As a user experience designer and prototyper, one of the painful aspects of creating websites is checking browser compatability. With the demise of IE6, there’s one less browser version we have to worry about! Hooray!
Check out the article on BBC Technology News!
“To the heart of design” is a phrase that best describes the largest and most successful World Usability Day (WUD) event produced in Phoenix, Arizona, since its first event in 2007.
PayPal hosted and sponsored the event, kicked off with a multimedia presentation of examples from its extensive interaction design team members, numbering 250 strong, worldwide. From personas with a humorous “South Park” feel to in-home studies of individuals such as a deeply committed yet overwhelmed soccer mom, to before-and-after designs that resulted in capturing millions in revenue, the presentations illustrated best practices in user-centered design and methods today. Theo Mandel, Ph.D., Founder of Interface Design and Development and Vice President of the Arizona UPA Chapter, organized the event.
Taking best practices into action, Laura Faulkner, PhD, gave an inspiring keynote address that moved to the “heart of the designer.” Expressing the global WUD theme, Dr. Faulkner sparked the audience to see their own work in new ways, and achieve ”Design for Social Change” by their daily interactions with the many real humans required to create and deliver amazing designs. To this end, she brought diverse experience from her work as long-time UPA-International conferences co-chair, a research scientist with The University of Texas at Austin, a consultant/strategist with FalconDay Consulting, and even her experience as a certified yoga teacher.
The event, at PayPal’s new facility in Chandler, was selected as one of only 5 worldwide WUD Global Partner Events. The 100 attendees were each given a PayPal tote filled with merchandise from event sponsors. Software valued at over $2,500, from Axure and TechSmith, along with other prizes were awarded in a raffle at the end of the event. The PayPal team inspired job seekers with discussion of how it utilizes design professionals, lit up creative thoughts with peeks into exciting current and future projects.
Very nice example of the discipline called “information visualization.” This is the field best represented by Edward Tufte’s amazing books and courses.
On one small notebook page, the complex distinction between the different varieties of scotch whiskey is beautifully displayed.
As an independent user experience (UX) consultant, this year has been very busy, with more and more companies and clients realizing that user experience and usability is a critical component of any product or device’s design and and development process.
Want to know more details on the resurgence of user experience? Check it out on Small Business Trends – Simplify This: User Experience Experts Are in Demand
I love it when journalists don’t let big companies get away abusing their customer’s experience. Here’s the latest user experience blooper, pointed out by Scott Davis at Forbes Magazine:
Any time you mess with the user experience, you’re going to risk backlash. If change is based on a solid understanding of your customers and the extent to which this disruption will – eventually – work for them, the effects will be not just survivable, but allow you to thrive.
Netflix committed a customer experience faux pas and the question is – Will Facebook do the same with their new total site redesign?
<< Check it out on Forbes >>
I was recently interviewed by Beth Stackpole for DesignNews magazine on how traditional CAD and design tool software is being made over to deliver a more natural and compelling user experience for engineers and designers.
Here’s my section of the article:
Beyond gestures, finger flicks, touch interfaces, and rotating objects around to change orientation, the smaller real estate of mobile platforms is also causing design tool providers to rethink the layout and structure of their programs. Progressive disclosure, a longstanding user interface principle that presents only the minimum data required for the task at hand in order to reduce clutter, is a far more important UI design principle today now that pixel space is at a premium, notes Theo Mandel, PhD, president of Interface Design and Development, LLC, a user interface consultancy.
“More fully featured applications tend to throw lots of stuff at users and you can’t do that on a mobile device,” Mandel explains. “With progressive disclosure, you only give people what they want at the time, and then you give them ways to go deeper when and if they want.”
View the entire article >> Design Tools Get the Human Touch
View an amazing collection of new military healthcare devices in the battlefield!“With the growing swiftness and capability of today’s technology, medical tools are increasing in their specificity to meet military healthcare needs. The combat environment calls for particular solutions; on the battlefield, where time is of essence, military healthcare providers need the right implement, at the right time. With extensive research and the integration of the latest civilian technology, innovators are finally poised to meet these needs.”
Going back to my beginnings in the new field of building “user-friendly” software in the early 1980′s, usability began a long history as a potential product differentiator in a competitive field.
Now, with the onset of a multitude of EMR software programs coming to market now and in the next few years, software vendors are now marketing usability as a key feature of their products.
The real question is, are their products really more usable than their competitor’s? I’ve designed a number of EMR’s and electronic field data collection systems, and I know that most of the EMR’s I’ve seen have been far less than usable!
Here’s what vendors are supposedly focusing on to improve their product’s usability:
However, following a usability checklist does not guarantee a product’s usability. Product design involves many iterative stages and activities, including user research, prototyping and design, and user testing.
A recent review of EMR usability is worth a read at amednews.com – Check it out!
