UX cambridge 2015 - Designing with small audiences - Marine Barbaroux
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It's widely expected nowadays that the UX of your product will have a massive impact on its adoption and success. We're all about delighting customers - particularly when you have thousands of them. But if a feature is used by a handful of people, it is hard to justify the cost required to make their experience better. And nearly impossible if the user base is made of experts who 'know what they're doing anyway'. Is this right? Business users are also people and they've often used web sites and smartphone apps that are far better than their enterprise software. I will give examples where focusing on design, even for a small number of users, has made a big difference to them and the businesses they work for. This deck was first presented at UX Cambridge in sep 2015. http://uxcambridge.net/2015/sessions/index.php?session=111
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UX cambridge 2015 - Designing with small audiences - Marine Barbaroux
- 1. Why invest in UX for a handful of users? Marine Barbaroux - UX Cambridge 2015
- 3. B2C End Consumer (You and me) B2B Average (You and me at work) B2B Super Niche (The people we are talking about today)
- 4. Case Study 1
- 10. Case Study 2
- 13. Copyright Iridium - all right reserved
- 14. 99.999%availability (ie. 5 min 26 sec donwntime / year)
- 15. Copyright Iridium - all right reserved
- 26. 5 Lessons
- 27. Lesson 1: Customer is unlikely to ask for UX
- 28. Lesson 2: It's easier to do your job well
- 29. Lesson 3: It's cheaper to do your job
- 30. Lesson 4: If you mess up, it's easier to fix
- 31. Lesson 5: People will love the tool/you
- 32. This works for B2B too.
- 33. You can make the world a better place.
- 34. Thank you.
- 35. One more thing... Cambridge Consultants are recruiting talented UX people. Drop me a line or visit www.cambridgeconsultants.com
Editor's Notes
- Title slide I could have said: "is it worth investing in UX for a handful of users" or "when is it worth investing for a handful of users"?
- Slide 2 Let me introduce myself: I'm Marine, and I'm a designer. I was trained as an industrial designer, but quickly evolved into software and UI design, but I am likely to dab a little bit into service design too. I worked in 3 companies only: Amadeus, Redgate, and now Cambridge Consultants. Today, I'll talk about the impact you can have if you design for niches. On people and bottom line. I'll take 30 to 40 min to talk about 3 projects examples and we can maybe take a little bit of time to discuss.
- Slide 3 Yesterday, Josh told us how much design is now understood, and how many startups are now founded with a designer CEO. A no-brainer. Maybe it is true for apps or services for people on the left hand side of the graph (you and me, at home)... but in my experience, not many people care about the people on the right hand side. When there are 10 or 15 people using your software, what money will you make? who will pay for it? Often, those guys are forgotten in the noise, and in my opinion shouldn't be, because I think they can teach us a couple of things we can use everywhere when dealing with our designer jobs. I came across them for the first time in 2005 at Amadeus, working on a project called Altea.
- Slide 4 Actually, this wasn't a project I actively worked on, but a project I was somehow involved in. So, just a little bit of background about the project.
- Slide 5 Amadeus is a GDS (stands for "global distribution system") and there are about 3 in the world. Created originally by airline to distribute their content to travel agents. Of course, things changed, and now with internet everyone can book online, etc. And for Airlines, business is harder and harder, so they need to fly more and more passengers, and become more efficient in terms of their cost. In 2005-6, Amadeus wanted to start entering the airline business, and a famous airline asked to work on a solution for them, to deal with all what it takes to fly passengers. This means dealing with passengers at the airport (check-in, handling bagages, ensuring seating, etc.) but also what happens on the plane itself (loading of passengers, track they're parked, fuel, food, etc. ) I didn't work on the project - I was in the Travel Agent division - but i was pushing some ISO 9241-11 and brand-guidelines as well as some methodology to implement UCD practices, so was known as the "UX" person. Their team didn't have any UX person dedicated to the project. This was a big, complex project, costed quite a lot, and there were a lot of moving parts to it. The team working on the project went to the airport, studied what it is like to be a checking agent, got a sense of the pressure you get, the number of passengers and everything. From the traveller side, they had a lot of things to consider and deal with : security, speed etc. You can see more about the product here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e4xTgz-fBA
- Slide 6 On the other side (behind the scene) there are a handful of people (at the time 10 or 15) the "load controllers" who deal with all what gets in the airplane: fuel, baggage, etc. and how to load balance everything. One day, the project manager called me: - "Marine, you need to come with us. The staff at BA is threatening to be on strike if we release the software." - "Wow! that's some news! what can I do, I didn't work on this!" - "Well, you are the UX person, you can explain them why we've done what we've done. Afterall we used your guidelines."
