User Experience Arts

Java thinks I want the Ask Toolbar, and I have 12 pixels to avoid it

2013-02-21T05:51:00.002-05:00

Today, my computer prompted me to update Java. I agreed, and then the above popup appeared on my screen. They "recommend" that I install the FREE Ask browser add-on. These add-ons are most often such a bad experience. To make things worse, for most people, they are almost impossible to remove once installed. This also feels like an anachronism. We are living in a time where everything is changing. Intel is exiting the motherboard business to focus on the “next unit of computing.” That is huge. A disruptive wave of change is happening.
Another thing that makes this feel like something from the late 90s is the interface design. Today, interfaces are so much more touchable and large because in many instances they literally are. Look at the below screen grab from delicious.com.

The "Join" button is absolutely huge by earlier-than-2010 standards. To stop the installation of the annoying Ask.com toolbar in the Java screen, I have to get my mouse over a 12x12 pixel checkbox. Does Java work on Microsoft Surface? Will I have to touch this to deselect it? Look at the two UI components next to each other:

It will be interesting to watch the evolution of visual design in the next couple years as the hardware evolves.

R.I.P. John Karlin, Human Factors Pioneer

2013-02-09T18:35:00.002-05:00

On the same day as the blizzard called "Nemo" blankets the Northeast, a story about the life of a User Experience pioneer was published in the NY Times. John Karlin worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey for 32 years, and in that time helped to develop products that the masses could easily use. He is responsible for the touch tone phone design and he put the white dots inside the rotary phone to increase usability after the labels were placed on the outside. The story that jumps out at me was the UX guerrilla tactic he utilized when there was a question about shortening the phone cord. While the debate was going on, he surreptitiously removed an inch of cord from co-workers' phones every three days. They didn't realize it until a foot had been removed, ending the debate, the long meetings and arguments with everyone with a strong voice and opinion. What a great example of Lean UX.

He is also credited with creating the very first Human Factors Department in a U.S. company. UX Professionals owe him a bit of thanks. He died on January 28th at the age of 94. Rest in peace.

Here is the full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/business/john-e-karlin-who-led-the-way-to-all-digit-dialing-dies-at-94.html

Jargon is Evidence of a Disruptive Wave of Innovation

2013-02-07T18:45:00.000-05:00

As I read through the titles of the first page of stories on TechCrunch.com, I noticed something interesting. There are a tremendous amount of new companies and products out there. 13 of the stories had jargonesque names in them that kind of sound silly if you say them all in a row. I can imagine them being sung in a karaoke bar to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire":

NanoSatisfi
Yammer
Goldbely
Uber
Zite
EveryBlock
Happier
Redfin
Redbeacon
MyTime
Telly
LibreOffice
Trademarkia

If you check the home page from TechCrunch in 2011, you see stories about HuffingtonPost.com, Google, HTC, SalesForce, GoDaddy, Apple and Groupon. There are only a few buzzword-ly named companies listed, like Animoto and Audioboo.

I think this illustrates how quickly things are changing out there in the digisphere, with startups popping up so quickly you can't keep up with the latest uber-telly-moto-boo-whatevs. Let's check out the tech homepages in 2015 to see where the startup dust has settled. See you then!

This is Why I Still Buy CD's and Comic Books

2012-10-23T05:33:00.003-05:00

We've heard these heartbreaking stories about how our digital possessions are so easily wiped away. The latest example is from Linn, an Amazon Kindle owner. Amazon decided to delete her account, thus wiping all her books off her Kindle. I dread this happening. This is why I still like to actually possess what I buy when I can. There is something strange to me about buying a comic for my iPad app and not being able to store it with other old comics when I'm done. I've lost my Windows machine countless times as well, so I like having the ability to put a CD back into the computer when the OS goes. Apple has serious issues with being able to restore your ringtones, playlists and podcasts easily if at all.

You can read the gory details here:

http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/

Virtual Meets Reality: Nomad Stylus

2011-11-09T06:21:00.001-05:00

What do all of the images above have in common? They were all created on an iPad with a Nomad Brush. I just ordered a couple this morning to use for rapid prototyping, but also interacting with customers during field work. Show them a wireframe and have them interact directly with something that is familiar to them. I also ordered the PenGo BrushPen, so I will come back with feedback after using them to see which one works best in the field.

