UsabilityTalks

Usability flaws..

2011-12-15T13:29:00.000+01:00

Hi,

today I want to share with you two nice images regarding usability...

The first one is from the airport in Zurich. This is the description on top of a lock that was mounted into a wall. The text is in german, but it is describing how to open and close the door correctly, without an alarm.

And here something that isn't a usability problem.. but it is a CERTIFIED FRUSTRATIONFREE PACKAGING (thx to Stefan for sharing this) - I never knew that there is a certification for that ;-)

I wish you merry christmas and a happy new year...see you in 2012!
Br, Claudia

UXcamp Vienna - Pics & Links

2011-11-14T15:52:00.001+01:00

Hi,
two days ago a great UXcamp took place in Vienna with about 80 participants and several interesting sessions.

My photos can be found here: Fluidr-UXcamp-Set
Sandras photos are here.

One nice outcome of the UXcamp is a MUST-READ List for UX.

Thx to all sponsors - TechTalk, A1, Ströck, bestHeads, GermanUPA - and participants,
br, Claudia

UXcamp Vienna coming up ... are you ready?

2011-11-11T12:39:00.001+01:00

Hi!

Personas from the UX workshop in Vienna

In the last weeks I moderated two usability workshops for developers in Vienna and Zurich and I had a great time and interesting discussions with the participants .... and now tomorrow the next highlight will come - the UXcamp in Vienna.

I'm planning to do two sessions if the others are interested in these topics ... and if I'm able to prepare them today :-)

The topics are:

UX & the agile world (Basic introduction)
What's going on in our brains? Effects on design decisions. (inspired by Susan Weinschenk)

And the best thing alright now is that we have 115 registrations for the event tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to meet a lot of nice people.

See you hopefully tomorrow ...

Br, Claudia

World Usability Day: UXcamp Vienna 2011

2011-10-22T13:58:00.003+02:00

Hi,

on the 10th of November is the World Usability Day. The Interactiondesign Stammtisch in Vienna is organizing a Barcamp two days later on the 12th of November 2011.

I think most of you know that for a Barcamp it's important that everybody is participating. Of course the participation is free of charge.

Where and When?
Samstag, 12. November 2011 von 9 Uhr bis 18 Uhr
A1 Telekom Austria, Lassallestraße 9 (nähe Praterstern), 1020 Wien

More information:
http://www.barcamp.at/UXcamp_2011

A few of the sessions will be held in english - see more info about that in the "geplante Sessions" section.

Would be happy to see you there.

Br, Claudia

100 things every designer needs to know about people & Neuro Web Design - What makes them click?

2011-10-04T10:48:00.000+02:00

Hi,

in the last month I read two great books by Susan Weinschenk:

She has a Ph.D. in Psychology and is working in the field of user experience for 30 years.

Both books draw their attention to the things that are going on in people unconsciously - how do they perceive information? How are they focusing their attention and what motivates them? How are they deciding?

But the books are not only high-level and theoretical, they also bring concrete examples for designers - like the perception of different font types or sizes.

Both books are worth reading, but if you want to have the one with more content, more pictures and more colors try the "100 things" book.

Br, Claudia

EVENT: Usability-to-Go für Entwickler: 1x1 Kompaktwissen

2011-08-24T12:33:00.001+02:00

Hi,

together with my colleague Stefan I will run a one-day workshop in Vienna and Zurich called "Usability-to-Go für Entwickler: 1x1 Kompaktwissen"
(It's planned to be in german, but we can handle english speaking participants too :-) ).

So the workshop is for developers and will be a hands-on workshop.

The content will be:

What is user-centered design?
Personas (representatives for the end-user)
Wireframes and Sketching to communicate and discuss requirements
Usability Testing
What methods are usefull depending on the project environment?

The dates are the 25th of October in Vienna (Austria) and the 3rd of November in Zurich (Switzerland).

More information about the workshop can be found on the TechTalk website.

Br, Claudia

Links - "Best of": 90% don't know CTRL+F, ROI of UX & Google+ Reponsive UI

2011-08-22T15:54:00.000+02:00

Hi,

after my Blogging-Summer-Break I want to share again some interesting links of the last weeks.

Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don't Know How to Use CTRL+F
theatlantic.com, Alexis Madrigal - August 18th, 2011
Alexis Madrigal talked with Dan Russel, a search anthropologist at Google, and was surprised that 90% of people don't know how to use CTRL/Comman + F to find a word in a document or web page!

ROI of UX
i-Thought.org, Marie-Claire Jenkins - May 29th, 2011 (already a little bit older)
I'm always interested on how to communicate the ROI of UX to customers and stakeholders. Most of the times these are high-level and boring articles but this article is a short summary and you should have a look at this video created by Susan Weinschenk.

Neues Google+ Feature zeigt Best Practice für responsive UIs und Scrollen
uxzentrisch.de, Tobias Jordans - August 19th, 2011
One of my new favorite blogs is "UXzentrisch" ... but it's only available in German. In this article they talk about the new google+ Feature (You-Tube Video in Englisch) and the best practice of a responsive UI in the browser.

Have a nice day,
Br, Claudia

UXcamp - Day2: Dealing with the failure of the user & Design Studio

2011-06-18T09:21:00.001+02:00

Dealing with the failure of the user
In this short discussion we talked about the "failures of the user".

Good failure vs. Bad failure: Failure can be good to give space for innovation.

Trying to make new failures and not always doing the same one. It's hard to document failures to learn from it in the future.

Broken gets fixed, but crappy lasts forever.

The user sometimes comes with the wrong mindset to our interfaces so he will do something wrong - so the user is wrong, but we need to take care of. Or maybe we should punish the user?
- Have the balls to say "no!"

The system should support my activity itself and not always ask if I'm really sure... So instead of asking "are you really sure" an undo method for deleting.

Design Studio (rapid collaborative sketching)
In this workshop Anders Ramsay explained the two kinds of Design Studio.

Ideation Clearinghouse
Get ideas of all stakeholders out, what are they thinking, how are they envision the product.
Tip: Put a large stackof paper on the table - Psychological effect (no limits for ideas)

Rules:

Create a private atmosphere (it's not common for them)
Everybody is participating (also the moderator) to let all participants feel comfortable

5 minutes sketching, Presentation in the group, Dot voting about the best idea
Add notes and ask questions to understand their ideas.
An additional iteraton can be done if the group has some new ideas.

Internal design studios
Add more constraints and goals and push them. Do more iterations to refine ideas.

Little big details

In this great session Tobias Jordans presented 18 "Little Big Details"... you can find the links to the great examples in the blog ux-zentrisch

UXcamp - Day2: Digital Trends - Challenges for Traditional UX

2011-06-17T13:00:00.001+02:00

In this session Clive K. Lavery (@cklaery) talked about the Digital Trends they analyzed based on the financial industry. They have a report with a lot of good examples, hopefully they will publish this as a white paper.

10 Digital Trends:
1 - Asymmetric Engagement - Strategies are not only happening on a website, there is more interaction (Crowd Sourcing, Serious Gamification, Social ...)
2 - Empowerment: Customers don't want to be thought
Life Assistence: www.mint.com (Personal Finance Management), Personal Heath Managements (MSN)
Civic Engagement: www.guardian.co.uk - Political Watch /
3 - Self-Sovereignty: Kout (www.kout.com) - Influence Monitoring - You want to be in a community but want to be recognized
4 - Context Awareness: The context is important, but the context is not "mobile" but the goal the user wants to reach (Geo-Fencing, Smart Targeting)
5 - Lifeline - Digitazation: You show you life online
6 - Convergence - Smart Homes, smart cars (Channel Alignment, Augmented Reality, Unified Communications)
7 - Distributed Experience: Content is distribute into various channels (Micro Blog, etc. ) (Portability, Extensibility, Modularity)
8 - Ubiquity: Web is everywhere and we take what we want - not going online anymore (Mobile Computing, Capability Cloud, Object Hyperlinking)
9 - Human centricity: Natural User Interaction, Cognitive Design, Affective Computing (Users are more dynamic, can we plan how the users are using it)
10 - Sensemaking: A process to make sense out of big load of data; Data Aggregation, Advanced Analytics, Data Visualization

The problem: It's not possible to test innovation unless you created it.

UXcamp - Day2: UX of conferences (Sven Guckes)

2011-06-17T08:53:00.000+02:00

A discussion session about "UX of conferences" hosted by Sven Guckes... Here are my notes.

Brainstorming Session

After conference follow ups: Newsletter with summary
Facilitating the in-between talks - enough breaks / more open spaces (facilitate 1:1 talks than 1:N talks) - "expand family"
"lightning talks" - Talks to share a lot of ideas in 1-5 minutes
Tagging - Wall for Tags with Faces (you can see the people in what they are interested in)...
Speakers should know what the audience the need to prepare for (the organizer needs to take care of - show demographics)
Share infos in various ways ... Facebook event/group, upcoming.org,
Content of the website: Travel, Accomodation, pickup-places, party
Barcamp: Couchsurfing (good example fosdem.org), Adopt-a-geek
Community advice (evangelists of conferences)
Twitter - News : always at the right time and updating

What you should focus in the conference on:
- Goals for the community
- Business plan
- Goals for the committee

3 most important infos on a website: speakers, costs, hard facts (how to get there)
Most time organizing an event needs to be spent on money + sponsors.

