Ramblings on User Experience title

Freedom from Constraints!! I prefer the freedom that comes from Constraints

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 06:45:00 +0000

Most people like working in situations with no constraints on time or resources; sometimes constraints feel like straight jackets, personally I find working within constraints liberating. Nothing like the focus that comes from having to solve a difficult problem with your back to the wall. The wall has got your back

Features & requirements that are unimportant get cut ruthlessly, the team becomes more open to taking risks, discussions with stakeholders become that much more efficient. The result more often than not, is a simple solution; for you have not had the time or the resources to complicate it. With all those risks being taken it might even be a solution that is elegant and unique.

So the next time you are faced with a problem of plenty don't relax! Carve out a nice space constrained in terms of time, budgets and resources and get to work.

30 Days Return Policy doesn't solve the problem with buying Clothing online

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:52:00 +0000

This festival season saw me heading to the store to buy new clothes. My typical routine in store involves walking around the men's section picking up a few shirts that I like, wait for my turn to use the trial rooms, try the shirts one at a time, suck in my tummy, give one admiring glance in the mirror and walked out to face the firing squad aka wife, kid & assorted strangers giving me dirty looks. After a barrage of staccato comments, I head back in and try again and again until there is a semblance of a consensus.

Now why do I, a fairly experienced online shopper put up with this stress only for clothes in spite of the convenience, discounts & variety on offer online?

My discomfort revolves around a few aspects,

There is no online alternative to the experience of walking down the aisles, scanning the displays, stepping up for a closer inspection (touch & feel) and pick something that feel right.
Everything looks nice on the model. Will the colour, pattern, texture look just as good when I wear it?
Will it fit well?

Most shopping sites offer zoom-able, rotable product shots, some even offer an option to virtually try your clothes but a lot of times they do not come anywhere close to the real thing. Here are a few random customer comments from some of these sites

Sorry to say that your display material and the quality is totally unmatchable

Everything was great the only exception that the images that you have put (up) on display and the actual article I received have a lot of differences.

Now a 30 day no questions asked return policy is awesome but hardly the complete answer to the addressing the insecurities present in the process of buying clothing online. In order to overcome some of these problems and avoid too much to & fro traffic, I might have to adopt the tactic of ordering multiple items (my shortlist), try them on and return those that i don't like. Seems like too much of a hassle!!

I would imagine that women would have as much, if not more difficulty than men in judging, size, fitment and colour but that's just a guess based a few casual conversations.

Anyone out there who has had a positive/ negative experience with shopping for clothes online please pitch in with your comments.

I would love to get a broader perspective on this...

My Experiments with Interactive Prototyping

noreply@blogger.com (Parag Pawar) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:08:00 +0000

Do you have a problem making clients understand your designs?

There are many tools available to help you with this problem. For the past two weeks I have been exploring one such application Axure RP. It gives you the means of creating interactive wireframes easily and quickly with a large library of commonly used widgets such as buttons, text fields, drop lists etc. Just drag & drop widgets into your canvas and arrange them as you want.

Linking

I tried creating a simple website. You can link simple interface elements to other pages for example when I click “Login”, login page will be displayed.

Select “Login”. In widget properties under ‘Interactions’ section choose the action eg. OnClick, OnMouseEnter etc.
Click Add Case. Case Editor window will open
Add action as ‘Open Link in Current Window’
In ‘Configure Actions’ choose ‘Login’ page to link and click OK

Master Page/ Page Template

In an application where the structure of the page is identical, there is no need to create it again and again. A Masters function is useful here. For my website, I created master templates of the Header and Footer and then used it in every page. The interactions assigned to elements in master are also preserved.

In ‘Masters’ menu select ‘Add Master’. New master will be created.
Click on master to edit
Add header elements to the Master
Assign interactions to elements, if any
Rename master to ‘Header’
Repeat the same to create ‘Footer’ master

Dynamic Panel

I tried to add a pop-in feature to the “Subscribe to Newsletter” button in which a simple form will pop in on clicking a button. With ‘Dynamic Panel’ this becomes easy. It is a stack of frames also called as states.

States can contain different elements as required. In this case State1 is empty and State2 contains a form and State3 is confirmation message.
Assign the interaction of changing state of panel to the button. You can set the style of animation like ‘Slide’ or ‘Fade’ with time duration in milliseconds.
Once you enter the email address and click the Go button, the form should pop out and confirmation message should be displayed. This interaction is set to the ‘Subscribe’ button.
Confirmation message should disappear after a certain time interval. This is done with ‘Wait Time’ action and panel is set to State1

The prototype is generated in HTML format which resembles the actual product. So the next time you think of making a prototype interactive, this can be one of the options on your list. More later...

