Part One: The reality of what's out there
We want instant gratification
It's cheap and easy to switch providers
Little white lies
3.6 million US adults in 2007 lost $3.2 billion between 2006 and 2007 in identity theft
Remembering account details is difficult
Part Two: Improving the essence of registration
Immersive Registration
Connect with your users
Ask only necessary questions
Only use unique IDs if necessary - communication, banking & finance - no meaningful need for a unique ID for commerce transactions
Use email or another common ID
Respect your user's locale
Use CATPTCHA wisely (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart)
Provide audio version for the visually impaired
Allow user to request a different image
Beware of color-blindness limitations
Use CAPTCHA to protect commodities like usernames
Part Three: Dealing with forgotten credentials
Register --> Use --> Forget
Account recovery mechanisms
Email
Sends email with current or temporary password
Quickest method
Assumes user controls their email account
Challenge
Asks for answer to a secret question in order to reset password
Prone to repeated errors
Works best when account information is up-to-date
Predefined questions often have easy-to-guess answers
Custom questions often contain, describe, or state the answer
Forensic
Confirms account activity and details in order to reset password
Verified actions only known by the account owner
Safest method
Most difficult to implement
Email recovery tips
Put the user in control
Think of life events
Be flexible
Allow alternate paths
Summary
Mindset
User want to retain their privacy and may be worried about iD theft
Registration
Build a relationship prior to registration
Be personable - use humor if appropriate
Explain the value of questions if they may be seen as out of context
Use an immersive registration process when possible
Account recovery
Put the user in control of account recovery
Remind users that their account may contain old information
Use human support when possible
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Information Horizons: a new technique
Users information behavior - what are the users information needs and goal, what is the content that is relevant, and what are the patterns that provide the ability to meet those needs?
Beyond this, what is the context this fits within? What are the users understanding of the web site and how does it compare to other sites?
So this technique is designed to bridge these two, at a inexpensive cost and low learning curve.
Need a better approach to get at this bigger picture than focus groups.
Information Horizons approach.
Based on book published in 2005. Theory proposed by Diane Sanderburg. They took this concept from the theory and developed a method to use it.
Format 1 interviewee, 1 interviewer.
Equipment: 1 large posterboard, markers to draw on the board
Steps:
1 - draw yourself in the middle of the paper. Provide the context you are asking for - do not provide specific type or site or anything - similar to a scenario. So "Recall an incident where you were trying to find information on a company"
Then have them talk about the experience, have them tell you a story.
Use the paper to show the resources. Use one color for these resources.
2 - change colors, and expand the experience - generalize the experience. By starting with a specific situation, you ground the context in reality. Now you are expanding into a more general situation, so they will do a better job. Add the target site at this point. Probe on it a bit.
3 - now probe onto the surprising serendipitous places they find information. Places that they look or found information elsewhere that was unexpected.
Analysis - look for where the target site appears in the drawing, early or late. You are gathering contextual information around this.
Detailed analysis - review recorded sessions, do content analysis, look for major themes.
This looks like a simple technique we could bring inside and start to use. I will ask the presenters for their slides.
Beyond this, what is the context this fits within? What are the users understanding of the web site and how does it compare to other sites?
So this technique is designed to bridge these two, at a inexpensive cost and low learning curve.
Need a better approach to get at this bigger picture than focus groups.
Information Horizons approach.
Based on book published in 2005. Theory proposed by Diane Sanderburg. They took this concept from the theory and developed a method to use it.
Format 1 interviewee, 1 interviewer.
Equipment: 1 large posterboard, markers to draw on the board
Steps:
1 - draw yourself in the middle of the paper. Provide the context you are asking for - do not provide specific type or site or anything - similar to a scenario. So "Recall an incident where you were trying to find information on a company"
Then have them talk about the experience, have them tell you a story.
Use the paper to show the resources. Use one color for these resources.
2 - change colors, and expand the experience - generalize the experience. By starting with a specific situation, you ground the context in reality. Now you are expanding into a more general situation, so they will do a better job. Add the target site at this point. Probe on it a bit.
3 - now probe onto the surprising serendipitous places they find information. Places that they look or found information elsewhere that was unexpected.
Analysis - look for where the target site appears in the drawing, early or late. You are gathering contextual information around this.
Detailed analysis - review recorded sessions, do content analysis, look for major themes.
This looks like a simple technique we could bring inside and start to use. I will ask the presenters for their slides.
Becoming a UX Coach
This is focused on being a consultant and coaching your clients. Not really very focused on us, aside from our relationship with HFI.
Can feel like we have hit a brick wall within the practice. Not making a giant leap in impact.
The traditional approach to management has its roots in an autocratic command and control approach. This is imprinted in us in elementary school and we expect it.
Coaching is more like counseling, so will not always work. It requires two way communication and willingness to work together.
Business acumen - we get MBA's to help us learn their language.
Frustrating thing is this never seems to go away, we always have to explain what it is that we do, why it is needed.
Transformational Coaching: What?
The are of assisting people to enhance their effectiveness in a way they feel helped.
When?
Need to be seen as a partner, not a provider.
How does this work?
Coaching Steps
1st step: grow
Set a goal + reality which maps to Research + Discovery - seek first to understand (Covey)
Tools for UX work that help at this stage: usability testing, card sorting, analytics, competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation
Option + will maps to Alignment.
Tools for UX - get commitment to make changes.
2nd step: Modeling, training, simulation
UX - teach others to do the usability testing.
3rd step: Gestalt - mind shift from doing to being
UX - listening and planning together.
4th step: Relationship building
5th step: Trust and Honesty
Trusted advisor
The heart of transformation
1 changing mindsets
Think less like a boss and more like a coach.
2 ego stuff
move from an ego driven state to a centered state
3 becoming more centered
4 a matter of style
collaborating, creating , clarifying, conducting - I am a creating person.
Creating
Strengths - enthusiastic, creative
Weakness - poor attention to detail
4 generational style
5 leadership by example + self disclosure
"what you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say"
So the second part is very applicable to what I do, and where we are headed. Check references.
Presentation at nform.ca/blog or slideshare.net
yvonne.shek@nform.ca
Can feel like we have hit a brick wall within the practice. Not making a giant leap in impact.
The traditional approach to management has its roots in an autocratic command and control approach. This is imprinted in us in elementary school and we expect it.
Coaching is more like counseling, so will not always work. It requires two way communication and willingness to work together.
Business acumen - we get MBA's to help us learn their language.
Frustrating thing is this never seems to go away, we always have to explain what it is that we do, why it is needed.
Transformational Coaching: What?
The are of assisting people to enhance their effectiveness in a way they feel helped.
When?
Need to be seen as a partner, not a provider.
How does this work?
Coaching Steps
1st step: grow
Set a goal + reality which maps to Research + Discovery - seek first to understand (Covey)
Tools for UX work that help at this stage: usability testing, card sorting, analytics, competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation
Option + will maps to Alignment.
Tools for UX - get commitment to make changes.
2nd step: Modeling, training, simulation
UX - teach others to do the usability testing.
3rd step: Gestalt - mind shift from doing to being
UX - listening and planning together.
4th step: Relationship building
5th step: Trust and Honesty
Trusted advisor
The heart of transformation
1 changing mindsets
Think less like a boss and more like a coach.
2 ego stuff
move from an ego driven state to a centered state
3 becoming more centered
4 a matter of style
collaborating, creating , clarifying, conducting - I am a creating person.
Creating
Strengths - enthusiastic, creative
Weakness - poor attention to detail
4 generational style
5 leadership by example + self disclosure
"what you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say"
So the second part is very applicable to what I do, and where we are headed. Check references.
Presentation at nform.ca/blog or slideshare.net
yvonne.shek@nform.ca
Designing for the anti social
Miles Rochford miles.rochford@gmail.com
IA since 2002, designing for the last 10 years working for Nokia.
Begins with the Panopticon model of prison. We are in the process of creating a social panopticon. We are allowing others to view us and we don't know when they are watching us or what they will do with it.
Ubiquity
Everywhere for everyone. We are always on-line. Consumption spreads faster today.
Eternity
Technology doesn't last forever.
By default, digital content is cheap to acquire, easy to keep and able to be rediscovered.
It now has distributed persistence.
Serendipity is a fairy-tale, it is magic.
You don't find it, it finds you.
Ambient Serendipity is discovering happy social coincidences.
Mediated serendipity is an attempt to create social luck, to generate joyful coincidences.
Bottom line: this is the environment we are building these social environments.
This presentation
Why do we share ourselves?
What implications does this have for design?
What can IAs do to create better social systems?
Facebook feed story - in the middle of a presentation, he needed to demo Facebook, and had not been on the site for a few days, so had no idea what would be in the feed. This led to this presentation.
Sharing the self
To live longer. Or at least long enough to pass on your genes.
Why share online?
Public vs Private space
Privacy used to be physical. Social delay controlled the speed of information distribution.
Sharing was about entering a physical space.
Venn diagram of private / public and semi-public semi-private
Consequences
Sharing information had consequences - it always has had, it always will have.
Social networks make it easier to share information and harder to control the distribution of information.
The great preponderance of people who are designing social functionality are not aware that is what they are doing.
Enter the IA
Making connections is what we do.
We can encourage positive outcomes through persuasive design.
Designing for the [anti-]social.
Story of uploading a photo to flickr of having a beer, boss sees it on the flickr stream, comments on it. Gets back to them via cell phone.
Unintended consequences
Can be positive or negative.
Surfacing possible consequences can help people think about negative effects.
Designers need to be more outcome-aware.
Gaming a system is a way of forcing an unintended consequence.
Ambient intimacy now seen as ambient exposure.
Harmlessness
Default to harmlessness
Provide ways of reducing the risk and extent of harm, through time delays and sensible defaults.
Different people have different ways of assessing risk and judging harmfulness.
Ensure all actors in a system are harmless.
Balance of community risk, versus individual risk.
Reciprocity
One of the most powerful human behaviours.
Lurking and stalking are often undesirable, but not everyone is a contributor.
"Bartersharing" as a form of social contract mutual sharing behavior to manage privacy.
Karma is a very good thing.
Deniability
Everyone lies. Around 25% of the time.
We all know that people lie, we don't need to be told.
'Plausible deniability' lest us create alternative explanations - often involving time and location.
Granularity
Use different ways of looking at the same information to preserve privacy and usefulness.
