inspireUX

An Interview with Jesse James Garrett

Catriona Shedd — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 21:26:19 +0000

This article was originally posted on Medium. Find my latest writings @inspireUX.

“Good design work is measured not in hours, but in days… Pace yourself, and trust your intuition.”

Thanks to the generosity of the great people at Adaptive Path and Capital One, I was given the opportunity to attend UX Week 2016 in San Francisco and sit down and speak with Jesse James Garrett, co-founder of Adaptive Path and author of the popular book The Elements of User Experience. We spoke in-depth about history of UX Week, where UX has been and where it’s headed, how designers can be more successful within their organizations, challenges working in-house vs. at an agency, and some final words of wisdom.

UX Week

“UX Week isn’t a conference about UX, it is a conference for UX people.”

C: Thank you so much for speaking with me. Let’s start by talking about UX Week. This conference is in, what, its 13th or 14th year?
JJG: 14th year.

C: 14 years. So what’s changed about it over the past 14 years?
JJG: I think that maybe what’s more interesting is what’s hasn’t changed. Because it’s changed quite a lot. It was initially only workshops and only taught by AP staff, and then we started inviting guests and workshop teachers, and then we started offering a more conference component to it as it evolved according to what our attendees were telling us they wanted to see in an event.

But I think that what hasn’t changed is that UX Week has always been about two things: One is an attempt to look at broadly at the notion of designing experience and what that means. So in the case of workshops that means we may have [one on] prototyping, but it also may mean in past years we’ve had improv workshops and game design workshops and things that are obviously not directly related to the work of a User Experience Designer. I would say UX Week isn’t a conference about UX, it is a conference for UX people and so therefore would be about the things that we think would be interesting and edifying to our community. So there’s that breadth, that diversity, that eclectic nature of the program which has only gotten more eclectic over time.

And then the second thing I would say that’s been consistent is that we’ve always tried to maintain a balance between the real practical skills building like you would see at a lot of other events, combined with some inspiration and some food-for-thought that will hopefully spark in people some new ideas and new ways of thinking about their work. So every year that’s always what we’re trying to do, is to have it be simultaneously grounded in practical things like the workshops you would find at a lot of other UX events combined with forward-looking and more inspirational content.

C: How do you pick that inspirational content? How do you try to make it relevant for User Experience people who may not be used to that from other types of events?
JJG: What I have found over the years is the less I try to calculate and triangulate the needs and expectations of my audience, the more successful the event is. When I let go of the idea of trying to check a bunch of boxes for things like “ok we need a mobile case study, and we need a talk about process…” Rather than try to reduce it to a formula that is going to meet the set of expectations that I imagine people to have for the event, if I just program the event for myself that tends to go better. I just feel very fortunate that we’ve been able to draw an audience that is interested in the same things that I am interested in .

Where UX Has Been & Where It’s Headed

“The UX community has been successful beyond my wildest imaginings.”

C: I noticed that your final talk with Peter [Merholz] on Friday is on the past, present, and future of UX and what’s been changing over the years. Thinking back to when you first entered into this field versus where it is now, what has happened that you wouldn’t have been able to anticipate when you first got into it?
JJG: I think that the UX community has been successful beyond my wildest imaginings. The first UX Week was in 2003 and at that time UX was still not even a discrete role inside organizations. UX was a set of practices that some people who were wearing some kind of designer hat or another were incorporating into how they approach their work. But there was nobody who was like “you’re our UX person.”

By 2003… we (Adaptive Path) were the first ones to be focused exclusively on User Experience and there were a couple of people who came along after that, but at the time there was still practically no market for agency services yet. Certainly not more than enough to sustain a couple of companies. And there were no significant in-house roles for User Experience, versus where we are now where there are hundreds of UX agencies out there and there are organizations where UX is not just one role, it’s an entire team or an entire department, and they have really taken up the work that we’ve done. Organizations like Capital One are seeing it as a distinct source of value and a competitive differentiator in the market and they’re investing in that and empowering those teams to do work that has both a broader and deeper impact for their customers.

C: Sure. And beyond the organizational changes that have happened, we now have CXO’s and other design leaders that we didn’t have before, has the work itself for the individual contributor or practitioner changed at all?
JJG: Yeah, I think that there has been a certain commodification of certain UX practices or even deliverables over time. When we started Adaptive Path, a wireframe was a strategy deliverable. It was something that was so abstract and removed from the design and development process that it felt like something that was sort of a very high-end thing, and now wireframes, as just one example of a UX deliverable, have now sort of moved down from strategy into the realm of baseline, table-stakes, how-you-do-your-job kind of stuff. And you see a lot of the things that early on were considered to be sort of rarified tools like personas.

Now, where we are in our practice right now is we do a lot of work around experience mapping. Which is still considered a pretty high-level strategic thing, but you can already see it happening. You can already see smaller teams or individuals taking up these tools. And that’s been on purpose. At Adaptive Path, through the writing work that we’ve done, through our workshops and our events, we are actively pushing that knowledge out, trying to teach as many people as we can the methods so it isn’t solely the province of a handful of strategists in a board room somewhere, but it’s something that teams on the ground can actively use in doing the work that they do.

Being Successful Designers

“Learning to speak the language of people outside our field is the biggest challenge that I’ve seen for teams who are trying to get their work out into the world.”

C: Is there anything happening, maybe not directly in the design and User Experience industry, but in the world around us that we have to be more aware of in order to be successful as designers?
JJG: I think that we are all collectively more empowered than we ever have been in the history of the field. But, we don’t necessarily have the background or the experience to know how to wield that power most effectively. And so when I talk to people about the struggles that they’re having that don’t have anything to do with design, it’s usually about politics, persuasion, rallying people behind a vision behind the experience for a product or service, and those are things that we’re collectively still trying to learn how to do effectively.

C: Why do you think that’s taken up to this point, and continuing, to figure out how to do that effectively? What’s made that so challenging for us?
JJG: I think most designers, quite honestly, feel like good work speaks for itself. And if they produce good work, then obviously that’s the thing that we should all do, and all they have to do is show it to everybody and then everybody will be onboard with it. And there’s a lot more complexity and nuance to the task of rallying people behind a vision and helping people really see what’s possible, rather than just putting things in front of people and relying upon their judgement to bring them along.

