things I have created

Over the weekend I attended UXCamp Ottawa 2012 and had a great time learning, sharing and meeting new people. Here are my notes from the day. It was a stellar line-up and I’m full of ideas!

It’s a great time to be a UX designer - Jared Spool

Slides: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1086584/It’s%20A%20Great%20Time%20To%20Be%20A%20Designer%20-%20R1.2.pdf

• Apple stores sell far more per square foot retail than even Tiffany’s - retailers attempt to copy the whole experience - JC Penney, fake Apple stores in China, Amazon Nook, etc.
• design can be revolutionary - look at Kickstarters that get $10 million+ invested without even a real product - just a design
• design is making the ordinary extraordinary, e.g. Square credit card processing, Nest thermometer
• the difference is design
• designing for whole experiences is no longer a lUXury that’s nice to have - it is now mission critical
• Fortune 2000: if each decides to spend $2 million on their design that’s 20 designers per company - 40 000 designers - demand is insane
• iPhone changed cellphone industry - it was no longer about features, it was about experience and design
• 60% of newspaper revenue was from classifieds for the longest time - Craigslist changed everything - then AirBnB built up on that - features -> experience
• the drive for designers is coming from the shift from features to experience - mobile is forcing companies to adapt to this shift
• waiting in line doesn’t have to be a crappy experience - need to consider the whole - look for the little gaps
• app to take a picture of your tax form and sends it straight to the IRS
• extraordinary design is about filling in the gaps in the experience
• lean UX - “are we getting closer to a better experience? Is this what our customers will pay for?” - get something out and quickly
• information architecture, design process management, copywriting, user research practices, interaction design, visual design, editing & curation are all parts of experience design
• specializing vs. compartmentalizing, need to be flexible and willing to leave your “speciality”
• frustration in design results in: missed sales/lost revenue, additional support costs, unused feature development and support costs
• designers need to use the language of executives: talk about increasing revenue, decreasing costs, increasing market share, increasing business, improving shareholder value
• there is a revolution happening and design is at the forefront of it, we need to cross train and focus on communicating our value
• spend 2 hours every week watching users use your design, whole team needs to see it

Deconstructing delight: pleasure, flow and meaning - Dana Chisnell

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/danachisnell/deconstructing-delight

• financial company created calculator to help take scariness out of retirement to sell annuities
• simple, beautiful, cute interface that set high expectations then led to a heavy math focused back end inconsistent with front end - no amount of cute script will hide a broken experience like this one
• making something useful is one thing but making it delightful is something entirely else - it can be hard!
• compare Swackett app to official weather information - which one is more delightful to use? same info, different design
• we need to infatuate our users, be thoughtful and considerate of our users - TripIt - aware of user, understands their value and adds treats for the user
• TripIt anticipates the needs of the users from start to finish,extra goodness
• Virgin America inspires “love” from its customers - they learned from mistakes and use iterative design to refine their product
• every release is an experiment
• in flight entertainment is different, treat customers as guests not troublemaker, great general tone and attitude
• Virgin America safety video does everything it has to to meet regulations but it goes beyond - it adds humour and design and attitude to what could otherwise be mundane
• OmmWriter video is another example
• flow: immersive, empowering, behavioral automatic, plays on mastery and control
• subtle motivation cues, psychological cues, language or lack of, social cues, reinforcement
• you get what you need when you need it but no sooner
• frictionless paths, supports serendipity, tangents are useful and meaningful, feeds curiosity and plays on user’s strengths
• ask ourselves: what would happen if I took care of my user?
• example of ZipCar giving its cars names, reinforces attachment, accountability and responsibility
• meaning: flourish through purpose, connectedness, making a difference, belonging, virtuousness
• plan the emotional effects and behavioural effects, focus on clarity, simplicity, funneling, modelling
• its not just about the digital experience - its about the whole experience, from the call centre to the CEO
• Kiva another example of meaningful design
• meaning is design with purpose, from mission to fulfillment, not just touch points

What everyone needs to know about designing for women - Jessica Ivins

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/jessicaivins/on-shrink-it-and-pink-it-designing-for-women