It’s time to design products that reflect how humans think.

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth Sawant) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 09:56:00 +0000

Diwali is the time for visiting friends, relatives, binge eating on sweets and stay-overs. Recently, I was explaining the working of the electric water heater to my niece who had come to stay with us for the Diwali vacations. After the explanation she still seemed confused. Her basic problem with the system was – “How come the indicator lights up when it’s not ready? And goes off when it’s ready?”

A very valid question it was. This is how it actually works - The thermostat essentially detects the temperature and breaks the circuit when the desired temperature is reached. The indicator is just connected in series with the heating element. I tried explaining the logic of thermostats and circuit breakers but I knew I had lost her.

It was a classic case of the implementation model being presented to the user as the interface. I had observed the same thing in the clothes iron. The user in this case was expecting the appliance to signal when it was ready for use. Instead, the appliance signals the circuit being complete and essentially the state of being ‘Not Ready’. The indicator in this case is indicating the heating process instead of the completion of the process.

This behavior is exactly opposite of the users' mental model.

The appliance world is full of these examples. It about time we move away from the era of products that make you learn and memorize the implementation model. It’s time to design products that are a logical extension of how we humans think.

Keep Data Models out of UI Design

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth Sawant) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:06:00 +0000

A recent project saw us redesigning the interface of a calibration system for a large company that specializes in manufacturing apparatus for testing Lab equipment.

Data model based design

The original interface that was designed some 20 years back. It had the typical characteristics of interface design of the 90’s. Information was presented to the user exactly the way it was stored on servers. The flow of the interaction replicated how the system processed the data rather than the real world task flow of the user.

The current design forced the user to create setup files for every test that they performed. The data from the tests was stored in another file and the user had to use the data file to generate report files. Needless to say many users had a hard time juggling the files and retrieval of a report form a past test was a pain.

User Mental Models

We spent long hours debating and redesigning the Information architecture that would most closely resemble the mental model of the users. In our field research we had found that in the lab, all references to calibration tests were in context of the equipment being tested. We made ‘Equipment’ as a central entity and designed our architecture around it. All setups, tests and reports could now be accessed via the equipment.

When we presented the new architecture to the stakeholders and users, it was an instant hit! They just loved it. It is now being showcased as a key differentiator of the product against the competition.

Splitting hairs over the split toolbar (Win 8 UI)

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:40:00 +0000

Split Toolbar

Recently while designing an app for Windows 8 tablet, we came across the guidelines for the app bar

"If you have distinct sets of commands (such as a set for creating new content, and a set for filtering your view), then divide those sets up on either side of the screen."

The guideline seemed reasonable for a 2 handed hold making the toolbar buttons easily accessible with the thumbs. What's the catch you might ask? The problem was with the usage of the device in a clean room environment - gloved hands lead to the usage of the stylus as the primary input device and shift to a single handed grip with the arm under the device supporting the weight for prolonged use. Reach was no longer a factor in the organization of buttons in the toolbar so a more left aligned layout worked just as well as the split toolbar.

To complicate matters further the gloves come off when the device is used outside the clean room and we are back to a 2 handed grip. I guess the only way forward is to optimize the design for whatever is the primary environment.

The truth about Social Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 10:39:00 +0000

How often have you had second thoughts about a particular status message on facebook, IM, twitter, because you thought it might not be appropriate for everyone in your group of friends?
This thought provoking presentation from Paul Adams (216 slides) - a user researcher at Google is absolutely worth your time and in the end provides a valuable insight into social netwroks.

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

Inverting Thinking or Seeing what's not there

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:03:00 +0000

There is this often narrated story from WW-II, the air force wanted to improve the survivability of its bombers so they initially counted where the bullet holes where on the planes and planned on increasing the armour plating at the places which had the most bullet holes. This is how the story would have ended if not for someone saying 'the planes that returned are the ones that survived, where did the planes that did not make it back get hit'. They concluded that the additional armour was needed in the places that did not have bullets holes since it was very likely that the planes that were shot down were hit in precisely these places.