C: There’s definitely been a lot of focus, not just at this event but at a lot of other User Experience events about those skills: communication, collaboration, even selling-type of skills that you need in order to be successful within an organization. Within a design team, what can they be doing better to get better at those skills?
JJG: Adaptive Path was an independent consultancy for 13 years and I had the opportunity to work with a lot of different teams of a lot of different sizes, and a lot of organizations of different sizes, and the breakdown that I have seen most frequently is designers communicating with business owners in the ways that designers like to be communicated with, and not necessarily in ways that actually connect with a non-designer audience. AndI think learning to speak the language of people outside our field is the biggest breakdown or biggest challenge that I’ve seen for teams who are trying to get their work out into the world.

In-House vs. Agency Challenges

“One of the enormous selling points for us in joining Capital One was that we felt like there was a really strong infrastructure in place of empowered champions who already had strong voices in the organization for the customer experience.”

C: And does how we communicate to these business leaders within our organizations change at all whether you’re a freelancer, someone in an agency, or someone in-house, or is it relatively consistent?
JJG: Well you know it’s interesting because I think being a consultant vs. being in-house has some very meaningful tradeoffs. If you’re in-house then you actually have your hands on the steering wheel. As a consultant, you’re standing next to the person who has their hands on the steering wheel and going “oh I think it’s going a bit to the left here, and oh I think we’re going to hit some rough weather and so we might want to head south” and you know those kinds of things. So, you have this position where you have outside perspective, which is enormously valuable, but at the end of the day somebody else has their hands on the wheel.

C: If you’re the one not in control of the situation, how can you possibly be successful?
JJG: There are two parts to that. One is building a relationship of trust with the people who are in control, and secondly empowering them to use that control more effectively. In the course of watching UX go from a set of practices, to a role, to a department within organizations within the past 15 years, what we had to do in order to keep the work alive is empower champions within these organizations. Give them tools, give them ways of framing the work, give them ways of selling the work, give them ways of thinking about the work for themselves, that would allow them to make choices that serve the experience even if we as the consultants are not around.

Now, being part of Capital One, I think one of the enormous selling points for us in joining Capital One was that we felt like there was a really strong infrastructure in place of empowered champions who already had strong voices in the organization for the customer experience and there was executive-level commitment to making those things happen. So it was an environment in which we thought we could be successful where a lot of other environments have been a much more up-hill battle.

C: I know a lot has been talked and written about on this particular topic of agencies being acquired by larger organizations. Do you see this as a trend, and is that a good thing? Or are there significant tradeoffs for people who are more used to being in a consultancy?
JJG: It’s undoubtedly a trend. There have been a number of these acquisitions at varying scales. John Maeda at MIT has been tracking the roll-up of design agencies over the course of the last several years. But, the thing is, it’s a trend from which I don’t think you can extrapolate any really large-scale messages except that experience is more and more important to organizations.

When Adaptive Path was acquired by Capital One, all of our employees came over with us because everybody was on-board with what we were trying to do. Other organizations, other companies that we used to compete with as an independent agency, have been through acquisitions and a significant number of people were not onboard with the acquisition and they quit. Because that organization was not the right fit for them or the roles that they were being offered were not the right fit for them, or they did not feel empowered by the new reality that was being put in front of them. So again, going back to what I was saying about having your hands on the wheel, if you’re the kind of person who wants to have your hands on the wheel, then moving in-house will probably serve you. If you’re the kind of person who wants to be more of a navigator than a pilot, then I think probably the consulting lifestyle is a better fit.

C: If you’re speaking to more junior designers, people right out of school or with a couple of years of experience, what path would you suggest to them in terms of where they should focus their career?
JJG: I think that starting out in an agency is a really smart move for younger designers because it gives them an opportunity to try out lots of different types of problems and find out where their creative interest really lies. I’ve worked with younger designers who were working in an agency context for a while and they got frustrated with not having their hands on the wheel. Or they tried out a bunch of different industries and found out “I have a passion for financial services” or “I have a passion for healthcare” or whatever. And so I think that early on that kind of thing is really valuable

There’s value in going in-house early in your career if you have the opportunity to try out lots of different kinds of problems. When we became part of Capital One there was this question that we had early on which was simply is there enough diversity of creative work to be done here to keep our teams engaged, to keep people from getting bored and frustrated and feeling like they’re just pushing the same rock up the hill every day. And then they showed us around all the different things that they were doing and we’re like yeah, there’s more than enough different complex, interesting work going on here to keep everybody engaged and that has been the case for nearly two years now.

C: That’s the best case scenario. I’ve been a part of an agency, big companies, a smaller company acquired by a big company, and one thing that I’ve seen that could potentially be a Bay Area problem rather than something generalizable for the rest of the world, but designers in particular lose interest quickly if they’re not continually challenged. Is that something that is the responsibility of the organization as a whole, or rather the design management to ensure their team is really engaged?
JJG: I don’t think it’s the organization’s responsibility to feed designers interesting work. If you’re not getting interesting work in the organization you’re in, you should probably find a different organization. I do think we have taken the creative care and feeding of our team very very seriously because, to your point, when people are working on stuff that really challenges them to grow as creative professionals, that is when their engagement is the highest. I think that design leaders really need to not treat their designers as interchangeable. To understand each individual’s strengths and areas of motivation and passion, to be able to align whatever work is available with what they want or what will continue to keep them at the edge of their growth, keep them engaged. I think that’s the thing, you see in a lot of design departments that kind of grew out of IT departments, you see this thing of trying to manage designers as if they were programmers, where you plug them in and you just hand them the requirements and they’ll bang out whatever the thing is that’s required. Design doesn’t work that way. And you know really, honestly, programming doesn’t work that way either, but design really really doesn’t work that way.

Final Words of Wisdom

C: So I have just one last thing for you. I don’t know if you remember, but I run a site called inspireUX that started as a collection of inspiring quotes from people across the field, and what I’ve noticed that your quotes are some of the most frequently shared and frequently cited. So I wanted to put you on the spot a little bit. If there’s something you could offer to people in the industry, general words of wisdom, what is something you might share with them?
JJG: This isn’t putting me on the spot at all! I would say that good design work is measured not in hours, but in days. What I mean by that is that there is a significant part of any creative work that happens outside of our conscious awareness, and happens at a different pace from focused, at the computer, pushing boxes around the screen kind of work. You are actually not doing yourself a service by trying to cram more work into less time because you’re not allowing the space for those creative processes to happen. So I would say: pace yourself, and trust your intuition.

C: Perfect. Thank you very much!

Learn more about UX Week and check out the great work that’s being done at the Adaptive Path.