Blurring zooming and anonymizing can all provide benefits for privacy.
Accountability
Empower users to be accountable for their data.
Let users own their data.
Make their actions visible.
Example of flickr and photos, should use the highest level of privacy of the people in the photo, not just the photo taker.
23andme - genetics personal social network.
Emergence
Allow people to apply their own meaning.
Support emergent behaviour through flexible design, open APIs and social platforms
People can be evil.
We need evil personas to establish goals and design system to keep them from achieving their goals.
Difference
We are all individuals.
People are different, in diverse ways.
Supporting difference requires empathy.
Language is loaded with semantic meaning, especially for relationships and emotions.
We encode prejudice into our systems, without even thinking.
Think globally
Showed that the average avatar in second life consumes more power than the average person in Brazil.
Summary
Think about the consequences.
Embrace the social.
Practice empathy.
Be human.
Slides will be at http://slideshare.net/rochford
miles.rochford@gmail.com
Podcast will be up at Boxes and Arrows in the fairly near future.
IA since 2002, designing for the last 10 years working for Nokia.
Begins with the Panopticon model of prison. We are in the process of creating a social panopticon. We are allowing others to view us and we don't know when they are watching us or what they will do with it.
Ubiquity
Everywhere for everyone. We are always on-line. Consumption spreads faster today.
Eternity
Technology doesn't last forever.
By default, digital content is cheap to acquire, easy to keep and able to be rediscovered.
It now has distributed persistence.
"Remembering everything is strangely similar to forgetting everything."Serendipity
Serendipity is a fairy-tale, it is magic.
You don't find it, it finds you.
Ambient Serendipity is discovering happy social coincidences.
Mediated serendipity is an attempt to create social luck, to generate joyful coincidences.
Bottom line: this is the environment we are building these social environments.
This presentation
Why do we share ourselves?
What implications does this have for design?
What can IAs do to create better social systems?
Facebook feed story - in the middle of a presentation, he needed to demo Facebook, and had not been on the site for a few days, so had no idea what would be in the feed. This led to this presentation.
Sharing the self
"We find reasons to do things, and reasons to do things together."Why be social?
To live longer. Or at least long enough to pass on your genes.
Why share online?
Looking at - social surveillanceNotes from CHI 2008 paper
Looking for - growing the social graph
Keeping up - active or passive belonging
Public vs Private space
Privacy used to be physical. Social delay controlled the speed of information distribution.
Sharing was about entering a physical space.
Venn diagram of private / public and semi-public semi-private
Consequences
Sharing information had consequences - it always has had, it always will have.
Social networks make it easier to share information and harder to control the distribution of information.
The great preponderance of people who are designing social functionality are not aware that is what they are doing.
Enter the IA
Making connections is what we do.
We can encourage positive outcomes through persuasive design.
Designing for the [anti-]social.
Story of uploading a photo to flickr of having a beer, boss sees it on the flickr stream, comments on it. Gets back to them via cell phone.
Unintended consequences
Can be positive or negative.
Surfacing possible consequences can help people think about negative effects.
Designers need to be more outcome-aware.
Gaming a system is a way of forcing an unintended consequence.
Ambient intimacy now seen as ambient exposure.
Harmlessness
Default to harmlessness
Provide ways of reducing the risk and extent of harm, through time delays and sensible defaults.
Different people have different ways of assessing risk and judging harmfulness.
Ensure all actors in a system are harmless.
Balance of community risk, versus individual risk.
Reciprocity
One of the most powerful human behaviours.
Lurking and stalking are often undesirable, but not everyone is a contributor.
"Bartersharing" as a form of social contract mutual sharing behavior to manage privacy.
Karma is a very good thing.
Deniability
Everyone lies. Around 25% of the time.
We all know that people lie, we don't need to be told.
'Plausible deniability' lest us create alternative explanations - often involving time and location.
Granularity
Use different ways of looking at the same information to preserve privacy and usefulness.
Blurring zooming and anonymizing can all provide benefits for privacy.
Accountability
Empower users to be accountable for their data.
Let users own their data.
Make their actions visible.
Example of flickr and photos, should use the highest level of privacy of the people in the photo, not just the photo taker.
23andme - genetics personal social network.
Emergence
Allow people to apply their own meaning.
Support emergent behaviour through flexible design, open APIs and social platforms
People can be evil.
We need evil personas to establish goals and design system to keep them from achieving their goals.
Difference
We are all individuals.
People are different, in diverse ways.
Supporting difference requires empathy.
Language is loaded with semantic meaning, especially for relationships and emotions.
We encode prejudice into our systems, without even thinking.
Think globally
Showed that the average avatar in second life consumes more power than the average person in Brazil.
Summary
Think about the consequences.
Embrace the social.
Practice empathy.
Be human.
Slides will be at http://slideshare.net/rochford
miles.rochford@gmail.com
Podcast will be up at Boxes and Arrows in the fairly near future.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
What do innovative intranets look like
Intranets
Four key purposes of an intranet
Content – done a lot with this and we’ve got a lot of content
Communication channel – we’ve done ok, we’ve got a clear focus, more work to be done but it’s a good start
Collaboration – big topic now, wikis or RSS or blogs. How do we do this that doesn’t make the intranet worse in the long run? We should be talking more about this topic.
Activity – the intranet should be a place to do things and not just read.
Most of our focus has been on content and communication. This is not useful enough and we need to work with the other factors to create true ROI.
We need to shift our focus to Collaboration and activity to close the gap in the difference. Get them to something and get them to complete a task.
A good intranet should have balance across all 4 aspects.
Fiat Example
Had problems and there were cultural problems
So they created “Fast and Forward” – a program to help managers and staff change culture. Learn and build leadership skills.
For instance, they earned credits for completing managerial tasks.
Had leader boards. This was not mandatory and there were no rewards or punishment. Just ranking.
They were able to point to the plan and credit it for the turnaround.
City of Casey Example
Small team and intranet team of 1.
Intranet has a brand and every site should. The brand matches the culture and it matches their physical team.
Has a quick staff directory. Use ajax to show staff on search using type ahead. Shows phone number, status and other details. Don’t need to click search to get basic information.
Has a map of staff directory. Users add their own location. Users can click on who’s near me and get the staff near including pictures and phone numbers. “Some of the best innovations are the ones you don’t notice.”
Environment Agency (UK)
Developed personas for their site. Thorough persona (showing desk, nice touch) Engaging persona. Targeted for authors to deliver better content. But they found out that it was great for stakeholders and managers. They acknowledge that they should have used them earlier.
QBE Insurance
They created a wizard for fraudulent claims. This process historically had been ad-hoc. The developed a simple application for the collecting of this information. Wizard was tables and changed based on their answers and then it spit out a form for them to print or e-mail.
Four key purposes of an intranet
Content – done a lot with this and we’ve got a lot of content
Communication channel – we’ve done ok, we’ve got a clear focus, more work to be done but it’s a good start
Collaboration – big topic now, wikis or RSS or blogs. How do we do this that doesn’t make the intranet worse in the long run? We should be talking more about this topic.
Activity – the intranet should be a place to do things and not just read.
Most of our focus has been on content and communication. This is not useful enough and we need to work with the other factors to create true ROI.
We need to shift our focus to Collaboration and activity to close the gap in the difference. Get them to something and get them to complete a task.
A good intranet should have balance across all 4 aspects.
Fiat Example
Had problems and there were cultural problems
So they created “Fast and Forward” – a program to help managers and staff change culture. Learn and build leadership skills.
For instance, they earned credits for completing managerial tasks.
Had leader boards. This was not mandatory and there were no rewards or punishment. Just ranking.
They were able to point to the plan and credit it for the turnaround.
City of Casey Example
Small team and intranet team of 1.
Intranet has a brand and every site should. The brand matches the culture and it matches their physical team.
Has a quick staff directory. Use ajax to show staff on search using type ahead. Shows phone number, status and other details. Don’t need to click search to get basic information.
Has a map of staff directory. Users add their own location. Users can click on who’s near me and get the staff near including pictures and phone numbers. “Some of the best innovations are the ones you don’t notice.”
Environment Agency (UK)
Developed personas for their site. Thorough persona (showing desk, nice touch) Engaging persona. Targeted for authors to deliver better content. But they found out that it was great for stakeholders and managers. They acknowledge that they should have used them earlier.
QBE Insurance
They created a wizard for fraudulent claims. This process historically had been ad-hoc. The developed a simple application for the collecting of this information. Wizard was tables and changed based on their answers and then it spit out a form for them to print or e-mail.
Developing Junior Programs in UX
Developing Junior Programs in UX
Panel of:
Mags Hanley
Karen Loasby
Henning Fischer
Design your ideal junior using paper -mine looks like:
Job title: Intern
Duration: 1 year, part time during school year
Attributes: flexible, eager to learn; intelligent; diligent; humble
Skills & Experience: Customer service, exposure to topics, had a IA class, had lab test class
Education: BS if in Master's program. in progress in BS with a degree in field
Expectation: wants experience, looking to grow.
Discussion around these items. Very different concepts from mine.
BBC program
Karen Loasby
15 junior IAs since 2002
2 juniors in a team of 16, but first when team only 3.
Why?
difficult recruitment market for everyone
demand exceeds supply
BBC is special
Public Service
training is heavy investment
"Contributing to the development of the wider UK internet sector."
Benefits for BBC
Very little competition for juniors
built in loyalty
reduced salary bill
train our way
fresh ideas from academia
enthusiasm
Finding People
work experience scheme - unpaid, 2 - 3 weeks on projects
other BBC teams "we pillage other teams"
contacts
advertising on our websites
interview: short test & 1 hr interview
The role
take noes in usability testing, help organize tests, prepare wireframes, sort out daa for prototypes and tests, write up notes from workshops, taxonomy development, search and server log analysis, collecting screenshots for competitive reviews . . .
"Develop work that they can do for a long period of time, but with a short
briefing." So things we look at temps for.
Training
formal BBC training for soft skills (presentation, influencing, creative facilitation)
peer training (card-sorting, usability testing)
practical experience
Promotion and retention
1 still junior
6 promoted, 1 now senior
3 left and stayed in BBC
1 left and returned
4 left the BBC
Approach to promotion
regular promotion opportunities needed
interview for all promotions
about 1 year in, have opportunity for mid way role. So move from junior to normal.
