User Experience: It's for Everyone

WordCamp London 2016 talk. Full title: "User experience: It's for everyone; it's important; and it's really hard.". The deck doesn't have a full or accurate script, and I didn't, by any means, read out all of the MANY slides. If you want to know what the actual talk was like, you'll want to wait for the video. But if you want information (links and quotes and questions) from the slides then you're in the right place. But don't forget to visit http://uxforevery.one as well!

Transcript

1. User Experience: It’s for everyone… …and it’s some other things too!
2. Ross Wintle Software Developer Technology Consultant @magicroundabout Hi everyone - hope you had a nice lunch etc… I’m Ross, I’m a freelance software developer, technology consultant and, as you’ll find out, not a UX Designer. I work for myself under the name Oikos Digital and I work as part of a virtual distributed agency called Hands Up. In all cases we aim to help organisations use technology to do good.
3. Please Be Nice! Now, I need to ask you, if I may, to please be nice. For a variety of reasons.
4. It’s my 1st conference talk! Firstly it’s my first conference talk. And you know what They only went and put me on the biggest stage, didn’t they.
5. It’s the graveyard shift Second, not only did they give me the biggest stage, but they gave me possibly the worst slot: just after lunch on the last day. The post-lunch period is often called the graveyard shift because all the blood has rushed from your brain to your stomach to digest your delicious lunch, and you’re all now, effectively, conference zombies. But fear not…this should be fun and exciting and if not I have jelly babies - shout if you need them for an energy boost!
6. I have baby brain Thirdly, I have a two month old baby - she has the most awesome geek name. We called here Ada! But that means I’ve not had as much time and focus as I’d like. So bear with me.
7. UX Designer Finally, for some crazy reason, I submitted a talk that about a subject on which I am NOT a subject matter expert. But you know what… It doesn’t matter. Because the whole point is that you don’t have to be.
8. My UX Journey You’re probably all thinking I’m crazy at this point so let me re-assure you by telling you a bit about my journey. I’ve always been interested in Psychology and human computer interaction. Even since my University days when my favourite courses were on these topics. That interest has carried through my 12 years working in software engineering and IT. And during the 5 years I’ve been a freelance web developer UX has become more and more important. I’m now having lots of conversations with clients large and small about the user experiences that we are creating together.
9. UX is 90% how you think 10% what you design
 - Joel Marsh: UX for Beginners [MAKE A PIE CHART?] Joel Marsh in his brilliant new book “UX for Beginners” which has helped me a lot in preparing this talk and making me feel like I DO know what I’m talking about, says this: UX is 90% how you think and 10% what you design. I’m not a designer, and I don’t have all the answers… …but we can ALL think, and we can all change the way that we think.
10. UX is 90% asking questions and 10% having the answers
 - Me! I’m going to mangle that to: UX is 90% asking questions and 10% having the answers. I didn’t create this talk to give you lots of answers. I created it to encourage you to and to give you the confidence to and to equip you to ask lots of important questions.
11. Q & A In fact, at the end, if there’s time, there’s supposed to be a Q&A. But I’m kinda hoping they’ve spelt it…
12. Q & Eh? …like this.
13. User Experience: 
 It’s for everyone it’s important and it’s really hard! The full title of this talk was actually “User Experience: it’s for everyone, it’s important, and it’s really hard!”, but it got truncated in the submission process, which is kinda OK, because I didn’t want to tell you up front that it’s really hard because you might not come. But this is basically what I’m going to try and convince you of. And don’t be put off by the fact that it’s hard. Lots of things are hard, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do them. So these are the three things I want to convince you of today. These will be your takeaways and having discovered these things I hope you’ll go away and read up on UX design, follow UX design blogs, buy and read some of the books that I’ll recommend, and try to ask more questions about the experiences you’re creating. Seth Godin talked about his speaking gig’s in a recent interview with Tim Ferriss and said: “...You have people in a room...eager to hear what you have to say...and for 45 minutes or an hour you have a screen that's 30ft by 20ft and you have a microphone that's amplified. And maybe just maybe you can get under their skin...and then...change the conversation…” And as we go I’ll share some experiences, tips, books, links and so on to help you find out more and start your own UX Design journey.
14. What is
 UX? Before trying to convince you of those things, let’s quickly try to explain what UX is. People will argue about exact definitions and terminology. I hope I present something that most people agree with. First, some definitions.
15. UX = User eXperience
