Posts Tagged ‘user experience’

The Top Ten Mistakes UX (User Experience) Leaders Make

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Top 10 Mistakes UX leaders make

1. Not having a clear understandable process. UX leaders need to build process so new talent can learn and so outsiders can understand UXs value. And even more than just understand, so outsiders can collaborate and participate with the UX team.
2. Putting process before place. UX leaders need to make sure the right tools, supplies, and places to do UX work are available or else no amount of process will save you.
3. Using Usabilty Testing as design arbitrar whenever there are disagreements. Simple A/B testing is not going to take you to the next level.
4. Not playing nicely with Prodct/Project Management.
5. Managing documentation rather than design. We need to be concerned with behavior and impact.
6. Having more requirements documents than design briefs. Feature lists are no substitute for business strategy.
7. Focusing on implementation rather than evolution.
8. Not building unity of purpose both within and outside of your department.
9. Not timeboxing both divergent activities (idea generating) AND convergent activities (decision making & consensus building)
10. Not having enough whiteboards for both group use and individuals. See mistake #2.

How do you measure UX (User Experience)?

Monday, July 20th, 2009

How do you measure UX (User Experience)?

This is a more thinking/theory post. For a more doing/practical post see “3 New Ways to Measure and Evaluate UX

A good question from Austin Govella, he asked me to blog on it. He and Livia Labate has been pursuing this question at UX Healthcheck. I myself have many thoughts on this question and this post is one thought about how I approach measuring UX for both online and offline experiences. This specifically relates to the UX Value of “Measure the Impact” in the UX Value Mandala.

For a given setting there is a reality, people have experience as they live and work in a particular reality. These people then create or make expressions of their experiences they have in these realities.

Why is it so complicated, can’t we just measure experience?
I am not interested in a reality if no one is experiencing it.
Different people can be in the same reality and yet have different experiences, for example they bring to a reality different expectations and different past experiences. A person’s “experience” is a contstruct and reflection on what happened to them.

Because we are seeking to understand what a certain set of activities or events MEAN to someone we can not just use objective measures of the experience that we collect as the experience unfolds. Too many UX measures soley focus on this one element of measuring UX.

In order to measure UX well we need to collect data on the setting of the experience and on people’s reflection and construction of their experiences.

How to analyze an experience setting.
The setting of an experience should focus on describing elements such as:
1) The actors, 2) their goals, and 3) feelings,
4) the different places, and 5) spaces, and 6) the objects located there,
7) during different events, 8) activities, and 9) acts that happen.

It’s more than just a task analysis.
I hope this expands most people’s conceptualization of user experience as only being made of activities or tasks.
Almost all the UX measurements out there seem to focus at the act and activity level. The better ones even correctly
coallese these into events that people experience, but few that I am aware of look at the other aspects of a experience setting.

Then the expressions that people have of the experience are varied and complicated.
Three good questions to explore are the following:
1 “Why or why not would you recommend this product or service to a friend?”
2 “If your experience with this product or service was a book, what would the chapters be titled?”
3 “What do you think you are going to start to do differently or continue to do the same now that you have had this experience?”

In other words, there are experience potential settings, there are the experiences that people have, and there are the memories/reflections of those experiences which they tell other people about and blog about. A good UX measurement index looks at all three.

Strategic Planning Process & User Experience (UX)

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

“How does UX fit into the strategic planning process?”

Strategic planning is planning for survival, even propsering. It is not leaving success to chance.

A straightforward view of Strategic Planning (at the business unit level) has 5 steps:
1 Mission & Objectives
2 Environmental Scanning
3 Strategy Formation
4 Strategy Implementation
5 Evaluation & Control

1 Mission & Objectives.
In the first step, the “UX Value Mandala” value of “See the Same” can help with finding ways of describing the company’s business vision. These visionary goals can be communicated in a customer centered way using many of the rendering methods of UX, such as story-boards, sceanrios, & personas. In addition, the “Mesure the Impact” UX Value means that the objective the business chooses here needs to be reflected in the online measurements and metrics.

