What struck me about the article was a thread that wove through the text with words like “holistic views”, “coherent vision”, “long term sustainability” and “design thinking”.  These have been recurring themes that I have noticed brewing over the last few months.  My initial foray into this “thinking view” was the work of Roger Martin in “The Opposable Mind” where he talks about a holistic thinking paradigm that designers use as being a valuable tool for business problem solving.

Here’s the good stuff before you get bored:

Moral of the story?  Envisioning the whole to support individual parts is the key to creating a sustainable UI/UX. 

 Long term?  Lower costs and happier users.  Win, win, win, win.

So where am I going with this?  It’s important to develop a coherent vision for your user experience to create sustainability.  Let me explain…

Here’s what Roger talks about  when we approach design solutions as single items to be addressed:

 “…the Frankenstein approach to design … a negative thing that happens when integrative thinking is not employed …a bunch of disjointed, disassociated parts and details being plunked onto an object.”

In fact I find this particularly in Agile situations where the software has been born out of many different threads that are then integrated to produce a whole.  As  you might imagine that can result in a very disjointed user experience.

An approach that I have found to be tremendously effective to beat the “Frankenstein” pitfall, whether in an Agile environment or not, is twofold:

1. Develop a “medium term” model for your UX - hopefully based on a long term vision - that will provide direction over a 9-12 month period.

2. Empower developers with understanding and a solution library.

By developing a model of your user experience to be reached over a medium term period you provide the “coherent vision” that your developers can work towards.  I’m not recommending that you then fall into a waterfall approach (pardon the pun!).  

What this model will give you is the integrated thinking that allows developers to make decisions about individual parts with an understanding of the whole.  That’s the key to avoiding Frankenstein.  In addition to the model,  a library of best practices solutions(widgets, UX definitions and principles, etc.), that developers can choose from when in need of, say, an edit process or how to implement search,  will support a strong UX at the micro interaction level within the product.

What this does is to give developers the ability to just “run with it” knowing that it WILL all fall into place in the UI.  That’s efficient and empowering.

Now for the sustainability part.  I know “sustainability” is all the rage these days with our eco-crisis.  Here’s the definition:

The most widely quoted definition internationally is the “Brundtland definition” of the 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development – that sustainability means “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.“    from http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/basicinfo.htm#sustainability

What does that mean then in terms of software development?  It means that by creating a UX that has a solid foundation you can continue to build upon it.  It is sustainable in that you aren’t compromising future development efforts with a UX that has to be rebuilt or deconstructed each time you want to release a new version or add features.  

Now your dev efforts are focused on value add projects rather than re-hash, rebuild tedium. It’s a much better and “sustainable” place to be. 

Interested in how this can work for you?  Drop me a line, let’s chat. deb@alignedstructures.com

For many of us our blog is our lifeline to our audience (or tribe if you’re a Seth Godin fan).  We communicate, commiserate and entice with our offerings. 

But when was the last time you thought about your users and what THEIR experience is like when they come to your landing spot?  Many of us focus our energy on marketing in building our brand and online presence, but it’s just as important  to support  that effort with ease of use once your visitor arrives.

Easy is fun, Easy is effective and Easy will increase your sales.

All the great PR in the world can’t get you the results you’re looking for if users have a hard time negotiating your site.  Providing good usability is the same as good customer service.  It makes the entrance and initial contact with your blog more enticing and friendly, which keeps ‘em coming back. 

 There are a gazillion pieces of “how to” do this all over the web.  And it’s all excellent advice.  So I’m looking to do something a bit different.  None of that information is SPECIFICALLY  tailored to YOUR BRAND, YOUR USER BASE and YOUR BUSINESS OBJECTIVES.  That’s what I’m looking to do, so I’m offering one-on-one sessions focused on your needs. 

 It’s easy (do I mock myself? Me thinks not!): 

Sign-up for a  for a no-holds barred session on the usability of your blog ($250 USD).
 

Spend an hour on the phone discussing your business objectives and how your blog supports those objectives through it’s user experience.
 

Realize an increase in your objectives (sign-up, sales, etc.) and a grateful user base!

Need a bit more background?  Here’s my resume and bio for your perusal.

  RESUME                     BIO

Looking forward to working with you!

Recent projects have had me doing a lot of work on search. Highly complex query builders for searching big databases… 72 million plus records a day. Yeah.. That’s big.

