WHEN

Thursday, November 9, 2017

WHERE

Better Software East 2017 Conference in Orlando, Florida

WHAT

There are two common problems that lead to bad software: the project team isn’t aligned on a problem and the customer isn’t involved in the design process.
You end up with a product that the business didn’t ask for, the tech team struggles to deliver and customers don’t want. How do you increase confidence in the direction of your product and work together to build innovative solutions that bring the business, technology, and customers together?
Design by Discovery is a process to understand business goals and customer needs. It isn’t about designing screens or coming up with a final solution. Rather, it’s an efficient way for a project team to gain a shared understanding, explore ideas, and develop a design direction.
You’ll walk away from this session informed, energized, and prepared to apply this knowledge on your projects.
With 37 years of combined experience, Matt & Garren have designed software and services for clients ranging from Fortune 50’s to startups to small businesses. They co-founded Artifact in 2011 and believe one of the secrets to success is to not take themselves too seriously.

Learning Outcomes:

• What is Design by Discovery?
• Why is Design by Discovery important?
• Who owns the discovery process?
• How do you understand which problem to solve?
• How can you better understand your users?
• What are effective and efficient techniques to use?
• How does Design by Discovery fit into Agile?

 

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WHEN

Tuesday, August 8 • 10:45am – 12:00pm

WHERE

The AGILE2017 Conference in Orlando, Florida

WHAT

There are two common problems that lead to bad software: the project team isn’t aligned on a problem and the customer isn’t involved in the design process.
You end up with a product that the business didn’t ask for, the tech team struggles to deliver and customers don’t want. How do you increase confidence in the direction of your product and work together to build innovative solutions that bring the business, technology, and customers together?
Design by Discovery is a process to understand business goals and customer needs. It isn’t about designing screens or coming up with a final solution. Rather, it’s an efficient way for a project team to gain a shared understanding, explore ideas, and develop a design direction.
You’ll walk away from this session informed, energized, and prepared to apply this knowledge on your projects.
With 37 years of combined experience, Matt & Garren have designed software and services for clients ranging from Fortune 50’s to startups to small businesses. They co-founded Artifact in 2011 and believe one of the secrets to success is to not take themselves too seriously.

Learning Outcomes:

• What is Design by Discovery?
• Why is Design by Discovery important?
• Who owns the discovery process?
• How do you understand which problem to solve?
• How can you better understand your users?
• What are effective and efficient techniques to use?
• How does Design by Discovery fit into Agile?

REGISTER HERE

 

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Description

BUY TICKETS [sgmb id=”1″]

Remote User Research

Remote user testing is an economical way to conduct research when getting in front of a live human isn’t economically or logistically feasible. I’ve focused this post on moderated usability tests, where as a researcher you’re actively involved in the test session. For unmoderated tests or interviews, using a service such a usertesting.com may be a better option.

Most aspects of a remote test should follow your process for in-person testing as far as recruiting, creating a test plan and analyzing your data. Where things get tricky is in the logistics.

Equipment

You’ll want a good headset so and, more importantly, a good microphone so the participant can hear you. Chances are the participant will not have great equipment so it’s  best to overcompensate but getting yourself better than average hardware.

Environment

Plan to use a quiet space. If you work from home, that means out of earshot of TVs, loud humans, and power tools. If you’re in an office, find an empty conference room or anywhere where noise is minimal. Remember that external noises that you don’t notice can come across loud and clear on a phone call. Find a private room where you can control the environment, like you’d do with an in-person study.

Similarly, ask your participants to kindly find a quiet place for themselves. This may be more difficult for them, but if you mention it while scheduling your sessions, you’ll at least give them time to try to find a good location.

Consent

You will still need to get the participant’s consent even if you’re not in the same place. Aside from having the participant digitally sign a consent form, have them read your consent form and verbally agree while you’re recording them (let them know you’re recording).

Timing

Watch the clock and keep each session under an hour. 45 minutes is the practical maximum for keeping participants attentive and engaged on the phone.

