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Following your Passions

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October was a month of wonderful opportunities. My first was the ability to go to Barcelona, Spain for a Design Thinking Facilitation course. This course was different than previous ones I have attended where design thinking methodologies are introduced. It was specifically about how to lead different exercises and what makes a good facilitator with actual practice doing it. The final day was for advanced people where we focused on different skills that make a good facilitator like talking, walking, standing, and even improv. I’m not necessarily a huge fan of DT. As an anthropologist, I see a lot of things “borrowed” from my discipline and repurposed for it. That said, I think there is a time and a place to use it and it should be considered a set of tools to use rather than the end all be all of getting companies and design on the same page.

Beyond the course itself, I was able to meet a lot of people from my company in person, which was really nice as I work from home. I was able to work in a little sightseeing as well. It was a beautiful city and I am very glad I had a chance to visit it. 

After I returned from Barcelona, I was a guest lecturer at UNT on Design Anthropology. There I talked about what I do, what I don’t, my career path that got me here, and how I use anthropological skills in business and design every day. 

The following week I presented on Team Building at DFW Beyond. I will write a post about this individually with a transcript of my talk for those who are interested! 

Though these three things may seem completely separate there is in fact a link between them. All three provided me with opportunities to learn how to help people through facilitation, share how I help people through anthropology, and share how people can be helped through intentional team building. Though I have many passions, my main passion is helping others and I find myself truly lucky that I’ve found a way to do so through design, research, and even gaming. More on the last in my next post! 

Notes on Creating a User Experience Strategy

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These are some notes I put together for my team last year. They are based off of a few books I was reading at the time and when I can remember those, I’ll post them for reference. We never made use of these due to reasons other than want and need, but others made find them useful.

These are just notes. Feel free to fill in any gaps as needed or ask questions if you have any.

Creating a User Experience Strategy

Goal:
An experience strategy is a guide for verticals / projects to be referred back to and updated as the vertical and/or project matures. It is a way to maintain focus on the end goal, providing the user with an experience, and is to be shared with and used by everyone on the team. For our purposes, they would likely live in confluences and our bullets would be numbered so we can refer to a specific portion of it when needed. Personas and journey maps as well as other UX artifacts (research before release / usability tests after the fact) would be parts of the experience strategy.

Reasoning:
A strong plan will guide decisions about how the business executes, maintains, and manages experiences to create value for the customers and the business. These should be invested in and managed as well as cultivated and nurtured. A strong experience strategy not only makes it clear what to do, but also what NOT to do.

Start with:
An expression of the experience you hope customers will have. A statement.

Build up:
Bulleted list of experience requirements (not ui / developer requirements, not tasks / goals – it’s all about the EXPERIENCE)
focus on:
user behavior, motivations, context, meaning
usefulness / desirableness
how does it help the user accomplish what they want to get done
how is it (or can be) different / innovative

Big questions:
What do people want to accomplish?
How does this activity fit into their lives?
How can we help deliver on those desires?

Craft:
Hypothesis based on
personas – which are project based, but stem from our basic set
research – which is project based, but builds on all other research – must be actionable and durable
previous testing – which can come from anywhere, but should help craft project based
experience
best practices
analytics

Test:
Against user stories
Against designs
Against prototypes
With Users / Analytics

Iterate and Evolve:
Take all previous information, build on it, then start over if needed.

Strategy should bring clarity and should act as a sign post to show the company where ewe are going and what we need to do to get there.

Consider making it visual when possible.

Leveling Information – so we all start out with the same definitions.

Behaviors:
activities in which people engage

Motivations:
drive and shape behaviors
– understanding the basic drives that lead people to do certain things in certain contexts

Contexts:
help provide meaning to the motivations
learn by doing

Meaning:
worthwhile? important? necessary? required? needed? changes based on context and motivation

Consider:
A user’s experience emerges from:
Motivations
Expectations
Perceptions
Abilities
Flow
Culture

Perception is preceded by sensation and followed by cognition if bottom up, if bottom down – then knowledge influences everything (Gestalt).

Ability – consider memory, it includes sensory (get attention), working and encoding (requires heavy attention), long-term and retention (storage). Recall falls off dramatically after 1 day – this is an issue for users who do not / would not / don’t need to / shouldn’t have to – interact with us or a particular tool / experience on a daily basis. Always something to consider. Reduce memory load / ability requirement whenever possible.

Flow – form follows function. Affordance means there is no need to learn. Avoid multi-usability (modes).