 aka
 UXD = User eXperience Design different to
 UI = User Interface Hmm…you know what. I’m going to talk about user testing soon, and just to show you that I practice what I preach, I’ve user tested this slide.
16. UX = User eXperience
 aka
 UXD = User eXperience Design different to
 UI = User Interface ✕ And my users didn’t like it.
17. UX UXD UI User eXperience User eXperience Design User Interface Before trying to convince you of those things, let’s quickly try to explain what UX is. People will argue about exact definitions and terminology. I hope I present something that most people agree with. User experience is just that - the things that a user experiences. But it’s also used as a term for the work that people do design user experiences - more accurately called user experience design. I’ll use UX and UXD interchangeably in this talk. These are different from but related to user interfaces and user interface design.
18. UI is what you see
 UX is how you feel Let’s try to get to the bottom of the difference between UI and UX because that’s important to understand and the subject of many, many metaphors that sometimes border on the ridiculous. Here’s a simple explanation I heard once: The user interface is what you see, and the user experience is how you feel.
19. Joel Marsh “UI is what you see
 UX is why you see it” The UX for Beginners book refines this slightly to… It’s a bit more than just how you feel. It’s affected by your context, your existing opinions and biases, any disabilities that you may have, for us - the technology you are using. And it creates feelings, memories, opinions. UX is the process that drives what you do and how you go about doing it.
20. “The best UX will often be no UI at all” Havoc Pennington
 http://blog.ometer.com/2016/01/26/the-dangerous-ui-team/ Here’s my take. WordPress committer Aaron Jorbin recently blogged and tweeted this. from http://blog.ometer.com/2016/01/26/the-dangerous-ui-team/ (via https://twitter.com/aaronjorbin/status/697872726296367104)
21. And here’s a great example…Anyone know what this is? This is the button on the dashboard of my car that changes the clock. This is User Interface. Who thinks this button has a good user expereince?
22. My UX Journey with thanks to Innocent Drinks And here’s some comparisons of user experience of changing clocks when daylight savings starts and ends. From smartphones, which have no UI for this operation, to that one, single, unlabelled button on my car dashboard that you have to stab at in frustration until you give up and decide that it’s not worth it.
23. UX IS: Making users effective User
 Goals Org
 Goals UX is: Making users effective. Your website has a purpose. Either for your users or for your business or organisation, or, hopefully, for both. The actions that sit in the middle of this are what your website is for and these are the tasks that you should make as simple as possible.
24. UX IS:
 User journeys UX is: User journeys. This is one of the things that I talk to clients about a lot….and it’s one of the reasons for doing this talk. Let me explain…
25. This is your homepage. Well, it might be. You see, I spend so long talking to people about their homepage, it’s crazy. Because, actually, in a lot of cases the homepage isn’t that important. When is the last time you paid attention to what’s on the Amazon homepage? Developers: when is the last time you typed “stackoverflow.com” into your browser? When did you last go to www.bbc.co.uk or buzzfeed.com to see what was on the homepage? People could get to this page, whatever it is, from social media, from a bookmark, from a search, from a link in an email, from an advert or poster, from a QR code…(hmm…maybe not)…from a business card… …who thinks their business card is part of their UX?… And it may be an article, a product, or an information page rather than the homepage.
26. ! "
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 People might get to your website from any number of sources. And it’s useful to think about who the people are, what their context is: where they are, who they are with, what they are doing, what device they are using. And how they came across or navigated to your site. This is all stuff that happens off site. Perhaps some of it even happens offline. But it’s important. Marketing and SEO are part of the UX. You can have the nicest website in the world, but if no one can find it then it’s a waste of time. Classic case: I had a person come to me and ask if I could put six images, with text on the images, onto a website for her and link them together. I pointed out that this wasn’t very good practice and she should probably make something more web-friendly, and her response was that because it looked OK on her screen, it would look OK on everyone else’s screen. I ended up telling her that there was no point building something that no one can find and which some people can’t use.
27. ! "
