creating Usable eXperiencesAndreas Johansson | Ericsson AB

Program-mer

Designer

Ericsson (BSS, M-

Commerce)

UX strategy

Andreas

› Why is UX important?› Between December 1993 and December 2004, the UK Design Council

tracked the share prices of publicly quoted companies that performed well in a number of design awards. The Council found that design-aware companies out-performed the FTSE 100 and FTSE All Share indexes by more than 200 percent.

› Why is UX important?› Inspired by the UK Design Council report, a Canadian design agency created the UX

Fund in 2006. Criteria were that the company cares about design, possesses a history of innovation, inspires loyalty in their customer base and fosters a positive user experience.

› They invested $50,000, with the original intent to sell after one year. In that year, the fund matured 39.3%. Four and a half years later, the fund had matured +101.8%.

› Why is UX important?› In short, leading UX companies outperform the rest of their market by far. › In other words: Take notes for your stock portfolio…

So what is UX then?

Usefulness Usability Branding

User needs

Business needs

FontsColors

Inter-action flows

Adhere to conventions

User-centered instead of

object-centered

Among others

…

UX without user research is not UX

Worry about designing the right product first, then designing the product right

Competitor analysis

Usefulness

Business model

Business needs

User research

Support channels

Analytics

User feedback

Then I need…

As a user I want to achieve the following…

First I need…

Goal!

Design for three things

Design for 0 data1

2

3 Design for error handling

Design for the “happy path”

› User’s mental model vs implementation model› Might not be the same terminology in back-end compared to front-

end› Might not be the same flow and relations between objects in the

front-end compared to the back-end› In fact, 99% of the time they are different

UX without user testing is not UX

› “Classic” user testing › User testing (simplified explanation) is basically when you get a hold of some

representative users of your product and ask them to perform representative tasks using the product. You then observe the users doing so and learn where they succeed/have difficulties with the product.

› User testing can be a very lean and cost-efficient activity; The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.

› Perform user testing as early as possible› Ideally on paper prototypes› Doing so lets you fix UX issues before you waste money implementing something that

doesn't work (and which you “won’t have time” to perform user testing on anyway)› Performing “bad” user testing is better than performing no user testing at all› Performing user testing with one user is better than performing no user testing at all

› What about automated testing & UX?› As part of research made in this area around 2012, it was estimated that it’s

possible to automate ~35-40% of usability guidelines from usability.gov overall

› Same idea can of course be applied in other UX-related areas, e.g. branding and accessibility… It all depends on the context!

› http://usabilitygeek.com/mainstreaming-web-site-usability-through-automated-usability-evaluation/

Sometimes the best way to end a meeting where assumptions are being

made is to state, “Let’s test it!”

UX Resources

› Web sites› http://www.goodui.org/ › http://ux.stackexchange.com/› http://www.nngroup.com/› http://uxmag.com/› http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

› Books› Don't Make Me Think!: a Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug› The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper› The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman› Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions by Theresa Neil› Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring by Stephen Few› Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski

Thanks!And remember, UX is not UI