Published on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 by Jeff Parks under
Usability.
Sharing experiences. That’s the primary reason for my attending UX Week put together by Adaptive Path. I’ll be recording conversations with presenters from Motorola, Don Norman, Peter Merholz, Indi Young, Leah Buley, Rob Naber and Dan Levine, Google, and others for the Boxes and Arrows Podcast, through out the whole week here in San Francisco. (To be released in the next two weeks – just need some down time to put together.)
I thought MX was one of the best conferences I had ever attended; then I attended UX Week and now I can’t decide!
Adaptive Path puts together conferences that are dynamic and engaging. What my colleagues in the field of cognitive psychology would deem to “model the behavior” for what a great user experience is all about. They found speakers for this conference, as they did at MX, that kept the audience glued to the stage along with workshops that used illustrations; exercises; and storytelling as a method for helping people learn through hands-on experience.
On the first day, presentations were given by a variety of professionals with the focus on the Fundamentals of User Experience. This included a keynote discussion with the President of Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz and Don Norman from the Nielsen/Norman Group.
Don made an interesting point, wondering why we call people “users”? They’re people, not “users”. Don also noted that he hated the expression, “Making things idiot proof” considering what that implies about those for whom they are designing. They aren’t idiots, they just know what works. By listening carefully to others, we can build better products and services based on how they think about interacting with these products. During the presentation Don put up a picture of a salt and pepper shaker.
He asked the audience which one contained the salt and which the pepper. Half the audience thought it was the one on the right, half thought it was the one on the left. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what we thought, it only matters which one your guests thinks is the pepper and which is the salt. If we apply this same analogy to how we develop and design, imagine how much better our products and services would be when we ship to our customers!
The other key point that Don made was that user experience is less about reality and more about memory. If people remember having a great experience they will work through changes to design to keep the product or service in place, even if the design is not as strong as others. Making the process of creating a great experience for products and services critical for not only adoption but also to keep customers and clients over the long term.
Leah Buley from Adaptive Path gave a brilliant follow-up talk from her presentation at the IA Summit earlier this year, “Being a User Experience team of one”. Showing video interviews from the team at Adaptive Path we learned about the humble beginnings from which they all came. She noted 5 tips for becoming a User Experience team of one:
1. Get comfortable with pen and paper – The basic tools of pen and paper allow for engaging teams with their ideas, allowing them to make changes right on the paper; without having to spend hours with applications.
2. Think big picture, not semantics – Leah noted that she used to spend hours on rich Photoshop deliverables only to find out after the first meeting about several changes that would cause her to spend even more time re-working the structure.
3. Be a good host – Open up meetings to other designers and other professionals. Adaptive Path illustrated this methodology in their new book, Subject to Change in their Idea Labs. The company continually gets insight about how to approach design problems by involving everyone in their company from executive assistants to the most senior executives; providing unique solutions to complex problems via unique life and professional experiences.
4. Decorate your space – Posting wire frames, illustrations, and ideas in your office / cubical can be a point of discussion for others involved and not involved with the project; possibly adding new ideas and insight.
5. Clarify UX goals – It’s important to clarify UX Goals through the project life cycle and reinforce these goals with all members of the team through conversation and sketching in an effort to illustrate key points that will ensure a good user experience once the product launches.
I attended Indi Young’s workshop entitled “Unpacking Stories to Serve People Better” She lead a “packed” room outlining key principles behind asking questions during UX testing that will get to the fundamental answers that will help to create great products and services.
From these answers, Indi taught the group how to create their own mental models through exercises in asking questions; picking out key concepts from transcripts; and how mental models can actually build upon or even replace user requirements documents.
I had the great pleasure of talking with Indi after her session that will be published on the Boxes and Arrows Podcast. You can hear more about her book on Mental Models in a discussion with Jared Spool on his Podcast, the Spool Cast. You can purchase a copy of her book on the Rosenfeld Media site – a brilliant book that will help you get started in creating your own mental models.
The Neo-Futurists put on a performance and if you’re ever in the Bay area and have a chance to see this group perform, don’t miss it! They string a clothes line across the top of the stage with numbers one to thirty on piece of paper facing the audience. On the back of these pieces of paper are titles of short skits they’ll perform. They do them in the order that the audience shouts out to the actors. They actors jump up, grab the number, read the title of the performance out, and the actors scramble to get ready for the skit. Each performance brought down the house with laughter and a great experience to wind up day one at UX Week.
In January of this year, I attended the first ever VizThink conference in San Francisco; and what an amazing experience!