Call for help if you need it: Show tasks on the website - The problem is tracking the people.
(makesense.org -Website: Website to find people, it's about skills)

UXcamp - Day2: Impressions

2011-06-16T23:38:00.002+02:00

Hi,

here are some pics from the 2nd day of the UXcamp Europe in Berlin.

More pictures you can find on Fluidr.

UXcamp - Day1: 10 war stories you (probably) won't see on Slideshare (Eric Reiss)

2011-06-16T07:30:00.002+02:00

In this nice and funny presentation Eric Reiss talked about 10 war-stories from the project life. The slides of this presentation you can also find on Slideshare.

1. What shade of lipstick can you put on our pig?
What to do when the client doesn't care (a story from the public sector)
Suggestions:

Do something quick and easy that makes you client look good. (show positive change)
Seek a true champion within the organization
If you're going to prostitute yourself, make sure the money is really, really good

2. Would you consider a no cure, no pay agreement?
How to get screwed in one easy lesson (a story from the airline industry)
Suggestions:

Don't let your enthusiasm get the better of you
Always maintain control of the "cure" (and make sure the "cure" is well-defined)
Ensure you establish your rights to the "cure" if the clients give your work to someone else for execution

3. Who called this stupid meeting? Wo are you guys? Why am I here?
How to avoid meetings from hell (a story from the financial sector)
Suggestions:

Write out a clear agenda and make sure everyone gets it prior to the meeting
List your expected outcomes/decisions
Provide some background documents if necessary

4. But social media is free....
The truth behind social media marketing
Suggestions:

Don't be greedy and accept a project unless proper internal resources have been allocated.
Understand that social media are not marketing tools, they are communications devices
Focus on communication goals, not projects

5. BTW, I'm no longer in charge of this project...
What to do when the key decision-maker leaves the team a week before the contract is signed ( a story from the private sector)
Suggestions:

Make sure the new person knows that you know they are calling the shots (don't threaten, be supportive) - "We help you to achieve your goals!"
Find out what the new person has in teams of personal goals and agendas (and why the other person left) Avoid talking about legacy decisions

6. Oh the contract is just a formality...
What to watch out for when dealing with bureaucrats (a story about charities and NGOs)
Suggestions:

A contract is always a contract
Cover your ass (save your e-mails!!)
Be wary of contracts that appear after you've started to work.

7. We want the best damned site in our industry. Can we have it on Thursday?
How to give clues to clueless clients (a story about B2B)
Suggestions:

Try and put the project into a familiar perspective (e.g. Compare preparation needs and budgets with those for their annual report)
Show how a proper development process works (e.g. www.fatdux.com/how/our-process )See if there is a link to an internal process (e.g. LEAN - muda, muri, mura)

8. You didn't deliver what you promised...
How to avoid "deliverables creep" (a story from the private sector)
Happens because what they asked for has nothing to do with what they needed.
Suggestions:

Don't be vague in the language you use for the contract.
Make sure you specify your deliverables - and that the client understands exactly what you mean (not everybody has the same definition of stuff, e.g. Wireframes)
Always be prepared to give more than you plannend on giving.

9. My wife says links should be blue...
What to do when the CEO pulls ranke (a story from the industrial sector)
Suggestions:

Pick your fights with care. Don't waste time discussing the home page if you can win on stuff like better forms design.
In a battle with the CEO's wife, statistics will lose
Get the CEO to choose between his personal business success and his wife - the business will win.

10. But your proposal doesn't contain all the stuff we want but didn't ask for.
How to read between blurry lines.
Suggestions:

Find out how you got on the shortlist
Don't spend to much time proving your qualificcations, instead show that you can think outside of the box.
Show folks success, not just process

Recommended Books:

Secred handshake
Dealing with difficult people
What clients love (Selling the invisible)

UXcamp - Day1: Enabling change (Stefan Freimark) & KJ diagram (Yeevon Ooi)

2011-06-15T19:35:00.002+02:00

Enabling change - Stefan Freimark

How to enable change?
- Mindset
- Methods

Establish a sense of urgency

Conduct stakeholder interviews
Start conversations between silos: Bring them together in workshops, Show them the bigger picture but also suggest small and specific steps - Start a project wihin a project.
Keep people in the loop: Publish a project newsletter, Present results to everyone interested, Q&A questions, Embrace new stakeholders (but keep core team small)

Don't call it change management OR Fly under the radar ("Kick Ass Kickoff Meeting "- A list appart)

Book recommendations

A sense of urgency - John P. Kotter
Switch - How to change things when change is hard - Chip Heath & Dan
Change Management - Stolzenberg/Heberle
Next practice - Erfolgreiches Management von Instabilität.
How to lead when you're not in charge.
Winning others over
Die Logik des Misslingens

The slides you can find on Slideshare.

KJ diagram - Yeevon Ooi

Problem: Long discussions that go nowhere

Different experiences, skill, opinions, priorities and personalities

Affinity Map - KJ diagram (Jiro Kawakita)
Article by Jared Spool (2004)

Everyone gets to contribute
Reach group consesus

UXcamp - Day1: Communicating and Selling UX Design Deliverables (Jan Srutek)

2011-06-15T17:16:00.015+02:00

The problem : UX tends to be abstract & conceptual
We're selling "just" ideas.
UX is about communication: We can use written, verbal or visual communication.

Visual communication is powerful - Images are processed in parallel.

Advices

Communicate design visually: Visualisation improves comprehension and inference.
Engage you audiences: Stakeholder should unterstand the designs. - Do collaborative workshops (Books: Game storming, Visual meetings)
Tell engaging stories - talk about people's experiences. (Storyboards)
Speak your audience's language - Use their terms and language. (Conversion funnel optimisation vs. Improving users' experience)

Where to start?
- 8 Steps by Dan Brown - Communicating design

The theory of Consumer Buying Behaviour

Problem recognition - Explain the problem you are trying to solve. Ensures that your perceptain aligns with the perception of the user.
Information search - Present information that frames the design problem and sets the constraints. (Explain the starting position)
Options evaluation - Show the client multiple solutions and you thinked about a wide range of possible solutions. Share your thinking process.
Purchase decision - Explain why the one solution is the best and "sell" it.
Post-purchase evaluation - Document your decisions process for future reference and validate your design with users.

Always have an executive summary ready.

Designing design deliverables

Every UX deliverable has two layers - The ideas (the what) and the presentation (the how).
Present UX deliverables in a way of user-centered design... More thinking about the ideas, leass about the presentation.
Characteristics of deliverables:

Consistency: Be consistent in names and visual styles (across and within deliverables)
Recognition rather than recall: Don' t force people to remember stuff, make your deliverables visible and easily accessible
Aesthetic and minimalistic design: Make it nice to look at but avoid decoration.
Deliverables should be prioritized: Emphasize important stuff and de-emphasise irrelevant details.

Some common UX deliverables

Wireframe-Example: Actual design is probably alright but the presentation layer is not correct. / Mix up annotation and design
Sitemaps: Avoid sloppy connections and crossing lines if not needed, avoid sloppy text placement and text variations (variant A, variant B),
Always use cover sheets - Your deliverables should explain themselve...

Discussion

Storyboard - Using sketching template, with your logo on it.
Wireframes & Colors: 1-2 colors, not use highly saturated colours

You can follow mailto:http://twitter.com/#!/JanSru.

UXcamp - Day1: Power of agile UX (Petr Dousa)

2011-06-15T14:16:00.000+02:00

The first session I attended at the Uxcamp in Berlin was a session by Petr Dousa about "Power of agile UX". He explained how he's working and focused on 3 major topics:

Design Workshops
Agile Usability Testing
Feedback

Rule of UX in Agile: Do just enough ... of Sketching, Mockups...

Design Workshop: with Users, Developers, Tester, Product Managers and User Experience
2 hours workshop - everybodyis sketching. (Explain the goal and background, Sketch 6 ideas, Present + discuss, Sketch whole solution, Present + discuss, Sketch one consesus solution)

It's fast
Pick the best idea (Good idea are coming from anybody!)
Mutual understanding

Agile Usability Testing: 3 participants - 3 tests in the morning, Eval & Pizza afterwards, Afternoon: Bugfixing

Involve the team!: Good ideas from everybody, buy-in (this is our product), Personal experience that users are different
Test evaluation: Every observer write down 3 major problems, write on sticky notes, First person sorts, Collision - Discussion , Pick 3 top problems, Start fixing now.
Repeat it each month!

Feedback

Including mockups in real application - to show how it could work.
Problems: It's uncomfortable / Devs: "I use it this way"
Solutions: Meet the users!, 70% communication and 30% design

The slides of his presentation provided Petr on Slideshare.

UXcamp - Day 1 Impressions

2011-06-14T18:35:00.000+02:00

Further pics of day 1 you can find on Fluidr.

UXcamp - Agile & UX: How to make it work

2011-06-14T17:16:00.000+02:00

Hi,

last weekend I attended an really great UXcamp Europe in Berlin. At the first day I did one session together with Anders Ramsay. The results of the discussion are collected in this presentation....

