Six Circles - An experience design framework
This ebook has taken far too long to write but at last it is finally finished. The beauty of self-publishing is also the major problem with it – nobody pushes you, you aren’t paid and for all you know nobody will read it once it’s published. I wanted to see how the many different aspects of the book may develop conversations within the user experience community.
Elements of the book have already aged, but the principles continue, even though the examples may not! However, I hope you enjoy the read and I am really interested to know your thoughts, either here or on twitter. Currently it is only an ePub available for mobile devices but if the demand is there, other versions will be made available.
Download Six Circles for Epub readers
(See the comments section below for browser-based ePub readers)
Some accompanying thoughts
In the last year I have seen how the different elements of the Six Circles transcend user experience, into the fields of brand strategy, service design and customer experience. It is my view that in ten years time we will be talking about what we do today in very different terms due to the contexts that we have to design for, using technology that is only beginning to become pervasive in our physical environment. I predict that UX and Service Design will cease to be differentiated, as they will be so entwined it would be too difficult, and potentially inefficient to separate into different disciplines.
I have seen enough of touch and tablet usage, mobile devices, ‘Everyware’ (and even Microsoft’s shift of it’s Windows 8 platform towards the touch paradigm) to feel that we are in for an exciting decade ahead.
Call it the legacy of Steve Jobs, but what he has left us with is a global population who are more instantly engaged with technology than we could have imagined ten years ago. To allow the very young and very old to interact with content through the same device is a stunning achievement, and for the interface and interaction designers to be able to support a richer experience is truly exciting.
Unfortunately companies are still catching up, fearful of failure and what they perceive as risk. Watching their competitors to see who makes the first move but the time for businesses to be brave and bold is now. There is not much time remaining for some businesses to make use of the power of meaningful, rich experiences delivered by brands that satisfy the culture and contextual uses of the users. Those companies that achieve this will simply dominate at a rate that is faster due to the networked society.
But all the talk of technology misses the point. It is the human needs, desires and emotions and their interactions with each other that create our insights that in turn drive innovation and success for companies. These experiences make the difference. It is the quality of experience that is the differentiator for any company in a crowded market.
Solving people problems will inevitably solve business problems. The challenge is to get businesses to believe in it, and trust those to deliver on the promise of user centred design. But with a process that is understood and a philosophy that appeals to many, there is alot we can do to ensure the business world adopts a path to greater product development, that builds on the needs and wants of people at its core.Tweet
Social computing on Interaction-Design.org
A free platform that offers so much content of benefit to interaction designers the world over is a rare thing. So I am really happy to be able to promote it here - not least because this particular content was filmed in my home town of Copenhagen, in the impressive building of the IT University.
Tom Erikson discusses content from his book about social computing – a theme that these days has more relevance then ever in our mobile, ‘always on’ world. Social interaction, between people via machines is at the heart of this work and makes for very interesting viewing if you are even slightly interested in the prominence of social media networks and online communities.
This content aside, some of the brightest minds in the field of user experience have contributed essays, articles and important design research on a free platform - Interaction-Design.org. I’m still discovering content and it’s a brilliant idea to have a place where so much good material can be accessed and shared.
Huge credit must go to Mads Soegaard and Rikke Dam whose initiative started in 2002. It is another example of the passion that people in this community hold, and a similar view point as to why I started my blog in the first place.
Documenting and sharing knowledge will help us all in our future work. Seeing a work of such magnitude makes me relieved that others believe that knowledge that will benefit society should be freely available.Tweet
What makes a good UX designer?
Photo courtesy of Sorensiim
I have always had this post at the back of my mind and often check myself against the qualities I have listed here. Of course I fail in some of them, but if you can aim to succeed with just a few of these qualities, your design work will get there too. At the moment I am working on a particularly tough project. The type that consumes you – energy levels, time, and concentration on any other task is difficult. Without being surrounded by good people it would be unbearable. So if you hire people, or are looking to join a team, try and find out these qualities exist in the people you are working with.
Some personal qualities to try and gain or maintain within a team and elements to consider when working as a unit;
Persistence
Commitment to a project needs to go beyond just time allocated to it. It needs to be exhibited as a character trait. To not give up, maintain momentum and motivation and keep on moving towards the overall goal is a core trait for a UX person to show. Inevitably this may result in annoying a few colleagues as you will not leave them alone until specific tasks are finished or you get an answer to a particularly important problem. Using a bit of charm will go a long way to ensure you can get progress.
Passion
There needs to be an underlying desire to ensure that the project succeeds and a genuine care about seeing it fulfill it’s initial promise. Having passion means going the extra mile, but also enjoying the elements of the work once it has started. Being interested beyond the bounds of a project but also spending the time to go beyond the normal delivery will affect other team members and soon create a positive working environment. Having passionate people on a team makes an enormous difference to the success of delivering a product or service.
Positivity
It is very easy to become dejected due to research findings or user studies that have shown results that were either not expected or detrimental to a project. Having the ability to look for the good, from a bad situation will pay off. A positive attitude to the work, difficult colleagues, stakeholders or customers, inevitably results in a better atmosphere, working environment and an increased potential for more work in the future.
Patience
UX work typically has the ability to impact on everybody inside an organization and certainly the customers or users who will interact with what is produced. The repercussions on some of the decisions made, affects different decision makers at all levels in a company hierarchy. Be aware that some changes will take years to see come to fruition and the plans that are laid out are likely to be the foundations – that you may never witness being executed. Therefore being particularly patient with people is a necessary part regarding change management. With UX work, your users will test you as you are testing them! Learn to control anything you may say in response to seemingly stupid comments or actions. Again it will serve you well in terms of collating valuable design research.
Progress
Be aware that on a project UX work has very different tasks that have outcomes with different time requirements. The pace of a project cannot dictate the pace of research and so compromises need to be met, either on budgetary expenditure or time spent. The important thing to be aware of is that incremental progress is a desired outcome for large scale ux projects – particularly on live products. Changes made need to be done in an orderly, considered manner so as not to disenfranchise or confuse customers. On new products, change can be made quickly, but be aware that the grand plan will be phased and broken down into critical elements first, the ‘nice-to-haves’ coming later.
Stamina
Some projects will last months and at times will require focus to ensure that the quality is not affected as issues occur and problems arise. The importance of giving the team a break in high-intensity work is very important but not quitting is really important. The ability to finish the work started is important to UX work, why research something if it is not followed through? To exhibit stamina, means that the necessary long hours and unusual times to conduct field research will be needed to offer a product that is well designed.
Humour
This is something you must have to get you through elements of UX work that are difficult. User testing in odd locations, the ability to convince a board member using charm and an outlook that can deflect hostility by using humour, is essential to a career in this field. UX people tend to be socially competent because they primarily deal with people to get products designed effectively. Having a sense of humour will allow events that may derail a project to not have a detrimental effect on the outcome. Sometimes you may simply have to laugh to keep sane and the ability to show this, effects team morale and positivity.
Embodiment
UX work is all about empathy for the user and designing for their needs whilst also aligning the business requirements in combination. To design with empathy requires somebody to have that as an attribute in their personality. To be concerned about user’s experiences means you cannot just pay it lip service. If a comment by a user is ignored and not represented in the final design, your attitude to their plight will be revealed. As a UX person it is your responsibility to be the voice of the user and make sure it is heard as a product develops. Evangelize the needs and wants to those that are building the solution. But also consider the realities of what must work for the business and the inevitability of compromise. Diplomacy and politics are a necessity here but with all the factors being present above – you will be well equipped to tackle the hardest UX challenges.
