Links

More links here

http://www.informationdesign.org/ the best round up of all things User Experience - subscribe to this if you haven't already - you will need nothing else!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page this is wikipedia - an ultimate wiki - an encyclopedia that embodies what wikis are about - anyone can contribute. Because its so up to date you'll find the latest info about anything in here. eg if you look in encarta for Web 2.0 you won't find it - you WILL find it in here.

http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr03/mattison.shtml this is a good article about what's the difference between wikis and blogs

Something to play with

check this out http://www.pubsub.com/ a tool to help you trawl blogs - search for certain phrases...

Final thoughts

Its been a very good conference. I wish you all could have been here to get this information. It reawakens some of the things I harp on about but get filed under "tomorrow..."

One big thing I've noticed is the message is clear in all the case studies...people achieve things because they do it their way - ways they know that work. The library redesign - they ploughed in and acted things out and built scenarios...all in the face of a very hostile environment. they managed to persuade librarians that they have customers not patrons. ..that's HUGE.

Yesterday we had a case study about Princess cruises. Very interesting again. The web dev team came to adaptive Path and asked them to research "should we implement an online booking engine?". Interesting in itself - that would normally be the Marketing guys and they would go to a market research agency...I'll bet you they'd come up with a different result. Adaptive Path actually found out that no, it wasn't something they should do. but the amazing thing with this whole project was what happened afterwards...because they'd segmented the market by users - it was different from their "usual" perception of customers. Long story short - this bit of research was a catalyst for several cans of worms around the organisation.

They were talking about the products differently in different sections of the company. On the in house systems. AND their pricing model which is nicely hidden fromthe public would be exposed once it was online. And that was a huge problem. They had support from the top but they took some painful steps to sort out their internal issues before they conitnued with design. But again - because they'd pushed and used the HCI techniques and tools....it really helped ...and they didn't take the traditional path.

So here's my thoughts that we need to think about as a team for the future:
1) I'd like to see our UCL research be as powerful about experience that we can make it - let UCL do the gadgets but we need to use that information that you're all getting form trailing lawyers and making it into something tangible for storyboarding
2) personas and scenarios...I'm coming back in again with this....HFers you should all be writing these...more on this when I get back
3) RSS - we didn't talk about it here but its right there in my head - especially with our Factiva stuff and our Alerts. I think its more pertienent to us than blogs etc.
4) Wiki's and blogs - we need to be on the same page and able to sell.educate the product people where and if there is value
5) interactive techniques - take Steve's drag & drop and lets look at it in the Ajax world but also lets continue pushing this front-end specialist theme - lets kick them out of the water for how to achieve their products
6) metrics...mainly influenced by Adaptive Path's beta product for chasing blogs...its nice interface...it inspires me!
7) everyone who goes to a conference will now have to write a blog. That's going to be a law.

And Tech Comm and Multimedia - if you're sitting there thinking "pah... its all about HF...and web dev..." Is it? what about the new help system? what about the potential for how we do tutorials?

And so its been a very good week - what I'm liking is the latent affect of this for me...every day I re-think something from the day before...and think..'ah yes'.... Its been highly valuable.

Day 4 - Designing for the User Experience

Oh and I thought I'd finished...

we had a presentation this morning which was really very interesting. A nice example of the difference of designing for experience was "design a vase" versus "design a way for people to enjot flowers in their home". Simple but effective.

Then it went into a great case study about redesigning a library system. It was one of those ones where you sit and think "I want that job...". The slides from this are going to be available at www.marcrettig.com/uxweek and when they're up there later today I storngly recommend you go and have a look - its a really nice visual represntation of the tools - their personas and their tools - nicely put together and very clear. In particular take a look at the Design Principles slide. Essentially it was an entire re-design of a library - from the physical architecture, the signage to the online system.

What was really interesting was they took an online experience (amazon) and applied it offline. So when a customer checks out of the library they get a little ditty with their printout saying "if you like this, you'd also like..." so it entices them to return and they get a feel for the depth of content within the library.

A nice thing they did was they started the project off by carrying out 3 scenarios - and they did it themselves.....acting out an experience not just "doing a task" (3 different people had to find a specific book in 3 different ways from online to physically hunting it out in the library). that was their starting point for finding the issues...then mapping personas...finding "breakpoints" which drove the design opportunities (very interesting - find that slide too)... But they did everything to provide design principles and how the whole experience maps together....including providing logic of where to put signage....and changing object signs to task oriented (reference desk became "ask a librarian" - intuitive and also gives affordance - you know you're allowed to ask). After the design was finished (you can imagine this was a huge project) they carried out the same scenarios again to see if it worked better. (refer to my continuing beef about use the same tasks across different testing sessions - something we still haven't managed to do).

Just an interesting porject to listen to and some really nice ways to use the different tools. Worth digging around in these slides.

