Blog

What I Learned at SXSW, Part 1

March 19th, 2010 @ 12:37 pm
Categories: Design, User Interaction Tags: , —

Show the Value Proposition, Don’t Just State It
The summation of this post is this: Put as few obstacles between your users and your site’s functionality as possible. It sounds simple, but a lot of sites do not follow this basic rule. Largely this applies to site registration and when to require a user to register. Often sites will only offer screen shots or demos of their functionality and require users to register to get into the real experience. Let people use your site before you require them to register, let them use the tools, create some content, do whatever it is your site offers, all without the hassle of account creation. But do so in a way that lets people know that everything they create will disappear if they do not register. When a user clicks “Save”, then prompt them to register. That way users get to know first hand what the value proposition of your site is as opposed through marketing pages, demos or screen shots. They have also invested some time and energy working with your site; they will be more likely to register to save that.

Another point about registration that was raised in several panels was do not require users to provide a lot of data during registration. Many sites ask for way too much info during the account creation process. Even if only a few of the fields are required, they are a perceived barrier to the user. Ideally a registration form should consist fields for email address and password and not much more. There are ways of encouraging users to provide more data after registration. More on that when I discuss video game metaphors in web site UI design.

Augmented Reality Apps Getting a Little More Real

March 10th, 2010 @ 1:06 pm
Categories: Mobile, Technology, User Interaction

First there was the Furby, then the Tamagotchi, soon there will be the iKat, a virtual pet that you can only see through your phone. The iKat even has a shadow.

Though it looks pretty simple, the technology behind the iKat opens up a lot of possibilities for augmented reality apps. The technology allows a phone to recognize spaces in 3D and add virtual objects into them in realtime, which could be used to show directions in perspective, play games based on your local environment, and everything in between.

Everything Gets Complicated Again

March 4th, 2010 @ 3:06 pm
Categories: Technology, User Interaction

A quote from Google vice-president of Global Ad Operations John Herlihy has been getting some attention in the blogosphere lately. He was quoted as saying “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.” Obviously that’s what Google is banking on, with heavy investments in operating systems for mobile phones (Android) and netbooks (ChromeOS) or whatever notebooks end up evolving into. I think saying desktop computers will be irrelevant in three years is over stating things by quite a bit. It would be more accurate to say that in three years the diversity of net connected devices will increase by a lot. Instead of just desktop computers, notebooks and mobile phones, consumers will have a wider spectrum of devices to choose from like the iPad, net enabled eBook readers, smart-phones on steroids, etc. We’re seeing the early signs of this already.

TechCrunch has a somewhat related article, In Mobile, Fragmentation is Forever. Deal With It. With new platforms and OS’s come new design and development challenges. Graceful degradation of the user experience, which never worked well to begin with, won’t cut it when you have many, many levels of degradation to support. User experiences will have to be more specific to a platform. And the fragmented nature of devices outside of the conventional PC will likely not go away.

New Ideas, Users and You

October 15th, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
Categories: Design, User Interaction

A co-worker of mine pointed me to this video on YouTube, Stone and Stone Wheel. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about innovating versus adhering to convention and when and when not to pay attention to user testing data, and this video really got me thinking.

I remember way back in 1999 observing my first user test, I was working for frog design on a web site for a large direct sales computer manufacturer. The client had taken it upon themselves to hire a third party to conduct user testing on the site which frog, in collaboration with the client’s own web team, had just launched. It was both awesome and horrifying to see users actually using that which we had created. Some of our design decisions succeeded exactly as we thought they would while some, that we had thought were pretty simple and straight forward, baffled users to a point where they could not complete necessary tasks. The whole experience was very enlightening.

When I got back from user testing I talked to one of the managers at frog about user testing and asked why frog didn’t as a matter of process include it in their projects. I was told that frog doesn’t do user testing. Period. The argument against it was users often do not respond well to new or innovative ideas (and frog had built its reputation on new and innovative ideas.) New or innovative work will rarely test well, thus negating the relevance of user testing.

Since I left frog I’ve heard that they have changed this policy (if it ever was an official policy, rather than just a general stance by the management.) And since I’ve left frog I’ve gotten to work with a lot of user experience professionals. Some of which have insisted that everything be tested. Every decision should be in some way be run by users. I’ve seen the User Centered Design methodology be taken to great lengths, where paper prototypes, then wireframes, then design comps, then the finished site are tested revised and retested until the data shows what the usability experts are looking for. If a user does not figure it out on the first try, it’s a fail.

I’ve also worked with user experience professionals who have demonstrated that there are ways to test innovative ideas and that not all data from user tests should be taken at face value. Just because someone doesn’t figure something out on the first try doesn’t always make it wrong. Sometimes it’s when a user doesn’t figure it out on the second or third try that it means something is wrong, and the fact that the user found something compelling enough to try to use it multiple times should be given some weight. Innovative ideas introduce a learning curve, it’s whether or not users are willing to overcome the learning curve that should be paid attention to.

Designers should always listen to their users. Designers should really listen to everyone, you never know where a good idea might come from. But being a good designer means knowing which ideas to use and which feedback to listen to. Good designers also know when to take a risk and try something new and when to stick to convention. My own philosophy on the subject is based on a quote from Charles and Ray Eames, “Innovate as a last resort.” If an method exists that users are familiar with, use it. Use it unless you think you’ve really got something new that works, and when you do, test it. And if no one gets it in testing, weigh the costs versus benefits before going forward anyway.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »