I mentioned the return of 1950’s/60’s marketing techniques just a day or so ago and then I find:
Win This Book! Designing the Search Experience: The information architecture of discovery by Tony Russell-Rose and Tyler Tate.
Three ways to enter, err, see the post for those.
Why you should try UserTesting.com by Pete Warden.
From the post:
If you’re building a website or app you need to be using UserTesting.com, a service that crowd-sources QA. I don’t say that about many services, and I have no connection with the company (a co-worker actually discovered them) but they’ve transformed how we do testing. We used to have to stalk coffee shops and pester friends-of-friends to find people who’d never seen Jetpac before and were willing to spend half an hour of their life being recorded while they checked it out. It meant the whole process took a lot of valuable time, so we’d only do it a few times a month. This made life tough for the engineering team as the app grew more complex. We have unit tests, automated Selenium tests, and QA internally, but because we’re so dependent on data caching and crunching, a lot of things only go wrong when a completely new user first logs into the system.
Another approach to user testing of your website or interface design.
Re-Introducing Page Description Diagrams by Colin Butler and Andrew Wirtanen.
From the post:
There’s no such thing as a “standard” client or project in a typical agency setting, because every business has its own specific goals—not to mention the goals of its users. Because of this, we’re constantly seeking ways to improve our processes and better meet the needs of our clients, regardless of their unique characteristics.
Recently, we discovered the page description diagram (PDD), a method for documenting components without specifying layout. At first, it seemed limited, even simplistic, relative to our needs. But with some consideration, we began to understand the value. We started looking at whether or not PDDs could help us improve our process.
As it turns out, these things have been around for quite a while. Dan Brown devised them way back in 1999 as a way to communicate information architecture to a client in a way that addressed some of his primary issues with wireframes. Those issues were that, looking at wireframes, clients would form expectations prematurely and that designers would be limited in their innovation by a prescribed layout. Brown’s approach was to remove layout entirely, providing priority instead. Each component of a page would be described in terms of the needs it met and how it met those needs, arranged into three priority columns with wireframe-like examples when necessary. …
Because of its UI context, I originally read this post as a means of planning interfaces.
But on reflection, the same questions of “needs to meet” and “how to meet those needs” applies equally to topics, associations and occurrences.
Users should be encouraged to talk through their expectations for what information comes together, in what order and how they will use it.
As opposed to focusing too soon on questions of how a topic map architecture will support those capabilities.
Interesting technical questions but no nearly as interesting, for users at any rate, as their information needs.
The post also cites a great primer on Page Description Diagrams.
Treat Your Users Like Children by Jamal Jackson.
From the post:
Do you have kids of your own? How about young nieces, nephews, or nephews? Do you spend time around your friends’ children? Is there that one neighbor who has youngsters who makes it a point to disturb you any chance they get? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, then you understand that caring for kids is difficult! Many people would argue that my use of the word “difficult” is a strong understatement. They’d be right!
Young minds are almost impossible to predict and equally hard to control. A parent, or any other adult, can plan out an assortment of ideal procedures for a kid to follow to accomplish something, but it will likely feel like wasted time. This is because kids have no intention of following any form of procedures, no matter how beneficial to them.
Speaking of people with no intention of following any form of procedures, no matter how beneficial those procedures may be, I can’t help but wonder why dealing with children reminds me of the life of a UX professional.
How many hours have you spent toiling away in front of your monitor and notepad, hoping the end result will be to the user’s benefit? If they even bother to proceed as you predicted, that is. In the end, the majority of users end up navigating your site in a way that leaves head-scratching as the only suitable reaction. This is why web users should be treated like kids.
The post is worth reading if only for the images!
But having said that, it gives good advice on changing your perspective on design, to that of a user.
Designing for ourselves is a lot easier, at least for us.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the same a designing an interface users will find helpful or intuitive.
I “prefer” an interface that most users find intuitive.
An audience/market of < 10 can be pretty lonely, not to mention unprofitable.
The Top 5 Website UX Trends of 2012
From the post:
User interface techniques continued to evolve in 2012, often blurring the lines between design, usability, and technology in positive ways to create an overall experience that has been both useful and pleasurable.
Infinite scrolling, for example, is a technological achievement that also helps the user by enabling a more seamless experience. Similarly, advances in Web typography have an aesthetic dimension but also represent a movement toward greater clarity of communication.
