So, what does
the user experience
team do?

ns)
eptio
conc
(mis
“you make ugly interfaces
really pretty”
“you’re a usability group”
“you delay projects and
extend deadlines”
“you introduce new
methodologies”

A story,
about a new,
not-yet-released,
product.

<- the iPhone

BUT...

In terms of features,
there’s really not
much that is new.
“When you get right down to it,
the device doesn’t even have that
many new features—it’s not like
Jobs invented voicemail, or text
n Yawning at iPhone
Japa
messaging, or conference calling,
or mobile Web browsing....”
one is
Apple’s much-anticipated iPh
y where
‘business as usual’ in a countr
vanced.
bile features already are so ad
mo

Psst. It’s not
about more
features.

“when
technology
delivers basic
needs, user
experience
dominates”
-Don Norman

Joshua Porter (Bokardo) offers some relevant
thoughts…
“The innovation in these applications is
not that they let us do something new,
but that they allow us to do what we
already do better, more often, in more
places, and more quickly. “
(commenting on Web 2.0 interfaces)

7 Lessons
about UX...

Lesson 1:
Place better
‘experiences’
ahead of
more features.

When you Lget o n 1 :
e s s right
down to it, the device
Place better
doesn’t even have that
many new features—
‘experiences’
it’s not like Jobs
invented voicemail,
ahead of
or text messaging, or
more features.
conference calling, or
mobile Web browsing.
He just noticed that
they were broken, and
he fixed them.
Quote from TIME Magazine article “The Apple Of Your Ear”

Lesson 2:
Start with
actual
experiences.

Cell phones do all skinds:of stuff—
Le son 2
calling, text messaging, web
Start with
browsing, contact management,
music playback, photos and
actual
video—but they do it very badly,
by forcing you to press lots of
experiences.
tiny buttons, navigate diverse
heterogeneous interfaces and
squint at a tiny screen. “Everybody
hates their phone,” Jobs says,
“and that’s not a good thing. And
there’s an opportunity there.”
Quote from TIME Magazine article “The Apple Of Your Ear”

Lesson 2:
Start with
actual
experiences.

Lesson 3:
Solve the real
problems.

Lesson 3:
“Your phone’s got feet on,” he says, not
Solve the real
unkindly. “Why would anybody put feet on
a phone?” Ive has the answer, of course: “It
problems.
raises the speaker on the back off the table.
But the right solution is to put the speaker
in the right place in the first place. That’s
why our speaker isn’t on the bottom, so you
can have it on the table, and you don’t need
feet.” Sure enough, no feet toe the iPhone’s
smooth lines.
Quote from TIME Magazine article “The Apple Of Your Ear”

Lesson 4:
Play to think.

The iPhone developed the way a
Lesson 4:
lot of cool things do: with a false
Play to think.
start. A few years ago Jobs noticed
how many development dollars
were being spent... on tablet PCs.
...so he had Apple engineers
noodle around with a tablet PC.
When they showed him the
touchscreen they came up with, he
got excited. So excited he forgot all
about tablet computers.
Quote from TIME Magazine article “The Apple Of Your Ear”

Lesson 5:
Treat
interfaces like
conversations.

Lesson 5:
Treat
When you need to dial, it shows
you a keypad; when you need
interfaces like
other buttons, the screen serves
them up. When you want to watch
conversations.
a video, the buttons disappear.
Suddenly, the interface isn’t fixed
and rigid, it’s fluid and molten.
Software replaces hardware.
Quote from TIME Magazine article “The Apple Of Your Ear”

Lesson 6:
Lead with a
vision.

Jobs demanded special
treatment from ehis phone
L sson 6:
Lead with a
service partner, Cingular, and he
got it. He even forced Cingular
vision.
to re-engineer its infrastructure
to handle the iPhone’s unique
voicemail scheme. “They broke
all their typical process rules
to make it happen,” says Tony
Fadell, who heads Apple’s iPod
division. “They were infected by
this product, and they were like,
we’ve gotta do this!”
Quote from TIME Magazine article “The Apple Of Your Ear”

Lesson 7:
Obsess on the
details.

Unlike most competitors, Apple also places
an inordinate emphasis on interface design. It
Lesson 7:
sweats the cosmetic details that don’t seem very
Obsess on the
important until you really sweat them. “I actually
have a photographer’s loupe that I use to look to
details.
make sure every pixel is right,” says Scott Forstall,
Apple’s head of Platform Experience (whatever
that is). “We will argue over literally a single pixel.”
As a result, when you swipe your finger across
the screen to unlock the iPhone, you’re not just
accessing a system of nested menus, you’re
entering a tiny universe, where data exist as bouncy,
gemlike, animated objects that behave according to
consistent rules of virtual physics.
Quote from TIME Magazine article “The Apple Of Your Ear”

Lesson 7:
Obsess on the
details.
(This is from Kathy Sierra)

The introduction of
the iPhone sets the bar
high... these companies
must innovate —
particularly on the user
experience — to compete
with Apple.
Forrester Report, “Apple’s iPhone Changes The
Stakes, Not The Game”

So, what does
the user experience
team do?

We make
things work
for people.

To do this, we...
- Start with an
understanding of users.
- Imagine what could be. This includes:
Visual Design
- Experiment through Information Design
rapid prototyping. Information Architecture
Web and Application
Interface Design
- Encourage participation. (Interaction Design)
Design Research
Rich Interface
Development
Expert Usability
Evaluations

This includes big changes...
(Before and after screenshots, showing a dramatically
improved information architecture)
Some of these are high
level (Cruises, Vacations);
things like Trip Extras and
This slide has been deemed proprietary and can only
Travel Protection should be
offered in context of an be viewed by employees of Sabre Holdings.
actual booking...
Don’t be sad. You can always come work with us:
www.sabreux.com/jobs
;-)

...careful attention to the little details...
(Sequence showing some nifty little this client’, we know
from ‘qualifying AJAX behaviors) they’re
what type of travel they’re interested in, and
deemed proprietarytype menu options
can remove the travel and can only
This slide has been
be viewed by employees of Sabre Holdings.
Don’t be sad. You can always come work with us:
www.sabreux.com/jobs
;-)
if the agent
leaves the ‘flow’,
information is
saved...

...more careful attention to the little details...
(Before and after screenshot of flight search results)
This slide has been deemed proprietary and can only
be viewed by employees of Sabre Holdings.
Don’t be sad. You can always come work with us:
www.sabreux.com/jobs
;-)

Things we’ll do
(that you might care about)
• map ‘stories’ back to Activities —
so product releases make sense!
• contribute to real product
ownership (YEAH!)
• create less rework
• develop reusable code.
• make our products more valuable

“We set about rethinking the UI from the user’s
perspective, which is ‘results-oriented,’ rather than
from the developer’s perspective, which tends
to be ‘feature-oriented’ or ‘command-oriented’–
thereby enabling people to focus on what they
want to do rather than on how they do it.”
(commenting on the new UI of Office 12)

How the group is set up...
User Experience Design Group
includes...
Interaction Designers Front-End Developers
passionate about... passionate about...
Design Research (and Strategy) XHTML
Information Architecture CSS (1,2, and 3)
Web and Application Interface Design Cross-Browser and Cross-Platform Compatibility
Visual Communications DOM Scripting
Information Graphics AJAX
Information Design Flash / FLEX
Brand Strategy (and Creation) Progressive Enhancement and Graceful Degradation
Web Standards / Web Development Web Standards / Accessibility
New (Web2.0) Innovations Presentation Logic (ASPX, Rails Views, etc.)
Usability Business Rules & Logic

Questions?