful for lists and sidebars against a main panel with full, expanded content.

The Honeycomb GMail app is an excellent exponent of this; in landscape mode you have a sidebar inbox panel that disappears when you rotate the device into a portrait position. This layout is often favoured for long-form reading as it provides the reader with a less cluttered interface. The sidebar can be easily retrieved by clicking the sidebar arrow that appears in this view. This latest release also allows you to drag and drop emails into folders.

Related articles

First Impressions Using Android Honeycomb, Google's iPad Rival (TechCrunch)
Honeycomb Hands-on: Why Android 3.0 is Seriously Sweet (LAPTOP Magazine)