Incidentally, I am currently looking for a UX lead at Hello Group – here in Copenhagen and in addition to posting the usual job ad I thought about qualities that define a person who ‘fits’ within the UX team. If the above sounds like you and you have the usual profile and portfolio let me know. One proviso is that Danish language (spoken) is an important skill to have, as well as the usual UX toolbox.
Prospecting in the 21st century
I have been sitting on this post (and maybe this fence) for some time and a recent article finally gave me the impetus to write this.
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Firstly, I would like to highlight some opinions of UX (and UCD) themes in evidence in the last 6 months:
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Eric Reiss in the Journal of IA took a balanced and considered view to these opinions. Framing them with a sense of perspective and presenting some deeper thoughts about UX and the role of IA in all of this. I particularly like his focus on business reality and the clarion call to embrace Information Architecture as the label that defines what we really do;
Ultimately, it will be our understanding of disciplines both within and beyond IA, that will ensure us a place at the table around which the big decisions are made.
Why UX must be present in the advertising industry
I think it’s important to reaffirm why we should not have an elitist view of UX and why IA is at the very core of the user experience collection of disciplines.
Clearleft and Adaptive Path do excellent work as UX design companies. But they are a minority in a huge marketplace of varied design companies and to say that UX doesn’t have a place in other types of business is contradictory to their usual UX evangelism. Isn’t it much better having people in all sorts of businesses doing information architecture and interaction design under the umbrella of UX?
In the company I work at, we are growing our UX offering around a product and it is a slow but sure process of convincing people that this approach (with the right designers) can really work for their business. However, we must also embark on communication and design work as our market is not as big or as mature as the US or UK. These are driven by the need for business survival but it also ensures we have diverse viewpoints on our projects. Different perspectives provide value.
The concept of baked-in marketing
…there are so many opportunities for engagement through interaction, conversation, utility and actual *use* between the initial message and the product itself.
A day before Peter Merholz posted his view on UX and advertising, Andrew Hinton highlighted that product development and communication go hand in hand. This closer alignment will have repercussions for UX – pushing it into mainstream design consciousness. Just about every design pursuit will need to look at wider issues that surround the customer and product. Companies will strive to engage, to create interaction. Creating users who become customers.
Service design is the natural progression from UX – taking interactions across platforms and concentrating on the invisible and tangible connections around customer or user interactions. Information architects should be at the heart of this design work and don’t be surprised to start to see IAs appear in companies that you didn’t even think of as ‘digital’.
Let’s also remember that this isn’t just the domain of designers but all stakeholders. We must realize UX work is done by those who do not call themselves designers. This can have both good and bad sides but if there are more people who know what we are talking about, in the right domains, this can only be for the good.
Design practice – risk and innovation
The reality of the times, is that a business needs to innovate and create better products, faster than before. But they need to mitigate risk, and UX methods offer a way of backing this up with real and relevant data. It seems at this stage to be a correct and considered way to ensure you have the right approach.
But the caveat is how to interpret data from users and it can be a minefield. The best designers will filter and discard many findings and see the real gold in reams of user interviews. This level of skill is learnt through experience. The ability to be a synthesiser of data and create meaningful relationships between themes is a core quality of any designer.
Conceptual work needs verification with customers at some stage and even Apple does this before they go to market. So to say they do not listen to users is a fallacy. They have conducted ethnographic studies with their customers, observing them using their products in their homes and offices for weeks.
The amount of data they acquire from these sessions would warrant a convincing case to not go for persona creation or user interviews, ever. They pretty much know how people feel about and use their products, so for them to innovate they need to pick up on areas that are hinted at by user comments and their behaviours through their usage. Concepts that are achievable by being verified with customers who have previously talked about the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘nice to haves’.
Action research and design doing
Negating risk by investing in research that is actionable is a shrewd move, especially in a marketplace where customers are more vocal and more likely to be persuaded by peers than ever before. For business, the value of UX can be seen in exploring hypotheses backed up by quantitative and qualitative research.
Optimization, concept creation and execution on innovative ideas can all be handled and explored by UX teams. Considered product developments and the tangible tools to be innovative, create real business value.
Software design, integrated service design and product design all benefit from design research. In my opinion UCD is purely another way of obtaining the right information. I wouldn’t design anything without ensuring a brief that included as much background information as possible. Would you?
Design thinking is one thing but design doing is a far more powerful act for business. A necessary part of this act is to gain real insights from user (or customer) research.
Envisioning the future by studying the present
It is not just interface design. It is not just about making the world more usable and ethically correct. It’s all this and more. It is a force for changing business in its approach and to make it economically stable by providing for needs but also satisfying wants beyond the present day. This is the business value of UX. How you interpret the data you collect, and create something truly unique, relies on the teams skill set and experience.
All of this leads me back to my belief that UCD as a philosophy and UX (and especially IA) form the foundation for the best products and service design. A whitepaper was released as I wrote this, defining UX – written by academics, practitioners and industry. It would be good if this were a full stop to the infighting and misinformation the discipline faces, but somehow I doubt it.
Creating Hellogroup.com
Recently we launched Hello Group’s site after 4 years of (let’s say diplomatically) sub-optimal solutions. With the best intentions, getting a site together that everybody in a company will be happy with may never happen. When it is a design centered company this can be even less likely. As it is what we do and are passionate about, we all tend to have an opinion and want it heard. Of course we can’t take all opinions into account, otherwise the project will lack focus, direction and will be difficult to maintain progress and reach a launch date.
Other factors come into play such as content. Where there is content there are firm opinions that go to the very core of the strategic direction of the company and what is communicated externally about the business. The site becomes a vehicle that must satisfy so many factors (and people) that there is always a risk that it will not do anything particularly well.
Direction and collaboration
The realisation of this fact early on, led to us having a core group of UX and visual designers working on the project together, after we had gained a clear strategic and creative vision of what we wanted to say. A day was set aside to see how far we could push the project, and though not all objectives were met it gave us a cohesive view of the design direction and interactive elements of the site.
We wanted a platform that tied together our other digital spaces (Facebook, Twitter etc) and did it in a way that we could easily build on. Once the design was decided we could brief the developer on something that was tangible and easy to explain. There was a lot of iteration and discussion between the visual, interactive and dynamic areas of the site between developer, designer and the UX team. Without constant dialogue the project would have become harder to complete satisfactorily.
We also had to involve the other parts of the business throughout in a way where their inputs would help shape the site but not derail the process of building to a deadline. I have no doubt that not everybody is as satisfied with the outcome as I am, but these issues will be resolved and importantly the site must be seen as a living entity that enables change as we go. It has been designed and built with this in mind.
Below are some factors, or principles, that led to a solution that for our market and our company’s values we feel is the right approach. A large part of the philosophy was realizing the importance of not communicating everything. That what you do not communicate is equally important as what should go on the site.
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Flexibility
The front page is modular, meaning elements can be switched or turned off depending on the need of focus. News is an important part as we often do things beyond client work that are interesting and valuable to know. The main dropdown also allows extra elements to be inserted inside the structure of the site without interfering with the main navigation. Jobs, news and other elements will appear as they warrant the inclusion through the amount of content available to the user.
Interaction
The website works well on the iPad – some content may be missing (Flash based video – which will be changed) but it does not harm the experience of using the site. So designing for tablet usage has enabled us to see what we are producing is beyond the browser but more about the platform. We had to think about a dual way of looking at user interaction. Touching and clicking on elements on a screen have to have a common element of interaction. The areas needed to be big enough, give appropriate feedback instantly, and convey a way of interaction that is intuitive. Expect more in the future as this crossover allows us to explore this way of designing interfaces further.