Quick coverage of:
Examples of each trend but you are left on your own for the details.
Good time to review your web presence for the coming year.
Mark Needham in Restricting your own learning, references: Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web: Listen to Your Customers not to the HiPPO by Ron Kohavi, Randal M. Henne and Dan Sommerfield.
HiPPO = “…the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO).”
Abstract:
The web provides an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate ideas quickly using controlled experiments, also called randomized experiments (single-factor or factorial designs), A/B tests (and their generalizations), split tests, Control/Treatment tests, and parallel flights. Controlled experiments embody the best scientific design for establishing a causal relationship between changes and their influence on user-observable behavior. We provide a practical guide to conducting online experiments, where end-users can help guide the development of features. Our experience indicates that significant learning and return-oninvestment (ROI) are seen when development teams listen to their customers, not to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). We provide several examples of controlled experiments with surprising results. We review the important ingredients of running controlled experiments, and discuss their limitations (both technical and organizational). We focus on several areas that are critical to experimentation, including statistical power, sample size, and techniques for variance reduction. We describe common architectures for experimentation systems and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. We evaluate randomization and hashing techniques, which we show are not as simple in practice as is often assumed. Controlled experiments typically generate large amounts of data, which can be analyzed using data mining techniques to gain deeper understanding of the factors influencing the outcome of interest, leading to new hypotheses and creating a virtuous cycle of improvements. Organizations that embrace controlled experiments with clear evaluation criteria can evolve their systems with automated optimizations and real-time analyses. Based on our extensive practical experience with multiple systems and organizations, we share key lessons that will help practitioners in running trustworthy controlled experiments.
Not recent (2007) but a real delight and as relevant today as when it was published.
The ACM Digital Library reports 37 citing publications.
Definitely worth a close read and consideration as you design your next topic map interface.
6 Must-See Usability Testing Videos by Paul Veugen.
From the post:
Usability testing. Some people love it, some hate it, many don’t get it. Personally, I think they are the best thing anyone can do to learn from their users. In the same time, they are emotionally exhausting for moderators.
Here are 6 usability testing videos I love. Four serious ones, two not so much.
Just the titles:
Interesting range of usability testing examples.
None are beyond the capabilities of the average web author.
How we read, not what we read, may be contributing to our information overload by Justin Ellis.
From the post:
Every day, a new app or service arrives with the promise of helping people cut down on the flood of information they receive. It’s the natural result of living in a time when an ever-increasing number of news providers push a constant stream of headlines at us every day.
But what if it’s the ways we choose to read the news — not the glut of news providers — that make us feel overwhelmed? An interesting new study out of the University of Texas looks at the factors that contribute to the concept of information overload, and found that, for some people, the platform on which news is being consumed can make all the difference between whether you feel overwhelmed.
The study, “News and the Overloaded Consumer: Factors Influencing Information Overload Among News Consumers” was conducted by Avery Holton and Iris Chyi. They surveyed more than 750 adults on their digital consumption habits and perceptions of information overload. On the central question of whether they feel overloaded with the amount of news available, 27 percent said “not at all”; everyone else reported some degree of overloaded.
The results imply that the more constrained the platform for delivery of content, the less overwhelmed users feel. Reading news on a cell phone for example. The links and videos on Facebook being at the other extreme.
Which makes me curious about information interfaces in general and topic map interfaces in particular.
Does the traditional topic map interface (think Omnigator) contribute to a feeling of information overload?
If so, how would you alter that display to offer the user less information by default but allow its expansion upon request?
Compare to a book index, which offers sparse information on a subject, that can be expanded by following a pointer to fuller treatment of a subject.
I don’t think replicating a print index with hyperlinks in place of traditional references is the best solution but it might be a starting place for consideration.
Listen to Your Stakeholders : Sowing seeds for future research by Tomer Sharon.
From the post:
If I needed to summarize this article in one sentence, I’d say: “Shut up, listen, and then start talking.”
User experience practitioners who are also excellent interviewers know that listening is a key aspect of a successful interview. By keeping your mouth shut you reduce the risk of verbal foibles and are in a better position to absorb information. When you are concentrated in absorbing information, you can then begin to identify research opportunities and effectively sow seeds for future research.