As user researchers & usability engineers we face similar situations where what we see is the adapted behavior of our users. What we observe and record is the manifest behavior of users and doesn't really expose the underlying problem. Asking the repeated 'why' question usually reveals the condition or problem that resulted in the observed behavior.

Sometimes even this tactic fails as all we end up with are rationalized responses. It is in these situations that a bit of inverted thinking could provide the insight, the breakthrough that we are searching for. Eventhough it sounds a bit contradictory what we need to do is see whats not there in the data!!!

Software with Personality?

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 09:39:00 +0000

I drive down to Chennai couple of times a year and prefer taking the route through Kolar instead of the golden quadrilateral. If the only goal was to optimize travel time the rational choice would be, to take the golden quadrilateral every time as it saves me about 30 minutes one way. But most times I prefer taking the route through Kolar purely because it’s a pleasanter drive with interesting sights and overall a much nicer experience. Thirty minutes seems a fair price to pay for arriving at my destination feeling fresher.

Is this similar to how users perceive their overall experience with a software product? I am going to go out on a limb and say that this intangible element is important even in the case of enterprise software applications where productivity & efficiency are paramount. As user experience designers, designing software applications that are the equivalent of a highway that’s takes you from point A to B in the shortest possible time is not enough for achieving sustainable differentiation.

So how does one go beyond an effective & efficient user interaction? How do we get to an engaging and memorable user experience? I am sure there are several ways, but my present favourite is personality.

Besides other definitions Websters defines personality as

the quality or state of being a person
a set of distinctive traits and characteristics

The aspects of the user experience that could help in bringing the software to life for a user could be,

System messages is one way for an application to communicate with the user. They provide us with a opportunity to transform this communication into a conversation. For example the Microsoft Vista guidelines talk about 'Text & Tone' (Tone in writing is the attitude that the writer conveys to the reader. It’s designed to create a specific response or emotion in the reader. Tone creates a personality that can either engage or repel users)
Visual Design - The themes defined for software applications talk about communicating attributes of a specific character/ personality that is consistent with the overall brand.

Designing for Personality

Assuming we want to evoke a specific personality; make users feel that they are interacting witha 'unique' person, how would the UCD process change to accommodate this goal? If personas bring the user to life for us, maybe there is a need to create a matching, compatible persona for the application, just a though...

Alternatives & Iterations

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:20:00 +0000

In one of my recent walks through the wild web, I came across this little nugget on the adaptive path blog. This little diagram is an extract from "Bill Verplank's framework on Interaction Design" and the thing that caught my attention was the generation, prototyping & testing of alternatives as the transitory phase between ideas to generic principles.

I believe having multiple options on the table at the same time would lead to richer discussions with stakeholders and quicker triangulation of a optimal solution, instead of a sequential iterations of a single option. If nothing else the presence of multiple alternatives would definitely help us in retaining our objectivity.

I can't help but wonder if this cycle of generating & evaluation alternatives is the key to building quality into our designs.

Experiencing Pain @ the Dentist

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:20:00 +0000

Of all the people in the world a dentist is probably the last person I want to meet professionally. After decades of dodging the dentist the inevitable happened… I found myself in the chambers of one. To be fair to the establishment it was a pleasant well lit room, but try as I might, I could not stop myself from making comparisons between dentist tables and torture chambers. The masked man in front of me in latex rubber gloves did not help matters one bit, not with those evil looking instruments in his hands. As you can see it was not an experience I care to repeat.

Is redemption possible for a place that doles out pain so generously? Is it possible to improve the experience a tiny winy bit?

Dentists have a well deserved reputation for causing pain. Let's be charitable and assume that its not personal, so besides an anesthetic what could make the experience tolerable?

To start at the beginning, reduce the build up of anxiety while patients wait their turn. Start with a sound proof chamber make sure the people in the waiting room don't hear the screams. It would be even better if there is separate exit for the patients who have just finished their 'procedure'.
Once you get in, give information about the procedure so that you know when to brace yourself for a fresh dose of pain. Essentially manage expectations.
Empathy - I don't care how brave the 10 year old before me was. It hurts dammit

Know of other ways to make this experience better? Let me know ...

Signposts from Adaptive Path: Nov 14, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:03:00 +0000

Interesting Links from Adaptive Path

Signposts for the Week Ending Nov 14, 2008

Posted using ShareThis

User Experience, What do you guys do?

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:12:00 +0000

We recently set off for some site visits and we met the sales guys who were organizing these visits, at the airport. After the initial formalities, one of the first questions they asked was, so you are from the User Experience team, what exactly do you guys do?

