Iowa State University HCI 596

Encoding Emotion

2011-11-13T19:13:00.001-08:00

This post is in response to Brave and Nass's question "How does emotion play out in computer-mediated communication (CMC)?" in Chapter 4 of The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook...

Emotion certainly plays a significant role in how we communicate with one another by providing a "social context" that seems to define the ways we communicate with one another. A smile on your face indicates to me you are feeling positive and are therefore likely more approachable and receptive to conversation than an individual with a grimace. It seems strange that computers have remained rather removed from needing to understand and convey their user's emotional experience. In many ways, computers have mostly been viewed as a cognitive tool but since computers are now being more and more used as mediums for creativity, connectivity, and interaction among people, we need to consider ways emotion can be encoded into the experience.

Emoticons became necessary because the types of interaction made possible via the Internet could not alone provide the context necessary for the communication. There are still, however, many emotions that cannot or effectively be conveyed through emoticons alone (e.g. sarcasm). Avatars in 3D games have employed emoticon type gestures that allow their character to exhibit behaviors that demonstrate one's mood (e.g. World of Warcraft characters can cheer or dance to celebrate a significant event) but these too often fall short. Emoticons of this type are low-bandwidth emotion conveyers. What's missing is the continuous and high-bandwidth emotional expression one can perceive from direct interaction with one another. Video communication (e.g. Skype) is highly effective, but video communication cannot as easily be shared, transmitted, or processed as text.

An important realization I've had is that emotions are experienced; they are not static. Emoticons are attempting to use another mode or dimension of textual interaction to efficiently "package" emotion into the textual experience--that is difficult to do and which is why they still fall short. Perhaps another mode that could be adopted for conveying emotion textually could be to standardize colors to sentences that indicate tonality, pitch, or cadence (i.e. much like music notes written on a sheet of music). While not ideal aesthetically, this capture would allow emotion to be captured in the communication.

I will soon start a new job at a small company. One important requirement levied by the hiring company was for attaining highly effective communication skills across many mediums and modes given the fact the team is spread around the world. Ideally I should be sure to spend time with these individuals in person to help define a "social context" that will help me "understand them". This provides me the means to know how to communicate with them effectively. We will also set up a "portal" that is a 24 hours a day, seven days a week television screen with a webcam linked directly to other portals around the world. The idea is that the portal will provide for higher-bandwidth communication than email can currently provide. The portal will allow the us as users to feel connected to the other working spaces rather than disconnected and reunited for minutes at a time with video chat like Skype.

InVision: Creating Fully Interactive Wireframes & Prototypes Easily and Beautifully

2011-10-06T12:27:00.001-07:00

InVision looks to be extremely cool for the talented dual visual/UX designers who want to get slick looking prototypes out quick.

I recently used Axure RP for prototyping a lo fi interactive prototype for a craigslist redesign but ultimately I was really disappointed in the level of interactivity and the overall look of how the final prototype appeared. Later I used Flex to develop a higher fidelity protoype for a new interactive online shopping application but also found that styling the Flex app proved to be lacking in true artist customization.

Now, the only functionality I can tell that you can add is linking to other mock up which isn't exactly as capable as something like Axure pre-coding (which may be its weak point), but I think my favorite feature is simply being able to directly port a rather slick looking Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. mockup and make it function quickly as a lo-fi prototype. Often times it seems a client will be more interested in how it looks then how it operates (however unfortunate that may be...). InVision will allow the taltend visual/UX designer to create the look and functionality simultaneously into prototypes. Cool idea though in reality you could probably just create slices and quickly code some HTML to do the same. For the price tag, not sure I'd get it, but nevertheless a cool idea.

Mashable.com 9 Essential Resources for UI Designers

2011-09-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

Mashable put out an article today that I think provide a few good resource for UI inspiration, best practices, and guidance:

http://mashable.com/2011/09/16/ui-design-resources/

Thought I would share. Always nice to see what others are up to.

Manners and HCI Design

2011-08-08T22:18:00.000-07:00

It's fairly frequent to hear discussions about our (humans) manners and dealing with new devices. As we adopt new technologies it takes a while to figure out how to incorporate the changes in lifestyle in a way that promotes civility between one another. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the manners that the devices and applications we create have.

In my day job I frequently deal with creating alerts for users. In my users' field of work it is important that they are alerted sometimes--even if we have to be a bit obnoxious about it--lives are at stake. But as I microwave a burrito for breakfast and then go attend to a few things while it cools down, it's not really important that I be alerted every 60 seconds that the burrito is done. In fact I rarely forget that I put food in the microwave but I frequently want to let it sit there for a few minutes to cool down. But the designers of my cool looking microwave didn't realize that. As I try to reverse engineer the personas they were expecting to buy said shiny appliance, I can see two possible audiences my microwave is designed for:

1) A user who is old and senile and typically forgets within 3 minutes that they have put food in the microwave and needs to be reminded.

2) A mega-stoner who has the munchies but forgot that they were already cooking those Hot Pockets.

Unfortunately for GE I am neither one of these people and I now have an active dislike for GE and their no-user-scenario-using, beep-making product designers. It's not like an oven where the house could catch fire if you go on vacation with it on. No, microwaves turn off when the little timer goes off. Worst case scenario is cold soup.

Another example that I see more and more online is the pop-up survey within seconds of a page loading. "Would you like to take this survey?" it asks. No, users are not invested in content at this point nor has the site made a good impression on the user. As a researcher and occasional surveyor I get the usefulness of surveys. They are easy, inexpensive and don't take much time. But we have to look at their other qualities--annoying, interrupting and boring--especially when we are asking people to volunteer to give their time and attention to the site's cause without compensation. It's not that surveys are wrong but we must employ them in a manner that models our polite standards of interactions. When we talk about user centered design vs task centered or goal centered, I think the use of manners is a possible discriminator for user centered design. If we are always designing for a person then we are less likely to neglect those sociological and communicative details that affect the experience for the end user. And this user sure would appreciate that.

This stuff really matters...

2011-08-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.edibleapple.com/apple-gets-creative-with-icloud-error-messages-photos/

....but it only matters insofar as most software is devoid of decent error messaging. It doesn't have to go to quite such a cutre extreme as this example from Apple, but consider that often the most direct communication you make to your users comes in the form of error messages.

At work, people have learned to not glibly state in front of me: "Just post a big red error message when that happens. Maybe throw in an exclamation mark, a big red X, or heck, why not a skull and cross-bones?" But that is the common approach: use this moment of one-to-one messaging to bolster a class/power division between you and your users: in effect, slap them down and show them who's boss.

Interactive and Input Devices, The Buxton Collection

2011-08-08T21:44:00.000-07:00

Bill Buxton is a researcher for Microsoft. He's written a cool book that we saw early in this summer in this very blog. He's also been collecting interactive and input devices for decades. Although these items might not be showing up at our local museums anytime soon, we can still check them out online at the Buxton Collection. The collection takes us through a visual history of the input devices that have played their own role in creating and shaping our field.

Some highlights:

The General Magic Data Rover 840 with sweet physical metaphor action.

The Versatron Foot Mouse. One might think this is marketed towards someone with a medical condition or extreme environment, but no--it's marketed as an improvement over your everyday hand mouse. I think this bad boy from 1984 is exactly what you need for your ottoman if you're a laptop couch junkie.

Okay, I admit, I picked this delight from Zenith simply because it is called the Space Command SC 600-X. Why didn't that name stick? It's way cooler than "remote control" or heaven forbid "clicker."

Captcha

2011-08-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

I have an undying hatred for Captcha, it seems to haunt my self confidence whenever I attempt to submit anything online. All it says to me is that the website has unmanageable amounts of spam and that somehow, it's the users fault. Well, maybe no one is being blamed, but it is the user that gets stuck with the bill. I'm glad our justic system isn't built off the same logic. "Well, to prove your not guilty, we would like you to perform a miracle, someone benevolent and righteous enough to do such a thing could never be guilty." So, anyway, I got to thinking about new ways of Captchaing submissions that lower the amount of cognitive/ sensory resources needed to complete it. Most Captcha designs are based on the computer intelligence tests that somehow go back to the stoneage when all we had were words that were easy to read and words that were hard to read. With all of our intelligence in the fields of computer science, psychology, and AI, is this the best we can do? The first thing I thought was along the same lines as what is currently in market place, a text word written plainly, with a bunch of words and letters scrolling in front of it. The idea is that your brain would focus on the static word, and the fly by decoy words would be ignored. Well, I made an example..

It didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't a fan, and that I wan't figuring anything special out. So I got to thinking again. I remember watching Tron and thinking man it's so easy to tell his face is CGI, I wonder how well a computer can tell a CGI face from a real face, I know I can. What if a 2nd gen captcha had two faces a CGI face and a real one and the question was posed, "which of these is a real person?"

Can you answer? I think I can, can a robot answer? no clue.

UMEX, a shorter alternative for the already short SUS?

2011-08-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

As you might have notedfrom one of my previous blogs (SUS), I am a big fan of usability analyses andstatistics. One thing I have found time and time again, is that it can be verydifficult to get participants to take surveys seriously. There often seems tobe a sweet spot when the user has less than 5 questions, but over 10 questionsand, whether you want to admit it or not, the number of bad data participantsincreases exponentially. That said, I came across a study recently byresearchers at Intel that encountered a similar problem when attempting toincorporate a 10-item, five-point Likert scale called the System UsabilityScale (SUS). To solve this, they decided to empirically reduce the number ofquestions by using only the highest correlating questions from a modifiedversion of the SUS. The SUS was chosen because it had been extensively tested,and has proven to be a reliable representation of user satisfaction and systemusability. However, by cutting down the number of questions from the SUS, itwould also reduce the amount of data points, to help offset this, the Likertscales increased from 5 to 7 points. Increasing to a 7 point Likert was alsoheavily backed up by previous research (see Diefenbach et al. (1993), Cox(1980)). The results of the research was titled the Usability Metric for UserExperience (UMEX).

It was concluded thatthe UMEX is a “reliable, valid, and sensitive alternative to the SystemUsability Scale.” It has a high correlation with SUS at that of above 0.80.Because of this, it is suggested that the UMEX is fully capable as acting as astandalone application for usability testing. More so, because of its compactsize and ease of application, the Umex is attributed by a fundamentalrequirement by the Use Experience community: “in order to measure userexperience effectively, its components need to be measured efficiently.”

I have not ever used theUMEX or anything like it. I can not say it should be used, I just think someonedoing a quick and dirty study might like using it.

Color contrast Calculator

2011-08-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

Ok, so in the last post I wrote about color contrast and providedsome links to a few calculators. I found however, that the calculators have allbeen designed for the designers and not for the usability tester. So the bold,adventurous spirit that I am… not really, just interested enough, decided toprototype one. Ok, so it is very early in the Alpha phase, and yes I designedit in excel… but I think it has a lot of potential.

Here’s what it does.

. Provides the practitioner with an eyedropcolor selector. Many times when doing analyses, we do not have access to theoriginal code, and even if we did, going through code to find a hexadecimal colorcode isn’t exactly the best use of time. Provides a quick pass fail for both color andbrightness, as well as a combined pass fail.
. Shows percentages for acceptance

What it should/ will do

Accept text size
Have a second tester for background contrast. Abig problem with contrast is not just the for/background contrast, but it isalso the amount of changing contrast found in the background. For example, ifthe background is a faded brick wall, although any given color provide plentyof contrast for the forground, the internal contrast between the levels ofbrick make text reading illegible.
The program should automatically spit out thetext needed to present the data, with descriptive stats included andeverything. (i.e., A basic color contrast analyses showed low levels ofcontrast (CD = 100)…)
Provide an example of the colors chosen.
A bread toaster.

I am attaching my first draft for anyone interested inlooking. HERE is the link

Color contrast

2011-08-03T21:31:00.001-07:00

Although many color designrules originated to support visual impairments, they are beneficial for allusers. Reading is not an innate ability; we do not learn to read simply bywatching others read. It requires effortful study and attention. Reading can beone of the most cognitive recourse intensive things a user does on a website.For this reason, it is vital that we as UX designers, facilitate easy readingfor all users. This will ultimately help users discern text, paragraphs, andtext bodies much more efficiently. Background / foreground Color testing isoften judged on two primary attributes, the contrast of the colors and the brightness of the colors. Equationsand standards for meeting accessibility requirements have been developed by W3Chttp://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-CSS-TECHS/.These standards provide detailed calculations for determining color contrasteffectiveness. These formulas are as follows:

BrightnessDifference:

Thebrightness difference is found by subtracting the figure index from the ground.The brightness index is found by multiplying each RGB value by a predefined partitionof 1000. The values are then summed together and then the total is devided by1000. The value for Red is 299, the value for Green is 587, and the value forblue is 114. So the completed equation would be: (299R + 587G + 114B)/1000.Next you subtract the index of the
figure from the background and you have thedifference.

Color Difference

Colordifference is very similar, however, the index is simply a summation of all RGBvalues and the difference is found by subtracting one from the other.

The range for colorbrightness difference is 125. The range for color difference is 500.

Many calculators have been created to do this foryou.

http://www.hgrebdes.com/colour/spectrum/colourvisibility.html

http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html

http://www.takeform.net/contrastCalculator.php

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/accessibility/webaccessibility/color_tool.html

Craigslist? Why bother redesigning it?

2011-08-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

After all that grueling work, I come across this link for an Adobe Air desktop app of CL.
http://www.cldesktop.com/

I love the sporadic migration of web apps to the desktop (actually I helped design one: Yousendit's "Express"). Somehow it feels like the barbarians storming the walls.

-Rob

Existing Product Redesign vs. New Products

2011-08-02T21:53:00.001-07:00

There is a very big difference between doing Interaction and Experience design for new products vs doing these tasks for the redesign or upgrade of existing products. My last two jobs were with companies that had established software products and product managers with loads of client and product knowledge. In this scenario, there is much less up-front user research to be done since the feedback is typically steady and a product manager knows the shortcomings and the opportunities for enhancements. Consequently, it is easy to look at the job of Interaction Design more in the middle of the process. From assignments over the course of my classes, it is typically the early research that is lacking in my projects and I've come to realize that only certain, lucky individuals get to do true product research. The discovery of a need may still come from another role such as a product manager or the business portion of a company. But if the product is new, it is the designer and researcher that must use proper methods to discover the use cases. One of the things I look forward to as I move forward in this career is doing proper research on users with interviews, case studies, focus groups and ethnography, to name the main methods.

New Login Designs - New Problems

2011-08-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

I posted something a few weeks about about bad design and noted the issues with single sign-on or the lack thereof.

Recently I came across this post which looks at an emerging issue with a user's ability to login using authentication via an entirely different service, such as Facebook.

This is a login option I don't tend to use - I prefer to keep everything separate - but I thought these stats were interesting, noting how often folks end up with multiple accounts and still can't remember their login:

"User Interface Engineering's analysis of a major online retailer found that 45% of all customers had multiple registrations in the system, 160,000 people requested passwords per day, and 75% of these people never completed the purchase they started once they requested their password. Ouch."

The folks at bagcheck illustrate an approach they're trying in order to help make this type of login easier for the end-user. I like that they show they're process and how it evolves.

What does strike me as odd is that you can see all these other user names when you search for your own... that seems worrisome.

Article: http://bagcheck.com/blog/02-design-solutions-for-new-log-in-problems

Javascript UI Libraries - Bridging the Gap Between UX Designers and Web Developers

2011-08-02T12:35:00.001-07:00

I decided to finish my blog posts with the same topic that I started with - the gaps between the developers and designers. Responses to my first post were interesting and insightful.

Again, I remember people talking about developers shooting down their UX ideas because they simply don't think it is possible given the time-constraints. Javascript UI libraries are rapidly evolving into the role of saviors for both UX designers and developers. There are several javascript libraries out there that makes the job of manipulating a web-page's objects within it's Document Object Model very easy. In addition many common widgets that are used most frequently while designing websites are now emulated by simple to use Javascript libraries. Examples of these commonly used widgets are - Accordions, Drop Down Menus, Dialog Boxes, Minimizable boxes etc,.

Following are a few of the many Javascript UI libraries that make the use of these widgets as easy as a couple of lines of code.