OK, big deal.  Well, there’s a small concept that is easily overlooked in these scenarios that will greatly increase the usability of your product:

Input is as Input does… take advantage of the mental model established by the data input form by reflecting  it throughout when searching for, or displaying that data.

There are a good number of reasons why this strategy pays off, not the least of which is the leverage you get from repeating the users mental model:

…the advantages of mental models all begin with 
the letter “C”:

♦ Confidence in Your Design—guide the design of the solution 

♦ Clarity in Direction—make good user and business decisions

♦ Continuity of Strategy—ensure longevity of vision and opportunity

-Mental Models by Indi Young Rosenfeld Media, 2008; version 1.1

The huge win here is that once your user has entered the data seeing it in an edit or read only view that reflects their input screen creates IMMEDIATE recognition.  In a search form, it also allows them to trace back mentally to specific values they may have entered in particular fields and speeds their search process to find the records they’re looking for.

Next is the ease with which standards can be created for developers to work with.  Starting with the selections or number of data inputs allowed per field in your input form allows you to easily define rules for searching that data.  Those rules could look something like this:

Free form text values:  text input box

 Choice between two options: radio buttons

Selection of one or many values out of 1-5 options: Checkboxes or Dropdown  menu depending on transparency and space requirements

 

 
Selection of one value from up to 20 values: Dropdown menu

Multiple value selections from a list over 5: Add/Remove Select Box

Now you’ve got an easy to replicate, easy to follow set of standards to use for input , edit and search.  Instant design patterns library!

Ultimately you have developed a very efficient cycle that promotes patterns, supports the users mental model,  and reuses code.  Nice job.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, ideally, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. Post it on your FB page, twitwall.com or your blog. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged, including me. 

Only play if it’s fun for you and you want to.

25 Random DeboToids:

1. This is me:
       
   
   
   
2. I love, LOVE, love to cook.  Sundays in fall and winter at my house are filled with great smells and football games.
3. I live with a fabulous partner (lisameri.com), two goofy and loving rescued greyhounds, and our 18 year old daughter in that marvelously ultra-liberal state of Massachusetts!
4. I’m an artist.  I studied at the Museum School in Boston - most incredible learning experience of my life. My main medium is drawing.
5. I’m a left brainer too - did economics as my major undergrad.
6. Fascinated by theoretical physics.  Favorite hobby.  I am pro string theory.
7. Richard Feynman is my hero and lives on my desktop.
8. I have an amazing life coach, @goodvibecoach who supports me as I walk through my journey.
9. I trust easily and often.
10. I have a 55 gallon fish tank with a 10 year old, 12 inch long Pleco.!
11. I LOVE to laugh and enjoy a slightly warped, dry sense of humor.
12. I once worked on a project at IBM where we decided to only look at people who’s resume’s had “humor” in the text!
13. My nickname, debo, was given to me by my daughter at 2.  Stuck ever since.
14. I’m a huge Red Sox fan.  Fav outing is going to Fenway Park in May.  Fav seats? First baseline, right behind the dugout.
15. I played the French Horn for 12 years.  Julliard was NOT interested.
16. I played the trumpet before that and have returned to my horn.  Proud owner of a Vindabona trumpet - large bore, copper composite makeup.  Warm, rich tone. This instrument I’m good at.
17. Marriachi is my most fav trumpet music!
18. I’m a jazzhead.  I tortured my partner for four years where all I would listen to was Gerry Mulligan.  Have since expanded my listening repertoire.
19. Diane Reeves makes me swoon.
20. My Mom was a classical Bassoonist and premiered “Carmina Burana” here in the states with Leopold Stakowski at Carnegie Hall.  I have the original recording.  Big influence in my life.
21. Diva is my favorite movie of all time.
22. @flourshingjudy is a great friend and makes me laugh a lot, have a special place in my heart for her.
23. I LOVE to watch TV.  This is a big confession for an artist.  Please note.
24. Bagels, lox and cream cheese, with a little red onion and tomato is mandatory for Sunday brunch.
25. I adore all of the great people in my life and always want the best for them.

So too is the role of a vision in the UX realm.  I’m working with a client right now to develop a user experience vision for their product.  And as Jared Spool (yep .. my fav go to quote guy) notes:

We’re finding having a solid vision is really key to success. Do you know what the experience of your design will be like in 5 years? In 10? Does everyone on the team share the same perception?

- from The Experience Vision, UIE Brainsparks

Fundamental truth.  When everyone is marching to the beat of the same drummer towards a shared goal/vision  it’s amazing the energy and quality that comes out of their work. 