- Slide 7 So I went with them, and here is the object of the angst. It's a bit small, so here is an enlarged version
- Slide 8 I'm not really proud of the UI (and I haven't designed it) but I did specify some of the colours :) Here is what the people had to work with, and they were not happy. Has we discusses features with their management? yes. Had we tested with them? no. Does anyone have an idea about what is so terrible about this that people refuse to work? and threaten to impact thousands of travellers? Turns out we designed for the wrong resolution. The staff at the Airline had small monitors, and the font was too small. Target to small too. So after discussion with them, weighting pros and cons, cost of redeveloping the UI...
- Slide 9 ... we found the solution: buy everyone 19 in screens. And it worked. People were happy (they had the largest monitors in the office) and conflict was avoided. This UI is already performing better than what was there previously, but what is sad about this story is that we had all the chances to do a very good design: all of the audience was on site. we could have tested it very easily. management trusted they knew what they wanted, and saw the designs, validating it. - the conflict was avoided, and this is still better than the system that was there before. BUT it isn't easy, nor pretty.
- Slide 10 This brings me to another case study, handled by Cambridge Consultant, more recently.
- Slide 11 Iridium Communications Inc. is an american company, which provides worldwide voice and data communication from hand-held satellite phones via a network of satellite (I leant that it's called a "constellation"), a system of 66 active satellites . The Iridium network is unique in that it covers the whole Earth, including poles, oceans and airways.
- Slide 12 In 2010, Iridium asked CC to extend its global satellite communication product range into the maritime market. To be successful the new product family had to increase data rate by around 50x compared with legacy products, but without increasing the peak loading of its satellite infrastructure. This project shared many of the characteristics of the previous one : Large customer. Big contract. A lot of complexity. Mainly about hardware and coms. Few users - in this case about 15, who impact a few hundred thousands.
- Slide 13 That's what it looks like: an antenna, connected to a modem-type device, and it came with hefty requirements...
- Slide 14 ... by nature, the system is used in places where there is no other means of communication ... so the system needs to be available all the time (almost). And that needs to be monitored, somehow . The client didn't really allocate time to design the app. It was assumed it will be done (because how can you have all the system in place without monitoring it) but it wasn't a real focus. More of an afterthought :)
- Slide 15 There is a small crew, somewhere in the gateway (in California) that deals with all of this. There are about 15 of them, working shift. This picture is actually another site, but it gives an idea. CC decided to go an visit them to see how they'd work and discuss the needs with them .
- Slide 16 On site, it became apparent, for instance, that each time the alert was on, someone had to physically go to the server room to check what was going on. But there was no reasons why that had to be the case, and we could create a Web UI that would be in the control room, for people to see what's going on and then decide if they need to go to the server room. Saving precious minutes. Equally, we were able to review what the servers looked like, and re-use the metaphor on the UI.
- Slide 17 With no real budget for design, would the UI magically happens? The team here did a little bit of free work. The entire UI was 3 months worth of developement, just one guy: Steve at the back, here. I'm showing this image, because this was a direct input from the task analysis: this is exactly a copy or the rack in the server room, with the same layout. But you can see it without getting up! Here, we don't see a lot of data, because it is on our test system here in cambridge (so the CPU and memory aren't used a lot)
- Slide 18 This is another view of the dashboard: there is no much date in here because it's a screenshot of our test system, but if it was for real, you would see how much of the Kband (the"pipe", the broadband link to the sky), and the data traffic. I won't get into the details, but what really mattered in that instance is that we could work with them. The guys are expert at what they do, so it was really a matter of understanding what is important to them and helping the prioritisation of what's displayed. Iterating here and there and showing them the evolution of the metrics, understanding what's important for them. And also, provided an ELEGANT and PRACTICAL way to deal with the problems they have, simply. THE GUYS LOVED IT. They loved it so much, they placed it in the top, very prominent space in their control room. (which is the reason the background was introduced: the UI had been designed for a different screen ratio and when the monitor arrived, they were 16.9! It was cheaper to add the background than to make the entire thing responsive.... )
- Slide 19 After this, the value of a good usability and design process was demonstrated, and the client, this time budgeted some time for the UI design on the next project: Iridium Push to talk. You can use your satellite phone as a walkie talkie, across the planet.
