Lady on the Bus

Making UX design famous

Adriana — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:36:27 +0000

In the late 80′s, as I was finishing school and choosing a career, the cool thing to go into was advertising. It seemed so exciting and exclusive, maybe because advertising people were so natural and unashamedly self-promoting.
20 years later, its has lost great part of the glamour. So what do kids want to be when they grow up nowadays?

If you read this blog you probably know I work with digital UX design, a field (and market) that has been growing steadily in size and strength, even during this long economy downturn. The strange thing is that it has been a silent growth.

Everyone uses digital products and services (like everyone used to enjoy watching creative ads), our clients certainly see a huge value in our work, but somehow UX design hasn’t become famous as a professional choice.

There is a lot of demand for talented interaction and visual interface designers, it pays well, and it’s damn interesting and creative work. So why is it under the radar?
I think we need to do a better job of communicating all this goodness to the mainstream. I’m just building upon a larger debate about defining what we do and finding talent, which has been going on in Europe.

How would you explain and sell a career in UX design to those bright young things (before they waste their talent somewhere else)?

Starbucks service experience map

Adriana — Sat, 01 May 2010 17:51:03 +0000

You might not like Starbucks coffee (I don’t) but this service experience map shows that the quality of the coffee is nearly irrelevant when you consider what happens when customers visit their shops. The opportunities and risks are all in the service. From the Little Springs Design blog

On cooking and multitasking

Adriana — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 08:43:17 +0000

Multitasking at work is a lot like cooking. If you do some minimum planning you can decide on a recipe, shop for the ingredients and do a simple mental schedule: chop the vegetables while the oven heats, put the rice to boil, call your mother while the chicken roasts, dress the salad in the last minute.

I’m no time management expert, but I’ve learned that multitasking is possible with:
- Some predictability: you can estimate how much exclusive attention a task requires and how much time you need to get it done.
- Planning: to organise multiple tasks together, you need to figure out waiting times and active times (can you eat and whistle at the same time?) – in the end of which you’ll have an idea of how much time you need in total.
- Experience: the more experience you have the less time you need to get things right – experience also improves your ability to improvise.

The problem with this neat recipe is that it assumes you will be left in peace to fulfill your clever plan without unexpected extra tasks and distractions. Is it ever like this in real life? Perhaps you can handle one interruption (the bell rings while you are basting the chicken), but when your dinner guest calls in the last minute to say his date is a vegetarian, you’ll need:
- a good sense of humor
- cold blood
- pure luck: got anything in the fridge to knock up a quick veggie dish?

But if you have some wisdom and experience, you’ll use all you power of improvisation… to order a pizza. And thinking ahead, you’ll make sure the pizza is served cold so perhaps your friend learns to be a bit more considerate next time

Online creatures and their mean ecosystems

Adriana — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:09:35 +0000

As I read the article – Gmail users tweet twice as much – I remember that a couple of months ago someone said during a nice girlie lunch: If a guy gives me a Hotmail email address I’ll probably lose interest, – which was followed by supportive nods of agreement. I learned that Gmail is to be expected. Yahoo might be tolerated.
Wow, talk about strict standards. I agree that Hotmail as a brand doesn’t add points to anyone’s cool factor, but then I wouldn’t go as far as shipping them to social Siberia.

But wait, I forgot to mention that my friends and I are a generation apart – and it shows. Whilst most of my social ecosystem grew under zero influence of the internet and is therefore agnostic to online social codes, to my friends there is no such clear line. Their online and offline personas are bundled together, and increasingly their cultural codes, references, brand preferences (and prejudices) are generated online.

Fair enough, my girlie lunch friends and I all work in the internet industry and thus are fickle early adopters. But from the research we do I get the impression that this is getting more widespread. What do you think?

The geek and the burglar

Adriana — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:04:20 +0000

Twitter, Facebook, etc. have really tapped into our needs of social catharsis, showing off and voyeurism. These obviously win over our privacy and self-protection instincts. What’s wrong with us? Can’t we help sharing our every step, thought and whereabouts?

