UX

I have read scores of pundits talk about the iPad being a “consumption device,” that it’s for enjoying content and not creating it. To all these talking heads, I say “phooey!” The iPad is a great device to be creative and productive, especially if you are in the user experience design field. Here’s my list of the great (and quickly becoming indispensable) apps that I use to create next-gen online experiences.

iThoughts HD
?This mind mapping tool was originally created for the iPhone, and has now been updated for the iPad. With intuitive controls and the ability to export the results into multiple formats, it’s a must-have for visual thinkers and designers.

Newsrack?
How do you keep up with what’s going on in the technology and design community? Why, by following RSS feeds and readers like Google reader, that’s how. Newsrack is my favorite reader, for many reasons, primarily because of it’s integration with Google reader and the ability to share links via Twitter and send content to off-line readers such as Instapaper (see below).

IMockups
?Want to do some quick design sketches? Well, iMockups is the app for you. Very similar to Balsamiq Mockups, this app let’s you drag and drop UI elements on the screen and then export the designs to your photo library. It’s quite useful and I look forward to future updates, where they plan on adding photo import and more stencil shapes.

Pages?
Want to write design documentation on the go? Well, Pages isn’t a perfect word processor, but it is optimized and designed for the iPad, and the latest version fixes some of the usability issues (no access to the menu bar when in landscape mode, for example) that the first version had.

Omnigraffle
?I’m a huge fan of the desktop app, which i consider “Visio on steroids.” My initial reaction to the ipad version was frustration and anger – the UI was hard to “get” initially, and had a learning curve steeper than I would have liked. But after taking the time to get to understand the app, it’s now one I use on a daily or weekly basis to create user flow diagrams and quick visualizations. Hopefully the next version will provide better stencil and document management capabilities.

Good Reader?
The ability to have all my documents with me is a godsend. I copy dozens of design articles, saved as PDFs, to the app via iTunes and the controls are intuitive and easy to use. It even supports syncing and downloading documents from box.net, Dropbox or iDisk.

Instapaper
?If I don’t have the time to save web pages as PDFs to read with Good Reader, I can quickly click the Read Later bookmark that saves the content of the page to Instapaper, and I can save an offline version of the article the next time I open the app on the iPad. An incredibly useful app, especially when I’m traveling and have no Internet access.

Penultimate?
This is the ultimate sketching app for the iPad, which allows me to quickly draw up ideas with my fingers or with…

Pogo sketch pencil
?Not an app, really, but a stencil that has a tip that the iPad or the iphone “reads” as biological. It gives me greater control than just my fingertip, and is a great deal at only $15.

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Originally posted on Atmmarketplace.com…

The iPad, Apple’s much-hyped new tablet device, was released last month to some measure of success — over 1 million units were sold in just 28 days. Clearly, the device has found an audience, more than any other tablet computer produced to date.

The question for financial institutions is, does this matter? How should banks and credit unions react? In the short term, the best reaction is to make sure their websites work in the Safari browser that ships with the iPad. Consumers who bank online will continue that behavior, only now many of them will be doing it using iPads. Financial institutions should also make sure that if they provide a mobile version of their site that automatically launches when accessed by the iPhone, it doesn’t do the same when opened with the iPad. Limited screen size is not a concern with Apple’s new tablet.

So, should financial institutions rush to create custom iPad apps to support the new device? Not quite yet.

As a user experience architect with Fiserv, I have conducted scores of consumer interviews and usability tests to understand consumers and provide the most effective product design possible. While doing so, I have reaffirmed again and again that mental models (how users think of activities or objects) and usage patterns (what users do to accomplish day-to-day tasks) are two deciding factors when it comes to technology adoption and success.
As noted above, usage patterns will remain the same for a while — users will check their finances online, mostly through the financial institution website. They will typically access this site from their home computer or laptop, and the iPad will initially be just another access option. The 3G iPad, however, may shift the traditional usage patterns. Because it will offer uninterrupted Internet access anywhere the user is (within the AT&T service area, of course), consumers will be able to use it to bank “on the go.” The iPad may become the world’s best mobile banking platform, due to its screen size, processing power and ever-present connectivity. For the most part, this mobile banking will not take place through custom mobile apps, but through the web browser.

