Prioritising User Experience

Prioritising User Experience Patrick Kennedy Design Research Lead News Digital Media Ark Group – Information Architecture 30 th September 2009 Rydges World Square, Sydney

UX IA UX

Introduction

User Experience (UX) is more than just the Information Architecture (IA) of a site

A good UX addresses the useful as well as the usable

Thus I will discuss why UX should be prioritised over IA

To create a good UX we need to do research to uncover the goals, attitudes and behaviours of our audience

This high level approach can then direct lower level design such as the IA

However getting user involvement at both the UX and IA levels can be challenging, and organisations often need some encouragement from UX/IA practitioners

Thus I will also discuss prioritising UX within the organisation

UX IA IxD ID EA UE UI HCI XD

IA vs UX

They're the same thing aren't they?

I have certainly said as much in the past

I've also made distinctions between them

And depending on the level you're looking at, both of these views hold true

At a very high level, both IA and UX are forms of user-centred design (UCD) and would be more similar to each other than either would be to, say, cooking

And of course many people consider IA and UX to be synonymous (as well as a whole host of other terms such as IxD, ID etc)

But for the purposes of this discussion, let's define them as being quite different from each other

UX IA IA UX

IA UX Structure Navigation Labelling

What is IA?

A fairly narrow definition of IA might be something like the design of

Structure

Navigation

Labelling

of a website or other information system

In other words, it's very product-centric; it's about the user interface, the system, the thing we're designing and making usable

No doubt many people would argue with this definition or want to offer their own definition, and that's ok

IA UX All aspects of the experience someone has with, or around, a product, service or organisation Structure Navigation Labelling (Website)

What is UX?

The holistic user experience is made up of many different factors, and many different components

It's more than just the IA, it's more than just the UI, it's more than even the product itself

It's all the things that might make up the experience someone has with, or around, a product, service or organisation

A good UX will satisfy your audience, and keep them coming back

The contrast with the above definition of IA should be pretty clear

IA UX Web Phone Print In-store Email Social network Website

Why UX over IA?

Perhaps this is a better way of illustrating it

We're talking about multiple touch points and multiple media

Not just the technical elements of UX in the Jesse James Garrett sense

IA UX Service Design Customer Experience

IA vs UX

The purpose of this discussion is not to criticise IA (as defined above) or those that do not distinguish it from UX

The point I'm trying to make is that if one was to take quite a low level definition of IA--one that is focussed on the interface--then you're leaving out quite a bit!

Also, if we expand this definition just slightly, you can see why UX is starting to merge into the area of Service Design and Customer Experience

Useful Usable Appropriate Relevant

Why UX over IA?

We should be focussing on the overall experience, not the individual aspects of the design of the a product

This includes the IA, but also the visual design, technical design and usability

Yes that's right, usability is not the most important factor

I believe usefulness, appropriateness and the overall experience are much more important than usability

So when we talk about prioritising UX, we're talking about making sure what we're building is useful for the people we are building it for

Does it make some aspect of their life easier/faster/better? Does it fit in with the rest of their lives in an appropriate and beneficial way?

Web Phone Print In-store Email Social network

Information ecosystems

When I say appropriateness I mean fitting a user's "ecosystem“

You ecosystem is the (typically large) variety of sources from which you gather information that allows you to perform some function or role (to describe a similar concept)

These sources are often offline and used with little loyalty, killing the myth of the "one stop shop" that users will come back to like lemmings

This is a very useful perspective to take as a sense check for usefulness and appropriateness of proposed solutions

For instance, we might be tasked with designing a website, yet does that make sense?

Not just 'can we build a website' but how realistic is it to propose the audience goes to a website to perform the task or action?

Sometimes it just doesn't add up and you need to re-think how you can sensibly be part of their ecosystem

See also: Information Horizons by Sonnenwald http://hdl.handle.net/2320/2544

Ecosystem changers?