It might be an age thing – I try being selective with the people I allow into my network, but according to British insurance and investment management firm Legal & General, 13% of Facebook users and 92% of Twitter users tend to accept followers requests without checking them up. And according to web security firm Sophos research shows that 41% per cent of people display personal and private information to complete strangers on Facebook, such as their date of birth, where they worked, where they lived and what they were doing. The result is that naive social network users may face higher insurance prices and limited coverage in case of burglary.

And speaking of naivety and robbery, I just love this story of the burglar who had to check his Facebook profile still at the crime scene, forgot to logout and got caught. Couldn’t help it the sad geek.

Easy on the eye, easy on the brain

Adriana — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:09:42 +0000

Dom Phillips has just published an article for the FT.com showing that readership of tabloids in Brazil is soaring – despite the Internet - at a time that most of the newspaper industry is bleeding.

I’m not going into the prejudices which come to my mind when I think of regular tabloid readers. But the article made me think about what makes some formats so successful.

Entertainment hungry, low attention span, uninterested in deep reflection. I’m not describing tabloid readers, I’m talking about most of us Internet users. The way people read paper tabloids have a lot in common with the way we consume information on the web. In fact, tabloids need to change very little from print to online versions. Compare the paper version of The Sun with their website or even their iPhone app, for instance.

User-experience professionals have known this for a long time. Fat headlines, bite size text, picture rich, attention grabbing editorial style has been the norm and let’s admit, a reference of best practice (we scan – we don’t read, etc.)

All in the name of usability – or we are all closet tabloid fans!

For the love of travel

Adriana — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:43:46 +0000

As many of us who like our travels to be a personal and original experience, Maria Martinez discovered that recommendations by word-of-mouth from friends and fellow travellers often hit the spot much better than those from traditional paper travel guides. So she, along with Blat and Manuel Muñoz, decided to create iwannagothere.com, a new site which brings people together to exchange travel tips, experiences and gather information to plan their next trip.

I do a lot of travel research on the web and on iwannagothere.com I find it particularly helpful that you can cross-reference the recommendations and the profile of the people writing them – you can see other places they have been to and liked. This way you can check if they are genuine and find the best match for your interests and tastes.

They also have a growing team of local contributors willing to share their gems and help you to stay away from tourist traps.

I’ll be posting on Sao Paulo soon.

Social software – fashion and fear in the corporate world

Adriana — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:16:52 +0000

We like to look good, but sometimes when people consciously decide to be fashionable, disaster strikes. I’ve been there. Those clothes in the depths of my wardrobe and my credit card bill won’t let me forget.

Technology moves through fashions too. Companies want to be modern and hate the idea of being left behind. Social media is seen as the new black in the corporate world. But actually, social media should really be seen as the new canary yellow - great colour, but it doesn’t go with everything.

We have frequent discussions with clients from every sector who feel they must adopt social tools but fear losing control over the message. I think we shouldn’t be discussing social software in the first place, we should be talking about who they are, their corporate culture, their market and who they want to be in the future – realistically.

Forget about labels and focus on business objectives. How can social software and user participation contribute to those objectives? Which tools and features are justified? What are the risks? Are they manageable? How are we going to measure success?

This presentation from Bond Art + Science is focused on media, but it’s tactical insights can be applied to other types of organisations willing to adopt and adapt social conversation to their business goals. One size does not fit all.