How often have you been asked this question?
How often have you come away with a feeling that you did not really get through to the other person?

After all these years I still find that question quite disconcerting. I realized that I could not rely on familiar jargon to communicate, so finally settled on something like "we understand user needs and use that to design user interfaces blah blah...". I must admit that was terrible...

Ever since, I have been hunting for a good elevator pitch but quickly discovered there is no generic solution and with it came the realization that I need to have a bunch of them, fine tuned for different audiences.

Stay tuned for details...

but in the meantime if anyone can help me explain my job to my mom, will have my eternal gratitude. In the spirit of full disclosure she thinks a TV remote is complex, come to think of it I agree with her :-)

Stories at work

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 07:17:00 +0000

“Interaction Design, is essentially story-creating and telling...” Nathan Shedroff.

Stories play a central role in UI design and there are tons of design artifacts, story boards, scripts, scenarios, to name a few that are inspired by the art of storytelling. (Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web by Mark Bernstein gives an excellent perspective on narrative & design)

Being an Ux professional it is not surprising that I am interested in stories but this interest in stories has turned into an obsession of sorts when I began to realize that stories could have a broader impact beyond design and design communication.

For instance, whenever there is a new colleague in the team who is about to travel to Germany for the first time, we always end up recounting the ‘cautionary tale’ of a colleague who took a very expensive 100 KM taxi ride from Frankfurt, all because of an invalid assumption. (The cab driver waits inside the terminal building in Frankfurt unlike in India where they are waiting outside the exit with a placard). So is there a point in these stories beyond teasing the colleague and telling newbie’s about what not to do when they land in Frankfurt?

Besides introducing the team members in an entertaining fashion, I believe stories like these communicate the organizational culture in general and in particular the norms of acceptable behavior. I realize that by narrating stories from the shared history of the team, we indirectly communicate the team's identity (the lunatic asylum hidden in plain sight?), the people and their roles - who is the user researcher? who is the joker?. Looks like all those informal discussions around the coffee/ lunch table do play a part in taking forward the official agenda of building productive teams...

Remote Usability Tests

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:51:00 +0000

Over the last few years, tightening travel budgets have led me to try remote modes of engaging with end users in US & Europe. My experience conducting remote usability tests (summative & formative) has been extremely positive.

The think aloud protocol works very well over the telephone. As moderator I feel that participants find it more natural to describe their thoughts and actions when the moderator is a voice on the telephone. When the moderator is the same room, they probably think that he can see what is happening and don’t voice their thoughts as readily.
Eventhough we warn participants that performance might be slow because of the network and they should ignore it while giving satisfaction ratings, slow system or network performance tends to leave a negative impact on satisfaction rating. While this used to be a problem in the early days of remote usability tests, currently this is negated to a large extent by the almost ubiquitous availability of high bandwidth network connections and excellent conferencing applications. I believe that in course of few years this will completely disappear.

Since we focus on the usage of the software artifact during testing, a combination of screen sharing, web cam and audio conference help us to get all the information we need to evaluate the interaction between participant & application. In my opinion there is hardly any difference between remote & live testing. Given the effectiveness of remote testing, it should be used more widely that it is used now.

On the other hand the results of my experiments with conducting remote user research is a completely different story. While you can get decent information during a ‘remote contextual interview’, a telephone conference with screen sharing can not substitute for the richness of the information that you get when you are present at the work place of the user. For example, you miss out on all the contextual cues present in the work place of the user like post it's, reminders on whiteboards, the physical environment and how its laid out in relation to other people etc. If you ask me, conduct remote user research only as a last resort and even then try and bolster the data collected through these interviews with information gathered directly from surrogate users etc.

Traditions - Are they packaged experiences?

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:40:00 +0000

I recently finished reading “Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Caldini, the book talked about the almost stereotypical responses exhibited by people in certain situations like when we go out to purchase vegetables, we would bargain in a street market and in a swank retail outlet we would pay the sticker price. While reading about these “fixed action patterns” I had this intriguing thought, what if the traditions that form part of our everyday lives are also pre-packaged, scripted experiences that serve a specific goal?