This is not intended to minimize or dismiss mobile banking applications. Consumers have many more mobile phones than iPads, and always will — but the iPad does provide a richer experience than most mobile devices. That said, it’s still about the user’s mental models that will determine if they will use the iPad for banking. If users think of the iPad as a device that is as secure as their personal computer, then they will use it for banking. If not, then the iPad will face concerns related to security and privacy.

Also, the way consumers eventually use the iPad should influence financial institution strategies around facilitating usage of their services via the iPad and other tablets. The iPad will be used by many as a “lean-back” device, intended for consumption of information and entertainment. Others will look at it as a “lean forward” device, one that can be used to create content such as presentations, documents, spreadsheets and more. For the first group, providing online banking services through their existing site may be more than sufficient. For the second, providing a custom iPad app that provides not only banking services but also financial planning and goal tracking may be more useful. How these usage patterns “shake out” over the next few months will be worth close attention.

Smart technology providers cannot afford to wait things out. Even though we do not know how end users will use the device, we are making sure that we “future proof” ourselves by ensuring that our products work with the iPad and that we provide apps for the platform. The idea of being able to use the iPad or other tablets to virtually “touch your money” is an intriguing one, and we have some top development resources working on a “touch banking” product offering for the iPad.

Some financial institutions have already started the process of providing such custom apps for the iPad. Spain’s Banco Sabadell will soon be rolling out its own custom iPad app, and it will not be the last. The key to the success of any such app is, as always, user-centered design. The apps should empower users to accomplish tasks, and not just be first-to-market “me too” solutions. When it comes to any such solution, banks should always keep consumer’s needs, mental models and usage patterns in mind.

So, will the iPad change things in banking? Not overnight, but, as we saw with Apple’s iPhone product just three short years ago, change can sneak up on the world very quickly. Apple went from 0 to 50 million iPhones sold in that time … and if they sell only one tenth as many iPads, that’s still a lot of existing (or potential) users for financial institutions to accommodate.

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I just finished watching the great documentary on industrial design Objectified, which has interviews with many of the best designers in the history of the domain, including a personal favorite of mine, Apple’s Jonathan Ive.

One moment early in the film struck a cord. The great designer Dam Formosa from Smart Design said that we need to understand the extremes – when designing hedge-clippers, if we understand that many of the people who use such a product are arthritic, and that many others are young and muscular, then supporting both will affectively support the needs of everyone else.

Could we apply such thinking to user experience design? I think so, and I think we already do it when it comes to creating personas.

In order to better understand our users we create representative personas, based on extensive user interviews, that my team can use to as design “targets.” These personas allow me to emphasize with the consumers of my designs so that I can craft solutions that work for them, and not for me (I also try and avoid using the same type of software that I design, to reduce the potential for bias).

The thing that I have found when it comes to personas, though, is something I call the “soft middle” – personas that are accurate but are so similar to the personas in the same range that they are almost indistinct. Whenever me or my team creates such personas we often label these personas as “secondary” personas, as opposed to the “primary” personas… The ones that represent the extremes.

So, what is the most important things to put into personas? A clear and (preferably) visual representation of the key characteristics and those “extremes”. We recently did a mobile research study, to understand how people use their mobile devices – and a key indicator we focused on was the engagement and involvement people had with the mobile technology.
How they thought of the devices, and the usage patterns and mental models we defined, allowed us to better understand what users need to understand to adopt mobile services my company was offering. We learned the extremes, and built personas from them. We could have created nine personas, but found that six primary and one secondary persona represented the data we found in our user research without having a “soft middle.”

In summary – define the most important characteristics, target the extremes, and do so by research real users. If you do your due diligence you’ll end up creating solutions that service the needs you find out. Like the man said, solve the problems at both sides of the scale and chances are you’ll solve the problems of everyone in the middle as well.

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