Methods to Achieve User Delight

Catriona Shedd — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 21:39:04 +0000

Designers like to talk about achieving the ultimate goal of “user delight.” In fact, it’s one of our primary goals where I work at RelateIQ. It’s not enough to just provide information and functionality anymore. Successful product teams go one step further and aim to delight their users. But, what exactly does that mean? Below are some ways of thinking about user delight and what you can do to create more delightful experiences.

Be Smart

Anticipate my needs and be one step ahead of me. It’s unexpectedly nice when a product knows what I’m trying to do before even I do.
Use technology wisely to do things automatically and intelligently. Don’t make me do a lot of manual work to get things done.
Prevent me from making errors. Don’t blame me for doing something incorrectly. Make resolving problems easy and friction-free.
Be smart and figure out what you need to know without making me give it to you. Don’t ask me to give you superfluous information about myself.

Be Friendly and Helpful

Give your product a personality through humor and a friendly tone. I don’t want to be using another stale and boring product. Make me smile.
Speak to me like you would if you were talking to a friend. Humanize your product. Corporate and technical terms are frustrating to read.
Go above and beyond when I need to contact you for help. Don’t just give me automated responses. I want to feel like you care.
Find ways of turning negative experiences back into positive experiences. Things can and will go wrong, but leave me feeling positive about your organization by responding in a helpful way.

Be Valuable

Make each step meaningful and purposeful. Don’t make me click through a bunch of extra steps that are just preventing me from getting things done.
Give me something valuable in return for using your product. This isn’t just a one way street. Reward me in unexpected ways.
Show me value immediately. Don’t make me sign up or go through a lengthy learning process before I can get anything beneficial out of your product.

Be Engaging

Pay attention to the details. Don’t always go for the “easy” or expected approach when a little something extra could create a better experience. Focus on the little big details.
Use transitions and animations in a clever and useful way that supports the task I’m trying to complete or augments the information that I’m trying to consume. Static interfaces are boring, but using too many animations can also be annoying and distracting.

Be Convenient and Accessible

Let me do what I’m trying to do on any device. Don’t punish me by hiding content just because I’m using a different type of device than you were expecting me to use.
Let me focus on the content and doing what I need to do. Don’t make me think about how to use your website or application. Stay out of my way.
Make your product work well with others. Don’t make me bounce between products just to get something done. Make moving between products seamless.
Focus on accessibility for all users. Don’t frustrate me by making your content difficult to consume if I have a physical impairment.

Be Consistent

Make your product consistently snappy to load and use. I don’t want to have to wait around to get things done, and any delay will impact my experience.
Be consistent across the entire product ecosystem. Consistency builds trust, and trust breeds loyalty. Delight can’t be achieved if that trust is broken.

Be Aligned Around Delight

You won’t be able to achieve user delight by cherry picking any of these principles. One isolated element of delight can easily be squashed by negative elements of the experience. In order to be successful, your entire organization has to be ruthlessly focused on achieving delightful user experiences. Be wary of the “oh, we can fix that later” mindset. It’s much harder to make up for a negative experience once it’s been introduced.

Get ideas and insights for achieving delight by watching and responding to your users’ aspirations and behaviors. Have your entire organization get involved in listening to the people who are using your product. You’ll quickly find out where your product has opportunities to improve. Think of your users as people, not just numbers completing transactions. Understanding the context around how someone interacts with your product can help you identify how to be delightful within that context.

Finally, find ways of measuring delight. Quantitatively, you can measure usage and engagement with a product through metrics. However, numbers don’t tell the whole story. Just because people are using a product doesn’t mean it is delightful. Create systems for qualitatively listening to your users and finding out whether your product is meaningful and emotionally impactful.

“I believe that logic + emotion are a winning combination. When useful and useable meet delight—great things happen. It’s about balance.” – David Armano

How to Find a UX Job in the San Francisco Bay Area

Catriona Shedd — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 17:56:43 +0000

3 months ago, I relocated to San Francisco from Philadelphia. Finding a job in the San Francisco Bay Area proved to be harder than I originally anticipated. After all, San Francisco is known as one of, if not the, largest tech centers of the world, right? Surely, there is an over abundance of UX and Design jobs and you can essentially have your pick, right? Well, not exactly. For sure there are tons of opportunities here, and the variety of companies to choose from is unmatched anywhere else in the country (New York is close behind). However, finding a job that’s the right mutual fit can still be tricky. I learned a lot along the way and want to share some advice based on my experience.

This advice is not necessarily exclusive to San Francisco. Much of this advice could apply to any job search. However, there are some elements of job searching in the Bay Area that are particularly important to pay attention to.

Define what you’re looking for

Decide what type of company you want to join.
Are you interested in a big corporation? Agency? Early stage startup? Later stage startup? The Bay Area has all of the above, and it can be tricky to decide which type of company suits you best. There are pros and cons of choosing to join different types of organizations. Consider the trade offs in type of work, variety, pace, salary, team dynamics, and work-life balance. If you’re not sure where to start, talk to people in several types of companies to better understand what it’s like to work there.

Determine what industry or type of product interests and excites you.
You will want to find a company whose mission aligns with your interests and values. If you decide to join an in-house product team, much of your happiness at work will be dependent on how excited you are about what the company is building. Keep an open mind about areas you might not have thought would interest you. You may stumble upon a great opportunity in a domain you never thought to explore.

Decide where you want to live and how long you’re willing to commute.
If you’re relocating from outside of the Bay Area, think very carefully about where you want to live, as it can significantly impact your job choice. Traffic is notoriously awful in this area, making commuting within the City, to the East Bay, or to the South Bay/Peninsula tricky. Public transportation is decent, but pay careful attention to the routes and time it takes to utilize public transit. I decided to live in San Francisco and commute to Palo Alto, which meant purposefully living near Caltrain to make the commute bearable.

Learn about salary and equity, and do your homework before negotiating.
Know your base salary number accounting for cost of living in the Bay Area (which, if you haven’t heard, is ridiculous). Many companies will ask you for your salary expectations on initial phone screens. If you must answer this question, it’s generally best to be honest and focus on what you expect to earn, not just what you earn today. If you’re joining an organization where equity is part of your total compensation (e.g. almost all startups), learn about what that means and decide how much you’re willing to compromise on salary in exchange for equity. Be aware that some places, even well-known companies, significantly underpay in the Bay Area. Don’t settle for a position that won’t pay you fairly.