When you discuss future UX research with your stakeholders you want to collect pure, unbiased data and turn it into useful information that will help you pitch and get buy-in for future research activities. As in end-user interviews, stakeholder interviews a word, a gesture, or even a blink or a certain body posture can bias an interviewee and add flaws to data you collect. Let’s discuss several aspects of listening to your stakeholders when you talk with them about UX research. You will quickly see how these are similar to techniques you apply when interviewing users.
Stakeholders are our clients, whether internal or external to our organization. These are people who need to believe in what we do so they will act on research results and fund future research. We all have a stake in product development. They have a stake in UX research.
Tomer’s advice doesn’t require hardware or software. It does require wetware and some social interaction skills.
If you are successful with the repeated phrase technique, ping me. (“These aren’t the droids you are looking for.”) I have a phrase for them that starts with a routing number. 😉
UILLD 2013: Workshop on User interaction built on library linked data (UILLD) Pre-conference to the 79th World Library and Information Conference, Jurong Regional Library, Singapore.
Important Dates:
Paper submission deadline: February 28, 2013
Acceptance notification: May 15, 2013
Camera-ready versions of accepted papers: June 30, 2013
Workshop date: August 16, 2013
From the webpage:
The quantity of Linked Data published by libraries is increasing dramatically: Following the lead of the National Library of Sweden (2008), several libraries and library networks have begun to publish authority files and bibliographic information as linked (open) data. However, applications that consume this data are not yet widespread. Particularly, there is a lack of methods for integration of Linked Data from multiple sources and its presentation in appropriate end user interfaces. Existing services tend to build on one or two well integrated datasets – often from the same data supplier – and do not actively use the links provided to other datasets within or outside of the library or cultural heritage sector to provide a better user experience.
CALL FOR PAPERS
The main objective of this workshop/pre-conference is to provide a platform for discussion of deployed services, concepts, and approaches for consuming Linked Data from libraries and other cultural heritage institutions. Special attention will be given to papers presenting working end user interfaces using Linked Data from both cultural heritage institutions (including libraries) and other datasets.
For further information about the workshop, please contact the workshops chairs at uilld2013@gmail.com
In connection with this workshop, see also: IFLA World Library and Information Congress 79th IFLA General Conference and Assembly.
I first saw this in a tweet by Ivan Herman.
Designing for Consumer Search Behaviour by Tony Russell-Rose.
From the post:
A short while ago I posted the slides to my talk at HCIR 2012 on Designing for Consumer Search Behaviour. Finally, as promised, here is the associated paper, which is co-authored with Stephann Makri (and is available as a pdf in the proceedings). This paper takes the ideas and concepts introduced in A Model of Consumer Search Behaviour and explores their practical design implications. As always, comments and feedback welcome
ABSTRACT
In order to design better search experiences, we need to understand the complexities of human information-seeking behaviour. In this paper, we propose a model of information behavior based on the needs of users of consumer-oriented websites and search applications. The model consists of a set of search modes users employ to satisfy their information search and discovery goals. We present design suggestions for how each of these modes can be supported in existing interactive systems, focusing in particular on those that have been supported in interesting or novel ways.
Tony uses nine (9) categories to classify consumer search behavior:
1. Locate….
2. Verify….
3. Monitor….
4. Compare….
5. Comprehend….
6. Explore….
7. Analyze….
8. Evaluate….
9. Synthesize….
The details will help you be a better search interface designer so see Tony’s post for the details on each category.
My point is that his nine categories are based on observation of and research on, consumer behaviour. A descriptive approach to consumer search behaviour. Not a prescriptive approach to consumer search behaviour.
In some ideal world, perhaps consumers would understand why X is a better approach to Y, but attracting users is done in present world, not an ideal one.
Think of it this way:
Every time an interface requires training of or explanation to a consumer, you have lost a percentage of the potential audience share. Some you may recover but a certain percentage is lost forever.
Ready to go through your latest interface, pencil and paper in hand to add up the training/explanation points?
Psychological Studies of Policy Reasoning by Adam Wyner.
From the post:
The New York Times had an article on the difficulties that the public has to understand complex policy proposals – I’m Right (For Some Reason). The points in the article relate directly to the research I’ve been doing at Liverpool on the IMPACT Project, for we decompose a policy proposal into its constituent parts for examination and improved understanding. See our tool live: Structured Consultation Tool
Policy proposals are often presented in an encapsulated form (a sound bite). And those receiving it presume that they understand it, the illusion of explanatory depth discussed in a recent article by Frank Keil (a psychology professor at Cornell when and where I was a Linguistics PhD student). This is the illusion where people believe they understand a complex phenomena with greater precision, coherence, and depth than they actually do; they overestimate their understanding. To philosophers, this is hardly a new phenomena, but showing it experimentally is a new result.