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 ? And once they’ve visited your website what are your users going to do, or where are they going to go? This is where understanding goals come in. Your job is to help someone do the next thing. This is a really simple user journey with just a few steps. But there is so much else to consider. Ultimately this may involve shipping a product. In which case your user experience may include a returns policy, a user guide, customer support. It may involve taking a donation, in which case how you say thank you can keep or drive away a supporter. It may involve getting someone to book a service or call you. The user experience doesn’t end online either. This is all stuff that happens off site. Perhaps some of it even happens offline. But it’s important. Marketing and SEO are part of the UX. You can have the nicest website in the world, but if no one can find it then it’s a waste of time. Classic case: I had a person come to me and ask if I could put six images, with text on the images, onto a website for her and link them together. I pointed out that this wasn’t very good practice and she should probably make something more web-friendly, and her response was that because it looked OK on her screen, it would look OK on everyone else’s screen. I ended up telling her that there was no point building something that no one can find and which some people can’t use.
28. User journey: Dead ends Logo Home - About - Donate Awesome
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29. User journey: Dead ends ? Logo Home - About - Donate Awesome
 Video
 Here ?
30. UX IS:
 A process! UX is: A process. It’s not something you ever finish or really get right. There will always be something changing about your end-users or your organisation or your clients. There will always be optimisations you can make to improve the user expereince. But again, don’t let this put you off doing the basics well. This is your job.
31. UX IS:
 Psychology Usability Design Copywriting Analysis UX is all of these things too. I don’t have time to cover all of them, but I do want to dwell on Psychology. Psychology: If this sounds scary, don’t be too put off by this, though I’d argue that if you think computers and code are interesting, the human brain and it’s behaviour are EVEN MORE interesting. There are behaviours and responses that are common to all humans and psychology allows us to understand and take advantage of these. Joe Leech says “A designer who doesn’t understand psychology is going to be no more successful than an architect who doesn’t understand physics” And for a lot of WordPress professionals these probably sound really expensive and complicated and time consuming for the sizes of projects that you are involved in. That EXACTLY my experience. BUT...I've come to see that this should not stop you asking questions, borrowing design patterns, being aware of principles and techniques and doing everything that you can do with the resources that you have to do some user experience design.
32. UX is for everyone And this brings me to my first point: UX is for everyone.
33. We all have experiences as users We all have experiences. We have all pushed doors. We have all used clocks, we all use websites and we get things done with them; we enjoy them; we love them; and we hate them.
34. It’s a Norman Door WITH INSTRUCTIONS. This is roughly equivalent to…
35. We can send a 1-ton rover vehicle to Mars and land it using a hovering, rocket- powered crane… But we still can’t make a printer work nicely! - Me I’m sure we’ve all used a printer and got to the point of throwing out of the window. Probably fewer of us have used Martian Rovers.
36. We all create experiences And if you work on the web you all create experiences for others. Some might say that this is the designer’s job. But no…I want to argue that…
37. UX is for… managers and consultants UX is for managers and consultants. Because it involves business and user objectives, and because it runs through the whole web design and development process, it’s definitely for managers and analysts and consultants.
38. UX is for… designers UX is for designers….clearly….because design plays such a huge part of the process.
39. UX is for… implementors UX is for website implementors who build websites without coding because you’ll still be working on site structure, page layouts, navigation, user journey, content, calls to action, and so on that are the key ingredients of user experience.
40. UX is for… developers UX is for developers, because performance and load times, uptime, SEO, animation, feedback, form validation, responsiveness, and so many other things that you are responsible for affect user experience.
41. UX is for… copywriters
 media editors
 content creators UX is for all of these people. Copywriting, as I’ve said before, is a key part of the user experience. But introducing photos (and the right photos), videos, audio and other embedded media, and ensuring that the user journey is right and that SEO is done properly and that email and social media integrates well are all part of UX and part of your jobs.
42. UX is for… everyone! UX is for all of these people and more people that I’ve probably forgotten to mention. We all have experiences, we all create experiences and we can all make the experiences we create better.
43. UX is important My second point then is that UX is important! I’m hoping it’s fairly obvious that making users effective at their goals and making it easy for them to take the actions you want them to take is good for everybody. But lets look at some examples.
44. UX can… make a difference
 