Find opportunities

Find inside connections and network, network, network.
Getting a referral from an existing employee is almost always more powerful than submitting your resume blindly to job board postings. Use Twitter and LinkedIn to your advantage. Scour your network and find people who work at the companies that interest you. If you don’t know anyone who works at those companies, reach out to others you know in the field, even if they don’t live in the Bay Area. More likely than not, you will find someone who knows someone at the places you’re interested in if you dig enough. In my search, I found my UX community to be incredibly useful and almost every opportunity I pursued came from a referral.

Many of the best opportunities aren’t posted online.
This is where having a strong network is critical. Many companies, particularly in the startup world, are constantly looking for Design talent, but may not have a specific opening in mind or otherwise may not post their positions online. Consider finding the companies you’re most interested in first, even if they don’t appear to be hiring, and then work to talk to someone there about possible opportunities.

If you do apply for a position without a referral, try to stand out.
Many of the more well-known companies in the Bay Area will receive hundreds if not thousands of applications for Design positions. In order to get a chance to move forward in the process, find ways in which you can stand out from the crowd. Some people take this to the extreme by creating custom web pages or sending the company bribes. My general philosophy is if you need to go to the extreme to get noticed, you’re probably not the right fit for the company. Instead, focus on writing a really good custom cover letter that succinctly explains the value you will bring to the company and why you’re passionate about the opportunity. Creating a video cover letter is a relatively easy way to stand out without going too far. You could also do a mini UX review of one of the company’s products.

Try to attend local UX or Design events.
Local events or meetups are a great way of meeting other practitioners in the area and finding people who are hiring. BayCHI, IxDA-SF, and many meetups on meetup.com are great places to start.

Show off your skills

Your portfolio is your most important asset.
It’s impossible to get a UX or Design job in the Bay Area without a portfolio. While you need to have a resume, most hiring managers will simply skim it to see where you have worked in the past. Your portfolio, on the other hand, is where you can really stand out and show your skills. It’s often the place where you will be making your first impression. Within your portfolio, it’s important to show and explain the process and thinking behind your work, not just the end deliverables. Talk about sketching, brainstorming, requirements gathering, research, etc. That will help companies better understand the value you could bring to their team.

Being a “unicorn” certainly helps, and most companies want someone with a breadth of skills.
Many companies in the Bay Area are searching for the elusive “unicorn” — someone who is a UX Designer, Visual Designer, and Front-End Developer all in one. From what I saw when I was searching for jobs, if you can’t do all three things, at least pick two. However, while many companies will want someone who can bring to their team as many skills as possible, good hiring managers know that it’s unlikely that anyone can do all of those things equally well. Don’t let unicorn postings scare you away from opportunities. Instead, focus on showing the company what you will bring to the team and how you collaborate with people with other skill sets to achieve results.

Prepare for the interview

Be prepared for a potentially long and intense interview process.
I found that Bay Area interviews tended to be a bit more intense in terms of time commitment than interviews I’ve had in the past in other places. This may be a result of the high bar and expectations that companies have for design talent in the area. Expect to go through several rounds of interviews (the most I ran into was 5). This can be particularly difficult if you’re interviewing remotely, so plan for needing the time to go through long phone or video interviews with each company.

Understand the company’s culture before you interview.
California is a very casual state. Startups in particular are known for having a very casual environment. Research the companies you’re interviewing with and try to learn about their company culture. Since culture fit is a big part of any interview process, be cognizant of things like what you wear to the interview. For many places, wearing a suit to the interview will make you stand out in a negative way. When in doubt, ask the company what is appropriate.

Put effort into design challenges or “homework.”
Many companies will ask candidates to work on a design assignment as a way of seeing how they approach a problem and present their work. Many will introduce this as a short 2-4 hour assignment. However, companies want you to show your interest in the position by going above and beyond and being creative in your solution to the assignment. That said, be fair to yourself as the interviewee. Your time is limited, and going overboard may backfire. Use these assignments as a chance to show off your process and core skillset to the company. You don’t have to come up with a perfect solution to these challenges, but coming up with something unique or creative can help you stand out.

Remember that you’re interviewing them, too.

Enter the job searching process with a clear sense of what you want out of a company. As you go through the interview process, listen carefully for signs that the company might not be the right place for you. Ask a lot of questions about the product, leadership, vision, culture, and day-to-day operations of the company. You will want to get a really good sense of what it’s like to work somewhere before you accept an offer.

Find out More

If you’re thinking of getting a new job in the Bay Area, feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I’m happy to make introductions to people I know in the area as well.

I also recommend reading through Patrick Neeman’s article Six Tips Before Moving To San Francisco as a UX Professional. He shares some great tips from his perspective.

RelateIQ is Hiring!

An article like this wouldn’t be complete without saying that we’re hiring designers of all types at RelateIQ! If you’d like more information, I’d love to speak with you. We have a great team and are working on a really challenging and interesting product for the enterprise.

Closing out 2013: My Move to San Francisco

Catriona Shedd — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 02:40:50 +0000

Things have been quiet on this site recently, and that’s because I’ve been incredibly busy making some pretty major life changes in the later half of 2013. I’ve relocated to San Francisco and have joined the amazing team at RelateIQ.

Why the move to the Bay Area?

The Philadelphia area was wonderful to me for the past 6.5 years. The people I met and the things I experienced in Philadelphia have had a significant impact on my life both personally and professionally. Moving on is certainly bittersweet. However, the Bay Area offers me a chance to push myself in my career and take on new challenges. The opportunities in San Francisco are incredible, and I’m excited to be in the place where there’s a constant buzz and energy around making great products.

Why RelateIQ?

After having experience in both a large organization and at an agency, I was looking for something new. I’ve joined a startup in order to dive head first into building a product that I believe has the potential to make a significant impact on people’s lives; a product that I can stick with, see improved over time, and where I have the chance to significantly impact the user experience of that product. Along with that, I wanted to join a team that’s a joy to be around every day and who I can learn from. That’s RelateIQ.

RelateIQ automatically captures your communications from email, phone calls, calendar events, and social networks. The idea is to reduce the significant amount of manual data entry most systems require in order to manage your professional relationships. We’re helping people build better relationships and make smarter decisions. Exciting and challenging, for sure!

Thank you

The move to San Francisco was not without its challenges, and I owe a lot to those who helped me along the way. Without naming everyone individually, I want to thank you all for your guidance, advice, and assistance in finding the right opportunity. I’m looking forward to meeting new people and joining Bay Area UX (and non UX) events and meetups. Please reach out if you’re in the area!

