ux survival guide
TRANSCRIPT
the
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
Need Validation Storyboard
Need Validation Storyboard
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
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
Paper Prototypes
Paper Prototypes
Paper Prototypes
Paper Prototypes
Paper 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
Interactive Prototypes
Interactive Prototypes
Interactive Prototypes
Lots of Interactive Prototyping tools
Indigo Studio
UX Pin
Invision App
Interactive Prototypes
Justinmind
Proto.io
Axure
Application Prototypes
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?
Application Prototypes
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