Form hypothesis – test hypothesis whenever possible early and then test again with analytics later. (See my pyramid)

Users / Personas in terms of behaviors, motivations, context and meaning:
Who? – are they
What? – do they need, want, use, are they trying to accomplish and is there a better way to do it
Why? – do they need it, want it, use it, like it, dislike it
Where? – do they need it, want it, use it, expect to find it / access it
How? – do they need it, want it, use it, does it fit into their workflow

Complexity:
Theories should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Acknowledge and embrace the complexity
Look for differentiators here – avoid parity, novelty, and trying to “be the best” at everything – just boil it down to the essentials, and then go a step further into the murky and complex chaos of the user until you come out on the other side with something that resonates with the users behaviors and motivations while considering the context and meaning

On Anthropology and User Experience Design

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I get a few inquiries each semester from students looking for information on how to get into user experience design, especially those with an anthropology background. I generally try to respond to each of these separately as they each have their own perspective and needs, however, this semester I am trying to get my dissertation defended on top of my every day job as a UXD (which is getting more complicated by the minute). So, rather than leave these unanswered, I am providing a public response here that includes the most common things I share. If you have comments or questions, please leave them! It will be easier for me to respond to those here than individual emails and you may help someone else who has a similar inquiry.

Response Below

Thank you for reaching out to me. Let me start out by saying that having a background in anthropology will lend itself greatly to UX design, however, it is only one part. My suggestion is to consider opportunities where you will be asked to learn to program or script (even just HTML/CSS) and have real users use what you create. This is not necessarily where your career path as a UXD will take you, but creating something, having users use it, and then having to “fix” it to make it better for them, will provide you with insight that no degree program will ever do.

After that, I suggest looking into classes in cognitive psychology and information architecture or information behavior. Adding those to your anthropology perspective will help you find out what users want and then understand what they really need – which may be two separate things. 😉

As for internships, consider looking into the agency world. What I mean by that is marketing/creative agencies that do campaigns for other companies. Not that you want to go into marketing, I prefer the high tech/application world myself, but it allows you to see how UX is applied to multiple groups of people and projects in a short amount of time. A lot of times you can find UXD or IA (information architecture) opportunities – both of which would be beneficial to you.

I also suggest looking into these authors: Steve Krug, Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen, Jesse James Garrett, Luke Wroblewski, Lois Rosenfield, and Peter Morville (These are just off the top of my head, they will give you a good introduction to user experience design – but there are plenty more out there to learn from!)

And I suggest taking a look at the UX Slack channel that has UXers from all over the world lending their perspectives to the field (and it may lead to internship opportunities).

I hope that helps!

End Response

There is a lot that could be added to this, however, I feel it is a great place for people to start. I definitely recommend everyone going into user experience design have some sort of programming or scripting background where people have had to use what you create. My biggest failure as a developer led me to becoming a UXD and in my particular field I use skills I learned as a systems administrator/developer all the time. Not that I do those things anymore, but my past experiences and my understanding of those things definitely help inform me how to make those things easier for others to do. And really, that’s the best part of being an anthropologist and a UXD – being able to use your own experiences to inform your designs. That is, after all, what participant observation is all about!

To learn more about my professional experience, please visit my design and ethnography site.

p.s. This may be edited and updated as I have time. If you have questions/comments – please post them!

Qualitative Remote User Research

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Following on the heels of last weeks post on my UX Pyramid, I thought I’d talk more about the methods one can use to produce the information that would be used to create the deliverables mentioned in it.

I am an anthropologist first and foremost, so being able to use my anthropological methods in user research is important to me. This particular method uses journaling as a means to gain insights into what the user actually does in the system by having the user document what they do when they do it rather than trying to run them through various fabricated scenarios that we as designers might come up with. This allows us to really see the application (this could be software, games, mobile apps etc.) from their perspective rather than trying to force our perspective on them.

As a part of this process, we ask the user to not only document what they are doing, but also to provide screen shots and any other collateral that might be of note (such as information about another site that may do what they want in a better way).

With the information gathered in the journaling portion of the study, we are then able to provide the users with access to new tools or scenarios we are working on that they may be interested in using. This way we get better feedback as these are parts of the system these particular users actually use.

This research then allows for the segmentation of the user base not only by the type of user they are, but also by the way they use the system and the parts of the application they use the most. All of which provides ample information for personas, concepts, process flows, story boards, and wireframes.

Qualitative Remote Research
Qualitative Remote Research

UX Pyramid

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Every now and then my work bleeds over into my blog here and this is one of those such occasions.