- Slide 20 Within the allocated budget, we were asked to do : the dashboard to control the hardware the UIs for Iridium's customers (less niche !) And again showing a dashboard with utilisation of the K-band, fault in the system (if it occurs) In this case, it's about designating spaces on the planet where people will be able to talk to another space in the planet, securely, in an encripted way. Typically, the army, NGOs, researchers where no other means of communication is possible would use the system
- Slide 21 This is a view of the "talk groups" and their performances.
- Slide 22 And here a novel visualisation of a satellite beam used at a given point in time, that was invented by working closely with the users. At this stage, the iterations , design and feedback loop were very quick.
- Slide 23 Now, change of scene: this is the part of the UI dedicated to Iridium's customers, for them to configure the system (as seen in the video), Here the visualisation of all the handsets available to create talk groups.
- Slide 24 Here you can see how the customer can easily draw a region on a map, that can communicate with another region I can draw on the map too.
- Slide 25 Like this on the west coast of America. Here it is more appropriate to draw a rectangle, not to waste some allowance in the water! Because a rectangle is less an less rectangle if you approach from the edges, or the actual superficie is very different for the same size! A lot of math went it this :) HAPPY STORY AGAIN! So... if there were some lesson to take from this?
- Slide 26 Well... for a start, IF you come accross a small group that can have a massive impact on many thousands of people, MAKE SURE YOU DEAL with them appropriately, and do your job well, even if...
- Slide 27 In this sort of large projects, involving hardware, processes and software, Clients are unlikely to ask for the UI bit to be designed. There won't be a budget planned for it, at least the first time. It's expected to happen as part of the project, somehow. Also: They probably accounted for a training budget. It's perceive as too costly. Managers think they know the job (but often, they forgot). So you need to take it upon you at first, especially when a small amount of people impact many others. As Anna Kirah and Meriel Lenfesty demonstrated in D1's keynote, challenge your customer!
- Slide 28 It's easier to do your job well.... Well... maybe not as easy as this looks like, but: You can reach 100% of the audience. Competition on UX is scarce. It's not difficult to do better. Test recruitment is easy. Chances are users are expert in their domain. Short iteration cycles (can even be done on site).
- Slide 29 Its cheaper to do your job. Or at least, it doesn't cost more to work with your users than working without them (all the cost of testing/recruitment etc. Don't exists). Feedback loop is quicker. Less personas to tackle.
- Slide 30 More creative solutions available: it doesn't have to scale much.
- Slide 31 People will love having something a little different and pleasant. If you involve users in design, and make something nice, they will forgive the tool more. You'll have more recurring business (but this time it's planned!). So perhaps you think "it's all well and good, Marine, but we are not working with those clients" Yes. This is true: If you are too small, chances are big clients won't ask you to work for them on such projects. If you work with those clients, you're likely to be in a large company, so you need to convince *them* before you can do the work. (or you try the technique we heard in the lightning talk yesterday and you try to be more Banksy)
- Slide 32 However, I think this learning is relevant nonetheless. I believe these characteristics apply for entreprise software too. Show of hands: Who has a piece of software at work you wish was better designed? Perhaps it's a software used to claim expenses, or holidays?
- Slide 33 I think we can do better. As designer we need to. If you are a designer with a misguided customer, challenge them. Take if upon you to try and show them what they could have. If you are a customer: think about your task force!
- Slide 34 Thank you. Questions? Can you share experience?
- Slide 35 Cambridge Consultants are recruiting talented UX people. You can contact me, or visit our website: www.cambridgeconsultants.com