Day 3 - Jared Spool

Well - the afternoon closed with a presentation from Jared Spool - very entertaining but nothing sparkly and exciting to tell you about. He basically talked about how he has evolved his huge toolkit of Usability testing tools and gave a few examples - such as the 5 second page test (show the page for 5 secs - what do people remember? did the key message get across?).

and so that's it really. Tomorrow we'll talk about the web for 2010...and then its back on the plane.

Oh - and my goldfish died.

Day 3 - User Research Remote Testing

This has been a very cool demo about remote testing - they didn't come in and say "hey this is the only way to do things". There's the capability of doing moderated remote testing and online cardsorting www.websort.net - pretty easy set up, take a look. And they weren't forcing their services down our throats - we could do this. And Morae is getting some good press here http://www.techsmith.com/products/morae/default.asp or go ask Doug he can tell you ALL about it.....

But interesting facts from the remote testing:

1) the users really talk - because they're on the phone they really do the verbal walkthrough much more readily. And they slam things much more readily too because they're not being watched.

2) for websites they're using a popup recruitment - "suprise" - but it means that they're getting people who aren't prepared (even for observation people 'prepare' themselves)

3) emotional attachment to the task (because they want to do it) and less of the "did I do that right?"

4) the analysis is nice because they use the representative sample in light of bigger metrics. So if 800 out of 1000 users all buy x on the site...when you sample12 users, and 6 of them also try to buy x...and 4 of those 6 say "I can't do this because of Z"...its a pretty compelling conclusion about what to fix

5) flexibility of it obviously (although can be clunky to set up for multiple observers) BUT here's a cool thing - if you're tapping into your target audience you might find that what you perceive to be your target audience may not be quite what you though...

Ruminations...

A few topics are going around that I just wanted to share ...

Accessibility is obviously a concern as Javascript and the world moves to an oh-so-visual world...If anyone is sitting around wondering what niche to move into to make their first million - it has to be readers and how you make a valuable experience. Also had an interesting conversation last night about how do you design for the cognitively impaired.....not just those with physical contraints.

Wikis...I got chatting to the main man from Socialtext last night and I'm getting more into them.....mainly because he said most companies are keeping Wiki's private. They do a nice little version comparison but its not really a track changes type approach...but it is good for notes and adding in a trail...so passing annotations on legal docs back and forth is apparently very common. I said I'd hunt him down today and get more info about his legal clients. They're an itty bitty company at the moment but about to blow out of control (and they need major help on their UI - adaptive path were supposed to sort it out but seems they're a bit busy...).

Blogs - I'm still out on Blogs too.... eileen quenin will tell you the positive effects of them...she actually managed to do more to salavage one guys' reputation in a week and half just by placing the right type of message on blogs than the big-wig PR agency he'd hired could do in a month and a half. But then again blogs are screwwing up search engines.... they're getting the way of peopel getting directly and easily to the main site - especially if the company's got some hiatus going on and all the blogs are chatting about it.... Nice for this stuff though.

And then Folksonomy...and I may be misquoting the name here but here's something to chew over.....part of this participatory enthusiasm (and note most people I'm talking to are as cynical as me about this stuff - most people recognise that Adaptive Path are getting on a band wagon) is that users start tagging their data and they help build your taxonomy. So flikr you can check out similar tags being added and if access is granted you can check out the category "Birthday" across everything....suffice to say this and the metadata stuff had me running to the hills (bar?) and left it to the librarians to ponder.... eh, James? Still; this business of users doing all this stuff and we relinquish control.... but I still think users are fundamentally lazy and are not up for the level of proactive behaviour these guys are predicting....

And on to Day 3 - its all about user research....

Day 2 - Algorithmic IA

A quick post about the last part of the day.... Jesse James Garret talked about algorithmic IA...which again...another term for personalisation but I guess now everyone is fessing up to how much we watch and are watched online.

The driver was that whilst usability sessions are good we learn a lot more about watching users - especially if we do what Amazon does and put algorithms all over the place to track, monitor and compare. Its interesting stuff because obviously its beyond traffic reports - so the only thing lacking would still be - "did you do that because you wanted to or did you do it because you hadn't got a clue?" but its getting closer to a more comprehensive picture.

Day 2 - content IA

The bulk of the day was about Content Architecture and then a case study from Wells Fargo. Essentially the presentation half was about how doing a good user needs analysis (who are the users? what do they bring? what do they already know) brings in profile information...then you map out what they want to do (whether stated or observed) . and what was nice to see is I'm not the only one who uses basic boxes and visio diagrams to make sense of things.... here's an example of how they work out the "mental models" and map it to content. Above the line are the mental models (aka - user goals and user tasks) and below the line is the content to deliver these. So you could use it as a way of doing gap analysis - if you've worked out the user's needs then have you got all you need to deliver? (or too much??)