This is a classic debate – whether it is nobler to be consistent or to be usable! EMRs have notoriously been both inconsistent and also very unusable. So, what to do – fix the inconsistencies or fix the usability issues? The problem is, fixing one of these issues doesn’t necessarily fix the other!
Here’s an article titled “AMA report: Standardizing EMRs would ‘stifle innovation‘” that addresses these issues.
The topics of usability of electronic medical records (EMRs)–and their ability to “effectively integrate” with clinical decision-making and work flow–will be on the agenda when the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates meets next month in Chicago. The focus, contained in a trustees report, will be on how these issues have not been adequately addressed so far.
The trustees report addresses a 2009 resolution that called for the AMA to promote the development and universal adoption of a “standardized user interface” for all EMR systems, and to advocate for a federal mandate for interoperability of EMRs as part of its healthcare reform agenda.
For more information, view these links:
It has become part of the internet vernacular to “Google” something to find out more about it. Once googled, how reliable are the results listed? Are featured listings more truthful or informative than lower-ranked listings?
A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results. Apparently, students favored search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it’s legit.
I’ve worked in healthcare usability for a long time and with the impetus to move all of healthcare to electronic platforms, there have been many, many unusable implementations of EHRs and EMRs.
The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) are working to provide guidelines for healthcare software usability.
Healthcare providers may soon have guides that describe the usability of electronic health records – designed to make the steps to adopt and use health IT clear and transparent and, in the process, improve patient safety.
Among the efforts, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing a set of procedures that are objective and repeatable for evaluating, testing and validating the usability of electronic health records and other health IT systems, said Lana Lowry, NIST health IT usability project lead.
Usability guidelines and evaluation techniques in healthcare are sorely needed. Keep up to date on these efforts here:
It is very comforting that the “User Experience” field has become more popular and well-respected over the years. That makes me, as a UX professional, feel good about the work we do. However, as Whitney Hess points out in her blog post,
There’s just one problem: not everyone calling themselves a user experience designer is actually a user experience designer. Unfortunately the designation isn’t as clear cut as a doctor or a lawyer. Most professions are certified and regulated, so you don’t see impostor behavior often — and when you do, it’s typically in the form of a news article about someone going to jail for fraud. Perhaps more analogously, even those in non-regulated occupations like writers and programmers would have a hard time passing themselves off as such without actually writing or actually programming.
So, how do you tell is someone is REALLY a true user experience professional, or a wannabe? Whitney posts a 10-point list answering the question, “You’re not a user experience designer if…”
It’s a good overview of some of the key things we focus on as UX professionals. Check it out at Whitney’s Blog!
Friday post – Google Doodle celebrates Charlie Chaplin’s birth with an original video celebrating Chaplin.
Google, the world’s most popular and most visited website is known for its celebration of special days and occasions but has only rarely featured a video doodle on its homepage.
In the black and white video, Chaplin is moved on by a policeman after he is spotted reading a Google newspaper on a park bench, engages with an artist painting a Google logo and then tries to blag his way into an event without paying the $1 admission.
View the article and video at The Telegraph
Good companies listen to their customers – better customers figure out the appropriate questions to ask BEFORE they ask for feedback from their users! There may be other factors (economic factors, for example) that may be involved, but this case study shows the dangers of poorly designed user research and the inherent dangers of (just) listening to your users and customers!
Here’s the beginning of the Daily Artifacts article:
$1.85 billon dollar customer experience mistake made by Walmart (a conservative estimate of lost revenue that does not include the hundreds of millions spent on remodeling stores)
- What happened? Walmart rolled out “Project Impact” – a major change in strategy and store customer experience – starting in 2008
- Why? Customers answered a Walmart survey and told Walmart that they would prefer less clutter in the stores
- Walmart revised their decades-old strategy of low price and wide selection
- 15% of the inventory removed from the stores
- 30% – some suppliers reported losing 30% of their stock in Walmart stores due to the revamp
- Removed pallets of items like juice boxes or sweatshirts stacked in the centers of aisles.
- Slimmed down merchandise on “end caps,” displays at the ends of aisles
- Shortened shelves
- Revamp not only removed items but cost “millions of dollars” per store in refurbishment costs
- Saw an immediate loss in sales and decline in same-store sales data
Similar to the “Golden Rules” of user experience design that I have written about and cover in my presentations and seminars, there are many common myths about users and the user experience.
Some myths have been around for many years, such as the myth, “You may not have more than 7 +/- 2 items in a drop-down menu.” This myth about human cognition dates back to George Miller’s famous article published in 1956, “The Mangical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.” This seminal work has been taken way too literally, especially regarding lists, drop-downs and navigation items.
The website, UX Myths (http://uxmyths.com/) currently has 31 web design myths, ranging from human cognition and perception myths, as I described above, to myths about good web design and the UX and usability process.