Personality
Why show our people? Well apart from giving our clients the ability to work out who does what, we wanted people to put names to faces, and to see where they fitted within the company. As we are only a small number of people it is critical that those who may deal with us know who they are talking to and have the ability to get in touch directly. Not least it gives us a human angle. Humanizing the web is something there simply isn’t enough of. We also wanted to show what some of these people thought, wrote or created. The Follow section allows us to have an area that links the other spaces where we occupy (blogs, Flickr etc) and allow us to pour this content into a general area of interest.
Content creation
The platform used by Wired, Mashable and TechCrunch is very accessible and is easy to manage content through a team that can collaborate through the interface. It also allows permissions to be set up that require different user roles to produce and publish the content. A very necessary element of producing a site is to ensure that there are methods to publish live, and instantly, when needed. Wordpress allows this in a way that is supported by a multitude of plug-ins that ensure other concerns (such as SEO and social media) are addressed. Simply put, Wordpress is a free back-end system that helps you run a website professionally. Yes we used extra coding to get things done how we wanted, but the system that runs the ability to add more content is out of the box.
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Known issues We use a home made font solution to render Helvetica on many browsers. Chrome manages it the best but Safari suffers on the Mac (though not on the iPad due to the font renderer on the tablet). This has caused issues and will be rectified for the Mac user. Some elements of the animation of the list are a little clunky and these will be ironed out as we go. |
Key people
You will find success in making sure you stick to the goal and remaining committed to it throughout. Setting achievable deadlines and communicating that to the other team members is critical. Technical problems may delay a launch but resource issues shouldn’t derail the building of a site – that’s just bad planning or lack of foresight. Also a creative developer was critical to this being built – his can-do attitude with an eye for details and creative flair ensured we have a site we are happy with, and can improve easily. Without his skill it would have been much harder to achieve our vision for the site.
Also make sure you have somebody who can continually badger people to get things done (if like me you haven’t the stamina to do it yourself). I luckily has a great PM to help and she kept on at the team to provide what we had laid out in the plan. At times you will get disheartened but remember that your ability to achieve the goal is mirrored in your personal belief that it is achievable. Always remain positive and it can be done with dedication and team work.
A site for the future
Conceiving, designing, building and refining a website can be a straight forward process or a challenge that will test the patience of all involved. Thankfully by adopting an agile strategy to design and user experience we managed to have a very clear direction quickly about how the site was organized , and the interaction and visual design was produced in a matter of days.
Content held us up and producing cases perhaps took (and takes) longer than we wish. But often they require feedback from all stakeholders and this takes time. What we do have upon launch is a site that has attracted attention and we are happy with. The best part is it is a platform that works well on tablets and laptops, we can add elements and ensure that we have a medium for communication that supports our demands.
This site represents a new beginning for Hello – and that was a key theme in it’s design. The designers managed to encapsulate this feeling in a look that is fresh, bold and in-keeping with the company. After all the work it is a very satisfying feeling to experience what has been built. The launch is just the start. The evolution of it can now begin…
Usability
The final component of defining the (user) experience design framework is Usability. To some it is a de facto standard of good design, but so much of what is produced fails in this area, and not just in digital design. It feels consistently that products, buildings, vehicles and urban planning lack a sufficient consideration of the human being.
Usability has become the easy bat to wield in the boardroom – primarily to help gain sponsorship. It is the element of UX that is easy to understand and very transparent to see. So much so, that usability and research consultancies have become widespread and are thriving – serving up endless recommendations and expert reviews to companies that feel they need to improve their user’s experience.
The challenge to those who actually design is to accept that this part of the job is a necessity, something that is unavoidable, that must be learnt and always considered. To not have a sound appreciation of usability leaves a proposed solution open to attack from any source. Many times design aspirations are shot down because of the ‘it’s not best practice’ statement. This is why usability has a bad name in design circles, and to some extent rubs off onto other areas of UX.
But usability is the starting point, and when placed alongside context, it becomes a design constraint that is a good thing. Played right, and quality design can be achieved that serves many people easily and can still be beautiful, show elegance and simplicity. The designer embracing usability will reward the person every time they use the product. That is the goal of any designer, to produce a meaningful experience by allowing a person to use a tool, service or product with the minimum of friction.
People’s interaction with computers must rely on increased usability because it is an abstract experience. The designer must assume that the user can only go from personal experience to navigate, interact with and control a device without any other human’s help. As UX designers this makes usability core to our design practice.
The following principles explore areas of usability that have direct impact on the quality of a person’s experience.
Way finding
 The proposed map of the London tube network
The reinstated Thames features on the map |
Finding your way through a website to their sign up page or making your way through a city to get to your hotel – the principles of way finding are the same. Four phases are present; orientation, route decision, route monitoring and destination recognition.
Transport for London felt the Mayor of London’s very public frustration when he demanded that a redesigned tube map – without the Thames displayed, should be scrapped and the old one reinstated. To remove a physical attribute on this wholly abstract, geographically inaccurate map, was enough to cause public outrage. It illustrates how we need a reference point – even in an abstract representation to give clarity and meaning. But the story also represents that the object, be it map or sign, takes on an emotional significance to the person who uses it. There is an attachment to it because the object helps in attaining our goals, and these goals carry a personal value. A map or sign that is established can not be changed dramatically without disturbance to the user. The same applies to established navigation elements in websites or applications. |
Flexibility Usability Trade-off
The more flexible a system becomes the less usable it tends to be. This trade-off can be seen in mobile phones and cameras that are feature rich. The difficulty of use tends to increase with the added ‘flexibility’ of the product. Over time the flexible nature becomes more specialised as the user needs become more defined in customer segments. Their experience of the product is optimised and so niche products or services become more prevalent. When research defines those needs, a product is produced that may seem a mistake to those customers outside the target market.
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Sony’s recent publicised work with Google has resulted in this creation. It is a fine example of how when flexibility is pushed to the limit (in this case a QWERTY keyboard attached to a tv remote control) usability is so diminished that it potentially renders the object useless. Ergonomically it appears to be uncomfortable, and by looking at the thumbs in the photo not unlike typing into a pocket calculator. |
Garbage in garbage out
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This principle concerns problems of type and of quality in the collation of information. In the online world this is typically seen in form design.
Clarifying the type of data can be defined by the constraints afforded by design elements (input fields, dropdown lists etc). Quality of information can be determined by verification checks and distinct instructions relating to the areas under current focus in the form. This form is a great example of poor layout which, regardless of the type of input fields, will have an effect on the efficiency of the form to collect useful data. It is extremely important to balance the usability of a form with the requirements of data that the form must supply. Where larger amounts are required, break down the data entry into steps. Reveal the necessary data in stages to the user and use visual cues to communicate progress. |
Performance load
Complexity is an unavoidable element when involved in the process of designing a solution. As computers become increasingly pervasive in society the amount of data that will be managed and transmitted will give an increasing pressure on the user to filter, rationalise and act upon information communicated to them. This principle can be divided into cognitive and kinetic load.
Cognitive load refers to the amount of thought required to achieve a goal. With screen based systems this largely depends on reading and understanding written text. The form above has a high degree of cognitive load and is often why it is prudent to keep emails short, as people tend not to read due to the cognitive stress of digesting large amounts of information.
Kinetic load is the physical effort required to complete a task. With touch technology, even pushing keys has been replaced by a tap on glass. Dimmer switches are not even dials to turn anymore – kinetic load is something product designers are extremely aware of. Software systems should also replicate this attention to detail, ensure minimal scrolling, and the least number of clicks to get a job done.