Looking back to my first semester at IIMC, the traditional welcome accorded to the fresh batch at IIM Calcutta seems to fit the bill. Do not be misled by the word ‘traditional’, it does not imply the garlands, aarthi, tilak routine in this case. These traditions starting with the con and ending with the return party follow the exact same template every year. I came to know in my 2^nd year the amount of scripting and coordination that activities like the con and the dunking take. The result is a very memorable albeit wet experience for the freshers, one that demolishes any illusions of grandeur we might have acquired getting into IIM C and introduces the seniors as a bunch of regular guys who are not beyond a prank or two. To me it does seem like a very well designed experience that gets everyone acquainted & acclimatized to life at IIM-C and never fails to be memorable.

Another example that comes readily to mind is the Indian wedding especially the ritualistic games that are played out between the bride and the groom after the wedding is solemnized.

Leaves me wondering how these scripts evolved and how they have stood the test of time……

Moments of truth

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:05:00 +0000

Working in a relatively new profession has its problems; the main one atleast for me is the continuous evolution of how we define ourselves. A broadening of our domain has been accompanied by a change in the tags we give ourselves, from the narrow user interface designer to the all encompassing user experience designer. Now, our area of responsibility extends to the whole lifecycle of a user/ customer’s interaction with a product including how they try, buy, install, use, and maintain the product. The first time I heard this it left me with a sense of de ja vu, it reminded me of the book ‘Moments of Truth’ written by Jan Carlson the CEO of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) on his experience turning around SAS.

The pivotal point of the strategy he advocated was the focus on customers, which in itself was not a breakthrough idea but what was unique was his focus on every point of interaction between the customer and the organization especially the pivotal interactions aka ‘Moments of Truth’. In SAS there was intense focus on ensuring that every interaction with the customer resulted in a positive experience.

In short this book was about management strategy, organization change and improving customer service; but what is amazing is the similarity in philosophy between what he achieved at SAS 20 years back and how we define user experience now. So is there a difference between true customer orientation and user experience? I believe shorn of all the jargon there is no real difference in the goal – deliver positive, memorable experiences to customers which can in turn create sustainable, profitable differentiation from competition a la Apple.

The biggest challenge that we need to overcome if are to realize our aspirations and make an impact at the level of business strategy is to understand the big picture. As the industry moves from applications that focus on business transactions to those that support decision making and problem solving, it becomes critical to understand what drives the businesses and what constrains them. Not too far back, experts were predicting the creation of 'Chief Experience Officer' role, while I am not aware of any I am hoping this is not too far away especially.

You're so far away, I just can't see...

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:14:00 +0000

Remote contextual Interviews - did I hear somebody exclaim remote & contextual, how is that possible? Well maybe it was just me thinking aloud. With participants spread across 3 continents it was not practical to even consider site visits, so in the true tradition of beggars can't be choosers, we choose remote contextual interviews.

The question that comes naturally when the participant is describing some aspect of their work, is,

Can you give me an example?
Can you show me?

Since we were quite literally blind, we did the next best thing and asked the participant to describe the artifact. What takes a few seconds to scan, takes a few minutes to describe, so the participant preferred sending us a soft copy. While this salvaged the situation somewhat, nothing can replace the ability to see and react with follow up questions if any. So for the rest of our user research project we intend to use application sharing as long as the participants do not have any objections.

Desperately Seeking Insight

noreply@blogger.com (Durgaprasad Vemula) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:29:00 +0000

Today I am kicking-off the user research for a new product. Like all the previous times, I am excited and at the same time apprehensive about encountering the unknown. The preparation has been rigorous, the discussion guide has been reviewed by all the key stakeholders in product / program management and piloted with internal users.

Spending quality time with users has never failed in yielding solid information on their goals, the constraints they work under, the processes they are part off. This has usually been accompanied by Insights that have contributed largely to the design of innovative user experience, so I should really have no cause for worry but gaining insight has always been this sudden, magical moment that arrives with absolutely no advance notice on its impending arrival.

When you experience insight, there is no change to your past experiences, except the way you now looks at those same experiences. Here is the interesting part, all those experience are now different. That make any sense to you? Let me give you an example from the movies,

I am sure many of you have seen 'The Sixth Sense'; As the audience we follow the relationship between the boy who sees ghosts and his slightly disbelieving, cynical psychiatrist. The climax when the shrink realizes he is a ghost, was the moment of insight for me and I am sure for most of the audience. This realization is followed by a montage of shots which show the past events which we interpreted differently in a completely new light.

Got me thinking about how, why and when does the flash bulb go off in our heads. Can we really control the path to achieving insight? What are the necessary conditions to achieve it?...