Agile & UX: How to make it work

In the next days I will share with you the rest of my notes and experiences from the UXcamp.

Br, Claudia

UXcamp Europe - I'm coming...

2011-06-08T13:21:00.000+02:00

Hi,

next weekend I'll be at the UXcamp Europe in Berlin and I'm already looking forward to get to know a lot of intersting people.

I plan to do a session together with Anders Ramsay about "UX in agile projects" to discuss topics like "How can you ensure a consistent user interface and consistent ways of interaction if functionalities are iteratively developed? ".

Hope to see you there,
Claudia

PS: If you can't make it there, I'll keep you informed on this blog and on twitter...

UXLX - 6: Slides

2011-05-24T13:10:00.001+02:00

Hi,

if you want to have a look at the slides of the UXLX you can find them here:
http://lanyrd.com/2011/uxlx/

Br, Claudia

UXLX - 5: Friday Talks - Part 2

2011-05-24T13:00:00.001+02:00

Hi,
this is the overview of all talks of Friday afternoon at the UXLX.

Josh Clark - Cage Match: Mobile Web vs. Native App

Challenges
- Many platforms, many cultures
- Choosing a platform is not only a techniqual decision it's also a decision about culture

Platforms:
Blackberry - the sensational suit, keyboard kommando, corporate crusher
IPhone - Aktive browsers, active buyers,...
Android - It's the technology, User experience doesn't have the highest priority
Windows mobile - the former champion; classy, urban, modern

Split decision: There will be no winner in the near future.

Web
Everyone loves her!
You don't need to create various apps for the different platforms and it's available.
The Web's UX weaknees: You can't compete with apps in speed, polish,...

Native App vs. Web: Not a real fight! Enemies are friends!

Suggestion: One mobile website and reward them with flagship native Apps. Choose 1 or 2 platforms, aim for the mobile culture that match you customer...

Content across devices and context: many devices, different views
Mobile apps NEED mobile content (navigation, content, ...).
The difference from usual websites is the size.
Mobile content doesn't only mean less content, because using a small screen doesn't mean to do less.
Core content must be there, probably only the hierarchy is changing.

An App is not a strategy it's only an App.
Don't think about every app alone.. See it like seamless content flow over all platforms.

Christopher Fahey - Squandering the cognitive surplus
User Experience Designer are not onyl doing the user interface.

They think about what the user gives and gets from the application
- Interaction - user behaviour
- Information - content strategy
- Cognition -the process of thinking

Biocost - energy, time, intention, stress associated to a task
We as user experience designer should take biocost into account.

Dario Buzzini - The manual of detection

3 hypothesis:
We write stories not manuals.
We design experiences, not procedures.
We strive for beauty not truth.

Ten Detection Probes
1. On Shadowing:
Taxonomy of Skills. It's not about roles, it's about what somebody can provide to a problem.
2. On Evidence:
As a designer look for evidence - learn how to talk the right language.
You need to be able to open the clients easy and you need to be able to do it.
3. - oh I missed it -
4. On Documentation
Make the documentation actionable: User Journey, Venn Diagramm, Two by two
Empowers designers to be creative.
5. On Bluffing
Designer sometimes lie to make great products or push innovation.
6. On Interrogation
Looking for the answers before you ask the question, Ask the question, You need to understand the behviour of the user.
What people say and do is different to what they think and feel.
7. On Crypography
We make it sometimes a little bit more complex as necessary.
Keep it simple, visual, ...
Example: PNC
8. On Nemesis
We like to look at extremes.
9. On Solutions
Bring you ideas to experience, Prototyping
LiveView - Screencaster to capture Photoshop and try it on you phone
10. On Dream Detection
We need to be sure that we build a vision/an innovation.

Don Norman - Living with complexity

If you are not failing, that means you are not trying hard enough.

If you show the numbers to convince somebody, that means your lying.

Never solve the problem the client ask me to solve because it's always the wrong problem.

Everybody complains about problems to be too complex... So we need to think about simplicity.
We try to figure out what the people need and the marketing try to figure out what the people are buying.

Salt & Pepper: What is what?
The important thing is what the person fills thinks.
Look for hacks - thats a sign for a problem and a workaround

Culture & Complexity
Preference - Complexity: Things that are to easy the customers doesn't like. There is a specific area of complexity they like most (desired level of complexity). This area is based on the level of experience.
Difficulty & Skill: Between the bored zone and the frustrated zone there is the flow zone. This is the zone with the correct amount of challenge (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyis "Flow)
Teslers Law: The conservation of complexity
- We should be able to create an idea in the morning, create a prototype in the afternoon and test it in the evening.
A very rapid prototyping-approach.

The enemy
- Reviewers: "Despite some missing features...."
- Salespeople: They want to sell the thing with the most functionality

Desirability will increase by the number of features - thats somehow true, but the Usability is decreasing.
But they don't need to be a tradeoff between functionality and usability.
Solutions:
- Natural: social signifiers (visual, tactile, ... - they can become natural) - e.g. Recommendations at Amazon. What articles were recommended by our users,...
(Affordance: Relationship between a person and the environment)
- Artificial: Good design
Conceptual Model:
- File system representation: It's not a direct representation of the storage, it has a totally different structure.

Systems Thinking
- Design for the whole system.
○ iPod - iPod, Licensing Music, Simple website to find the music, easy to buy, music directly at the computer - so the whole system was designed to be as easy as possible
○ Kindle vs. Sony eBook: With Sonys eBook you need to figure out on you own how to bring the book on you eBook. For using Kindle you don't even need a computer.

Br, Claudia

UXLX - 4: Friday Talks - Part 1

2011-05-17T10:15:00.001+02:00

Hi,

last Friday at the UXLX a lot of interesting talks took place. Here is my overview of the first part.

Louis Rosenfeld - On not declaring victory: Going beyond user research

Insights live in different silos.
- The reports from the user research group
- Query data gleaned from site search team
- The logs from the call center
- The reports coming out of the analytics applications
- Insights from Voice of the Customer research (surveys)
- CRM data
- The insights coming out of the research center.

Louis Rosenfeld

A nasty, three-headed cartographic challenge

1. Fragmentation: Tell us where an organizations insights live

2. Differentiation: Tell us what kind of insights there are

3. Synthesis: Tell us how to combine them effectively

The organization's challenge: thinking with a whole brain.

Some recommendations:

- Get out of your silo

- Establish what's common: KPI / goals, Segments/personas

- Map it: Maps, after all, are designed objects

Put people together from different silos

Win it: Companies that integrate their silos of insight will outpace their competitors

Christian Crumlish - Playful Design

Play - all the concepts of play he's working on has something to do with moving in space.

Masks: Putting on a role

Make belive: Invent themselves online

Reimagining: Play a role

Games:structured play

Games:

- Needs to start of with an invitation: "do you want to play"

- Boundaries: You have a system you play in

- Rules

- Goals: What is the goal of the game?

- Competition

- Cooperation

"It's easy to make a game fun, but it's hard to make the HR website fun."

Christian Crumlish

Nick Finck - The Cross-Channel Experience

Nick Finck

What is cross-channel experience?

Cross-Channel experience Design is the process of designing for all the touchpoints a person has with a business regardless of channel.
- Interactive touchpoints: Web, mobile, etc.
- Human touchpoints: Sales person, hotline, etc.

What you should do...

Know the context of use
Attention to detail counts
Look for hacks
Follow the whole engagement
Learn the business process
Understand how employees work

We need business on the site to improve here.
- We must break down the silos.
- We must cross-pollenate (collaborate with different parts of the company)
- We must work more like a hive.
... With a unified version of what we're trying to do.

Stephen Anderson - Critical Thinking Skills for UX Designers
Critical Thinking Skills - Z-Shaped Thinkers:
○ "When everyone zigs, zag."
○ Changing what you are doing through critical thinking

Z-Shaped Thinkers approach challenges (of all kinds!) in different ways.
Skills of Z-Shaped Thinkers:

Rephrasing the problem
Explore many perspectives
Synthesize information
Embrace constraints
Challenge assumptions
Appreciate details

...In oder to envision unseen opportunities.

Stephen Anderson

Kristina Halvorson - Content/Communication
Problem: We still think about content as copywriting? It's just writing and everybody has Word :-)

Tools to get the writer in the room at the beginning - Content strategy
Content strategy plans for the creation, delivery and governance of content.