 (positive and negative) UX is for all of these people.
45. https://twitter.com/Una/status/698003448323641344 This is a quote about UI, not UX. But I think the principle is exactly as important.
46. UX can… increase sales
47. –Greg Linden - Make Data Useful - 2006
 
 https://sites.google.com/site/glinden/Home/StanfordDataMining.2006-11-28.ppt Every 100ms delay costs 1% of sales This is the classic quote from research done for Amazon back in 2006. This is a quote about web performance really, but I’d say that performance affects experience greatly, and we see a change in behaviour as a result.
48. –Adam Silver 
 
 https://medium.com/simple-human/embracing-simplicity- cf9ca9fe6a9e#.xpwld4p72 Just Eat removed a fancy, JS accordion form and replaced it with a multi-page form. “…this resulted in almost 2 million extra orders per year.” This is from an article on embracing simplicity in design and implementation…
49. UX can… raise more money
50. –Steve Guy - British Heart Foundation
 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIR2BamKwl8 The BHF simplified a form and raised an extra £2m per year
51. UX can… make people smile It was hard to find concrete evidence of this - everyone’s focussed on money, which is the end goal I guess. But take Slack as an example.
52. –Lots of people
 
 https://twitter.com/slacklovetweets “We love @SlackHQ…” Any Slack users? Slack is…
53. UX can… change the world? Again, I don't have evidence for this, it’s just a hunch. But I have this sense that if UX helps us be more effective, more efficient, can make more money and make people happier and more productive…perhaps those are steps towards bigger more exciting goals. Think about it.
54. UX is important
55. UX is hard And this brings me to my final point: UX is hard This was actually where my idea for the talk originally started. Remember that UX is 90% about how you think? Well the idea was to take a really simple web-based thing and show what sort of questions you can ask about it. An in doing so show that very little of what we do on the web is simple. And to show that we can all ask these sorts of questions, and that these questions are important, and that they are hard. But being hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do things. Lots of things are hard. So before I get to my more in-depth case study, I want to look at a some more simple things.
56. Who’s seen Facebook reactions?
57. UX is hard
58. Should I have a home link in my navigation? So there was this question that I saw in a Facebook group recently. The question was… Who thinks this is a simple, innocuous, yes/no question? What’s amazing about this question was the number and variety of responses.
59. No, people know that they click the logo. Should I have a home link in my navigation?
60. Yes, people don’t know to click the logo. Should I have a home link in my navigation?
61. No, people use breadcrumbs Should I have a home link in my navigation?
62. No, people use the back button Should I have a home link in my navigation?
63. Yes, people expect it. Should I have a home link in my navigation?
64. It depends. Should I have a home link in my navigation?
65. What about on mobile with collapsed nav? Should I have a home link in my navigation?
66. Have you considered the user journey? Should I have a home link in my navigation?
67. Test it Should I have a home link in my navigation?
68. I tested it!
 (and people do crazy things) Should I have a home link in my navigation?
69. YOU’RE NOT NORMAL! Talk about biases and user behaviour
70. UX is hard
71. https://twitter.com/rUv/status/695055910683615232
72. https://twitter.com/lionelrudaz/status/695147236670455808
73. UX is hard
74. The Simplest
 Web App
 In The
 World Case Study
78. User journey • Discovery • Arrival (at homepage?) • Sign up / create account • Log in • Change status
79. User journey • Discovery • Arrival (at homepage?) • Sign up / create account • Log in • Change status • Push notifications?
80. Acquisition is hard And this brings me to my final point: UX is hard This was actually where my idea for the talk originally started. Remember that UX is 90% about how you think? Well the idea was to take a really simple web-based thing and show what sort of questions you can ask about it. An in doing so show that very little of what we do on the web is simple. And to show that we can all ask these sorts of questions, and that these questions are important, and that they are hard. So before I get to my more in-depth case study, I want to look at a simple question that I saw in a Facebook group recently. The question was:
81. Homepage How did the user get here?
82. Homepage How can I get more people here?
83. Navigation is hard
84. Homepage What should be in my navigation?
85. Homepage What should NOT be in my navigation?
86. Homepage What about when logged in?
87. Homepage Should I have a home link?
88. Calls to action are easy (mostly)
89. Homepage What might the user want to do next?
90. Homepage Can I easily take action on mobiles?
91. Homepage Can I simplify by limiting the number of choices?
92. Homepage Should the action change when logged in?
93. Copywriting is hard
94. Homepage How can I simplify/ edit this?
95. Homepage What DO I need to say.
96. Homepage What DON’T I need to say.
97. Homepage Have I clearly and succinctly explained what this is in a way that a new visitor will understand?
98. Homepage Do I need to explain this to new users? Or is some prior knowledge assumed?
99. Homepage Is my page too long? Or too short?
100. Homepage Are my lines too wide? Or too narrow?
101. Mobile-friendly is hard
102. Homepage Responsive!
103. Forms are REALLY hard
104. Sign up How can I make it easy?
105. Sign up What data do I need to collect?
106. Sign up What data don’t I need to collect?
107. Sign up Do users need usernames? Or will email addresses do?
108. Sign up What needs explaining, and what doesn’t?
109. Sign up What do I need to do about data protection and legal stuff?
110. Sign up Should people set a password? Or should I send one?
111. Sign up Should I enforce complex passwords?
112. Sign up What validation do I need to do?
113. Sign up How do I display validation errors?
114. Sign up Should I do fancy JS/ AJAX validation in real time?
115. Sign up Should this be a one page or multi-page form?
116. Sign up Would social media logins be easier?
117. User journeys are hard
118. Thanks! What happens now? What screen do users go to?
119. Thanks! Should the user be logged in?
120. Thanks! Do they get an email?
121. Thanks! Does an admin get an email?
122. Log in How long are people logged in for?
 