AlloyUI

XUI

Knowledge of the features of these libraries would strengthen your case when a software developer shoots down your proposal stating 'lack of time' as a reason. Software developers in turn can turn themselves into amazing UX developers without much effort if they are familiar with these wonderful tools. Adding new UX features to their repertoire everyday, these libraries are bridging the gap between designers and developers.

Geri Interaction Design: Importance of Logo in Branding

2011-08-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

Geri Interaction Design: Importance of Logo in Branding: "New Logo Sketches This is a redesign sketch of a new logo for the HCI site. I attempted to keep some of the same language of the existing l..."

Geri Interaction Design: Card Sort Exercise

2011-08-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

Geri Interaction Design: Card Sort Exercise: "Lecture number six had a section about a method of research from the information technology discipline called card sorting. This is a method..."

Geri Interaction Design: Creation of App For HCI site.

2011-08-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Geri Interaction Design: Creation of App For HCI site.: "Wireframe for HCI site This is the wireframe for the proposed redesign of the Iowa State University Human Computer Interaction site. The ho..."

Opportunities for UX Improvement in Retail Websites

2011-08-01T17:34:00.001-07:00

My curiosity to know if there are any websites or UX firms that examines different websites for usability metrics led to a few fairly interesting companies, individual blogs and websites. One of my favorite studies conducted by Usography is this UX audit.

Usography reviewed 100 top retail web sites and presented their findings in "Retailer UX Audit". The sites were rated according to a list of 30 user experience feature criteria (listed in the article). The founder of Usography, Paul Bryan, summarized their findings in this article on UXbooth.com. It is interesting to note that on a scale of 30 two companies were were tied for first position. What is more interesting is the fact that these two companies implemented 16 out of the 30 features. I'm sure the article would be even more fascinating to people who worked on the 'Individual Class Project 3' (Socialite) or participated in an in-class activity where we discussed about ideas for a shopping application with social features. Aren't you thrilled to see that some of the best features that were found to be missing from many sites were actually discussed during the in-class activity? For example we discussed about features related to price comparison and visual try-ons. Though companies like Buy.com and Amazon.com which are online-only retailers take the top spots, they only implement half of the features used as the evaluation criteria. This tells us that even in case of mature companies there is a significant potential for UX improvement. I do not believe that implementing all 30 features would increase the sites overall usability. Also a thorough cost-benefit analysis should precede the decision to support implementation of any of the listed features. However this audit provides tremendous value to the companies by pointing-out areas of improvement, without the companies having to invest in a UX evaluation.

Note: Do check-out Usography's website and services. They have an interesting business model and offer several design services with a lot of focus on evaluation.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words...er...Page Hits

2011-08-01T00:42:00.000-07:00

The saying is true and Stew Langille, former VP of marketing at Mint, is out to prove it with his new startup visual.ly. Visual.ly will attempt to build a community, market and tools for infographics. Later this year, visual.ly plans to release Web-based “prosumer” tools for editorial, marketing, student and other users to create their own shiny infographics.

According to Langille, some of the most successful posts on Mint.com's site, that garnered the site its user base, were the posts including infographics. These posts would receive 30 to 40 times the page views of non-infographic posts.

Visual.ly hopes to make creating attractive infographics from user data easy--particularly easier than creating them with non-data driven programs like Adobe Photoshop. These designs can then be tweeked and shared as desired.

It is an interesting idea and I'm looking forward to trying it out. Making attractively designed infographics in Illustrator or Photoshop is not always ideal. I'm curious to see how they'll create different themes or styles so all the infographics do not begin to seem the same. A few of my favorites shown so far are True Colors: Color Preferences By Gender, Mars Missions and The Evolution of the Geek.

Google’s new User Interface

2011-07-31T11:58:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed Google’s clean, a minimalistic user interface? The new facelift slowly started to spread across Google’s suite of products when Google+ (Google’s answer to Social Networking problems) was introduced. You could say that the new interface has a much more breathing room compared to the previous by looking at the before and after Gmail themes (below). Allowing extra spaces in between links, buttons, within buttons, words, and sentences makes the information on the page easily readable and digestible. By applying different shades of grays to the controls and fonts, the new facelift brings out all the important information to the forefront. Regardless of all the positive aspect about the new interface, you might experience scrolling vertically, roughly about 128 pixels further down (differences in the Gmail’s before and after image height) to view rest of the content, whereas in the old interface the content would be available to you without scrolling vertically.

Gmail Theme (before)

Gmail Theme (after)

Because of the extra spaced links, controls, and large buttons, Google’s new interface is easier to use on my iPad too. I was able to test the new interface with Google News since Gmail only supports iPad friendly web version.

Google News (before)

Google News (after)

Marc Hassenzahl's Why, What, and How.

2011-07-30T16:48:00.001-07:00

While reading Marc Hassenzahl’s chapter on User Experience and Experience Design (link below) in conjunction with Buxton’s “Sketching User Experiences”, the differences and what user experience is became clear to me. Commentaries by several user experience gurus at the bottom of Hassenzahl’s chapter are also helpful in understanding user experience and experience design.

The Philips’ Wake-Up Light is a perfect example that describes a (what Hassenzahl calls it) surrogate experience. Let’s say an enlarged version of the wake-up light that was flat and mounted on to one of the bedroom walls, it would only be visible and active during the user set time—by doing so, would it enhance the user experience?

The three levels of Why, What, and How that Hassenzahl, lays out are easy to understand in terms of the experience of a product. Basically, Why clarifies the “needs and emotions involved in an activity, the meaning, the experience.” After the Why is determined, then the What “determines functionality that is able to provide the experience.” And the How is “way of putting the functionality to action.”
Ref: http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/user_experience_and_experience_design.html

Micro businesses and service design

2011-07-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

One of the things that this course has helped me do is recognize service design. I remember when I had my first visual design class in undergrad and I started seeing the world differently and noticing things like alignment, proximity, fonts, and so forth in the media around me. Now the way I perceive the world has a service recog capability that wasn't there before. So I recently saw a very interesting business in my local town that I think is awesome because it's people recognizing a need that is not being met and then fulfilling it. It's not super-complicated but it's a good example of how micro-businesses can work.

The service is called ikea*run. Our city is about 4 hours away from an Ikea store but there are enough people in town who have lived other places and traveled to know that we like Ikea. If you've ever tried to order from Ikea online then you know about their ridonkulous shipping fees. So these clever folks have started a business where you can order Ikea stuff and they will go get for less than the Ikea shipping and without the hassle of going yourself.

http://ikearunhsv.com/index.html

A Contextual Usability Framework for a Mobile Computing Environment

2011-07-27T12:36:00.000-07:00

I read this article on the Journal of Usability Studies that was published in May 2011. You may be interested to learn about this framework:

The work of several scholars (Bevan & Macleod, 1994; Shami et al., 2005; Thomas & Macredie, 2002) who attempted to identify additional variables that may impact usability and subsequently adoption, led to the conceptual emergence of context of use (herein referred to as context)as it relates to usability, also referred to as contextual usability. Several frameworks encapsulating context have been proposed (Han et al., 2001; Lee & Benbasat, 2003; Sarker & Wells, 2003; Tarasewich, 2003; Yuan & Zheng, 2005). While there may be other usability frameworks that attempt to capture the essence of context, the models cited here provide a representative set of work in this area. From these we adapted the framework proposed by Han et al. (2001) because it offers considerable detail for each dimension they identified.

On the basis of the discussion on approaches to usability evaluation and the framework proposed by Han et al. (2001) and Kwahk and Han (2002), we propose a contextual usability framework for a mobile computing environment. The framework is depicted in Figure 1 and contains three elements. First, the outer circle shows the four contextual factors (i.e., User, Technology, Task/Activity, and Environment) described earlier as impacting usability. Second, the inner circle shows the key usability dimensions (i.e., Effectiveness, Efficiency, Satisfaction, Learnability, Flexibility, Attitude, Operability, etc.). Third, the box on the top of contextual factors shows a list of consequences (i.e., improving systems integration, increasing adoption, retention, loyalty, and trust, etc.).

Compared to the framework proposed by Han et al. (2001) and Kwahk and Han (2002), there are several advantages of the suggested mobile usability framework. Although the previous frameworks proposed by Han et al. (2001) and Kwahk and Han (2002) are comprehensive, they are difficult to follow due to formation and evaluation dimensions being merged into one diagram. Thus, the suggested framework depicted in Figure 1 represents a simple yet direct way to identify and address the various contextual mobile usability dimensions. In addition, with its central focus on usability, it offers specific guidance on the implementation of any interface/interaction project along with potential outcomes.

In addition, two modifications are introduced in terms of nomenclature for mobile contextual usability. First, “Technology” replaces “Product,” as this term helps conceive the system that a user may interact with a greater set of components, instead of simply the device or application itself. One example of this is found in the case of mobile usability where the inclusion of the wireless network is likely in addition to the mobile device (i.e., the product) when studying usability of a mobile product or service. Because mobile usability is mainly related to mobile technology, which continually improves the limitations of mobile interfaces and its applications, the technological factor of a mobile usability framework is an important and unique component that needs to be taken care of. Second, “Task/Activity” replaces “Activity,” as the former term appears more commonly in usability literature when describing the nature of users’ interaction with the technology. In addition, a list of consequences of usability was added to the framework as an output of usability evaluations.

These four variables (i.e., user, task/activity, environment, technology) were used for the presentation of the qualitative review of previous empirical research3 that relates to the usability assessment of mobile applications and/or mobile devices. The benefit of using these variables for the literature review is found in both the structure it provides for the discussion to follow, as well as to help highlight any areas that are lacking investigation.

Ref: http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2011may/coursaris2.html

Emerging approaches to long-term usability

2011-07-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

There is no one definitive solution for the problem of how to ensure long-term usability of data.

Ensuring physical survival of the bits is addressed by today’s archiving solutions. Typically, they deal with the obsolescence of media and form factors by migrating the data from one medium to another. Ensuring the usability of the information is the greater challenge, but in many cases there are a number of viable approaches.

These include:

• Using virtualization technology to emulate the obsolete hardware needed to execute the applications that can make the digital artifact useful.
• Converting the artifact to a standard canonical format, so that the problem is limited to ensuring the usability of the standard format.
• Periodically transforming the artifact into a current format.

The right approach often depends on why it is important to ensure the long-term usability of the information, and on the characteristics of the data, such as format or size. Once the business requirements are determined, it becomes possible to adapt and design a solution to meet specific needs.

IBM has been addressing various aspects of ensuring long-term usability over the past decade, with a wide variety of solutions that address both the survival of the bits and the broader issues of long-term usability.

Ref: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/nl/dias/lt/emeging_approaches.html

Content-Incentive-Usability Framework for Corporate Portal Design!

2011-07-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

While working on reviewing an Agricultural Knowledge Management Portal I have come across an interesting paper, which discusses about a content-Incentive-Usability Framework for Corporate Portal Design from a Knowledge Management Perspective.

It discusses about three important components:

First, Specify the issues involved with the creation and integration of content for knowledge portals.

Second, highlight the importance of providing incentives for employees to share knowledge.

Third, examine how user acceptance of KM portals can be promoted, and how this knowledge can be used to desing better corporate portals.

If you are interested to learn more about this framework please find resources at http://www.irma-international.org/chapter/content-incentive-usability-framework-corporate/17867/

Swoogle: A Semantic Web Search Engine!

2011-07-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of Swoogle?

You can find this search engine at http://swoogle.umbc.edu/index.php?option=com_frontpage&service=search&queryType=search_swt&searchStart=1&searchString=

Swoogle is a search engine for Semantic Web Ontologies, documents, terms and data found on the web. Swoogle provides services to human users through a browser interface and to software agents via RESTful web services. Swoogle employs Resource Description Framework (RDF) semantic technique - and other semantic technique is Topic Map which you may aware of that.

Swoogle is a research project (PhD thesis work of Li Ding) developed at and is hosted by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. This project received funding from US DARPA and NSF.

You can read more at - http://www.searchenginejournal.com/swoogle-an-engine-for-the-semantic-web/5469/

How much is too much?

2011-07-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Did you ever hear about the philosophy: "fail early, fail fast". I picked up this line while reading about the "lean start-up philosophy".

Imagine a two person start-up trying to develop a web 2.0 application. Time is the most precious resource for the company and delivering a working prototype is everything! In such circumstances, the million dollar questions is: "how much time do you spend on conceptualizing, planning and designing before you start implementing the prototype? In other words, how much (time spend on design/planning) is too much?"

I know that the answer to this different for each scenario and is dependent upon - the time you have, the overall goal of the project and the immediate goal of the prototype. However I thought, it would be neat if someone could come-up with a 'COMPLEX' flowchart that helps people figure out which design methodologies are more relevant to a particular situation than others. I call it a COMPLEX flow-chart since the number of possible scenarios are infinite and each scenario warrants a unique approach. However it should be possible to identify the 10-20 most common(or general) scenarios and then create a flow chart that. For example the flowchart would tell you that - the card-sorting method is more relevant to scenario X, but usability testing with low fidelity prototypes are more suitable for scenario Y. Basically if we synthesize the different design principles, techniques, methods learned in this class into an applicability based flowchart it would be a nifty tool!

I would like to know your thoughts/opinions on this. Do you think it would be possible? Or would it be too much of a generalization? Or too complicated?

Low/High Fidelity Prototype at Work

2011-07-23T18:35:00.000-07:00

There are many different ways to prototyping web pages and applications. In this post I want to mainly touch on low and high fidelity prototypes and which fits best at my company currently. I work in an agile development where the software engineers tend to work faster (at least that’s the case at my workplace), which means the engineers would have a “working” prototype for demonstration prior to going over a low fidelity prototype. Perhaps the engineers should hold off until the low fidelity prototypes are approved and signed off, but that does not seem to happen in the agile world.

When I created low fidelity prototypes (very few times), I thought it generated valuable usability conversation, arguments and suggestions, but unfortunately the scrum team (engineers, BA, PM, QA) thought it decelerated the development process. Whenever there is a meeting (backlog grooming, project planning, design) that debates a feature, the teams would want to see the big picture (high fidelity prototypes) right of the bat.

The quality and usability of the applications at my workplace could be highly improved by at least fifty plus percent if the teams take the role of design in software product development seriously. In Bill Buxton's book, a clear representation of design, engineering, marketing, and sales in all phases of the product development process shows that the engineering team’s role in the design phase is very little, which means that the engineering team would have no room to demonstrate a “working” prototype.

Data visualization on the iPad using Flash Builder

2011-07-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

I came across Adobe’s sales dashboard demo app while searching for the Flash Builder tutorials. My initial thought about this demo app was that if I were to prototype a dashboard app, it would not have looked anything like this demo app. My prototype would have carried a data grid, some charts, and lots and lots of buttons! This demo app carries an intuitive user interface, which represents big and small deals in circles/bubbles that users can interact with on the x and y-axis. By displaying information in a way that is easier for an end-user to digest large chunks of data in a usable interface, would ultimately enhance the user experience. The touch gestures in the iPad are perfect and the sales dashboard app built using the Flash Builder demos how pleasurable the user experience can be. It’s very useful to let the user do a gesture based interaction for the purpose of knowing that something is happening and being informed that something is happening in the device.

I haven’t played with the Flash Builder’s mobile properties, but from what I’ve seen (tutorials, sample flash builder mobile apps) I seem to enjoy it.

America: The Story of Us

2011-07-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if you have watched America: The Story of Us but this is a very interesting documentary. A co-worker was watching it over lunch the other day and I quickly became absorbed. I am not an avid history buff and I don’t watch the history channel on a regular basis, except for American Pickers, but this show had me immediately. The story is presented in a rich factual way. Though they are reenacting the information it is truly breath taking and makes the history come alive. It isn’t your usual boring narrated film. The thought that went into the design elements and how technology was used to enhance the story not take away from it was phenomenal. If you have not watched the series you can see it on Netflix. Hurry before the price goes up. I know I plan to take a look before canceling my Netflix subscription.

Mobile Application Development - Data/Functionality Driven Decisions

2011-07-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

I work in a large-company that very recently instituted a mobile-computing team. After attending a talk about the mobile UX, I could identify an interesting challenges while choosing the general mobile application development direction.

Native vs. Web Applications - choosing the right path!

Native application are mobile applications native to the mobile OS. (Eg. iOS, Android). Web applications are applications written in HTML/JavaScript, accessible through a web-browser on the mobile device and respond to gestures just like native applications. It is important to choose between native and mobile applications because of the following reasons:

1. Native applications provide hardware interaction support like camera integration, gps integration etc., Web applications do not support this.

2. Web application code-base is easy to maintain since you can write once and deploy across all platforms.

When native applications are chosen since code needs to be written for each single platform and also maintaining a uniform UI/UX design is an additional challenge.

So choose wisely!

Never Used a Computer Before in His Life

2011-07-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

There are people in this world who have never used a computer! We are often quick to forget this. I find it hard to believe too.

Jennifer Boriss, a Fire Fox developer, recently encountered 60 year old Joe, a cafeteria worker, stumbling around the mall food court "bored out of his mind". Boriss had originally traveled to the mall to conduct user tests on how people surf the web (interesting note: she mentions she finds malls an excellent place to find user test participants due to the variation in technical expertise). She ended up spending three hours with Joe, finding his unbiased, inexperienced and untouched impression of the Internet a source of valuable insight.

While she did focus primarily on browser usability, I loved how she found that Joe instantly attempted to use the "Help" menu as a guide for him to navigate the world wide web. There really is no guide book for using the web. Its hard to believe that perhaps we take for granted all the drop down menus, text boxes, and scroll bars we seemingly find so intuitive. While these inexperienced users are becoming more and more rare, Joe's experience serves as a good reminder of remembering to think about your users' context, skill level and basis of interaction.

A few of Boriss's discoveries:

No matter the user skill level, users stick with what they know. In the case of new users: text. Simple and informative text is effective.
Don't assume users will naturally investigate how software will work. Provide visual feedback and encouragement.
Don't make too many assumptions on how user's will use your technology

We truly take for granted what we know as we become experienced technology users. We've become so accustomed to scroll bars and drop down menus. Now we have touch interfaces where we can scroll around with a finger touch and zoom in with a pinch. We are even becoming more familiar with motion sensing devices that allow us to swipe through the air and move around to interact with the virtual world. It would be very interesting to see Joe try out a smartphone, tablet, or the Microsoft Kinect.

With the growth of ubiquitous computing, its interesting to think of how we will interact with technology in the future and decide what is natural and ideal. I personally strive and hope to create and support technologies that will us to interact in such natural ways that provide us deeper interaction with the world around us. I think we will need to learn more about ways to mesh our expertise of perceiving physical affordances in the world with our expertise of navigating virtual world of software and the web.

System Usability Scale (SUS)

2011-07-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

I felt like we went over the SUS very quickly, so Iwanted to elaborate on it a little.

Originally developed by John Brook in 1986, the SystemUsability Scale (SUS) is a self reported survey metric used to evaluateapplication usability. The survey is comprised of 10 questions that rate user satisfactionor dissatisfaction on a 5-point scale. The odd questions are positively wordedand the even are negatively worded, this is done to add variation to the survey.The questions are as follows:

I think that I would like to use this system frequently.
I found the system unnecessarily complex.
I thought the system was easy to use.
I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this system.
I found the various functions in this system were well integrated.
I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system.
I would imagine that most people would learn to use this system very quickly.
I found the system very cumbersome to use.
I felt very confident using the system.
I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system.

To score the SUS youmust first change each score from the alternating 1-5 scale to a standard 0-4scale where 0 is dissatisfied and 5 is very satisfied. To do this, you take theodd scores (positive worded scores) and subtract 1 from each score. Forexample, if you had a score of 5 it would now be 4 (5-1). Then you take all ofthe even scores and make it reverse by subtracting the score from 5. Forexample if you had a score of 3 it would now be a 2 (5-3). All of the scorescan now be summed together and multiplied by 2.5. It is multiplied by 2.5 tomake the score out of 100. If each odd score was a five and each even score wasa 1, the final score would be a perfect SUS score of 100. SUS scores average atabout 66% (69% Median). With 77% in the 75^th percentile, anythingover 80% can be considered a “good” score (Tullis & Albert, 2008).

Below are some quick referenceanswers.

How is the SUS used?
TheSUS is most frequently used to compare application designs

How many questions are inthe SUS questionare?
10

Is the SUS reliable?
Multiples studies (Lewis& Sauro 2009; Bangor et al 2008) have founds the SUS to have a Cronbach’sAlpha of .90 (note anything above .7 is considered “good”)

What does the SUS try to measure?
Effectiveness,Efficiency, Satisfaction

Please, if you have any other FAQs please ask them and I will answer (look up the answer)

Interesting Observations, and Related Resources, from Working on the HCI Website

2011-07-17T16:41:00.001-07:00

As I carried out my discovery/research work for my attempt at a re-design of our HCI website, I came across a lot of interesting data, particularly from the site's Google Analytics account, that brought UX concepts back to mind that I was first introduced to when getting into the field. In my experience, in the past year, there seems to have been a dramatic decrease in the mentions of the importance of "copy" and proper "writing for the web." These topics were once extremely prominent across UX publications and online entities. This article, by French UX consultancy Miratech, outlines some reasons, based on comparisons with print reading, that call for curtailed and, most importantly, scannable amounts of copy. The tendency to scan and not gaze as much and decreased information retention mean a lot for text-heavy sites like the current HCI portal. It means that important links, like the PDF versions of all course offerings, found at the very bottom of some inner site pages, are rarely noticed and thus substantially underutilized. In fact, on the page this PDF lives on, Google's in-page click analysis shows an insignificant use (below 1% in page clicks) of the PDF link. In general, throughout the HCI website, less than 4-5% of clicks occur below the fold. Besides for PDF resources like this course handbook, this means that other important pieces of information may be jumped over: contact information, application information, etc.. as all of these academic tidbits live within paragraphs of extensive text. I would say the homepage suffers from the very same problem and that it may correlate with the low depth and length of visits that the site (for 50% + of visits), as a whole, experiences (in absolutes, and not in averages since some students/faculty behaviors are outliers and increase the mean).

So, although it's a relatively old topic in the web-focused domain of the HCI/UX field, it's interesting to once again see a working example of it. This is something I am paying specific attention to during the CFR.org re-design, which I am mid-way in terms of completing, particularly with certain about pages; the coupling of lengthy paragraphs and poor font choices (size/family) make for pages from which most users don't glean anything useful.

As I was thinking about all of this web copy talk, it brought to mine instances of menus, particularly "specials menus" in restaurants I've visited, where I've felt as equally burdened as when trying to find information on a much too wordy website... a topic which kind of ties in with service design. I'm wondering if anyone has perhaps potentially read or knows of resources related not specifically to web and writing, but to, more generally, services and writing/textual components of the service. I'd love to read more into it.

Pepto Bismol is Expensive but Feels So Good

2011-07-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

The rising cost of design as a project progresses goes hand-in-hand with the "cone of uncertainty" in project management. A designer rarely gets the opportunity to revisit design the farther along a product goes. We are relegated to doing the best we can and then we watch as the design floats down the river, down the conveyer belt, dropped into a container, a lid sealed on, and a label. In a poor process, these late design opportunities present themselves more often, maybe due to ignorance at the upper levels, or cynicism about the design process. But in today's generally "Agile" environment, it happens rarely, though I wouldn't be blogging about it if I didn't recently get that opportunity. And wow, it is a really great opportunity, though not without risks and difficulties.

Our engineering department recently decided to change their code-base. In other words, a very quick and complete rewrite of a project that I had done research, design, and testing on. I was happy with the end-product in general, but one little piece was bothering me and we didn't have enough time to do any more design. It would have worked fine, but if you're a designer, you know, it needs to sit well in the gut. This wasn't sitting well. And then, POW, a new chance. And what a chance it has been. It's expensive, yes. Not as expensive as after the release, but it is costing them. At least the cost was factored into the change decision and the top brass are on-board. Consequently, my gut feels better. The area I didn't like is smooth as silk now. I was offered redemption! I guess I'm just saying that I'm stoked I got this chance and wish there was some part of the process that could be built-in for it, but it's textbook malpractice. Just costs to much.

It must be said, also, that the process isn't completed, yet. The code is still being rewritten and this entire rewrite is to take 4-6 weeks. In other word, I have very little time to test my new design and testing is the real proof. Without the testing, it's just a hunch, and that's scarier than not having a strong gut feeling about it. So I'm struggling to get to a point where I can test, and testing takes so much time, and means iteration. Gotta do it. Otherwise, there goes that twinge in the gut again. Ready to release on a beta of 30 large clients without usability testing? I have just one thing to ask ya, are you feelin' lucky? Huh, punk, are ya?

Service Design Tools

2011-07-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

At my work place, one of my boss has a large poster of Service Design Tools hanging on one of the wall. It spurred an interesting discussion between me and her. This graphic representation of how each discipline is intertwined and where they have their roots is fascinating. It shows the inter-relation, history as well as mile stones in each field. Hope you'll enjoy as much as I did.

3M's Visualization Attention Service

2011-07-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

https://vas.3m.com/

I came across this very interesting services provided by 3M when I was searching for various Eye Tracking technology. Recently, I got to try Tobii's (http://www.tobii.com/en/analysis-and-research/global/?gclid=CKnmjuelhKoCFacaQgodLmHGzA) Eye Tracking technology which was super cool! It's cost factor led me to research other inexpensive methods that captures a user's attention.

3M which is usually famous for all their typical products has now come out with a service called Visual Attention Service. They claim that they can "accurately indicate what design elements people are most likely to notice in the first 3-5 seconds". Now that is quite fascinating that they can accurately determine what catches the users attention. The way it works is that you can upload an image and instantly the 3M's VAS will generate heat maps and hot spots (based on scientific methods) that provides other information such which elements will be noticed by the user in the first 3-5 seconds.

Following is excerpts from their website:
http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/VisualAttentionService/home/why_use_vas/

"The tool analyzes basic design elements such as colors, faces, shapes, contrast and text, to accurately predict which areas will attract attention in the first 3 to 5 seconds. The results show you the hotspots – and the not-so-hot spots – so you can easily confirm your design choices or alter your image to emphasize specific elements.

3M VAS does not measure the strength of marking messages or the emotional impact of a design – it goes straight to the heart of visual science to tell you where the human eye will naturally gravitate in the first few seconds of viewing. Once you're certain you've grabbed the attention of as many people as possible, your next steps depend on your own marketing goals and needs."

This is a great inexpensive (first 5 images free and then you have various subscription options) way to test designs in the early phase instead of using conducting a usability testing. This approach can be integrated early on in the design process as a very cost effective method that can generate valid data.

Global companies must harness cloud-based services

2011-07-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

The url below is at a large IT conference and highlights the partnership and ideas of Oracle and more specifically InfoSys.

http://www.infosys.com/Oracle/features-opinions/Pages/oracle-open-world-keynote2010.aspx

'Look beyond the cloud'
Global companies must harness cloud-based services and platforms, and capitalize on solutions based on multi-tenancy and non-linear payment models to accelerate innovation.

'Invest in the future'
Companies must serve the digital generation by focusing on mobile technologies in diverse areas such as e-Commerce and healthcare. They can enable better collaboration across the enterprise through social media and pervasive computing.

This is very much worth the listen. Particulary notice the presentation on "iEngage" which is one of the infosys platform products. iEngage goes beyond creating facilitation of information transfer and becomes an interactive engagement platform. In the presentation it refers to consumers. Companies must understand the power is at the consumer (users) level and need to understand the consumers demand.

Tesco's subway shopping

2011-07-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

A friend at work showed me this the other day and I just think it's a perfect example of service design in action. Tesco, a global grocery store chain, has created a way for shoppers to purchase groceries by scanning grocery items on a giant graphic on subway walls using their cell phones and then Tesco will deliver them to the shopper's home.

Amazing service design. Saves time and eliminates a lot of the work of shopping for customers and I imagine it could lead to quite a revenue boost for Tesco. Plus all of the free viral marketing that they are getting.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/south-korean-supermarket-chain-opens-virtual-grocery-stores-in-subways/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPM4Ui6Sjfk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Eye tracking and custom eye-drawing software

2011-07-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.eyewriter.org/

I was browsing for something (I can’t remember what) about a week ago… I might have started with google’s sci/tech news and landed on the EyeWriter.

EyeWriter is a low-cost eye tracking and custom eye-drawing software that enables you to write or draw using your eyes instead of your hand. It’s interesting how these two technologies work together to help Tony Quan (graffiti artist), who was diagnosed with paralyzing Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Tony is now able to draw again using just his eyes with EyeWriter.

What if EyeWriter was combined with other software like Word, Excel, or games that are customized to fit the needs of an individual and what if our smart phones were equipped with this combination? Would we achieve a better user experience since the number of clicks and taps could be relatively minimal? And just as I was wondering how this technology could be combined with robots, I came across the LiveWriter which is EyeWriter + Robot Arm. But I'm aware of other ways to have a robot write or draw something, and LiveWriter is another option that is opensource and low-cost.

Get the code from: http://code.google.com/p/eyewriter/downloads/list

Potential to improve some user experiences Using HTML 5

2011-07-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

Apple's iphone and ipad doesnot support the flash and silverlight, which is a big draw back for users as well as from user experience angle. In Such cases HTML 5 is alternate for creating RIA.

HTML 5 has potential to improve the improve some user experiences, it comes with its own set of implementation challenges that can outweigh its benefits. UED professionals should look to HTML 5 as a means to improve accessibility, design apps for Apple devices, and build text-heavy sites.

Using HTML 5 we can improve the experiences in some of the places like

Experiences for people with disabilities
Apps that are solely intended for Apple devices
Producing text-heavy sites that require text resizing

Some of the Best features about HTML 5 which can be considered while building best User experience Design

Movable content : The user can easily drag and drop any web content making the user interface very easy
Quick access to videos and audios : As there is no need of flash plug-ins , so the site will load very quickly by using less lines of codes

http://html5demos.com/
http://html5gallery.com/

http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/?fbid=KRSl2gndnuX#

Social Circles, Service Design, and Other Thoughts

2011-07-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

Today, I wanted to point out two articles I've come across during my usual, pre-work Monday morning read.

First, and most relevant to our Google+ discussions in class, here's a piece by Frank Spillers, who, like Mike, emphasizes that perhaps the greatest innovation of Google+ is the introduction of social circles. Frank concludes that this extraction of a "real-world social phenomenon" and its application to Google's "user experience strategy" is a sign of "intelligent life" in social networking and design. This particularly rang a bell with me as I thought in a similar vein for my Craigslist re-design project in this course; breaking away from the "social media" stereotype of social design was a main, personal goal during that individual project and to effectively do so, I had to think of "real-world social phenomena," as Frank describes them, inherent in real-world activities that parallel Craigslist's functionality. Out of this perspective, I was able to derive social functionality that did, in the end, prove useful to the users I was testing: bookmarking/saving of listings (much like physical ads -- both for later reference and for sharing with others), more personal, direct sharing of ads (via a bunch of mediums including of course social media channels and e-mail), and friends' activity on the "market"/Craigslist (bordering on this idea of "social circles," we're definitely more prone to trust those within our circles during transactions, as opposed to strangers).. and so on.

Another relevant piece I came across is a cool booklet about service design and its implications for local authorities. Most interesting about this literature, of course, is the extension of service design's usefulness from more profit-oriented entities that we've examined to public services that directly concern local authorities and governments. As "public services are currently confronted with a number of complex social challenges" (higher demand, aging population, etc.) and simultaneous "squeeze[s] on government resources," service design emerges as a "new discipline" that can cost-effectively help "reach solutions relatively quickly and in a manner that is highly visual and comprehensivle for all." Ever since Mike introduced us to the topic in class, I've been highly interested with keeping service design in mind as a career direction, perhaps after these studies. Articles like this one only re-inforce his take that the discipline is gaining more and more importance and is a great market for HCI practitioners, current and future, to think about entering.

Measuring Usability: 14 burdens placed on the user

2011-07-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/user-burdens.php

In his recent blog post, Jeff Sauro writes about common and burdensome interaction practices associated with websites and software. Many of them are examples that I've encountered as a user but had never really considered from a usability perspective. I think that to a certain degree I've come to just 'accept' these hassles as part of the experience. I've resigned myself without having realized it.

I think there also may be a bit of professional "oh well, I understand" going on. For instance, in relation to Sauro's #1 gripe, I work at a university and understand the challenges of a user-friendly universal single sign-on across tools and services. So when I'm using my ISU tools I'm only slightly annoyed that my sign-on info is different in some key places that I access frequently.