Core content strategy - What are we going to do with our content?
Content components: Structure & substance
People components: Workflow & governance

Kristina Halvorson

Br, Claudia

UXLX - 3: Usability testing bootcamp

2011-05-16T22:15:00.000+02:00

The 2nd workshop I visited on Thursday was the "Usability testing bootcamp" by David Travis ..and here are my notes:

Usability is not JUST about making things easy.
- Just measuring Completion rate is not enough
- Just measuring Satisfaction is not enough
- Just measuring Time is not enough

Number of users for Usability Test
- Are 5 users sufficient? 5 users is based on the assumption that you develop iteratively.
- Steve Krug: "Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end"

Phases of the usability test
- Identify the test goals
- Recruitment
- Identify the test tasks
- Preparation
- Consent: If the user is ok with the usability test
- Context-Setting: explanation of the method
- Demo Thinking aloud by the moderator
- Explicit Permission to start using the technology
- Practice thinking aloud with the participant (with an easy task that has nothing to do with the test itself)
- Task creation
- Moderated the test
- Survey
- Incentive

Usability test situations
- Portable test lab: Take the system to the user
- Single room setup
- Classic testing lab setup (one-way mirror)
- Classic benchmark test: Time on task - no think aloud
- Multi-room setup: Observers in another room
- Remote moderated test
- Remote unmoderated test

Writing test tasks: Headline Tasks ("red routes") are the most important things to test.
Ask the following questions...
- Is it really a red route?
- Is it specific and measureable? (is there a begin and endpoint)
- Does it describe a complete activity (integrated, not simple tasks)?
- Is the task "portable" to competitor products, systems or services?
- Does it include enough information to complete the task yet avoid hidden clues?

How to moderate a usability task
Hats of the moderator:
- Flight attendant: Welcome the participants, provide coffee, small talk,...
- Sports Commentator: Talk to inform the observers, Remind the user to think out loud, let the user to repeat the task in his own words, ...
- Scientist: Responsible for avoiding test bias and recording the data.
Br, Claudia

UXLX - 2: Short sessions - Magic, hurt feelings and forgiveness & Usability testing with mobile devices

2011-05-16T21:59:00.002+02:00

The 2 short sessions I visited today were "Magic, hurt feelings and forgiveness" by Oli Shaw and "Usability testing with mobile devices" by Belén & Bernard.

Magic, hurt feelings and forgiveness by Oli Shaw

Fun & Inspiration:
- Costs of technology keeps falling
- Science fiction is becoming science facts

Pythagoras: There are no miracles, there is only ignorance.
Paracelsus: Magic meant the natural forces which were not yet completely understood.

Over time technology was always between Science and Magic.
Magitek - Magic & technology: Devices, apps, services..
- Explicity magical: Microsoft Wizzard, Magic Mouse, HTC Magic,...
- Implicitly magical: Mobile phones
- Unrecognized as magical: Skype, WiFi on moving,..

What are the principles of Magitek?
- It seduces through mystique & power
- It creates wonderment
- It can be used without thought
- It hides the complexity of its mechanics
- It goes beyond the obvious needs and expectations
- It leads into something deeper....

Kano model:

- Excitement can become to an basic need
- Something delighting can become disgusting very fast.

Usability testing with mobile devices by Bélen & Bernard
Extra challenges for mobile testing

- Which context?
- Which phone?
- Which connection?
- How to record?

Test your mobile software in the field... Testing in the field with mobile phone is difficult, time consuming and expensive.
- Some testing is better in no testing... So test it in lab situation...

Use the participants own phones for the test!
The user needs to be familiar with the phone - the usability of the phone should be irrelevant (its realistic)

Don't test over WIFI - and switch of 3G.
You have to cover the costs of the participants!

Capture the test
- Mount camera on the mobile phone - very intuitive
To build you own mobile software lab: 138,68€

Br, Claudia

UXLX - 1: Know thy users

2011-05-16T21:59:00.001+02:00

The first workshop I attended at the UXLX was the workshop "Know thy users: Persona-Centered Design" by Steve Mulder. I already read his book about personas so most of the information I already know but I was very interested in the topic of discussing obstacles.

First a short of the main facts:

Steps to convince a CEO - the heart of user-centered design
- Business results depend on satisfying users
- You are not your user
- Learning about users requires direct contact
- Knowledge about users must be actionable
- Decisions should be based on users

A persona is defined by
- Goals
- Behaviours
- Attitude

Why can personas help?
- Bring focus
- Build empathy
- Encourage consensus: Shared vision
- Create efficiency: Everybody agrees early on the same direction
- Lead to better decisions

The Breath of Life - The elements of realism
Make personas real:
- They are much more memorable

Personas
- Name: Real name, allitaration can be used (Alice, Assurance Seeker)
- Key differentiators: Goals, behaviours and attitudes what is making this persona unique
- User Goals: Primary reasons why they are using this
- Pick Photos: Make them real, no models - http://www.scx.hu/, http://www.morguefile.com/, http://www.istockphoto.com/
- Personal data: Age, Family status, ... Data that mathers for the application
- Profile: Mini-Biography, first person version, why she is here, what she loves, etc.
- Quotes: Captures what the persona might say?
- Business value: If data is available
- Priorization of the persona: primary persona or 2nd level persona (primary, secondary, unimportant, excluded)

And in the discussion about the obstacles I captured the following notes:
- Time: Convince customer, that they can use the personas through the whole process - usability testing & marketing

- Personas as part of the project: Present them in the kick-off
- Not convinced project team/company: Start with high level personas and refine them, or start with a small project and communicate improvements
- Customer is not the user: You could create 2 sets of personas
- Personas dying in long projects: Impersonate personas with actors
- Difference between stable characteristics & characteristics in specific situations: Persona is a habit, but they can change behaviors. You should cover both or what is related to the product you are designed.

Now I looking forward to participate in the workshop about Usability testing by David Travis...
Br, Claudia

UX-LX: Lisbon I'm coming....

2011-05-10T11:25:00.000+02:00

Hi,

tomorrow the UX-LX conference in Lisbon will start. I will be there on Thursday and Friday... I'll try to share my experiences with you on this blog and on my twitter account.

I plan to visit these workshops/sessions:
- Steve Mulder - Know the User: Persona-centered design
- Oli Shaw - Magic, hurt feelings and forgiveness
- Bélen & Bernhard - Usability Testing with Mobile Devices: A crash course
- David Travis - Usability Testing Boot Camp: How to Plan and Moderate a Usability Test
- Wolf Becvar (Hot Gloo): Wireframing in full stereo! Why interactivity is a winner

- Louis Rosenfeld: On Not Declaring Victory: Going Beyond User Research
- Christian Crumlish: Playful Design
- Nick Finck: The Cross-Channel Experience
- Stephen Anderson: Critical Thinking Skills for UX Designers
- Kristina Halvorson: Content/Communication
- Jeffrey Veen: How the Web Works
- Christopher Fahey: Squandering the Cognitive Surplus
- Dario Buzzini: The Manual of Detection
- Don Norman: Living with Complexity

So I'm looking forward to get to know a lot of interesting people and hear interesting new things.

Have a nice and sunny day,
Claudia

Links - "Best of": Mobile Web Design, Integrate UX into Agile Development and Innovative Techniques to Simplify Log-Ins

2011-05-06T09:28:00.000+02:00

Hi,

today again I want to share a few links you might be interested in:

Video: Mobile Web Design Interview
LukeW - April 5th, 2011
First I want to share with you an interview of Michael Slater with Luke Wroblewski. In my last post I have written about Lukes book "Web Form Design" and in Summer his new book will be out... "Mobile First". In the short interview he gives an insight in the new book... I'm already looking forward to it.

Integrating UX into Agile Development
UXmatters, Janet M. Six - April 18th, 2011
Ask UXmatters interviewed 6 usability engineers about how they integrate the UX methods into the agile development process. The articles covers topics like Success factors for Agile UX, Adapting User Research to an Agile Approach, Team Dynamics, ....

Innovative Techniques To Simplify SignUps and and Log-Ins
Smashing Magazine, Anthony T - May 5th, 2011
Everybody see it several times every day .... the log-in Screen. Anthony T summarized a lot of techniques how the signups and log-in screens can be improved to help the user. Some of them are more or less common sense like "Auto-complete the country field" but a few of them are not very often used like "Require users to type their password only once" and "Allow users to unmask their password".

I'm already looking forward to the UXLX conference next week in Lisbon with a lot of interesting workshops and talks... I will try to share my experiences with you over this blog and my twitter account.

Have a nice day,
Claudia

Book Review: Web Form Design > Filling in the blanks

2011-04-04T13:58:00.000+02:00

Hi,

The cover

in the last weeks I tried to read the book Web Form Design - Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski because I'm very interested in the topic.

The content of the book in general is very interesting but I don't know why the book wasn't able to get my full attention (and I tried it several times).

I wasn't very happy with the layouting and the structure of the content. A lot of prosa text for things that can be said in a few bullet points - so in my opinion a lot of unnecesary words. The examples used to visualize the different topics were ok, but sometimes it was not so easy to match the correct explanation to an example.

Good examples but not the perfect structure.

Perhaps I was a little bit influenced by the last book I read about this topic - "Forms that work" by Caroline Jarrett and Gerry Gaffney (my short review). It was perfectly structured with great examples and explanations that were easy to understand ...

Only for clarification... I think the book by Luke Wroblewski is good but not as fascinating as the book by Caroline Jarrett and Gerry Gaffney.

Br, Claudia

Links - "Best of": User Experience cannot be designed, Lean UX & More, better, faster UX design

2011-03-16T14:17:00.000+01:00

Hi,

today I want to share with you some interesting links of the last days.

Why User Experience cannot be designed
Smashing Magazine, Helge Fredheim - March 15th, 2011

UX doesn't depend only on how something is designed, but also on other aspects, because we cannot design the user and we cannot design the situation in which the product is used. Fredheim gives a great new perspective how we should see the UX work... because it's not limited to usability or information architecture.