2 Environmental Scanning
In the second step, the UX values of “Know the Small” and “Know the Large” can ehlp with a Michael Porter five forces evaluation on customers, both current customers in “Know the Small” and future customer and your competitions customers (conquests for you) in “Know the Large.” In addition, if a PEST analysis is done, then when you are looking at the social and technological factors you should involve UX team members and ask for their library of whitepapers. A good UX team that is living the value of “Know the Large,” will mean that they have a nice library of short whitepapers in which they have been continuely evaluating changes in the internet technologies and social media and how it might affect the business.

3 Strategy Formation.
In the third step, I don’t think there is much help that UX can add.

4 Strategy Implementatin
In the fourth step, I don’t think there i smuch help that UX can add.

5 Evaluation & Control
In the fifth step, the UX value of “Measure the Impact” can be a big help. If the same metrics the business chooses for overall success are the same ones that are being monitored online (which can give minute by minute feedback) is allows for better alignment and perhaps even act as an early warning system. Another help that UX might bring is to design a dashboard that would facilitate the monitoring and tracking of the actual performance versus the performance standards.

References
UX Value Mandala

Anthropology & UX Related Links

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Resources that are about anthropology and UX.

New Creative Order Emerges in Minneapolis – talks about

And a handful of younger shops with names such as Periscope and Olson that combine digital specialties with quirky offerings in design, packaging and even “social anthropology” are on the verge of lapping long-established, holding-company-backed agency brands in revenue.

Periscope – Check out their services page on Insight & Innovation, has ethnography. On their Talent section they have Heather Saucier, with background as Sociologist. Boo – no Business Anthropologist list.

Olson – Very light on the anthropology, but Social is there. No people listed at all, so no chance to see any anthropology background. It has a one sentence mention in their work section on Nike Bauer.

Out-of-the-box thinking is also being done in places such as Olson. The 180-person shop specializing in digital, for example, used a team of eight “social anthropologists” from places such as the London School of Economics to help Nike Bauer Hockey shake its perception as an older brand in a space dominated by youth. Olson mined hockey culture for insights into players’ language and aspirations — noting that youth hockey players are more influenced by older youth players than by the professional endorsers Nike typically employed. It also revamped the online retail experience. Bauer climbed to No. 1 from No. 3 in the category and has since been sold by Nike, which retained Olson to work on its Converse brand.

Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter: Reflections on Research in and of Corporations by Melissa Cefkin

Office Code: explores the impact of cultures upon office interaction and space planning

Mind the gap: ethnographers navigate the space between users and designers, start on page 40

UX Value Mandala

Friday, June 5th, 2009

This is my UX Value Mandala for User Experience or UX.

uxmandala
The goal of most UX is repeat customers, the core problem at the center of the diagram “How to keep customers coming back again and again?” sums this up nicely. In order to do that there are three questions that we should be asking ourselves every day:

  1. What is it we are designing and why?
  2. Who will use it?
  3. How will we know if we’ve been successful?

Know the Small: At the most basic level we must be very close to the customer. Do usability testing, take part in interviews, observation or ethnographic-like investigations.  We also need to know the content on the page or screens.  All the assets, images and video. All the features and functionalities.  These two things together make up the majority of the use experience (the person interacting with the “content” through certain functionality.  This is the air we breath. Through different features/functions/content we create different “settings” in which the customer has a certain experience. So if we don’t know this, we won’t know what our constraints and opportunities are.

Know the Large: This outer ring of elements are for a more senior person.  More experience, knowledgeable, and built on a solid foundation of knowing the small.  Knowing the Large is about the business context, the different competitors both direct and indirect, understanding trends in the industry and with customers. For example, twitter is something that 2 years ago was just starting, now it is a major force that brands need to be aware of and engage in some form.

See the Same: This is the absolute core of the value we bring to the table.  If everyone just sits around a table and talks their ideas then they could walk away saying they are in agreement, but each thinking of something different. That is not sharing..  We need to create transparencies into each others minds. We find ways to make sure that everyone is “seeing the same” thing. They don’t have to like it, but they have to at least be seeing it.

