Rob Grady » User Experience

Christian Watson’s Elements of Design Showcase

Rob — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 03:15:10 +0000

Christian Watson has put together a Design Showcase with over 70 different elements. It’s a great reference when brainstorming and wireframing.

NextAutos.com launches

Rob — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:29:42 +0000

After many months and countless hours of hard work we’ve finally launched NextAutos into the wild. An evolution of Winding Road Magazine, NextAutos is a new site for automotive enthusiasts. More to follow but thanks to everyone from nFusion and Rain City Studios for bringing it together.

Q and A with Luke Wroblewski

Rob — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:07:47 +0000

Design Sessions has a good interview with Luke Wroblewski. In particular, I thought the following passages were very interesting:
“Q: How do you know when a design is successful? How does your definition of success relate to usability, technology, and art?
Luke: A site is successful when it achieves the goals you set for it. I know that’s a simplistic way of looking at things, but there are so many considerations that impact user experience: findability, usability, desirability, accessibility, credibility, technology, etc. Focusing on any one of these as a measure for success may cause you to lose track of the big picture.
As an example, I hear a lot of designers complaining about the design of eBay. They point to a cluttered home page and dated aesthetics. Granted, these could be improved, but looking at these factors alone ignores the broader impact of the eBay service. eBay is the 30th largest economy in the world. 700,000 people make their full time living selling on eBay. Individual sellers can reach a global audience of millions from their home using it. If you compare those metrics against eBay’s goal of creating a level playing field for sellers of all sizes, and thereby truly democratizing commerce, the service is actually a huge success of which the design is no small measure.
Unfortunately, we lack an effective way to evaluate designs of this significance. So instead, critics focus on what they know best: aesthetics. Until we develop a better way of judging interaction designs that manage things like global economies or communities, we’ll continue to define success with visual design awards, which is unfortunate because only a portion of my time is spent making things pretty - most of it is spent making experiences that are useful, usable, and more desirable.”

“Q: Do you consider visual design and usability to be two separate disciplines? If so, where do they meet, or how do you bridge the gap?
Luke: The visual design of a website bears the responsibility of communicating the possibilities, limitations, and state of interactions. It tells users what they are seeing, how it works, and why they should care. The better at communicating we are, the easier it is for our users to use and appreciate the websites we design.
However, the wrong message may be sent to users when visual elements are applied without an understanding of the underlying interactions they are meant to support. Visual styling that obscures or clouds crucial interaction options, barriers, or status messages can have a significantly negative impact on user experience.
You can think of visual design as the ‘voice’ of interaction design and information architecture, and therefore directly responsible for the usability of a website.
Now I don’t think that means usability & visual design are the same discipline, but there is certainly a symbiotic relationship between the two. Bridging the gap between them requires an understanding of that relationship and its impact on the final design of a product.”

Problem Solving and Problem Setting

Rob — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 08:06:35 +0000

I’m currently reading Sketching User Experience by Bill Buxton and he does a great job illustrating the critical difference between problem setting and problem solving in the product design process. He points out, “problem setting can be characterized by the question, ‘What is the right thing to build?’ and problem solving answers the question of ‘How do we build this?’”

Too often we find ourselves, clients and colleagues in the position of problem solving when we should be problem setting. Especially in the process of developing websites, you’ll find folks on a ‘technology high’ and dazzled with new technologies. You’ll hear quotes like “We would like to make it web 2.0″ or “It would be cool if we could use ajax.” While this can be amusing and cause for jest (SC), it’s actually backwards. As Buxton says, “get the design right and the right design.”

Great article on sharing UX with the team

Rob — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:27:46 +0000

Great UX team article on UXmatters.com by Pabini Gabriel-Petit. The article does a great job outlining real world problems such as ‘throwing docs over the fence‘, the discrete discipline roles and how they should work together. While organizational roles differ by organization, I’ve found that the more disciplines represented in the process, the more innovative the UX solution. As Scott Berkun notes in The Myths of Innovation great innovations build on others work and collaboration.

The rise of the Web Strategist

Rob — Sat, 26 May 2007 09:13:51 +0000

Jeremiah Owyang has a good podcast discussion with Steve Gehlen Steve Gehlen on the state of the Web Strategy Industry about the growth of the web strategist role. While I don’t think anyone who is a “decision maker and stakeholder of a website” is a web strategist, it is interesting to consider the lineage of the role. As noted in the podcast, the role has grown from both IT and marketing disciplines depending on the organizational, most professionals got their Today, the web strategist is generally a hybrid who may have started their career from a number of different disciplines including:Business Analyst, Project Manager, Product Manager, Developer, Visual Design, Advertising among many others.In my career I’ve formally and informally been a project manager, technology product manager, front-end developer, business strategist as well as a user experience architect. While it may seem somewhat schizophrenic it’s been educational, fun and it’s made me a generalized specialist on the web side. While I openly admit that I lean toward software product management and user experience design, I’ve gained an understanding and appreciation of multiple disciplines and their interaction. One of the biggest challenges today is finding web strategists.Given the required breadth of knowledge for a web strategist, it is often easier to grow them than find them. If you can find an individual who has a background in one of the core areas and is passionate about technologies and has a desire to learn, you may be better off. While most folks won’t excel in all areas, providing the right people with different areas for growth keeps them interested and helps grow the organization. Having people with multi-discipline experience can help bridge the gap between disciplines.As Jeremiah and Steve discussed, the great divide between IT and Marketing is slowly being bridged as ‘Web Groups’ are beginning to emerge as core organizational departments. Organizations and the role of the web strategist will continue to evolve as web technologies continue to grow and take on increasingly important functions.

