User Research
UI15 Notes
The learning at User Interface 15 was intoxicating. While nothing can take the place of “being there,” I thought you might enjoy looking at my very raw notes from a few of the sessions at the conference.
These notes have been heavily influenced by the visual design thinking concepts presented by Dan Roam and Dave Gray. Additionally, if you want even better examples of how information from the User Interface Conference can be displayed visually, turn no farther than the excellent work of Jason Robb – his sketch notes from UI15 (and UI14) are impressive.
Dave Gray – Gamestorming:
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Luke Wroblewski – Mobile First:
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Dan Rubin – Hands-on Prototyping with HTML/CSS:
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Jared Spool – Anatomy of a Design Decision:
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Enjoy!
Micromax: Another User Research Success
The August 16th – August 29th Bloomberg Businessweek included a technology piece titled “Giving Indians the Phones They Want” (posted online as India’s Mobile Phone Hitmaker).
This article profiled a local Indian cell phone maker named Micromax, which is currently experiencing great success with their very localized cell phone models. The article reports that Micromax is selling about 1 million handsets each month – about 4% of the 6.3 billion dollar Indian market. India’s largest mobile phone provider, Nokia, has seen their market share go from 64% in 2008 to 52% at the end of 2009, thanks in part to hyper-localized companies such as Micromax stealing some of their business.
So how did Micromax do it?
User research.
Now, if you were to ask Micromax, they may not refer to it in such “user experience-y” terms. They may call it “understanding their market,” or “targeting a demographic,” or even “localization,” but make no mistake: the secret to their success here is most definitely due to user research.
They looked at how Indians were living their lives (the users and their context), identified the frustrations they had with existing mobile technology (the problems), and formulated a product that would alleviate these frustrations (the solutions).
Some examples:
Micromax’s recent success stands as a great example of how investing the time to understand your users’ needs and desires allows you to effectively stack the deck in your favor, thereby increasing the chance that the next hand you are dealt will be a winning one.
Usability Moments
Jared Spool and Robert Hoekman, Jr. were asked recently on the Userability Podcast (Episode #14 – Growing in UX) what they might recommend to the caller as “a course of study to become a user experience designer.”
Amongst the great advice shared in the episode, there was a comment by Jared that particularly stood out to me (quoted below, to the best of my ability):
“Look at the people around you… Look at how they respond to certain types of products and services. Look at the things that get them really frustrated and then look at the things that get them really excited… the type of things they want to tell you about without prompting. Then ask yourself – what did the designers of those organizations do to explicitly get those reactions: was it an accident or was it intentional? How would you take the same thing they did to apply it [to your product] for the good stuff and how do you not do the same things for the frustrating things? Once you are doing that regularly, you are now talking strategy.”
Jared’s suggestion seems parallel to an exercise that my former UX manager made a part of our weekly team meetings: an exercise he called “Usability Moments.”
Each week, our team was given one simple task: Be prepared to talk about a situation that occurred in the past week that created a good user experience or a bad user experience. We were asked to explain what we thought caused the good/bad experience and also if we had any ideas about how we would improve the experience (if it was bad) or replicate that experience in other areas (if it was good).
This exercise provided a great arena for collaborative discussion and, in some cases, collaborative design.
But perhaps more importantly, the real genius of this exercise is that it began to shape my perception. At first, I had to look back each week to intentionally think about the usability of something I encountered, but then slowly and surely, I began seeing examples of good or bad user experience as I was encountering them. Each observation now comes with a whole lot of additional questioning: Why is this happening? What would change this experience? What are the costs and benefits of the proposed changes? In short, the exercise helped me move from “casual observer” to “thoughtful investigator” – a shift that would benefit any UX researcher.
Given this exercise’s success in helping me improve my ability to critically think about the user experience, it should come as no surprise that I would highly recommend its use within any UX team to build observational expertise and critical thinking. Luckily, it appears that Jared Spool would do the same.
Tabbed browsing acclimation
I recently completed some usability testing on an e-learning training module. This e-learning is launched in a browser and utilizes on-screen controls within the browser window to handle the navigation of the e-learning (forward, back, etc.). In our testing, users were able to use these controls to navigate through the e-learning successfully.
However, there was something noteworthy that occurred regarding browser tabs.
But first, some context. The client who commissioned this usability test had recently upgraded their corporate desktops from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7. The delay in doing so (IE7 was released in 2006!), was due largely to a variety of in-house applications that only worked correctly with IE6. Until those applications could be updated, the company was stuck on the less-current version of Internet Explorer.
You astute readers probably already guessed where this is headed. IE7 had a very important new interaction that was not in IE6: tabbed browsing. As such, interactions that in IE6 would cause new browser windows to pop up would now show up as new tabs in IE7.
In this study, several links (which were seen as clickable by users, thanks to good use of blue/underline link appearance conventions) were clicked by users.
Almost 20% of the participants tested did not see the new tabs that were created by clicking on these links.
This statistic is not so surprising once I mention another little detail: when the users clicked the links, a new browser tab did appear… but the focus remained on the tab that the user was currently on. Users that were more acclimated to the newer tabbed-browsing convention successfully “found” the new tab, because they (1) either assumed their interaction would create a new tab or (2) they were pre-disposed to check the tab locations to “see if there is a new tab/window..”
The 20% who did not see the tab mentioned that they thought that “the link must be broken.” In some cases, they executed multiple clicks of the links (launching multiple tabs) but still did not see the new tabs. These users went through the full e-learning missing whole pieces of content and a post-course feedback survey.
I had a few good professional reminders from this study:
1. Always remember the user’s background/experience/context. Although I personally am very acclimated to tabbed browsing, I cannot assume others are the same. Looking at the big picture in this case (i.e. learning that the transition from IE6 to IE7 was a recent one for the client) helped to further explain what may be going on here and helped to provide context for this discovery.
2. Outcomes should align with user’s expectations. Users expected something to happen when they clicked the links. Although something did happen, it was not visible to many of the users. These users quickly made the assumption that something was broken. One recommendation that was provided to the client was to ensure that the focus would move to the new tab when the link was clicked. Since we did not test with this option, it would be interesting to see if users would then know how to find their way back to the correct tab with the e-learning. Perhaps a more intensive solution is necessary?
3. Although you might be using IE8, Mozilla, Chrome, Opera, or Safari, there are a lot of other people that are still using IE6. NetMarketShare reported as of June 2010 that IE6 was still approximately 17% of the market share for all browsers surfing the web. The learning here: new technology/software/practices/etc. take a long time to permeate through an open marketplace if users are not forced into an upgrade path.
Conventions are important. Unfortunately, new “conventions” (a la tabbed browsing) take a lengthy time for acclimation before they truly become “conventions,” and even then may still be conditional for select audiences.