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User-Centered Design – and its mindset of bringing users into the design process – exists to reduce gaps between who is creating a product and who is using it. UX is about closing the gap between people.

uxdesign.cc

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Facebook Hackathon

Water is part of life. Drowning shouldn’t be. Let’s empower communities to be safer all round.

RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and Facebook organised a hackathon where we - the female attendees - came up with ideas to tackle water safety issues in the UK and around the world.

The four core themes of the day were:

 How can we help people survive if they get into trouble in the water? 🌊

How can we improve the safety of locations close to the water? 👷

How can we encourage people to behave safely when near the water? 🚶

How can we work with lifesaving, charities or other partners to tackle global drowning? 🚤

I was interested in addressing the last challenge from the list (4.) and teamed up with another 5 ladies to discuss the topic and come up with possible solutions. We established that a current problem is that RNLI does not have a systematic approach to collect data from international, local communities. In many cases the causes of the fatalities are not documented and there are no appropriate actions taken, so that such situations are prevented in the future. In addition, there is no adequate education in local communities ensuring that people know the potential risks and are aware of the danger.

We’ve learnt that RNLI recruits the co-called ‘Future Leaders’, who are local volunteers and who are in close contact with their communities. They are individuals trained by RNLI and have developed skills to build and manage effective lifesaving services in their own countries.

Our proposed solution was a chatbot used by Future Leaders to collect data, which also identifies areas of opportunity and suggests relevant actions. That way we are able to collect data on habits & behaviors, causes of fatalities and danger areas in a centralised system, as well as offer appropriate training and education materials. 

A possible scenario would be:

“Ann is a Future Leader with RNLI, she is from Vietnam and volunteers for her local community to help save lives in the water. She has learnt about a few kids recently drowning in a close by village. Ann goes to interview the relatives of the victims to learn more about what happened. With the help of the RNLI chatbot Ann can record her findings and request advice on what are appropriate next steps. The chatbot inputs the data to the RNLI international system, which could inform the organisation on danger areas. It will enable RNLI to have a better understanding of the causes and plan how to prevent such incidents in the future. The bot advices Ann that she could schedule sessions in the local school, so she raises awareness among the kids and trains them how to be more careful around the water. It provides the necessary materials for Ann to carry on the session.”

And that’s just one scenario. Imagine all the opportunities the RNLI chatbot could bring to help save more lives each year. 

[sia-georgieva]

The Four Big Don’ts of Mobile App Usability

Don’t copy UI elements between platforms. It may seem like a good idea to ensure that your iOS and Android and Windows apps all look exactly the same but each platform has a defined look and feel. These lead to users developing clear pictures of the conventions associated with that platform. If you change the UI to resemble a different platform; it doesn’t benefit the user it leaves them unclear as to how to proceed.

Don’t use underlined URL links. The underlined URL is part of a different model of online interaction – it belongs in websites that are accessed via browsers. Mobile apps don’t work that way, they rely on buttons to signify a change in screen as opposed to a link which takes you to a different page. Google adds a corollary to this rule too – don’t hard code links because they need to be manually changed and broken links spoil the user experience.

Don’t take users to browsers. You want to keep an app user inside your app and not send them elsewhere. Sending them to a browser risks them not returning to the app and provides a “clunky” user experience. If you must call their attention to some content online – use a browser within your app to deliver that content; don’t send the user elsewhere.

Don’t demand an instant rating in the app store following download. If you want good ratings for your apps, you have to give the user some time to get used to it and to appreciate the experience. You should be asking regular repeat users for ratings not those that have just installed the app. They’ll be certain to give you better reviews and reviews with a higher level of content.

Text source: Interaction Design Foundation, Mobile User Experience (UX) Design

Image source: Mobile App UX Principles, Google

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Rapid beard prototyping (quick and dirty)

It was Rich’s birthday, and we were told he hates to celebrate. So it was a perfect reason to actually celebrate. We decided not to embarrass him too much so we kept it within the CX team.

Kulvin said “Shall we all wear fake beards? Or is that weird.” I mean….how could it possibly be weird… and I was on it.

google search -> “beard cut out”

Printed one quickly and cut it - that was my first prototype. It was the proof of concept stage, so I took a picture (secretly in the loo) and sent it to the others. They loved it!

I then continued developing the concept and added strings on the sides so we could all tie the beards on. Of course, I tested the prototype with a user and found out that I need to create better support around the edges where the mouth and the strings go, as the paper was ripping apart. I added masking tape to the problematic area and covered it with black marker where needed. Boom it was ready (or at least an MVP version).

I had no time and needed to move on. I printed more copies, added strings to them and support on the edges.

We then ran into a meeting room, quickly decorated it and of course put a candle on top the princess cake Sherrie has got for him. We sat waiting quietly and giggling at each other.

I have to say he was quite impressed with the whole setup and our ability to keep the whole operation top secret.

Great fun and certainly worth the effort. Best part was trying to stuff the cake through the small hole. Next iteration will focus on solving this slight issue and perhaps some visual improvements on the beard itself.

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Amit sharing insights on how to organise your art boards in sketch. Everyone is mind blown! But sorry info only available for #UXD29 #highlyconfidential #topsecret #shhh

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IoT challenge

I took part in a competition where the brief was to come up with an idea for a physical connected product that solves an everyday problem for a consumer or a business. The winner would get their product prototyped. My two ideas were:

1) Wearable for people with diabetes 

Problem - today 415 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes, expected to grow to 642 million by 2040.