Visibility
Indicating a system’s status to a user, the possible interactions and the results of their inputs is described as visibility. Revealing information at the relevant moment, is key to a user responding and acting on information in the quickest time. Too much information or too many options will create confusion and delay. Context sensitivity of a system allows this to happen, influencing the interface to respond depending on the situation.
| Dashboards were originally examples of efficient design. The basic mechanics of a car meant only a certain amount of information would ever be displayed. Cars made in the last century had a clarity that modern manufacturers find hard to emulate.
With the added complexity of hybrid motoring there appears to be a trend to emulate a smart phone interface on the dashboard. The consciousness of the design team towards the technological advancement of the car pervades into the dashboard’s design. Note the warning lights are separate entities above the electronic display here. Is it because the visibility of these essential items could be diluted by the electronic dash? |
Layering
When conveying relationships between groups of information the layering approach allows a build of complex information groups around an object. Think of the weather map as a simple illustration of this. The object being the physical satellite view of the geographical location. The images describe the layers of air pressure, temperature and cloud cover placed over it. Not only does layering help manage complexity by breaking down complex data into stages, but by grouping information together it can also reinforce the relationship between the information types.
Two-dimensional layering can be sequential (linear), and can be used to manage complexity by introducing the content in stages with context changing easily. It can also be non-liner, for example hierarchical (site structure diagram), parallel (swim lanes) or web-like. Three-dimensional layering uses transparent layers to introduce conceptual ideas around a particular context that does not change.
Accessibility
Of all the principles in the experience design framework, arguably the most important one, has been left until last. Without this principle being acknowledged and adhered to, the world would be a much more frustrating, and potentially dangerous place to live in. Four elements define if a solution is accessible or not, and if barriers are present to users that inhibits their usage of a product. Addressing accessibility goes some way in producing naturally usable products.
Perceptibility
Can the design be perceived irrespective of sensory capabilities? Common ways to address this is to make sensory alerts (visual and auditory) when an action is performed. From the doors of a train to the alert box of a computer system, sound and visual alerts are used. Physical objects can be made more perceptive to touch by using size and texture. Online elements can use the ALT tag and code structure of the page can ensure screen readers focus on content and not superfluous graphic items.
Operability and Simplicity
This Paris Metro ticket machine has a large spinning roller that controls the screen above and two very large buttons either side to cancel or accept cues on screen. The machine also talks to the user, is positioned so a sitting person can still operate it and is highly sensitive – so the roller can move with the minimum of physical effort. The design is marred by the credit card area being positioned up and away from the focus area, but generally it is operable to multiple user types. It also manages to achieve simplicity as the control inputs are simple, and the choices can be understood with the use of pictorial elements, text and audio. Even without knowledge of French, the machine can still be used to produce a ticket, revealing relevant steps to ensure the user continues through the sales flow and achieves their goal.
Forgiveness
When designs minimise the occurrence and consequence of errors the design exhibits forgiveness. Reversible actions (undo), controls that can only be used in the correct way and the use of confirmations and consistent messaging all ensure that safety nets are available for the user (and the ability to not be punished for making errors). E-payment systems consistently ensure that their payment system is forgiving and gives ample opportunity to allow a user to decline or leave the process.
Six circles
Ending this six-part series on forgiveness seems apt. Perhaps as designers who cater for experiences in the UX or service design fields, the levels of understanding that we need to acquire will only increase as technology will allow us to do more, with more speed and with more societal ramifications. Forgiveness would be a good place to start in this increasingly turbulent time of technological flux.
There is a pressing need on us to do things better, make things smarter and more efficiently. The six themes within the framework started in a sequence that seemed to have no order but on reflection I have decided that persuasion sits on the periphery of experience. It affects our behaviour, often tacitly from experiences we have had in our past only held within our memory but still affecting how we interact with the world.
The third theme is visual design. The first tangible layer that we see, and come into contact with. As human beings it is how we are hard-wired to make decisions. It is a part of our genetic and biological make up and beneath that lies usability. This is the enabler for meaningful interaction, without usability the interactions that we have with the object will be without merit and will produce a negative effect – a bad experience.
Interaction is the doorway to the content. The ability to feel, touch and gain feedback to the ‘thing’ you wanted to get to in the first place. Content in this series has been described as the textual material we find within websites. But of course content can be anything to anybody. Music, art, film, an object or a product could sit at the core of the other five themes within the framework.
I am compiling the six themes with a foreword into an e-book available as a download on userpathways.com and an accompanying visualisation of the Experience Design Framework. If you are interested let me know on twitter: @userpathways
Euro IA 2010 – ‘Strong IA feels real’
Last week I was in Paris for an entertaining, yet equally perplexing Euro IA. The majority of talks were a thought provoking foray into the usual domains of information architecture but also service design and co-creation.
The opening keynote from Oliver Reichenstein was a strange experience, part personal take on the field and part philosophical reflection on how he personally arrived at his own professional destination.
I am an admirer of his work and yet elements of those great data visualizations and experiments (the web trend maps) were not mentioned here. He did attempt to explain his user experience diagram but after claiming metaphors were only useful to a point, he then likened IA to ‘the recipe for user experience’. This gastronomic reference, was a recurring theme throughout the two days.
Contradiction seemed to be the order of the day. On the one hand stating that he found IA used too many ‘bullshit’ terms that were unhelpful, he then described his own design process as ‘dialectic’. I find philosophy in alignment to IA has never been helpful to our profession. It doesn’t resonate with me as thought-through – ‘the architecture of the mind’ that Reichenstein holds up as one of his views is unhelpful to a layman and really only strengthens the opinion of those who feel that IA is intangible. Even Reichenstein says that ‘if you stretch metaphors they break’.
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Ian Fenn wrote a fictitious tweet, and yet ironically it was exactly what it felt like after he delivered his keynote.
It was a shame that this opportunity was lost of convincing the group that he didn’t just use the term because he liked the phrase. But unfortunately that seemed the real reason if you take the talk at face value. |
His comment that ‘strong IA feels real’ was ironic, as this ia felt unreal, unrealistic and abstract. Even if it works for him and his company, I felt he didn’t tell the whole story.
I think therefore IA…
Other talks also reflected the philosophical aspect. Koen Claes focussed on designing for memory (enjoyable but try selling that to a CEO). Peter Bogaards talked about the similarity with gastronomy to aspects of what we do as UX people.
All thought-provoking stuff but really it had the feeling of some in-joke that only UX people would get, and that those from other communities who were present, the product managers, marketing and developers would look on and question.
This is not a practical application or useful in my opinion and after talking to a few attendees after day one they felt the same. These talks gave more attention to the experience of being human than the thing that we design. Though the two are obviously connected, it becomes too indiscernible from existentialism.
Lean IA, service design and Ubicomp
The second day proved far better, more real and more tangible. More useful to talk about how to design in an agile way, using co-creation and the methods and skills found in the scrum processes of product development teams.
Here Jeff Gothelf, Johanna Kollmann and Franco Papeschi proved that the application of our skill set is the most important thing in our domain. The tools and methods are fine but not as important as engaging the team, working collaboratively and transparently and being an agent for change.
Their approaches were the exact opposite to the mysterious design master. This is the future of UX, with Claire Rowland and Chris Browne representing service design and ubicomp in a very comprehensive, fascinating talk.
Christophe Tallec also talked about how the theory of the wisdom of crowds, has usefully been applied to a product. These emerging fields becoming more relevant every year, and I guess in the not too distant future these fields will become facets of the same discipline.
Aimless ends
The closing plenary was given by Paul Kahn where he stated that Facebook was not important to him. But with its 500 million users and a previous slide stating how the biggest sites are user generated it just seemed he was being provocative for the sake of it.