Convinced?  Please do be.  It’s going to be worth it to you in the long run.  Whether it’s just your blog or a suite of software tools, having a vision will help you make the right decisions about your user experience at the incremental level (those little baby steps you take to get your stuff out there on the web :)).

As soon as you say “vision” everyone starts to think “OMG this is a big deal! We don’t have time or $$ to do something like that!”.  Actually… you do.  There’s no reason that creating a user experience vision has to be a long and expensive process, whatever works for you is the important part.  Fit the process to your needs, not the other way ’round.  I will say that the more involved or mature the product that you are dealing with the greater the level of rigor that should be applied.  However, quick and sort of dirty will also get you something to work with which is better than groping in the dark.

So here’s the list - the steps if you will - of the process I’m working with.  I will put the “Don’t try this at home” warning out there.  There are definitely parts of this process where you may want to work with an expert to guide you.  But I’m also a believer in everyone’s ability to make something their own.  If you feel confident, have at it.

1. Gather Inputs

Collect as much information as possible from  customers, staff (especially those guys!), current product research, etc. Wherever there is something that is relevant and sparks an idea grab it and put it in the pile.  Think about where you want to be 5 or 10 years out with your user experience. 

2. Define Principles and Priorities

What are your buisness goals or product goals?  Use these to prioritize your thinking, for instance, what is more important time to market or quality of interaction?

Define what your principles are.  What values do you stand upon for your business?  Is transparency an important value?  In many cases these values can be directly translated to guiding principles for your user experience.  This is one of those items where you may want to get some help from a UX person.  They can help you translate your principles into UX principles.

3. Define the Vision

Using your principles and priorities as filters for your inputs, create a sentence or expression that defines what you want to achieve.  Here’s a great example from Google that they used for developing their new browser - Chrome:

Major Themes
Content not chrome

In the long term, we think of Chromium as a tabbed window manager or shell for the web rather than a browser application. We avoid putting things into our UI in the same way you would hope that Apple and Microsoft would avoid putting things into the standard window frames of applications on their operating systems.

The tab is our equivalent of a desktop application’s title bar; the frame containing the tabs is a convenient mechanism for managing groups of those applications. In future, there may be other tab types that do not host the normal browser toolbar.

Light, fast, responsive, tactile

 from chromium.org/user-experience/

4. Socialize, Review and Finalize

Buy-in for a vision is critical.  If you make it they won’t necessarily follow.  Make sure that whomever is going to participate in creating your user experience has an opportunity to review the vision you have defined.  This is an opportunity to gather straggler ideas for input, and provides a litmus test to be sure that the inputs were correctly translated into a vision that is understood by all.

If need be, integrate additional thoughts and regenerate the vision.

 5. Document, Publish and Evangelize

Once you have a vision that you’re on board with you’ll want to document it in a way that communicates the vision and potentially create a model that SHOWS the vision.  There are a bunch of ways to do this, I have seen everything from a back-of-the-napkin sketch to full blown flash demo’s that depict the desired result.  The key is something that everyone in the organization can point to and say “that’s where we’re going” and they truly understand it.  For one of the BEST examples of this take a look at the Apple vision video:

The Knowledge Navigator concept piece by Apple Computer (1987)
inspired by the earlier “dynabook” vision and work of Alan Kay

And finally… Evangelize, evangelize, evangelize.  Keep the vision front and center at all times and work towards it with EVERY decision that is made, from where to put your buttons to the look and feel for your product.  

Hope you find great success with this, and as always, please keep me posted about your results!

What I’m driving towards is distilling best practices for various user experience design patterns, providing the “why’s” for good implementations, and then publishing a self-contained solution at a price that would be a fraction of the cost to hire a UX Designer.

My thinking is that not all dev teams need a unique design solution.  But what they do need is a good, solid, justifiable ux design that gets their product out the door on sure footing usability wise.  Hence my tagline - to help them hit the ground running with their user experience.

Thoughts? Feedback?  Does this matter?  Would it be useful?  Could sure use your input so please be open and unabashed.

If you only need one, why buy a six pack?  The key is that not all products and teams NEED a full time UX person, and being able to engage a resource on an as needed basis is the best answer in most cases.  