Solution - a wearable wristband that keeps track of your blood sugar level at all times.

• Sensor technology measures sugar levels in the blood, no need for blood sample as it measures through the skin (the technology already exists).

• When critical level is about to be reached (either very high or low) notifies you and recommends what’s the appropriate action.

• You can check real time if you could consumes specific food/drink e.g. you are really craving a Sneakers, you search the database of products (or scan the barcode of the product, it measures and tells you you if it’s ok to have this exact product at this exact time based on your sugar level.

• Hi-fives you when you are doing well and encourages you to keep your sugar level balanced.

• Parents could use to monitor children health.

2) Vertical farm

Problem - today 1/3 of food is lost during production or wasted at the retailer and  consumer level. Food is transported long distances leading to:

⁃ High CO2 emissions

⁃ High costs

⁃ Need to freeze so it looses its nutrients

⁃ Use of preservatives and additives (which are ultimately making us sick).

Solution

A vertical farm in the city. Sensors give information to a control system about how much light water and nutrients the plants need. Growing most productive crops all year round and reducing food loss. Fresh nutritious food is distributed to people in close proximity, with very low CO2 output.

In order to eliminate waste the farm delivers straight to the customer (no middleman). Consumer data helps the farm make more accurate production estimates. Growing food on demand.

I had 1 minute to pitch each idea (hence the concise format above) in front of around 50 people. I didn’t win but for me the process of coming up with these connected products was very awesome. With the research I’ve done to prepare, I’ve learned a lot about the IoT space and what to expect very soon! I have a Nest at home and really enjoy using it. One thing I don’t like though is the scheduling within the app, so my next challenge is to redesign it. 

[sia-georgieva]

Hack the Senses Hackathon

“During this 3-day event we will seek to prototype new devices and applications that tweak, extend and augment the reach and power of our senses. We will provide equipment for participants to use, such as sensors, microcontrollers, cameras, AR/VR kit and biometric data collection devices.”

Over the 3 days another 4 guys and I took on the challenge to create a VR environment that represents brain activity recorded with EEG. We wanted to show human emotions through visualisation and sound.

The process:

1) Stimulus - playing a video to a participant, which consistent of a very calm meditative images and sounds, followed by dynamic & violent visuals, and at the end giving the participant to smell a strong freshly brewed coffee. 

2) EEG - we recorded their brain activity through sensors to identify if / how the different stimulus through various senses would affect the brain waves. 

3) Data - the processed values were streamed live for audio and visual processing.

4) Magic - using the magic hands of our tech team members...

5) VR - we created a VR environment, which was feeding the data from the EEG sensors.

The result:

We’ve managed to record brain waves, which feed data straight into a VR environment. The data transforms into visualisation, which initially was supposed to look like the Northern lights but due to the limited time ended up being a sun-like sphere, changing colours depending on what data was coming through the sensors. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the sound to work but hey we already had a lot on our plate with the visuals. 

During the presentation we were streaming a live demo of the prototype happening in the room next door. We had a participant watching the ‘stimulus’ video who was wearing the EEG sensors, and one of the judges was being able to see what’s going on in his mind through the VR set. The colours of the sun kept changing as the video was going through the different stages of calm-violent images and sounds. Here are our slides.

We won second place! $500 Intel Code for Good prize, along with a design workshop with IDEO senior designer Tim Bouckley.

It was a pretty awesome weekend!

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Fuck drop downs. 

Love that talk from SXSW http://www.fuckdropdowns.com/

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Check out

Farmdrop has a pretty cool check out process. 

Steps were easy to complete and overall functionality works well. I like how you are notified if certain items are not available on particular days, and how you could easily edit your basket throughout the steps. 

Nice and simple order summary that allows for various info to be amended (including basket, delivery day, time slot, address, payment, etc.)

Visual design looks good and ux is ace. 

[sia-georgieva]

Filter

I’ve recently been working on improving the filter of a well known electronics company website. Turned out, probably not too much of a surprise, that most users prefer left hand side vertical filter. The left hand filters were clearly identified and utilised by many users in a very natural way when they entered the page.

Horizontal option only works well for industries and site types that naturally have few filters 3-8, and there are several issues with horizontal filters, including access if the feature is not sticky, and overview of filter options as most sections expand individually without context to other filters.

Vertical left hand side filter on the other hand is used by most of the pages that use filtering, so users are used to this particular placement, resulting in a more intuitive experience.

A lot of major retailers utilise this method on desktop, particularly where large quantities of products or results need to be filtered down. This offers one of the best functional executions, but can be visually dominant on the page.

In both horizontal and left hand side filter options, mobile filter is replaced by a button, which expands the filter options as laid over or full screen. With a full screen approach, it can be difficult to communicate when the results list is updated. This is an issue which is sometimes solved with partial screen overlays.

[sia-georgieva]

Working on creating a new style guide and found a few good examples.

http://style.import.io/

http://styleguide.mailchimp.com/

https://marvelapp.com/styleguide/

https://www.lightningdesignsystem.com/

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Mailchimp - If you click MailChimp’s high five hand too much, the hand will start turning red.

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Turn off wi-fi to access our mobile site. This 100% makes no sense.

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Apart from the genius idea, that I call a cool website http://www.gelinaz.com/

@gelinaz

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These two gifs on Instagram new logo made me laugh so much. 

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I’m renovating my flat and constantly coming across websites that just don’t work. Here the only way to scroll up and down to see the products is by pressing the little arrows. It’s taking ages and it’s super annoying.