Of course there are times when a new product or service can have a marked impact on people's lives

change their ecosystem, change their habits, change the way they see the world

Good examples include Google, the iPod, Tivo and mobile phones

people do do things differently now because of the impact of those things

But I tend to think of these successes as serendipitous rather than calculated

Over time we have changed in response to products/services/technologies that could probably not have been predicted, let alone planned

So to expect to design and launch a life changing product/service/technology is probably being a tad optimistic

Yet that is so often the reason given for ignoring the audience's ecosystem: "this will be a market killer!“

It's not that this doesn't happen by design, just that only a small percentage of us are in this league. And it takes a hell of a lot of hard work to do this, it's not as easy as saying your pride and joy will be a "one stop shop". If you build it, they won't necessarily come.

Ecosystem changers?

Image credits

http://www.tivo.com/assets/images/buytivo/products/boxes/180hr_TiVoHDDVR/TiVoHD_front_wremote_602.jpg

http://images.apple.com/ipodclassic/images/overview_hero20090909.jpg

http://www.google.com.au/intl/en_au/images/logo.gif

http://blog.mobiles.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/nokia-6300-most-popular-mobile-phone.jpg

Web Phone Print In-store Email Social network ?

Why UX over IA?

Ok back to the point, which is that in almost all cases you need to fit into your audience's ecosystem and provide something useful, otherwise it doesn't matter how pretty, clever or usable your product/service/technology is

Hence I believe that we (those that might be willing to undertake this IA thing) can easily miss the boat if we're not careful, and forget to meet our true, if perhaps implicit, objective which is to meet the needs of real people in the real world

If you're just making it usable you're not going far enough

If you're just doing IA then you're not doing enough

See also: http://www.gurtle.com/ppov/2007/08/01/usability-is-a-path-to-failure

“ Supposing is good, but finding out is better.” Mark Twain

The role of user research

To go to UX, beyond IA, you must understand

Who your audience is

What they need

What they want

What they do

before you can have any hope of creating something that is useful and that fits into their ecosystem in an appropriate way

You need to undertake research to find out these things

Image credit: www.teslasociety.com/photos.htm ( This photo depicts Mark Twain in the laboratory of his friend, Nicola Tesla, a famous scientist and electrical engineer)

Design Research Testing

Testing vs research

User research is generative, exploratory and formative

It's aim is to gain insight and inform the design process

It doesn't have to happen prior to or disconnected from the design process, just that it's uncovering information that goes into design

In fact, this kind of research can continue well into the design process, especially if an iterative approach is being taken

Usability testing on the other hand is evaluative, validitory and summative

It's aim is to assess the outputs of the design process

It doesn't have to happen after the design process is finished, just that you're taking stuff you've created and seeing how well it works

In fact, testing can take place from any point when there is something produced by the design process that you want to check or validate

Again, this is especially the case if an iterative process is being taken

Testing vs research

The main similarity between the two is that they involve, nay require, user involvement

On a practical level, there are many methods or techniques that are the same or similar between research and testing

The way you use them, or the value you extract from them, might be different, however

For example, interviews and focus groups are commonplace research methods, but they can also be used to "test" concepts, ideas and an understanding of the audience's needs

Likewise, the "talk aloud" methodology typical of usability testing can be used as a research tool to learn about the audience and gain insight into how they use information systems, almost disregarding feedback on the actual user interface users are shown

Design Research Testing

Understanding users

But what we're talking about here is the research side of things; generating insight that informs design, and strategy

A large proportion of the insight you're gaining when you undertake user research is an understanding of users, or the audience as I prefer to call them

For example the kinds of question we might aim to answer include:

Who is our audience?

What are their goals, attitudes and behaviours?

What are their information needs?

How do you discover all of this? Well there are a variety of methods you can use, ranging from face-to-face interviews and focus groups, through to "virtual ethnography" where you monitor the digital footprints of your audience to see what they're doing online

And everything in between

IA UX Structure Navigation Labelling

Understanding users

Once we've got this understanding of our users, how do we use it to inform our UX strategy?

And how doe this trickle down to structuring the IA?