Here’s the summary of points:

1. WHY integrating UX into your development process is a good idea:

Increased Adoption Rates = Increased Margin
If it’s easy to use, more people will use it (given a choice among products with similar functionality).  Greater adoption rates throughout an organization leads to increased margin.  But adoption is also the key to becoming the application of record in many cases.  This is an important factor for the little guy trying to gain a foothold with their software.

ROI
ROI for usability has always been difficult for development teams to justify.  But building the UX for an application to meet users needs the first time around can yield big wins over the lifecycle:

“The average UI has some 40 flaws. Correcting the easiest 20 of these yields an average improvement in usability of 50%. The big win, however, occurs when usability is factored in from the beginning. This can yield efficiency improvements of over 700%.”
-The trouble with computers: Usefulness, usability, and productivity. MIT Press.

‘nuf  said.

Reduced Maintenance Costs
The usual course for dev/engineering is that the majority of their activities are focused on fixing problems with existing systems (usually UX issues) and not enough time on solving cool, exciting problems that get developers engaged and excited.  Using UX to create a better mousetrap the first time around frees up bandwidth for R&D.  Great stuff to keep your product ahead of the curve.

“The rule of thumb in many usability-aware organizations is that the cost-benefit ratio for usability is $1:$10-$100. Once a system is in development, correcting a problem costs 10 times as much as fixing the same problem in design. If the system has been released, it costs 100 times as much relative to fixing in design.”
-Principles of software engineering management. In Usability is good business.

Reduced Development time and costs
Making sure you have met users needs before committing the design to a fully deployed product reduces long term costs in maintenance and re-design (as noted above).  But having a clear vision of your UI/UX will allow you to build it once and re-use in many cases.   You will also be able to create templates for a good user experience that can be cascaded throughout your product.  What this means in the dev cycle is that less bandwidth is now needed for GUI development  pushing the efforts towards the back end which is usually where the majority of heavy lifting is needed. 

Efforts are more focused;  less time is wasted re-doing interactions that can’t even be tested because users can’t get over the UI stumbling blocks; and you can realize a faster time to market.  All good answers.

2. WHAT are your needs?

The clearer you are about what your needs are the more defined you can be when engaging a UX person for your team.  Whether you want someone to take the reins from the ground up and create an entire UX system for your product (a la Google Web Toolkit), or you just need a specific interaction designed, being able to set boundaries for you and the UX pro will keep costs down (note the theme here) and the effort focused on exactly what you need.      

And if you’re not completely sure what you need you can work with a UX pro to figure that out.  That’s a clearly defined project too!

3. The RIGHT fit

It’s not just about skill set.   In all professions there are practitioners that fit better for one client than another.   Style IS important.  Skill set IS important.  Chemistry DOES matter.  Don’t brush these factors under the table; doing that could come back to bite you in the long run.  Everyone being happy will  serve you well in the long run.      

And then of course…once you’ve got your groove on with UX humming in the house… there’s the added benefit of being able to sing this song:

Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3

We would benefit by clearing up how we communicate and simplifying our message organizationally.

My good friend Dano (Daniel Szuc, ApogeeHK) posted the above comment on my opening post Ready, Set, Go!.  Thought a lot about it.  Then I happened to pick up my fav quick read, Science News, that I’ve been reading since I was 12, and tried reading an article about the Hadron Collider (CERN) in Switzerland/France. As I continued on the words became so unfamiliar that I couldn’t even grasp the concepts:

• Photino
• Wino
• Zoino
• Gluino
• Gravitino
• Sleptons
• Squarks
• Charms
• Muon

Well there I was… feeling like I was probably in the same place as a Developer or Product Manager listening  to me speak UX speak. 

How do we make OUR users’ experience as accessible as we try to make the experiences we analyze and design?

This is what I’m finding useful and EASY to work with in approaching this issue - apply the principles of our trade to the people and organizations we interact with on a daily basis:

Opacity - make sure you’re not using UX language just to stump your audience.  Our words are meaningful to us, but don’t mean much to many others.  Try to use easily accessible labels for principles that you are describing.  Or, be sure that as you say them that you define technical words (in a way that people can hear) to educate your audience.

Context - Relate whatever your describing to the world that your audience occupies.  If you’re speaking about an orange be sure that whomever you’re speaking to has the context to relate to “an orange”.  If they have no frame of reference or concept for citrus fruit then you may need to speak about it as “a sweet, juicy, round orange fruit”.

Design for Persona’s - This relates to context but get’s more specifically into a one on one situation.  Try to relate what you’re talking about to your listener’s personal frame of reference.  Use metaphor’s that relate to hobbies, shared interests, etc. 