Creative Folks Bypass Old School Judgment System: Amanda Hocking

2011-03-02T07:02:00.004-05:00

The path for "making it" used to funnel through a select few anointed ones. For musicians it was getting discovered by someone at a major label, and signing a deal. That takes a lot of hard work, but a large portion of serendipity. There were only just so many people in the right place at the right time. These days, musicians don't wait for that to happen, they just create their own opportunities online. This is simple today because MP3 players and sharing music is commonplace.

In the world of writing, the same thing is happening more and more as eBooks become easier to consume on our gadgets. Amanda Hocking was rejected repeatedly by book publishers so she decided to self-publish. Now that the Kindle, iPad and Nook are becoming an outlet for avid readers, she and others like her can wave goodbye to having to pass through the gates of the major book publishing houses. Last April she self-published and has sold hundreds of thousands of books online. Here is her story:

The Ballad of Mirco Wilhelm: Flickr Still Flying Without a Net

2011-02-02T10:28:00.005-05:00

In 2004, the photo sharing and storage website Flickr was born. It grew quickly in its popularity because of its features and ease of use. It was a fun, good experience. In March of 2005, Yahoo acquired Flickr for $35 million. They have now had 6 years to grow this product from the great start they had with loyal customers.

So where are we today? Ask Mirco Wilhelm. He is an IT professional that has been posting photos to his Flickr account for years. Thousands of them. He tags them all and people link to them from all over. They are really lovely. Well, they were really lovely. You see, Mirco found someone illegally posting photos on their account so he complained to Flickr. By mistake, instead of deleting the other account, they deleted his. All 4,000 photos, stories, tags, links and everything that is Flickr is gone, and Flickr can’t do anything about it to recover them. They gave him a 4 year credit for Flickr Pro.

This would be horrible under any circumstances, but almost exactly three years ago to the day, the same loss of data happened to Steve Portigal. Someone phished him and deleted his account without his consent and Yahoo could do nothing to recover it. I blogged about it when it happened to illustrate that this is a simple scenario to plan for and that others do it all the time. Even Mirco says that it is part of what he does all the times in his day job.

This means that Yahoo/Flickr has known about this for three years and they just don’t care. Chief Product Officer, Blake Irving, just days ago tweeted the following:

"Is Yahoo committed to Flickr? Hell yes we are!"

Just days ago the New York Times wrote a story on how Yahoo is committed to Flickr, despite shrinking traffic stats. Here is a quote from the article by Matthew Rothenberg, Head of Product Strategy and Management of Flickr:

“We’re trying to build the best experience that we can.”

I think what resonates with people is not your strategy or tweets, but the experience you actually deliver. Here are the words from the Flickr support staff member sent to Mirco:

Hello,

Unfortunately, I have mixed up the accounts and accidentally deleted yours. I am terribly sorry for this grave error and hope that this mistake can be reconciled. Here is what I can do from here:

I can restore your account, although we will not be able to retrieve your photos. I know that there is a lot of history on your account--again, please accept my apology for my negligence. Once I restore your account, I will add four years of free Pro to make up for my error.

Please let me know if there's anything else I can do.

Again, I am deeply sorry for this mistake.

Regards,

Flickr staff

That is the real experience and message we get as customers, not what Product Managers tell reporters. Mirco’s story is being written about by large news organizations and propagating quickly around the web. I hope it doesn’t take Yahoo another three years to finally listen to these and other traumatized customers, and they fix this problem that everyone else seems to have solved. You have to afford and "undo" when it comes to your product, especially if you see this happen over and over.

Here is Mirco's story in his words: http://bindermichi.posterous.com/you-have-to-fucking-kidding-yahoo

Here is Steve Portigal's story from three years ago: http://www.portigal.com/blog/stories-lost-forever/

Dead Space 2: Listening to Your Customer...s' Mothers

2011-01-19T05:59:00.005-05:00

Electronic Arts did something interesting for the new Dead Space 2 video game release. They interviewed the mothers of their core customers. If they hate it, their kids will love it. To seal the deal, they record the interviews and use the utter disgust of these moms to promote the game.

Leveraging feedback from a generational, or "user" gap is interesting. There are always disruptive waves of innovation within domains that cause a change in the primary persona base. Let's package up the feedback from the old users and use it to sell it to the new ones?