Tips for Structuring Better Brainstorming Sessions

Catriona Shedd — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 18:46:38 +0000

Brainstorming is widely used by teams as a method to generate ideas and solve problems. However, many brainstorming activities are flawed and can end up hurting creativity rather than helping spur ideas. It has been well documented that traditional brainstorming, where groups come together and toss out ideas one by one, is often a flawed process. Issues with brainstorming include:

Lack of preparation: If participants in a brainstorming session don’t understand the goals of the session in advance, they will come to the session unprepared and significant time will need to be spent ensuring all participants understand the problem before any ideation can take place.
Limited creativity: Many brainstorming activities focus on generating unique ideas or unconnected solutions to a problem. Creativity, however, is often achieved by elaborating on individual ideas by taking them apart and improving or changing one part at a time.
Group-think: It’s easy for groups to fixate on the first dominant idea that is expressed, reducing the production of additional ideas.
Unequal contributions: Traditional brainstorming tends to favor outgoing, extroverted personalities. Without effective facilitation, the group may end up deferring to the most outspoken and animated participants while other participants contribute less to the discussion.
Fear of judgement: Even with the guidance that “all ideas are valid”, participants may feel the need to “perform” and only contribute ideas that they feel will be well perceived. The fear of contributing “bad ideas” can result in a counterproductive session. Studies have shown that critique and conflict can result in better and more imaginative ideas.
Confusing next steps: Often, teams will come up with many ideas during a brainstorming session, but struggle with what to do with those ideas.

However, brainstorming doesn’t have to be flawed. It’s possible to structure brainstorming activities to maximize the value that you can get from both individual and group thinking. The following 5 step process can help you conduct better brainstorming sessions:

Define Goals & State the Problem
Stimulate Creativity
Ideate Individually
Share, Expand, and Critique
Categorize and Synthesize

1. Define Goals & State the Problem

Prior to the brainstorming session (preferably 24 hours in advance), send participants a clear, succinct statement that explains the purpose of the session. State the problem that you’re trying to solve. Be cautious not to make this problem statement too specific as this can limit the amount of creative solutions to the problem. A wider, more abstract problem statement allows participants to challenge assumptions, generate new perspectives, and uncover new approaches to the problem.

Provide background materials that will help participants understand the context of the problem. Summarize these materials in a scannable format to increase the likelihood that participants will read them and at least consider the highlights. By giving participants both a summary of the background material and links to the full material, you can help them feel in control over their ability to prepare for the session without feeling overwhelmed.

While it’s important to set the expectation that participants need to prepare for the session in advance, briefly re-emphasize the goals and problem statement at the beginning of the brainstorming session to ensure all participants are in alignment and to allow for any outstanding questions to be answered.

2. Stimulate Creativity

Many brainstorming sessions ask participants to jump straight from a problem statement to solutions. Many participants may not know where to start, and will often struggle with coming up with ideas without any further direction. Use “thought triggers” to help participants think about the problem in unique ways. Here are some suggestions to draw from:

Psychology: Create a list of psychological concepts from Stephen Anderson’s Mental Notes to guide participants to think about how psychology could be applied to the given problem.
Perspectives: Have participants consider the problem from multiple perspectives, whether that be from your target user groups/personas or from outside perspectives.
Parallel Worlds: Create a list of parallel worlds to help participants imagine comparisons, similarities, and differences between your problem and worlds outside of your given domain. For example, draw solutions that are inspired from fashion, television, space, the travel industry, or the construction industry.
Highlights from research & strategy: Select a few key quotes, statistics, or findings from previous research studies or strategy documents to help participants recall inputs that may impact the given problem statement.

3. Ideate Individually

Each participant in a brainstorming session should have an equal chance to contribute their ideas. Instead of having participants immediately shout out ideas in a group setting, allow them to generate ideas individually for a fixed amount of time. This allows you to gather everyone’s opinions and generate more ideas in a shorter amount of time.

One way to ensure you gather a diverse set of ideas and opinions is to invite a diverse group of people to the brainstorming session. While sessions shouldn’t include every single person who could have an opinion, don’t limit participation to only the design team. You can get great ideas from developers, product managers, customer service reps, etc.

Provide each participant with a stack of sticky notes or note cards and instruct them to write a single idea on each note. Aim to generate as many ideas as possible within a ~10-15 minute timeframe. The exact time you choose is dependent on the complexity of the problem you’re trying to solve. Each note could have a word, phrase, or drawing to help the participants express their ideas.

Encourage participants to not over-analyze their ideas at this stage, and to generate as many individual ideas as possible. Explain that even half-baked ideas can help the team build upon the concept.

4. Share, Expand, and Critique

Once individual ideas have been generated, have each person read off their ideas one-by-one. Initially, let everyone express their ideas without discussion or critique. As each idea is read, put the idea up on a wall. You could also document ideas digitally in the form of a diagram or mind map, which could be particularly useful if you’re working with anyone remotely. If similar ideas are expressed, you can group them together, but don’t focus too much on grouping concepts until all ideas are read. This will allow you to get all ideas in front of the team so that you can more effectively discuss the ideas as a whole.

Expand

Once all ideas have been shared, begin discussing how you can build upon the existing ideas. Instead of critiquing the ideas, look to clarify them and expand upon them in order to generate additional concepts. There are a few ways in which you can facilitate this process:

SCAMPER – Discuss how you could substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate and/or reverse an idea in order to build off the original idea and create new ideas.
Dissect the idea – Take an idea, and see if you can take it apart and improve or change one part of it at a time. Think about if there are any parts that make up the whole that might be able to stand on their own.
Ask “why?” – If any assumptions come up regarding either the original problem statement or generated ideas, ask “why?” several times to help spur further discussion.

Critique

While some may argue brainstorming sessions shouldn’t include critique (initially, at least), critique is a natural extension of the idea generation activity and needs to be done in order to act upon the ideas. Once all of the ideas are up on the wall, begin critiquing the ideas. Without proper facilitation, this process can quickly become unwieldy. It’s important to structure the conversation so that each idea is thoughtfully considered and so that the group can freely add ideas and build-upon existing ideas. There are several techniques you can use to manage this process:

Six Thinking Hats – Discuss each idea from different perspectives: just the facts (white hat), the positive aspects (yellow hat), the problems or negative aspects (black hat), emotional reactions (red hat), and alternatives building upon the initial idea (green hat). Facilitate this process (blue hat) so that you can get through the ideas quickly and don’t spend too much time on any one idea.
Round Robin – Have each person in a group give one piece of feedback about an idea, or react to feedback from another person. Continue so that everyone has the chance to contribute their feedback.

If you want more information about critique, Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry have put together some great information about the Art of Critique.