I can use my ISU username and password to get into WebCT or Blackboard and also CyMail. But I have to use my numeric University ID and a password to get into AccessPlus. And if I want to use the Libraries resources, I've got to have my Borrower ID and a totally separate PIN.

So I understand Sauro's point. And from a user standpoint, I am annoyed. But I also find that, as an IT person, I understand the technical challenges that lead to these decisions and it's not always easy or even possible to make the user experience more effortless.

Design of shower controls

2011-07-06T07:14:00.000-07:00

This past week I was in Atlanta Georgia and stayed in a Courtyard hotel. I find most of my hotel stays thankfully uneventful. It seems most have hair dryers in the rooms and almost everyone has the electronic card swipe locks. We have all figured out how to operate these devices. You wouldn’t think that taking a simple shower would require studying the faucet in order to determine how to start the shower. I think I am fairly mechanically inclined but some of you may think this faucet is easy and/or you may have this particular model at home. I was able to start the water without a problem but getting the actual shower to start was a challenge. Before I left the room I had to take a picture because I decided this would make a good blog post and would help me explain.

As I looked for a way to start the shower I focused on the spot but there was no pull up or other evidence of someway to start the shower. I focused then on the actual faucet controls. There was the usual OFF and C and H. You can see under the control is a black arrow looking mark with what is hard to see tub-lo and low-shwr. As I looked at this I couldn’t determine if this was for the actual flow control or if there was another control element I was missing. After careful inspection I found what appeared to be the lever. It was located on the right side and I have included a better picture below.

This was just another example of how something so basic that most people use everyday can be made difficult by design.

“New Conductive Ink Allows Circuit Prototyping With A Pen”

2011-07-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

As HCI professionals, we depend on our ability to create prototypes that help us to design better user experiences. In this case, engineers now have the new ability to use a specialized ink pen to help them make speedy and less costly prototypes. Previous ink-based circuit construction was typically done using inkjet printers or airbrushing, so removing the extra hardware from the process is a huge step forward. The team has some news for those people that think the writable ink won’t hold up in the long run. The ink is surprisingly quite resilient to physical manipulations, and they found that it took folding the paper substrate several thousand times before their ink pathways started to fail (Nathan, M., 2011). This can be a really be help in user-centered design approaches because this ink can conduct electricity like the copper on circuit boards.

This kind of application can help designers and engineers to work closer together in mobile environments to help create quicker and faster solutions in designing hardware and other technological devices.

http://hackaday.com/2011/06/30/new-conductive-ink-allows-circuit-prototyping-with-a-pen-and-paper/

4ourth mobile design pattern wiki

2011-07-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

Smashing Magazine posted a link to 4ourth mobile design pattern wiki today that I thought might be useful for other folks working on projects that incorporate mobile interaction.

It covers the wrapper, information display, labels, interactive controls and a lot more.

Here's a snippet from one of the early sections, "What is a Pattern?":

Patterns are simply well-defined, well-researched best practices, but fundamental principles of design must be followed always, the user must always be kept in mind, and the purpose of the design must always be considered.
In mobile interactive design, we might summarize these core principles as "user centered design," context, and other principles. A set of more specific ones are detailed at the end of this section. These core principles are always considered, the proper pattern for the situation is determined, and the correct application is created from the user's needs, their context, and by integrating the solution into the whole system.
The patterns in this book attempt to follow this philosophy. Not only are they intended to be a point of departure, but they explicitly state what conditions are required, which are optional, when to simply follow adjacent or superordinate standards, and the key pitfalls if the edges are exceeded.

“Reactable Live”

2011-07-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

Music is a strong application in all things HCI. In HCI we try to make the user’s life better, safer, and etc…by designing and developing ways to program positive experiences. I chose to blog about the power of music because it can be very instrumental in cognitively programming one to perform a desired behavior like to get out of the way when you hear a siren and to increase our ability to memorize information. Play is also just as instrumental because project-based learning approaches help give the users the ability to actively solve problems tangibly.

Recently, I watched a demonstration of “Reactable Live” that is primarily being marketed to the music industry. However, once I saw this demonstration it became very apparent to me how this technology could be modified as a dynamic learning-programming tool. I thought about how when we hear a siren we cognitively know it is not noise but information. Then I also thought about the possibilities when connecting music/sound and play to program a person cognitively to retain more information for longer periods of time. I can still remember the lyrics of music that I have not heard in years only if I can get the music to flow right in my head, and then the lyrics just come to me as if I just heard the song recently.

Here is the link and I hope you all enjoy it.

http://www.reactable.com/products/live/

Touch Screen User Experience

2011-07-01T08:57:00.001-07:00

Touchscreens are becoming popular with their intutive design and ease of interaction, right from the mobile devices, Electronic Devices, Kiosk’s to ATM everywhere touchscreen has made a presence everywhere. Now a days key pads are replaced by touch screens

I also noticed couple of touchscreen applications/devices, where I got lost just because I wasn’t aware which gesture to use, as no proper guide was provided. I was suppose to pinch on an image to zoom it and I was trying to tap on it. these are all common problems we face. I want to provide

some of the guidelines which can improve the user experience of Mobiles

Provide clear Navigation
Use familiar Icons
Make Icons, buttons, links and interfaces easily clickable
Position and space the icons
Use Simple language
Maintain consistency and provide clear indications
Implied Textural in Mobile Design
Capture the richness of communication.

What is Ethnography?

2011-06-30T16:45:00.000-07:00

Ethnography is a research methodology and not a specific technique to collect data (unlike participant observation, or interviews). In fact, it is a multiple technique approach: an ethnographer uses a mixture of techniques appropriate to her/ his situation; and adapts each technique to her/ his situation. Ethnography tries to integrate the different methods into one holistic study.

Ethnographers frequently use participant observation to gather data. As a participant observer, an ethnographer participates in the society or culture being studied by living amongst those people. Yet, through reflection and analysis, the ethnographer retains an analytical or observational position so that s/he can describe and interpret the subject of the study. Through immersion in the field (the project and the context in which the project is working), the ethnographer accumulates local knowledge. Research takes the form of diverse relationships and ‘conversations.’ Even when it includes apparently impersonal methods like surveys they are treated as part of an ongoing conversation or relationship with a place and with people. Every experience, conversation and encounter can be treated as ‘data’ alongside more formal research activities such as interviews.

A research approach such as this does not require interviews and conversations to be completely structured. While the researcher is broadly aware of the issues to be addressed, the precise questions, and their sequence, emerge only as conversations/ interviews progress. Thus, data is collected through ‘chains of conversations’. Similarly, the researcher begins by identifying key informants. The reliability and veracity of those chosen as key informants is crucial for the ethnographer. To ensure reliable information, ethnographic researchers triangulate anything learnt from key informants with others. Talking to the key informants points the researcher to people who may provide further information. Thus, the collection of data progresses through chains of conversations and informants, and the emphasis on sampling is not adequacy in a statistical or numerical sense but in identifying events/ people that contribute to the narrative. Nevertheless, this narrative is scientific i.e. its acceptance/ rejection is subject to testing.

To reduce the influence of personal bias or ideology, ethnographers are trained to be constantly self critical and reflexive, especially on the field.

Reference:
Balaji, Parthasarathy, Aswin Punathambekar, G. R. Kiran, Dileep Kumar Guntuku, Janaki Srinivasan, and Richa Kumar. (2005) "Information and Communications Technologies for Development: A Comparative Analysis of Impacts and Costs from India" Project Report, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India.

Service Design: Global Conference

2011-06-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

While working on our group project I have come across to the Service Design Global Conference From Sketchbook to Spreadsheet and would like share with you the all the details...

Call for Contributions
Open to everyone includes business people, enterpreneures, academicians and service design practitioners.. initial submission last date is June 30.. For more details click here

Themes

Design and business collaborating, what working, learning and building together looks like, what works, what doesn't

Measuring success - what?where?when?how?

Service Design and how it works at different levels of organizations

Service Designers working on new, 'wicked' problems

Service Designers designing business, business designing services

Not everyone who creates a service calls themselves a service desinger

How does the business community view service design?

How organisations access, buy and value service design?

What makes a successful (service) design business?

Marketing and moitising service design

What might designers learn from business and vice versa

What will service desing look like 5, 10, 15 years from now?

Venue
Palace Hotel2 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

For more details click here

Don’t Be So Quick To Criticize

2011-06-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

I ran across an interesting article entitled “Six Things User Experience Designer Forget When They Criticize Websites” that discusses how UX designer are quick to criticize before understanding why certain decisions were made. This is something that I have caught myself doing.

In fact, recently, I was helping out a friend who is starting her own business. She has never created a web site, but had found a hosting company who catered to non- technical people. The site she came up with wasn’t what I would have done and I was quick to think about a million things she did wrong. Fortunately, I didn’t spit all of those out to her because it wouldn’t have sounded constructive at all which is what she asked for.

Once we were able to sit down to talk, I asked her what the purpose of the site was and who the target audience is. These two questions are critical for me to provide the best site design possible. After finding out those answers, several of the things I was criticizing actually made sense for her site. I was amazed at the amount of research she had done to come up with what she did and she was able to defend a lot of the decisions. Not all clients can do this, but when they can, it is very helpful.

One of the main points in the article talks about how business decisions can sometimes trump the user experience. In this example that was exactly what happened. Hopefully, when it does happen it’s not such a poor user experience that it hinders the bottom line.

A/B testing

2011-06-29T14:07:00.001-07:00

Most of us are familiar with the concept of using A/B testing. A/B testing is also known as "split testing" or "bucket testing," A/B Testing is a method by which two design samples are presented to real life users in live circumstances. Each sample is tracked allowing for comparison of results. These results can make the business team can decide which option is better functionality for users.

For instance, one might typically test two different headlines on a landing page. One would then outperform the other, and you would know which is the top-performing page.

Why do we need A/B testing?

Budget-Friendly
Measure Minute Differences
Resolves Conflicts
Measures Actual Behavior

Before getting into Testing we need to make sure we accomplish few key points

1) Establish Testing Goals and Parameters

2) Determining the Sufficient Test Interval

3) Create 1-3 designs

4) Redesign based on testing results (After first round of results)

5) Evaluate the Redesigns in A/B Split Tests

In conclusion, A/B Testing is a valuable addition to other types of user research. It provides credible, real-world numbers and guidance to inform any design decision.

REACTable and New Directions In Mobile Design and Development

2011-06-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

So, I finally re-discovered the name of the touch musical device I mentioned in class yesterday (the one on which you can place/move around different objects to create musical tracks): REACTABLE. Since I personally don't know much about "phicons," I can't say much about this machine's relevance to this concept; however, it is well within the range of "tangible user interfaces" and centers around the tracking/programming of actions (sounds) based on fiducial markers. Check out this basic demo to see its elementary functionality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc. If you want to take a look at actual production potential, there's a bunch of YouTube clips available, including: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgy1S8qymx0. Obviously, this is geared towards the electronic scene, but I thought it'd be something cool to share as tangible UIs relate well to some of the computing perspectives we looked at during our lecture yesterday.

Another interesting item I wanted to bring up in this post looks at the intersection of mobile computing and the psychological practice of "homing" (related of course to the sensation/feeling of "being at home"). What an article I read this morning highlights is that there are many psychological phenomena for which mobile computing could be adapted in order to enhance overall life experiences. For example, in this instance of "homing," there is a tendency for humans to "differentiate" based on location (some people have a house in an urban area and one in a more secluded, beach/suburban/rural area -- they leave different wardrobes in each to enforce "differentiation" of their various "homes"); what this rather directly entails in mobile computing is really context-dependent programming and functionality. How can devices and software be more tailored to the physical contexts in which we find and establish ourselves?

Like the REACTable example, this idea of complementing psychological "tendencies" with systems like mobile computing is one that I think we will see slowly evolve, and it has clear implications for practitioners of HCI and UX.

Mike Oren on Miscellaneous Topics: Service Design, Google Music, and Google+

2011-06-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile since I've written a post, myself, on this blog. First, I want to thank all of my students who have posted so far--there have been some truly exceptional posts and the posts have been fairly solid in general. It's a fun and interesting challenge teaching a combination survey (wide range of topics covered, primarily at the surface level), project-based (in-depth hands-on work), seminar-style (open ended, discussion-based, and collecting guest speakers) course where all of the students are remote.

I imagine this can be equally challenging for students, even given the lack of required readings, since (as many of you have discovered) some outside reading is often required to do well on aspects of the class (the survey component is to make sure you have the base knowledge to find the resources you need to do the work). To be honest, it wasn't until Robert sent me an e-mail this weekend that it really struck me that what I am doing with this course is at all odd or different--I have taken courses with all of these components, but they were all separate. I know I have always said the course can easily be split in three, which I would do if the resources were available for three courses on these topics; however, I had always thought about that in terms of just the sheer amount of information I try to pack into the class, but I can see how that can be the case for the delivery method as well.

The class, when first taught in 2009, was not originally setup to be as much of the mixture it has become--while I'm reusing a decent amount of the slide content, I am also adding a lot of new content, activities, former HCI 521 (cognitive aspects of human-computer interaction), etc. to the mix. While part of the content mixture makes for the current format of the course--521 was designed as a survey course and the original 596 was designed as a predominantly project oriented course (with a heavy dose of theory, which I'm thankful I was allowed to maintain and even expand--my original draft for the 2011 course, cut the theoretical discussion due to the practitioner focus but when the lectures on situated action and phenomenology didn't bomb, I reintegrated them with some modifications).

One thing I have been pondering with the course though is why I see very little discussion during the lectures on Adobe Connect. In classes where I've monitored just the discussion feed or have taught a course in a chat room as an experiment, the side/back chatter is pretty dominant. Here, unless I specifically pause for comments, I rarely see much going on in the chat. Is this being done simply out of politeness/respect? Are there chats going on but private ones? In some ways it does make things nice because this way I don't have to parse the chat for things to share vs. random (but often related) talk but on the other hand, I wonder what conversations are being left out. In my own experience, much of the back chatter in these online discussions of live class sessions tend to be related--links being shared, personal experiences being exchanged, etc. Another possibility is that there's just simply an overload going on--am I simply presenting too many divergent topics too quickly? Transitions are something I'm acutely aware of--integrating the topics I am is often like throwing paint at a wall, some of it may form into a unified splotch while other things will appear far removed as little drops. My hope though is that everybody is getting something useful out of the course. I should also add, that some topics people ask to be covered in more detail, I purposely avoid as there are other courses that are setup to cover them (e.g. graphic design, research methods/full user research cycle, etc.)

Switching gears to my original intent for the post... I was chatting with a friend of mine who work for IDEO, which as I've mentioned in class does quite a bit of work on service design (they are one of just a few companies in the US that do this kind of work). She shared some of her favorite examples with me (from the Boston office where she works--although she was not on these projects), and I thought I'd pass them along as great case studies of the service design process and what can be accomplished. The first is one I think we can all have opinions on: TSA Checkpoints. The second, she wasn't sure if it was (strictly speaking) a service design project, but it does have some aspects of it: Bedsider. I should note that both of these examples take the more traditional service design approach rather than the information flow focus of Glushko's take, which I prescribe to more as I feel the equal focus on the backend data processing and flow has a lot of potential to really improve service quality and reliability (although it won't be as readily noticeable by users/customers). I am keeping a summary of these cases out of this post, both due to the current length and to allow a student to write up a blog post about one or both of them (note: it should be more than a summary--add some analysis or synthesize it with user experience design in some way).

Jumping into another unrelated topic... I received an invitation to join Google Music last Thursday. I managed to finish getting all of my DRM-free music on to the cloud by the end of the weekend, but during that time I tested it out on a decent (but by no means great) Internet connection, only to find it useless due to the apparent lack of buffering--the song was choppy and just didn't really play. I also tested it on my iPhone, but it apparently doesn't currently work on the iPhone (I have yet to test it on the iPad, but I am expecting a similar problem). It's still in limited beta, so these issues aren't terribly surprising. The interface itself is pretty slick and seems to work well--and with an Android phone, this could definitely be the media killer "app" (a solution just as, or possibly even more elegant than iTunes integration with the iPhone/iPod for music). I'm really not fully sold on this yet, but so far I like it much better than Amazon's Cloud Player, which I've also tried. I'm curious what everybody thinks about possible use cases for Google Music and general usefulness of cloud music players in general.

