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.
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. |
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. |
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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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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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. |
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. |
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… |
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