Both excellent questions; let's start with the strategy

Putting it simply, strategy is deciding "what to do" at a big picture level

User research can help with this in two ways: ensuring what you're going to do is what people want, need and will use, but also ensuring that you going to do it to the right people

Once you have that sorted you would be able to go on to the IA

Informing IA

Whilst at one level we want to ensure we focus on the UX, the useful, if we're designing a website, intranet or other kind of information system, we will need to create an IA at some point

This is where you can get more specific and look at those three basics of IA I mentioned before: structure, navigation and labelling

Your user research can inform each one of these

Structure Navigation Labelling

Informing IA - structure

The structure of the information is something you can easily gain insight into through research

You might use card sorting to uncover how your audience see the content fitting together or you might get feedback on an existing categorisation scheme

Informing IA - navigation

Navigation is closely related to both structure and labelling

However, a key research finding for navigation might be the outcomes of a task analysis

This tells you the process users follow and on which you may want to model your navigation

Annual Leave (No Loading)

Time off In Lieu

Personal Leave

Long Service Leave

Other Leave

Informing IA - labelling

Labelling involves naming parts of your IA in a way which will allow your users to correctly understand what content or functionality is identified by that label

To make the IA as usable and meaningful as possible, the labelling used should reflect the words/terminology/jargon that the audience uses

A simple example can be found in most corporate organisations where the official vernacular might include the term "personal leave" but staff refer to it simply as "taking holidays"

As such, going hand in hand with learning the language of users, you may need to unlearn the official language of the organisation for whom you are producing the IA

Informing IA - labelling

This quickly falls out of the research, because in order to speak with people effectively you have to arrive at a point where there is a common language between the researcher and the researchee

Ideally it is the researcher who should be actively bridging the gap and adapting their terminology to match the user

By doing this you need to recognise what words and phrases users use to refer to the problem space

If the subject you are researching has specific jargon associated with it, then this is something you need to pick up

In most situations it would make sense to use that jargon when labelling the IA (assuming that the audience is familiar with that subject)

The bottom line is: speak your audience's language

Design Research Testing ? ?

Actually getting users involved

Ok user research is what we need. How do we get them involved? Costs can be high if you outsource recruitment to a market research firm, but there are ways to cut this almost to zero if you're willing to do some of the heavy lifting yourself. Such as, recruiting participants yourself through internal connections or perhaps using a survey or poll on your website (eg Ethnio)

See also: http://www.gurtle.com/ppov/2007/07/12/guerrilla-user-recruitment

You can even just grab people in the hallway, run concepts or sketches past them, rather than go for full on usability testing in a lab

The approach really depends on your objectives and available resources

To help encourage this user involvement you should offer a form of incentive, either cash or some other compensation

But often the audience are keen to be involved, either because they want to help improve the product or service, or because they want to let you know how good/bad it is

Of course if you're recruiting non-users or non-customers then this won't be a factor, hence it's usually a good idea to include both users and non-users in your research to see both sides of the fence

Research Website Email Call centre Twitter

Accepting user feedback

Even before recruiting for a specific piece of research or testing, you should be open to feedback and suggestions from your audience

This might mean asking for feedback on your website, through an email address or a tool such as UserVoice

Or you could sign up to Twitter and listen to you users/customers

Or maybe you can just stop hiding your customer service phone number in the bowels of your website (in 3pt text)

Busy building business Scared of users Want to control Quality not rewarded No time and budget UX maturity 

UX maturity

No matter which approach to recruitment and research you take, finding or making opportunities to get in front of users is relatively easy

Encouraging your designers, developers and managers to allow user involvement is somewhat harder

Many people (including Dan Szuc, Joel Flom, Jared Spool and Bruce Temkin) have talked about the idea of an organisation requiring a certain level of maturity before things like user centred design (or "service design" or "design thinking") can take place

And user involvement is definitely one area in which this is quite evident

UX maturity

Sometimes an organisation or a team just aren't ready to have user involvement

It could be that they're too focussed on establishing the business and getting products out the door; refining the user experience just isn't a priority

It could be because they are scared of what users might say (this is also a very common reason for the resistance to social media that many companies have)