Lean UX: Getting out of the deliverables business

Smashing Magazine, Jeff Gothelf - March 7th, 2011

Traditionally user experience design is very deliverable-oriented. So most of the times a huge amount of effort is used to deliver documents instead of working on end-user experiences. Lean UX, inspired by lean and agile development techniques, tries to bring results faster to life with less emphasis on deliverables and greater focus on the actual experience being designed.

More, better, faster: UX design for startups
The Cooper Journal, Stefan Klocek - March 16th, 2011

This article, also related to the Lean UX idea, is focusing on how the UX process can be speed up to be able to show results very fast.

3 to 5 days for each "learn-build-measure" cycle are suggested. But fast shouldn't be dirty so pair design - as we know the concept already from software development - is recommended.

Br, Claudia

UX Events in Europe & why don't usability problems get fixed?

2011-02-18T15:17:00.001+01:00

Hi,

today I want to share two user experience events in Europe you might be interested in.

One - I'm not sure if I will attend - is the UX LX in May - an User Experience Event in Lisbon with a lot of interesting speakers and workshops.

The 2nd event is the UXcamp Europe on the 11th and 12th of June in Berlin. I will be there and if you too perhaps we can get in contact...

And now a link that may be interesting for you.

Why don't usability problems get fixed?
UX matters, Jim Ross - February 7, 2011
The usability test is done, you worked on good solutions for the usability problems and presented them to the team.... A few weeks later only a few of your recommendations are implemented - what's wrong?
Jim Ross collected reasons and limitations and also provides some ideas how this problem can be solved.

Have a nice weekend,
Claudia

SpecLog is here... the new tool for organizing requirements.

2011-02-07T18:12:00.000+01:00

Hi,

I'm very proud to inform you about a cool tool where I'm involved as a Usability Engineer in the development. The tool is called SpecLog and should help to organize requirements for agile projects in a more natural way using story maps for showing the relation between goals and user stories and capturing the acceptance criteria.

The best features in my opinion are the TFS integration, the customization of the requirement cards (language and process independent) and of course the synchronisation of the repository (backlog) from different clients. Useful if you have already a backlog is the Excel import.

SpecLog is free at the moment because this is now the beta phase so you have enough time to have a look and try it out.

We already have a lot of ideas how to improve but we are always looking for new inspiration and ideas so your feedback is highly appreciated.

You can find more information and the download link at http://www.speclog.net/.

Have fun...
Claudia

Book Review "Forms that Work"

2011-02-02T10:26:00.000+01:00

The book "Forms that Work - Designing Web Forms for Usability" by Caroline Jarrett and Gerry Gaffney is a must read for all usability experts dealing with business applications and online forms. I would also recommend it for developers interested in these topics.

Like the books by Steve Krug ("Don't make me think" and "Rocket surgery made easy") this book is filled with a lot of great examples and the focus of the content is on the relevant topics.The chapters are dealing with Persuading people to answer or making questions easy to answer to choosing the forms controls and making a form look easy.

A lot of examples with good explanations

More information about this topic and the book can be found on the Forms that Work website.

Have a nice day,
Claudia

Links - "Best of": Wireframes to Code, Best Podcasts 2010 & Crappy Surveys

2010-12-27T16:11:00.000+01:00

Hi,

perhaps you have at the moment - between Christmas and New Year - more time, so I want to share with you again some interesting articles from the last weeks.

From Wireframe to Code (Part1)

UX matters, Bill Schmidt - 20th of December 2010

How can the workflow be optimized? Is it more useful to have a integrated code approach (use the same artefacts for design and code) or separate code approach (artefacts to communicate design are separate from the final code)?

***

Lauren Cramer, User Interface Engineering, provided an article about the most interesting podcast of 2011 (part 1/part 2) and I want to provide you two I find most interesting:

Design Lessons from Facebook’s 350 Million with Julie Zhuo
2nd of March 2010
A few years ago we heard the following wishes from the customer ... "It should work like google.." "It should work like amazon.." Since a few months (in Europe) we hear "It should work like Facebook"... This is an indicator that this are the trendsetters - Brian Christiansen talks with Julie Zhuo, the Product Design Manager at Facebook, about the balance between the need to launch new features and the necessary user research.

Moving Beyond Static Forms with Luke Wroblewski
11th of February 2010
Last time I already shared a link about Better Form Design... and in this podcast Luke Wroblewski (authour of the popular book "Web Form Design") talks about the changes in the last years reagarding Form Design.

***
User Experience For Developers
UX Magazine - Pek Pongpaet, 23rd of December 2010
Quote: "UX shouldn't be the purview solely of UX specialists; a well-rounded developer can become a UX professional, too." Interesting links and what interested developers should focus on.

***
19 Lessons from United Airlines on How To Build A Crappy Survey
User Interface Engineering - Jared Spool, 26th of December 2010
A funny and interesting to read article about Jared Spools experience with a crappy survey from United Airlines.

I wish you all a happy New Year 2011 :-)

Claudia

Links - "Best of"

2010-12-10T10:37:00.000+01:00

Hi,

today I want to share with you three interesting links from the last weeks....

10 Surefire Ways to Screw Up Your iPhone-App
UX Magazine, 10th of December 2010
An interesting and fun to read article about how to screw up an iPhone-App - from Information Overload to Not Doing Usability Tests.

When is design done?
The Cooper Journal, 3rd of December 2010

Is the design done when it reaches "perfection", when the requirements are met or when time and money runs out...

Need Better Data? Pay more attention to your webforms
UX matters, 6th of December 2010
"Web forms are like the poor relations when it comes to their getting the attention they deserve from the usability community."
This article is a must read for all who are dealing with webforms in their daily business.

Br, Claudia

Difference between male and female designers

2010-12-02T15:07:00.000+01:00

Today the Webdesigner depot (WDD) provided a interesting post and infographic about the differences of web-design by gender.

Have a look and find out some interesting numbers about the tendency to use large numbers of typeface colors or the use of straight or rounded lines. (Of couse the numbers are no rules, there are only a rough insight.)

Br, Claudia

The Power of Wireframing - Kits

2010-10-27T18:28:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody!

Now it's autumn (already with some snow) (at least in Vienna & Salzburg) and it has been a long time since my last post. In the future I will try to share with you at least one interesting information per month (because I have a lot in my mind).

Now back to the topic ... Wireframe Kits.
The great Smashing Magazine published an huge article with a lot of useful wireframe kits. A few of them I want to share with you directly.

As I'm a big fan of magnetic protoyping this kit is a real help - the Wireframe Magnets (DIY Kit).

A also very useful kit is the User Interface Design Framework for Illustrator and OmniGraffle including GUI Elements, Icons and Styles.

And the last Wireframe Kit is the Free Sketching and Wireframe Kit, available for illustrator, as svg, pdf and eps.

If you want to see/try more wireframe kits - have a look in the article.

Br, Claudia

Book Review "Selling Usability"

2010-06-08T14:59:00.002+02:00

Hi everybody!

Verena - a friend of mine and an user experience designer from Artefact (Seattle) - recommended to me a book called "Selling Usability - User experience infiltration tactics" by John S. Rhodes published in 2009.

I would strongly recommend reading this book if you are responsible for Usability/User Experience in your company and you want that your organization cares or cares more about usability.

The book consists of 40 small chapters (each 3-6 pages) and it's easy and entertaining to read. Especially the headlines of the chapters (and the related comments) made me smile ... for example "Designers & Developers: These Bees Give You Honey" or "Teams: What Mama Didn't Tell You".

Even if not everything mentioned in this book can be applied to your situation, everybody will find some good hints where he can start within the organisation.

Best wishes from sunny Vienna,

Claudia

Unexpected usability problems...

2010-03-25T10:51:00.007+01:00

Hi,

today I want to talk about unexpected usability problems. A lot of products are tested and tested and tested to ensure a high user experience and to find severe usability problems. One of these products is flight entertainment solutions.

Three weeks ago I flew from Munich to New York with Lufthansa and next to me sat an elderly man - about 75 to 80 years old. He tried to use the entertainment system and he couldn't figure it out the main issue .... "How can I navigate?"

What do you think was his problem?

His problem was that he didn't recognize or know that the screen is a touch-screen. He tried to use the space on the right side of the screen (what is actually the cup holder) like a mouse pad.

This example showed me again how important it is to test the application with end-users (because there is a gap between what you think is useable and how the end-user acts) and to test it in the correct - the real-life - environment.

Br Claudia

Games in applications: Try Ribbon Hero in Word!

2010-01-20T10:42:00.004+01:00

Hi,

a few months ago (in October 2009) I wrote a blog post about "The Fun Theory" and how games in applications can help to increase the satisfaction of the users while working with an application.

Today Office Labs (a creative, future-oriented, experimenting department of Microsoft) published "Ribbon Hero" - a concept prototype that should help users to learn Word and Excel. I want to share this with you because this is the first realization using game mechanics in "boring" daily-business applications.

Try it, and probably we can share our highscore in facebook :-).