Final topic: I know we talks about this in class, but I have to rave, again, about Google Plus. Even the integrated chat feature ties in with the social circles--so not everybody is allowed to chat with you; however, I would actually prefer if there were settings where I could choose to allow certain circles to chat with me at various times (e.g. family and friends view me as offline during business hours; business contacts, who are not also friends, view me as offline when I'm on vacation; different status messages for different groups--e.g. my chat status for friends might be links to a funny video, but to work colleagues an intranet page about a major policy change). I also discovered that Sparks was not the semi-random social area around common interests that I thought it was (I had not viewed any demo videos)--it's apparently just a means of finding articles/photos/videos to share, which is not nearly as interesting to me (not sure if I'll ever use it again beyond my quick test). Shared messages also appear to lack a character limit, or (at the very least) are not arbitrarily low (e.g. a thousand characters can be typed). There was also a critical lesson learned from Google Wave--notifications from Google+ appear across all Google properties via the navigation bar, where a small status icon shows a number (for notifications on Google+)--the bar also has a share button built into it. While it is hard to truly evaluate Google+ until I get more of my contacts on to it, so far what I've seen has been vastly superior to any of the other social networking sites out there (for me, circles makes a huge difference). There are also a decent number of research questions that Google+ inspires and a lot of possibilities for digital social networkings future that could allow it to more closely mirror real social networks.

Note: The post title is intended for when I share this on Google Reader and ifttt.com automatically shares it to Twitter. Today, I had shared a post entitled "I wrote a book" and that's how it gets shared on Twitter (I had not written the book, of course). The book is recommended for folks new to UX: Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web (by the blogger at Ignore the Code). As a fun post, if anybody wants to discuss the usability of blog titles/news headlines then this would make a great case to include.

“3D Interactions between Virtual Worlds and Real Life in an E-Learning Community”

2011-06-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

Collaboration is one of the central focuses of the Internet. The ability to use the Internet to improve communication, collaboration, and the exchange of ideas has become more important day by day. Those that work in the discipline of human computer interaction may also work with these virtual mediums to improve these highly engaging environments that offer few limits on the possibilities of what they can offer. Virtual worlds, like Second Life, offer a very dynamic and diverse virtual universe that has been proven successful in various applications like education. Presently, there is a large presence of real life universities, like Iowa State University, on the grid using this medium for engaging and collaborative purposes. Moreover, there are other entities that utilize virtual worlds in their everyday practices like IBM that depend on the medium to bring globally dispersed work groups together to help adjust to today’s globalization while saving money from travel expenses and the alike. Altogether, virtual worlds offer users an environment that is more dynamic and flexible as compared as SMS texting, email, and other lesser engaging technologies.

Virtual worlds may have positive impacts in other areas of HCI because a systematic combination of real life and virtual interaction is promising a huge benefit for electronic learning, in terms of (not only virtually) tangible E-learning interfaces that enrich the experiences of learners—and probably also those of teachers. By a felt-as-somatic interaction with the learning environment the cognitive capabilities of students can be exhausted to a much larger extent than in traditional classroom settings, where learners are typically acting in a much more passive and less individual way (Lucke, U., Zender, R., 2011). Learning using virtual worlds can offer learners the ability to experience inexpensive project-based learning of all ages from K-12, collegiate, corporate, and non-academic. Virtual worlds also offer a safe environment to learn cause and effect relationships that may help promote safety, education, collaboration, and various other needs that can extend far outside of the industrial realm and deep into the interpersonal human condition.

Lucke, U., Zender, R. (2011). “3D interaction between virtual worlds and real life in an e-learning

community”, 2011.

Retrieved June 27, 2011 from:

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ahci/2011/684202/

“Museums and Human Computer Interaction”

2011-06-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

I remember as a kid enjoying going to the museum because of all the neat and unexplainable things that I became exposed to. The big problem is that I had no real idea what I was viewing and if I did, I may have known very little about the object or its importance in order to be in a museum anyway. Recently, I got to spend almost a week in Washington D.C. and I spent a lot of time at The Smithsonian. This museum is broken-up into various themed sub-museums that have audio devices that allow the user to stand in front of an exhibit and be given an audio presentation of what the artifact is and its importance. Therefore the device gave me a better user experience because it shared information, provided education, and possible inspiration to promote further study of certain artifacts of history that may have really interested me. The minor drawback of this technology is that because of the private nature of the device (the use of headphones); the user’s attention may be drawn away from the environment around themcausing them to focus harder on the current experience. Because the external environments noise can be drowned-out by the headphones and the auditory presentation I listened to, I found myself separated from my group many times which resorted in our savvy uses to find each other using our smart phones. Nevertheless, this personal presentation technology makes the museum experience more enjoyable and substantive over the unfulfilling experiences I remember when I was a kid.

Today, there are new technologies that can give a museum visitor an even greater interactive experience that remains personal but also collaborative not only with the museum artifacts, but also with other museum visitors as well. This new technology is a remote collaborative multi-touch experience that offers an additional channel for museum visitors to explore the exhibition and increase the sense of connectedness and awareness between the two spaces. The experience flow includes stages of offering opportunities for exploration, negotiation, and cooperation (Arroyo, E., Righi, V., Tarrango, R., Blat, J., 2011). For museums like The Smithsonian, this technology can make the visitor experience be richer and more immersive while allowing group discussion and video communication between other visitors. Visitors can spend more time enjoying the museums with less worry of keeping track of others and their geographical locations as well. This kind of device also has numerous uses outside of museums. Instruments like this can be used in construction, plant management, transportation, and in many other environments where people may have to be in distributed areas while needing maximum mobility and the ability to communicate.

Arroyo, E., Righi, V., Tarrago, R., Blat, J. (2011). “A remote multi-touch experience to support

Collaboration between remote museum visitors”, 2011.

Retrieved June 27, 2011 from:

gti.upf.edu/a-remote-multi-touch-experience-to-support-collaboration-between-remote-

museum-visitors/

Demographic Markup Language (DML)

2011-06-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years I've been becoming more and more annoyed with how targeted web advertising is choosing to become. Between Facebook data mining and Google ad targeting, it seems like every ad on their websites I visit believes I want to get an IT degree from the University of Phoenix and participate in every Tough Mudder event happening on the West Coast simply because I've indicated I'm back in school and enjoy running events.

I laughed and was intrigued when Amber Case recently tweeted her blog post about creating a demographic markup language (DML). Essentially, such a markup language would allow one to define one's demographic information for all web services. For websites, the more data you have on your user, the better you can targets ads, and these ads bring more advertisers and, most importantly, money. So now it seems everyone collects some small bit of information so ads can be targeted. Amber notes, however, how sad it is how significantly one's user experience can change simply by changing basic information since most websites currently have only very small data points, like age or sex, with which to target their advertising. She herself set her gender to male and birthdate to 1973 so she could actually get advertising she likes. By defining a DML, the user would have a better say in the types of advertising they want to see. This is a win win for user and advertiser.

This would seem to pull the carpet out from under social media giants like Facebook. I've always felt that Facebook benefited more than its users simply because of all the data they have on their users. By giving the user more choice in the type of advertising they will see (since they have to), all websites will have equal access to user data and create a richer and more customized web user experience. This could be powerful for many different reasons and start to give identity to the faceless users of web services.

Corey's Axure RP Review

2011-06-26T19:22:00.000-07:00

I recently created interactive prototypes using Axure RP for my individual project in the redesign of craigslist.org. I opted to use Axure RP since I've seen many job listings in the field of HCI inquiring about familiarity with the prototyping tool. In the process of using Axure RP in my project, I became intimately familiar with the program's strengths and weaknesses and thought I would share those. I'm not terribly familiar with competing software tools, such as iRise, so this review is based on my experience with Axure RP alone. I have used OmniGraffle, Balsamiq, and Microsoft Visio, primarily, fairly extensively for system and flow diagrams, but I would say that Axure RP is in a different league based on its interactive prototyping capabilities.

If you're not already familiar or aware, Axure RP is a wire framing, prototyping, and specification software tool for design of user interfaces in applications and websites. It can used to quickly create wire frames that evolve into fairly high fidelity interactive prototypes all before any code needs to be written. This allow for quick evaluation of company or client designs. Axure RP also boasts an automatic specification generator that utilizes annotations from the wire frames to generate a Microsoft Word specification document.

The Newbie Level videos on Axure RP tutorial page are a good place to get started. I watched a few videos and was off designing in less than hour.

Axure RP's user interface was familiar given my previous experience with similar software tools. Beginning your wire frame is pretty straight forward. Widgets (what Axure calls all the buttons, text, images, panels etc.) are easily drug out on to your page from the Widgets panel. A grid, snapping, rulers, and guides provide an easy way to keep your wire frame all lined up and organized.

Depending on the widget, various properties can be set on the Widget Properties panel. This panel is where you will spend a lot of time with its three tabs: Annotations, Interactions, and Formatting. The Axure RP tutorial doesn't make a big deal of it and I wish it had, but the Annotations tab is where you can apply labels to your widets--this provides an easier way to find specific widgets when you're adding interactivity to your prototype and later, where the tool will pull your comments from when auto generating the prototype specification.

Different widgets have different event handlers (OnClick, OnMouseOver, etc.) and this is how you bring your prototype to life. You can add several Cases of interactivity with the Case Editor on the Interactions tab--a case being a possible interactivity that will occur after a specific event (e.g. opening a link in a current window, bringing a specific panel to the front, or disabling or enabling features of a specific widget). Its also possible to add simple conditions (e.g. if a widget is at a particular state, do this or if a variable has this text, disable this widget) if you want to start adding more high fidelity interactivity. You can add simple slide or fade in or out animations if you're looking to add that level of detail to your prototype.

Perhaps Axure RP's most powerful widgets are the dynamic panels. These contain stacks of states or diagrams. The dynamic panel can be hidden, shown and moved, or switched between its various states based on the interactivity you add to widget interactions. I ended up using dynamic panels quite a bit as opposed to pages since I wanted to maintain a constant menu bar across the top of the UI for my particular prototype. One thing that I liked about Axure RP was the widget libraries which are essentially dynamic panels other users had previously created.

I did not spend a lot of time on formatting but Axure RP does have the ability to create styles and masters, which are essentially templates if you're doing a larger scale design and have many different iterations you want to try out.

I was pleased with Axure RP. I will say that it seems at some point once you start adding complex interactions to your prototype with Axure's Case Editor you may have been better off coding the prototype since your are limited by Axure RP's event handlers and would not be with your coding creativity. For myself, I see Axure RP as a powerful tool to quickly generate lower fidelity interactive prototypes for clients and generating early specifications for statements of work.

“Privacy and HCI”

2011-06-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

Currently, I am also taking POL S 533X and this is a class where we research and understand what makes quality e-government web sites and how they should be developed. Between the state, local, and federal levels of government, all levels are facing serious financial constraints which is pushing the e-government initiatives even hard as government store-fronts shut down and resort to offering forms, services, and information via the Internet and the WWW. Outside of the digital divide being a competing variable in the success of e-government, one of the biggest concerns is privacy. As designers and developers begin roll-out these e-government sites, how can they provide measures to protect the public provide that their personal information that they enter online into these sites is safe. Privacy, like security, concerns risk, its perception, and its management. Privacy problems often lie in the potential future consequences of present behavior, which may be deemed risky or safe according to standards of judgment (not necessarily those of the participants involved). As such, privacy harkens back to HCI’s origins in ergonomics and the safe operation of complex machinery (Ackerman, M., Mainwaring, S., 2011). History tells us that if there is a database that stores key personal information, like the databases some e-government sites may have, there is the opportunity for this information to be compromised. One such example really hit close to home here in Texas recently. The State of Texas migrated hundreds of thousands of personal data on State of Texas employees onto a public e-government site by accident. This personal data resided on the public database for years; however, because a link to this information was never coded into the actual e-government site, the state “feels” none of this data was further compromised. The problem is that the information was still accessible if this e-government site was hacked or internal unauthorized personnel found this information and dishonestly managed or benefited from this mistake. I feel one of the keys to insuring privacy in the HCI process is that designers need to carefully plan and map how data moves throughout the whole e-government processes and provide safety checks and balances that help protect personal users information using external and internal controls that are sufficient.

Ackerman, M., Mainwaring., S. (2011). “Privacy Issues and Human-Computer Interaction”, 2011.

Retrieved June 26, 2011 from:

scott.mainzone.com/pubs/05-privacy-issues-and-hci.pdf

“Design and Implementation of a Human Computer Interface Tracking System based on Multiple Eye Features”

2011-06-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

Accessibility and inclusion have become new buzz-words in HCI. As practitioners in HCI, we are ethically challenged to keep accessibility in mind because we have varying assistive technologies that are common and available to us to use to help those with disabilities that promote further inclusion. Human eyesight is one of mankind’s most major senses. The eye is different from the other body parts that make up the human’s sensor array. A person’s eyes convey a great deal of information with regards to the meaning behind certain facial expressions. Also, the direction in which an individual is looking shows where his or her attention is focused. By tracking the position of the irises, useful interfaces can be developed that allow the user to control and manipulate devices in a more natural manner (Azam, S., Khan, A., Khival, M., 2009). Pupil tracking also has limitless possibilities outside of becoming a valuable assistive technology for those who are disabled and for those that are not disabled. Pupil tracking can be used in medical, educational, military, entertainment, and other applications.

What I like the most about pupil tracking is that it may allow for greater cognitive control during situations of stress and heavy multi-tasking where the speed of the human mind can work in an integrated fashion with speedy technologies, illuminating the slower response time from using a mouse or other slower input devices. This may also reduce errors as well.

Azam, S., Khan, A., Khiyal, M. (2009). “Design and implementation of a human computer

Interface tracking system based on multiple eye features”, 2009.

Retrieved June 26, 2011 from:

www.jatit.org/volumes/research-papers/Vol9No2/8Vol9No2.pdf

Respecting Embodied Cognition in Usability Tests

2011-06-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

Typically, usability testing involves a testing laboratory, video cameras, and software to record actions. The user is placed in a foreign environment. It has been recently suggested that this isolation and sterilization of the user-environment may not be producing natural test results. In her interview with Dr. Lawrence Shapiro on the Brain Science Podcast website (www.brainsciencepodcast.com), Dr. Beverly Campbell explains that, "Embodied cognition is an approach to the study of cognition that regards cognition as something that involves, not just the brain, but also the body and its environment."

Standard cognition would explain the brain as more of a computer, processing stimulae as it comes in from the senses. Shapiro says, "Embodied cognition, in contrast, imagines not that the brain can be isolated from the body and the environment, but thinks of the body as in some sense shaping, or constraining, or involved in the very processing of the kinds of information that an organism needs to interact successfully with the world. So, it’s no longer possible, according to people in embodied cognition, to think about cognition as being the middle stage in the sense-think-act cycle. Instead, thinking involves active exploration—use of the body with things in the environment."

I decided to try this theory by doing my next two usability tests not only on-site, but literally at the desks of the users who typically use the software. I was presenting a beta version of the software to them, a clickable prototype, actually. But I ran into a couple problems with this scenario. The first problem was attempting to get the software to the user's machine. In other words, preparation is difficult unless you take over the user's machine, which is probably not appropriate. The next issue was the noise factor. The test is loud and the heavy users of our products are not the execs that have offices. We bothered the coworkers and they were good sports, but this was an inescapable distraction. Observation by the product owner was done over remote software and this also had to be setup on the user's machine. After all this preparation and distraction, it's a wonder they didn't toss me out on my butt. They were cordial, though, and I learned quite a bit. The key might be to try to setup a test environment that is "like" a user environment or at least to streamline the setup process.

But Shapiro says, "the last thing you want to do is place the subject in a kind of artificial environment where you’re removing all the kinds of what cognitive scientists think of as distractions, but what we embodied cognition people think of as necessary props in the environment that the subject uses to collect or simplify the sorts of information that the subject needs to be performing his or her cognitive tasks." So, what to do? I tend to believe the theory of embodied cognition but it puts us in a testing conundrum. I like the idea of testing in a user's own habitat so I'm going to continue working toward that. I think it can be done effectively with the right tools and process.