In research about public policy, the NY Times authors, Sloman and Fernbach, describe experiments where people state a position and then had to justify it. The results showed that participants softened their views as a result, for their efforts to justify it highlighted the limits of their understanding. Rather than statements of policy proposals, they suggest:
An approach to get people to state how they would distinguish or not, two subjects?
Would it make a difference if the questions were oral or in writing?
Since a topic map is an effort to capture a domain expert’s knowledge, tools to elicit that knowledge are important.
Level Up: Study Reveals Keys to Gamer Loyalty
For topic maps that aspire to be common meeting places, there are a number of lessons in this study. The study is forthcoming but quoting from the news coverage:
One strategy found that giving players more control and ownership of their character increased loyalty. The second strategy showed that gamers who played cooperatively and worked with other gamers in “guilds” built loyalty and social identity.
“To build a player’s feeling of ownership towards its character, game makers should provide equal opportunities for any character to win a battle,” says Sanders. “They should also build more selective or elaborate chat rooms and guild features to help players socialize.”
In an MMORPG, players share experiences, earn rewards and interact with others in an online world that is ever-present. It’s known as a “persistent-state-world” because even when a gamer is not playing, millions of others around the globe are.
Some MMORPGs operate on a subscription model where gamers pay a monthly fee to access the game world, while others use the free-to-play model where access to the game is free but may feature advertising, additional content through a paid subscription or optional purchases of in-game items or currency.
The average MMORPG gamer spends 22 hours per week playing.
Research on loyalty has found that increasing customer retention by as little as 5 percent can increase profits by 25 to 95 percent, Sanders points out.
So, how would you like to have people paying to use your topic map site 22 hours per week?
There are challenges in adapting these strategies to a topic map context but that would be your value-add.
I first saw this at ScienceDaily.
The study will be published in the International Journal of Electronic Commerce.
That link is: http://www.ijec-web.org/. For the benefit of ScienceDaily and the University of Buffalo.
Either they were unable to find that link or are unfamiliar with the practice of placing hyperlinks in HTML texts to aid readers in locating additional resources.
Five User Experience Lessons from Tom Hanks by Steve Tengler.
From the post:
Some of you might work for companies that have not figured it out. They might still be pondering, “Why should we care about user experience?” Maybe they don’t care at all. Maybe they’ve lucked into a strange vortex where customers are accepting of unpleasant interactions and misguided designs.
If you’re that lucky, stop reading this article and go buy a lottery ticket. If, on the other hand, you work at any company with a product, website, or application within which a customer might fail or succeed, you should pause to understand how the strategic failings of some (e.g. Research In Motion, Yahoo, or Sony) caused them to be leapfrogged by the vision of others (e.g. Apple, Google).
But delineating the underpinnings of user experience clearly for everyone is not an easy task. There are algorithms, axioms, and antonyms abound. My frequent reference-point is pop culture; something to which folks can relate. I’ve already touched on UX lessons from Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp, but a thirsty person crawling through the desert of knowledge needs more than two swigs, so today’s user experience lessons are five taken from the cannon of Tom Hanks.
Another touchdown by Steve Tengler!
I have seen at least some of the movies (the older ones) that he mentions but his creativity in relating them to UI design is amazing.
I will have to comment and suggest he post lessons based on Kim Kardashian. 😉
Dueling and Design : How fencing and UX are quite alike by Ben Self.
From the post:
The other day I was leaving the office and mentally switching gears from the design work I had been doing all day to the fencing class I was about to teach that night. During my commute, I thought to myself, “It’s time to stop thinking like the end user and start thinking like a fencer.”
Suddenly realizing the similarities between my job and my hobby, I found myself pondering the connections between fencing and UX Design further over the next few weeks. I discovered more parallels than I had expected, although the first thought I had was that the goals are almost completely opposite.
When I am fencing, I want to frustrate my opponent and keep him from accomplishing his goals. When I am designing an interface, I want to encourage the user and help them accomplish their goals. It occurred to me, however, that while the final results are polar opposites, many of the methods used for assessing how best to achieve those opposite ends are actually very similar.