As he ambled through several sites that he liked, it was similar to surfing a smashing magazine post of cool dataviz sites. The structured and non structured aspect of metadata is well documented but the talk really just seemed to meander without purpose.
His closing message that user-centred design is best tackled by saying ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’ was uninspiring. Did this statement derive from too many failed projects? One he showed – though it used a neat UI trick it was where he openly admitted he didn’t have numbers to know if it was effective or not. Who knows?
Summing up
There were a lot of great presentations and Martin Belam has gathered the talks on his site and are well worth a look. But keynotes are from thought leaders. Surely they have a responsibility to not use the platform as a casual debate (or product promotion) with throw away comments?
Or perhaps that is their call, but I do ask as an attendee for the speakers to prepare the material and avoid being self-indulgent or misleading. Give us something real. Give back something tangible to this community.
I remember last year being at a talk where a student pleaded – ‘give us something we can use’. From the keynotes, I was left with the same feeling…
UX design framework - Interaction
Interaction
I have already covered content, visual design and behaviour as part of the UX design framework but now for the important topic of interaction…
A major element of UX, it has been described as
“the design of behavior, positioned as dialogue between a person and an artifact. A person commonly doesn’t talk to an object; they use it, touch it, manipulate it, and control it. Usage, touching, manipulation and control are all dialogical acts, unspoken but conversational.” – Jon Kolko
and also…
“a design discipline dedicated to defining the behavior of artifacts, environments, and systems (i.e., products)”. – Robert Reimann
Undoubtedly interaction design is a design discipline that has become a defining element of UX. Though the preceding two quotes assert the alignment with a user’s behaviour they do so here in relation to their interaction (the person and the artifact).
Getting UX Integrated
The purpose of UXBASIS is not only to be a set of methods for UX practitioners but it is also a way of introducing UX to the wider organisation. The talk I gave last month to a group of Danish web product managers was focused on not only the tools we use in UX but how they themselves can successfully integrate UX into their organisation.
The audience represented those who really are empowered to change the user experience daily – the product and web development managers. In the presentation I highlight several ways to create change and use approaches to help give a different perspective to their task in hand.
So much of what they deal with, the political and organisational challenges as well as resource issues and technological constraints, we only observe as UX people. The real-life of producing and implementing what we draft is something that as UX people we need to be more mindful of. After the implementation of the ideas, these people are the ones who must ensure business runs as usual and goals are met.
The presentation is an introduction and also a practical approach to get UX integrated with 5 tips to help UX become a reality in the team and the business.
Agile and the importance of cultural understanding
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Though I work in UX, a core interest of mine is not so much the practical application of tools but the importance of the organisation of the teams behind creating the best products and being aware of the cultural makeup of those teams.
Getting this right allows us to concentrate on the production of the best ideas and solutions and generates momentum and further inspiration. |
The challenges and changes in digital design
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After 10 years of job title changes we come back to being designers, albeit ‘user experience’ designers for users and for people.
In 1999 it seemed to be so very new and we were on the same page, but now we see the different disciplines needing to embrace and unify before they fragment completely. It needs to change soon, to move on with an admission of guilt for the turf wars, the inflated egos and finally gain some appreciation for each other’s craft. |
Changing online banking
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Photo courtesy of Daniel Y. Go |
Before I moved to Denmark I used HSBC for fifteen years. Their online banking system was adequate initially, and has grown better over time with improvements to its functionality and speed. But its amazing what you take for granted when you are forced to use an alternative.
My bank here in Denmark, though not Danish, is courteous and helpful in the physical world but digitally they are atrocious. Their online banking system is a world apart from HSBC and I can only think its because of an overtly paranoid view of security. |
UX Design Framework – Visual Design
Previously I introduced a UX framework and wrote about the first element – content. This post is about visual design, perhaps the most immediately emotive ingredient to user experience. Seeing is believing, and what our eyes see immediately tells us if we either like or dislike what they are receiving. It has a sway on the other 5 elements of the UX framework as it is something that is very tangible and creates instant feeling in a person. As UX designers we need to be aware of the importance of visual design as a doorway to incorporate the other equally important facets in our work. Visual design, like it or not, is still king when it comes to the first few seconds that a user interacts with a product or service.
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Saul Bass, the legendary graphic designer and film maker, described design as ‘thinking made visual’. In many ways visual design should communicate the more complex considerations of a solution in an immediately accessible way.Aesthetic usability Think about a website that you like and there will probably be a good deal of visual design that helps you in understanding its content better, what it offers and how easy it is for you to use. Aesthetic usability is a quality that arguably Apple have made very much part of their product offering. Consider their most successful devices, (iMac,iPod and iPhone) and there is an immediate attraction to getting to know the product, even before you really know what it can do. As there is an emotive connection (one of delight or intrigue) it affords the product a level of forgiveness within the user when the product or system fails. |
Usability is dead….the write up
A title as loaded as Usability is Dead needs some sort of explanation that a presentation can’t really convey.
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KForum – a Danish site serving all those involved in communication, gave me an opportunity and asked for a write up. You can read it here (in English).
Hopefully the article goes some way in describing how as a UX community we need to start collaborating more and moving away from formulaic thinking. Creativity is back in a big way, fuelled by context and relevance… |
Usability is dead…
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On Wednesday (17 June), I attended the SIGCHI Interaction Design Day at Copenhagen’s ITU. It’s an impressive building and apt to host an event about technology and our interaction with it.
I also did a talk about Usability and user centred design and how user experience is always key in what we make.
You can see the presentation on SlideShare here and I will be writing an article about it published next week. I have placed the notes here |
What Google does
 Bradley Horowitz at The Next Web 09 courtesy ofDailyM |
After Jeff Jarvis had his take on Google we had somebody from the inside – Bradley Horowitz.Horowitz was the man who advised Yahoo to buy Flickr and after redefining his role there he made them acquire Delicious. Previously he had formed Virage (video categorization engine) and sold it to Autonomy after dropping out of his degree at MIT Medialab where he worked on image categorisation technologies. Read more… |
Engagement and optimisation: Defining behaviours
Photo by Nicholas Nova
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The second of a seven part post about optimising a site to create a more engaged audience. Here we look at user behaviour and how methods used help ensure you address user needs. Previously: Success metrics |
Engagement and optimisation: Success Metrics
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You hear alot about engagement, and not just in the UX community.
How do you engage your website users? What exactly constitutes the different parts of a website’s content that will attract people and make the website an enjoyable experience for them and a profitable one for your business?
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Holistic concept models: an ROI blueprint
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I read a post recently that illustrated how concept models are rarely used in the right way and are often misunderstood. Are they really worth doing at all?
Now seems a good time to expand on the tool that Dan Brown has popularised through his book Communicating Design. Not as simply a stand alone tool but one that can provide a blueprint for giving solid ROI on design, analytics and testing. |
EPIC 2008 (IN)VISIBILITY
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A big surprise when attending the EPIC 2008 conference was the lack of talk around the next stages beyond ethnographic research. The academic stance was accompanied by representatives of large corporations, though it felt mainly a concentration on the methods and findings of ethnographic praxis. Read more… |
Creating user centred taxonomies
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When you organise content on a web site, how can you be confident its relevant and clear for your users? The following walk-through tells of how you can ensure you build a site with users’ interests at heart.