5. Categorize and Synthesize

After you have discussed and evaluated the group’s ideas, work to combine the ideas into categories. Aim to identify themes that connect the various concepts. You may find that you have multiple levels of groups. For example, several ideas may relate to a desired capability, and several capabilities may relate to an overarching theme. At this point, you may also remove ideas from consideration if the group agrees that they do not meet the needs of the problem.

Once you have identified these groupings, you can have further discussion over how well the generated ideas and their associated categories meet the needs of the original problem. This step is critical to making sure that you move forward with the ideas that you generate. Provide participants with evaluation criteria that help you identify how well the ideas meet the overall goals. These criteria may or may not need to be weighted depending on your particular problem and goals. Have the group rate the remaining ideas and categories against these criteria. This can be done in a few ways including:

Rating matrix – Rank ideas on a scale (e.g. 1-5) for each of the defined evaluation criteria.
Dot voting – Have participants select which ideas are highest priority or best meet the evaluation criteria, and vote on those ideas using a limited number of dots (with stickers, or simply checkmarks on the board of ideas).

Once your ideas and categories have been synthesized, they can be shared with your broader team and explored in terms of their feasibility and overall impact.

This method of structuring brainstorming sessions takes more time and effort than the more informal method of getting together to generate ideas as a group. However, by following a more structured method, you’re more likely to generate a larger number of ideas and a higher quality resulting set of ideas. The exact method you follow may be modified based on your team’s individual needs. If you have any other suggestions for structuring brainstorming sessions, please share them in the comments.

How to Gain Support for UX Through the Mind, Heart, and Environment

Catriona Shedd — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:23:22 +0000

When I talk to people who work in the User Experience field, I often hear a common refrain:

“It’s hard to make my organization value UX.”
“I can’t convince my clients that we need to do user research.”
“My organization constantly cuts the amount of user experience work we should be doing.”
“I feel trumped by the business and technology teams. How can I make them invest more in user experience?”

Getting an organization to invest in user-centered design and user experience can be challenging. Politics, organizational structures, past experiences, and ingrained processes can make change difficult.

However, many UX professionals approach this challenge ineffectively by trying to push their own UX agenda without considering the mindset and viewpoints of their clients and co-workers. Only by understanding the needs of others and reducing friction between UX and the organization can you successfully increase user experience’s influence.

In the book Switch: How to Change When Change Is Hard, authors Chip and Dan Heath describe that in order for change to occur, one has to consider 3 interrelated factors: rational, emotional, and environmental factors.

Rational Appeal

The rational thinking side of our brain provides us planning and direction. When we think rationally, we try to determine the best course of action based on the information we have available.

Resistance is often the result of a lack of clarity. When we try to sell UX with generic points such as “it’s really important to focus on the user”, we’re not giving crystal-clear direction, causing decision-makers to have to try to interpret how to move forward. This makes it very difficult to make any visible change or progress. Saying “if we talked to 10 users before we start this project, it will help us identify gaps and design a product that better meets their needs” provides a much clearer direction than “we need to be more user-centric.”
Focus on the value UX provides to others. In order for others to buy into UX thinking, we need to make it clear how our work provides value to others. Don’t make your coworkers and clients guess how you can help them reach their own goals, show them directly. For example:

Business executives: show how UX can improve ROI
Marketers: show how UX can increase engagement and clarify desired messaging
Salespeople: show how UX can increase conversions
Developers: show how UX can help prioritize features, decrease maintenance, and streamline development
Customer service: show how UX can reduce support costs

Aim for mutual understanding. Most importantly, actively listen to your coworkers’ and clients’ needs before you try to sell them on UX. Your conversations will be much more effective if you tailor your message to each individual’s knowledge and objectives. Ask them about their problems and approach solutions from a “how can I help you?” standpoint. Don’t make assumptions about people’s needs before you ask them directly. Also, aim to learn how you can benefit from them just as much as how they can benefit from you.

Emotional Appeal

Only appealing to your colleagues’ rational side will give them direction without motivation. In order to cause change, you need to find ways to see problems and solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.

See -> Feel -> Change. John Kotter and Dan Cohen (The Heart of Change) note that successful change efforts follow a sequence of “See -> Feel -> Change.” Present your team with evidence that makes them feel something, whether that be shock, happiness, anger, or hope. Think carefully about what you want them to see in order to generate a certain feeling. Tell stories when you present your work to bring humanity to your designs. The entire product team needs to feel empathy for users in order to gain an understanding of the problems that exist, and understanding leads to change.
Engage the team in user research. One of the most effective ways of obtaining an emotional reaction is to engage your team and clients in observing user research. Watching users engage with a product first-hand helps the rest of your team develop empathy for your users, frequently leading to a desire to invest in creating a better user experience.
Demonstrate progress by emphasizing accomplishments. One way to motivate action is to show that the team is making progress. Rather than only focusing on how much needs to change about an existing product, make an effort to show your team what’s already been accomplished. Use visuals to show a before-and-after view of your product experience, no matter how small the changes may be. Reminding the team of positive changes that have already been made helps encourage an investment in future improvements. Don’t focus only on the impact you have made, but rather on changes the entire team has made toward improving the experience.

Environmental Change

What might appear as a people problem is often a situation problem. Make it easier for your organization to embrace change. Remove the friction that separates UX from the rest of the organization by changing the environment around you.

Share your deliverables. Put your research findings, personas, flow diagrams, sketches, and wireframes up on a wall in your office. As people walk by, show them the work to help increase understanding and build support for future activities. Encourage other team members to do the same with their work to show interest in how their work is also leading to a better user experience.
Shape your deliverables to fit the needs of your team. Be flexible with your approach to UX deliverables and how you present them. Listen carefully to the response you get to your work and adjust it to make it more effective. It may be that detailed reports work well for some people, and high-level summaries and visuals work better for others. The format of your work is less important than the ability for it to make an impact.
Create co-working spaces. One way to reduce the divide between UX and the rest of the organization is to recognize that everyone can contribute to the user experience. Create physical spaces that allow people to come in and share their thoughts, post concerns, add ideas on a whiteboard, and sketch out concepts. Encourage all team members and clients to review the work in progress and to contribute their ideas. People will become much more invested in the process once they personally contribute to it.