All these years I thought interfaces were designed to prevent me from accomplishing my goals. An even closer parallel to fencing. 😉
Ben does an excellent job of drawing parallels but I am particularly fond of his suggestion that you know your opponent/users. It’s hard work, which is probably why you don’t see it very often in practice.
What other activity do you have that illustrates principles for an interface, communication with others, or other semantic type activities?
Fantasy Analytics by Jeff Jonas.
From the post:
Sometimes it just amazes me what people think is computable given their actual observation space. At times you have to look them in the eye and tell them they are living in fantasyland.
Jeff’s post will have you rolling on the floor!
Except that you can think of several industry and government IT projects that would fit seamlessly into his narrative.
The TSA doesn’t need “bomb” written on the outside of your carry-on luggage. They have “observers” who are watching passengers to identify terrorists. Their score so far? 0.
Which means really clever terrorists are eluding these brooding “observers.”
The explanation could not be after spending $millions on training, salaries, etc., that the concept of observers spotting terrorists is absurd.
They might recognize a suicide vest but most TSA employees can do that.
I am printing out Jeff’s post to keep on my desk.
To share with clients who are asking for absurd things.
If they don’t “get it,” I can thank them for their time and move on to more intelligent clients.
Who will complain less about being specific, appreciate the results and be good references for future business.
I first saw this in a tweet by Jeffrey Carr.
Recent research has demonstrated a difficult-to-read font can reduce the influence of the “confirmation bias.”
Wikipedia on confirmation bias:
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people’s conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in military, political, and organizational contexts.
[one footnote reference removed]
The topic maps consumed by users can either help avoid or reinforce (depends on your agenda) the impact of the confirmation bias.
The popular account of the research:
Liberals and conservatives who are polarized on certain politically charged subjects become more moderate when reading political arguments in a difficult-to-read font, researchers report in a new study. Likewise, people with induced bias for or against a defendant in a mock trial are less likely to act on that bias if they have to struggle to read the evidence against him.
The study is the first to use difficult-to-read materials to disrupt what researchers call the “confirmation bias,” the tendency to selectively see only arguments that support what you already believe, psychology professor Jesse Preston said.
The new research, reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, is one of two studies to show that subtle manipulations that affect how people take in information can reduce political polarization. The other study, which explores attitudes toward a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center site, is described in a paper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
By asking participants to read an overtly political argument about capital punishment in a challenging font, the researchers sought to disrupt participants’ usual attitudes to the subject, said graduate student Ivan Hernandez, who led the capital punishment/mock trial study with University of Illinois psychology professor Jesse Preston.
The intervention worked. Liberals and conservatives who read the argument in an easy-to-read font were much more polarized on the subject than those who had to slog through the difficult version. [Difficult-To-Read Font Reduces Political Polarity, Study Finds]
Or if you are interested in the full monty:
“Disfluency disrupts the confirmation bias.” by Ivan Hernandez and Jesse Lee Preston. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Volume 49, Issue 1, January 2013, Pages 178–182.
Abstract:
One difficulty in persuasion is overcoming the confirmation bias, where people selectively seek evidence that is consistent with their prior beliefs and expectations. This biased search for information allows people to analyze new information in an efficient, but shallow way. The present research discusses how experienced difficultly in processing (disfluency) can reduce the confirmation bias by promoting careful, analytic processing. In two studies, participants with prior attitudes on an issue became less extreme after reading an argument on the issues in a disfluent format. The change occurred for both naturally occurring attitudes (i.e. political ideology) and experimentally assigned attitudes (i.e. positivity toward a court defendant). Importantly, disfluency did not reduce confirmation biases when participants were under cognitive load, suggesting that cognitive resources are necessary to overcome these biases. Overall, these results suggest that changing the style of an argument’s presentation can lead to attitude change by promoting more comprehensive consideration of opposing views.
I like the term “disfluency,” although “a dlsfluency on both your houses” doesn’t have the ring of “a plague on both your houses,” does it?*
Must be the confirmation bias.
Acknowledging Errors in Data Quality by Jim Harris.
From the post:
The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that occurs when people make judgments based on the ease with which examples come to mind. Although this heuristic can be beneficial, such as when it helps us recall examples of a dangerous activity to avoid, sometimes it leads to availability bias, where we’re affected more strongly by the ease of retrieval than by the content retrieved.