Br, Claudia

PS: Hopefully my mum likes the game and I needn't explain the ribbon anymore.

Anybody can do usability ...

2009-12-21T15:27:00.004+01:00

Hi everybody

I just read the new blog article by Jakob Nielsen and I want to share this great statement with you:

Usability is like cooking: everybody needs the results, anybody can do it reasonably well with a bit of training, and yet it takes a master to produce a gourmet outcome.

I also have the opinion that everybody - if he/she is interested in the topic - can learn the basic skills to find usability problems in advance (by scribbling screens) or afterwards (by reviewing the application). So, read the article ... it's really great.

Br/Üdv/LG
Claudia

Agile & User-centered design (the next part)

2009-12-15T08:55:00.003+01:00

Hi,

once again I want to share with you an interesting blog article by David Farkas about the agile and user-centered design process and how these can fit together?

http://johnnyholland.org/2009/12/14/how-ucd-and-agile-can-live-together/

... and the solution is "communication". And I agree 100%.

Farkas talks about the agile and the UCD process as two equivalent processes that influence the whole project. In my opinion the agile process effecting the whole team is the framework and I try to integrate and align the UCD process to it.

Farkas also shows in the blog article his view of the project lifespan and the transition from the UCD process to the agile process. As I already mentioned I think the UCD Phase 1 can be part of the first few sprints of the agile process - I don't know any project that starts in the first sprint with the whole UI and interaciton stuff :-). Of course at the beginning there is a lot of work for the usability engineer.

So that's my opinion, but what is yours - or have you any further interesting links you want to share?

Br, Claudia

12.11.2009 - World Usability Day

2009-11-11T14:31:00.007+01:00

Hi everybody,

I want let you know that tomorrow is the World Usability Day 2009 and there are a lot of interesting events all over the world. More information about the day in general and events you can find on the general website http://www.worldusabilityday.org/.

In Vienna and Zürich are also some events. In Vienna the german upa - regional group vienna and the Interaction design Stammtisch have organized different workshops and presentations for everyone (in cooperation with Digitalks), an UXcamp for usability professionals and they set up a competition to find the most annoying and frustrating tools - it is called Frustikus. The announcement of the winner will be tomorrow at 8PM in WerzeugH.

More information and the time table can be found at the website of the World Usability Day Vienna.

Have fun.
Br, Claudia

The Fun Theory or "Can game mechanics helps to improve applications?"

2009-10-22T16:01:00.005+02:00

Hi,

today I want to talk a little bit about a very interesting topic - the power of games and how fun can manipulate the behaviour. At the beginning I want show some real impressive videos created by VW for the project "The fun theory".

The idea of the site is that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. In this video they try to increase the number of people recycling glass. (Visit the website and you can find two other nice videos.)

As you can see in this video - if you have fun using a system you will use this more often and have a higher satisfaction using it.

Very extensively the game mechanics are used by social networks - for example on flickr, facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. It's possible to collect things (friends, followers, views), to customize you view/avatar and you can rate things or you can get an rating ("Your profile is 90% complete", etc.)
And also for example on ebay as a powerseller you get points and know on which "level" you are.

The following is an interesting presentation from the Google Tech Talks by Amy Jo Kim from January 2009 about "Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software" (1h).

Also a nice example is the Google Image Labeler. To label images is a boring work, but now Google tried to make it fun by creating a game out of it (example by John Ferrara - "Extending Game Design to Business Applications" (video) ).

So I think applying game mechanics to applications is really hard to do, but if you can experimenting and test you ideas with users at the end you get a better, more fun product.

Br, Claudia

Compatibility... different browsers & different operating systems

2009-09-17T17:08:00.007+02:00

Hi,

today I want to share with you some nice tools for testing web applications where you can test the appearance and behavior in different browsers and also on different operating systems.

IE Test

We all know the problems with the different versions of the internet explorer and IE Test is a tool to check the application in the versions from 5.5 to 8.

Microsoft Web SuperView
Also Microsoft provides a tool where the application can be tested with different IE-versions and the websites can be compared on one screen. You can download it here.

Browsershots

A very nice tool is browsershots.org. This websites gives you the opportunity to view your website in various different browsers on different operating system. As a result you get screenshots from the specific page in the different environments.

If you know any useful tool it would be nice if you leave a comment.

Br, Claudia

Review: A project guide to UX design

2009-08-17T08:38:00.008+02:00

Hi,

last weekend I read the book "A project guide to UX design - For user experience designers in the field or in the making" by Russ Unger (Twitter) and Carolyn Chandler (Twitter).

I found this book because Robert Hoekman, Jr. mentioned it in his Userability Podcast as one of the top 3 books he would recommend.

In general the book is nice and fast to read, the content is very basic and is a good introduction if you want to start in the field of User experience (for me a little bit to low-level). The book focuses a lot on the topics that are relevant for a UX consultant and cover topics like the project ecosystem, proposals for consultants and freelancers, project objectives and approach and Business Requirements.

More interesting chapters for me were about user research, personas, Transition: from defining to designing, Site Maps and Task Flows, Wireframes and Annotations and Prototyping.

Especially the chapter "Prototyping" was interesting because a few weeks ago I discussed with a colleague and he put the need of prototyping into question. Here are some of the key facts from the book...

"... Remember that prototyping is a process and not an artifact. [...] The outcome of the prototyping process is actionable feedback from concepts that can be used to enhance and improve the design."

And Todd Zaki Warfel, president of Messagefirst said the following regarding the goals of Prototyping:

"Prototypes are a way to achieve one or more of the following goals:
Work your way through a design
Create a common communication platform
Sell your design ideas internally (e.g., to your boss, other designers, etc.)
Test technical feasibility
Test design concepts with end users/customers"

So in my point of view there are a lot of good reasons for prototyping, because the best or most useable design can only be created in an evolutionary process with a lot of feedback from users, customers and stakeholders.

Br, Claudia

@ TechTalkers: If you are interested in the book I can borrow it to you.

Web Findings ...

2009-08-11T17:41:00.007+02:00

Hi everybody,

today I want to share with you some of the links I found in the last weeks - some of them you probably know because I already posted them in twitter.

A program to simulate colorblindness for Windows, Mac and Linux (in the image below you see the TechTalk-Website with a deuteranopia colorblindness) -> Color Oracle

The first world usability day event in Vienna on 12th of november 2009 -> http://www.worldusabilityday.org/wud09vienna

A nice example that shows the development of a very rough draft to a elaborated wireframe. -> Uwe Thimel's Portfolio on BehanceNetwork

And the last link I want to share is about Personas and how they can be represented ... a lot of different examples -> Fluidproject.org

Br, Claudia

PS: ReMix in Vienna on the 1st of october 2009 > Microsoft

PPS: TechTalk is looking for an creative user interface designer > TechTalk (german text) (or contact me)

Get information! Interviews with stakeholders and endusers

2009-07-28T09:33:00.005+02:00

Hi!

One of the basics you need to create a user-friendly interface is that you should know the user. You should know what are his goals, tasks, abilities, workflows, the environment, etc.

So one of the first step in the user-centered design process is to collect the information. One possibility to do so is to interview endusers as well as stakeholders.

A the beginning the usability expert should collect the questions he wants to ask and should always have in mind the general purpose of the interview. The perfect place to interview the enduser is the environment in which the application will be used, so for example in his/her workplace. The usability expert shouldn't ask question after question but rather let the user talk about their experiences and the expert should observe the behaviour of the user.

Several websites provide lists of questions that can be asked during an enduser or stakeholder interview. One website that provides a lot of information about each step in the usability process is usability.gov. They also provide a list of questions (.doc) that can be asked to the team at the kick-off.

Another good resource is the list of questions by Jared Spool and also the article "Putting context into context".

If you have any other interesting sources/links you're welcome to leave a comment.

Br, Claudia

Finding design alternatives

2009-06-30T11:35:00.008+02:00

Hi,

last week I held an internal workshop regarding heuristic evaluation. Also one part of the workshop was to find the best and the worst design alternative for a specific purpose and today I want to share with you the great suggestions.

The first exercise was to find the worst design for selecting date and time as it is used here:

The first team really quickly found a great worse solution. The user must type in the number of seconds from an specific time on using up and down arrows.

The second team focused on a very often used anti-pattern - drop-down boxes for everything!

And the third group found 3 bad solutions.
The first is a slider where you have to slide to the correct date and time - we don't know if this is technically possible - but a great idea.
The second solution was an empty textfield and the user must type in the date and time in words.
And the idea behind the third solution was to use different controls for each field.

After the fun the teams should focus on finding the BEST solution for filtering an list. The task was described the following:
Find the „best“ design for
multiple filtering on a list of documents

5 different filter parameters (file size, date of the last change, name, read-only, file-type)
Multiple values per filter parameter?
Combination of different parameters and different values of one parameter?

So here you can find some of the solutions. The first team created an control where the user can add filters on demand and then select the related parameters - only the parameters that are available should be shown in the value list of each parameter.
The second team created an solution where the user hast to enter the possiblity to filter using a simple text box or to open the extended mode to filter multiple parameters.

The third team has a really large selection screen - this reminds me on the filtering used on geizhals.at ...