Issues
effort/investment
career changers - coming in with advanced business skills, so the relationships etcetera - but next level is based on technical skills, not business skills.
job title - currently called junior Information Architect. They want to remove that junior level off within a month. Too quickly.
hanging onto them - 6 months in, they become attractive to the marketplace - so they start to leave.
operational work - becomes hard for them to be doing this work over time. Need to give them a chance to do more than this, so they can demonstrate that they can be a information architect.
reputation with "clients" - once you have been a junior, harder for the business to see them outside of this role.
Going forward
1 year contract, 3 months assignments
2 juniors
1 day per fortnight in training
usability / user research, wireframes, design, metadata, + one in interest area
Talk to team about running an internship / fresh grad program. I wonder if we could get a program together working with Giovanni as a year long program, based on temp style contract and no expectation of hiring at the end of that year. Might help us with any churn, identify potential people for Florence's team / Darin's team.
WTG Junior Program
Mags Hanley
Developing a graduate program for business analysts and information architects.
12 month program for 2 people.
mentoring by senior member of each team.
Writing the paper to pitch the program was easy, developing the program is hard.
Looking for someone with a degree and some kind of work.
Organization is very interested in developing junior staff, but you need practical HR help to get the program off the ground. People need to see support and progression forward.
Great motivator for senior staff. People looking for development, can see this as a great opportunity.
Need to find the time for the program, and need to time it correctly. Is this the right time for us to develop this sort of a program?
Next steps are: hire the senior IA, get the recruitment together, start the program in June.
Curriculum looks to be 1) get to understand the organization, 2) gain technical skills. Have them redesign the internal web site, have them work on client work.
Adaptive Path
Henning Fischer
Internships were very unprofessional
Summer internship: 10 weeks, 2-4 people.
Long term internship: 3-6 months 1-2 people.
Who: The interns
Areas of practice: design, IA, researchers
Hire according to your areas of expertise
Academic Background
Bring in students from programs you are familiar with, you can teach them, and they can teach you.
Personal Qualifications
People who have an arc, who are goal oriented, how can we help you do what you want to do? Look for passion.
What: The Program
Client Projects + Research & Development
Never more than one intern per project. They need that attention.
Teach by doing
Advocacy
Buddy on staff who is responsible for your care and feedback.
Treat interns like full employees
Where: Recruiting
Outreach: Targeted vs general.
Application processes: case by case vs all at once.
Used to do case by case, now doing all at once.
Closing the deal: You want what?
What clients, what kind of sexy work will they be doing with you?
Perks: we don't have a pool.
They want a lot more money than they can pay.
When: the timing
October: Send out early feelers
December: Have your program in place
January: recruit
March: hire
May: Prepare for them to come in, panic about project assignments
June - August: Work them to death
September: Follow up
A good intern program requires a year round commitment
Content Design
Content page design best practices again
Luke started at NCSA
Thought about their categories and organized it according to how it related to everything
We optimize for a hierarchy in the application… but it really is broken out into pieces on the internet(its chunked out)
Web ecosystems
Content is broken out into different types, communication, display surface, content creators, content aggregators, search… So how do we build for that?
People are searching and not just using your site hierarchy
Understanding this context….
Communication – people linking to your content and passing it along in im, email or even blogs or discussion boards
Display surfaces – mashups, facebook, places where people add content and links to content
Content creation tools – blogging(people are framing it before they get to your site)
Content aggregators – RSS, myYahoo, delicious, dig
Search engines – very demanding and what happens when people get to your page?
Break out of your page when people get there
Context, related and the content
Content
Make what shows up in the page title should be your headline (match them up)
Content should be the focus, having too much ads or other links is not good so make it your focus, cross reference to other actions related to the content is ok. If you give people what they want then they will be apt to use related links.
People don’t stay long
People don’t read the entire article and typically only scan. So keep it short.
• Favor visual hierarchy over site hierarchy
• Make it scannable
Related
Spare the site map and extra junk. You don’t need to give access to everything. But instead most content is related so give them access to the related stories or content, not the other stuff. Provide “related detours”. Give them action oriented materials. But don’t over do it. The simplest choice is the back button.
Get related calls to action noticed – pay attention where people are looking and place those links there
Best practices
• Related calls to action are ok if good content
• Limit number of choices
• Think through presentations
Context
Where you are and what you can do.
Know where they are coming directly from and modify your page to show more options based on their search.
Best practice
Utilize the minimum amount necessary to build
Luke started at NCSA
Thought about their categories and organized it according to how it related to everything
We optimize for a hierarchy in the application… but it really is broken out into pieces on the internet(its chunked out)
Web ecosystems
Content is broken out into different types, communication, display surface, content creators, content aggregators, search… So how do we build for that?
People are searching and not just using your site hierarchy
Understanding this context….
Communication – people linking to your content and passing it along in im, email or even blogs or discussion boards
Display surfaces – mashups, facebook, places where people add content and links to content
Content creation tools – blogging(people are framing it before they get to your site)
Content aggregators – RSS, myYahoo, delicious, dig
Search engines – very demanding and what happens when people get to your page?
Break out of your page when people get there
Context, related and the content
Content
Make what shows up in the page title should be your headline (match them up)
Content should be the focus, having too much ads or other links is not good so make it your focus, cross reference to other actions related to the content is ok. If you give people what they want then they will be apt to use related links.
People don’t stay long
People don’t read the entire article and typically only scan. So keep it short.
• Favor visual hierarchy over site hierarchy
• Make it scannable
Related
Spare the site map and extra junk. You don’t need to give access to everything. But instead most content is related so give them access to the related stories or content, not the other stuff. Provide “related detours”. Give them action oriented materials. But don’t over do it. The simplest choice is the back button.
Get related calls to action noticed – pay attention where people are looking and place those links there
Best practices
• Related calls to action are ok if good content
• Limit number of choices
• Think through presentations
Context
Where you are and what you can do.
Know where they are coming directly from and modify your page to show more options based on their search.
Best practice
Utilize the minimum amount necessary to build
Search Patterns with Peter Morville
New book coming out on search patterns from O'Reilly. Not due until next year.
Patterns - references Christopher Alexander "The timeless way of building" "Design Patterns"
Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell.
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library.
Search Pattern Library - flickr.com/photos/morville - examples of search.
Shows his pattern library with samples of best bets, faceted navigation, and so on. I should revisit this site, it appears to have gathered enough momentum and community to be helpful.
Behavior Patterns:
Narrow ->query->more keywords -> new results
Search & Browse & Ask all one thing to users.
Pearl Grow - find one good document and use data from that document to grow and explore other relevant and interesting documents. This is an expert search behavior.
Best bets - a few good starting points suggested by humans. Both broken out, and integrated into the search results. Can be used for query disambiguation.
Federated search - users don't know which database you hid the information within.
Faceted Navigation - multiple ways to search and browse through narrowing. Supports the way people think and behave within search. Serves as a map to the search results. Usually based on meta data. Usually dynamic. Usually showing the possible selections within the category and linking directly. Not the way we have done it. Need to use the search logs to continue to improve month over month. You need to include the number of results available within the value, important detail. "Scented widgets" very important. Need to see opportunities without being overwhelmed by them. Includes tagging within this area. Showed the VW UK site as an example of a graphic facets.
Auto-Suggest - because little things make a big difference.
Two types: Queries, based on own history or popular searches overall. Results - show the ones people have clicked on in the past within the results.
Structured Results - including structured information within the results, so apple stock results within a search on apple. Or a web site structure within the results list. We could take the resource search and use it to surface the sub navigation of the tool.
Social search - bleeding edge.
Books & Authors - what do I read next?
Google and Amazon use popularity to bring the most popular results to the top. We need to do the same. Things people use, should be at the top. So we need to know what people use.
IBM - Enterprise 2.0 search within W3C web site. Talks to a their search results. They used tabs as a way of surfacing blogs. Did not work. Surfaced some of the content onto the page, and usage skyrockets. Integrated this information into the search algorithms. Using the use of data to raise the results.
Media Search - showed a site called oSkope. Microsoft image search on live - drag and drop, infinite scroll. Like.com find images by color, shape or pattern.
Mobile Search - as we get faster devices and better bandwidth, more becomes possible.
Spime search - Objects that know where they are, know their history. Example, query a rack of wine, as each is RFID tagged. Cisco Wireless Location Appliance is another example. Finding high value objects.
Google keeps expanding our understanding of what is searchable. everyzing uses automated speech to text to make a podcast searchable. And allow for search on it and leap to specific place in file. Audio and video become searchable.
Web 2.0 is the biggest Knowledge Management success in a long time.
Library example showing how search is connected to physical objects.
I highly recommend grabbing the podcast of these session and listening to it, again and again. There are many different ideas in this discussion that will be helpful in the future.
Patterns - references Christopher Alexander "The timeless way of building" "Design Patterns"
Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell.
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library.
Search Pattern Library - flickr.com/photos/morville - examples of search.
Shows his pattern library with samples of best bets, faceted navigation, and so on. I should revisit this site, it appears to have gathered enough momentum and community to be helpful.
Behavior Patterns:
Narrow ->query->more keywords -> new results
Search & Browse & Ask all one thing to users.
Pearl Grow - find one good document and use data from that document to grow and explore other relevant and interesting documents. This is an expert search behavior.
Best bets - a few good starting points suggested by humans. Both broken out, and integrated into the search results. Can be used for query disambiguation.
Federated search - users don't know which database you hid the information within.
Faceted Navigation - multiple ways to search and browse through narrowing. Supports the way people think and behave within search. Serves as a map to the search results. Usually based on meta data. Usually dynamic. Usually showing the possible selections within the category and linking directly. Not the way we have done it. Need to use the search logs to continue to improve month over month. You need to include the number of results available within the value, important detail. "Scented widgets" very important. Need to see opportunities without being overwhelmed by them. Includes tagging within this area. Showed the VW UK site as an example of a graphic facets.
Auto-Suggest - because little things make a big difference.
Two types: Queries, based on own history or popular searches overall. Results - show the ones people have clicked on in the past within the results.
Structured Results - including structured information within the results, so apple stock results within a search on apple. Or a web site structure within the results list. We could take the resource search and use it to surface the sub navigation of the tool.
Speed is 100% most important thing. Google is successful because of speed of the
search.
Social search - bleeding edge.