It could be that the team(s) involved do not want to relinquish authority over the product or its design. They may feel threatened by users having input, because their colleagues might start to question their worth

It could be that reward and recognition in the organisation comes not through creating the best product or service, but from cost-cutting or just doing what the boss says

It could simply be because of the time and cost. It's a popular view that everything slows down if we have to go and do user research. Or my favourite teeth-clencher: "this is an Agile project, so we don't have time for research"

UX maturity Busy building business Scared of users Want to control Quality not rewarded No time and budget 

Encouraging user involvement

IF you can sell the idea of user experience as a crucial part of the business, then the user involvement becomes a no brainer

You have to research and you have to test if you want to nail the user experience

IF the organisation sees that bad user experience means loss of revenue, lower loyalty and higher costs then they're going to want to make time and budget for those activities

Those are, of course, rather large IFs

Selling the idea of UX being crucial to business success is much easier said than done

Even in companies whose sole business is products and services that rely fundamentally on a digital user interface (websites, software, mobile etc), where you would think it's be an easier sell. Alas, it isn't.

This has become a hot topic in recent years, with excellent advice coming from such wise people as Dan Szuc and John S. Rhodes

I'm not going to repeat all of their great suggestions for prioritising UX, but rather I'll discuss a few tactics that I have seen work

Gain their belief

Don't expect respect and understanding, rather "gain their belief" (paraphrased from Mark Schenk's great post on successful leadership http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2009/09/successful_lead.html )

You'll do this by showing you're effective; make some quick wins, get a few runs on the board, prove why you should be given the time/budget/resources you need

This requires choosing the right projects to demonstrate value and impact

Communicate clearly

As I said before with reference to labelling, ditch the pseudo-scientific jargon and geeky terminology

Speak the language of your audience

Which in the case of selling UX is likely to be business and management types

This will probably require you to drop the ego (something which will work wonders with all the suggestion I'm putting forward here)

Listen to the business

They might just tell you what they're looking to get out of your relationship

Thus giving you something to aim for and hopefully exceed

You may need to study up a bit in order to understand them and what they do; get your business groove on!

Make deliverables visible

Many products of UX work are very useful for (some might even say their sole purpose is for) attracting attention and generating discussion around the work you're doing

Personas and concept models are two types of deliverables that immediately some to mind

Stick them on the wall in a high traffic part of the office

Make sure it's clear who created them and that they welcome feedback

You don't need to go so far as the life-size cardboard cut-out personas some organisations have made, but a nicely presented A3 poster that clearly communicates an idea or concept will do wonders for the visibility of the UX team and the work they do

Tell stories

They are a great way of breathing life into what can be a rather dry subject

Tell stories of your success but also of UX challenges

The latter works in the same way as that old usability cliche: show management a video of usability testing where the user becomes frustrated by the product and they will probably get on board the usability train pretty quickly

Better yet invite key stakeholders to research and testing sessions

It can be tough letting them watch but you'll need to get past that if you really want them to take you and your work seriously

Collaborate

Break down the silos, drop the ego (again) and look for other parts of the business who have overlapping or complimentary skills and capabilities

A UX "Community of Practice" can be a good, low cost way to kick off this co-operation between different parties with an interest in UX

In many ways such a community approach can be much more effective than a dedicated UX team going it alone

And the cross-pollination effect can be a real bonus, not only in terms of gaining knowledge and skills from other teams but also because their reputation, legitimacy and respect can rub off on you, hopefully in a positive way

See also: http://www.gurtle.com/ppov/2008/11/12/cross-pollination-of-knowledge-and-methods-between-fields

Be passionate

If you're boring and act like the situation is dire, then why on earth would anyone want to encourage or support you?

Find executive champions

Ultimately what all these ideas are pointing towards is getting someone with authority on board and help you change the way the organisation functions (to a certain extent)

Look for like-minded or sympathetic people who "get it" throughout the organisation, use them to help spread the word and build a case for doing things the right way

Usually these allies will be the result of demonstrating value through a project (see the first point above) but they can also be the result of networking performed "off the clock" so to speak