What is a taxonomy? The term ‘taxonomy’ is a bit of a misnomer, having its origins in Biological study denoting sub-species within a species classification. However, in the business sense of the word, taxonomies can encompass a whole range of different elements that, broadly speaking, are ways of classifying content under categories recognised by a user group. |
Extending the experience
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Synthesis of research, business culture and product goals ensures a UX team sits in the middle of a web development process. However the team can benefit by not being solely project focused…
User experience is heavily associated with brand experience and as technology becomes less visible and more pervasive, the two elements will converge into one. User experience adds substance to the brand experience – experience design defines the brand.
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Creating User-Centred Taxonomies: Part Two
The second part of Creating User-Centred Taxonomies, on the FUMSI site, has been posted here…
The diagrams featured are also available on Flickr
Creating user centred taxonomies on FUMSI
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Published here, the first in a two-part article I have written about the mechanics of creating user centred taxonomies. |
Tools and techniques for managing website evolution
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This post started from the ideas of a two-part post written last year by Seth Gottlieb & Brice Dunwoodie. It made me think about a list of tools and techniques that content editors could use whilst editing in a collaborative environment. The post is a point of reference for those involved in the daily running and development of sites that are continually evolving. |
IA Summit 2008 UX Matters review
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After several blog posts, UX Matters asked me to do a proper job on it and it is now live here, in an overview of all the highlights of the IA Summit 2008. |
The what, when and why of wireframes
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I recently presented at a conference on the humble wireframe and thought it would be a good idea to run through some key points. I have also noted that some feel the wireframe is dead, though if anything its more alive now than ever. Pay heed to 37 signal’s take on the subject…
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The answer is in the interface
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A recent article by Alex Iskold brilliantly captures the separations of where we imagine semantic search should be and the reality. Even if it were trying to knock Google off a top spot, what he highlights is that it would be an unnecessary exercise. Google does its thing very well. Few would argue with that. Alex suggests that semantic search should do something completely different… |
User paths for conversion - elements in engagement
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This image was shown during Peter Moville’s talk about IA 3.0. What is interesting about it is how he linked this to Christopher Alexander’s text about design in architecture and also Peter Merholz’s essay Metadata for the Masses. In which he highlights ‘desire lines’ how paving is built once you see the paths that people tread.
If we look at online behaviour, user paths give us a solid idea of routes to content, where they return to and where they tend to go next. Human behaviour tends to follow patterns, see this article about mobile phone usage for an example of how predictable we tend to be. Read more… |
Building a metadata schema
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A year ago I was involved in a major restructure of 7 major websites. Each had a new taxonomy and controlled vocabulary created. A clear vision of the direction of each site was drawn up and site maps and wireframes produced. The one problem we had, was there wasn’t a generic metadata schema that was adhered to. It was a combination of ad hoc, legacy tags. Some originated from the SEO team and some from the developers and database administrators on each site. |
Optimising images to ensure findability
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Tagging images at source enables a standard to be reached when all images are used during a production process, both for print and online. If they are tagged properly, valuable metadata can be captured inside the JPEG file that can be read by applications later, either on or off line. Read more… |
Design principles for building user engagement
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Luke Wroblewski – Content Page Design Best Practices One of the talks at the IA Summit was by Luke Wroblewski, author of two books and various resources published on his site. If you can see/hear the presentation at this location, I would urge you to do so. There will be something in there I have missed! The content he shared, was an insightful window into how we design pages and how the business requirements of a page may actually work against it. It really reminded me about the mechanics of persuasion, and he highlighted some insights explicitly. The following observations were made by Wroblewski. Read more… |
Being that UX team of one
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Leah Buley – How to be a UX team of one If there was an award for the most enthusiastic and passionate speaker I think Leah Buley would take it.Her presentation, How to be a UX team of one was a real hit, at the recent IA Summit in Miami. Anything with cartoons immediately gets my vote. It was engaging and inspirational with the hand drawn elements serving to convey the speaker’s personality and it was a refreshing change to the usual slides. Read more… |
IA convergence and emergence
 Andrew Hinton (Inkblurt) – |
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Ok a bizarre word to start off with. That grabbed the attention and yes, the talk covered links. But it was more about an explanation of IA, and as Hinton stated, ‘moving the conversation about it forward’. From the start Hinton mentions emergent theory and I think that’s a very good place to start. If you look at the practice of Information Architecture it is very much in an emergence. It is only as old as web design itself. |
IA and its changing general dynamics
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Mathew Milan – The Information Architect and the Fighter Pilot
If you click the image to the left you will go to a response to the presentation by Mathew Milan, that contains the presentation slides with audio and numerous comments from readers beneath it. From my point of view this was the most thought provoking of the presentations because it touches on elements of my design education, that of reflective practice. But it is really important because of the ramifications of Milan’s observations, and the ensuing discussions… |
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Raising hackles at the IA Summit 2008
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Jared Spool: Journey to the centre of Design Jared Spool’s opening keynote was perhaps deliberately inflammatory. If you go into a room of IAs and say UCD is dead you probably run the risk of losing half the audience within the first two minutes. |
However, provocations aside, Spool raised some important issues that we need to figure out if we are working in a commercial environment where IA and usability are often questioned as being expensive luxuries.
Yahoo! Pattern Library is open for all
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All this talk of recession and the web is currently awash with generosity. After my favourable words about the BBC who gave us a view of their new design language, Yahoo! have decided to go one better and provide their entire pattern library and developer tools for free.
Very kind and of course there is a monetary side to it but the new site is live here and during the day long workshop they gave at the IA Summit 2008 the complete set was given away on a memory key. |
Heuristic usability review checklist
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So you haven’t much time. The client hasn’t any budget. But being a conscientious UX professional you need to ensure that certain criteria are being met on a site that is due for a refresh. What can you do to present a coherent study of its failings, before the management team assign budget? |
Information Architecture 3.0 - Peter Morville
A holistic view of where we have come from and where we are headed was outlined from a founding father of IA. A notable comment was;
‘Iterative design is good but you need a structured method to stop going around in circles.’ Read more…
IA Summit 2008 - Yahoo! Pattern Libraries
 Downtown Miami |
Whilst still getting over the jet lag, today marked the start of the IA Summit 2008 for me, here in Miami. The first day has been excellent in terms of knowledge sharing from the Yahoo team – Erin Malone, Christian Crumlish and Lucas Pettinati. They have also designed templates for wireframing using patterns from the YUI library which will be publicly available very soon. I’m already really impressed by the community spirit exhibited here and there is a great feeling of togetherness and transparency. I will go into the details of what was said in a later post but its going to be a good five days of insight and inspiration. Apart from design patterns, there are loads of other talks I will be attending, I will cover a synopsis review and my take on each one in subsequent posts (that will take me into May no doubt)… |
Managing taxonomies
This post is reflective of the business environment I work in, notably in the B2B publishing sector. However, I feel that all sites would benefit from this approach if they use a site search technology, a CMS and a specialised group of individuals.
Taxonomies on business-to-business websites are industry based around the communities that interact with their content. The problem that many sites find is that the content can evolve and the taxonomy can not adjust to changes in what the content creators produce, or with what advertisers wish to sponsor, with regards to useful popular content. Read more…Tweet
Ambient Findability
I guess you could say this is a meme map of Morville’s observations, research and his ability to see into the future of the trends of Internet based technologies.
Its an interesting, and enlightening, discussion about what we as humans want and need from technology. It seems the text is intended to propagate more discussions and in turn discoveries around the subject of findability and technology. The book certainly makes you think about where we are heading as a society, but also the importance of the products we use and how they become integral to our lives.
Being able to orientate ourselves is a natural human instinct. In the 21st century, findability is a concept that we must ensure is present in the products that are developed (have a look at this great article about its importance just published here on A List Apart).