Expect to spend time getting the participant connected with your screensharing software, too. Sometimes it’ll take a good 10-15 minutes and may require rescheduling if additional time is needed.

Software

Speaking of screensharing software, I don’t think there’s any one perfect solution, but here are the applications I’ve used that support audio and screen sharing, along with some pro’s and con’s, in order of my preference.
Google Hangouts – Free. You and your participant will need to have a Gmail account.
Skype – Free. You and your participant will need to have a Gmail account.
Uberconference – Free. You and your participant will need to use Chrome.
GotoMeeting – Not free. Your participant will have to install software (a GotoMeeting plugin).

Recording

Screenflow is my preferred application for recording my sessions because it supports audio recording from multiple inputs, screen recording and editing. The one piece of the process it fails on for me is creating clips. There are clumsy workarounds but it’s far from ideal for that.

Camtasia does the same, and more, but is much more expensive.

Scheduling

Scheduling can be a little tricky, especially if you’re planning to do many interviews over a short period of time. Chances are your schedule will be constantly changing.  Youcanbook.me is a handy site that syncs with your calendar and lets participants find and select times for their session based on your availability. There’s less back and forth via emails this way. Whatever method you use, remember to set up reminders and to be careful about timezones. Like in-person interviews, leave time between sessions to reset your equipment and prototype.

Honorariums

I like to use Amazon gift cards for honorariums. They’re free and commonly accepted. If you prefer not to use Amazon, other reliable and free options are PayPal and Square, though to me, Amazon cards feel more legit.

Follow up

If you want to do a follow up survey or a SUS evaluation, Google Docs is a handy tool. Again, it’s free and provides some basic analytics, too.

image credit: Greg Balzer

Clients and co-workers ask a lot of great questions to user experience designers. What do you say if you don’t have an answer?

It’s not uncommon for project stakeholders to ask questions about things like interaction design or expected user behavior. I’m sure most UX designers have heard questions like “Which is better, a top navigation bar or a side navigation bar?”. We can answer these questions based on personal experience or best practices, but sometimes the questions are more specific. For example, if a client asks “What’s the best organizational structure for my application’s navigation?” the answer probably won’t be obvious. A long-standing joke among UX designers is to answer questions with the phrase “it depends”. “It depends” is a cop-out. It’s an easy answer to a question where the answer isn’t known or obvious. The problem is, many designers stop there, crickets chirping, bringing a conversation to a stop. It’s just not helpful.

What’s worse? Making up an answer to avoid saying the dreaded words “I don’t know.” A made-up answer to questions is even worse because if you’re lucky, half the time you’ll be right but most of the time you’ll end up wrong and looking like a fool.

What I recommend, when you’re asked a design question that you don’t know the answer to, is instead respond with “I don’t know, so let’s find out!” Every question has an answer, whether it’s known or not. And every unknown answer is an opportunity to talk to customers and learn how they would use your software. You, in turn, get to find out the right answer. Helpful!

I’m not saying every unknown answer warrants an entire full-blown research study (although if resources are available, why not do some guerilla testing?). But what I recommend is to keep track of these questions. Keep them in a list. Weave them into your future research so as you plan your next regularly scheduled research study, you can revisit your list of open questions and make sure they’re addressed.

image credit: doobybrain

Short answer: I’m still not totally sure.

The term CX (customer experience, or is it consumer experience?) has been around for awhile now. But when I ask fellow UXers what the difference is between the two, I’ve never received a clear answer. The most common response I get is something along the lines of “it’s just another flavor of UX.” Sort of like Service Design, but I’ll leave that for another conversation.

I recently set out to learn more about CX by attending a local chapter meetup of CXPA. As I got to talking to the group at my table (by the way, everyone in attendance was super smart and friendly) I saw patterns emerge. I noticed that they had job titles that included phrases like account services, customer success, and post-purchase. The more we spoke the more clear it became (at least in this group) that CX was more focused on “supporting users” and less about “designing things”, which is how I typically think of UX. We design things for people to use.