Unintended Product Uses: Leveraging Google To Land a Job

2010-05-14T04:26:00.000-05:00

Most people use Google AdWords to promote their business. That is how it was designed. Alec Brownstein used it to get a job. He was looking for a job as a copywriter with some of the top ad agencies in New York City. So he bet that the creative directors at these top agencies would “vanity google” their own name. He bought AdWords of the names and put a special message in to each of them. He now works for Y&R, after a total cost of $6. Here is his video explaining his “Google Job Experiment”:

Here is a direct link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FRwCs99DWg

Maybe Google should consider creating this a new feature? This reminds me of the people who used eBay & Craig’s List to find jobs or ask others for help in 2009.

What unintended features are lurking in your products?

Mark Hurst Interview: User Experience Professionals in the Ivory Tower

2010-04-17T04:52:00.003-05:00

I conducted an interview for UX Magazine with Mark Hurst on listening, user experience professionals posture within a company and the GEL Conference. You can read or listen to it here:

http://uxmag.com/strategy/mark-hurst-talks-about-listening

Computers Are Supposed to Make Life Easier, Not Have The Cops Raid Your Home

2010-03-19T05:07:00.003-05:00

Rose and Walter Martin are an elderly couple living in Brooklyn, NY. They are 82 and 83, and he is a WWII veteran. Does this sound like a bloodthirsty crime spree duo? Unfortunately for them, the police department’s computer system thinks so.

Since 2002, the police have raided their home more than 50 times, sometimes multiple times a week. It has taken the police 8 years to finally figure out that it was a computer “glitch” that led them on these errant invasions. During a “test” of the system their address was added. The police never removed all the test cases all this time. Now they are using the computer to flag the Martin’s address and make sure they “Double check” that it isn’t a mistake.

“Shall we play a game?”

Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAcEzhQ7oqA

A Night of Surprises Makes the Fandango Experience a Bad One

2010-03-15T17:31:00.001-05:00

It’s rare that I’m able to go to the movies, which is tough for me because I’ve always enjoyed going to a good movie. It is hard though when you have a 5 year old, a 7 year old and a 5 month old. When a movie-going opportunity presents itself, I jump all over it. That happened last night. To prepare for this uncommon event, I went online to Fandango. I had been using the iPhone app to see movie times recently in the hopes of going, so I went a step further and actually purchased the tickets through Fandango. Fandango printout in hand and babysitter in place, we were ready to go.

Last night was not only movie night, it was also bad weather night. Getting to the theater proved time consuming because some roads were closed due to flooding. The trip took almost an hour instead 15 minutes, so we ended up late instead of early. When we finally did arrive, the cashier at the theater looked at my Fandango printout and asked for my credit card. I didn’t have it. I keep the credit card I use for online purchases at home. We move to the side and call the babysitter, who gets us the credit card info. Back on line, back to the cashier. Success! Time to move on to important decisions like what treats to overspend on at the popcorn counter.

With refreshments in tow, we move to the theater. As we arrive 30 minutes late, we walk into a completely empty room with commercials playing on-screen. Confused, I walk out and talk to the ticket-taking-dude and ask why there is no movie playing in Theater 8. He gets his manager who looks confused as well. The movie had been cancelled because the heat wasn’t working in that theater. How were we even able to purchase tickets he asked? Fandango.

While I enjoy things with Fandango like the ability to easily see movie times online or on my iPhone, they have yet to extend the experience to purchasing tickets. I don’t expect them to know if a particular theater has heat problems on any given night. I do expect them to have thought through the things they can’t manage that create bad experiences and know how to help customers through them.

Also, I’ve purchased tickets online for other events like baseball games that allow me to print out my ticket at home. That printout looks like a ticket and works like a ticket when I present it at the event. With Fandango, they make the printout look like a ticket, leading you to believe you’ll have the same experience. There should be an image of half a ticket on there with an image of your credit card next to it letting you know you need both to get into the theater.

Maybe I will try out Fandango in a year or so to see if they have changed anything. In the meantime, I’m going to old-skool-it and buy the tickets at the movie theater. The guy selling me the tickets there will know if there is heat on or not.

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Customer-Led Innovation

2010-02-20T10:44:00.005-05:00

Adam Richardson has a new book out called, Innovation X, which focuses on customer research's role when innovating. Here is a Slideshare presentation that touches on what the book is about:

Innovation X Book Launch Presentation

View more presentations from frog design.

Einstein Quote for User Experience Designers

2009-12-31T18:50:00.003-05:00

I will end 2009 with a quote from Albert Einstein. Something that all User Experience designers and Product Managers should keep in mind in the upcoming year:

"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction."