Books & Authors - what do I read next?
Google and Amazon use popularity to bring the most popular results to the top. We need to do the same. Things people use, should be at the top. So we need to know what people use.
IBM - Enterprise 2.0 search within W3C web site. Talks to a their search results. They used tabs as a way of surfacing blogs. Did not work. Surfaced some of the content onto the page, and usage skyrockets. Integrated this information into the search algorithms. Using the use of data to raise the results.
Media Search - showed a site called oSkope. Microsoft image search on live - drag and drop, infinite scroll. Like.com find images by color, shape or pattern.
Mobile Search - as we get faster devices and better bandwidth, more becomes possible.
Spime search - Objects that know where they are, know their history. Example, query a rack of wine, as each is RFID tagged. Cisco Wireless Location Appliance is another example. Finding high value objects.
Google keeps expanding our understanding of what is searchable. everyzing uses automated speech to text to make a podcast searchable. And allow for search on it and leap to specific place in file. Audio and video become searchable.
Web 2.0 is the biggest Knowledge Management success in a long time.
Library example showing how search is connected to physical objects.
Apophenia - the seeing of patterns that do not exist.
Search is wicked problem. No definitive formulation, considerable uncertainty..
Complex interdependencies
incomplete contradictory and changing requirements
stakeholders have different world views and the problem is never truly solved.
It is a wider system, not just a particular interface or project
I highly recommend grabbing the podcast of these session and listening to it, again and again. There are many different ideas in this discussion that will be helpful in the future.
Presentation on slide share at http://slideshare.net/morville
His blog:
http://findability.org/
His email: morville@semanticstudios.com
Black Swan - we underestimate the ability of unexpected events to
completely change the world.
Building trust through restricted information: a case study of the hotwire.com air redesign
Melissa Matross Senior Manager, User Experience mmatross@hotwire.com
Trust is critical for any successful relationship. " A users willingness to spend time, data and money on a web site".
Brands she trusts - Nordstrom, Target, American Express, Apple.
Common elements: Service, Focused experienced, quality.
Hotwire is owned by Expedia, falls to one extreme - price sensitive customers who love travel and have no loyalty.
Business model: Opaque booking model. Suppliers have excess inventory and do not want to expose those prices to their loyal customers.
Air product conceals: Flight times, duration, number of stops, carrier. Savings of 30%. Core business model. Left with some level of distrust.
They have tried to overcome this distrust through:
Education
Testimonials
Direct comparisons
Putting work on the user does not help build trust.
When presented with a choice between opaque and retail more than 2/3 of the users chose opaque.
Dedicated customers were overwhelmed by options and did not find them useful. Tracked number of searches and purchase.
Users that indicated flexibility up-front were able to find lower priced alternatives and were more likely to purchase with hot wire.
1) Opaque = distrust.
2) shopping for travel = distrust & work.
3) competitor offering more data/options = more work & responsibility.
4) their users are more flexible than they know, if cost is lower.
Goals for redesign
Improve access to opaque inventory
Provide users with expected fare results while exposing them to lower fare alternatives
Present the trade-offs to the users
Improve user experience
Users were open to a series of trade-offs
Small - connections, schedule, carrier
Medium - changeability, alternate dates (leave on the 12 - 16), alternate airports
Large - products, destinations, flexible dates (any time in April)
Started to think about this as a travel agent. Simplified planning experience, knowledge, best recommendations.
Changed the interface to show the options and the impact of those changes, rather than just presenting the options. Gave them in terms of small, medium, large trade-offs. Gave more information about the opaque option, while still concealing what needed to be concealed. Gave and easy back option as well.
Layer only appears if there is a different alternative with a lower price.
Use this layer as a seducible moment - introduce the customer to lower price alternatives. Called it the speed bump model, wanted the user to pause and consider.
Limited choice - only 3 -5 best options. Give them 4 options - what they asked for, and 3 options based on trade - offs above.
Small trade-offs are always presented - opaque option and non-opaque options.
Anchoring & Framing - anchor on the exact choice, framed by the options.
User is able to understand the entire pricing context.
Did two usability studies: one as a low fi prototype, one as QA environment. Very positive reaction to the layer, very positive reaction to the search result.
Result
10% - 20% increase in alternate searches
50% - 55% higher opaque purchase rate for engaged customers.
10% - 20% increase in conversion
Garnered industry attention and good PR
Did these changes improve trust? Yes.
What is next?
Continue the model.
Positive feedback and conversion improvement.
Extending this model to the hotel and car searches.
Extending the model to other changes.
What can you do?
Understand what users really want, and what they say they want.
Need to understand what they say and what they do.
Understand how they make decisions and present trade-offs appropriately.
Identify what makes your offering unique.
Take risks.
Have fun.
Trust is critical for any successful relationship. " A users willingness to spend time, data and money on a web site".
Brands she trusts - Nordstrom, Target, American Express, Apple.
Common elements: Service, Focused experienced, quality.
Hotwire is owned by Expedia, falls to one extreme - price sensitive customers who love travel and have no loyalty.
Business model: Opaque booking model. Suppliers have excess inventory and do not want to expose those prices to their loyal customers.
Air product conceals: Flight times, duration, number of stops, carrier. Savings of 30%. Core business model. Left with some level of distrust.
They have tried to overcome this distrust through:
Education
Testimonials
Direct comparisons
Putting work on the user does not help build trust.
When presented with a choice between opaque and retail more than 2/3 of the users chose opaque.
Dedicated customers were overwhelmed by options and did not find them useful. Tracked number of searches and purchase.
Users that indicated flexibility up-front were able to find lower priced alternatives and were more likely to purchase with hot wire.
1) Opaque = distrust.
2) shopping for travel = distrust & work.
3) competitor offering more data/options = more work & responsibility.
4) their users are more flexible than they know, if cost is lower.
Goals for redesign
Improve access to opaque inventory
Provide users with expected fare results while exposing them to lower fare alternatives
Present the trade-offs to the users
Improve user experience
Users were open to a series of trade-offs
Small - connections, schedule, carrier
Medium - changeability, alternate dates (leave on the 12 - 16), alternate airports
Large - products, destinations, flexible dates (any time in April)
Started to think about this as a travel agent. Simplified planning experience, knowledge, best recommendations.
Changed the interface to show the options and the impact of those changes, rather than just presenting the options. Gave them in terms of small, medium, large trade-offs. Gave more information about the opaque option, while still concealing what needed to be concealed. Gave and easy back option as well.
Layer only appears if there is a different alternative with a lower price.
Use this layer as a seducible moment - introduce the customer to lower price alternatives. Called it the speed bump model, wanted the user to pause and consider.
Limited choice - only 3 -5 best options. Give them 4 options - what they asked for, and 3 options based on trade - offs above.
Small trade-offs are always presented - opaque option and non-opaque options.
Anchoring & Framing - anchor on the exact choice, framed by the options.
User is able to understand the entire pricing context.
Did two usability studies: one as a low fi prototype, one as QA environment. Very positive reaction to the layer, very positive reaction to the search result.
Result
10% - 20% increase in alternate searches
50% - 55% higher opaque purchase rate for engaged customers.
10% - 20% increase in conversion
Garnered industry attention and good PR
Did these changes improve trust? Yes.
What is next?
Continue the model.
Positive feedback and conversion improvement.
Extending this model to the hotel and car searches.
Extending the model to other changes.
What can you do?
Understand what users really want, and what they say they want.
Need to understand what they say and what they do.
Understand how they make decisions and present trade-offs appropriately.
Identify what makes your offering unique.
Take risks.
Have fun.
How to be a UX One
Leah Buley from Adaptive Path presented probably the most "rock star" presentation. It might have even been right along the lines of Spools Keynote. The premise of her presentation is how to do UX only by yourself and she focused on the design portion of this process. On to the bullet points...
In her previous role she was the only UX person and had to do everything
She fell into a mode of moving blame around if something didn't work such as the development or functional requirements process
Went to adpative path and was handed a stack of postit notes and a marker and asked to sketch ideas and it freaked her out
Worked with other to generate design
She generates many ideas and then refines and removes designs
She now has 3 ideas for a team of one
Brainstorm a lot
Team (ad hoc) meetings
Pick your favorites designs
She took Evite and used their current page as an example of how she could work with it
Brainstormed and used conceptual frames works (she uses spectrums, 2x2 spectrums, grides and word associations)
She also keeps an inspiration library to review
Assemble an ad hoc team
Make sketchboards
Run template based workshops (we need to do this)
Decorate your space(people walk by and start talking)
Walk around and ask for opinion
Pick the best idea
Keep a point to stay in contact with and focus on that and meet that goal
Business needs are good
User needs are better
Business needs and user needs together = design principles
Design princples are not just one liners but a mixture that gets a strong selling point across.
In her previous role she was the only UX person and had to do everything
She fell into a mode of moving blame around if something didn't work such as the development or functional requirements process
Went to adpative path and was handed a stack of postit notes and a marker and asked to sketch ideas and it freaked her out
Worked with other to generate design
She generates many ideas and then refines and removes designs
She now has 3 ideas for a team of one
Brainstorm a lot
Team (ad hoc) meetings
Pick your favorites designs
She took Evite and used their current page as an example of how she could work with it
Brainstormed and used conceptual frames works (she uses spectrums, 2x2 spectrums, grides and word associations)
She also keeps an inspiration library to review
Assemble an ad hoc team
Make sketchboards
Run template based workshops (we need to do this)
Decorate your space(people walk by and start talking)
Walk around and ask for opinion
Pick the best idea
Keep a point to stay in contact with and focus on that and meet that goal
Business needs are good
User needs are better
Business needs and user needs together = design principles
Design princples are not just one liners but a mixture that gets a strong selling point across.
Placemaking and IA
Definition– the process of creating plazas, parks, streets & waterfronts that will attract people because they are pleasurable
Not just functional, but pleasurable
We’re good at putting up buildings but bad at making places
Last half of 20th century was horrible for cities and communities – engineers were the cause of the problems. They focused on the objects rather then the good spaces for people.
