and the oscar goes to...a case study in ux strategy
TRANSCRIPT
9/24/11
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And the Oscar Goes To…
A Case Study in UX Strategy
Tonya McCarley & Wendi Strang-Frost
For the BEST UX Prototype Video….
EVER
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The BEST UX Prototype Video
• What is this prototype video? • Why were we asked to create it? • What strategies were employed?
– Using strategy to provide balance – Being strategic with our process
• What was the outcome of the video? • Share the lessons we learned
The Ask
Create an interactive prototype demonstrating how Books will be added into the current JSTOR journal structure to be presented to an important external audience in 6 weeks.
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Deer in the Headlight Moment
• How were we going to manage this “Ask”???? – Crazy deadline – Informal “fuzzy” requirements – Teammates who were literally strangers – A requirement to use a new technology – And have this polished enough to be presented to very important stakeholders at a major conference
The Solution
• Be as strategic as possible • Pull every UX rabbit out of our hat
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Be Strategic as Possible
• Beware of the PITS syndrome – Using informal check-‐ins as a mechanism of checks and balance
– ConSnually challenging each other and the product manager to push us to a reasonable point of risk
– Being willing to dream, yet keeping it real
Pulling Rabbits out of the Hat
• What does this prototype really need to be? – Some requirements
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Taking it to the next level
• Increasing the level of fidelity
Wrangling the List
• Using an informal card-‐sort exercise to categorize a looooonnnng list
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Mapping it out
• Laying out the pages as they were finished to validate the user flow and look for missing interacSons
Check ins, check ins, check ins
• Keeping the lines of communicaSon open • Repeatedly inviSng stakeholders to review work
• InviSng stakeholders to push us further
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We need to make it feel real
• Learning Flash Catalyst to provide the feeling that this prototype is real
Faking the results
• We needed to be able to show the results of the search, but we didn’t have any data
• Asking our stakeholder to call in favors to get data to create search results that felt real
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Our Final Product
<show video> *not available unSl acer 9-‐18-‐2011
Lessons Learned • What Worked?*****
– Extreme collaboraSon • Access to Product Managers • Pairing with an SME
– Real-‐Sme changes in response to feedback – PM trust in team & responsiveness to feedback
*****We got really lucky that we worked so well together
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Lessons Learned
• What Made it Harder? – Learning and using new socware
• New socware incompaSbility across systems • Pulling in new team member for video ediSng • Missing fonts across systems • Churn due to learning new socware
– Key stakeholder not involved unSl the end – Offsite collaboraSon issues
Questions?
Tonya McCarley [email protected]
Wendi Strang-‐Frost [email protected]