If you are trying to educate executives and iinfluencers about UX design, learning about the web design and usability,this is a great place to learn and share. Enjoy!
As a user experience professional designing EMR, EHR and case management software in the healthcare industry, there are few opportunities to educate, learn, network and focus on UX in healthcare. Well, look no longer!! I’m excited to hear about the Healthcare Experience Design Conference in Boston, Mass, on April 11, 2011.
Here’s a summary of the conference on Mad*Pow, the organizer of the event:
Mad*Pow and Claricode are partnering to host the first-of-its-kind Healthcare Experience Design Conference. The one-day conference will be held on April 11, 2011 at the Fairmont Copley Hotel in Boston, and is designed to inspire and empower thought leaders, students, and working professionals in the fields of healthcare design, usability, and technology development.
Conference details, including featured speakers and registration information can be found at Healthcare Experience Design -Improving Health Through Design and Technology
Mark Hurst of Good Experience recently wrote on How one button changed the customer experience of New York City taxis
Installed a few years ago, a touch-screen user interface allowed customers to choose a tip of 15%, 20%, or 25%. Thus with a single tap one could deliver the tip (and avoid mental arithmetic calculations). Good user experience, eh?
However, just recently, the tip buttons were changed to 20%, 25% and 30%. Small change, but it is a drastic reduction in the user experience.
It’s all about the user experience! How would this change make you feel as a customer in the taxi?
There have been a number of recent articles, blog posts and list comments trashing user experience design (UX) as unneeded, misguided and counter-productive to good product design and development.
As a long-time user experience practitioner, I was taken aback by these attack from many sides. However, as my partner at Success PragmatiQ, Larry Marine, and I have come to realize, there is some truth to these concerns. Larry and I have addressed these issues in a number of articles and blog posts. Read on…
First, there has been a historic battle in Agile development camps as to the importance and place in the agile process. Many agile developers don’t see a need for up-front user research and product design. Unfortunately, agile is a development process and not a design process. Larry Marine and I addressed this problem in a recent article, “The Grand Design in Improving Agile Success,” on the new Software Quality Connection website. Our approach is that up-front, user-centered research can define users’ problems and create a design that solves these problems. User experience design can then be integrated into the agile process with parallel sprints that preceed development work. Read our article and let us know what you think!
Secondly, other articles have stated that user-centric design approaches don’t produce breakthrough designs. Read “User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea” at Fast Company’s Co.Design. Their premise is that listening to users and user-led design produces incremental improvements to design and sameness rather than innovative products. Our response to this is presented in Larry’s blog, “Mediocrity in Design.” Our response will definitely stir the pot! Again, please let us know what you think.
Finally, Larry was interviewed in Boulder by Allison Tatterson, where he spoke about user experience and what product managers should know about it. View the interview text and video. Here’s a snippet of what Larry had to say:
Every interaction someone has with a product, service, or company, creates an “experience,” including the branding, messaging, product positioning, sales channels, ordering/purchasing process, as well as the actual use of the product. Every touch-point combines to create a general perception by the users, and, as the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. That experience sets the tone of how that user will perceive the company and all aspects of it, including other products and services. User-experience design is the process of managing those experience touch points to achieve a specific desired effect. Good experience design is all about setting and managing specific expectations and experiences.
Along these lines, I wrote a brief article, ”Effective Website Design – It’s all about managing expectations!” – in RMDMA Magazine (Page 4). Same topic – managing expectations about website design.
We hope this will generate comments and discussion about the drawbacks and improvements to be made in user experience and user-centered design. There’s nothing like a frontal attack to rally the troups!!
Fast Company‘s Co.Design did their research and came up with 12 very cool UI ideas. Here’s what they say:
This past year, we brought you stories on everything from tweeting toddler toys and streamlined ATMs to news-reading apps and remote controls that magically change channels with a wave of the hand. Though wildly different from one another, these projects share a common denominator: They all display intriguing user-interface innovations.
User interfaces, when done well, are the unsung hero of product design. They’re the difference between a printer whose buttons you can figure out without even reading the instructions and one you want to throw across the room. Now, with the rise of personal computing, interfaces are more relevant than ever before, providing the crucial link between physical objects and the virtual world. Above, we’ve collected some of the year’s cleverest, clearest, and most creative UIs. Enjoy!
Very good reading! User Experience stories from UX experts!
From the IxDA website:
In this free eBook, ‘UX Storytellers – Connecting the Dots’, 42 UX masterminds tell personal stories of their exciting lives as User Experience professionals.
The book brings together authors from around the world who paint a very entertaining picture of our multifaceted community.
Whether you’re a usability pro or a student of interaction design, whether you’re a senior information architect or a junior UX designer, you will find 42 entertaining stories in this book told by leading experts from all over the globe.
<< Download the eBook now! >>
