UX and interaction designers @ HEL: The Interaction16-fun started

Sunset in Helsinki

Today I arrived at Helsinki for my first attendance at the Interaction-Conference organized by the IxDA.

After enjoying the sun in the afternoon with a nice run, the Interaction-Community already started coming together for the first evening event at the IDEAN office. They really have nice slogan...

"Life is too short for crappy UX!"

IDEAN and IBM invited for a get-together and Douglas Powel (Design Principal at IBM Design) presented how they are currently facilitating their design process.

Get-together at IDEAN office

Douglas Powell (@douglaspowell1) talked about "What more can Designers do?" in order to push borders and "move" into new areas.

Design is not something new for IBM - it started in the mid of the 20th century.

"Good design is good business." (Quote from 1966)

And todays philosophy of IBM is:

"The technology we use at work should be as delightful, intuitive and efficient as the techology we use the rest of our life."

The tactical formula to reach this goal is focusing on three parts: people, places and processes.

PEOPLE

IBM hired a lot of Designers - they have a 3 months' program (like a boot camp) to give the new employees the chance to "understand" IBM with all the related aspects. They have now 700 designers and are hiring more - 2/3 directly from the university.

PLACES

The designers will work in Studios - the workplace needs to be flexible (moveable whiteboards) and collaborative, with a lot of space to be creative.

PROCESSES

IBM created an IBM design language, which is available since early 2015 - it includes resource for vision, motion and interaction design. It's available at IBM.com/design.

A process resource is the IBM design thinking: it's design thinking but focusing on distributed teams and high speed (constant movement) - so the focus is speed & scale.
The IBM design thinking focuses on user outcomes, multidisciplinary team and restless reinvention (iterations) - the team need to "move" always; stagnation is the worst.

So Douglas Powell presented a good overview of how IBM is facilitating the design process and there are some interesting aspects - but I'm still curious if they are able to make the huge amount of "new" designer really productive.


So this evening was already a nice start with interesting discussions and I'm already looking forward to the first day of the conference tomorrow.

Thx IDEAN (@Idean) once again for hosting this nice evening.

UXcamp Europe 2015 - Day 1/Part 1: UX Guidelines, Visual User Resarch and Expert Reviews for Mobile

This weekend again I'm participating in the great UXcamp Europe in Berlin. During the Session Planning it is always fantastic to see how many participants step up to propose sessions. For most of the time slots the though task is too chose one out of the 7 parallel tracks.

Session Planning on Saturday Morning

Here are my notes and thoughts of the first three session of day 1.

#1 (Unofficial) Top 10 UX Guidelines - Jasson Schrock

The first session I visited was by Jasson Schrock (Onefootball) presenting the 10 UX Guidelines they want to establish in their company. He pointed out very well what UX experts should focus on. Some of the guidelines are very common sense in the UX community, but often still ignored.

The 10 guidelines are: 

Planning Phase

• Increase users happiness
  He pointed out that speed and simplicty are important, but not always the answer, and that it is important to empathize with the user in order to understand his needs.
• Solve a user need and make it a habit
  The Toothbrush Test is a possiblity to check if it could evolve to a habit - "Would you want to use it twice a day?"



MVP shouldn't been not just feasible.

• Make it valuable not just feasible.

• Plan for the next steps but focus on the MVP.
  New ideas should be collected and prioritized. 
• Implicit over explicit personalization
  We should keep the complexity on our end, not the users. To add a new feature just as a new setting that the user should take care of is not a solution.
• Tell a story
  ... and it's not a feature list.

Design Phase

• Have a clear visual hierarchy
  Check if your design can pass the squint tests. Squint - and check if you can still identify the primary and secondary hierarchy.
• Provide feedback for every interaction
• Encourage interaction with context
  For example community details can be used to improve gamification and encourage exploration (e.g. # of review, ratings,...)
• Be consistent. 
  ... and don't reinvent the wheel. Use common design frameworks so the user know what to expect.

#2 Visual User Research - Jan Diettrich

Jan (@simulo) did a nice presentation about Visual User Research. He presented various techniques of how visual techniques can be used to facilitate user research and improve the outcomes of workshops with users. With these visual tools you can focus on documenting workflows, moods, relations, etc.

Why visual tools?

• It's accessible for researchers and participants alike.
• It gives an overview
• It's easy for referring back



Mood diagram with annotations

• It helps not asking for features but for users experience

Sequence:

• Explain the task including an (not to well drawn) example 
• User should draw/write by himself
• Ask for more information, clarification, demonstration
• Wrap up

We also tried out the method of a mood diagram by drawing the mood of "Breakfast" from preparing to enjoying... It really was interesting to see which different moods various people are going through (motivated to prepare, because everything is smelling good vs. checking out that some ingrediants are missing)

I really appreciate that Jan provides all the templates and also a short book about the methods open source, so you are free to use it. (He would be happy about feedback or adapted templates.)

• Templates & Description: https://m18.uni-weimar.de/~jand/static/researchAssets.html 
• Book "A Beginners Guide To Finding User Needs": https://jdittrich.github.io/userNeedResearchBook/

He also recommends the book "Convivial Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front End of Design" by Liz Sanders and Pietter Stappers (on Amazon).

#3 WTF? Evaluating Usability Without a User - Expert Reviews in the Age of Mobile - Hans Joachim Belz

Hans-Joachim talked about Expert Reviews. Because I'm using that very often in my daily business it was very interesting especially with the focus on mobile reviews.

Expert reviews are cheap and can be surprisingly effective (check out the CUE reports).

WTF? Usability without a user?
Good expert reviews take into account

• User needs
• Mental models
• Typical perception behaviour
• …

Experts have extensive experience with user behaviour (use lab experience, participating in user research efforts,...).

Pro Tip #1: Create maps of needs & mental model
The map and mental model should be based on research.

Pro Tip #2: Multiple experts

• If possible let more than one expert review the product.
• Every expert tests independently. 
• Build consensus about your test results by a thourough and frank discussion of your observations.

Pro Tip #3: Use scenarios (and personas)

The Usability Inspector ... 

• Should have a (small) usability focused set of test devices
• Main display sizes, aspect ratios and screen resolutions
• Leaning towards the more contrained devices
• Should have a agreed set of evaluation criteria including
• Information Architecture
• Interaction Design
• Domain-specific aspects

AND you should evalute complete user journeys based on scenarios.

.... Continues on Day 1 / Part 2: Designing for Context, Becoming buddies with your clients and 5 UX questions answered by Eric Reiss  

Talk: Developing windows store apps - our experiences and learnings (german)

Hi,

together with 2 colleagues (Andreas Willich, TechTalk & Christoph Bach, CPB) I will do a talk next Thursday (June 6th) about our experiences and learnings developing two windows store apps (Windows 8).

We will present these two apps (PROFOS and Kilocoach) and we will talk about the challenges we faced while creating and developing these apps.

Profos - Kundeninformationen

Kilocoach - Startseite

Some facts:

• Free entry
• Please register
• a breakfast
• and 2 cool apps... so join us: http://bit.ly/11f5e8j

Thx.
BR, Claudia

World Usability Day: UXcamp Vienna 2011

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

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

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

Anybody can do usability ...

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

12.11.2009 - World Usability Day

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