Improving Twitter Email Notifications

I am a regular Twitter user (@azollers), and I truly love the service because it connects me to a wide range of interesting people in my field. I feel a stronger connection to the UX community because of Twitter, and so leave my profile open to allow anyone to discover and follow me.

My biggest frustration with Twitter, however, is the proliferation of spammers in the form of bots, porn, and “social media marketers”. Not only do these profiles provide me with little value, I do not wish to be personally or professionally associated with them. My first defense against spam followers are the Twitter email notifications, which, when they actually work let me know who has followed me. These notification bring me no end of frustration because of their complete lack of information to help me make a decision regarding the legitimacy/credibility/interest of the person following me.

Twitter Email Notification

The current notification only provides the following information:

• username
• # of followers
• # of tweets
• # following
• the link to the profile
• link to block the person

Although the ratio of # of followers to # following is often a good indicator regarding the person – with a fairly equal ratio indicating that the person is not a spammer – it is not enough information. I am constantly forced to click on the link to visit the profile to get a better impression – and often accidently end up clicking the block link, because of poor readability.

The email notification would actually be much more useful if they contained the following information:

• The bio
• The full text of 2-3 most recent tweets
• Contacts we have in common
• Clear links to follow and block the person

Twitter already has all of this information and surfacing it would certainly help me make a reasonable decision about the individual. Whenever I am forced to view an individual’s profile, I always look at the bio first followed by their most recent tweets, RT, and mentions. If I could have this information up front, it would save me a lot of time and frustration, and actually make the email notifications valuable.

Filed under: Design, Social Media , email notifications, twitter, usability

Josh Porter at Refresh Boston

I just relocated to the Boston area, and in order to get myself acquainted with the local design community, I decided to attend Refresh Boston.

I am so glad that I went because Josh Porter gave a GREAT talk called “Designing in Recession”, where he went over tips and tricks for succeeding in the current economy. This blog post is a recap of the talk.

Your skills are not self-evident
Most people out there do not know what you do, so you need to be very clear about your skills set. Also, design skills are very conceptual, and we need to surface them. The best way to do this is to create a portfolio which outlines your process, deliverables, and project contributions. Josh does not recommend just having a screen shot that links to a live web page. It is not likely that you were responsible for the entire site, and so should be clear about which parts were your contribution. Also, the design of you portfolio should in some ways reflect your focus. If you are a visual designer your portfolio might be more visual catching than an information architect. Josh specifically keeps his website visually simple because those are not his strengths and he wants to market himself as a strategists versus a visual designer. If you don’t have a portfolio that you are happy with, or are just getting into the field and don’t have a portfolio yet, take an existing site and redesign it. Josh specifically mentioned Dustin Curtis who redesigned the American Airlines website (he was not working for AA) and even got a response from the AA team!

Find Your Focus
Although this may seem counter-intuitive, having a focus that differentiates you from other designers will help bring in business. It is tempting to think that a shop that can do it all is what clients are looking for, but its difficult to compete on those terms especially with so much competition from “chop shops” that can covers PSD to HTML in a manner of days. Also, having a focus will bring in business that truly interests you and speaks to your focus. Your focus should be some kind of niche, so coding to web standards is too general a focus as all designers aspire to comply with standards. SEO for drupal sites is an example of a great focus. Josh mentioned a guy who has a 50+ person company doing nothing but SEO for drupal sites! That guy really found his niche, what is yours?

Publish Your Thoughts
The way Josh gets much of his business is through the popularity of his blog. He recommends each designer find a channel that works for him/her. The point is to get your name out there and show people that you have something to say. He mentioned that many people have a hard time starting a blog because they think they don’t have anything to say. You have to remember though that some things that are easy for you are difficult to other people. Also, you can check out discussion lists and see where people are having problems and try to address them in your blog. Another option is to comment about someone else’s post on your blog. The key here is to be positive in your tone, even if you disagree. A lot of negativity will turn people off, and you might lose business, so even if you disagree with someone, embrace their ideas and then extend them. For example, say something to the effect of “Bob did a great job explaining X, here are some situations where X might not work…”

Be On Time
This is just a basic professional courtesy. Here the subject veered a bit towards not wasting your own time. Josh does not recommend working with clients that ask for spec work. Spec work is when a client says, “Show us what you are thinking and to help us making a decision about going forward”. This is basically a company trying to get you to do work for them for FREE. You are not getting paid to do the spec work, and have potentially wasted your time, especially if you are competing against other designers. Spec work is not the same thing as a competition, where all the work from the participants is public. Spec work is held privately within the company and may never see the light of day, additionally, the company may use your ideas in the future without proper compensation. Josh also stays away from creating 3 different comps for clients, he concentrates on creating one comp. The reason for this is that a comp (or wireframe in Josh’s case), takes into account a very specific prioritization and organizational scheme. This means there is one strategic organizational scheme, not 3.