Placemaking is
Community driven, visionary, function before form, adaptable, inclusive, flexible, culturally aware
Placemaking isn’t
reactive, design-driven, one-size-fits-all, etc
Some relevant principles
The community is the expert, create a place and not a design, you can see a lot just by observing, start with Petunias(iterative design, get design work done and redo it, don’t spend years), triangulate(make an object that two people can see and talk about – builds community – on content allow people to talk about the content), form supports function(in placemaking they talk about seating – how do you construct the seating so that you can have people comfortable, good vision, etc), you are never finished
IA Place Diagram
Sociability – Marriage proposals on twitter, divorces, feel comfortable interacting with strangers
Uses and activities – not lurkers who are hidden (ex. students who look up and research discussion topics to look brilliant), you want visible lurkers
Access and linkages – search, browse and ask
Comfort and Images – no porn, can visitors be seen in different areas
Washington Square Project
Maps and questions in the field, put pieces together, discuss the map and writing comments on their map – created a dense map that shows opportunities and problems
How to create successful markets workshop
Cheese shop… reflection in the display window, people can see each other at eye level talking to each other, should we build in “conversation seeing” (triangulation example)…they created a frame as well
South street bridge
Tables of teams, each had a facilitator, also had someone how could draw and give form to everyone’s ideas, had examples of other bridges, sketched out ideas immediately, very effective
Central Market
Talked about use of mobile devices in their market, how can info be available at the market that goes beyond brochure-ware, example of the carrots, need to balance - HR,physical resource and online
Probe I
Don’t think of it as design
Probe II
The IA is the facilitator, get people to see the same thing even though they are saying different things and think they are in agreement
Probe III
Know the context of the community, the large and small pieces of it… make sure the community is integrated and helping out each other, business owner associations built around the community… the IAs need to stick with the clients and business throughout and after the project… these sessions in the community are tough and passionate but it gets the truth out in the community and describing everyone’s difference.
Dilemma
Design – Steelcase hallways take people out of the flow and put them in cubbys, but people want to be in the flow of traffic and want to meet people that way (placemaking)
Not just functional, but pleasurable
We’re good at putting up buildings but bad at making places
Last half of 20th century was horrible for cities and communities – engineers were the cause of the problems. They focused on the objects rather then the good spaces for people.
Placemaking is
Community driven, visionary, function before form, adaptable, inclusive, flexible, culturally aware
Placemaking isn’t
reactive, design-driven, one-size-fits-all, etc
Some relevant principles
The community is the expert, create a place and not a design, you can see a lot just by observing, start with Petunias(iterative design, get design work done and redo it, don’t spend years), triangulate(make an object that two people can see and talk about – builds community – on content allow people to talk about the content), form supports function(in placemaking they talk about seating – how do you construct the seating so that you can have people comfortable, good vision, etc), you are never finished
IA Place Diagram
Sociability – Marriage proposals on twitter, divorces, feel comfortable interacting with strangers
Uses and activities – not lurkers who are hidden (ex. students who look up and research discussion topics to look brilliant), you want visible lurkers
Access and linkages – search, browse and ask
Comfort and Images – no porn, can visitors be seen in different areas
Washington Square Project
Maps and questions in the field, put pieces together, discuss the map and writing comments on their map – created a dense map that shows opportunities and problems
How to create successful markets workshop
Cheese shop… reflection in the display window, people can see each other at eye level talking to each other, should we build in “conversation seeing” (triangulation example)…they created a frame as well
South street bridge
Tables of teams, each had a facilitator, also had someone how could draw and give form to everyone’s ideas, had examples of other bridges, sketched out ideas immediately, very effective
Central Market
Talked about use of mobile devices in their market, how can info be available at the market that goes beyond brochure-ware, example of the carrots, need to balance - HR,physical resource and online
Probe I
Don’t think of it as design
Probe II
The IA is the facilitator, get people to see the same thing even though they are saying different things and think they are in agreement
Probe III
Know the context of the community, the large and small pieces of it… make sure the community is integrated and helping out each other, business owner associations built around the community… the IAs need to stick with the clients and business throughout and after the project… these sessions in the community are tough and passionate but it gets the truth out in the community and describing everyone’s difference.
Dilemma
Design – Steelcase hallways take people out of the flow and put them in cubbys, but people want to be in the flow of traffic and want to meet people that way (placemaking)
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Inspiration from the edge . . .
Passionate about interface design.
How has the iPhone changed the web/desktop design? One example are new radio buttons.
Where do you get your ideas for interface designs? Generally people have "default thinking". So if you are designing a booking tool for a airline, people look at other on-line booking tools. Look at wundrbar - completely different experience - better. You need to look beyond immediate industry rivals for innovative design ideas. Another set of default thinking is to only use the standard buttons etcetera in the toolbox. Think differently about the interface.
Really good presentations
Architecture, Film & Mechanical objects - Dan Saffer.
Cinematic Interactions and so on - look at the slide deck that will be on-line.
3 quick comments:
Project Crazy Quilt
Integrate dozes of existing applications, each with wildly different UI's, support power users & newbies, small business and enterprise, world wide on broadband and dial up companies.
How do we stich together multiple applications? Standard web thinking is to use tabs. Issue was, each app had it's own navigation. Saw the sugar interface and started thinking about the problem differently. Thinking that maybe the nav did not have to be persistent. Started to think about a "hub and spoke" model. Applications should not be navigation focused, they should be more focused on the ability to do things, task focused. Uses Club Penguin to show how the model of how the game works could be used to enable multiple applications to work.
Takeaway #1 look beyond the surface.
Looking at Photoshop, why could these actually be floating windows?
Takeaway #2 Think outside the (UI) box.
Deep customizability - games have very deep ability to establish things in new places, with new tools. We don't typically allow this as designers - we need to start thinking in this way.
How do we accommodate multiple workspaces?
Tabbed navigation? Doesn't work in his environment. Windows controls? Again doesn't work in this environment. Started thinking about scrollable work areas from a flash developers site that would allow for fixed areas of work, but with ability to move from one to another. Started looking at the iPhone for inspiration as well.
Are there better ways to display search results?
Started to split the screen with preview of documents on right. showed a flash site with weird calendar. This breaks out into 5 nodes of information. 1 Categories
2 sub categories 3 color 4 height 5 preview.
Takeaway #1 again - look beyond the surface.
How do we reduce the complexity of our applications?
Design with less space.
Think in conversations.
Songza as an example.
Focuses on what is important in each step of the process. So when you search for a song, you see the list. Once you select a radial menu opens with each thing you might want to do with a song: play, share, etcetera.
Getting away from persistent nav. Getting more towards how to enable tasks at the right point in the process.
Start looking outside the box more often.
ZUI - zooming user interface
How has the iPhone changed the web/desktop design? One example are new radio buttons.
Where do you get your ideas for interface designs? Generally people have "default thinking". So if you are designing a booking tool for a airline, people look at other on-line booking tools. Look at wundrbar - completely different experience - better. You need to look beyond immediate industry rivals for innovative design ideas. Another set of default thinking is to only use the standard buttons etcetera in the toolbox. Think differently about the interface.
Really good presentations
Architecture, Film & Mechanical objects - Dan Saffer.
Cinematic Interactions and so on - look at the slide deck that will be on-line.
3 quick comments:
With new technologies, almost anything is possible. Think about Adobe AIR,Context: where this became important.
Surface, Wii, Silverlight, Cloud Computing, XUL
Natural behaviors are
superior to learned behaviors. So, why are we pulling down to move a document up
with scroll bars?
Except when the learned behavior is better (makes me feel
better, makes me more productive) than the natural behavior.
Project Crazy Quilt
Integrate dozes of existing applications, each with wildly different UI's, support power users & newbies, small business and enterprise, world wide on broadband and dial up companies.
How do we stich together multiple applications? Standard web thinking is to use tabs. Issue was, each app had it's own navigation. Saw the sugar interface and started thinking about the problem differently. Thinking that maybe the nav did not have to be persistent. Started to think about a "hub and spoke" model. Applications should not be navigation focused, they should be more focused on the ability to do things, task focused. Uses Club Penguin to show how the model of how the game works could be used to enable multiple applications to work.
Takeaway #1 look beyond the surface.
Looking at Photoshop, why could these actually be floating windows?
Takeaway #2 Think outside the (UI) box.
Deep customizability - games have very deep ability to establish things in new places, with new tools. We don't typically allow this as designers - we need to start thinking in this way.
How do we accommodate multiple workspaces?
Tabbed navigation? Doesn't work in his environment. Windows controls? Again doesn't work in this environment. Started thinking about scrollable work areas from a flash developers site that would allow for fixed areas of work, but with ability to move from one to another. Started looking at the iPhone for inspiration as well.
Are there better ways to display search results?
Started to split the screen with preview of documents on right. showed a flash site with weird calendar. This breaks out into 5 nodes of information. 1 Categories
2 sub categories 3 color 4 height 5 preview.
Takeaway #1 again - look beyond the surface.
How do we reduce the complexity of our applications?
Design with less space.
Think in conversations.
Songza as an example.
Focuses on what is important in each step of the process. So when you search for a song, you see the list. Once you select a radial menu opens with each thing you might want to do with a song: play, share, etcetera.
Getting away from persistent nav. Getting more towards how to enable tasks at the right point in the process.
Start looking outside the box more often.
ZUI - zooming user interface
The little UX that could...
This is a simple fairy tale that talks to the experience of being a UX person. You are not going to be the King, you are not going to be the Princess, so you have to find room for UX.
Given a simple development process - Definition, Back end Development, Implementation - the Princess (sponsor) will be involved in the definition, and be partly involved in the other two steps. The Wizard - back end developer - will be involved in the back end development based on definition and throwing it to implementation. The Witches - implementation team - will only be involved in implementing. As UX you will be involved in all steps in the process. So we have to create success without ownership.
Frequently someone else owns the product definition, and you will not be the only one who sees issues with the definition, but you will likely be the first person to say that we need to get the user involved.
Frequently, someone else owns the requirements. In the fable the little UX had to work with an incomplete set of requirements and expand them out to include the user. Usually, the project sponsor will push forward with development, even though you are not done. Be ready to go back and rebuild consensus.
Someone else owns implementation. They are going to be focused on implementation, not on the end user. They will be measured on their ability to implement the system, not how well the system works. You need to be the one to bring the purpose of the system back into the process.
Acceptance is not buy in. People will all love the user, until something causes them pain. You will have to go back, again and again to align
consensus and to bring the user back into the process.
Managing UX in the real world requires techniques and tactics that work up and down the conceptual ladder. Don't wait for a mandate. Concentrate on the idea that "I can make things better".