The Onion puts its spin on bigger and more complex:

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work

Happy New Year!

Change Blindness: What Are You Paying Attention To?

2009-12-22T06:20:00.003-05:00

Depending on what we focus on, our brains can be completely blind to obvious changes going on around us. This is called, “Change Blindness” and it is unnerving when you can easily see it. Here are a couple videos showing this in action. The first is an experiment conducted at Harvard where 75% of the people in the test don’t notice that the man in front of them has turned into another man. Below the Harvard experiment is a video of magician Derren Brown exploiting this blind spot we have in a much more dramatic way. Can you imagine a white male changing into an Asian female without noticing, right in front of you?

This is similar to “The Awareness Test” video I posted last year. What I always think of first when I see things like this is what are we failing to capture when observing people using the products we design? What do we don’t-know-we-don’t-know?

Direct link to Harvard's Change Blindness Experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38XO7ac9eSs

Derren Brown - Person Swap - The most amazing home videos are here

Direct link to Derren Brown's Person Swap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPG_OBgTWg

YouTube is the new Incubator: Panic Attack! (Ataque de Pánico!)

2009-12-19T04:15:00.002-05:00

Following in the footsteps of singers Esmee Denters, Justin Bieber and Arnel Pineda (Journey), YouTube has launched the career of Filmmaker, Fede Alvarez. Fede spent about $300 creating a 4 minute short film and posted it on YouTube. Just like Journey being able to find a singer in a way they could never do in the past, Fede’s video was seen by Sam Raimi online and quickly signed to produce a $30 million film. Here is what Alvarez said about the process of being discovered:

"I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios... If some director from some country can achieve this just uploading a video to YouTube, it obviously means that anyone could do it."

YouTube has become a listening channel for discovering talent, wagging serendipity for anyone out there who has the goods. What have you uploaded today?

Here is the video from Fede Alvarez, Panic Attack:

Direct link to Panic Attack video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk

Not Knowing Something is a Business Requirement: LED Traffic Light Design Fail

2009-12-18T06:46:00.001-05:00

If you had to create a new traffic light bulb, what would your business requirements be? It turns out that it’s not just about the amount of light they cast or the energy they use. There was a hidden business requirement in designing new traffic lights bulbs. LED traffic lights are much easier to see and consume up to 90% less energy, but something the designers didn’t consider was something incandescent traffic lights do naturally. They melt snow. People can see current traffic lights in snow because the heat that they produce melts the snow that accumulates on them.

If someone made that a requirement in designing the new LED lights, they would have addressed it. Instead, police departments are reporting an increase in traffic accidents where LED traffic lights are installed. Are there important product features that get removed during an upgrade because people weren’t aware of their importance? Product Managers have to make sure they know what features of their products are vital.

UPDATE 1 Jan 2010: The New York Times article on this same topic - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/us/02lights.html

Domino’s Is Changing, But Half of Us Still Prefer Our Local Pizza Place

2009-12-17T08:00:00.005-05:00

There is a story out today that Domino’s is changing the taste of its pizza because it ranks very low amongst customers. The company says that it took two years to upgrade their recipe and that they have invested much more than they have on food launches in the past. Is this why Domino's isn't what people prefer?

At the bottom of this story there is a place to vote on your favorite pizza. The “mom-and-pop place near where I live” beat everyone easily with 49%. Do we love our local pizza places because of just the flavor? People love to recommend and talk about their favorite pizza. Domino’s might want to look at the entire mom-and-pop pizza place experience and the connection people have with them.

Want to Hear Better? Touch Someone

2009-11-27T09:42:00.005-05:00

On this Black Friday, I was listening to NPR instead of shopping with the masses when I heard this interesting story on listening. A recent study in the journal Nature found that sensations on the skin help you hear better. Sounds such as "Pa" require a burst of air while others like "Ba" or "Da" don't. Bryan Gick, a professor of phonetics at the University of British Columbia says:

From my point of view, we're whole-body perceiving machines. We just take all of the information that comes at us in our environment and merge it into a percept of something that happened in the world.

We already knew that seeing a person's lips while they are talking helps our perception, but feeling their words is really interesting to me. It got me wondering...When we design user experiences are we too one dimensional? A lot of companies, including Google, use statistics as their core view of their users. A holistic view of our customers could uncover product features we couldn't find through stats alone.

