Knewton User Experience

Remembering Sylvia Harris. Her work will continue to inspire an...

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:05:01 -0400

Remembering Sylvia Harris. Her work will continue to inspire an make an impact.

This video is from her talk during World Usability Day 2010.

WRAP-UP: UPA NYC WITH Jared Spool

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:10:00 -0400

Monday night’s UPA NYC event featured Jared Spool whose talk ‘Mobile & UX: In the Eye of the Perfect Storm’ focused on mobile user experience.

Spool gave examples of mobile experience that fall short (ex. Coca-Cola ‘install flash’ message) and ones that are pretty ‘slick’ (ex. umbrellatoday, groupon, uber cab).

His hour long talk included lots of examples including how Luke Wroblewski’s article ‘Mobile First’ is a good starting point for building full online experiences.

Some good points:

Good mobile sites are vaguely familiar to the full site and have limited feature set. (ex. Amazon, Best Buy)
90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon’s Law)
Don’t just pack in features. Feedback and curation becomes important, deciding what goes in/out, and the ability to say ‘no.’ When Word Perfect came out it had about 170 features, the technology was unusable and there were so many features. Word came out with less than half the amount of features, but they were the ‘right’ features. They were the features most commonly used, and the ones people cared about.
Activity vs. Experience. It’s all about the details. ‘It’s the gaps that happen in between the activities’ that separates, Word Perfect from Microsoft Word, Disney from Six Flags, Blockbuster from Netflix, etc.
Basic expectations of users and excitement generation. Users that are satisfied is neutral; we should be doing ‘delight surveys.’ Go beyond satisfaction!

The Three Questions (to predict successful experiences)

Vision: Can everyone on the team describe vision 5 years from now?
Feedback: Two hrs every six weeks of user observation (everyone in the company needs do see this)
Culture: Reward team members for design failure. Risk-averse, and for learning.

And finally, Spool mentioned how Netflix does user testing on a weekly basis. They make a contest out of it, and anyone on the team who can predict 10 things the customer will love will get a $1000 gift card, which someone has yet to earn. This shows that no one knows the ‘right’ answer, and how user research, observation and testing is crucial for creating great user experiences.

Download slides here.

(Submitted by: Delose)

Approaching Data with a Beginner’s Mind- By Hunter Whitney

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:00:28 -0400

Excerpt

“

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.
- Shunryu Suzuki

Recently, I was asked for my opinion on a project in which a UX team was trying to represent complex relationships using a specific type of data visualization. I asked whether that type of visualization was the best way to represent the relationships, and why that particular approach had been chosen. The answer: a designer “liked it.” Perhaps not enough foundational thinking had gone into what they were trying to accomplish. I believe UX practitioners, and the growing variety of users working with these kinds of visualizations, need to consider and ask fundamental questions about the full process that determines what data gets collected, stored, processed, and ultimately displayed. Otherwise, they become part of the problem of misinterpreting data rather helping to make it clearer and more meaningful. Sometimes the simplest questions are the most important to ask, especially when designing visualizations for complex data sets.”

View full article Here ›

Wrap-up: 1st Annual User Experience Awards

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:08:43 -0400

The first-annual User Experience Awards was held Monday night, coordinated by NYC-CHI as part of NYC Internet Week in partnership with NYC UPA, NYC IxDa and NYC Information Architecture Meetup.

A few highlights…

Razorfish’s project for Terra mobile won Best i-pad experience with a tablet optimized version of their site. It feels like an app and it’s built in HTML5.

I tried Terra on our office i-pad and it’s very intuitive and easy to use. Panelist Nicole Rubin from Creative Good mentioned that ‘an intuitive site is one that is easy to use and learnable even when in a different language.’

Instead of traditional navigational elements, scrolling horizontally browses different news stories, while scrolling vertically gives more details of the current story.

Whitney Hess won Best User Centered Design Process for the Boxee Beta project, fully documented here.

Nike+GPS team won the grand prize for Best User Experience. Although Nike+ has been widely recognized one of the best user experiences, the panelists agreed that being dedicated to advancing a great project even further means a lot. They are developing a new ‘Tag it’ feature which is like playing tag with your friends…’tag, you’re it!’

Nike+ is now turning five years old and they’re giving away free versions to celebrate (now they just need it for android)!

See all the winners and their submissions here.

