If I Were U x

This is the first draft of the UX talk I gave at FESuffolk on 18th June 2012.

I cut the talk down for the day, but the research really helped me get my thoughts together on how I feel about my work and the experiences that I provide for clients and their customers.

I will be doing more with this talk as I move forward, and can hopefully include a little more detail on the benefits I've found from the practical steps mentioned.

You can find out more about FESuffolk at https://github.com/FESuffolk
There is more information about me at http://www.maxshelley.com and you can find Measured Brilliance at http://www.measuredbrilliance.com

Transcript

1. Max Shelley @maxshelley
3. If I Were U x
4. UI/UX
5. UX
6. User Experience
7. “User experience (UX) is the way a person feels about using a product, system or service.” “a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service.” - Wikipedia. Hmmm... - ISO 9241-210 Ergonomics of human-system interaction
8. Empathy
9. “the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.” - dictionary.com (because I couldn’t find a real dictionary in my house)
10. • Logical deduction (“Theory-theory.”) • Imagine how they feel. (“Simulation Theory”) • Mirroring, body language (Physical.) • Loads more....but many apply to real-world interactions.
11. What about online?
12. Practical empathy.
13. Not only practical ways to help determine how people feel about your work, but also being practical about that information.
14. User Experience
15. Dan Saffer - odannyboy.com
16. This sucks. This is awesome.
17. This sucks. This is awesome.
18. This sucks. This is awesome. The wilderness of tolerance.
19. This sucks. This is awesome. The wilderness of tolerance.
20. This sucks. This is awesome. The wilderness of tolerance. The Functional Zone
21. Where you place your work on the line should be a deliberate decision. You can base that decision on your understanding of the way people feel about using your work. Other factors affect it, and that’s ok, as long as you’re aware of it.
22. Your work, every day, affects someone, somewhere.
23. How you decide to engage, or not engage, with their experience defines nearly everything you do. Your work, every day, affects someone, somewhere.
24. How do we measure UX?
25. Remote Testing Eye Tracking Customer Contact Social Analytics Clicktale - Mouse Movement & Click Heatmaps. Usability Testing Ops and Customer Service Teams Surveys Customer Services Competitor Evaluations Web Analytics Unstructured Data A/B and Multi-Variate Testing Market Research In-Depth Interviews Search Analytics Form Analytics Pro-active Chat In-line Feedback Speed Tests Prototype Testing Accessibility Tools
26. Some practical tools.
28. “Sometimes you just need to cut the middleman and talk directly to the source. That way, you feel their pain and nothing gets lost in the translation. If you never talk to the customer or the user, then everything is just an assumption or a guess. You are essentially developing and designing in the dark.” - Pek Pongpaet VP of Technology and Product, spoton.com
29. “Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table.” - Joel Spolsky CEO Trello & Fog Creek Software. (and once a Program Manager for Excel)
34. Event Tracking
35. _trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)
36. _trackEvent(‘UX’, ‘Signup Validation’, ‘Please enter Address Line 2.’)
37. “Onboarding”
38. guiders.js https://github.com/jeff-optimizely/Guiders-JS
40. guiders.createGuider({ buttons: [{name: "Next"}], description: "Guiders are a user interface design pattern for introducing features of software. This dialog box, for example, is the first in a series of guiders that together make up a guide.", id: "first", next: "second", overlay: true, title: "Welcome to Guiders.js!" }).show(); /* .show() means that this guider will get shown immediately after creation. */ guiders.createGuider({ attachTo: "#clock", buttons: [{name: "Close, then click on the clock.", onclick: guiders.hideAll}], description: "Custom event handlers can be used to hide and show guiders. This allows you to interactively show the user how to use your software by having them complete steps. To try it, click on the clock.", id: "third", next: "fourth", position: 2, title: "You can also advance guiders from custom event handlers.", width: 450 });
41. Ideas that might be useful.
42. Who’s taking support calls?
43. If you no longer support IE6, what do you do for those users?
44. Build tracking into your project setups. (including events).
45. Use re-usable dashboard templates to email yourself usage stats of new work.
46. Ask people what they like about your competitors work.
47. Why?
48. If your data shows what you’re working on isn’t working, it gives you a head-start to a better idea.
49. Not just better for people who interact with your work, also better for you.
50. Use your UX work in meetings with new potential clients.
51. Data wins. It beats project managers and HiPPO syndrome.
52. It will save you time.
53. It will make you enjoy the project more.
54. Phrases that will remind you of this talk: “Nobody uses that.” “That’s a really popular feature.” “Nobody will do that.” “We’re pretty sure that [insert total thin-air assumption here].” “This is what people complain about the most.”
55. Your work, every day, affects someone, somewhere.
56. How you decide to engage, or not engage, with their experience defines nearly everything you do. Your work, every day, affects someone, somewhere.
57. www.maxshelley.com/ifiwereux