Its an inspirational read for many reasons, never trying to present answers, but certainly showing the questions that we need to answer if we are to harness the information monster we have created.
You should expect to read something that will present concepts and not case studies or solutions to problems. This book is about the bigger picture and the troubles of information management we face as a society.
Verdict: A philosophical study of where we are, and where we are going that proves Morville is at the forefront of thought leadership when it comes to Information Architecture.
Designing Web Navigation
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James Kalbach succeeds in bringing together the fundamental components that determine great, and not-so-great, user interfaces. The UI itself must always be respected and the author illustrates exactly why in the journey the book takes us on. What the book does is show how this can be achieved, from the past, notably from the present and into the future. The illustrations are in colour (critically important for any design book) and give clarity to the text’s important insights. Read more… |
IA collaboration - two heads can be better
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Two months ago I wrote about a case study, how it was implemented and what the results were. I thought I would go into the detail of the information architecture and how collaboration with my colleague helped us reach a successful conclusion to the project.
I was extremely fortunate to be working alongside a taxonomist, Rachel Hammond. We were sat beside each other and interacted continuously on the same project daily. This made for an extremely good collaborative working environment. |
Concept models explained - Dan Brown from EightShapes at IXDA
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The most popular post on this blog is about concept models and recently Dan Brown talked at the IXDA conference on the subject. He effectively walks through the chapter of his book, giving an in-depth talk on what they are and why you should use them. Its 37 minutes but well worth it, here. |
| I have used concept models for a year on 7 large projects and I personally think they are the most valuable design deliverable. Basically its because all other steps in designing a site fall out from this in-depth analysis.
Some interesting points of note from the talk were about collaboration and buy-in, which are so key to the success of any project. |
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Persuasion Architecture - getting the ROI on IA
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Persuasion Architecture has been around for years, Bryan Eisenberg (and his brother Jeffrey) founded the term and has been successfully establishing it as a concept and a measurable process. However, in a recent post, he states that after 7 years we still must be aware of usability and optimising the user experience. Regardless of the passage of time, sites still struggle to be successful. Read more… |
Living Wireframes using Office Live
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The challenge that faces any design project that uses wireframes is that they can easily be snapshots in time and become static. As soon as they are printed or circulated around a stakeholder group they become a moment in the site development’s life cycle. They often can be made redundant due to forces outside of the design project. This can be a potential point of weakness for this valuable deliverable. |
Visual Language 1.0 - BBC layout guidelines
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Any web designer or IA will find this document really interesting and high value. It makes you thankful for institutions like the BBC who readily share their research with the public. This openness and transparency is really admirable and only possible through public funding. Find out the style and layout properties for the forthcoming BBC web pages here. |
Design Pattern Libraries - cataloguing success
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These serve so many different elements to a website design. To not use them seems a bad mistake. Initially they can help overcome issues about how an element may work on the site. More importantly they clarify the purpose of every element that appears on the page and states the user interaction. |
Wireframes - illustrating design strategy
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The powerful thing about the wire frame is that it removes many emotive aspects of design that will cause division amongst clients. There are no uses of branding , colours or elements of graphic interest on a good wire frame. When they are stripped back to absolute functional essentials it is much easier to explain exactly why key elements are placed in certain areas on the page. |
ComputerWeekly.com- An IA case study
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This was not so much a redesign, or even a relaunch, but more of a resurrection of a site that had become tired, old and ineffective. Its many shortcomings were highlighted with the onslaught of the new generation of sites from competitors that used user-generated content and a more social networking approach to their presentation layer. As this site represented the best of computer related business journalism, it was apt that it should be the company’s first site that underwent a complete overhaul from the ground up. |
Inclusive, collaborative, Agile UCD
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When thinking about how teams work very often there needs to be a person who can become the glue that holds it all together.
A person who can do this has a special talent, not only can they motivate a variety of personalities but they can bring it all together for the common good. They are given the name boundary-spanner in a white paper on the subject (paid for content) by Rizal Sebastien. Read more… |
Concept Models - illustrating business strategy
In his book, Communicating Design, Dan Brown has a chapter devoted to the concept model. Initially I thought that these were little more that an add-on for a web project but after using them for nine months I can safely say they are integral to any new site or redesign. The power of them is largely in their simplicity, nothing more than a few circles and lines, and their ability to communicate without complication. It is this clarity that makes them instantly engaging amongst any group, be they business owners or developers.
It allows a common ground to be reached in terms of a vision for the site or project. It is a mental model and the tangible document between what the IA is thinking and what the rest of the team is wanting to see from the site. Add the users into this and you have the IA basics right there. Essentially the IA basics, it places the user at its core (user needs), the business interfacing with the user and its own objectives (the products’ context) and the actual content that will be produced often in the form of a product (content).
You can also blend in real world statistics to give credence to your thinking, many business owners like to be shown a few figures to back up your arguments and it makes for a more in-depth read.
The great thing is that the client identifies with this A3 colour print, they put it on their wall. It defines where they are heading, its ‘the star to sail their ship by’ as Peter Merholz said recently at dConstruct…
For the IA its also the way we can ensure that user needs are in the fabric of the structure of our site. Not only by persona led taxonomies but by defining areas that users will feel a part of and then creating areas around these zones. By using the model as a basis for site structure, the site map can be spun out fairly rapidly and its presence ensures the user needs, the business goals and content types are never missed in the design process.
I find that this document is the most important in many ways, as it crystallizes the thought processes of a team and defines how a project will be tackled and what the likely outcomes will be. All with the user at the centre of the design process, and that can only ever be a good thing.
See Dan Brown’s presentation at IXDA on the subject here
Metadata - signposts in the wilderness
Peter Morville’s book – Ambient Findability, is as much a philosophical muse as a book about the current state of play in the world of search and the future technologies. What he does say however is that the power of metadata is something that we can not underplay the importance of.
I recently have compiled a Metadata schema for the company I work for. Based on the Dublin Core set of rules for metadata and also the IPTC set for news (and PRISM and MIME for file formats) it endeavors to produce a set of metadata standards that can be used for text, images and video or audio file types. Obviously these days tagging your files is an involved process, how do you go about tagging an image for example, Google have made a game of it here
Tags and folksonomies will always be fraught without a metadata approach that has been thought through and applied systematically. It also underpins a good information architecture. Categorization will be successful when metadata has been carefully considered.
Once implemented finding will become an easy task. Content that has taken time and money to create can now be found, enjoyed and re-purposed. Saving money, increasing productivity and giving the user an enjoyable experience.
Now surely everybody can see the business value in investing in metadata and information architecture??Tweet
Apple.com
Just had a look at the Mac section on Apple’ site and the new slider widget at the top of the page that helps a user see all the products.
This makes me laugh a bit as it seems to be a throw back to the time of frames and horizontal scroll bars.
Wonder why we don’t see horizontal scroll bars on web pages? Oh yes because they go against user screen use, ie although the eye scans down a page and across the screen it somehow feels awkward to do the same with the mouse.
Thanks to David Malouf for making me aware that successful companies with years of design experiences still get things wrong….weird.
The return of the Content Inventory
Luckily I haven’t had to do these for a while as the projects have moved on to the core IA tasks but more about those in the coming weeks.
Content Inventories or Content Audits ( a less detailed look at the physical make up of your site) are time consuming and do take a fair degree of concentration to achieve the end results. They are not fun, they are dull and if you do them make sure you get paid every last penny for the trouble.
Nobody in their right mind would ever do these for amusement (unless they are twisted) but they are so important in gauging what the site is all about and what it has to offer.
An Excel spreadsheet earlier today
The importance of an audit comes out when designing the new structure of a site. It also helps to gain real inside knowledge that not even the site owners may have.