Interestingly, CXers were as curious about what do as I was about them. And the more we shared stories, the more similarities we saw between the tools and tactics we use, just from slightly different angles. We all talk to customers and users. We all watch them work and listen to their needs. It’s just that it seems CX is more focused on the customer from a reactive mindset (fixing problems and making people happy) and UX is more proactive (designing great experiences that make people happy). In the end, we want the same result: happy people.

Clear as mud?

I’ll be attending the always-excellent UX Hong Kong conference next month (including a week-long stopover in Tokyo). I highly recommend attending this conference if you ever get the chance.

The 1 1/2 day conference consists of UX speakers for the first afternoon followed by a full day of workshops. Topics include the Myths of Innovation, Managing UX Teams, Agile UX and the Psychology of UX.

Lots of folks from different cultures always makes it a great experience and speakers are always top notch. If you happen to be there, make sure to track me down and say Hi! [sgmb id=”1″]

What is a Discovery Workshop?

A Discovery Workshop is an in-person, hands-on, facilitated workshop which is used to understand client/stakeholder design problems. Discovery workshops aren’t about designing screens or coming up with a final solution. Rather, they’re an efficient way for a project team to gain a shared understanding, explore ideas and develop a design direction before starting a new project.

What is this workshop?

From startups just getting off the ground to established businesses looking to expand features or product lines, we’ll show you how to start your project right. In this workshop, we will share practical tips for getting the most out of the time you spend with clients or stakeholders during the discovery (initial) phase of a project; tips will cover the spectrum from making a workshop plan to connecting with your attendees during the workshop and following up afterwards. You’ll get a copy of our own battle-tested workshop playbook to take home.

Join us on Friday, July 10 for this workshop led by Matt Wallens of UX Atlanta and Garren DiPasquale of Aduro. After the workshop, stick around and we’ll grab drinks together in Atlantic Station to continue the conversation.

Happy Hour will be sponsored by our friends at ettain group (free drinks!).

The user experience is every project team member’s responsibility. You don’t have to be a UX designer to attend!

Who Is This For?

• Designers
• Developers
• Project Managers
• Product Managers
• You, because you want to improve the projects you work on

What You’ll Learn

• What to do before running a discovery workshop
• How to plan a discovery workshop to solve a specific design problem
• What kinds of innovative, fun exercises you can use when running a discovery workshop to get data you can use
• How to build rapport with your participants and get them all involved
• What deliverables to provide your participants
• How to measure the success of your workshop

What You’ll Get

• Our playbook with instructions for running each exercise
• Document templates
• Shopping list of materials to buy to run a workshop

 

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When I meet with a new client and discuss facilitating a UX Discovery Workshop, it’s not surprising that they often don’t know what I’m talking about. For someone who isn’t a UX practitioner, it’s not always an easy concept to grasp right away. But at it’s core, a Discovery Workshop is an in-person workshop used for understanding and solving difficult design problems.

One thing to note, these workshops aren’t about designing screens or coming up with a final solution. They’re a very quick, efficient way to explore an idea and come up with a design direction before starting a project that will give you, the client, the confidence that you’re going down the right path. It’s also about making human connections. Let’s face it, we’re all people, and if the Discovery Workshop turns into a longer relationship it’s good to get to know each other. So in that regard, from my standpoint, the workshop is also about gaining a deeper understanding of the client and the overall landscape of the project.

From a structural standpoint, the workshops are broken down into two parts: Divergent Thinking, when we focus on exploring ideas and problems, and Convergent Thinking, when we select one or two of these ideas and start to form solutions.  So what really happens in one of these workshops? Here’s are some of the activities involved.

PART I: DIVERGENT THINKING

This first thing we do is get ready to explore ideas and think creatively. After we begin with some fun icebreaker games to get everyone feeling comfortable with each other, we move on to understanding your business. This includes the history of success and failure of the current business. Honesty is key here. Remember that line about those who cannot remember the past are something-something…

It’s also key to talk about the reason for this new project. Is the team fending off a new competitor? Breaking into a new market? Where do they want to be in a year? In 5 years? How do they expect to make that journey?

