Site Navigation

• Home
• Meetings
• Reading
• Mailing List
• Officers
• Bylaws

Home > Meetings > January 2002

Explaining User Experience Design to non-CHI Professionals

Andy Schechterman, PhD

January 29, 2002 — Cogito, Provo

Meeting Summary

Andy took us on a whirlwind tour of the methods and metaphors he uses to explain User Experience Design to clients. His presentation covered 123 slides, so what follows just hits a few of the many excellent points he made. Contact Andy if you would like a copy of the present ion.

Blue titles and black text are from Andy's slides. Gray text is my notes and comments.

- Grant Skousen

---

When communicating with clients it is important to learn to say no to inappropriate requests -- "No, but this is what I can do for you."

Understand the difference between big "I" Innovation and little "i" innovation. Little "i" is the refinement that is easier for people to accept because it fits into their current way of working/living.
"[All change] and new things put tremendous strain on old ways."

You Must . . .

• Empathize with the human condition (few know how to)
• "Correctly discover"
• Map or "bring to life" the human code . . . the user’s needs, wants, tasks, goals, desires . . . to the experience design medium

Human Design = Business Success

Shocking but True (1 of 3) (Cooper)

• Software may be a new economy - the internet is not
  • This economy delivers adaptability, flexibility and scalability
• Understanding and designing for your users is the hardest part of the entire process . . . and it's much harder than we realize
  • If you make the target bigger, your aim will only get worse
  • What I like and what you like is not what others like
  • You and I are not representative
  • Most people are neither logical nor self-aware

Shocking but True (2 of 3) (Cooper)

• You need powerful and compassionate tools and expertise for understanding your users
  • A "user requirements document" of sorts
  • Interaction Designers follow user-centered methods
  • User-centered design research accommodates multiple goals,modeling the user (e.g., personas) gets you much closer
  • Interaction designers bridge the gap between users and technology
  • Don't make up the design as you go along - it's too expensive
    
• Don't launch and learn
  • Code is very expensive - one of the last things you do
  • The most important tool is paper and pencil and a whiteboard
  • A lot like making Hollywood movies

Shocking but True (3 of 3) (Cooper)

• It takes about two (2) or more years to build quality software sufficient to generate profit
• Shipping early is like the care required of a premature baby
• There are no magic technology bullets – not voice recognition,
  not wireless, not 3-D, not the internet
• The only magic bullet is understanding and then designing for your users

Completed Designs are Trade-offs between Resource Limitations, Business Objectives, and User Experience Objectives

Where the Rubber Hits the Road...

The three layers from the user's perspective:

• The UI (user interface)
  • Initially considered to be the product, service, environment
• The UI2 (user interaction)
  • Typically invisible, the negotiated relationship that
    the user controls
• The UX (user experience)
  • The soul of the interaction: Think human-to-human
  • The perceptions that result from every point of contact and end-user has with the product, service, environment, initially and over time
  • User experience = Brand?

 

• Effective design finds a balance between being truly usable and useful, being liked or pleasing to the user, and being something that can actually be coded or built
• There is a potential "profit" component only when the above prerequisites are fulfilled

User-Experience Design (UXD)

• Places the Horse before the Cart:
  • Done in the field (the user's world)
  • Discovers mental and conceptual models
  • Then designs the interaction
  • Then maps "information architecture"
  • Then crafts the textual and visual (or sensory) affordance
  • Then codes system support
• Iterate, iterate, iterate . . . along the way
• Very important: "Usability" is a subset of usefulness is a subset of meaning is a subset of desire is a subset of overall value - which is always subjective

UXD (User Experience Design) . . .

• Includes "usability" as a given
• Is a process of constrained creativity
• Means getting "under the skin" before designing, refining, innovating, or "fixing"
• The human data - or touchpoints - gathered from users:
  • Frames the problems, strengths, opportunities, solutions
• Between data gathering, data, design methods, and design solutions, is an element of magic
  • Perhaps unconscious and uncontrollable
  • Borne out of knowledge, training, experience, natural ability
• There is a lot of work to do when moving from data to design
• And it takes time to incubate and germinate innovation
• Is an approach to designing ease of use in the total user experience with products and systems.
• Requires two fundamental elements:
  • Multidisciplinary teamwork, collaboration, cooperation
  • Methods of acquiring in-context user “data” and “converting” it into meaningful design.
• The object is not to know the answers before we do the work. It's to know them after we do the work.

Some UXD Basics

• Simplicity: Don't compromise usability
• Support: Place the user in control, provide proactive assistance (the "waiter" as UX)
• Familiarity: Build on users' prior knowledge (recognizing strengths and limitations of metaphors)
• Obviousness: Make objects-actions and their controls visible and "intuitive" (we learn through observation)
• Encouragement: Make actions predictable, reversible, exploratory
• Satisfaction: Create a sense progress, production, achievement, success
• Availability: Make all relevant objects available at all times (contextual menus?), no less . . . no more
• Safety: Keep the user out of trouble (also encourages exploration and discovery)
• Versatility: Support alternate interaction techniques (redundancy, shortcuts, keyboard, platform, ADA)
• Personalization vs. Customization: Allows users to do (strengths and limitations)
• Affinity: Bring objects-actions to life through relevant visual design (subtractive, hierarchy, affordance, scheme)

How Well Can You Know Users?

• Market research (and related) offers approximation and aggregation of demographic characteristics, tendencies, preferences - abstractions from 30,000 foot level. Helpful bit not enough.
• Strategic design research offers an intimate "life on the ground" data set of people who make up your audience. These are living, organic portraits. Know them and design for/with them (Eckersley, Schechterman, 2002).

Andy gave several examples of getting to know your users. These were rich with pictures and stories.

We will not presume to design experiences for people, but we will do
so with them, if asked.
– John Thackara (Doors of Perception)

The best market and design intelligence comes from simply spending time with your users.
– Aaron Marcus

UXD Results in Actionable Models

Is There a Business Case? (YES !)

• UXD is a philosophy and a practice for understanding, building and
  managing true customer relationships.


• Success in digital and non-digital products, services and
  environments is a function of what you know about your current and

potential customers, and your capacity to reach and motivate them.

• UXD offers the prospect of knowing much more about your target
  audiences than ever before, likely far more than your competitors.


• Translating that knowledge into insightful archetypes and models,
  and designing for compelling end-customer experiences brings it full
  circle.

Thanks to Andy for presenting and Cogito for hosting.

---

Original meeting invitation:

Explaining User Experience Design to non-CHI Professionals

Andy Schechterman, PhD

Tuesday, January 29th 2002, 7:00pm

hosted by:
Cogito
3521 North University #100
Provo, Utah
www.cogitoinc.com

With emphasis on real-world discovery, and drawing on user studies he conducted from the 80’s to the present, Andy has assembled a sample presentation of slides he shares with business stakeholders who are curious about the philosophy, method and process underlying human-centered design of products, services, and environments, digital and non-digital. While some stakeholders may still need to be sold, most simply need to better understand - to be walked through - what it is they are about to embark upon. Non-HCI and non-technology guests are also encouraged to attend.

Questions, comments or suggestions? email Grant Skousen.

Copyright © 1999-2007 the Northern Utah chapter of the ACM SIG on Computer-Human Interaction (NUCHI).

xhtml | css