I was recently tasked with creating a slide deck to help spotlight all of the things that User Experience (UX) Design could do above and beyond wireframes. As a part of that process, I collapsed a previous slide deck I had crafted about 5 years ago into a single infographic. Though it is a stacked pyramid, it should be thought of more of a cycle. The pyramid was built to illustrate how giving a user experience design a solid foundation would help inform the experience throughout the entire design process, which starts well before any boxes and arrows are placed on a screen. Once you get to the top of the pyramid, the analysis of the design should feed back into the discovery process and reinform the strategy for improvements.

This is hardly news for most of us, however, I always enjoy a simple, concise, and useful infographic – so I thought others might as well. Please feel free to share and iterate on this. I always appreciate the feedback.

UX Pyramid
UX Pyramid

The social aspects of elevators

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Elevators as a Shared Experience
While we may not really consider elevators as a social place, there is a sense of togetherness that occurs when you enter into that shared experince together. This includes things such as holding the door open for someone, pushing a button for a floor that someone needs, or even entering and exiting together. The hotel for IA Summit this year has provided an entirely new take on elevator access that goes beyond just the interesting new interface as the technology has affected the social aspects as well.

The Elevator Technology
First, the elevators are only accessible from the third floor (while yes technically there are other elevators, these are the most accessible). Second, there are touch pads outside of the elevators and that’s where you select your floor. What you don’t know unless you are told is that the first bank goes to a set number of floors and the second bank goes to a different set. There is no sign that states that. It’s only through education or paying attention to your experience that you may perceive this. Third, after you select your floor there is a voice that tells you what car to go to. If you are an accessibility person there are two things that scream out here. How do people who are blind pick their floor and then get to the right car? How do deaf know what car to go to if there is no visual indicator? I have not investigated these things myself yet, so I’ll get back to you when I find out.

But beyond all of that is what happens after you select your floor and are directed to your car. While there may be another 4 to 6 people waiting for an elevator, they are usually waiting for their own car. There is no more sharing the elevator experience. There is no one to hold the door open for. There isn’t even a button to push in case someone mistakenly gets on with you not knowing that your car is going to your floor for you. While this technology may have been invented for the purpose of making the elevators faster or improving the singular user experience (though the jury is still out on whether it does either of these things), it does so at the expense of the shared experience. You couldn’t even ride the elevator with your friends on different floors unless the system decided to put you all on the same one (and I’ve yet to see this happen).

Though this may not seem like a huge issue, just consider all of the other shared experiences that have slowly disappeared over the years. Is it really better to benefit the individual in a solo and completely separated experience over the shared group one?

Introduction of New Technology Creates Both Winners and Losers
I’ve been reading a lot about social informatics this semester, so this has really influenced my thinking on the influence of technology on people and the influence of people on technology. One of the overarching principles of social informatics is that there are two sides to the introduction of every information technology. There is always a give and take. There is always a winner and a loser. A lot of times people only consider the implementation of the technology and its benefits, never really taking into account the adverse aspects. I suggest that those of us who are the technology innovators and implementers really should take a moment to step back and realize technology does not always make things better. We should always consider the potential negatives. Especially those that are not always tangible. Emotions around an interaction are just as important as being able to complete physical tasks.

I have to say it feels kind of lonely and self serving going up 26 floors all by my self. If nothing else, it’s really frustrating to have several cars come to my floor and not be able to get on them because I’m waiting on my car to arrive and I have no way to know where the other cars are going (and no way to influence their direction once I am on them). 

For those of you here, what do you think of the experience?

P.s. – Please forgive my typos. This was all typed out on my iPad.

My take on ‘Guerrilla Research’ as an anthropologist and UXD professional

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I’ve been avidly following a discussion on the anthro-design list about guerrilla research and thought that perhaps my reply as both a traditional researcher and a guerrilla researcher may be useful to those who follow my blog. So, here it is!

Little about me:

Academically, I am finishing my masters degree in applied anthropology in 3 weeks where I focused on cyber anthropology – or studying culture online and using virtual research methods (as long as everything goes according to plan). Additionally, I am starting my PhD in 4 weeks in Human Computer Interaction.

As far as work experience I have 13 years in the computer industry and over 10 years in the fields of software development (JCPenney internal marketing applications that serviced over 5000 internal employees and over 1000 stores), graphic design (various jobs over the years from traditional print to web design), and user experience including positions as interaction designer (school information systems), information architect (at an interactive ad agency), and user interface engineer (designing HR software) / designer (designing mobile, desktop and web tools).

