Blog of Much Holding

Let’s go back in time a bit – back in time to those carefree days of yore, when companies like Microsoft or Adobe piled new feature after new feature into each consecutive release of their flagship products… When each new release promoted a new shopping list of goodies to entice eager buyers to upgrade.

Remember all that? Because those days are long gone. Dead, and buried. The new rules of engagement? Not more features, but better features. Improvements, enhancements, and usability. The design of the software is now the selling point.

And I couldn’t be happier. Why is obvious, but I’ll state it directly anyway: Now the programs are designed for users, and not by engineers or project managers trying to one-up the competition. Now, the software is appropriate, appealing and most importantly USEFUL.

Two examples, both from the Big 800-lb Gorilla of software, Microsoft. Recently, Microsoft released the beta of their Microsoft Office 2010 suite, and the design enhancements are plentiful and incredible. They have designed a new File “menu” that groups like functions in a way that brings a gasp to users who are accustomed to the old awkward UI that was presented when they tried to print or export documents – it even provides context-driven options that are based on the specific Office program you are using, integrated and consistent across programs.

The second example? Microsoft’s recently announce Windows Mobile 7 operating system (renamed “Windows Phone 7”). The new UI is a dramatic departure from the standard phone interface, in that the UI is driven by data and not applications – contextual options display about your calendar mail and contacts, instead of having applications be the center of the interaction model. it’s unique, it’s user-centered and, frankly… it’s bold. It’s the type of innovative design work one would expect from a company like Apple – not Microsoft. It’s impressive.

So, when even the king of “featuritis” Microsoft starts to focus on experience design… well, the tide has turned.

It’s a great time to be a software designer, and an even better time to be a user experience designer – because, finally, the companies who make software “get it” – it’s about the how, not just about the what. It’s about making engaging appealing experiences for user – not just shipping lots of bullet-point functionality.

Is this an ongoing trend? Absolutely. I see more and more companies embracing a user-centered design model, especially in those areas where software is becoming a “commodity play” – which is, well, almost everywhere. I see good times – and great human-computer interactions – ahead.

One of the many things I am paying close attention to is the demographic group called “Tweens.” These are young people, aged 11 to 14, who grew up in a world where Internet access and mobile devices are ever-present. These aren’t the future users, in many instances they are already users of the solutions that professional user experience designers like myself create.

So how do you support these users, both now and when they are buyers of technology (not just consumers)? What interaction models will they be comfortable with? To answer these questions, I recommend you start playing with, and looking at, the UI designs found in game systems.

No, this is not because all kids these days play video games (though a majority have or do) – it is because quite often the menu design and control mechanisms found in said game platforms are incredibly innovative and well done. 

All the major systems – the Wii, the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3 –  have a well-designed and throughout menu structure, allowing for contextual options to be presented in the appropriate places. While none of them are perfect, it is obvious that a lot of thought was applied to to the information architecture.

Additionally, all feature some degree of 3-dimensional menuing which allows for the content provider to expand the options available to the users both “horizontally” and “vertically” – which in turn allows for an extensible experience that can evolve over time. The design was forward-thinking, understanding that new options (like social media plug-ins) can and will appear. This extensibility should be appreciated and, where applicable, emulated.

Finally, the controllers used to browse these designs provide limited input, the limits of the hardware has encouraged additional focus on ergonomics and simplicity – two keys to affective design.

So, is it crazy to play games to do design research? Nope – the next great design idea you may have may have its origins in a good game of Call of Duty.

As you may have seen from many of my other posts here, I’m a big Star Trek fan. Big Big fan. When I got the DVD of the new Trek movie last week, I immediately dived into the extras to see how the producers had pulled the rabbit out of the hat and saved the franchise. One of my favorite special features was on Ben Burtt (formerly of Lucasfilm) and his sound design for the movie. This segment repeatedly emphasized how important sound was to add subtext and reinforce key moments of the film.

Burtt also noted that the churps and beeps in the original series when the characters did something (like open a communicator or lay in a course) were always friendly and musical in tone and that alerts and warnings were almost always guttural and sharp tones. So, of course, being a user experience guy, I started thinking out applying this to my own work.

Even though I design applications for the web, I see there is obvious value in using sounds to add a layer of alerting and/or confirmation for the users. And, interestingly, the major computer operating systems follow the same design principles that Burtt noted that the original Star Trek did.

Both Windows and Macintosh operating systems have audio cues and alerts, but it is interesting to see how different the designer’s approaches are. Microsoft is much more aggressive in their use of sound, while the UI designers at Apple tend to be more minimalistic about sound design. Also, Apple’s sounds tend to be more melodic in tone and Microsoft’s more… well, the best word I can think of is “guttural” with harsh DONK sounds accompanying errors.

No judging, just observing.

I noted previously the future has already arrived, it’s just not the future we expected. If you look at the future of experience design, I think that music and sound is an important thing that we should begin to consider part of our responsibilities. In other words, when designing experiences, we need to think beyond the screen and keep sound in mind.

Farmville.

Twitter.