Always offer solutions to every problem you raise. Don't think your solutions are the be all and end all, but use them as a starting point for discussion. If you just point out the problem you will generate resistance.
Be ready to work harder than anyone else involved in the product.
Enjoy the successes, but don't take them at face value.
Don't assume that a successful project will have a positive effect on the next.
Given a simple development process - Definition, Back end Development, Implementation - the Princess (sponsor) will be involved in the definition, and be partly involved in the other two steps. The Wizard - back end developer - will be involved in the back end development based on definition and throwing it to implementation. The Witches - implementation team - will only be involved in implementing. As UX you will be involved in all steps in the process. So we have to create success without ownership.
Frequently someone else owns the product definition, and you will not be the only one who sees issues with the definition, but you will likely be the first person to say that we need to get the user involved.
Frequently, someone else owns the requirements. In the fable the little UX had to work with an incomplete set of requirements and expand them out to include the user. Usually, the project sponsor will push forward with development, even though you are not done. Be ready to go back and rebuild consensus.
Someone else owns implementation. They are going to be focused on implementation, not on the end user. They will be measured on their ability to implement the system, not how well the system works. You need to be the one to bring the purpose of the system back into the process.
Acceptance is not buy in. People will all love the user, until something causes them pain. You will have to go back, again and again to align
consensus and to bring the user back into the process.
Managing UX in the real world requires techniques and tactics that work up and down the conceptual ladder. Don't wait for a mandate. Concentrate on the idea that "I can make things better".
Always offer solutions to every problem you raise. Don't think your solutions are the be all and end all, but use them as a starting point for discussion. If you just point out the problem you will generate resistance.
Be ready to work harder than anyone else involved in the product.
Enjoy the successes, but don't take them at face value.
Don't assume that a successful project will have a positive effect on the next.
Folksonomy and Exploratory Search
Tingring Jiang & Dr Sherry Koshman
School of Information Sciences - University of Pittsburgh
3rd PhD student at University of Pittsburgh.
The material here is fairly simple overview of tagging systems. She compares and contrasts the various search behaviors with the activies in the social tagging systems.
Exploratory search and social tagging systems
Information architectures in exploratory search systems
Information seeking modes in social tagging systems
Exploratory search is the look for uncertainties in information need and information space. Looking with out a goal. More an attempt to understand the informaiton space. Typical activities are searching in a cognitive way, or browsing in a perceptual way. So searching is "teleportation" and browsing is "berry picking" in my terms.
Investigation into information seeking within social tagging systesm is typically exploratory. People are not looking up specific peices of information, they are instead trying to understand the system and how it will grow - trends.
She is taking a classic information sciences approach to folksonomy, finding it to be lacking in heirarchy and overly anarchic.
Four structures
Hierarchical classification
Faceted categorization
Dynamic clusters
Folksonomy
Hierarchical classification characterized by fixed non overlapping systems. Classic taxonomies.
Faceted Categorization characterized by a set of small hierachries that represent conceptual dimensions. Less human investment. Favors recognition over recall, making them easier for the user. This is limited to a fixed collection, unable to search dynamic material. These are similar to our filters in Beta II.
Dynamic clusters are generated based on the material retrieved. They are based on the clustering algorithms. Very automated. This is AQG in Autonomy and is in Beta III.
Folksonomy is characterized as being flat and inclusive. Based on anyone at any time in any language adding terms to the folksonomy. The benefits are inexpensiveness and responsiveness.
She gives a nice overview of the structures in a table. Worth including in our system.
She sees 4 types of behavior in social tagging systems
Browsing
Searching
Being aware
Monitoring
Still have the same 3 main elements: resources, users, tags. She then takes each in turn and shows how they interrelate and the behaviors of each.
This is a overview of tagging systems in general, not focused on using tagging in search or document retrieval.
School of Information Sciences - University of Pittsburgh
3rd PhD student at University of Pittsburgh.
The material here is fairly simple overview of tagging systems. She compares and contrasts the various search behaviors with the activies in the social tagging systems.
Exploratory search and social tagging systems
Information architectures in exploratory search systems
Information seeking modes in social tagging systems
Exploratory search is the look for uncertainties in information need and information space. Looking with out a goal. More an attempt to understand the informaiton space. Typical activities are searching in a cognitive way, or browsing in a perceptual way. So searching is "teleportation" and browsing is "berry picking" in my terms.
Investigation into information seeking within social tagging systesm is typically exploratory. People are not looking up specific peices of information, they are instead trying to understand the system and how it will grow - trends.
She is taking a classic information sciences approach to folksonomy, finding it to be lacking in heirarchy and overly anarchic.
Four structures
Hierarchical classification
Faceted categorization
Dynamic clusters
Folksonomy
Hierarchical classification characterized by fixed non overlapping systems. Classic taxonomies.
Faceted Categorization characterized by a set of small hierachries that represent conceptual dimensions. Less human investment. Favors recognition over recall, making them easier for the user. This is limited to a fixed collection, unable to search dynamic material. These are similar to our filters in Beta II.
Dynamic clusters are generated based on the material retrieved. They are based on the clustering algorithms. Very automated. This is AQG in Autonomy and is in Beta III.
Folksonomy is characterized as being flat and inclusive. Based on anyone at any time in any language adding terms to the folksonomy. The benefits are inexpensiveness and responsiveness.
She gives a nice overview of the structures in a table. Worth including in our system.
She sees 4 types of behavior in social tagging systems
Browsing
Searching
Being aware
Monitoring
Still have the same 3 main elements: resources, users, tags. She then takes each in turn and shows how they interrelate and the behaviors of each.
This is a overview of tagging systems in general, not focused on using tagging in search or document retrieval.
IA and semantics
FYI in HTML view on iPod... Anyway the semantic presentation was excellent. The main point was to review your content on a granular level. You can then structure your content that is easier to read and allows search engines to easily process and index. One other take away was the use of axure as his protyping tool. We should continue to work with this program. I'll have more to share in our presentation
5 Trends in Tagging
Gene Smith discussing trends on tagging. He has a book out at http://genesmith.ca called tagging. This led him to identify 5 emerging trends.
Standard model, 3 parts - user, tags, resource. This model comes from Flicker and del.io.us. These are really just the first wave, and they really have not changed very much.
5 Trends
More Structure
Automanual Folksonomies
Leveraging Communities
Rethinking Pace Layers
Sparking Innovation
More Structure
Initially the lack of structure was seen as advantage. This lack of structure allows the difference of the community to become part of the structure, so movie people can be different from the cinema people. Even though this is helpful when it brings more clarity, but structure is wanted when it fails.
Example of structure is wesabe. This is a site where you upload personal data. You have the ability to tag things with tags and sticky tags. Sticky tags will stick to the merchant. So every transaction you have with that merchant will have these tags put on them. The tags can then be used to categorize your expenses.
Talked to the capability to "bubble up" the tags to higher levels, creating a tag hierarchy.
ZigTag - social bookmarking service introduced the concept of semantic tags. As you tag, it references other tags to allow you to provide further meaning beyond "IA". So shows all possible concepts that fit behind the various tags. To create their semantic tags, they mined wikipedia. Making there tags more meaningful.
Leveraging Communities
Example, looking at a tag cloud you can see what a particular community is in to. In some situations the community turns to tags to help define itself. example is LibraryThing. Combining tags gives you the ability to take two tags, and say they are the same. Users now have the ability to create a defined vocabulary. This is not monitored by the community managers. Any paying member can make two tags equivalent, and any paying member can separate tags. Example of Humor, humour - not combined. Used to separate American humor from British Humour. Simple philosophy - only combine tags that are the same in meaning. Interesting concept.
Automanual Folksonomies
Etsy is a good example of this. Place to sell handmade items. How do you design product categories, when you have no idea what people might sell? And each item is hand made. You select an initial top level category, this then creates a set of related tags. These tags are actually the sub level navigation of the site. Library thing is using something similar in a "tag mash" and have used this to approximate the Library of Congress system. They then use this to maintain and suggest tags for new books based on Library of Congress system.
Pacelayering
Concept from Stuart Brand. Idea is that society responds to forces which move at different speeds. From nature to fashion. Peter Moreville applied this idea to IA. Some kinds of IA move slower and are more durable, while others move more quickly. He placed tagging into the fast paced layer. Grant argues that tagging has some aspects of a slower and more durable item. We see that over time people coalesce around a set of tags for content. This is upheld by the paper from the ASIS&T conference from 2006. This is just the power law at work. Example is Buzzillions.com - has taxonomy, faceted nav and user generated tags. They then use the product reviews to create tags and so on.
Sparking Innovation
Architecture of classifying systems. Example is flicker. Any text string as a tag, then you can create a RSS feed based on those tags. Dan Cap is a developer who is a photographer and a coder. He developed a mashup with Google map. He added tags 1) geotagged and two machine tags with lat and long. This let him put photos on the map. In beginning it is fairly primitive - all by hand. Because Flicker architected their tagging system in a nice way, Dan added value to flicker leading to more users, etcetera.
This is happening in many different places - one example is dogear, in IBM, using RSS to tag things into workgroups.
Tags are a fully integrated part of the product and people leverage them - this is what leads to innovation.
Standard model, 3 parts - user, tags, resource. This model comes from Flicker and del.io.us. These are really just the first wave, and they really have not changed very much.
5 Trends
More Structure
Automanual Folksonomies
Leveraging Communities
Rethinking Pace Layers
Sparking Innovation
More Structure
Initially the lack of structure was seen as advantage. This lack of structure allows the difference of the community to become part of the structure, so movie people can be different from the cinema people. Even though this is helpful when it brings more clarity, but structure is wanted when it fails.
Example of structure is wesabe. This is a site where you upload personal data. You have the ability to tag things with tags and sticky tags. Sticky tags will stick to the merchant. So every transaction you have with that merchant will have these tags put on them. The tags can then be used to categorize your expenses.
Talked to the capability to "bubble up" the tags to higher levels, creating a tag hierarchy.
ZigTag - social bookmarking service introduced the concept of semantic tags. As you tag, it references other tags to allow you to provide further meaning beyond "IA". So shows all possible concepts that fit behind the various tags. To create their semantic tags, they mined wikipedia. Making there tags more meaningful.