Apply Best Practices - If your objective is communication then using that as your guiding principle will move you in the right direction (underlying strategy).  If you insist on exact meanings and definitions and that only specific labels for those concepts will do, then you may be met with blank stares.  Do whatever you can to remove roadblocks towards your audience understanding what your talking about.  You want to inspire disciples who will champion your work, not create frustrated detractors.

Hopefully this gets you started, and as you experience successes, come back and brag about them!

Yesterday I attended an outstanding seminar by Joshua Porter produced by those great folks at UIE (yep shameless Ak’ing there.):) The topic was Designing for Sign-up. What struck me the most about the presentation, as a UX geek, was that the issue was not about the mechanical process of making the sign-up easier, but around the socio-psychological issues of helping users make a commitment.

Here’s the recap (before I get into all the details - good blog form) of the points to help you add this to your arsenal of blog techniques:

1. For visitors who are ready to sign-up right away stay out of their way by providing sign-up options clearly at the top of your blog page. With your logo at the top and a tagline or elevator pitch associated with it that may be all they need to convince them that signing up is a good idea.

2. For visitors who need a little extra to understand what they will get out of it if they sign-up, provide them with a few short bullet points about what their action will get them (notifications) and your blog’s value proposition - what are you going to give your readers?

The bottom line in most cases is that sign-up for your blog feed, your ezine, whatever, is not as much about how easy the process is (that’s important, but not all of it), but about addressing users fears, questions, issues about WHY on earth do I want to sign-up.

There were three levels of engagement that Joshua identified about what’s in the users head:

Level 1 - I know I want to sign up.
Level 2 - I want to make sure this is for me.
Level 3 - I’m skeptical.

And here were his answers to each level:

Design for the 3 levels of engagement
Level 1 - I know I want to sign up -> Get out of their way
Level 2 - I want to make sure this is for me -> Reiterate your basic value proposition and provide additional description.>
Level 3 - I’m skeptical ->Provide highly detailed levels of description; free trials; product tutorials

So let’s take a look at how you as a blogger can address each one of these issues to increase your sign-up (for whatever you want):

1. I know what I want -> Get out of their way
With this one you have won the battle. No work necessary here! So What I suggest to get out of their way is give them what they want and put your rss sign up and your email sign up right at the top of your blog page (most blog formats already do that for you and this one is probably a widely addressed solution).

2. I want to make sure this is for me -> Reiterate your basic value proposition
a. This is where you have to start doing some work. Joshua identifies 3 levels of description to use in descending order:

1. Elevator Pitch (taglines, one sentence descriptions, your logo)
2. Learn More (bulleted lists of why signing up matters, features and benefits)
3. In-depth (support forums, case studies, detailed product descriptions)

Number 3 really relates much more to signing up for a product or when a purchase is involved so I’ll skip over that one for now, but will take it on in a future post.

Elevator Pitch - Make sure your logo, tagline and or a one sentence description of what you have to offer is prominent and at the top of your page. Visitors will engage, they will trust and you will start to build your brand. Most importantly that may be all they need to say “hey that would be helpful to me” and sign-up.

Learn More - Here’s where you start to break it down in more detail for the user. In my case I provided this little idea in my subscribe box:

Begin building your arsenal of UX insights to get your application humming for your users

Feature - UX Insights
Benefit - humming applications

Next I’ve added this little list of items that you can expect to see as I continue to blog:

By subscribing you will get:
> A notification about new posts as I make them
> Free UX Design solutions, ideas and techniques designed to help YOU be better at User Experience yourself.

So you say “big deal everyone knows that” (signing up gets you notifications), but that is exactly the point. Everyone doesn’t know that! I had no clue when I went to a blog for the first time what on earth I would be getting when I signed up for the blog. I thought “why would I do that?” so here I’m addressing that issue.

The second bullet clearly states my value proposition in a more detailed way than both of the preceding one sentence tag lines. I’m letting you know that you will get stuff for free and you will learn and get better. Not a bad deal! And one of the subtle pieces here is by using a > instead of a bullet I’m creating a call to action.

Note also how I’ve maintained my hierarchy of offerings:

• Short elevator pitch in the header, and above the subscribe box.
• Slightly more detailed description for the learn more folks BELOW the subscribe buttons so that I STAY OUT OF THE WAY of people who are instantly engaged and ready to sign-up.

Give it a try and be sure to let me know how you make out!