All of the above have one thing in common: for many many users they are incredibly addictive experiences, sucking hours and hours of time away from them day after day. Updates from games like Farmville has become the only thing I see now when I go to Facebook. So, in response to this phenomena, I have two questions… First, is this a good or bad thing? Second, what makes these experiences addictive?

Let’s take the second question first: What makes these experiences addictive, and how can we leverage the design practices they have in our designs? Here’s what I have identified:

Positive reinforcement. When the users accomplish tasks in the programs, they get immediately rewards – leveling up, more friends or followers, a more profitable crop, etc. The reward is obviously tied to the effort and for many people, this is the only immediate gratification they get when they are sitting in front of a computer screen (because many online experiences, well, they aren’t very friendly or usable).

Immediacy. There is very little planning that users need to do to interact with these experiences – they can open the browser or access the game on their computers and in they go. This ties to my opinion that we are living in a time where the real-time web and the immediacy of now is filing in users free time. Bored? Play Tower Defense or write updates on Twitter.

Learnability. Almost all of these systems have simple, obvious control patterns. The most complex of them all, World of Warcraft, is still quite easy to understand with very little ramp-up. I maintain a mark of a good game or online experience is that novice users can pick up the controls (be they mouse or gamepad) and immediately start doing something. Those systems that have a demo or introductions… well, often they are covering over a crappy interaction model that is not easy to learn or use.

The social experience. You are not alone when you are working within these designs, and in many ways the whole purpose of the design is social in nature (see Twitter). We interact, we share ideas, we react to inputs that are not generated “in nature.” Which brings me to…

It stimulates us. We are an incredibly interactive species, and even our most sedentary crave stimulation. These experiences feeds that need to do something, and when it comes to stimulation, we wouldn’t be here as a species if we didn’t crave such stimulation (see: procreation).

Now, onto the second question: Is it good or bad for users? Well, I’m a libertarian so my immediate response is that it can be both – if users enjoy an experience then let them enjoy it to the fullest. It is, of course, the definition of “fullest” where things get hairy for some on the outside looking in. I think the obvious example is that any human being can die from drinking too much water too fast – there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

But., compared to other forms of entertainment that many abuse, society should not cast a worrying eye towards addicting online experiences. We have a lot more things to be concerned about.

I had the great opportunity to speak at the second Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC last week about UX and design matters, and one of the questions that was asked was a good one: When marketing wants advertising to take up a certain space or work a certain way, and some basic usability and design principles would be compromised by doing it that way, what do you do?

My initial flippant response was “pistols at dawn.” Of course, that won’t work (though sometimes it may seem VERY desirable).

My follow-up, which I’ll restate here, is simple: Test the idea that marketing has to show ads in your site/app the same way you would test your own ideas. Why you do this is, to me, obvious: If the design principles are being compromised the way you think they may be, then testing with user will very quickly prove this. If not, then maybe those design principles aren’t so hard-and-fast after all.

Yes, potential UX heresy: Best practices and design principles need to be TESTED, not just assumed. Sometimes (many times, in my experience) a non-UX professional will have a good and different way of doing things, and we always need to be open to different ways of designing. So, back to another best practice – test new designs.

So, to answer my own blog title – it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about providing the best experience for users. And we need to question our assumptions via user testing in order to do so.

Finally, for the record, I do not look at UX versus marketing as a good thing – I have many friends in marketing and, at their core, they are all striving to do what UX professionals want – encourage adoption and use of your products to make your company money. They are just going about that differently – in some cases, very differently.

In a former post I wrote about how my experience as a Dungeon Master had helped me be a better facilitator of usability tests. I won’t repeat all I said there, but I want to reinforce that the ability to be able to visually describe ideas to test participants is a key skill when testing early (potentially rough) interactive designs.

For some participants, though, you need more than just a design and desciptive verbal skills. You need props.

Yes, props – the stuff that they use in stage and screen to give the actors something to do with thier hands, or something to carry the plot forward because they are used, ore persued, by the characters. A gun, a knife, the Ark of the Covenant, a Phaser – all are props.

Are you testing the design for a personal financial mangement system? Then bring in (or mockup) bank statements for the user to hold and ponder. Eliciting feedback on a design for a program to organize someone’s music collection? Then put an iPod on the table. Want to see what people think about security? Put a lock on the table. And so on.

You’ll be surprised at how the use of such items helps participants open up, because you have made an artificial situation more real, because of the extra context and tactile sensation that props bring to the table. It works.

Of course, you should always make sure that the prop makes sense – don’t bring a fur coat to a usabilitytest about mobile devices, for example. And make sure that if you have “created” the prop in a design tool such as a graphic design package and printed it out, make sure it has the appropriate amount of versimilitude, based on both the situation and who you are involving in your test… You don’t want to show someone making minimum wage a prop bank statement that shows a balance of $15,000. That takes the participant “out” of the scenario you are wanting his/her feedback on.

(Geek confession: The idea of using props came from the James Bond Role Playing Game I used to enjoy when I was a teenager. The game modules for the system came with printed props, such as maps or photos that were intended to enhance game play. It did, and I applied the same principle here.)

Props – they can make things more real for test participants, and for many the results should be more honest and useful feedback.