In his thought-provoking book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman explained how availability bias works by recounting an experiment where different groups of college students were asked to rate a course they had taken the previous semester by listing ways to improve the course — while varying the number of improvements that different groups were required to list.
Jim applies the result of Kahneman’s experiment to data quality issues and concludes:
I need to re-read Kahneman but have you seen suggestions for overcoming the availability heuristic?
The Ultimate User Experience by Tim R. Todish.
From the post:
Today, more people have mobile phones than have electricity or safe drinking water. In India, there are more cell phones than toilets! We all have access to incredible technology, and as designers and developers, we have the opportunity to use this pervasive technology in powerful ways that can change people’s lives.
In fact, a single individual can now create an application that can literally change the lives of people across the globe. With that in mind, I’m going to highlight some examples of designers and developers using their craft to help improve the lives of people around the world in the hope that you will be encouraged to find ways to do the same with your own skills and talents.
I may have to get a cell phone to get a better understanding of its potential when combined with topic maps.
For example, the “hot” night spots are well known in New York City. What if a distributed information network imaged guests as they arrived/left and maintained a real time map of images + locations (no names)?
That would make a nice subscription service, perhaps with faceted searching by physical characteristics.
Collaborative Systems: Easy To Miss The Mark by Jocob Morgan.
From the post:
Map out use cases defining who you want collaborating and what results you want them to achieve. Skip this step in the beginning, and you’ll regret it in the end.
One of the things that organizations really need to consider when evaluating collaborative solutions is their use cases. Not only that, but also understanding the outcomes of those use cases and how they can map to a desired feature requirement. Use cases really help put things into perspective for companies who are seeking to understand the “why” before they figure out the “how.”
That’s what a use case is: the distilled essence of a role within your organization, how it will interact with some system, and the expected or desired result. Developing use cases makes your plans, requirements, and specifications less abstract because it forces you to come up with specific examples.
This is why we created a framework (inspired by Gil Yehuda) to address this. It breaks down as follows:
- — Identify the overall business problem you are looking to solve (typically there are several).
- — Narrow down the problem into specific use cases; each problem has several use cases.
- — Describe the situation that needs to be present for that use case to be applicable.
- — Clarify the desired action.
- — State the desired result.
For topic maps I would write:
Map out use cases defining what data you want to identify and/or integrate and what results you expect from that identification or integration. Skip this step in the beginning, and you’ll regret it in the end.
If you don’t have an expectation of a measurable result (in businesses a profitable one), your efforts at semantic integration are premature.
How will you know when you have reached the end of a particular effort?
The personal cloud series by Jon Udell.
Excellent source of ideas on the web/cloud as we experience it today and as we may experience it tomorrow.
Going through prior posts now and will call some of them out for further discussion.
Which ones impress you the most?
Masterful design of the everyday baggage tag by Nathan Yau.
Nathan points to a post on the history of baggage tags that including the following quote:
Just as you can track, step-by-step, a package you’ve sent by FedEx, airlines use bar-coded tags to sort and track bags automatically, through the airport, and across the world. That’s a huge change from the old days, when bags were dropped into the “black box” of a manually sorted baggage system. But crucially, an ABT doesn’t just contain a bar code—it’s also custom-printed with your name, flight details, and destination. That made the global implementation of ABTs much easier, because early-adopters could introduce them long before every airport was ready—a huge advantage when it comes to seamlessly connecting the world’s least and most advanced airports. And of course, ABTs can still be read manually when systems break down.
There is a for design.
Works with fully manual, fully automated and everything in between systems.
What about your topic map? Or is it enslaved by the need for electronic power?
If I can read a street map by sun/moon light, then why not a topic map? (At least sometimes.)
Suggestions?
Focusing on the Reader: Engagement Trumps Satisfaction by Rachel Davis Mersey, Edward C. Malthouse and Bobby J. Calder. (Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly published online 5 September 2012 DOI: 10.1177/1077699012455391)
Abstract:
Satisfaction is commonly monitored by news organizations because it is an antecedent to readership. In fact, countless studies have shown the satisfaction–readership relationship to be true. Still, an essential question remains: Is satisfaction the only, or even the critical, thing to focus on with readership? This research indicates that the answer is no. Two other related constructs, reader experiences and engagement, affect reader behavior even more than does satisfaction. The discussion provides examples of how to increase engagement and calls for experimental research to understand how news organizations can positively affect engagement and thereby readership.