BRAIN SCIENCE PODCAST With Ginger Campbell, MD
Episode #73
Interview with Lawrence Shapiro, PhD, Professor of Philosophy and
Author of Embodied Cognition
http://www.brainsciencepodcast.com/storage/transcripts/year-5/73-bsp-Shapiro.pdf

Usability Testing Saves Design Flaw

2011-06-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago we performed our first external set of usability testing for a new website we are preparing to roll out. It should be said that initial testing was done with our experts and it seemed to pass with only a couple of modifications. As we gathered our subjects it was a diverse set of testers from various backgrounds and all over the United States. We picked this time to do the testing because it coincided with our June Orientation and Enrollment. Randomly the test subjects were selected and sent to our location. What we were about to learn saved us from making a serious design flaw.

We covered all of the legalities of the test and instructed them on how we would like them to talk out loud about their thoughts and explain what they are doing. There were a total of 10 tasks they were given to perform on the site. Out of the 8 people we tested that day all 8 had the exact same issue. They continued to get sucked in to a menu bar that was part of the wrapping from our main page. The menu didn't contain any items relating to our questions. As we observed it was apparent the menu had to be changed. Our marketing department required the header menu be added to all web pages. Since we were using a screen capture and user voice and video utility we could show the results to our marketing department. They agreed to drop the requirement and are now considering the menu requirements for other web pages.

"Redesign Must Die", by Rosenfeld

2011-06-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.slideshare.net/lrosenfeld/redesign-must-die

I've had Rosenfeld's polar bear branded O'Reilly book about information architecture for as along as I can remember. It's one of the books I recommend to folks getting started in web design. So I enjoyed this set of slides that I only discovered this week.

While there is not accompanying audio, for those who've been in the business of UI design for any time, the slides themselves tell the story.

I was particularly struck by this presentation because I work at a University and Rosenfeld's examples of how his alma mater continued to redesign and rebrand their home website hit close to home. Our communications department does much the same thing. They have a total homepage redesign schedule of every 3 years. This isn't based on user feedback or any analytics or, apparently, common web sense. It's a decision made years ago by someone in marketing. And it makes me nuts.

I'm a fan of "refine" rather than "redesign", and that is one of the central points of the slides. Hope you guys find the information interesting.

Understanding Programing – The Pros and Cons

2011-06-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

In a recent lecture Dr. Oren mentioned having the ability to code is an extremely good skill to have and I would agree. I discovered many years ago after doing basic coding in ColdFusion and PHP that I don't particularly like it because it's extremely frustrating for me. However, I like to code in HTML and CSS. These two tend to be a more visual way to code at least that's how I look at it.

Either way, understanding different languages of coding is a good skill even if you can't code things yourself. In many cases, I'm able to tweak code that someone else has written or at the very least understand how and why a programmer may ask the questions they do.

Another skill that is very valuable for me in my daily routine is the understanding of databases and data fields. This is especially important when designing data-driven sites, but even something as simple as a form. Knowing how a simple name change of a field could cause issues within a database, understanding the different data types and lengths and why they are important.

Both of these skills can also help in bridging the gap between the business/client and the designer/programmer. This has been a skill set that I didn't develop on purpose; it just worked out that way.

I found this article by Jared Spool who discusses three ways in which knowing how to code could make you a better designer.

http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/06/06/3-reasons-why-learning-to-code-makes-you-a-better-designer/

Web Accessibility: Section 508 Compliance

2011-06-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Congress instituted section 508 in 1998 to make new online opportunities available to people with disabilities and to encourage the development of software and technologies to help make this happen. An amendment of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 508 requires federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology available to disabled citizens. Under the amendment, agencies must give disabled employees and citizens access to information accessible to others.

Why is Section 508 –Web accessibility Important!

Imagine surfing the web with your eyes closed. All of a sudden, those little things you take for granted — like quickly scanning a table for information, making judgments based on color-coded status updates, or filling out a protected form are no longer available to you. Many people who are blind or visually impaired cannot access the websites where as in recent days as these are evolving as human need.

To make sure everyone has access to all the websites, section 508 compliance was introduced. It has a number of features that make navigation easier for people using screen readers and uses a large high-contrast display for people who have difficulty seeing traditionally formatted web pages. The standards of Section 508 are extensive and greatly dependent upon the type of disability at hand. The standards establish a minimum level of accessibility, but many Web companies are going above and beyond for the disabled members of society.

Areas of compliance:

Website Navigation - All the web designers/developers now have a lot of stake. Website navigation is crucial for 508 compliances by which users can navigate all across websites.

Audio and Video – Videos and other multimedia are often used for ads and other programs on the website. But without the ability to hear, there can be a large disconnect for the hearing impaired. Add the necessary audio descriptions and captions.

Flash – Flash is extremely useful in catering to the hearing impaired. It allows Web designers to create complex and detailed pictures and charts that cannot be created with basic HTML. Flash is a valuable tool in Section 508 compliance.

Resizable Text – It gets difficult for people with disabilities to read some of the small text found on various Web sites. It is important to provide the resizable text option so they can adjust the size based on their visual needs.

Text Only Versions – Web sites must have a text only version for the hearing impaired individuals, especially if Web site has a lot of videos that require hearing important details.

More information

http://section508.gov/index.cfm?fuseAction=stdsdoc#Web

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm

Context Dependent Memory

2011-06-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

"One's ability to retrieve (or recognize) an item is heavily influenced by the relation between that item's storage and retrieval contexts – is indisputable." 1

When it comes to choosing ways to conduct user research, it's very easy to put users into a conference room to get what you need quickly. Business types love this approach. But typically, we try to go a step or two beyond the conference room approach, based in part, on the unreliable nature of memory. It's too easy to forget the minutia.

Interestingly, from a UX perspective we all generally accept that this is true. And as an alternative (or complimentary) approach – we agree that contextual inquiry yields more rich, accurate information to inform the design process.

But why?

I've heard many great reasons – including "You get a better understanding of the environment." To which I totally agree. And there are any more good reasons.

I want to add one more good reason to the list.

Because we know that context can effect memory recall – doesn't it make sense that users will be more accurate and remember more detail about their work, when they are sitting at their desk? Memory just works better when you are trying to recall information from the same context that it was encoded.

There may be some research out there on this – specifically in the context of HCI research – but I wanted to share the thought. It seems like another good way to justify the time (and possible expense) of taking the time for thorough user research.

Here's a paper you can read if you're interested. I found it through Google Scholar and the ISU library.

1. Environmental Context and Human Memory

STEVEN M. SMITH and ARTHUR GLENBERG

University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 5370

How Great Leaders Inspire Action

2011-06-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

I wanted to post another quick resources that I found inspiring.

One of the things I have found exceptionally important in the business world, especially as of late, is the need to communicate effectively. It can literally make or break the content you have to share. I have found over and over that it doesn't matter what you have to say, how amazing it might be, if you cannot connect with your audience.

I am constantly looking for ways to simplify and improve the way I present information, findings, and concepts to business leaders and stakeholders within our organization.

And that's why I wanted to post this link. Simon Sinek is speaking at a TEDx event and shares his thoughts on why some people are good at inspiring people and rallying them around their beliefs, and why some others are not - even when they may all be great speakers.

Give it a watch if you can. It will be worth the time invested.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Corporate Ethnography?

2011-06-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

I received an interesting piece from Putting People First a few days ago referencing a book on corporate ethnography, edited by Melissa Cefkin of IBM's services research department: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=CefkinEthnography. Although you have to pay to download specific chapters, some of them are particularly interesting, e.g. "Working in Corporate Jungles," and you can grab decently sized previews from Google Books (well, at least for that chapter).

Reading through the excerpts, I began drawing parallels between recent changes in my department and this act of corporate ethnography. Prior to my arrival, the standard practice with creative deliverables (say, for re-designs of the site or sections of it) would be to convene rather large stakeholder meetings, complete with the VPs from every single department. I had the chance (chance in terms of the motivation it gave me to do things otherwise) to attend such a meeting and, as an initial outsider, be able to identify its pitfalls. Amongst others, the size of the meetings made it hard to progress through a sequential list of deliverables and/or topics -- personalities would clash, departmental special interests would be aroused in light of others, etc. Since then, we've gone a far way. In the recent re-design I'm leading, we've separated wireframes and visual designs based on "groups" that represent certain sections on the website. In turn, these groups also represent specific departments. What this highly compartmentalized layout of deliverables has allowed us to do is to completely strike out the idea of a general stakeholder meeting. Instead, we've made for a plan that will allow us to meet with each stakeholder group that a certain group of wireframes is relevant to.. this brings down meeting attendee numbers from 15+ to 2-3... making such meetings simply more useful and manageable. This, in the end, helps us iterate more quickly.

Although my example definitely doesn't nearly touch the breadth nor specificity with which the book approaches the role of ethnography in corporations, I think it does show the value of either investing in actual corporate ethnographic studies or at least performing some internal, reflective operational reviews. As a newbie in the corporation, I was pretty much an unbiased observer "in the field" -- however, it was that outsider perspective that made the large stakeholder meetings seem a bit out of place to me, and that eventually led me to the idea of carrying out the re-design in this new way.

Much like HCI espouses user-based iteration in research, design, and implementation, internal user-based iteration (e.g., in this case, modifying the structure of creative-related debriefs to stakeholders based on "outsider" impressions of past practices) re: organizational practices can also help refine the productivity and efficiency of internal teams.

Communicating Mental Models

2011-06-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

I wanted to post another illustration that I have beed using a lot lately. The drawing below by Jacques Carelman.

It's one that's been around for quite some time, but does a brilliant job of conveying the concept of a mental model. I think it works well, simply because we all understand bicycles. It's kind of like using Apple Computers, to support a story about innovation.

I love posting this on screen during a meeting and asking people "Why won't this work?" The conversation is always excellent.

Hope this is useful for those who have not seen it.

How is UX Research Different than a Traditional BA Lead Process?

2011-06-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

Recently, I started working on a document management project for one of the departments within our company. This project has been running for quite some time, prior to my (and my team's) involvement. They have done quite a bit of legwork in requirements gathering. In fact, at least a year of it.

As my team has begun to engage, we strongly recommended doing user research as a component of our work. Pretty obvious, right? Not so fast. In this case, it requires us to fly another office, in this case NYC, and will require some substantial expenses. Not to mention extending our project timelines.

That said, I have confidence, that this work will pay-off with 5,10, and maybe even a 100x ROI.

But then something unexpected happened. During a meeting one of our executives asked me this question: "So why are you going to NYC? Team X has already done all of the requirements gathering. Why can't you just start the design work?"

That question left me wondering - so how do you answer this question in a way that a business executive can easily understand?

Which brings me to the point of this post – to share a diagram that was developed during a whiteboard session, that has become a tool we use, when answering the question of "Why do user research" to the business crowd.

The BA team that did the requirements spent most of their time asking "What do you want to be able to do?" But what they never asked, "Why is this a problem for you?

In the diagram, the point is this. When you start with tools and features, in the end you will have the same problem you started with, just in a different tool. But if you ask "Why" is it a problem, you have a chance to solve the root issue and fix the problem.

Example: if a fileshare is a mess, introducing a new tool is not going to fix the problem, unless the new tool accounts for the root cause. In this case – why is the fileshare an unorganized mess in the first place?

I'll end with a short anecdote, that has seemed to work for me in a few instances.

Imagine your neighbor comes out complaining about his shovel. "This darn thing never works. Can't stand it." So as the generous person you are, you go to your shed, and bring back a different shovel for you neighbor to try. A few minutes later, he comes back out and complains about the new shovel not working very well either. This prompts you to ask "Well. It works fine for me, what are you trying to do with it? Your neighbor replies: " I've been trying to trim my bushes!"

Detailed UX Article

2011-06-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

I recently happened upon this article at Smashing Magazine, What Is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools And Resources. The article is a cornucopia of overviews for different aspects of UX. What I really found valuable is what the article suggests as "situations (that) would benefit from UX design". Complex systems, Start-ups, Projects with "OK" budgets and Projects with longer timeframes are the four that they list. Personally, I think that all "new" projects should be consider user experience. Budgets may not be able to afford a single UX person for the project, but as the article suggests about start-ups like 37Signals, everyone working in the field should be "well-rounded" - meaning being familiar with UX concepts and practices AND performing other project creation-related duties. This means that, being a 'Jack of all Trades' is once again a necessity.

The other section I found useful was "Criticisms of UX as a Profession". With a variety of arguments that companies might have about hiring a UX professional, this gives us, as those UX professionals, a chance to define why we are useful. When you have your argument planned out, you will be more prepared when confronted with opposition.

The article rounds out with a very long list of UX resources – UX Magazine, UX Booth, etc. I glanced at some of what is listed - most seem to be good resources, but so many seem to be lacking in tasteful graphics (I'm looking at you www.uxmatters.com!).

“The Promise of Flexible Displays”

2011-06-21T16:45:00.000-07:00

One of the new technologies that have already come out has been very impressive to me has almost infinite uses; especially, in HCI. The flexible display is light and dynamic enough to be used with keyboards with auto-changing layouts, low-power shelf tags and point-of-sale ads, and display windows on credit-card-size smart cards. But designers are also rethinking product design around these new screens possibilities. Carl Taussig, director of Advanced Display Research at Hewlett-Packard, notes the Dutch company Polymer Vision has demonstrated a cell phone with a roll-out display, and suggests other possible form factors. “You might have a display that you keep folded up like a piece of paper, “ Taussig says. “You might open it halfway and use it that way, or you might open it all the way. You might have it partitioned with a keyboard on one part and a screen on the other (Communications of the ACM, 2011). These new possibilities can help promote limitless innovation in future product design and safety.

Communications of the ACM. (2011). “The Promise of Flexible Displays”, 2011.

06/2011 Vol. 54 No. 6 pp(s): 16-18.

Error Pages on a Web Site

2011-06-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

There is nothing I hate more than receiving an error page that doesn’t tell me what happened or how to fix it. Unfortunately, no matter how careful you are with your site design, errors can happen especially with sites that are more data-driven. I’ll admit even though this is a personal pet peeve of mine, I still don’t give error pages a thought until they pop up.

Since these pages are likely to pop up from time to time, you need to think about their design and how to get the person back on track. The message should do the following:

Explain what happened and why
Explain how to fix it or who to call

It’s really that simple. Regarding the actual design, the second most important thing after the message is the design. The error page should look just like your site. Some people argue that a “cutesy” design for these messages is not a good business practice, but I think it really depends upon the site and audience.

Here are a few sites of some really good and sometimes funny 404-error page designs:

Usability testing through Heat Maps

2011-06-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

To have a better understanding about users & their usage patterns online, we can do usability testing through “heat maps”. By using heat maps, we can produce visual displays of where end-users are actually clicking and which ones are the popular locations on your website (or a specific page).

The core idea of using a heat map is to analyze/test how a user is interacting with a web site. What links are they clicking on? What kind of page design may work well? What functionality placed at different zones can work better? We can get help from such heat maps to understand some missing factors in our application.

For example, if a link is not getting any or less clicks even though it’s a link, then there is a serious issue of “affordance“, which tells us that the design of the button is not intuitively implying its functionality and use.

There are tools like Heat map, Click map, Hover map which helps the Interaction designers/Business to decide the move things around in the websites and make a improvements for Information Architecture, optimize link and advert placements.

Resources for Heat Maps

Features of Heat Maps

The heat maps display red-hot zones where most users spend longer periods, and blue or cold areas where your users spend the least amount of time.

A very nice feature is the Form Analytics tool, which displays aggregate form field information. This information includes time of field completion, the number of entries and clicks as well as which form fields have the highest abandonments, or take the longest to complete, or have the most backtracks due to errors or confusion.

Sample of heat Map

Responsive Layouts & Information Visualizations

2011-06-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

As a web/UI designer, I have been asked to specifically design to fixed width and sometimes flexible/liquid layouts. When there is no specific direction, depending on the amount of information to be displayed on each page, I would either choose fixed width or flexible layout.

