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UX Survival Guide

Tools & techniques for creating a betteruser experience and reducing uncertainty

Nicholas McClay Usability Team Lead @ Forever

Hi, I’m…

@nickmcclay

My job in a nutshell:

Determine what our users really want

Find out why we haven’t given them that

Do what is needed to change that

Shaolin Kung-Fu

Krav Maga

Certified Bad Asses

We need the Krav Maga of UX…

Building a survival kit

Building a UX survival kit

Triangle of Uncertainty

Not Certain

VeryCertain

Some Certainty

Let’s start here

Not Certain

VeryCertain

Some Certainty

Starts with PeopleMost uncertainty

List of things that aren’t people

Technology or infrastructure

Business concerns or ideology

Features or products

Need Validation

People have problems

Examples of problems

I want to make more money.

I want to be less stressed.

I want to save time.

Terrible Examples of problems, too generic

Real examples of problems

I never graduated high school and can’t find steady employment.

I haven’t taken a vacation in 2 years and my marriage is falling apart.

I can’t do the things I used to love because raising my child is absorbing all my time.

–Tim Ferris

“Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is easier. Don't create a product, then seek

someone to sell it to. Find a market - define your customers - then find or

develop a product for them.”

Need Validation Storyboard

Your Problem Our Solution Your Result

Name of Concept

Storyboard Template

Goals of Need Validation Storyboards

• Do they recognize the problem?

• Do they have boundaries/concerns around your solution?

• Is there urgency or interest in the solution?

Market Research

Like… business stuff?

Social Proof BiasWhen undecided, we tend to follow the patterns

of others

2 Types of Market Research

Market Reports

Competitive Research

What to look for in market reports:

Size of the target market

Demographics of the target market

Emerging patterns and trends

Major competitors and influencers

Where to find market reports?

Consumer Reports

Marketing Intelligence Agencies

Qualified thought leader blogs/articles

Competitive Research

Feature Gap AnalysisWhat products do relative to the competition

Market Space AnalysisWhere products are positioned in the market

relative to each other

Heuristic Product AnalysisWhere products are positioned in the market

relative to each other

• Focused on curating the best blog content into standalone e-books

• re-inventing the self-publishing space

• Buy a book - gift 4 free copies to your friends (because you will anyways)

Low HighHeuristic

Uniqueness

Complexity

Duration

Competitive Research Club

Design Workshop

–Johnny Appleseed

“Creativity is a stepwise process in which idea A spurs a new but closely related

thought, which prompts another incremental step, and the chain of little mental advances sometimes eventually ends with an innovative idea in a group

setting.”

!

"Topic

! !## #

Brainstorming

$!

"Topic

! !## #

Workshopping

The humble sharpie & post-it

Radar Diagram

Abstraction Ladder

Abstraction Ladder

Statement

Why?

Why?

How?

How?

Personas

An archetypical customer profile used for:

•Evaluating feature requirements

•Prioritizing product requirements

•Alignment about user needs within business

What is a Persona?

Customer Interviews

Ethnographic Photography

Relationship Map

Family of Personas

Prototypes

The Role of Prototypes

Quickly validate concept direction

Simulates general user experience and flow between tasks

Identify parts of experience are working poorly

Prototype fidelity

time

real

ism

Paper Prototypes

Application Prototypes

Interactive Prototypes

Paper Prototypes

Advantages of Paper Prototyping

Fast (like less than 30 minutes)

Really high level concept testing

Totally obviously informal and simple

Paper Prototypes

Lots of Interactive Prototyping tools

Indigo Studio

UX Pin

Invision App


Justinmind

Proto.io

Axure

Questions you should ask yourself:

Do we clearly understand our user’s requirements & workflow?

Do we need fidelity to get a realistic response? (projection issues)

Is there anything else we can test faster than building real code?


Next Level of Certainty

Not Certain

VeryCertain

Some Certainty

Shared Understandingbuild certainty with a

Design Radiators

Whiteboards

Wikis are where designs docs go to die…

Chat rooms

Mockups

–Erik D. Kennedy

“I majored in engineering — it’s almost a badge of pride to build

something that looks awful.”

https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeous-ui-part-1-559d4e805cda


Aesthetic-Usability EffectWe perceive things that look nicer as easier to use

Krav Maga of Visual Design:

• https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeous-ui-part-1-559d4e805cda

(Great inspiration for this presentation)


Design Review

Focused presentation

Embrace Curiosity

–Jared Spool

“Good design, when it’s done well, becomes invisible. It’s only when it’s done poorly that we notice it.”

When in doubt Revisit Principles

User Stories

Agile != UX

Minimal Viable Product

Minimal Viable ProductDesirable

“As a _____________ I want to _____________

so that I can ______________”

Not Optional

Also Not-Optional

― Douglas Crockford JavaScript: The Good Parts

“We see a lot of feature-driven product design in which the cost of features is not properly accounted. Features can have a negative value to customers

because they make the products more difficult to understand and use.”

Final Stretch!

Not Certain

VeryCertain

Some Certainty

Style Guides

Styleguide Benefits

Take guess work out of visual design

Easy reuse of existing design work

Can vastly improve front-end development speed

Usability Research

― Erika Hall, Just Enough Research

“As a designer or a developer, you either care about usability, or you’re a

jerk.”

Usability Tweaks

Direct interaction with application

Moderator is NOT the designer/developer

Single moderator in the room, others remote viewing only

Tasks over keywords

- User

“I’ve read all your buttons!?”

Question the questions

Qualitative Research

User Metrics

Quantitative Research

Data driven design

Large scale usage patterns

Testing user assertions against behaviors

A/B testing

Triangle of Uncertainty

Not Certain

VeryCertain

Some Certainty

Forbidden Secret Technique!

Synthesis

@nickmcclay

Thanks!

UX is about making sure your software solves real problems

Download - UX survival guide

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