In the course of the paper, the authors discuss which definition of “engagement” they will be using:
In both arenas, marketing and journalism, the term engagement has been readily used, and often misused—both causing confusion about the definition of the word and affecting the usefulness of the concept in research and in practice. The disagreement regarding the nature of the role of television in civic engagement, whether the influence of television be positive or negative, is an example of how differing definitions, and specifically how the construct of engagement is operationalized, can create different results even in high-quality research.11 So while researchers tend to rely on mathematically reliable multi-item measures of engagement, as in work by Livingstone and Markham, we cannot be assured that engagement is similarly defined in each body of research.12
An opportunity for topic maps that I won’t discuss right now.
Earlier the authors note:
If content, however distributed, fails to attract readers/users, no business model can ultimately be successful.
That seems particularly relevant to semantic technologies.
I won’t spoil the conclusion for you but the social aspects of using the information in day to day interaction play an unexpected large role in engagement.
Will successful topic map application designers ask users how they use information to interact with others?
Then foster that use by design of the topic map interface and/or its content?
Designing for Consumer Search Behaviour (slideshow) by Tony Russell-Rose.
From the post:
Here are the slides from the talk I gave recently at HCIR 2012 on Designing for Consumer Search Behaviour. This presentation is the counterpart to the previous one: while A Model of Consumer Search Behaviour introduced the model and described the analytic work that led to it, this talk looks at the practical design implications. In particular, it addresses the observation that although the information retrieval community is blessed with an abundance of analytic models, only a tiny fraction of these make any impression at all on mainstream UX design practice.
Why is this? In part, this may be simply a reflection of imperfect channels of communication between the respective communities. However, I suspect it may also be a by-product of the way researchers are incentivized: with career progression based almost exclusively on citations in peer-reviewed academic journals, it is hard to see what motivation may be left to encourage adoption by other communities such as design practitioners. Yet from a wider perspective, it is precisely this cross-fertilisation that can make the difference between an idea gathering the dust of citations within a closed community and actually having an impact on the mainstream search experiences that we as consumers all encounter.
I have encounter the “cross-community” question before. A major academic organization where I was employed and a non-profit in the field shared members. For more than a century.
They had no projects in common all that time. Knew about each other, but kept waiting for the “other” one to call first. Eventually did have a project or two together but members of communities tend to stay in those communities.
It is a question of a member’s “comfort” zone. How will members of other community react? Will they be accepting? Judgemental? Once you know, hard to go back to ignorance. Best just to stay at home. Imagine what it would be like “over there.” Less risky.
You might find members of other communities have the same hopes, fears, dreams that you do. Then what? Had to diss others when it means dissing yourself.
A cross-over UX design practitioner/researcher poster day, with lots of finger food, tables for ad hoc conversations/demos, would be a nice way to break the ice between the two communities?
Leveraging the Kano Model for Optimal Results by Jan Moorman.
Jan’s post outlines what you need to know to understand and use a UX model known at the “Kano Model.”
In short, the Kano Model is a way to evaluate how customers (the folks who buy products, not your engineers) feel about product features.
You are ahead of me if you guessed that positive reactions to product features are the goal.
Jan and company returned to the original research. An important point because applying research mechanically will get you mechanical results.
From the post:
You are looking at a list of 18 proposed features for your product. Flat out, 18 are too many to include in the initial release given your deadlines, and you want identify the optimal subset of these features.
You suspect an executive’s teenager suggested a few. Others you recognize from competitor products. Your gut instinct tells you that none of the 18 features are game changers and you’re getting pushback on investing in upfront generative research.
It’s a problem. What do you do?
You might try what many agile teams and UX professionals are doing: applying a method that first emerged in Japan during the 1980’s called the ‘Kano Model’ used to measures customer emotional reaction to individual features. At projekt202, we’ve had great success in doing just that. Our success emerged from revisiting Kano’s original research and through trial and error. What we discovered is that it really matters how you design and perform a Kano study. It matters how you analyze and visualize the results.
We have also seen how the Kano Model is a powerful tool for communicating the ROI of upfront generative research, and how results from Kano studies inform product roadmap decisions. Overall, Kano studies are a very useful to have in our research toolkit.
Definitely an approach to incorporate in UX evaluation.