What's interesintg for me this is the first presnetaiton I've been to when the IA is actually talking about IA...and not categorising data. Because in this discussion about the content to deliver the use needs... he was talking about feature functions not just data. So it was interesting as we went into a formulaic approach of choosing the right device to deliver the content. Peter Merholz showed an attribute chart he'd put togther for devices...including paper....

(not sure how clear these imnages will come out on the blog - click on them but I'll load up the slides when I get back)...

so then Peter described how he would look at a goal (eg buying a house) and split it into tasks (applying for amortgage) and see what attributes that task needed (see right hand column on the 3rd figure below). Matchign your "high"s indicates the best kind of device to use. Obviously there's still some subjectivity in this but more objective than a VP saying "I want it this way..."


Then it took a turn for "using tools to get results". Which essentially meant use a wizard approach where it makes sense. Peter tooks us into Matchmaker.com (not what you think) and it helps you select a bike. It actually was how Gateway first approached their online business - walk the user through....but shown again in a more funky interface...all in one hit rather than a multi-page effect... But agian interestingly - this is a presentation about content architecture and yet really - he's talking about interaction design....feature functionality. Interesting how the winds change (and yet they dont - everything I heard today was generally still the same principles of good HCI approaches - just nicely articulated and with more uptodate examples).

Then the presentation got into page deisgn and presenting tonnes of info but in a manageable way.... (but at whch point I had to step out to take a call...).

More links
http://www.rashmisinha.com/
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm%3Fid%3D1013177&ei=LX8LQ5TsB7O4YO7F-YoKhttp://www.iasummit.org/2004/finalpapers/87/87_Handout_or__final__paper.ppt

then we went into a case study about how Wells Fargo do their website - they use all the good stuff and I'll walk you through their approaches as I think it gels with our storyboarding and what we're trying to achieve on the Users and personas site.

An aside...light switches....

Just for some fun...yesterday something came up and one of the presenters was talking about how you interact (user experience) will become a key preference element when picking a product...she used online banking as an example. Many people are leaving banks in the USA if they don't offer online banking.... at my table we were discussing this and I pointed out you can't really talk about online banking in america because its so far behind the rest of the world...to which 2 Americans (ie not me) at my table said (paraphrasing)"...its so far behind in so many ways.."...which led to observations such as the voltage is lower than the rest of the world so nothing I have works...and even the light switches are on upside down...no-one believed me! Its true - but I wasn't entirely sure about India... so I checked it out with a friend...who wrote this ridiculous verbage to me - but its amusing....and all about design....and dust (part of the UX I hadn't considered in the design...)


...in reference to your text message "Light switches in India...do you flick up or down to switch on?":
...as you have lived in Asia, the answer to any question about the standard way of doing things should be self-evident - there is no standard, or if there is, it has not been followed consistently. However, most of the switches in my apartment switch things on by flicking the switch down rather than up, up being the norm in most of North America. There is a reasonable explanation for this, though - the design of the visible movable part of the switch is different here. In NA, when the switch is off, the little handle thingy is pointing downward, meaning that any dust or liquid that lands on it would tend to slide off, rather than into the internal workings of the switch via the tiny gap between the switch and the cover plate. In India, most switches are curved rocker-type things where in the off position, the upper part of the curved bit is flush with the cover plate, so that dust or liquid that falls on it would tend to slide off the bottom like a miniature ski jump. When you slide your finger down the cover plate to turn the switch on, the lower end of the rocker switch becomes flush with the cover plate, and the upper end sticks out a bit, thus allowing dust that accumulates there to enter the interior of the mechanism when you turn the switch off. All of the above assumes that the switch is designed to spend more time in the off position than on.
Of course, when you are talking about three-way switches (where you have two switches for the same light fixture, i.e. at opposite ends of a hallway
or staircase), then the position of each switch is more random.
The above is of course total guesswork (though an informed guess), and it
obviously makes more sense in India, where dust is much more pervasive!

P.S. - Yes, it was a quiet day at the office, and yes, I am thinking about applying for a position on the panel of "The Straight Dope", where you can find lots of similarly verbose answers to an amazing number of questions on an incredible variety of topics. Go to "http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000526.html" for a fascinating explanation of why the bubbles in a properly-poured pint of Guinness appear to defy the rules of gravity by flowing downward in the glass! Or, try "http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_161.html" for an answer to the question "Do bathtubs really drain counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere?". Amazing!

Day 2 - IA

So far the day has started off really nicely - the articulation of IA has been done really well and likely this will be the presentation I show the group as its not earth shattering news but a very nice way to discuss things.

What was very strong was how Jesse defined IA as the "juxtaposition of individual pieces of info in order to convey meaning" .....which if you think about it is a good connection to the feature-stingy sites talked about yesterday...little bits on their own are useful in a narrow focus - but in the context of other 'bits' then it provides far better, more useful information.