 (This is critical!)
123. Log in What screen is shown after login?
124. Log in What does a user do if they’ve forgotten their login?
125. Log in Is social media linking/logging in helpful?
126. Change status What is the button feedback?
127. Change status What else happens after pressing the button?
128. Change status Should I congratulate the user?
129. Change status Should people be allowed to upload a photo or note?
130. Change status Should people be allowed to change colour (as they now know the gender)?
131. Change status Should I offer sharing on social media…
 
 …or by email?
132. Change status Should there be an “oops” or “undo” option?
133. Change status What’s the balance of more options vs getting out of the way?
134. The Simplest
 Web App
 In The
 World Case Study
135. 2 actions Case Study
136. 46 questions Case Study
137. UX is hard And this brings me to my final point: UX is hard This was actually where my idea for the talk originally started. Remember that UX is 90% about how you think? Well the idea was to take a really simple web-based thing and show what sort of questions you can ask about it. An in doing so show that very little of what we do on the web is simple. And to show that we can all ask these sorts of questions, and that these questions are important, and that they are hard. So before I get to my more in-depth case study, I want to look at a simple question that I saw in a Facebook group recently. The question was:
138. Which way now? So. Hopefully I’ve convinced you that user experience is for everyone - including you! That it’s important. And that, yes, it’s hard, but that’s OK. So what do you do now?
139. Beg, steal, borrow Resource: http://www.goodui.org Look at what others do…make use of UX blogs, shared research, books. UX is a hot topic. So much shared knowledge, design patterns, information etc. I’ve had SO many “Aha” moments just by reading about how other people improved their user experiences, or by hearing about commonly used design patterns.
140. Ask questions Resource: Your brain Dig into your user interface. Ask as many questions as you can about it.
141. Test and Observe Resource: Your mum, dad, grandma, cat Watch people use the things you’ve created. Not your designer friends. Your mum. Your partner. Your friends.
142. Track and Analyse Resource: Analytics (Event Tracking) Use analytics to work out how your users behave. Set up some simple event tracking to see what actions users take and from where. Remember that finding and leaving your website are part of the experience too.
143. Change and test Resource:
 Google Experiments, Optimizely, InVision Make some changes. Use Google analytics’s simple experiments function, or a tool like optimisely, to test the change for a percentage of users. See what improves.
144. Think outside
 the screen Resource:
 Your own experiences Remember that your user experience is more than just what people see on the screen. It might involve a support query. Emails. SEO. Social media. Packaging and delivery, or even a returns or refunds process.
145. Ask, Discuss, Learn Resource:
 Each other
 http://uxforevery.one I’ve set up a twitter account, Facebook page and website where I’ve curated lots of stuff that was useful in the preparation of this talk and I hope to keep it updated with information and thoughts for beginner UX’ers like.YOU! … Come and ask questions…of me…of each other…of other UX people who may want to help. Perhaps we can build a little community as we learn and experiment together.
146. Questions? (But not necessarily answers) Ross Wintle
 @magicroundabout oikos.digital UX for Everyone uxforevery.one @uxforeveryone I hope you have questions. But I hope that they’re not question that I can answer. They may not be questions that you can answer. But I hope that you might feel like you have some ideas about what to ask and how you might go about finding the answers.