• Della fail on Dell’s part to market to women: classic “pink it and shrink it” reflex
• content based on assumptions really missed the mark
• rather than solving problems we often jump to extremes when marketing to gender
• we need to make products and experiences that work for our users, not just “appeal” to our assumptions about them
• Holly Buchanan: Marketing to Women Online blog
• two approaches: visible design is clearly targeted to one gender, must be sure product is one gender or the other (e.g. Venus razor)
• transparent targets one gender but isn’t overt about it and doesn’t alienate other gender, make it work especially well for one gender (eg endura scrubs)
• consider spectrum of femininity and where your product might fit
• realistic personas help drive vision for marketing - forces you to consider real people not a stereotypical aggregate whole
• facilitate sharing given women’s propensity for social media
• don’t stereotype your audience - get to know them

Accessibility as a design tool - Derek Featherstone

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/derekfeatherstone/accessibility-as-a-design-tool-14714388

• we need to learn how to integrate accessibility into typical workflows for specific audiences - devs, project managers, scrum masters, designers
• there is some lack of awareness but many people think its too hard
• many struggle to understand benefits of accessibility - it benefits everyone not just the blind or deaf
• accessible design is better design, period
• accessibility is not a binary all or nothing scenario - how you view accessibility affects everything we understand about it
• the majority are the middle - and you have outliers at either extreme, 95% fall in the mean but the extremes help us understand the needs of the whole audience
• ideo video series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM
• meeting the needs of the extreme ends of our spectrum of users will help us meet the needs of everyone falling in between
• accessibility often comes in at the design and development stages but it needs to be considered from inception to launch
• issue of describing city boundary expansion for non visual users - had to consider why do people care? Tax purposes - so why not help users determine that - what is the purpose of the map?
• everything from auto complete to errors plays into both accessibility as well as overall usability
• multiple paths into info can help meet accessibility requirements as well as enhance usability
• floating menu bar with skip to heading and main content - love it - brings screen reader techniques to all users

Citizen experience design and you - Jess McMullin

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/jessmcmullin/citizen-experience-design-and-you

• we need to redesign government
• the workforce is changing - aging, shrinking
• what happens when nwe think about citizen experience rather than customer experience?
• citizen exp bell curve: politics and voting -> community and civic involvement -> programs and services -> failure demand (when the system becomes its own enemy) -> civic action
• how do we change the citizen experience? We need to thinks about design
• design is style and aesthetics (related to delight), function, problem solving
• reframing and redesigning the problem might help fix the problem more than applying patches and fixes to the existing problem as it is understood
• policy is the decision DNA of organizations - you can’t change the world without changing that decision DNA
• citizen experience design can’t only impact service delivery but also policy
• the power of design is to give confidence in the face of uncertainty and to help make the right decisions faster
• citizen experience design makes common maps for everyone to use as they move forward
• celebrate the power of possibility - look at what could be instead of what was - the power of seeing systems, networks, the real world
• prototyping and visualizing and making
• iteration is important - experiment small - incremental improvements let us explore options without massive policy shifts
• power of codesign/collaboration - model of reality leaves our heads and ends up shared with others
• make meaning for people - if we meet needs we can make a difference in people’s lives
• BC Public Service Dragons’ Den
• City of Vancouver transportation 2040
• Edmonton had citizens come and build their vision of the future through Lego - competition and winning ones were displayed and used for planning
• citizen experience is a focus, it helps us stay on target, it’s a bridge that ignores politics, it’s a compass and a map
• put design to work - lets make the right decisions faster, improve outcomes and rediscover a culture of optimism and opportunity
• citizen experience is a new frontier - go there

Lessons from evil ad men - Shai Idelson

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/shaidelson/UX-lessons-from-evil-ad-men

• right beats easy - the flying experience started from the terminal until you arrive - its everything - and it doesn’t need to suck, it can be engaging and fun
• but to change the experience ads were not the way - had to change the experience, then advertise that
• do the right thing even if it’s hard - not the easy thing
• we are good with the things we are comfortable with. When a problem arises, think about the need, not what we know
• Perdue chicken: sold experience (Perdue) rather than just the product
• it worked because of trust - without trust the data is useless - need both
• crazy works - e.g. Meow Mix, Isuzu Joe
• hate it? change it - just remember that sometimes change needs a little helping hand
• UX can help change culture by changing behaviours - advertising changes culture by changing attitudes
• changing behaviours can change attitudes