From Business to Buttons 2009

Adriana — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:40:05 +0000

From Business to Buttons 2009 brings us Garr Reynolds, presentation guru and web 2.0 thought leader, along with a great mix of tech heavyweights, startup cases and experts in innovation including:

Matt Jones (founder of Dopplr.com)
Scott Berkun (author of The Myths of Innovation).
Todd Lefelt (Director of User Experience at Huge)
Microsoft (sponsor) with the Interactive Surface tabletop.
The Cocktail (sponsor) introducing Iwannagothere.com, the travellers social network born in Spain.
Complete list of speakers, sessions and registration at businesstobuttons.com

When and where: 11-12 of June in Malmö, Sweden

Short bios:
Garr Reynolds, Associate Professor of Management at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan, is the creator of the most popular website on presentation design and delivery on the net: presentationzen.com. He shares lessons and perspectives on making remarkable presentations that are simpler, visual, engaging, and effective. He is the former Manager of Worldwide User Group Relations at Apple Computer, and spent most of the ’90s at Sumitomo Electric Industries in Osaka.

Scott Berkun is the author of bestselling books “Making things happen” and “The Myths of Innovation”. At Microsoft from 1994-2003 he oversaw projects such as Internet Explorer (v1-5 of), Windows and MSN. He has taught at the University of Washington, regularly contributes to Harvard Business Digital, and has featured as an innovation and management expert on MSNBC and on CNBC. He writes frequently on his popular blog: scottberkun.com

Matt Jones is a founder and lead designer of Dopplr.com, a service for frequent travellers. His previous positions include Director of User-Experience Design at Nokia Design, and creative director for Sapient in London. In the late 90s, he was creative director for the launch of BBC News Online. He has spoken at events such as Reboot, Ars Electronica, O’Reilly’s Etech and FooCamp. He now blogs at www.magicalnihilism.com.

Todd Lefelt is the Director of User Experience of Huge, where he oversees research and interaction design for projects including Audible.com, Nickelodeon and The Warner Music Group. Todd has over 10 years of experience leading the definition of scalable interactive media strategies and user friendly experiences. www.hugeinc.com

Iwannagothere.com is a social network dedicated to travel, an off-shoot of The Cocktail. During the conference the people behind Iwannagothere will be showing how they have used the Effect Map methodology in the development of the service and will be launching their mobile service, co-designed by The Cocktail and InUse.

About the conference

From Business to Buttons is the most important European conference on Design for Business. It’s third edition runs between 11-12 of June in Malmö, Sweden.
For whom: designers, business strategists and user experience professionals.
Organisers: InUse, Ergonomidesing, Malmö University – Sponsors: The Cocktail (Spain) and Microsoft.

First impressions: Changing from PC to Mac

Adriana — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:01:40 +0000

I’ve recently switched to Mac after nearly two decades using Windows. My first impressions:

- Yes, the Mac user interface is incredibly elegant and clever.

- Yes, it makes MS look stupid and life easier. Simple example: plugging a Mac to a projector and watching it adjust the resolution perfectly and automatically – versus embarrassing long minutes trying to set a PC up for a client presentation.

- It’s gorgeous, it’s clever, but it is not intuitive. Sorry, the Mac UI is NOT as intuitive as fans claim. In my humble opinion the learning curve is steep, or steeper than I imagined. To find my way around I need to get used to a number of tricks, shortcuts and combinations of the two things. I confess that I haven’t taken enough time to “study” these tricks – but should I need to just to do the basics?

- Whilst the Windows UI is clunky, you can find your (long) way around it without much help – my mum and mother-in-law can handle it although it amazes me HOW absurdly they handle it. But things go well only until things go wrong. And boy, things do go wrong on a PC. Don’t even get me started.

- Software made for Mac is nearly perfect. But I’m not impressed with the “versions for Mac” of generic software. Who on earth thought that floating panels were a good idea?

Provisional verdict:
Despite a slightly bumpy start I have to say that the Macbook is such a nice piece of kit. The user interface is beautiful but not intuitive – requiring a considerable effort to get used to. But I can see myself already working more efficiently and perhaps in a month or two, joining the hordes of annoying Mac fans.

P.S. (22/10/09) – Reporting back 5 months later: Happily using my Mac on basic mode. Surviving without ever learning non-essential tricks and shortcuts.

Check out the evolution of operating system user interface design from 1981 to 2009 by the Web Designer Depot.

Mac user interface as I remember it from 1991