About six months ago, I received an email with the subject ‘Responsive Layout’ from my boss. The body of the email had few links, videos, and podcasts about the responsive layout. I was very curious to find out what it really is, so I clicked all the links that opened in my default Chrome browser with separate tabs. I went back to finish reading the rest of my email and in short, my boss had asked me to start thinking about converting our products to responsive layout. Here are the links that my boss had sent me:

http://adactio.com/journal/1696/

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/

After that day, I started googling and came across: http://bit.ly/m51JoB and http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/hardboiled_css3_media_queries/

You might find many other sites that are adapting to the responsive layout design…

So, basically responsive layout design is a technique using flexible grids, images, css, and media queries to adjust layouts. Initially, I misunderstood and thought that this technique is not new. Well, it’s not new. But, how you do it—is, what’s new. Responsive layout adjusts to the size of a browser window, whereas the traditional way of supporting multiple devices would be to detect if a device is a desktop or mobile. For example, go to about.com on your desktop browser and resize the window, and notice the layout adjusts to fit perfectly to your viewing preference. Do the same with cnn.com. You might want to try this in your mobile browser; about.com would adjust to fit, whereas cnn.com would detect if the platform is desktop or mobile.

If I were to design a brand new site or redesign an existing site, I would prefer responsive layout over the platform detection technique. But, if an organization just wants their site to be on a mobile device and does not want to edit their existing source code, then I would choose the platform detection technique. I believe both of these techniques can be very effective if applied properly. But, the responsive layout adds to the list of choices for web/UI designers and probably stacks additional work to be done.

UX and Systems Engineering Requirements Process

2011-06-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

Lately I've the opportunity/stressful task of learning how to incorporate user experience methods into a bigger systems engineering process. Most of the things that I learned early on in my HCI studies focused on web design. Then as I my work life demanded and my research capabilities grew, I learned more about application design. Now the needs before me are taking me into yet another new direction. As I know that some of you all are working in defense orother complex system oriented industries, I thought I would share what I'm learning so far. For now I'm going to focus on the requirements part of system engineering because that's where the cycle begins and where we as UX/HCI folks want to start working on a project. (Not as the people who have to pretty something up at the end!)

Systems engineering typically follows a "V" process. If you are familiar with waterfall type software development process (versus an iterative or AGILE process) then you will notice that the systems engineering process is designed to go with that process. If you are not familiar with a waterfall process then the takeaway is that these processes want you define all of your requirements up front before you work on other tasks. In small projects this strategy makes sense. If you have lots of time this strategy can make sense. If you are a huge project with tight deadlines and large disparate groups, this strategy is not the way to go.

We've discussed so far that traditional systems engineering and old school software development processes don't work for large projects that need to be done in a reasonable amount of time. Now let's look at a better approach. If you'll remember we've touched on user scenarios/user stories in one of the earlier lectures in this class. In that example we looked at small stories to capture user behavior. One approach that has been suggested is to use these types of scenarios to driving the engineering requirements process. In this type of process you create natural language user stories at the beginning and use those as a basis to perform your other types of analysis. The benefits of having this collection of user stories are many but the main two things they help with are organizing and analysis. On the organizing front it's really helpful for all of your teams to "get" what it is you are building and how it will be used for real. You can also use your stories to organize your traceability. On the analysis front it's useful to test your features against the stories to see if you are having feature creep or if you are missing functionality that your operators will need.

Here are a few resources that I've found helpful as I'm learning more about this topic:

1) Government/DoD System of Systems oriented: Scenario Driven Systems Engineering

2) Role oriented scenario approach: A Scenario-driven Role Engineering Process for

Functional RBAC Roles3) Operational threads (high-level capability is organized into threads and then you create user scenarios for each thread): Operational Thread Development

'About Face 3', available online

2011-06-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=85571&loc=&srch=undefined&src=0

I believe I found this via the Iowa State Library, however I can also access materials via the University library where I work so I may have gotten to it through that path.

This is the complete book and it's excellent. I hope others are able to access it.

Resources for Usability & UI/UX

2011-06-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

I have been coming across several useful links that can aid Usability and UX/UI efforts. I have been getting there through various sources such as Linked in, Book readings and of course fellow class mates as well.

I came across this article in my LinkedIn news today. Its showcases Top 20 free UI kits for web designers. You can download them for free and most of them are done in HTML and CSS3

Another free tool is 365 PSD where you can download cool designs as photoshop source files.

The following resources are from the book Web Design for ROI

Usability.gov

User Interface Engineering

Use It

ACM SIGCHI

HCI Bibliography

MarketingSherpa

SEO Moz

High Ranking

Free Google Ad Words Guide

B2B Marketing Insights

Pew Internet

Web Design for ROI

2011-06-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

I recently came into possession a great book that is very similar to the topics that Andrea talked in class. It’s titled Web Design & ROI written by Sandra Niehaus and Lance Loveday and they run a company called Closed Loop Marketing (http://www.closed-loop-marketing.com/index.php) in Northern California.

It’s a must read for every web designer attempting to increase conversion rates. The book is an easy read and it goes in depth about what is ROI and how design can significantly affect a company’s ROI. The book pushes each stakeholder to think of websites as investments and not something that needs to just have an online presence. The perspective is that of driving websites to generate revenue through simple and effective changes in the design. When Sandra and Lance reference design, it’s mostly about the design of information and the interaction between the user and the interface. The authors also cover the topics of several different metrics that can be used to measure conversion rates and basis to determine success or failure. Some of the suggestion are so simple but can deliver mind blowing results.

The book starts out with the why’s and what’s of ROI. It is explained in simple terms (no complicated mathematics or statistics) to make any reader understand the concepts of ROI. This is very important and it goes back to what Andrea talked about. It’s about being an advocate of the user and communicating to the stakeholders in a language that they can understand – plain and simple Return on Investment. For example redesigning a landing page that “incorporates a cleaned-up layout, simplified copy, a highly visible action area, and a clear call to action” increased conversion by 600%! Hard to believe? A quick read into their landing page section will make it all clear that this is indeed possible.

There are two aspects of the book that I have to mention. First is that the book goes in depth about how to increase conversion for Landing pages, Home pages, Category pages, Detail pages, Forms and Checkout process. For each of those, the authors present issues, clear set of guidelines that can be incorporated to increase conversions as well several examples (Screen shots) of existing company websites for each of the guideline. It’s almost like a picture speaks a thousand words. Detail description of the guidelines as well as examples drives the concept deep into the viewer’s head. Another aspect of the book that I truly liked is sections called Featured Techniques. They cover basics of A/B testing, Card Sorting, Scenarios, Multivariate Testing, Informal Usability Testing and Metrics Analysis. Although the concepts are covered briefly, the authors provide more resources to gain deeper insights on the same. At the end of the book, there is a vast set of resources that include a set of books for further reading as well as several online resources. They can be found on their website for the book:http://www.wd4roi.com/home.html

http://www.amazon.com/Web-Design-ROI-Browsers-Prospects/dp/0321489829/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308275148&sr=1-1

Project Cartoon - Warning, This Might Be Old News.

2011-06-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

I just came across this link (www.projectcartoon.com/cartoon/2) when searching for a past xkcd web comic about User Experience (this one). The xkcd comic is for anyone who is using the HCI website redesign concept as one of their projects – it makes a really good point about what users are looking for on a university site. The title tag (on mouse hover) is also pretty funny.

Now to the Project Cartoon link I found - I think that Project Cartoon does a great job of visually describing everything that we are trying to say in class about the "process" and how we are all working to change it.

The site was launched in 2006 based on an original comic strip that the artist (Justin Hourigan - info from whois database) created. The Create page on the website adds functionality for users to create their own version of the "process" - You can view what other have composed (in several different languages) under the Gallery page. NOTE: There are panels that people have submitted or suggested to the site owner in the Gallery links that are not in the first link in this post.

Discvr app = great user experience

2011-06-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

As all of my friends and co-workers know I am an Apple convert. Several years ago I was one of those people who poked fun at people who wanted a Mac. Yes I admit it. When co-workers would ask me if they should consider getting a Mac my usual saying was, “they are great for graphics but if you need to get some real technical work done you need a PC”. I believe the last time I might have said that was about five years ago. Now I have a PC in my work office, but would rather have a Mac, and I have a PC at home that hasn’t been turned on for…about five years.

Today I have a Mac at home and use my iPad several times throughout the day. One of the struggles I have with the iPad is finding just the right application. Many times the most popular or the one that has the most downloads isn’t the app for me. With over 500,000 apps it takes too long to try and research and review apps. I would just like to know who has a competing product and do some research to find if that product may be better or as good for a lower cost as the one I am considering. Well now there is an app for that!

Discovr is an app that you can install which provides that interactive map connecting like applications to other applications using a graphical interface. The best part of this is they did an amazing job with the user interface. Why? Well because they believe in a good UX and made it a top priority in the beginning. According to the TechCrunch article written by Rip Empson:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/14/discovr-launches-awesome-tool-to-find-and-discover-new-apps-think-interactive-graphs/
They hired Tama Nepusz who has his PhD in graph theory to focus on the graphic user interface.

The con of Discovr is that it costs money for the app. I sure wish it was a free app but then it would probably be damaged by companies paying to somehow elevate their apps status. It does offer featured apps based on similarities. The TechCrunch article states that the similarities are based on “a combo of machine algorithms and human curation.”

I really like the feel of the application. I didn’t spend a lot of time poking around on the screen to try and understand how the application worked. It just felt natural. This is certainly what I strive for in designs. I believe this shows they did their homework in user experience and got it right the first time.

Surfing, Not Web, and Service

2011-06-15T07:55:00.000-07:00

"All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine." - Jeff Spicoli, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

It dawned on me this morning, just after dawn, actually, that service design is a bit like surfing. If you're not familiar with surfing, let me give you a brief summary. I'm sure you know what surfing is, but there are many intricacies to surfing that most non-surfers aren't aware of. First of all, there are many types of surfboards to suit both the surfer and the types of waves available that day, or even that hour. Surf conditions are directly correlated with the weather. Surfboards are generally built to perform appropriately in particular types of waves. A longboard (9-10ft in lefth, 2 ft wide) surfs well in smaller waves that are slower and not powerful enough to propel a shortboard (6 ft long, 18" wide). In general, bigger boards for smaller surf and smaller boards for bigger surf. Shortboards are for faster surf with more critical (steep) sections of the wave. The interesting thing, however, is that all surfboards work quite well in what are considered to be "good" waves. When you have good surf, the surfer chooses the surfboard that best suits his or her style. Styles are made up of many things, size of the surfer, personality, athleticism, hair length, you get the picture.

So, yeah, how is this related to service design? Consider that people's needs are always changing like the conditions of the ocean. In order to serve those "users" properly, you need properly designed tools. This is true whether the users are in a good mood with a lot of good energy and want to interact or they are in a hurry, want to be alone, and might pummel you if you mess up. Norman explains in the lecture at ID Chicago that people don't want the same things each time they visit a hotel. Sometimes they want service, sometimes they want to be left alone. The surfboard adjusts and fits different conditions, as does the surfer. The waves are the ever-changing customer/consumer and the service/surfboard must react quickly, changing directions, speeding up and slowing down, even "stalling" a bit to take a bigger risk and get a bigger payoff, a "barrel." There are very few sports where the conditions change as much as surfing and I would argue that service is much the same. Nothing is less predictable than a person that you don't know and you must rely on for consumption of your product. The service must react quickly to mood changes and offer choices and above all, a gnarly experience.

Documentation of Mental Model

2011-06-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

I would like to share my thought process considering the “Mental model” of the user while designing the Service, Webpages, Interactions etc..

Mental Model is how we explain yourself about how something works in the real world, Our Mental models help us to predict what will happen if any action is performed.

Lets take an example of chipotle; it’s a 3-step process of ordering your food.

Pick & place the order
Pay for it
Fill the drink and pick the napkins

Our mental models help shape our behavior and define our approach to solve the problem.

If the same service order is changed to

Fill the drink and pick the napkins
Pick & place the order
Pay for it

Mental models lets you skip the Step 1 and follow the step 2 &3. We should be very careful when we deviate our users.

Coming to computer interfaces, users come to websites with a problem and expectation of how they will solve the problem. So we should be careful when we deviate away from the expectation of how things are supposed to work. In Some of the website I see that people tend to put grey color for the links which users generally miss it, because users are tend to use blue color links. When business are moving towards making a change the mental model of the user we need to document mental models.

What is the need to document mental models?

Mental models should serve as an analytic tool, allowing us to clearly document users’ current mental images, vocabulary, and assumptions. Once the mental model is documented, we can create a target mental model—the model of the product that we want our users to have. If there is a difference between the two, we can design the UI and user assistance material to transition users from their current models to the target model.

Conclusion

We have to be careful when we deviate away from our users expectations of how things are supposed to work. We need to do thorough A/B testing and create target mental model, which can help in having a smooth transition from Old to New Mental model of the user

Service Blueprint in the News

2011-06-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

A recent Mashable post included this image of a new mobile-based service. The minute I saw it I thought, "Hey - Service blueprint!"

I liked this approach in explaining the service because it occurs to me that someone like my mom can understand it more easily than if I tried to simply explain it. My mom knows what texting is, but is only familiar with the limited scope of what texting is used for in social communication. Showing how a phone can help collect medical data in the field is captured here in way that illustrates how the "front stage, backstage" SMS interactions create this new service.

A blueprint like this helps to visualize the opportunity and interplay of the technologies. The inclusion of the bobble-headed figures adds a "people" dimension to something that otherwise might seem like a disconnected technical solution.

Usability blogs to follow

2011-06-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have to admit I spend a lot of time reading various blog posts. Some which aren’t relevant to this class, but the majority of them are. Most of the blogs I have run across via Twitter or just through a specific search only to discover the whole site had excellent content.

Here are some of the blogs I read the most and consistently go back to when I’m looking for specific web design information or inspiration.

Mashable.com is one of my favorites as well because it covers a wide range of topics especially trending items and more social media.

Many of these sites provide inspiration for my personal blog. I try to write every week although that’s really tough with school sometimes. However, at a minimum, I re-tweet or re-post others articles so at least their content is shared as many ways as possible.

My personal blog can be found at spoiledogs.com and I’m on Twitter @spoulson22.

Be a Skeptimist

2011-06-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

Did everyone get a chance to listen to Don Norman's lecture on Service design? Dr. Oren posted the link on the Service Design project page. If you didn't see it, here it is: Norman's Lecture

I loved this talk. The service design part is great. But that's not the part I wanted to point out.

During the lecture, Norman talks about a personal rule that he uses when consulting: "I don't ever solve the problem that I was hired to solve." He goes on to say that the hardest part of design – is figuring out the problem you should be trying to solve in the first place.

Typically when I start a project I am given a rundown on the project goals, scope and background. In short – the problem the stakeholder is trying to solve. And more often than not, the project is only a symptom of a different root issue. For me, this is the best part – trying to extract the real problem and then articulating a more effective solution.

But sometimes that's easier said than done.

We have all experienced the start of a new project so many, many times, that sometimes it's easy to become weary, and stop challenging the status quo. So I write this post as a reminder to myself – to be a skeptimist. A reminder to never take someone's word for it. To dig into the behaviors and the root causes. And a challenge to always strive to be a critical thinker and start with the why.

Paper-in-Screen Prototyping

2011-06-09T08:10:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a lot of UX Magazine lately, since its RSS feed popped up on my Flipboard app. [ASIDE: For those of you with an iPad, I recommend Flipboard for reading your favorite feeds and social media(s) – flipboard.com]. A few months ago I came across this article about paper-in-screen prototyping –
uxmag.com/design/paper-in-screen-prototyping

The beginning of the article (intro and Lo-Fi Prototyping) covers a lot of what we have been going over in class for the past few weeks, but the bulk of the article is very interesting for those about to start mobile testing (anyone in class about to start Project No. 2).

One suggestion I would make to the article is, when doing your paper sketches, sketch within the bounds of the mobile device you are testing on. This will save you the headache of resizing and/or getting them to fit without stretching or squishing after scanning them. Since they will already fit to the correct dimensions of the device, just crop and sync.

Here is a brilliant and inexpensive gift for the iPhone 4 UX designer you love -
appsketchbook.com/products/app-sketchbook

Or this free downloadable, watermarked wireframe version of the iPhone 4 -
fullofdesign.com/posts/iphone-app-wireframe-template

Although, if you have any Adobe CS products you can easily make your own sketch templates. The iPhone 4 has a resolution of 640px x 960px (wikipedia), the iPad2 has a resolution of 1024px x 768px (wikipedia). You are on your own to search for whatever specific Android, BlackBerry or Windows mobile device resolution you want to design for.