Being the most knowledgeable in the team about the product is never a bad thing and gives you much needed ammunition for future battles. For instance they may be sentimental about an item that rarely gets any traffic, only you will know the facts through analysis of web metrics – the decision to remove the item becomes easy.
Statistics to back up the arguments – evidence based design decisions
You will also see where content is sparse but where traffic may be heading and be able to raise this to the content providers. Some analysis tools also give you overlays of the users’ click behaviour – another great tool for deciding priority of the content.
The main areas covered in a Content Audit are;
- Page ID – Allows future references in documentation to be made easily. The Home page starts with a zero, and decimal from there on in.
- Existing Navigation Category – News, Products or Suppliers for instance.
- Page Description – What is it you are looking at? Is it a News home page, a product listing or a contact page with Vcards?
- Page Elements – What is actually on the page? Name the individual content types. Poll, news article headline, body text, image etc.
- Format – What is the file type? HTML, JPEG etc
- Content Location – Where does the page reside? Use URL string
- Links to – Where does the page link to? USe URL string
- Purpose – What is the point of the page??
- Author – Who created the page
- Publisher – Who published the page
- 3rd Party Content – What external content is served up here
- Traffic – What are the traffic stats associated to the page or section
And that is it. All you have to do now is go through each unique page type and fill out the spreadsheet. Once that is done, you can then create a suggested structure on a new tab.
Compare and contrast with your client group and watch them marvel at your Excel prowess (you will be a master by now) and your irrefutable page analysis and recommendations. All in a (few) days work (or a week for a large site) for an IA. Things only get better from this point on…..
Content InventoriesIA process defined
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After five months, nine different projects and several workshops, presentations and seminars I have finally gathered together several deliverables that define a decent core IA strategy. Of course its based on the three principles of good information design; our users, the context of use and the content that is being served up or requested. |
UX Intensive - Adaptive Path, Amsterdam, June 2007
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Sometimes attending events do nothing more than affirm that you are doing the right thing. That you know a bit about what you do and that there are many like-minded individuals out there who are moving in the same direction.
This event proved all those things but also gave us some excellent food, in an area of Amsterdam that was devoid of drunks, stoners or sex workers. Amsterdam is a wonderful city and the trip reaffirmed that fact. It also provided some great workbooks on design strategy, information architecture and interaction design. I only attended the IA event (my company’s budget too tight to splash the cash on the three day course) but it was well worth it. For an overview, view this UX Intensive page. Chiara Fox did a very good job of outlining IA and all the various facets of the work that it encompasses. There wasn’t any real new news that we could take home but just an affirmation of what we do know. All in all a good trip and money well spent. |
Parts of the Process
I have just completed a four week project on a large computing website and although I am an IA virgin I am happy with the results. My colleague produced the taxonomy and controlled vocabulary and with the help of the polar bear book, Communicating Design and the fantastic Elements of User Experience, I think I am getting to grips with the dark arts of information design.
Its tricky that the more you read the more you feel impelled to produce increasing amounts of deliverables but obviously time and money are deciding factors here. You must strike a balance. This project has produced 9 documents in total. They are, in chronological order;
- Content Inventory
- Information Scheme (requirements gathering)
- Taxonomy
- Controlled Vocabulary
- Navigation scheme
- Wireframe
- Concept Model
- Site Map
- IA Strategy Report
I feel that they are all crucial to produce a design that is truly user centred. They do rely on quality research data and user related deliverables (such as personas) are critical to the quality of output. Persona led taxonomies are what really underpins the structure in this context heavy environment but more of those later….
What is important here is although two of us did the work, many more people helped create the end products. For a successful team you need to collaborate but you also need different skills in the core group. UCD and information science together seems to be the right mix.Tweet
Collaborate or feel the consequences
After reading this article http://www.peterme.com/?p=536 I was somewhat saddened and the also transported back to a time 7 years ago when I was a lowly web designer working for an information architect who headed up our design team.
She was of the opinion that the surface design was all we were good for, our thoughts concerning interaction of the user with the interface was little more than icing on the cake that she had lovingly baked. She was frustrating, she ring-fenced her domain, no colleague or client could get into her information utopia. Don´t get me wrong, we respected and admired her courage and stubbornness. She usually got her way but she never got user centred design.
Back in the room….yes 7 years on and the old problems seem to still be there. There appears to be a disconnect in IA from a UCD approach. Even in the Polar Bear book we have overtones of how UCD is the poor relation to information organisation. I would like to propose we drop this outlook and the reasons are clear. As more people with different ideas contribute to the information mix we will have to embrace the user, put them at the centre of everything we do and allow their behaviour to permeate through our taxonomies. Let our taxonomies become Persona led and multi-faceted.
Just as IA is reaching its highest point it is in danger of falling flat on its face. I emplore it as a discipline to embrace interaction and interface design. Collaboration is the key to its success as we are on the threshold of implementing processes that are solid and enduring.Tweet
Walk before you run
Agile is the buzzword of the moment. It seems odd that so many large organisations are embracing this web methodology without addressing their organizational structure. To be agile after all requires one to be light weight, nimble and free to move quickly. The term is ironic when so many web teams are weighed down by product managers, brand guardians, marketing teams and business owners. All are absolutely necessary but can hinder effective web development if a confused process is followed.
A user centred approach is also a necessity but can be felt as something that gets in the way. ‘Agile’ wants to produce software that a user values, can interact with and use with maximum efficiency. UCD is concerned with a product that the user wants, even before design and build, and it ensures the user moulds the product whilst it is created.
Personally I feel that Agile often misses a trick, it is not a complete process when UCD is not represented during the development sprints. In other words, if a professional with the user or customer in mind is not present at key stages the project will inherit failings.
I do feel that the principle of Agile/Scrum is a sensible solution, the Beta push can not be denied as a cost-effective and impressively quick way to get your product to market. However, if proper user research has not been conducted to verify the purpose of the product, who it is for, how it should work, then it will not fulfil its potential. Only public refinement will occur in the ‘live’ environment. It may take a year before several sprints are complete to revisit a problem noted in a snag list as long as it is complex.
Real, considered, user data through user interviews, persona creation and prototype testing before build will always result in a better product.Tweet
Interface dilemmas
As a designer you want it to look good, the user wants it to work. Is there a happy compromise? Often simplicity is the answer – strip it back to the skeleton and only build in the minimum gloss and sheen. A brand colour, logo and all the whistles and bells – including badly written copy and too many content types will overwhelm and confuse a user.
Without strong direction aligned with the needs of the user, a design will not hit its mark. There is so much in making a good design great. Often it is the research that spurs evidence based decisions and this will do much of the thinking and win most of the arguements about placement of content or interface elements. By being stubborn and telling the right people constantly can change minds. Just ensure you have the evidence to back up your arguements!Tweet
Content Inventories
This hurts! There is no other way to describe your first job as an IA. Mind-numbing and boring but very necessary to establish a starting point for a site redesign. It may take a week to do but the information you gain from the excersise is rich and from it you can make informed decisions about the direction your site will go in.
After doing two I realised how important these are to any refresh or redesign. Structural problems are obvious and the hidden gems in your site are revealed. With the aid of web analytics you can see the most popular areas. With search logs you can see how a user finds your information. This can also be the basis for your controlled vocabularies once your taxonomy has been created. Use social bookmarking sites to note the tags your user’s are compiling and that you are reflecting the language they are speaking.
Whatever you think about the hard slog of doing a content inventory – stick with it. It probably will be the best research time you spend in getting your site the redesign it deserves.Tweet