Leveraging Communities
Example, looking at a tag cloud you can see what a particular community is in to. In some situations the community turns to tags to help define itself. example is LibraryThing. Combining tags gives you the ability to take two tags, and say they are the same. Users now have the ability to create a defined vocabulary. This is not monitored by the community managers. Any paying member can make two tags equivalent, and any paying member can separate tags. Example of Humor, humour - not combined. Used to separate American humor from British Humour. Simple philosophy - only combine tags that are the same in meaning. Interesting concept.
Automanual Folksonomies
Etsy is a good example of this. Place to sell handmade items. How do you design product categories, when you have no idea what people might sell? And each item is hand made. You select an initial top level category, this then creates a set of related tags. These tags are actually the sub level navigation of the site. Library thing is using something similar in a "tag mash" and have used this to approximate the Library of Congress system. They then use this to maintain and suggest tags for new books based on Library of Congress system.
Pacelayering
Concept from Stuart Brand. Idea is that society responds to forces which move at different speeds. From nature to fashion. Peter Moreville applied this idea to IA. Some kinds of IA move slower and are more durable, while others move more quickly. He placed tagging into the fast paced layer. Grant argues that tagging has some aspects of a slower and more durable item. We see that over time people coalesce around a set of tags for content. This is upheld by the paper from the ASIS&T conference from 2006. This is just the power law at work. Example is Buzzillions.com - has taxonomy, faceted nav and user generated tags. They then use the product reviews to create tags and so on.
Sparking Innovation
Architecture of classifying systems. Example is flicker. Any text string as a tag, then you can create a RSS feed based on those tags. Dan Cap is a developer who is a photographer and a coder. He developed a mashup with Google map. He added tags 1) geotagged and two machine tags with lat and long. This let him put photos on the map. In beginning it is fairly primitive - all by hand. Because Flicker architected their tagging system in a nice way, Dan added value to flicker leading to more users, etcetera.
This is happening in many different places - one example is dogear, in IBM, using RSS to tag things into workgroups.
Tags are a fully integrated part of the product and people leverage them - this is what leads to innovation.
Podcasts
The conference sessions will be podcast. The recordings will be available on Boxes and Arrows. Subscribe from thier site, under podcasts. Works best with iTunes.
I got a chance to meet the people running the podcasts. They have a really cool and neat persepective on the process. He shared with me a number of cool tips and tricks about how to podcast using Macs, garage band and some other tools.
Very cool.
I got a chance to meet the people running the podcasts. They have a really cool and neat persepective on the process. He shared with me a number of cool tips and tricks about how to podcast using Macs, garage band and some other tools.
Very cool.
Jared's KeyNote
Started with Celebrity Deathmatch between 37 signals and Don Norman.
37 signals said they were designing for themselves. Don Norman, naturally, took umbrage. Jared now mentions that Apple and 37 signals are designing great products without focusing on the user.
So where does User centered design come from?
1960's IBM System 360 - designed for engineers by engineers - highly trained and skilled in using the tool.
1980's IBM DisplayWrite - for office workers, completely different system.
Techniques used for designing for engineers don't work for designing for others.This means a whole new process has to be developed.
Based on human factors and cognitive psychology. Promised that designing with users at the center would have better market acceptance.
The elephant in the room is that user centered design has never worked. UIE has been researching what it takes to create great designs. What differentiates great teams from teams that struggle. Process is the series of steps, a recipe for how to create a product. Can be a one time instance, can be followed every time. This is often confused for methodology. Then there is dogma at the far end of the scale. Example of dogma, is the TSA. Jared then gives examples of the TSA dogma, like 311. Uses these as humorous examples of where dogma goes wrong.
37 signals said they were designing for themselves. Don Norman, naturally, took umbrage. Jared now mentions that Apple and 37 signals are designing great products without focusing on the user.
So where does User centered design come from?
1960's IBM System 360 - designed for engineers by engineers - highly trained and skilled in using the tool.
1980's IBM DisplayWrite - for office workers, completely different system.
Techniques used for designing for engineers don't work for designing for others.This means a whole new process has to be developed.
Based on human factors and cognitive psychology. Promised that designing with users at the center would have better market acceptance.
The elephant in the room is that user centered design has never worked. UIE has been researching what it takes to create great designs. What differentiates great teams from teams that struggle. Process is the series of steps, a recipe for how to create a product. Can be a one time instance, can be followed every time. This is often confused for methodology. Then there is dogma at the far end of the scale. Example of dogma, is the TSA. Jared then gives examples of the TSA dogma, like 311. Uses these as humorous examples of where dogma goes wrong.
"Dogma is the unquestioned faith independent of any supporting evidence."
Expectation, when assessing the process and methodology of teams, was that great organizations would have a methodology or dogma that worked for them and could be recreated. In fact, on the other side of process, are the techniques. Example is the Rue in chicken paprikas. It takes practice to get it right. Once you have the technique, you can use it independent of the methodology. Further to the right are tricks. Techniques you use in a way not intended. Humorous example of a plumber in his house using the wrong tool to fix the pipe. The best teams did not have a methodology or dogma they followed. If one exists, they ignore it. The struggling organizations had a methodology that they slavishly followed. The best teams focused on increasing the techniques and tricks for each team member. They were constantly exploring new tricks and techniques for their toolbox. Struggling teams had limited tricks and techniques.
Maybe it is time to get rid of the user centered design dogma.
Maybe it is time to get rid of the user centered design dogma.
The story of stone soup.
Important point, the traveler does not believe that the stone makes soup.
The stone is a catalyst for getting people to work together. You can create incredibly crappy designs with usability tests and card sorts. It is a catalyst for getting people to focus on the end users.
The goal of user research is to inform the design process.
Example of a big box retailer.
Showed a physical example of a 1.8% conversion rate.
Have to design for the very small group who represent most of the income.
What gets measured, gets done.
What gets rewarded gets done well.
We don't reward on doing great design. We need better measures for getting things done well.
UIE has been measuring brand engagement. Traditional way of doing this is via loyalty. Other ways of measuring brand engagement: Confidence, Integrity, Pride, Passion. Jared does a live demonstration of brand loyalty using Starbucks, McDonald's, Apple and Microsoft.
The three core UX attributes for great UX design
Solid Vision.
Strong Research feedback capability.
Right Culture for doing this kind of work.
Vision - "Can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your design five years now? The importance of the vision is to give a flag that lets you see if you are moving towards that vision."
Feedback - "In the last 6 weeks has anyone on your team spent more than 2 hours watching someone use yours or a competitors design?"
Culture - "In the last 6 weeks have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?" Celebrate because this is an important lesson to learn about your customers. Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
Let's move away from the dogma and move towards informed design. Build a reward system based on informed measures. Focus on 3 core UX attributes. Vision, Feedback, and Culture.
Copy of slides will be available on SlideShare - so once available I will send out.
The design and architecture of social web experiences
This was a very good session. The speakers broke the time into 3 parts overview of the topic and 1 part activity. The slides will be available on slide share after the conference. Once the slides are up I will post a link out to them.
Some key quotes and points:
"if you really want a community, you can't just put technology out there - you have to take part."
The Simple (Hard) Steps:
Have a compelling idea
Seed
Community Manager
Short Clear Rules for the site
Write a good TOS
Punish swiftly and nicely
Reward contributions
Spread the word out
Adapt to community norms
Apologize swiftly and frequently
Simple good software that grows with group
"80% of design time is spent on 20% that doesn't matter that much..."
Site needs to support conversations.
Some key quotes and points:
"if you really want a community, you can't just put technology out there - you have to take part."
The Simple (Hard) Steps:
Have a compelling idea
Seed
Community Manager
Short Clear Rules for the site
Write a good TOS
Punish swiftly and nicely
Reward contributions
Spread the word out
Adapt to community norms
Apologize swiftly and frequently
Simple good software that grows with group
"80% of design time is spent on 20% that doesn't matter that much..."
Site needs to support conversations.
Communicating Deliverables and Personas
Yesterday I attended two pre-conference workshops at the IA Summit. The morning session was entitled Communicating Design and was led by Dan Brown. I’ve read his book and watched his site and have always liked his work. His class was no exception and it was filled with a variety of lessons on how to create good deliverables. Even better then seeing some of his work, which was well worth the price of admission, his ideas that go into deliverable were just as eye opening.
One immediate lesson I took away was the idea that we need to keep in mind who is reviewing our deliverables. Granted, many of his clients are external and throughout the conference that is the perspective that is maintained. But I think we can still remember who we are delivering our wireframes and flows to. We need to constantly monitor if we are going too far with details or in some cases not giving enough details. And if it’s a stakeholder that is reviewing the data, make sure you are on target with your message.
Another take away is that it’s ok to walk into a meeting with questions and to work those questions into the deliverable. Now, if the product is being converted into a prototype in a couple of days, might be a little late to ask some big picture questions. But at the beginning why not clarify questions in our deliverables. While they’re reviewing the material they’ll be in the right mindset to provide answers.
I also saw some great deliverables that I’d like to review once the slides are available. There are some ideas that we can show our stakeholders just by adjusting line weight and style (dotted vs. solid line). As we continue to work on more detailed workflows, we need to find an easy way to get across our message to stakeholders.
The second session of the day was developing guerilla personas. The main takeaway was that we may not have a lot of time and/or facts to build out our personas. But we need to have some idea of who our users are and need to address them in our designs and decisions. And guess what, we have a lot more to go on than we think.
The few items that we need to produce these personas are our search logs, referring keywords, metrics and possible call center or questions. We can read through all of these data points and build out a for lack of better words, virtual user. And there is nothing that we is wrong with this. These are data points that are based on user numbers. Why not review our metrics and see what our users are doing. Our search engine logs can also provide great data points. What are they looking for and who do we think is the user that is entering the search terms.
One immediate lesson I took away was the idea that we need to keep in mind who is reviewing our deliverables. Granted, many of his clients are external and throughout the conference that is the perspective that is maintained. But I think we can still remember who we are delivering our wireframes and flows to. We need to constantly monitor if we are going too far with details or in some cases not giving enough details. And if it’s a stakeholder that is reviewing the data, make sure you are on target with your message.
Another take away is that it’s ok to walk into a meeting with questions and to work those questions into the deliverable. Now, if the product is being converted into a prototype in a couple of days, might be a little late to ask some big picture questions. But at the beginning why not clarify questions in our deliverables. While they’re reviewing the material they’ll be in the right mindset to provide answers.