For the entirety of the workshop, we want the project stakeholders in the room to understand their goals. And when I say stakeholders, we want all of them. Especially whoever is in charge of the budget. I’ve seen many teams put a lot of effort into a workshop only to have a stakeholder come in at the last moment and not be on the same page as the rest of the team. A classic swoop ‘n poop. Talk about a waste!

The next step is to understand the product. For large, complex software, this can take a bit of time, and at first may seem laborious to a team that already knows their product. However, for me to help the team, I need to understand the product, too. We don’t talk about the nitty gritty details unless we need to, but it’s critical to get a solid overview of the features and functionality so that I can steer the workshop, ask constructive questions and look for areas to improve.

I always schedule time for us to critique the competition, and this is usually fun. Who doesn’t like to make fun of their competitors? It’s a great way to understand the industry and demonstrate to the workshop participants that even if they’re not the current market leader, everyone can be taken down a peg and have their weaknesses exposed.

Understanding the users and customers is next. This discussion is less about the demographics of the users and more about their goals, motivations and attitudes. To design with a true user-centered approach, understanding the users and distinguishing between users and customers is key. I take all of this information and we collaboratively build out some rough User Profiles. These won’t be full-on personas, as they’re based solely on internal feedback, but being able to reference different user types will help the team start to design with more intent and less guesswork.

Stay tuned for Part II of this series where I’ll talk about our Converge exercises and what happens after the Discovery Workshop. [sgmb id=”1″]

The online form submission has been around for ages. Now that we’ve finally established some solid design standards, we shouldn’t let all of the great information they collect go to waste. What do I mean? Let me tell you a story.

I recently embarked on a mission to plan an event and needed to book a venue. I knew the date, approximate number of attendees and a general idea of the kind of venue I wanted, so I hit up Google to find potential solutions. As I browsed various sites, I could generally tell whether the venue would be a good fit based on size, amenities and location, but to get the critical information (availability, and sometimes cost) I knew I’d have to contact the venue.

Now, I’m not what you’d call a “phone person.” If I can use email instead of a phone, I choose email every time. Fortunately, most of these venues had published a contact email address, and many even had a handy form to fill out. It was nice to see a lot of well-designed, usable forms. When I came across one in my search, I happily filled in all the required information (and even some optional comments) and submitted my form request, with my primary goal to find out if these venues were available on the date I needed.

After I submitted my form, one of three things happened

1. No response

After 24 hours without a response I assumed my submission was delivered to an unmonitored email address, to someone who wasn’t interested in helping me, or to a business that was no longer around.

2. A form response

I don’t mean a quick “Thank you, we’ll get right back to you.” type of message. Those are helpful, but I’m talking about a message written by a person who didn’t bother to reference my answers to their form questions or respond to what I wrote in their comment box.

3. A personal response

It wasn’t often, but some companies I contacted took their form submissions seriously. In a few cases I received a response within the hour, that specifically addressed the date of my event and other information I provided.

I realized as designers and coders, we rarely focus on the “after” of an online form submission. In my search, I was dealing with very small businesses. For all I know, they may only have a few employees running things. But it was clear in many cases that they didn’t treat their online sales feed with the same respect I bet they treat their phone contacts. Would they not answer a ringing phone? Would they not return a voicemail left by a potential client? I suspect not.

As user experience designers, we should take the opportunity to better help our clients as we build products for them. It’s not enough to slap a form on a website, no matter how good the interaction design is. Ask your clients: Who will receive those messages? Talk to your clients about their customer’s expectations as far as response time and what information would be helpful in those responses.

If you have a form on your site, do you have an process for handling the submissions? Do they just sit in someone’s inbox until that person decides to answer them? Or worse, no one gets to them? [sgmb id=”1″]