My Experience:

In all of my experience I have rarely ever been able to properly conduct user research. Even the one time I was given the go ahead to do so the recruitment methods which were performed by the product management team were so awful we only had a total of 6 people participate!

This means I’ve had to utilize any opportunities available to me to conduct ‘guerrilla research’.

Methods I’ve used include:

‘Participant Observation’ – I sat in on and participated in training classes where support people were being trained on current versions of software and were able to voice their concerns for themselves and their customers. I was able to take this information plus a heuristic review of the software’s current state and use that as my basis for what challenges needed to be tackled in the new interface and process design.

Subject Matter Expert (SME) interviews. Here is where I went deeper than the stakeholders or even those that called themselves SMEs and ferreted out those people who had to be SMEs not because it was their job title, but because their positions within the company required them to be. I found a great source to be the Sales department (and sales engineers) of all people. Why? These people are the ones on the front lines trying to sell the software. They are the ones that do the most competitive research and are asked the most questions by both potential customers who are shopping around (so I saw in this demo by this other company they did it this way – why do you do it different?) AND existing customers looking to upgrade (so why should I upgrade to the new version when the version I have does everything I need it to – or the current version is no longer meeting my needs and I’m not sure the new version will either – why should I stay with your company when I need this, this, this and this that you have yet to offer). Additionally, these people are GREAT to reconnect with after you’ve done your job and they are selling the software you’ve designed as they can give you both potential and current user feedback on it that they receive during demos!

Developers, developers, developers… They get such a bad rep because they are seen as the ones that just do the behind the scenes plumbing and aren’t as concerned as how it should operate on the front end. This, for one, isn’t necessarily true and in most cases is a simply out dated notion. Though many aren’t sure what to do on the front end, once you give them prototypes or wireframes and actually talk to them about your ideas they can help you expound on them 10 fold because they know how the system works, why it works the way it does, the current pitfalls, and ways to not only improve the front end based on all of this information but also ways to improve the backend which also has implications for user experience especially in terms of things like errors and page loads etc etc.

Online forums! Getting out there and seeing what people are actually saying about previous/current state is a huge help. Though it can be damaging to the ego once they start talking about YOUR contributions to the project, it is definitely a place to gather at least unabashed criticism and sometimes helpful suggestions to the product.

Stakeholders – really, I go to these people last. Especially in terms of product managers. They have too many people to answer to, to be in the right mindset of user experience most of the time. Though I’m not their adversary, I look at myself as the user advocate and the person that has the user’s voice when things come up where they might want to sacrifice usability and accessibility needs for niceities/unnecessary features/timelines.

More traditional methods done in a guerrilla way:

Site visits – can’t stress this enough. Though we only got a chance to visit two offices, just being able to see the tools they work with (monitor size, the size of their browser windows, how busy their office is etc etc) were very insightful.

Phone interviews – these were most helpful when the user already answered a set of predetermined questions up front and the phone call was used to expound on them.

Journals – having users take screen shots of problem areas and talk about them prior to our visits or phone calls was very helpful in that it got them thinking about where their problem areas were and it saved us time in that we could jump right into issues they were experiencing in the WAY they were experiencing them even if we couldn’t be there to see how they got to the issue, why they got there, or how they had to satisfice their way around it at the time (and all previous times).

Card Sorting – we had several different types of people across two offices take a stack of cards with navigation points on it and asked them to sort them in what they would most navigate to in terms of top level navigation and where they’d classify the rest of the cards beneath that top level. This was very insightful and helped our client see that yes 13 top level super cats was a bit ridiculous.

Shadowing internal users – when you have the opportunity to develop for in-house clients shadowing them is one of the least obstructive and most informative research methods I’ve been able to perform.

Examples of work:

If you’re at all interested you can find out more about my work via my resume, and my portfolio, which doesn’t include anything from my current job – but you can see an example of the work I’ve done for them here.

Let me know if this was useful!

World Usability Day…

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Happy World Usability Day!

World Usability Day is today and there are several events going on all over the world. If you are in the Dallas area I invite you to join me at IMC2’s Evolution of Usability: Past, Present. If you can’t leave your desk check out Microsoft’s free Webcast on UX:

Webcast: Best Practices for Creating “People-Ready” Solutions
Thursday, November 8, 2007 9:30 am PT – 5:30 pm PT

10:30-11:15AM Donna Flynn (Research Manager, MS Mobile and Embedded Devices)
Impactful Ethnography: Integrating deep insights across company divisions.

Enjoy!

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