Don’t Eat Alone
Go out and network, have one-on-one lunches with fellow colleagues to find out the secret and cool projects they are working on. You will always learn something new and valuable from others. As an addition to this, always celebrate your colleagues’ victories (even if you are secretly jealous!). This will spread good will and also help you make better design decisions in the future. Josh really loves how Tumblr engages new users, and secretly wishes he could have come up with that design. However, he did learn from it and uses similar concepts to help clients. Also, its important to become a good referrer. If you are not able to take a project, refer clients to a colleague (its helpful if the person has portfolio!). Its beneficial for all parties.

During the Q/A there were questions regarding dealing with clients. Josh says that is existing clients are much more valuable then potential ones. Don’t do a rush job for existing client, but rather try to do your best work because you already have their business and could get more work by keeping them happy. Also, don’t shy away from small projects because they often lead to larger ones. The small projects are sometimes the way that clients give you a “test” run before giving you a big project. This comes around to the issue of trust. It is important to gain a client’s trust early on. Josh recommends getting a win early in the project so there will be less second-guessing later. However, it is important to have a rational for your design so that you can justify your choices.

Overall it was a great session, and I am really happy I got to meet Josh!

Filed under: Design , Design, josh porter, refreshboston

Navigating Image Collections

I am currently working with a really awesome research group out of UCLA Libraries called Simul8. The purpose of the research group is to experiment with new designs for UCLA Library Services. The designs include revamping the current library website, but also go beyond to web to thinking about incorporating mobile technologies, and even rethinking the design of work spaces.

The first project that we have been working on is thinking of new interface designs for the UCLA image collection. The image collection contains thousands on images from a variety of topics including science, architecture, history, and art just to name a few. Currently, users have to select a specific image collection from long list, and then perform a search. The search interface differs for every collection, and honestly assumes expert users.

In order to broaden our thinking about image navigation, as a group, we did a competitive analysis of sorts, and found websites that have interesting image navigation features. I thought I would share some of these sites in case anyone else is working in this domain (in no particular order).

Flickr Related Tag Browser
http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/

NASA Image Gallery
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html

Live Labs
http://livelabs.com/seadragon/

Simple Viewer
http://www.airtightinteractive.com/photos/

Mood Stream by Getty Images
http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/

Tilt Viewer
http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/tiltviewer/app/

Viewz
http://www.viewzi.com/search/whitevoid-photocloud/

Hardrock
http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/

SFMOMA Artscope
http://www.sfmoma.org/pages/artscope

Glocal
http://www.glocal.ca/

Horizontal Scrolling
http://www.simonhoegsberg.com/we_are_all_gonna_die/slider.html

Pattern Tap
http://patterntap.com/tap

Filed under: Design , image navigation

On Being A Generalist

I have been on the lookout for job opportunities since January. Due to the economic constraints at the moment, many job postings want a UX designer with visual design skills who can develop. Although I can do UX design and development, I am not very well versed in graphic/visual design. I was starting to worry that I am missing an important skill.

At SXSW, I spoke with John Kolko and asked him if visual design was a necessity for UX design. He said that since my designs touch the UI, I should understand the fundamentals. He specifically recommended taking class in composition, typography, color theory, and figure drawing.

All of this has been mulling in my head, and then Jared Spool posted this on the IxDA list: http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=40833 Jared mentioned that ROLES don’t matter, SKILLS do, he also said this:

Our research showed there are core skills [that successful teams possess]: interaction design, information architecture, user research, visual design, information design, fast iteration management, copywriting, and editing.

After thinking everything over, including my own concerns, here is how I feel about being a generalist:

First, I completely agree with Jared, the ROLE and role name do not matter, the SKILLS do. People can call me an IA, UX, IxDA, UI, Web designer, whatever, I still bring the same skills to the table.

