blue ticket to ride

user experience and design research: quick and dirty methods, evangelism, and inspiration

[bluetickettoride]

Sketchnotes by Craighton Berman from SXSW. 

[bluetickettoride]

In an age of information overload, information discovery — the service of bringing to the public’s attention that which is interesting, meaningful, important, and otherwise worthy of our time and thought — is a form of creative and intellectual labor, and one of increasing importance and urgency. A form of authorship, if you will.

One of the most magical things about the Internet is that it’s a whimsical rabbit hole of discovery — we start somewhere familiar and click our way to a wonderland of curiosity and fascination we never knew existed. What makes this contagion of semi-serendipity possible is an intricate ecosystem of “link love” — a via-chain of attribution that allows us to discover new wonderlands through those we already know and trust.

~Brain Pickings

[bluetickettoride]

What is curation? Or, more properly phrased (according to Dan Brown, curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum), what is curating?

Here are some digestible notes toward a definition from Noah Brier, co-founder at Percolate:

A way to create content in a very lightweight way. . . a hybrid publishing model: combining third party content with original thinking to create something bigger.

via Laughing Squid

[bluetickettoride]

Dan Brown on self-awareness for designers

“Designers should have self-awareness. They should intimately understand not only their strengths and weaknesses, but other aspects of their personalities and preferences that impact their projects." Ask yourself:

What’s the most effective way for me to get feedback?

How much time do I need to dedicate to brainstorming?

What cadence of design and delivery suits my style?

How much control do I need to have over a project?

How quickly can I adapt to new circumstances?

Are you a big-picture person or a details person?

How dogmatic are you about techniques and methods?

How comfortable are you performing with less than optimal inputs?

via http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/03/soft-skills-for-ux-designers.php

[bluetickettoride]

What to prepare, and how to connect collocated team members. 

via @boltpeters

[bluetickettoride]

By adapting a card-sorting exercise, a user research method often used to understand how people categorize and group options on a website, my team was able to prioritize user goals for a registration flow.

First, we generated a list of 15 known user goals based on feedback from customer-facing teams (account managers and business development folks). I stuck each goal on an index card and, during a recent participatory design session, gave each participant his or her own stack with several blank cards included. I then asked them to rank the goals, tossing out any irrelevant ones and adding goals that hadn't been identified. Each person explained his or her choices and I then gave the observation team the chance to ask follow-up questions.

About half the participants not only ranked the goals, but also grouped them into buckets like "essential," "nice to have," and "low priority." The rankings helped my team to identify patterns in user goals and prioritize them. The buckets made it clear to my team that some users think in terms of "deal-breakers." Certain goals need to be addressed together in the presentation of the product in order for the value proposition to be communicated successfully.

[bluetickettoride]

An entertaining riff on Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. Love the presentation of #6: "Wow. . . and WOAH!"

[bluetickettoride]

"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else."

- pablo picasso

[bluetickettoride]

David Kelley encourages designers to apply their skills inside organizations and to think about other disciplines and POVs in an organization as constraints - just part of the design challenge to be tackled.

Interesting thoughts, too, on trends in social impact and how that's made things easier for design in some ways.

Only 3 minutes!

[bluetickettoride]

Lest we think only the experts can design and innovate.

The students researched what their peers wanted in terms of school furniture, sketched out their ideas, created 3D computer models and physical mock-ups, and learned about appropriate materials and manufacturing techniques.

This video lets you hear about and see the sketches and prototypes - first on paper and then in 3D - that these 8th graders created to present and test their ideas.

Via The Tools at Schools design education program via  smartplanet 

[bluetickettoride]

"There's only room in one's life for a couple of systems and between Twitter, microblogging, TripIt and one experiment (currently Google+), that's me full :)." 

The takeaway here is not to speculate as to whether this sentiment is shared by the masses (though it would be interesting to know that, too). Rather, it's that products that feel like they take up space in one's life (and are referred to with terminology like 'systems') are perceived to be burdensome. The fact that this person reserves a space for an 'experiment' demonstrates how susceptible they are to competition. Products that are built to solve problems (plenty of those!) and designed well don't feel like they take up space in one's life or that they need to be managed. They feel weightless. 

[bluetickettoride]

[bluetickettoride]

Prepping for user profiles workshop

[bluetickettoride]

One of the most interesting findings called out here:

People say they're more likely to interact with large brands using social location apps.

BUT

People's behavior shows they are more likely to share interactions with small businesses with their friends online. 

And it appears that there is an almost exact inverse relationship here.

[bluetickettoride]

A simplified history of user experience

A Steady Trend:

Human-computer interaction is about paying attention to people and their relationship with computing.

Information architecture is about making things findable.

Interaction design is about making things usable.

Content strategy is about making things meaningful.

Experience design is about making things seamless.

Persuasive design is about making things influential.

The trend goes towards deeper meanings and bigger impacts.

As the design discipline gets better at the basics of understanding and enabling behavior, it moves towards creating meaningful impacts by influencing behavior. But this influence must be built on top of successes in the more basic elements of UX such as good research and seamless usability.

Via Lauren Baxter 

[bluetickettoride]

Women don't like to waste time

Neither do men, but women apparently care about it a lot more: I learned this after watching Amy Jo Kim's GoogleTechTalk on "Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software." The feeling that one is wasting precious time can be a significant barrier to engaging female users in games or products that employ game mechanics. 

One way to lower this barrier is to design the product with a points system that rewards the player. If the points are redeemable, the amount of time spent accruing them often rests better with the conscientious time manager.

[bluetickettoride]

Words with friends, relations, and former roommates

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.  

So said W.H. Auden, and while I'm far from a gaming enthusiast, I see his point.

The folks at Words With Friends (which henceforth I'll refer to as WWF, despite the bizarre connotation) have built a product that's successfully penetrated my "things that will undoubtedly waste my time" filter and got me hooked. These are some of the reasons why the product is valuable to me and why it's engaging:

Intellectually stimulating. Most games feel like a guilty pleasure: you often wish you had those hours of your life back, even if you've played in moderation. WWF, however, engages my analytical and vocabulary skills in a way that's valuable beyond the duration of the game.

A social, not a solitary, pursuit. An abundance of video and online games provide infinite ways to remove yourself from the world of normal social interactions. WWF provides a simple way to move towards people rather than away from them.

Competitive. Of course I want bragging rights over my my sister. And my dad. And my roommate. Duh.

There when you want it, invisible when you don't. Even when I have alerts on to let me know when it's my move, I can play whenever I want to. And so can my friends.

Mimics an aspect of real human relationships. This one is a bit more nuanced, but let me start with the truism that one of the very real and delightful aspects of close relationships is the quality of being able to jump in and "pick up where you left off," no matter how much time has gone by or how much physical space separates you. This is part of the intangible value of WWF and one of the keys to its success. Though it's competitive and creates a very brief interaction, the game mimics the depth, familiarity, and intimacy of a close relationship.

On that note, one of my favorite experiences with WWF has been playing against a young woman whom I babysat from the time she was a toddler until her pre-teenage years. I spent so much time with her and her family that she would occasionally introduce me to strangers as her sister. We now live on opposite coasts and have little in common day-to-day; needless to say, our paths don't cross very often, even with Facebook and so many social tools at our fingertips. It's been wonderful to connect with her on a regular basis via WWF, although presently she's 30 points ahead of me. . .