Five User Experience Lessons from Tom Cruise by Steve Tengler.
From the post:
As previously said best by Steve Jobs, “The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.” And the better the design, the more your company will thrive.
But how can we clarify some basics of User Experience for the masses? The easiest and obvious point of reference is pop culture; something to which we all can relate. My first inclination was to make this article “Five User Experience Lessons from Star Wars” since, at my core, I am a geek. But that’s like wearing a “KICK ME” sign at recess, so I thought better of it. Instead, I looked to a source of some surprisingly fantastic examples: movie characters played by Tom Cruise. I know, I’m playing up to my female readers, but hey, they represent 51% of the population … so I’m simply demonstrating that understanding your customer persona is part of designing a good user experience!
Tengler’s Five Lessons:
Lesson #1: Social Media Ratings of User Experiences Can Be Powerful
Lesson #2: Arrange Your User Interface around the Urgent Tasks
Lesson #3: Design Your System with a Multimodal Interface
Lesson #4: You Must Design For Human Error Upfront For Usability
Lesson #5: Style Captures the Attention
Whether you are a female reader or not, you will find the movie examples quite useful.
What actor/actress and movies would you choose for these principles?
Walk your users through the lessons and ask them to illustrate the lessons with movies they have seen.
A good way to break the ice for designing a user interface.
The First Three Seconds: How Users Are Lost by Zac Gery.
From the post:
In the time it takes to read this sentence, someone has viewed this post and moved on. They probably didn’t even read this sentence. Why did they leave? What were they looking for? Users searching on the internet have a short attention span. It is commonly referred to as the “3 Second Rule.” Although not specifically three seconds, the rule accentuates the limited time a website has to make a first impression. The goal of any website is to clarify, then build interest. Interest drives return visits and recommendations. As a user’s visit extends so does the chance for a return visit.
On the web, first impressions start with speed. From the moment users request a web page, they begin to evaluate. Displaying a modern website is a coordinated effort of content, css files, javascript files, images, and more. Too many requests or large files can increase a website’s load time. Tools such as Firebug, YSlow, Webkit’s Inspector, and Fiddler offer an excellent overview of load times. Browser caching can help with additional requests, but most websites are not afforded a second look. Investigate the number of files required for a web page. Sprites are a great way to reduce multiple image files and overall size. Compression tools can also help to reduce wasted space in javsacript and CSS files.
A little bit longer than Love or Hate in 50 Milliseconds but it still raises the bar over the thirty (30) second elevator speech.
Are you measuring user reactions to your interfaces in milliseconds?
Or do you ask your manager for their reaction?
Care to guess which test is most often used by successful products?
I first saw this at DZone.
Five Lessons Learned Doing User Research in Asia by Carissa Carter.
From the post:
If you have visited any country in Asia recently, you have probably seen it. Turn your head in any direction; stand up; go shopping; or check an app on your phone and you will notice products from Western companies lurking about. Some of these products are nearly identical to their counterparts overseas, and others are brand new, launched specifically for the local market.
As more and more companies are taking their products abroad, the need for user research in these new markets is increasing in importance. I spent a year spanning 2010 and 2011 living in Hong Kong and leading user research campaigns—primarily in China, Japan, and India. Through a healthy balance of trial and error (and more error), I learned a lot about leading these studies in cultures incredibly different than my own. Meta understanding with a bit of methodology mixed in, I offer you my top five lessons learned while conducting and applying user research in Asia.
Successful user interface designs change across cultures.
Is that a clue as to what happens with subject identifications?
Should We Focus on User Experience? by Koen Claes.
From the post:
In the next seven minutes or so, this article hopes to convince you that our current notion of UX design mistakenly focuses on experience, and that we should go one step further and focus on the memory of an experience instead.
Studies of behavioral economics have changed my entire perspective on UX design, causing me to question basic tenets. This has led to ponderings like: “Is it possible that trying to create ‘great experiences’ is pointless?” Nobel Prize-winning research seems to hint that it is.
Via concrete examples, additional research sources, and some initial how-to tips, I aim to illustrate why and how we should recalibrate our UX design processes.
You will also like the narrative (with addition resources) from Koen’s presentation at IA Summit 2011, On Why We Should NOT Focus on UX.
The more I learn about the myriad aspects of communcation, the more I am amazed that we communicate at all. 😉
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