Out of the skills that Jared listed, here are the ones that I think specifically pertain to UX:

• user research: because we need to understand the domain and the users of the domain
• information architecture/information design: because we need to be able to thoughtfully and purposefully structure the content based on user and business goals
• interaction design: because interaction makes up the large chunk of the experience
• fast iteration management: because our first ideas are never the best ones, fail quickly and often

The skills that I think are “nice to have” but should NOT be required include:
- visual design
- copy writing and editing
- development (not mentioned in Jared’s list)

The “nice to have” skills that I have listed are in this category because they are professions onto themselves, and I think its unreasonable to believe that a UX designer will be able to master 4 different professions. I believe that if one expects this, then they are going to get a designer who is mediocre at everything. There really is only so much time in the day/life that one can dedicate to new skills, or breadth. Drawing on Jared’s analogy of doctor’s, we would not ask a cardio-thorasic surgeon to deliver a baby, why would we ask a UX designer to craft copy? Yes both a surgeon and an obstetrician are doctors and know the anatomy of a body, much like a UX designer and copywriter know the language, but the mastery of the skill is quite different. If doctor’s have specializations, why can’t UX designers?

This is not to say that people should narrowly specialize, I also agree with Jared on this point, if one is too narrow (only doing usability testing for example), then it could certainly hinder your job prospects because you should be able to apply what you learned from the usability testing to create an improved design, the company does not need to hire another person to do that.

However, visual design, development, and UX design often challenge each other, and it is necessary to have the tension for great designs to emerge. If one person is attempting to do all those jobs at once, they will start compromising on the UX as they begin to think about the code or the grid structure. The compromises start to happen conceptually and the designer becomes constrained.

Now Jared mentioned that the UX designer should have the fundamentals of each of those skills, I am not clear on what Jared means by fundamentals, but I think his definition goes further than my conceptualization – which is knowing enough about the domain to be able to communicate with your colleague. I feel that a UX designer needs to understand the basics of programming, visual design, and copy writing to enable meaningful conversations, debates, compromises and decisions. Understanding how your design is going to be developed has a significant impact on interaction, and one needs to understand those consequences. Similarly, if a visual design hinders usability, the UX designer needs to be able to communicate with the visual designer to come to some kind of agreement that does not break the visual flow. Yet, the UX designer should not necessarily have to create the visual design if the designer falls ill, for example.

Given all that I have said, I know many people have entered the UX field from different domains. I personally came from a computer science/programming background, so don’t mind doing front-end development as well as UX design if things get tight. Others might have come from a visual design background, and so can roll up their sleeves and also do that job. This does not mean that the visual designer needs to be able to code at my level, nor I need to be able to design at theirs. We have our respective skills, and will be able to find work that matches our skill set. This is our version of a cardio-thorasic surgeon vs an obstetrician.

My argument is that a good team should have a well-rounded UX designer (possessing all the required skills, with the nice-to-haves as bonuses), along side separate individuals doing visual design, programming, and copy writing/editing. The UX designer must coordinate with all of these people, but not necessarily be a master at all these skills. I agree with Jared that a good UX team should have ALL of these skills present on the team, I just don’t agree that a single individual should or can posses them.

For myself, I have decided to get better acquainted with the language of visual design, I have asked some friends for resource recommendations, and have put together this amazon wish list.

Also, these lessons were highly recommended: http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/web/50-totally-free-lessons-in-graphic-design-theory/

I know that I will never become an amazing visual designer, but it does not make me any less of a UX designer (who can code none-the-less!).

Filed under: Design, UX , career, skills, UX

UX and Agile

There has recently been a lot of discussion in the UX field about Agile and how we can integrate our work into the process.

Here are some interesting discussions:
Agile & UX on IxDA List
Leah Buley’s post on Burndowns and Flareups in Agile

In my experience working in an Agile environment at THE_GROOP, I feel like Agile can work, but it ultimately depends on your constraints – clients, time, and resources.

What Works:

• Having a Sprint 0 for UX strategy/research before design and development. This is the time for ideation, sketching, and research. This strategy phase is vital to providing the ground work for the rest of the project.
• Writing out the tasks that need to be completed per sprint, and including iteration as one of the tasks. This allows the designer to get both a broad view and detailed view of the project. It is incredibly helpful to lay out all the tasks that need to be done in a concrete way. By going through this activity (however painful and tedious), it forces you to see what you *don’t know* upfront and then plan accordingly. This is also a good time to talk to other stakeholders and figure out how much documentation is necessary. If the developers don’t want an annotated wireframe, then don’t build it into the schedule.
• If you do the Sprint scheduling with other stakeholders like visual designers and developers, it is really easy to coordinate activities, find out where we can all work in parallel, and also surface the dependencies.
• Burning down at the end of each day feels great (for UX as well!) You also quickly learn how long it actually takes you to do things, so that you can estimate better on the next sprint.