Discuss the Different: After everyone is seeing the same thing then we discuss the different ideas people have.  And here is where we need to be respectful of people’s ideas and listen to what they say.  This takes the sharing that was established from “See the Same” and makes it an object held by joint owners. It must be owned by all. It is a difficult role sometimes, but we need to facilitate the conversation. This is both internally and with clients.

Plan the Possible: Never will we have unlimited budget or time, so we must work with what the constraints are. Actually time and money aren’t as insurmountable as lack of assets.  That is the one that always is my biggest barrier.

Dream the Better: But at the same time, don’t lose those great wild ideas that you have.  Record them in some fashion so that the next campaign or program can take advantage of them earlier on the process and hopeful implement some of them.

Get it Done: We can’t just be designers. We must do all we can to help get it done.  This means being available for consult throughout launch and even post launch with updates and maintenance.  When you have to live through multiple version of your own previous work. Scalable isn’t a buzzword anymore and flexible isn’t just nice to have.

Measure the Impact: Lastly I am a firm believer that we need to try to predict the impact of our different recommendations.  We need to be watching the metrics to see if we had the impact we said we were going to realize.  It might take your team awhile to get really good at this, so you might want to keep it purely internal at the start.  But you will be surprised at  how accurate you can become.

References and Acknowledgements”

The 3 questions come from the 1st edition of the Polar Bear book.

I want to thank Livia Labate, Crystal Kubitsky, and Austin Govella for many great conversations on the User Experience (UX) Value Mandala when I worked at Comcast Interactive Media. Also Jamie Thomson helped get the image just right in wordpress. Any errors in this post are, of course, my own.

Three Questions To Ask Your UX Consultants

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

Three questions your UX (User Experience) consultant better know the answers to!

UX consultants, be them Information Architects, Search Engine Optimization experts, User Experience Designers, Interaction Designers, or something else can be very important to the success of your product, service, and brand. You are paying them money. Sometimes very big money. How can you get more for your dollar?

To achieve the maximum return on your outlay, you must personally make sure your consultants can answer the following 3 QUESTIONS.

Here are 3 questions that you should ask your consultants every so often, or even better make them write up and give to you:

1. How does MY company make money?

Wow, what a powerful question. You want them to know how your company makes money, how it sustains itself, how it grows. You would be surprised how some UX consultants are not focused on the client’s business side of things. They spend an enormous amount of time, energy, and attention on the user side and don’t balance that with an equally sophisticated understanding of the business needs. It is YOUR FAULT if you let them come up with great ideas that customers like, but aren’t willing to pay for.

2. How are MY customers going to change over time?

This is not as easy. They usually are working from personas that you have given them or perhaps your consultants are researching and creating the personas as part of their deliverables. Do not see personas (or your customers) as permanently static bulls-eyes. People change. The situations change. You need to make sure your plan and design can change too. At the most simple level look at demographic changes, such as your 34 year old customer now in 7 years will be 41. What does that mean for the user experience? Those two age groups are very different, but it was the same person. How do you grow with them, or is the default plan to abandon them as you pay to acquire brand new customers.

3. What will get ME promoted?

Ok, this might seem a little selfish, but I can assure you that if your consultants know what it is that you are being measured on it can only be a good thing. Whether it is for your next promotion, a raise, or a bonus this kind of insight helps them in a micro way in the same way the first question helps them in a macro way. It might not be the focus of their current efforts, but their creative minds will work this over throughout the project and perhaps come up with some great ideas. If they see their fortunes and your fortunes as tied together, a rising tide raises all boats. What a testament to their success.

These questions and knowing their answers are about making sure you are getting the most value from your consultants. The answers change over time and sometimes quite often so at least at the start of every project refresh these mutual understandings and make sure that everyone has the same basic answers. It will help make your UX consultant more valuable and in the end help make your product/service and brand more valuable too.