Br, Claudia

Improving design of web pages

2009-05-29T10:56:00.005+02:00

Hi,

today I just want to post a short article about improving the design of your web page. Therefore I want to link you to the post of Matt Cronin who collected some ideas about improving factors.

In his article "8 Layout Solutions To Improve Your Designs" he presents 8 different kinds of new web controls to improve designs. Almost all of them are based on new web technologies like AJAX.

The reason why I got aware of this post is the fact, that I am currently having a problem with a menu that takes away a lot of space. Therefore I thought about using a different control to improve the layout and save some space on the page. After doing some paperprototyping I found a good way to layout the menu using the Accordion control.

The following pic shows my paperprototype of this Accordion control.

In his post, Matt Cronin describes Accordin controls as the following:

Accordion menus are based on the same concept as sliders and tabs: it takes a large amount of information and encapsulates it in a smaller area.

So this control is exactly what I need. And he also provides some good examples and links to existing controls and sample sites which reduces the effort of searching for good controls.

So if you need some inspiration to improve your design, check out the 8 layout solutions. Maybe you'll find some nice controls.

Kind regards,
Harald

Paper Prototyping @ Usability Week

2009-05-25T15:03:00.005+02:00

Hi,

last week I visited the Usability week 2009 in London and today I want to share with you my experience regarding paper prototyping.

On the last day we should work in groups to create a paper prototype in about 1 hour and then test this prototype with a person from another group. I have to say it was really fun and it worked really well. Especially we recognized how easy and FAST a design can be tested and improvements can be found.

In the following pictures you can see fast and creative work :-)

The topic of the paper prototype was part of a shop application where the user has the possibility to create a customized duvet.

In the following short video you can see the start of the test session and our favourite sentence "We are not testing you, we are testing the application".

Hopefully in the next days I have time to add more interesting topics related to the Usability Week.

Br, Claudia

Scrum in a real life project

2009-05-18T20:51:00.002+02:00

Hi,

today a short video found on the "All about agile"-Blog about scrum in a real life project (you can turn the sound off :-) ).

Scrum methodology from Soul' on Vimeo.

Greetings from London,

Claudia

Web content accessibility and heuristic evaluation

2009-05-08T15:41:00.003+02:00

Hello together,

today I want to introduce you to the WCAGs 2.0 - the web content accessibility guidelines and how to evaluate an existing web site using heuristic evaluation methods as described by Jacob Nielsen.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [1]
These guidelines are a good basis to work on when designing web pages for different groups of users including for example visual impaired people and more or less describe what to consider. Important to know is, that these "principles" are just recommendations and not rules.

The W3C consortium describes the WCAGs as follows:

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

These guidelines cover a wide range of different topics like how perceivable or how understandable a site is or how good the interoperability is when just using a keyboard. It would be too much now to go into detail but I want to list just a few principles which are the most important ones for me:

providing alternatives for all elements: this means, providing ALT attributes for images or video content
the contrast between the foreground and background should be a good one to make it easy to differ between real information and background info
the UI should be navigable using a keyboard only - so setting the TabIndex attribute is important
when designing forms, provide the "name" attribute for the input fields and put them into relation with labels using the "for" or "label" attribute
when structuring web content, use the H1-H6 elements to do so, 'cause usually screen reader applications rely on them

Considering just these 5 principles make it much more easier to build good accessible web pages.

Heuristic evaluation [2]

Heuristic evaluation is, according to Jacob Nielsen, a discount usability engineering method for quick, cheap, and easy evaluation of a user interface design.

Heuristic evaluation works the following way:

find "principles" - so called heuristics on which the evaluation should be based on. In our case, these heuristics would be the WCAG principles. Such principles are usually defined by a group or a single person, commonly used and good recommendations to follow but should not be considered as fixed rules
according to these principles, evaluators - who are usually usability experts - go through the whole interface of the application step by step and take notes, when the UI does not consider one of the principles. Usually, a good number for the amount of usability experts to use is between 3 and 6, 'cause one expert will only find 35% of all the problems. 5 experts will find about 75% of the existing problems.
after each evaluator has finished his process, they all meet together and compare their notes. Based on these notes, they rate the problems using the "severity rating". Therefore, each problem is assigned a number from 0 to 4, whereas 0 means, that there is no problem and 4 means, that it is a complete mess and a usability catastrophe
at the end, these results are summarized and presented to the developer team or the customer

When designing web content according to the WCAGs and using heuristic evaluation you can make your content better accessible and help impaired people understanding your web content.

Heuristic evaluation is a quick method for reflecting your UI and finding major usability problems according to various heuristics. These heuristics can be the WCAGs as well as other defined principles.

[1] ... WCAG web site [http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/]
[2] ... Heuristic Evaluation [http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/]
[3] ... How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation [http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_evaluation.html]

Role of Usability in the agile process

2009-05-05T11:31:00.007+02:00

Hi,

in the last weeks we often have the discussion @ TT which role should the usability engineer have in the agile/scrum process. Is the usability engineer a member of the team or on the same level as the product owner?

In the article "Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to agile development" on the blog "AgileProductdesign.com" Jeff Patton advises as a main point that the UX practitioners should be part of the customer and product owner team. This has the advantage that the UX expert is in the position to decide and influence what should be build in the next sprint.

In my opinion it's not always clear how this can be handeld during the sprints to keep up the communication between the development team and the UX team - also to get fast feedback and not wait until the end of a sprint.
Another interesting question is how efforts/estimation should be handled? If the UX team is part of the product owner team and not part of the "TEAM" the efforts will not be part of the estimation at the beginning of the sprints. I'm not sure if this is good. Jakob Nielson also mentioned in his blog-article "Agile Development Projects and Usability" that story points should be assigned for the interaction design and usability.

Do you have any opinions and suggestions on this?

Br, Claudia

Event - Kundenfrühstück bei TechTalk

2009-04-15T10:19:00.003+02:00

Hi,

today in german:

Kundenfrühstück bei TechTalk am 23.4.2009 um 9:00 zum Thema:

"Usability meets Development"
Wie schafft man es den Spagat zwischen Development und Usability optimal zu spannen?
Erfahren Sie auch, wie die Qualität/Userexperience von Applikationen für den Endanwender durch die Zusammenarbeit von Programmierung und Design verbessert werden kann.

Ich würde mich freuen wenn möglichst viele Interessierte dabei wären.

Br, Claudia

Inspiration needed?

2009-04-07T15:29:00.003+02:00

Hi,

today I want to share some interesting links:

Interaction Designers - Flickr Group
Blogarticle "20 cool interaction design concepts"

And a great website is the "Wall of Deliverables". The idea was born at the IA Summit 2008 in Miami and the aim of the site is to share examples of deliverables.

Have fun, br Claudia

MIX09, Surface & Userability Podcast (again)

2009-04-04T23:02:00.006+02:00

Hi,

today I want to recommend to view the following session videos of the MIX09. Of course the Keynote of Bill Buxton (recommended by michbex) and i was really fascinated by SketchFlow (presented by Christian Schorman - our judge @ Imagine Cup 08) and I'm looking forward to try it out. SketchFlow is currently not included in the Blend3 Preview. This is a screenshot of the SketchFlowPlayer:

Microsoft Surface Stove

A nice april fool by the Silverlight team is the Surface Stove.

20 years, No Improvement?

And one interesting podcast with Scott Berkun is now available at the Userability podcast answering the following question:

Don Norman’s seminal, The Design of Everyday Things, is approaching it’s 20th year in print. It explained why so many basic things in life are poorly designed and hard to use, such as pull handles on doors that need to be pushed. Since the world has been aware of these design flaws for two decades, why are so many basic usability failures still around?

Have fun,

br Claudia

Usability & UX Podcasts

2009-03-25T11:17:00.003+01:00

Hi,

today I want to share some very interesting podcasts related to the Usability and UX topic.

The first podcast is the Adaptive Path Podcast. (iTunesStore) The podcast is a mix between speaks at conferences and interviews with UI/UX/Usability-Experts. The podcast also provides the best presentations from the UX Week Events and the MX.

Boxes and Arrows Podcast (iTunesStore): A lot of interviews are available with professionals from the field of Information Architecture, Interaction Design and User Experience.

UIE Brain Sparks (iTuneStore) : Very interesting podcasts - consisting of SpoolCasts (General infos, interviews and virtual seminars) and Userability Podcasts (A caller asks a UX question and Jared Spool and Robert Hoekman, Jr. try to answer it).

Have fun,
Br Claudia

Articles about UX in an agile environment

2009-03-02T08:16:00.002+01:00

Hi,

today I want to share with you some interesting articles about the UX work in an agile environment.

The first 2 articles about the "12 best pratices for UX in an agile environment" by Jeff Patton (agileproductdesign.com) are available here:
12 best practices - Part 1
12 best practices - Part 2

(Same article with more pictures you can find here)

And i also want to recommend a second article by Jeff Patton discussing the question "Is user experience relevant where you work?".

Br, Claudia

Designing Interfaces (Jenifer Tidwell)

2009-02-23T10:44:00.005+01:00

Hi,

last weekend I read the next book - Jenifer Tidwells "Designing Interfaces". In the post about Design Patterns I already mentioned the related website.