"Social Games, Virtual Goods"

2011-06-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

One of the many places we can see design changing the norm is in virtual communities. Although these communities were thought of just as games, many designers have used these mediums as grounds to go outside the norm to create something and it is of value. These games are virtual universes that can sometimes blur the line between reality and virtual reality. Social networking has worked hard to build upon virtual reality to offer users intrinsic and extrinsic reasons to become more than addicted from the entertainment and exploration values, but also because of the real world incomes that can be made as well. As people begin to populate the virtual medium’s more and more, so is the amount of content that is being created and sold and purchased within the virtual worlds own economic system which produces a economy that may or may not mirror accurately the real world markets, but they can. To make matters interesting, many of these in-world currencies can be converted to real world currencies. Some residents are like me and just create virtual goods to be consumed by other residents. I just cashed-out about $200 in real world virtual world currencies to be deposited to my bank tax-free. Some residents rely on these virtual worlds as even their full-time real life incomes. A number of people playing Second Life have earned hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars selling real estate or providing services within the game (Communications of the ACM, 2011).

What designers and developers of virtual mediums have noticed is that the users are greatly influenced by virtual objects in the same way we are regarding real life objects. This may open the door to endless ways that our behavior can be altered and changed all depending on what objects are accessible to us. They are also realizing that virtual mediums are becoming more than just games to the users and in other endless possibilities to get the user to further attached to the virtual world. Meanwhile as social networking continues to feed the popularity of virtual worlds and their seemingly inability to be regulated for now, may become the new Wild West of designers, developers, users, and company that owns the virtual world servers, may be profiting immensely both financially and through unfettered innovations.

Communications of the ACM. (2011). “Social Games, Virtual Goods, 2011.

04/2011 Vol. 54 No. 4 pp(s): 19-21.

(MY) Troubles of an multi-disciplinary field!

2011-06-07T21:03:00.000-07:00

The class lectures, discussions and some of the blog posts by classmates has brought to my attention the multi-disciplinary nature of HCI more than ever. People enter the HCI field from various different backgrounds such as psychology, visual design, industrial design, engineering, web development and many others. Different backgrounds have an immense positive effect since it brings in so many facets of the human nature into the field. This reminds of the video we saw in class about IDEO redesigning shopping cart. The video called the team an "eclectic" one which ranged from biologist to marketing to psychology. They worked in perfect unison to bring their expertise from several fields to come up with the solution to shopping cart problem. HCI is similar to that. In my experience of 1 year as an off campus student, I have met classmates from different backgrounds and each one them has provided deep insights into various topics of discussion.

While the multi-disciplinary is a great thing, it can also pose issues. You get to learn about several different fields. Since this is still a growing field and with so many several different avenues that it can lead to, I find myself lost and overwhelmed with amount of skills set that I have to learn. Other fields such as engineering or computer science have the skill set etched out. With HCI, it depends on the route you want to take. You not only need insights in psychology and visual design but also be able to program as well. Current job descriptions ask for skills that range from latest web technologies, programming knowledge, prototyping knowledge, design skills, usability testing skills, as well cognitive psychology know how. I see a lack of specialization & clear direction that I see in other professional fields.

Blueprint +

2011-06-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

First where credit is due, thanks Ryan for this link:http://www.servicedesigntools.org/tools/35

This is a great site with several articles on different kinds of blueprints. The one that struck me most was the Blueprints +. It is the first case study on the page.
This article talks about service blueprints with added features. The article refers to these as "Blueprints +". What it is is basically it's a traditional blueprint but has additional information such as emotional and motivational sides. Blueprints + has more layers of information that color coded to displays emotional states. Added graphic elements allow for more readability and makes it easy to understand the overall situation. Such blue prints allow for quick analyzation of not only the physical flow but the emotional state as well. This can then be translated into more satisfying experiences for the customers.

Power and Framing

2011-06-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

Through listening to the lectures and participating in reading the chat comments during class, I have learned so much about the day to day field of HCI. John M. Carroll's quote about crossing boundaries in interaction design is like the field of HCI. It is so cross-disciplined that it defies categorization.

Turf Wars

I wonder what discipline can emerge from the future battles over ownership of the field. Maybe HCI is as complex as the human experience thus each discipline encompasses a core fundamental function of the brain. Hopefully there will be a discourse among the leaders in the field in order to identify core concepts that will be shared.

I wonder where is the visual and experiential designers role in all of this. As an industrial design I did interaction design when I designed web sites or designed a first class airline seat for an airline. It was called human factors when I was an undergrad and usability as an MFA candidate. Who will speak up for the designers in this process?

I wonder if the success of applications such as Azure is a result of creating access for other disciplines to have a ramp into this field.

HCI and the "Internet of Things"

2011-06-06T21:15:00.000-07:00

Teja's below post about HCI's state in 5 years and our class discussion both came to mind today when I received a Putting People First newsletter (if you haven't heard about Experientia, I find their newsletter to be a great resource of curated content that blurs the lines between all sorts of fields including literature, anthropology, experience design-- find it on their site); it made (surprisingly) reference to a BBC article that summarizes the idea of an "internet of things" -- basically connecting many forms of physical things/devices to the internet (e.g. their "smart wine rack" example, the RSS feed alert about sewage overflows, etc.) in experience design rooted not only in service but also in more intentional action (environmental initiatives), everyday life (muting the TV when the phone rings), etc.

I think HCI is going to play an extremely important role in what could be an emerging sub-industry. In terms of the sewage alert example above, for example, these are some quite innovative ideas made possible by internet connectivity that basically defy all interface and procedural guidelines set previously. Is their hub set up technically the best way to run this service? In turn, this reminds me of our survey of situated action and the impression that HCI, when experienced a certain way, can become the sort of amenable figure that changes overarching direction based on context. What rings as most important is the HCI mentality of evaluation and the practice of exploring the usability of new devices and interfaces even at their birth in order to better ensure their sustainability (I'm thinking back to my post about gestural interfaces).

Anyways, just wanted to share an interesting article and resource (Putting People First)!

Multi-Faceted by Necessity

2011-06-05T17:57:00.000-07:00

I have new (6 months together now) junior co-workers who ask me what they need to do in order to be considered User Interface Designers, Interaction Designers, User Experience Designers, or more likely some combination of those titles as long as they come with higher pay, prestige, and significant work. They are considered graphic designers at the moment. I have also recently had front-end engineers ask me the same question. So I am using my career as an example here since it is the one I am most familiar with.

The simplest answer is that you need to know and do more. I think of my work in terms of user experience. Every element in a company affects user experience. Technical limitations in database design affecting how relevant or useful some bit of information is for a user are things I need to understand and factor in. Reading between the lines when meeting with stakeholders is important for saving time and staying employed. Expressing your ideas in writing, info graphics, wireframes, and mockups is essential.

So how did I get there? 1) Startups 2) Reading 3)Web Design

I started working in Silicon Valley in 1997 as a project manager with a Master Degree in English. Within a year and a half, I was in a 3-person startup funded by a small insurance company. I helped design the product, designed and coded the interface, ran the Russian development team, wrote the copy, and hired a bunch of people. Another year and a half and I was managing 8 people at eLance; moonlighting at another small startup of 5 people doing UI design. Startups are good for stretching your talents into the available need.
You gotta digest a few books and be learning continuously. I started with Don't Make Me Think and my brain's been plastic ever since. Loved a few editions of Principles of Interaction Design by Cooper, et al. Read Norman's Emotional Design a few years ago and was struck by how shallow most of the UI design I do is. Then I shrugged it off and went back to work... Use Jennifer Tidwell's Designing Interfaces every other day or so at work. Seen Edward Tufte's seminar twice over the years. Have 2 sets of the books.... And here I am getting a second Masters Degree. Not proud, just obsessed.
I could be wrong, but back in the day, we sorta had to do it all if you wanted to make websites for people (and make $). A lot of HTML/CSS. A little javascript (some Perl...). Gather requirements. Design. Analyze server logs. FTP to the server. QA your own work. Did I mention write all the copy 'cause the client can't seem to get the words out?

If you take all that experience and then decide to focus it on improving the end users' experience as well as the performance (from the company's perspective) of some digital product, you get a lot of skills you don't use directly except as checks and balances against the complex machine which will actually develop and support your products. You also retain enough skills to express your research and your original ideas in forms which allow stakeholders to understand them and evaluate their potential -- eventually coming aboard as clear supporters. And it's cool to know a lot of stuff.

NEXT POST: Re-designing the Grocery IQ iOS app for the Google/Motorola launch of their Honeycomb tablet device. With pics!

Computer (Then) Human Interaction: The Aerospace Industry Approach

2011-06-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd give a personal perspective on usability in the aerospace industry for my first blog post and how I hope to personally grow and influence it through Mike's course on emerging practices in HCI. I currently work in the aerospace industry--specifically in unmanned systems. It's a field filled with amazingly talented and brilliant engineers who throughout history have designed some of the most amazing systems, technologies, and aircraft.

Often times just getting the aircraft to fly or the system to run is the largest technical feat of them all. Sadly as a result of the complicated nature of these systems, little thought is ever given to how the they should be flown or how the systems should be controlled. We've all seen pictures of jet cockpits with hundreds of buttons, switches, and small displays. Especially now in the unmanned systems world where human factors plays a smaller role and HCI should be taking the lead. With all the quantitative minded engineers designing these systems, it seems that the qualitative approaches to design of the frontend usability of these systems is lost. Instead computers are being designed by engineers according to contractual requirements, military standards, and system restrictions (all quantitative measures in nature). It is a computer "then" human design. In the end, the humans are forced to interact with these systems no matter how complicated or ridiculous the interface. Many times, human cognitive architectures are overlooked and extensive training is required to train the users on the complicated nature of the systems and redesigns are later required at significant cost. With millions and millions of dollars going into the creation of systems, it is often the case that the usability of the end product is overlooked. Add to this the long term investment in what eventually becomes aging computer operating systems and what was once considered "cutting edge" appears outdated and becomes bulky, slow to modernization, and buggy.

I will say, however, I am happy to see that the industry is slowly realizing the importance of usability due to the strides being made in the private industry. In addition, with the prevalence of unmanned systems being interfaced through computer interfaces, users are desiring efficient and more modern services. The United States Army is looking to implement smartphones for combat claiming that smartphones, in addition to being smaller and lightweight, are "easier to use" than currently implemented devices. It's true, the aerospace industry has been very slow to adopt usability concepts in design. It is no small task--designing hardware that can perform in extreme environments while allowing ease of use by the warfighter in its interface. My hope is that by taking this course, I can help influence the usability aspect of military products in the unmanned systems industry. It seems strange that the end product, what the user will interact with and see, after all the system design is completed is always overlooked. It is the most important thing in the end. The qualitative nature of HCI must be accounted for in contractual requirements to system design and allow for modern UX practices. These will drive costs down in the long run and most importantly, keep the warfighter's perspective and needs in the forefront!

Two excellent usability books

2011-06-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

I was introduced to “Letting Go of the Words” by Ginny Redish last year. Although it’s been around for several years, it’s still a fantastic book and very easy to read.

The book focuses on the actual content of the website and not just the design or functionality. Redish discusses a wide range of topics which all apply to the user experience.

For example:

Breaking up the text using headings, subheads, and bulleted lists.
Writing links that are meaningful.
Making sure your site is accessible to everyone.

All of the advice Redish provides in the book still hinges on understanding the target audience and the purpose of the site. The content of the site often gets overlooked since it’s usually the last thing to do and money and time are running out.

Another valuable book is “Usability for the Web” by Tom Brinck, Darren Gergle & Scott D. Wood. It provides a comprehensive discussion of website usability. The book provides 450 pages of usability advice. It’s broken down into easy sections allowing you to jump to the areas you may need; however, I would recommend reading the whole book.

Here is a list of the sections:

Pervasive Usability
Requirements Analysis
Conceptual Design
Mockups and Prototypes
Production
Launch
Evaluation

I read this book initially when it came out in 2002; however, I have referenced it a lot since then.

Usability of iPad apps and websites

2011-06-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

Blog post 1 Usability of iPad apps and websites.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/ipad-apps-form-over-function/

This is an interesting article on using gesture based iPad apps. The findings of the Nielsen and Norman Group present issues that I have struggled with on certain iPad applications.

Swiping apps - I find that each application does this differently. In one case you will have to swipe to turn the page but in another simply tapping the screen will turn the page.
As most of us are very comfortable navigating a web browser we are familiar with the back button. This is something we look for when we navigate to a screen and find the information isn't what we desired. I find that I either look for a back button or if I am using a keyboard will reach for the backspace key rather than swipe the screen.

I have a colleague that is in her late 50's and has an iPad2. The other day we were discussing a web site she had pulled up on her iPad. The site had lots of videos and
pictures with links spread throughout the site. As she attempted to navigate to the bottom of the page by scrolling with her fingers she kept accidentally clicking on the links. Though she wanted to pull up the bottom of the page the gesture was confused with wanting to click on a link. I could sense her frustration as she finally said out loud "why does it keep doing that"? My thoughts are, there must be a better way. Websites that are viewed on the iPad need to have bigger touch points for links and the spacing between the points needs to be farther apart.

You can find the full report on Usability of iPad Apps and Websites from the Nielsen Norman Group at:

http://www.nngroup.com/reports/mobile/ipad/

-Jan Elsasser

Misrepresentation vs. Misleading Representation of Information

2011-06-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

In class, we discussed about the state of HCI in the next 5 years. An interesting point raised in this discussion was the involvement of HCI in healthcare industry, aviation industry and insurance industry.

In all these case availability and representation of information are critical to the business. Simply put - "you are as good as your data!". ( 'you' here refers to the companies/business). Hence, while data misrepresentation is a crime, misleading representation of data is no less a crime.

Difference between both: Data misrepresentation is erroneous/wrong representation of data. Misleading representation is an ambiguous representation that fails to convey a coherent message to all the people trying to interpret it.

1. Healthcare Industry Scenario - Diagnosis and Treatment: Imagine if health history information of a patient was incorrectly represented by the modern-display systems doctors use. It might lead to wrong diagnosis leading to wrong treatment. Loss of life is a potential risk in this case. Could misleading representation of information cause the same? Absolutely!

2. Aviation Industry Scenario: Imagine a poorly designed electronic pilot-feedback system or control system. These systems, even today, are poorly designed and unintuitive according to many people. Hence they are 'bound to fail'. Misrepresentation and misleading representation of data could have equal impact.

3. Insurance Industry Scenario: The entire risk analysis in this industry is based on statistical data and its representation. In case of large mulit-million/billion dollar policies, decisions are made by individuals based on their statistical analysis. Wrong representation or misleading representation could mean bazillions of dollars in losses. As a consequence, a huge company could potentially go out of business in a span of days.

Interesting Observation:
In spite of non-intuitive interfaces, especially in areas like airline industry, the businesses are run safely. My reasoning: I believe that humans could be trained to offset the disastrous impact of poorly designed systems.

Based on these observations, I predict that HCI would play an important role in the success of companies within the aforementioned industries.

Selling Usability: Learning from the Healthcare Industry

2011-06-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

I got into the usability field because I love visual design, interaction design, and the cerebral nature of the UX design world. But these days, I spend a fair bit of my time thinking about how to promote a culture of usability within our organization.

The question I often ask myself is this: How do you move a person, group or organization from zero awareness of a discipline, to a culture that lives and breathes a user centered approach?

Recently, I was challenged to engage with a business division to help them implement a change management and communication program. I was added to the implementation team primarily because of my background in communication, i.e. the advertising and design world.

When I set out, my goal was this - find out everything I could about Change Management in a short period of time. Turns out, the health care, psychology, and business worlds have been at this - for a long time. While I was digging around - I found a few resources with strong parallels to the process of evangelizing usability.

The most impactful resource I found was the Transtheoretical Model of Change, sometimes known as the Stages of Change Model from Prochaska and DiClemente. This article from the American Academy of Family Physicians is a great illustration. Family physicians are constantly challenged to help people change behaviors - and they have to be really good at getting people to want to change - all on their own. Or they just aren't effective.

This article talks quite a bit about taking different approaches for people in different stages of change. For example, their research showed that constant education, and communication of benefits is sometimes not enough to get people on your side. Parallel: Maybe we need a new approach - and just telling people how great UX is, and how great it will make their lives, is not enough. Read the article if you have a chance. It's written for family Physicians, but reads like a satirical guide to selling UX.

Week 2 Reaction Post

2011-06-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

I have created my own blog so that I can share my class assignments with the class. It is named Geri Interaction Design.