The combination of influencing the mind, heart, and environment will help you increase support for user experience within your organization. As you interact with your team, however, it’s important to not be too over-zealous in your approach to introducing UX. Start small and introduce change gradually in order to build momentum. Above all, recognize that user experience can only be achieved through the collective work of all members of a product team. Understanding their roles and contributions is just as important as ensuring that they understand yours.

iOS 7 Experience Design Concept

Catriona Shedd — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:19:34 +0000

The blogosphere has been inundated with commentary around the anticipation of iOS 7. While not necessarily representative of the general public, tech writers are clamoring for iOS to evolve rather significantly. I was asked by Fortune Magazine to explore a design concept of what iOS 7 might be like (see: 9 ideas for a radical redesign of iOS 7) . While no one is going to be able to accurately design the real iOS 7 experience, I thought it was an interesting exercise to see how iOS might start to address the needs of today’s mobile user. Below is the result of this concepting exercise.

iOS 7 Experience Design Concept

Overall iOS 7 Concept

As evidenced with both Google Now and the Windows Phone experience, today’s mobile technology is quickly moving beyond providing access to applications. Mobile devices are increasingly surfacing information valuable to the user in a highly contextual and personalized way.

As a result, it’s been widely reported and discussed that iOS is starting to feel “outdated,” largely because the current iOS experience is centralized around access to applications, and not information within those applications. Turn on your iPhone, and you’re greeted with a screen of individual applications. Open up an application, and your experience is centered solely around that application. Receive a notification, and dig through a list of notifications grouped by apps and not by relevance or importance. Close an application, and move on to the next one, one by one.

My concept centered around the idea that iOS 7 needs to take what iOS is best known for, its apps, and mold the experience around getting to information those applications provide quickly and easily. Apple also needs to give the user more control over their mobile experience. Changing the visual aesthetic to flat design, as rumored, is not enough to really evolve the experience.

Caveats

To get this out of the way, I will completely admit that I was inspired by Google Now and the overall Windows Phone experience. With just a few days to pull together an iOS 7 concept, I felt it best to look at how elements that make those experiences useful could be leveraged effectively within iOS. I don’t see this as “copying” per se, rather taking what works well and figuring out how to adapt that within a unique operating system. This concept is also intended more as a conversation starter rather than a comprehensive redesign.

Home Screen

Expanded Tiles

Home Screen Tiles

My revised home screen experience uses tiles of information intelligently grouped by context, providing relevant and timely notifications (e.g. My Morning Routine, My Upcoming Commute, My Evening Plans, Recent Social Activity, etc.). There are some key differences between this and Google Now. Google Now revolves around Google services or services that Google can control. Apple’s home screen could serve as a platform for applications to deliver contextual content, and users can control what they want to see when. This isn’t just about presenting a subset of data accessible within an application, but rather forming the home screen experience around relevant information, regardless of the application it’s coming from.

In the spirit of deeper customization, such a home screen could also be customized to provide a display of semi-permanent items coming from app services. I find the concept of a “widget” too limiting in this context. Widgets live in isolation, much like their full app counterparts. Alternatively, iOS could explore ways of allowing the user to seamlessly move data between app services and interact multiple app services at a time.

Apps Screen

Apps Categories

Today’s iOS home screen limits the number of apps per screen and within folders. The user is left to manually organize each screen of their device, which can get difficult and confusing if the user has a significant number of apps. My revised apps screen provides more flexibility around organizing apps. Each screen represents a category of apps, and apps can be assigned to one or more categories. By default, apps can be assigned to the category they lie within in the App Store, but apps can be moved to custom categories. Users can quickly navigate between categories by swiping sideways, or view all apps within a category by scrolling vertically. This approach maintains the overall feel that iOS users are accustomed to, but introduces more structure and organization necessary for users who have a lot of apps.

Additional iOS Possibilities

These ideas are just a hypothetical look at what Apple could bring to the iOS 7 experience. One thing is clear, though. Acting as a springboard for applications isn’t going to be enough to engage iOS users for much longer. Apple has all of the pieces in place for a more intelligent system (iCloud, Siri, and the largest developer community). It will just need to figure out how these pieces can work more effectively together to bring a unique and useful experience to its users.

New Way to Browse inspireUX Articles

Catriona Shedd — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:14:15 +0000

Interested in catching up on some inspireUX articles that you may have missed? I’ve updated the Articles page to make it easier to browse archived articles. Take a look!

A Web vs. Native Tablet App Experience Analysis: A&E

Catriona Shedd — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:42:04 +0000

In my last article, “How Native Tablet Applications Can Inspire Better Tablet-Optimized Websites”, I outlined several principles from native apps that can be leveraged to improve browser-based web experiences on tablets.

As an example of the experience gap between many browser-based web experiences that haven’t been optimized for tablet use and native applications on tablet devices, let’s take a look at the A&E TV web vs. iPad experience to determine which experience better facilitates user tasks on a tablet device. For those not familiar with A&E, it is a United States-based cable and satellite television channel with the tagline: “Real Life. Drama.”

While research should be done to validate A&E’s users’ needs, let’s assume that A&E’s digital content is likely frequently accessed by people sitting on their couches in front of a TV. These users likely want to find out more information about the shows, catch up on shows they missed, and find out when they are on. Under these general assumptions, does the A&E website or native tablet app deliver a more usable and enjoyable experience?

The A&E Web vs. App Experience

Focus: The application’s initial screen focuses on featured shows of interest in a way that is very scannable. The screen invites exploration without coming across as overwhelming. The initial web homepage experience, in contrast, features only 3 shows in a distracting rotating header space and then fills the page with some scheduling information, video content, web exclusives, top shows, and callouts to other sections of the site (not to mention plenty of adverstising). The web homepage distracts from the core user tasks, whereas the focus of the native application makes the core information immediately apparent.
Navigation paths: The native application focuses on content of most interest to its users: featured shows, all shows, and recently added content. These paths are large and easily accessible. The web experience uses a heavy navigation schema that doesn’t make the key paths immediately obvious. Secondary navigation is difficult to select, as it hasn’t been optimized for touch input, and some of the sections even direct the user to content not available on tablet devices.
Actions: A&E’s native application makes key actions accessible at all times including viewing the schedule, adding an item to a watch list, and search. Additionally, actions that are contextual to individual content items are prominently displayed consistently across the experience. In contrast, actions on the website are more difficult to find and are spread out more inconsistently throughout the experience.
Information views: The A&E app progressively reveals content instead of relying on full page transitions to view show information or to preview videos prior to watching. This helps to simplify the experience by progressively revealing information as needed. On the website, pages are more content-heavy and full page refreshes are required to access much of the content.
Transitions and animations: The native application uses subtle transitions and animations to enhance the overall feel of the experience. Tiles with featured shows flip into view, a small “+” sign animates when shows are added to the wish list, and subtle animations are used within the channel schedule. In contrast, the website feels like a more flat and static experience with the absence of subtle animations. Full-page transitions and refreshes make the web experience feel more linear and less immersive as compared to the native app.