Great Article on Color (or Colour)

Rob — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 21:06:50 +0000

Mark Boulton does a great job of explaining color theory basics.

Five Simple Steps to designing with colour part 2: A few basics : Journal : Mark Boulton

Interaction Design Books

Rob — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:29:14 +0000

Great list of interaction design books from Luke Wroblewski. I have most of them on my shelf and need to set aside some time to finish reading a few of them

Post-UX 2006 Thoughts

Rob — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:23:09 +0000

As UX 2006 finished up (for me) yesterday, it certainly exceeded my expectations. It’s important to consider since there are organizational expectations that I will ‘learn something’ and subsequently ‘apply’ this to organizational initiatives as well as ‘teach’ these learnings to others. To evaluate it, I consider the conference on a number of levels including: Speakers, Relevance, Takeaways, and People from the perspective of a Product Manager and a User Experience Designer.

The speakers were great. The two tracks allowed me to pick the sessions that would be most appropriate for me. As a product manager who is responsible for managing the user experience, I come at it with a business bend. The sessions outlining the business value were a good refresher for the business side and it had been a few years since I heard NPV (net present value). Most of the topics were relevant and I definitely had some good takeaways from the sessions that I can apply. The people I met were terrific and it is always beneficial to have the discussions with folks who are as passionate about the topic as I am.

As I went through the seminar, I began to think about what would make this experience more tangible, more of a practical learning experience. I have to write up my notes immediately after the seminar so I have artifacts to jog my aging memory. What might be very cool for the good folks at Adaptive Path to consider is taking a day and break the attendees out to work on a ‘practical’ project for a non-profit.

Each team could work with a facilitator to come up with a topical deliverable. While it would certainly would be a challenge to come up with a discrete deliverable in a day, it would be very cool if it could be used for a practical purpose. If time is a factor, perhaps it could be an ‘on-going’ project. That would let team members continue their contact beyond the conference.

Web 2.0 Next Generation Presentation Notes

Rob — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 10:47:24 +0000

Great presentation this morning by Jeffrey Veen on designing the next generation web apps. He used the Garrett framework as a reference to examine how the next gen apps. With all the buzz around 2.0 it has been a challenge to put it in an applicable context. Some of the key takeaways:

As Jeff points out there have always been economic booms and busts. Web 2.0 is no different and there will be an adjustment. I don’t know if it is on the scale as the previous boom but there will be failures.
In the ‘Surface’ layer, the real change is providing users the ability to control the data. Good point, with sites such as Kayak.com the focus is providing the users with the ability to manipulate the data.
Today, trust in the site is more important than ever. Research shows that users determine trust based on the first impression. While the example he gave demonstrated Home Pages, we need to be focusing on the deep pages to test for trust.
Web 2.0 technologies support the basics such as Discoverability, Recoverability, Context, and feedback. We should be focusing on using the tools in this capacity.
Technology has become a commodity and it is much cheaper to develop apps. I would extend this and say the agile methodology has made the process more efficient and reduces the development cycle.
The ‘amatuerization’ has more people participating

Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps

? ? Web 2.0

ï ? How do boom and bust cycles work
ï ? They are normal
ï ? Web 2.0 Meme map
? ? Surface

ï ? Everyone has an opinion
ï ? Add metadata to take from Data and create Information
ï ? Use visual design to enable users to control their own data
ï ? Use to give users control of data
? ? Building Trust is critical

ï ? Visual Appeal
ï ? Cognition and Emotion
ï ? Halo Effect
ï ? Don Norman: Emotional Design
ï ? BJ Fogg: Persuasive Technology
? ? Skeleton

ï ? Allow users to explore without the penalty of navigation
ï ? Make mistakes easy and lightweight
ï ? Ajax, “Roller skates for the web”
ï ? Make sure you can support the
? ? Ajax and Interaction Design
? ? Discoverability (Finding stuff easier)

ï ? Suggest features
ï ? Careful to innovate around key features
? ? Recoverability

ï ? Actions should be without cost
ï ? Catch errors before it happens
? ? Context
ï ? Upload Example
? ? Feedback

ï ? How the system responds
ï ? Yellow fade effect
? ? Structure

ï ? The way we organize the data
ï ? Tagging (Experience as Architecture)
ï ? Create the container for the experience (Flickr)
? ? Scope

ï ? Commoditization
? ? Old Problems, New Platform,
? ? Participation
ï ? Changing the way an industry work

ï ? Mashups
? ? Your site is one piece
ï ? You play well with others
? ? Amateurization

ï ? An architecture of participation
ï ? Internet blogs changes journalism (Rather)
ï ? Powerful tools in the hands of amateurs
ï ? Weblogs fix the inefficiences traditional publishers are paid to overcome and in a oworld where publsishing is that efficient, it is no longer an activity worth paying for
? ? Show users how to be an expert: Use the tools

ï ? Flyspy
ï ? Farecast
ï ? Most won’t lose too much given the reduced cost
? ? Strategy

ï ? www.veen.comónextgen.pdf