Here is the full article from NPR:

http://weblogs.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120873368

CNN.com: Living with Technology vs. Technology

2009-11-21T09:14:00.004-05:00

I noticed that CNN.com has a new main section of news on its home page, "Living with Technology." At first I thought they just changed the title of the category that I frequent quite often, "Technology." It turns out they added this new category, and by the title you would think that they would use it to spotlight stories about social networking and iPhones and such. The other seems like a good place for news on IBM or Hubble stuff. It turns out that both share similar story content. Seems like people just want more Technology news. Cool.

Silent Silence of the Lamb Hills

2009-11-18T08:42:00.000-05:00

When trying to create a good experience, sometimes it's just easier to leverage someone else's good experience. I was walking through Best Buy and noticed that these two movies just happened to be placed next to each other. Silence of the Lambs is such an excellent movie, I guess it was easier for the designer of the Silent Hill movie to just borrow its likeness. Why create when you can steal?

Nationwide Airline Delays Caused By Bad Weather? Try a Bad Router Card

2009-11-15T05:22:00.000-05:00

Thursday Morning, airports from Atlanta to Los Angeles reported delays for more than four hours. Was this because of rain? Snow? Wind? Geese? It was because of a single router card in a computer that processes flight plans for the F.A.A. When this went down, they had to create these flight plans by hand. It didn't just cause people to have to wait longer on lines at airports. The U.S. Military couldn't see this info that they track so much more carefully since 9/11.

As more and more of our daily lives are taken over by computer systems, their fragility needs to be looked at more. This system that the F.A.A. uses is antiquated. Is there something they can learn from Amazon or Google at how to better manage things?

I'm always amazed at how we allow our imagination to carry us through a film with outrageous plots. We often see villains in movies control large systems with silly little apple laptops. Hearing that you can take down a nationwide system by the failure of a single router card makes those movies seem a bit more real now. Hans Gruber is smiling somewhere.

The House (Computer) Always Wins

2009-11-07T08:38:00.006-05:00

Bill Seebek was playing a $4 slot machine for a half hour in a Florida casino, when the sirens of you-just-won-a-shiteload-of-money sounded. He had won $166,666,666.65. He thought. The casino roped off the machine and after inspecting the "machine" (evil computer), they ruled that it malfunctioned. The max on that machine should have only been $99,000. Instead, Bill Seebek got nothing because that is the payout for a malfunction.

It always annoys me when I hear someone blaming "the system" instead of the organization that deployed that system. It's like when you're on the phone with your bank or credit card company and they say:

"The system is down now...Sorry...Can't get your information to help you right now"
"The system is so slow"
"I can't get that information because the system doesn't track that"It's as if the computer is culpable for doing something wrong.

Every day we are let down by the computers that surround our lives. Just imagine that it wasn't the bad UI at the self-service checkout, but losing a 9 figure prize instead. As more data of our lives goes online, what "malfunctions" will cause us to have a Seebek situation?

Here is the news story of the incident:

Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGIsN9PfPtA

Howard Stern, DOTS iPhone Gloves and a New Era of Innovation

2009-11-04T06:43:00.002-05:00

During the first hour of conversation this morning on Howard Stern, Howard talked about his older children not owning televisions in their homes. They used laptops to watch TV shows or Movies. Howard was really shocked by this since he encouraged his children to watch as much TV as possible as he did while growing up. Howard said that as a child, the cast on his favorite Television shows were his best friends. That's the kind of twisted relationship with a product that TV Content Producers cherish. Robin also commented on how young people she knew watched most of their media on phones even though they had a TV.

After listening to this, I went online and noticed a story on NYDailynews.com about DOTS gloves for iPhones. The problem was that in cold areas of the country, people had to take off their gloves just to answer the phone. This product comes from a pair of 22-year-olds, Larry Lairson and Chris Harrison.

Life in a post-TV-is-the-center-of-our-life world will produce lots of change in the products in our lives. The gloves are low hanging fruit, like remote control holders for couches, but you can see that the needs for new products is just beginning.

BlogPress for iPhone Entry

2009-10-14T06:40:00.002-05:00

I read about this iPhone app called BlogPress and wanted to try it out. So far so good. I was able to snap a photo and type away. Cut/copy/paste is a huge help too. I think I may purchase the full version (using lite now). Fingers crossed... Going to hit publish now...