One may argue that A&E’s native app purposefully only focuses on a subset of the content available on the web. The app is more media-centric, choosing to focus on video over other content. However, A&E’s audience likely has fairly consistent content needs across the web and native experience when using a tablet device. Through research, A&E may be able to determine how to better present their web content in a way that doesn’t take away the full breadth of content but rather better prioritizes content that is most important to their users.

By presenting the user with a desktop-oriented experience on their tablet browser that hasn’t been optimized for tablet use, A&E may be losing an opportunity to engage users who attempt to interact with the company’s content in a browser. But by aiming to optimize their website for tablet use, A&E may be able to evolve their web experience to better suit users on both desktops and tablets.

“Download Our App!” Disrupts the Web User Experience

A&E Download App Popup

A&E must have some awareness that their native application delivers an overall better experience on tablets, as they employ a disruptive popup upon the user’s initial visit that tries to direct you over to download the application. This technique is a clutch that doesn’t recognize that users are accessing the content through a browser for a reason, and desire to engage with content without needing to download an app. Prompting users to download an application can be a very disrupting experience that could end up preventing users from accessing any of the company’s content.

How Native Applications Can Inspire Better Tablet-Optimized Websites

Catriona Shedd — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:55:52 +0000

Native tablet applications are often described as being “more engaging” than their browser-based web experience counterparts. There are characteristics of native experiences that “feel” different from most browser-based web experiences. In fact, when considering a responsive design approach to optimize web experiences for tablets, many aim to design a mobile web experience that is more “app-like”. But what does being “app-like” really mean? What can we learn from native applications that we can use to improve tablet-optimized web experiences?

There is currently a divide between browser-based web experiences that are optimized for tablet use and those that present existing desktop web experiences (perhaps with slight optimizations or none at all). Organizations frequently struggle with how to optimize tablet experiences, as the desktop experience can often be seen as “good enough,” particularly given the additional cost of optimizing web experiences for tablets. However, there are lessons from native application design that can be leveraged on the mobile web that can result in deeper user engagement outside of the native application approach.

Trip Advisor’s Native Tablet App and Web Experience

The “Feel” of the Native Tablet App Experience

Many people describe native applications as beeing “smoother”, “more polished”, and “more engaging” than their mobile web counterparts. The reason for this overall impression is due to a wide variety of factors, but it’s important to realize that the “smoother” feel is not universal and need not be unique to native applications. Frequently, the reason for the better overall feel of native applications is a result of good design mixed with a good technical implementation, neither of which need to be exclusive to native applications.

Top Characteristics of Good Native Tablet App Design:

The following characteristics of good native tablet app design can be used as inspiration to improve the tablet web experience and to make interactions in the browser feel more natural and engaging on a tablet device.

Focus as a design principle: The best tablet applications focus each screen on a core user task or core piece of content to consume. Distractions that may take away from that core element are removed in order to simplify the experience and to make the best use of the device’s form factor. Interactivity and progressively revealing content is prioritized over adding too many features to any one screen.
Clean and simplified navigation paths: Tablet applications typically employ navigation techniques that keep navigation easy to find when needed without distracting from the rest of the experience. Additionally, navigation hierarchy is typically flattened to avoid having to access too many screens in order to access desired content. By getting users where they want to go quickly, tablet navigation doesn’t take up an overwhelming amount of prominence in the experience.
Persistent and contextual actions: Tablet applications frequently make use of toolbars that place commonly used actions within easy reach. Additionally, actions related to a particular piece of content are placed in close proximity to that item in a way that indicates how it can be used or manipulated. When each screen is focused only on the necessary content, contextual actions become easier to find.
Information views in lieu of full-screen transitions: Instead of transitioning a complete screen following a selection, many tablet applications aim to only manipulate the content piece or area that changes. For example, popovers and modal windows can be used to display contextual information instead of displaying that information in an entirely new screen. This helps users keep track of where they are in the experience, and helps to reduce the amount of navigation steps needed to move between content.
Use of transitions and animations to provide feedback: Subtle animations and transitions can help make tablet experiences feel interesting and engaging and can help to provide feedback when users complete an action. When animations are used following an action, it enhances the user’s sense of directly manipulating objects on the screen. This sense of manipulation is one of the key aspects that currently distinguishes native applications from many mobile web experiences.
Use of gestures to enhance the experience: Incorporating simple standard gestures into an experience can enhance the overall interactivity of a tablet experience. Instead of progressing through an experience through a series of taps, gestures can serve as shortcuts to interact with content elements. Gestures need to be used appropriately and with proper affordances to ensure they are easy to discover and remember.

Web experiences on tablets don’t need to copy all of the design choices made in native applications simply to obtain an “app-like” look and feel. In fact doing so could make maintaining a cross channel experience more difficult. However, there are elements of native app experiences that can be employed in different ways to optimize the browser experience on tablet devices.

Technical Aspects That Can Impact the Tablet Experience

Responsiveness and Overall Performance:

Frequently, but not universally, native applications respond more quickly to user inputs and can retrieve data more quickly than their web counterparts. This responsiveness is an important element of the overall user experience. A common user complaint of the web experience on tablets is that websites or web apps are too slow or too “clunky” from a performance standpoint. However, it’s a myth to assume that mobile web experiences by default are going to be slow and not very responsive to user inputs.

As Tim Kadlec explains, blame the implementation, not the techique. If web experiences are built with performance at their core, web experiences can start to approach the same level of performance that many native applications have achieved.

That said, there’s still going to be an element of performance and interactivity that native applications can accomplish that current browser-based technologies such as HTML5 haven’t quite caught up with yet. For that reason, it’s important to implement interactivity that’s going to be successful from a performance standpoint and isn’t just introduced in order to make a website appear to be more like a native app.

There’s Still a Place for Native Apps

While many of the design principles used to make native app experiences useful and engaging can also be leveraged within the browser, there are still plenty of scenarios where a native app can result in a better experience for your users. However, prior to investing in developing a native app experience for your users, you may want to consider optimizing the tablet browser web experience to ensure that you’re meeting the immediate needs of your users where they’re most likely to begin engaging with your content. Native apps can then be developed to support functionality that goes above and beyond what’s available in the browser to deliver an optimal total experience for your users.