Rob Grady » User Experience

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