Big picture UX - Nick Fincke

• we’re thinking too small
• we need to get beyond the notion that sales are won or lost in a single channel or through a single aspect of our business
• we need to look at the cross channel experience - mobile and physical shopping experiences need to become seamless - embracing technology can bring in more customers (reach)
• it’s not just retail - way beyond that - it’s the nature of how we experience things, how we work, think, play
• Uber town car type service - app lets you pick where to be picked up - locates driver nearby and dispatches them and shows them driving to you - no cash or credit card, all handled through online
• star rating given to driver and client, receipt is emailed, trip history, maps, mobile, email, online all work together to provide a unified experience
• REI - shop online, then find bike in store - salespeople knowledgeable and helped narrow selection and they had a track to test ride it on
• web product staff and retail working together to increase sales
• what is the brand experience? how does the cohesive whole combine - its not “just the web” anymore - think beyond what you’re tasked with - UX designers job is to improve the experience, not just the channel

Creativity: the missing link between data and common sense - Jeff Parks

Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/u/jeffparks/p/creativity-dot-dot-dot-the-missing-link-between-data-and-common-sense

• we need to start valuing the person who shares an idea - appreciate the idea for its own merit
• why-how-what : basic framework applicable across disciplines
• ability to get to fundamental truths through questions has been lost - we spend too much time arguing over data - we don’t often ask why we are doing this, we need to focus on the purpose
• too much data = makes it hard to decide, tech makes it harder to share and connect genuinely, not just online but IRL too, being online does not make us remarkable
• focus in housing used to be porch now it is often the garage - social skills being hurt and discourse as a result - technology, weaker social ties, multitasking all impact our ability to communicate with each other
• we need to take a global view of ideas - we need to design for human experience not just digital experience - need to take a broad global view of design and life
• we need to understand the people we’re trying to get buy-in from
• people are the foundation of every organization - stop arguing over where ideas are from and more about the merit of the ideas themselves
• we need to interact in communities not pose in them
• its not about problems anymore it’s about people - we need to shift the conversation from what we could be doing to what we should be doing
• we need to appreciate ideas regardless of where they come from

Building Chameleon - Gabor Vida

• it’s all about solving someone’s problem - and the smaller and more detailed that you can define the problem the more likely you are to create something great
• look at Shazam and Instagram - they solve small problems
• content is king, context is god
• used video to launch, gauge interest, Kickstarter launch and to keep them updated
• usability can be cool - auto adjusting contrast widget solves usability issue and adds real wow factor
• started designing for 10 inches, then had to adjust for 7, then for the phone
• radical transparency, picture is worth a thousand words but video is worth a thousand conversations, get it in the wild early
• cool isn’t cool when nobody gets it <- need to communicate value

The power of bad ideas - Steve Portigal

• bad is not the absence of good - they can elicit a very strong responses
• bad ideas can almost always be good in the right circumstances - it requires reframing the problem
• we need a safe place to enable bad ideas, laugh at ideas not people, trust and listening foster collaboration, if we don’t create safe places for each other this creativity won’t happen
• support both deliberate zany ideas and tentative unfinished ideas - they both need support and recognition
• combinatorial creativity is a vector that combines ideas - product of brain wanting to reorient and redesign dissonance - bad idea is valuable because it’s a trigger to generate next (possibly good) idea
• process words are insightful, need to respond with positives, throwing an idea and accepting offers - like improv - it doesn’t work if the group isn’t open to it
• expose implicit beliefs about what the criteria are for bad vs good ideas
• bad ideas make great batting practice, we build up understanding of insights from working with them - just translating insights into solutions, even bad ones, is a win - if you can translate the bad you are in an even better idea of how to translate the good
• Breaking Bad and Cow Clicker sound like awful ideas on paper but have been huge hits - Wired article on Cow Clicker: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_cowclicker/ - outcome and intention don’t match: supposed to be satire but was huge hit
• appsurd: apps that started as jokes: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577404284117534706.html
• marketplace is where the ideas are judged - e.g. mobile wifi homeless at SxSW, chain ankle shoes
• consider your context, engineers say if it’s stupid but works its not stupid, be open to surprises, listen to your audience, consider your criteria for success