The message was well put - by putting facts side by side, it "means" more...so when you template a page/wireframe.....he he.... when you group smilar items together (ooh where did that piece of wisdom come from...?) it 'means' more to the reader. But it was an extremely articulate description - the focus was on the power of juxtaposition and how it gives more meaning. And depending on your familiarity with the data give you further context - about the writer, about the trust value etc etc. If you have no familiarity with the data then you have to trust (or hope? or dismiss?) a little bit more.... my aside on that is to lead that into a discussion about spin, bias etc etc... which links oh-so-easily into his next presentation about....

.... IA and how its driven by the brand. Again - not earth shattering but great to actually define it as that. But Brand is a whopper, as you know, and everything we do (including whether you think a wiki for your users is a good idea) directly reflects on the brand.

There are some easy but strong examples to demo a lot of this - it was one of those session where you sit and think..."oh yeah...nicely put".

Ajax examples...

these 2 are cool examples of AJAX...

• Amazon Diamond Search slider search http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/finder/?productGroupID=loose%5fdiamonds
• Rico - Ajax platformhttp://www.openrico.org/

this one....you'll see how relevant this is... Protopage virtual note taking space for stickies/post-its http://www.protopage.com/

Other Examples:-
Jamesdam.com
login without page refresh or submit button
http://www.jamesdam.com/ajax_login/login.html
Ajax Periodic table of the elements
zoom in
http://code.jalenack.com/periodic/
Del.icio.us Direc.tor
alternate interface to del.icio.us
browse your tags
http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/
See also -Making Ajax faster

Day 1 - Ajax

We had the first day of the UX Week with Adaptive Path... I'll add in the other links for blogs so you can get their view.

Day 1 ended up being more focused on social networking and a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm for letting the user play a strong part...Its all about the user being "contributory". There was unfortunately less about the Ajax side of things - the marketing spin on this day appeared to be much more about tech than philosophy of how people are going to be using the network... Which was a shame. Jesse had to cut his presentation short - which was really unfortunate as the impact of what he's talking about is huge.

AJAX stands for asynchronous JavaScript and XML (I believe) but I had to get that from another delegate. We didn't learn much more than is already available on the web so go read the website for more and I'll chime back in when I've dug about some more....

Anyhoo - quick overview - for my mind there were 5 main things to come out:
1) Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 - this is a huge discussion in itself - how can it be so dichotomous? I don't think it can, but that aside.... The focus (briefly) is on:

a) the strength of new technologies (Perl, ruby etc) - front end specialists were a BIG theme here....

b) taking away the "toy language" perecption of Javascript..... an AJAX approach (see the link for Fast Ajax and follow through to where someone somewhere has used the term LazyLoading - your ave tech would call that a "work around"!!)

c) evolving from a page based environment to a page-less-non-submitting environment;

d) from feature rich pages towards feature-stingy (but many stingies together make up feature richness - jigsaw them together

2) "mache -ing" or it could be "mashing" - not sure but THIS is what makes life exciting.... mash together 2 URLs - by using the technology to bring together 2 useful sites. So use googol maps of Chicago PLUS the Chicago crime reports - and bingo you've got an interactive map of where crimes are concentrated...

3) Its all about community networking - I'm not going into this - the enthusiasm for this is enormous but I can't get into the reality of this especially n a b2b world. I'll let you know if they manage to sell me on it! (love it - in its right place - but for us? thoughts? to me its something that's been going on for ages and now its more accessible and more promotable to everyone...which brings with it its own HUGE socio issues....)

4) Design it right!! Essentially as this new tech comes in a lot of the constriaints we've hit before because of page by page approach are starting to dissolve away (hurrah!!) ie nothing we didn't know but nice to see that we're getting there - so we need to help push this stuff. Some of you may have used this - its been around for a couple of years....but its a good example of how the web will be heading.... https://reservations.ihotelier.com/onescreen.cfm?hotelid=2682&languageid=1

5) Here's an interesting aspect to the whole social network - blogs, wikis etc (and they didn't' spend enough time talking about RSS just more about this social networking) but an interesting aside is that enterprise software is all about control and centralised data that never moves (example was of exporting outlook address book to the Mac and how you have to circumvent it using 24 other apps...) ...If we do give users more control and we move towards an opensource mind set - where things are free think of the impact this is going to start to have as we move our data freely - and even when we submit data its still"ours" and the users data is still "theirs"....

apologies for if this is garbled - this was my a-ha moment and not early enough to allow real thought into this just wanted to get it up there for you....will play more later

But think about this - if we move to a pageless environment - where we allow clientside access into the server - more direct and bypass the browser...how does that leave our middle layer? we're designed at a page by page way... and if the logic changes...the business logic changes too. The databases will be safe but the app layer and the presentation layer....hoooheeee....? back we go...begin again...??