I also saw some great deliverables that I’d like to review once the slides are available. There are some ideas that we can show our stakeholders just by adjusting line weight and style (dotted vs. solid line). As we continue to work on more detailed workflows, we need to find an easy way to get across our message to stakeholders.
The second session of the day was developing guerilla personas. The main takeaway was that we may not have a lot of time and/or facts to build out our personas. But we need to have some idea of who our users are and need to address them in our designs and decisions. And guess what, we have a lot more to go on than we think.
The few items that we need to produce these personas are our search logs, referring keywords, metrics and possible call center or questions. We can read through all of these data points and build out a for lack of better words, virtual user. And there is nothing that we is wrong with this. These are data points that are based on user numbers. Why not review our metrics and see what our users are doing. Our search engine logs can also provide great data points. What are they looking for and who do we think is the user that is entering the search terms.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Photos
The photos I am posting in the blog were taken with the digitial camera I recieved as a gift for work on the new visual identity for the firm. They are not high megapixel photos, but I think it is doing a servicable job.
This photo is of a building across from the conference center. The architect placed a large oval connecting the two buildings. It looks like it might fall off at any moment.
1st session
I attended my first pre - conference session today. The session was with Margaret Hanley and was on UX team management. Much of the content was familiar, particularly the section on goal setting. The firm does a fairly good job of describing how to set goals, how to measure goals and coaching a team on completing goals. The more interesting bits, for me, were on the different types of managers and on the use of social network analysis within your own firm to ensure your projects are successful.
The different types of managers she described were: pure manager, manager and developer of the team, manager as practitioner, and manager as project lead. The pure manager has no other responsibility than to manage and lead the team. They focus on the allocation of work, developing the practice of UX, team management and finding work for the team. The manager as the manager and developer of the team is where the manager focuses on ensuring the development of the practice of UX and the mentoring of the individuals within the team. Here the run some projects to show leadership, but will not have much focus on managing upwards. The manager as practitioner is where the manager continues to have a active practitioner role, keeping their skills in UX current, but diluting the impact of them as a manager. Manager as a project lead is where you are leading a team through a project, or a series of projects while also being the line manager of the team. In this role the manager has an active role in developing the products, but the development of the practice of UX, the team and the individual suffers.
The idea is to self assess your own strengths, your interests and the firms needs and determine which role you are taking on in a active way. With this mind set you are better able to focus your attention where it is needed, and understand what areas will remain undeveloped, rather than trying to do all things for all people.
The second part I found interesting was the application of social network analysis to the political environment within your firm. If you are able to identify the key stakeholders, their influencers and the role each project team member has within the network, you can target your communications and actions, making them more effective. Not sure we are in an environment that will be conducive to this sort of analysis, but the implications were interesting.
Very interesting first day, if tiring. Which role does your manager take? Are they effective? Or are they spreading themselves too thin? How about me? If you are on my team, do you see me falling into one of these roles?
The different types of managers she described were: pure manager, manager and developer of the team, manager as practitioner, and manager as project lead. The pure manager has no other responsibility than to manage and lead the team. They focus on the allocation of work, developing the practice of UX, team management and finding work for the team. The manager as the manager and developer of the team is where the manager focuses on ensuring the development of the practice of UX and the mentoring of the individuals within the team. Here the run some projects to show leadership, but will not have much focus on managing upwards. The manager as practitioner is where the manager continues to have a active practitioner role, keeping their skills in UX current, but diluting the impact of them as a manager. Manager as a project lead is where you are leading a team through a project, or a series of projects while also being the line manager of the team. In this role the manager has an active role in developing the products, but the development of the practice of UX, the team and the individual suffers.
The idea is to self assess your own strengths, your interests and the firms needs and determine which role you are taking on in a active way. With this mind set you are better able to focus your attention where it is needed, and understand what areas will remain undeveloped, rather than trying to do all things for all people.
The second part I found interesting was the application of social network analysis to the political environment within your firm. If you are able to identify the key stakeholders, their influencers and the role each project team member has within the network, you can target your communications and actions, making them more effective. Not sure we are in an environment that will be conducive to this sort of analysis, but the implications were interesting.
Very interesting first day, if tiring. Which role does your manager take? Are they effective? Or are they spreading themselves too thin? How about me? If you are on my team, do you see me falling into one of these roles?
Reality strikes
But this is my view for 9 hours a day, aside from 15 minute breaks here and there. As you can see, not as nice as my cube view.
Photos of the site
The site is very nice. The first session I am in is the UX Management session. This has been very interesting. We have been talking about hiring, skills development, career paths and so on.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
IA Summit - Ed's Schedule
Theresa Simek, Jason Richardson and I are going to the IA Summit this week. This conference is held over the weekend, with pre conference activities occuring on Thursday and Friday. You can learn more about the event at the IA Summit site. We are going to be posting live summaries of the sessions as we attend them.
In addition to two pre conference sessions, I will be attending:
In addition to two pre conference sessions, I will be attending:
Saturday, April 12, 2008
8:30 - 10:00AM Keynote: Journey to the Center of Design
- Jared Spool
10:30 - 11:15AM IAs, language and lego - an introduction to semantic analysis
- Matthew Hodgson
10:30 - 11:15AM Integrating web analytics into information architecture and user-ce...
- Hallie Wilfert
10:30 - 11:15AM Tagging: five emerging trends
- Gene Smith
10:30 - 11:15AM Exploratory search and folksonomy: Exploration paths in social tagg...
- Tingting Jiang
11:30 - 12:15PM Do real people really use tag clouds?: Research to help distinguish...
- Garrick Schmitt
11:30 - 12:15PM Core and paths: Putting a creative findability framework to use
- Are Halland, Olly Wright, Are Halland
11:30 - 12:15PM Web use recorders: The future of web analytics?
- Dustin Chambers
1:45 - 2:30PM Effective IA for enterprise portals: The building blocks design fra...
1:45 - 2:30PM Designing your reputation system in 15 easy steps
1:45 - 2:30PM Designing your reputation system in 15 easy steps
- Bryce Glass
1:45 - 2:30PM A management fable: The little UX that went a long way
- Dan Willis
2:45 - 3:30PM How to be a user experience team of one
- Leah Buley
2:45 - 3:30PM Content page design best practices
- Luke Wroblewski
2:45 - 4:45PM Peer coaching - support for UX managers
- Margaret Hanley
2:45 - 5:45PM IA slam 20008: The workshop with a winner
- Chris Chandler
4:00 - 4:45PM Blind ambition: How the accessibility movement overlooks sensory ex...
- Claude Steinberg
4:00 - 4:45PM The business of experience: The experience impact framework
- Jess McMullin
5:00 - 5:45PM Inspiration from the edge: New patterns for interface design
- Stephen Anderson
5:00 - 5:45PM The long wow
- Brandon Schauer
Sunday, April 13, 2008
9:00 - 9:45AM Extending the gaming experience to conventional UIs
9:00 - 9:45AM Extending the gaming experience to conventional UIs
- John Ferrara
9:00 - 9:45AM Taxonomy is user experience
- Dave Cooksey
9:00 - 9:45AM Placemaking and information architecture
- Dennis Schleicher Jr
10:15 - 11:00AM Hotel Yeoville
- jason hobbs
10:15 - 11:00AM Testing for advertising effectiveness
- Margaret Hanley
10:15 - 11:00AM Building trust through restricted information: A case study of the ...
- Melissa (Goldstein) Matross
10:15 - 11:00AM Content page design best practices (repeat)
- Luke Wroblewski
11:15 - 12:00PM Search patterns
- Peter Morville
11:15 - 12:00PM Reducing global attitudes into a single online solution
- Michelle Watson
11:15 - 12:00PM The information architect and the fighter pilot
- Matthew Milan
1:30 - 3:00PM Developing junior programmes in UX teams
- Henning Fischer, Karen Loasby, Henning Fischer
1:30 - 3:00PM Practical prototyping
- Anders Ramsay, Todd Zaki Warfel, Anders Ramsay
1:30 - 3:00PM Presence, identity, and attention in social web architecture
- Andrew Hinton, Christian Crumlish, Andrew Hinton, Gene Smith
3:30 - 4:15PM Code blue: How service design can revolutionize patient care in hos...
3:30 - 4:15PM What do innovative intranets look like?
- James Robertson
3:30 - 5:15PM Creating career paths for UX professionals
- Kristen Johansen
3:30 - 4:15PM Making the leap from practitioner to manager: Confidence building s...
- Samantha Bailey
4:30 - 5:15PM E-service: What we can learn from the customer-service gurus
4:30 - 5:15PM The impact of social ethics on IA and interactive design - experien...
- Ingrid Tofte
4:30 - 5:15PM Web site maturity cycles
- Vera Rhoads
Monday, April 14, 2008
8:30 - 9:15AM Why markets love the internet (or, the 1 hour MBA for user experien... - Alex Kirtland
8:30 - 9:15AM Embodying IA: Incorporating library 2.0 and experience integration ... - Michael Magoolaghan
8:30 - 9:15AM Storytelling - a compelling design tool - Dorelle Rabinowitz
8:30 - 9:15AM Search patterns (repeat) - Peter Morville
9:30 - 10:15AM Audiences & artifacts - Nathan Curtis
9:30 - 11:30AM How to set up and run participatory design sessions, analyze data a... - Greg Nudelman
9:30 - 10:15AM Designing for the social: Avoiding anti-social networks - Miles Rochford
9:30 - 10:15AM Putting multiple user centered design techniques in combination to ...
10:45 - 11:30AM Data driven design research personas - Todd Zaki Warfel
10:45 - 11:30AM Becoming an ia/ux coach: Proving success one champion at a time - Yvonne Shek
10:45 - 11:30AM Good news on your cell phone: Optimizing the user experience for di... - Joergen Dalen
11:45 - 12:30PM Ia for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets - Martin Belam
11:45 - 12:30PM Information horizons: Proposing an alternate approach to assessing ... - Anindita Paul
11:45 - 12:30PM Designing with patterns in the real world: Lessons from Yahoo! And ... - Austin Govella, Christian Crumlish, Austin Govella
2:00 - 2:45PM Checking the feel of your UI with an interaction audit - Peter Stahl
2:00 - 2:45PM What are your users really thinking? An objective way to uncover th... - David Robins
As you can see, this is a busy set of days for us.
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