What Doesn’t Work:

• Clients often want to see progress each day/week. Once they see initial design ideas, they have a difficult time letting go (no matter how rough the sketch). This makes it VERY difficult to iterate, or “throw away” designs.
• Aside from clients, time constraints often also restrict design iteration. Unlike code, which could potentially be thrown away and written in any number of ways to do the same thing (with most clients non-the- wiser), design is much more “sticky” because it is so visual. Once you start on a path, you are pretty much forced to continue going down that road. It is almost impossible to completely throw out a design that “just didn’t work” and start from scratch. This is especially true since developers and designers are dependent on the UX work to move forward, so once the ball is rolling, its hard to stop.
• There is practically no time for user research/testing after Sprint 0. You basically have to fit it in guerrilla style (after work or during lunch utilizing fellow co-workers), which doesn’t give you great results or confidence

In general, the visibility of UX work makes it very difficult to generate new ideas, conduct proper testing, and iterate on designs. However, it does force the designer to plan ahead, and get to know themselves a bit better. I do believe agile can work for UX, but perhaps a modified version that takes some of the problems into account.

I am still going to be thinking and developing my ideas about this topic as time goes on, but these are my initial impressions. Will be interesting to see how things change over time!

Filed under: Design, UX , agile, UX

Kathy Sierra: Help Your Users Become Kick Ass

Awesome presentation by Kathy Sierra on how to to truly concentrate on your users, helping them achieve their goals, become passionate, and more intelligent. Wonderful presentation:

http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2008/london/videos/kathy-sierra/

Filed under: Design, UX , kathy sierra, user experience

IA Summit: Participatory Design

Purpose of participatory design: To understand the people using your site and uncover latent needs and desires. Then translate those needs into product.

Setting up the lab

Large TV used for demonstrations (show and tell), don’t have to crowd around small monitor
Cameras set up around the room to get a variety of angles, including ceiling (to get a shot of what people are working on)
Used Austin Powers and Homer Simpson cut outs – sets mood of relaxation and fun
Large table for people to spread out and be creative
Large whiteboard for brainstorming
One-way mirror where the team can watch the sessions
Keep the session relaxed
Food – helps breaks down the social barriers

Recruiting

Use an incentive of $150-200
Communicate about the food options that are going to be available so that person can eat if only snacks are provided (and are not thinking about food the entire time)
6-9 participants
Can have designer or business person co-facilitate (take pictures, answer questions)
Recruit with specific specifications in mind (newbie, expert, mix, ect)

Brainstorming

Example: Design a coffee maker

Workflows and Features: Steps required to make coffee and/or tea
Show and Tell: Used a Similar Coffee Maker? Describe the steps to make it work
Individual Design Exercise: Sketch your ideas coffee maker
Discuss of the Individual Designs
Work as a team of 3 and and sketch new design
Discussion of th Group Design

PICTIVE

Construct designs

Can have magnetic interface elements
Post it notes
Construction paper
Glue stick!!
Have people construct designs
Seed pieces: to cut or not to cut? Cut out pieces, but not too many. Don’t make multiple copies of the same thing (ex: more than one search box – too granular).
8.5×11 for individual

8.5×14 or 11×17 for group sessions

Can give screenshots of other websites such as Amazon, Walmart, Google (without brand) and allow people to cut out elements.

Can also have a second package that is more leading and fancy such as ajax elements and competitors sites. This provides for multiple datapoints. They first work with package 1 then 10 minutes later they get package 2.

Looking for discussion and underlying content, not layout
Differences in individual and group designs
Sequence of the elements that they took out/cut out and used
Provide very specific tasks or personas for the design activity

Don’t take participants design literally! Trying to get at the root of the need.

Running a Session: Tips & Tricks

Move from general to specific to avoid biasing
Introduction (Great Greg, Magnificent Michael, ect)
Jokes
Want to be dressed better than participants (to assert authority)
Make crazy faces at people behind the mirror (acknowledge that they are being watched)
Warm up – use whiteboard to write down activities, existing features, features wanted
People talk about physical features, but we are looking for underlying motivations and roles. Probe participants to get at the “why”
Round Robin – ask people what they think (don’t do this too often)
Can have design review of group design – better if people did not design the same thing to avoid competition

Will end up with lots of data points around the artifact creation!

Analysis

It’s going to take 2 weeks (recommended timeline)

• take time off
• watch the videos again, if you hear something interesting you type it up
• reconstruct the sequence
• come up with a report and plan 4-5 insights
• Looking for worksflows, goals/motivations, interests, expectations, behaviors, mental models, features
  • features are least important, people have a hard time expression features. It is better to understand the underlying needs.
• Create roles (mini personas): motivations, behaviors, expectations, interesting in ..

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Filed under: Conferences, Design, UX , iasummit2008