For me the book doesn't contain new information. It's a nice compendium of the main patterns and I think the book could be helpful if you want to find a solution for a specific problem.

If you don't know much about the design patterns than you should read the book. The various patterns are really well explained and visualized with good examples.

Br Claudia

PS: @Techtalker - This book is available at the foyer.

The back of the napkin

2009-02-16T10:21:00.006+01:00

Hi,

today I want recommend you a book about solving problems and selling ideas with pictures. "The Back of the Napkin" by Dan Roam describes a new way of thinking - the visual thinking. On the one hand the book concentrates on possible methods to solve problems with visual thinking on the other hand the book also describes how the solutions can be presented to the audience.
(@Techtalker: The book is available in the foyer @ TTV)

At the MIX 08 conference Dan Roam talked about it and the video is available online. The basics of the book are covered in this workshop.

The visualization of the tools/methods provided in the book are also available on the website.

If somebody used this techniques to solve or present a problem it would be nice to hear something about your experiences.

Br, Claudia

Usabilitytalks goes Twitter

2009-02-13T11:35:00.002+01:00

Hi,

now you can find usabilitytalks also on twitter. I will use twitter to post interesting links when I have no time to write a blog entry (so probably there will be some redundancy).

A nice visualization of twitter using paper sketches is available on youtube ("in plain english"-series).

Br Claudia

User Experience Deliverables

2009-02-10T09:34:00.004+01:00

Hi,

today I recommend you a link to an article by Peter Morville about User Experience Deliverables. In this article Morville lists 20 user experience deliverables, including stories, personas, scenarios, concept designs, prototypes, styleguides and design patterns, with links to relevant resources and examples.

A really beautiful visualization of the deliverables is the treasure map.

Have fun,

Claudia

Design Patterns - Part 2

2009-02-06T09:14:00.003+01:00

Hi *,

now I want to share with you the second part of the links to the Design Pattern Libraries.

Pattern Tap

The first Pattern Library is Pattern Tap. They organized the patterns in collections and additionally they have so called User Sets. User Sets should focus more on detail than collections but they should be connected to patterns.

Designing Interfaces

Designing Interfaces is a book written by Jenifer Tidwell. On the website several patterns are described answering the questions "what?", "why?" and "how?".

Designing Social Interfaces

The last link I want to share with you is the wiki Designing Social Interfaces created by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone because they are writing about this topic. They use the wiki to share the patterns and to get feedback from the community.

I hope the provided links are usefull for you.

Br, Claudia

Design Patterns - Part 1 (of 2)

2009-02-04T09:20:00.007+01:00

A few days ago I talked with collegues about design patterns and now I want to share with you several pattern libraries available on the web.

UX Patterns Explorer (Quince)

The UX Patterns Explorer is a Silverlight Application and you can browser through different UI Patterns using different modi. For example you can find patterns via a Wireframe or Tag connections. Every pattern is described with the problem, the solution and several "real life" examples.

Yahoo Design Pattern Library

The Yahoo Design Pattern Library provides UI Patterns sorted by the users tasks. Every UI pattern explanation contains also a paragraph concerning the accesibility.

UI Patterns

The UI Patterns website provides articles about several patterns, as well as screenshot collections sorted by the patterns.

UI Pattern Factory

Like the others the UI Pattern Factory is a collection of UI Patterns and there is the possibility to suggest new patterns and add examples using flickr.

In the next days you can find the second Part of the Design Pattern-Libraries here.

Br, Claudia

Prototyping & Sketching

2009-01-23T14:47:00.006+01:00

Hi,

in the last days a read a lot of articles about prototyping and sketching and today I want to share with you some interesting links about this topic.

The first link is a IxDA discussion about "How many alternatives, concepts, or sketches are enough?" . So how can we be sure to create the best (or one of the best) design solution -> here a short visualisation.

Magnetic prototype
Another nice idea I read about in the last week is the magnetic prototype. I think this could be a really good method to test different UIs if you already know which controls you will need. I haven't used it so far, but i will try it.

Prototyping with Visio
The third link I want to share with you is a tool that could support you to create wireframes with Visio. There are controls and widgets available, also in a sketchy style. The ressources and a introduction are available >here.

The Website Stencil Kit
And for all they want to draw by hand, but are not so skilled .. here a tool that could probably help you a lot.... (Design Commission Shop)

Br, Claudia

Integrating User Experience and Agile (Cooper)

2009-01-19T11:17:00.003+01:00

Hi,

here you can find an interesting video of a Q&A session by Alan Cooper and colleagues at the company pivot lab. The discussion is about the interaction design process and the challenges of integrating user experience and agile.

... the cooper blog ...
... the video ...

Regards Claudia

10 ways to ...

2009-01-14T17:00:00.005+01:00

Hi,

today I want recommend you two interesting articles by the smashing magazine.

10 useful techniques to improve your user interface design
This articel sometimes refers to basics of visual perception, for example "White space indicates relationships" and "Using contrast to manage focus".

10 principles of effective web design
This article deals with the user attention and again the topic "Don't make users think"...

... the examples in the articles of the smashing magazine are really well visualized.. and you will find many more interesting articles like 10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of and for the friends of Fitts' Law 30 Usability Issues To Be Aware Of (@ Ver: Only a few sentences about fitts.. don't worry ;-) )...

.. have fun,
Claudia

How do you design? - A Compendium of Models

2009-01-10T13:33:00.004+01:00

Hi all,

today i want to share with you a link to a book which is written by Hugh Dubberly. He also writes articles for the magazine "Interactions".

The new book is called "How do you design" and is a compendium of design models. For the book Dubberly has collected over 100 descriptions of design and development processes.

The book (PDF) is available online > here.

Regards Claudia

Quicktest Center - Usability

2008-12-29T08:28:00.010+01:00

Hi all,

today I want inform you about the new Quicktest Center developed by TechTalk. With this tool it's possible to check the quality of your requirements analysis document or the usability of your software.

The Usability QuickCheck consists of 10 questions and is only a small excerpt of a larger criteria catalog (about 60 questions). At the moment the Tool is only available in german and if you don't want to install Silverlight you can find more information about the test here.

Br, Claudia

What can we learn from Game Design?

2008-11-20T13:31:00.002+01:00

Microsoft Office Labs hosted a few weeks ago the Seattle’s Interaction Design Association meeting and they were talking about the concepts of games and how they can be used for interaction design for ordinary applications or websites.

The videos of the presentations are available here.

Br Claudia

World Usability Day 2008: Transportation

2008-11-13T13:31:00.001+01:00

So.. today is the World Usabiltiy Day (Making life easy!) with the theme "Transportation: Understand how your use of transportation impacts our environment" ...

.. and now celebrate .. probably with a Häferl Punch :-)

Br, Claudia

IxDA & Interaction 08

2008-11-12T13:29:00.002+01:00

Hi,

today I want introduce to you the IxDA - Interaction Design Association. They describe themselfs as follows:

The Interaction Design Association is a member-supported organization committed to serving the needs of the international interaction design community.
The forum and mailing lists are really interesting.

They are also hosting the IxDA Interaction conferences.The videos of the Interaction 08 are available on the web and I already downloaded 10 of them (internally available).

Have fun,
Claudia

Introduction to Good Usability

2008-10-29T13:24:00.002+01:00

Hi,

today I want to show you a PDF called "Introduction to Good Usability" (by peterpixel).

It only has 20 pages (and a lot of images) and it gives information about interface design guidelines and principles of good usability focusing on websites.
(You also can find a printed version in my room).

Most of the principles are really obvious and if you read the book "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug you will recognize a lot.

So if you want to read more ... read the book - It is available @ TT and I really recommend this book (only 200 pages and very easy and entertaining to read).

Br, Claudia

I want to introduce you to ... Jakob Nielsen

2008-10-28T12:58:00.001+01:00

Hi.....

today I want to introduce you to Jakob Nielsen if you don't know him by now. Jakob Nielsen is a very popular web usability expert.. also often called a web design/usability guru.

Mainly in the 90s he wrote a lot of interesting books/articles/etc. and influenced many usability and web design principles. For example if I talk about heuristic evaluation, the heuristics that I normally use were defined by Nielsen. So.. he is a usability guru, but he has one problem.. his website: http://www.useit.com

And here is a intersting article about this topic:
Guardian: "The web design guru that web designers love to hate"

Br, Claudia

Agile 2008: Developers, Interaction designers & agile

2008-10-23T12:55:00.003+02:00

Alan Cooper is a famous interaction designer and this year he gave the closing keynote at the Agile 2008 conference. I recommend to view his presentation but it is only the presentation with detailed comments (no video).

His blog entry:
http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/08/alans_keynote_at_agile_2008.html

The presentation itself:
http://www.cooper.com/journal/agile2008/

He also wrote the book "About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design" (available @ TT, the green book) and "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity".

Br, Claudia

Welcome to the World of Usability!

2008-10-22T12:52:00.001+02:00

At irregular intervals you will find in this blog information and news about usability in general, some book recommendations, links to interesting sites, conferences and videos.

I think in the beginning phase there will be more posts, because I have so much in mind that I want to share with you :-).

Feel free to leave comments.