Video: Responsive Web Design: A Visual Guide

Tue, 31 May 2011 16:43:13 -0400

Video: Responsive Web Design: A Visual Guide:

‘These days, “one size fits all” is quickly becoming a dated concept. Luckily, with CSS media queries, we can now easily build responsive web designs that accomodate everything from your mobile phone, up to your massive desktop!’ —Andrew Gormley

WRAP-UP: UPA NYC with Dmitry Zak

Wed, 18 May 2011 18:26:00 -0400

At last night’s UPA NYC event, Dmitry Zak from the NBC Universal IxD team talked about ways to improve their video syndication process at CNBC. The goal was to build a system that would make video producers day-to-day job simpler and less painful. He says he like to be guided by Einsteins quote…

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Dmitry’s approach was user centered design. He conducted user interviews and research and observed the folks that use the system day-to-day. The highlight for me was when he talked about building a system that knows and anticipates the user’s actions and tasks they will perform. This adaptive approach makes the process easy for the user and also minimizes input errors.

Highlight input fields that users use most often
System reacts/gives options based on the user’s actions and what they can/cannot do (ex. selecting two events makes ‘merge’ button active)
Digital fingerprint (name/photo) of the user (history of workflow across shared files)
Make error messaging more meaningful for humans

Providing meaningful error messages

What are you doing/trying to do? ‘Editing an event’
What do we know about it? ‘These people worked on the file last’
Give useful information. ‘Data loss could occur’
Give choice. ‘Cancel or edit’

Although there will be challenges(for CNBC working with legacy systems) listening to your users will help you come up with solutions and make improvements that will make life better. Whether large or small they can add up and make a process much simpler!

(Submitted by: Delose)

Resource: Simple image placeholder

Wed, 18 May 2011 10:49:33 -0400

Resource: Simple image placeholder:

How does it work? Just put your image size after our URL and you’ll get a placeholder. Like this: http://placehold.it/350x150

Why Users Click Right Call to Actions More Than Left Ones - UX Movement

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:42:53 -0400

Why Users Click Right Call to Actions More Than Left Ones - UX Movement:

great article… nice find.

Ten Guidelines for Quantitative Measurement of UX - By Richard Dalton

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:38:56 -0400

Excerpt:

“Most UX designers use qualitative research—typically in the form of usability tests—to guide their decision-making. However, using quantitative data to measure user experience can be a very different proposition. Over the last two years our UX team at Vanguard has developed some tools and techniques to help us use quantitative data effectively. We’ve had some successes, we’ve had some failures, we’ve laughed, we’ve cried, and we’ve developed ten key guidelines that you might find useful.”

Read full article here ›

Article: UX is 90% Desirability

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:11:05 -0400

Article: UX is 90% Desirability:

‘Creating a desirable application or product can only happen when it is — at it’s core — something meaningful. It has to be something that improves people’s lives or just makes them happy for much longer than the five minute high after their purchase.’

Article: The 5% Creativity Challange

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:59:00 -0400

Article: The 5% Creativity Challange:

In today’s always-on, 24/7 business world, when are we supposed to generate creative breakthroughs? In-between checking our iPhones, responding to email, and updating our Facebook status? We’re so busy being “heads down” on our to-do lists, that we fail to spend time being “heads up” to explore the possibilities.

I WANT Giant Sticky notes for screen sketches

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:59:28 -0400

I WANT

Giant Sticky notes for screen sketches

Wrap-up: UPA NYC with Andrew DeVigal

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:23:00 -0400

At last night’s UPA NYC event, Andrew DeVigal, Multimedia Editor at The New York Times, spoke about multimedia storytelling. He defined multimedia storytelling as ‘how you tell a story to engage users and to deliver content to what the user is looking for.’

Process, engagement and learning from users
Working quickly (by nature of the news) allows for more opportunities to experiment, learn, and grow because people are using and reacting to your projects more often. Some projects will grow unexpectedly and ‘out of proportion, but you learn and move on.’ Sometimes using a quick ‘hallway test’ within the office will help get a feature out in just a few days(‘Sounds of Radiolab’ project). Andrew gave an example of how interactives like ‘Gauging your distraction’ engage users through simulation. Users were no doubt engaged with this ‘game’ of texting while driving. Some were passionate, and some downright angry enough to give their feedback. Some users found the literal representation of driving a car through gates while texting unrealistic, ‘I would never be driving through many gates!’ It was learned that maybe more emphasis on the application of the challenge itself may have engaged and communicated the story more effectively…‘dolphins and hoops?’

Content narratives
In non-linear flows a user may only see a small portion of content. In narrative flows (beginning, middle, and end) like in gaming, there is a linear narrative which gives users the opportunity to delve deeper into the story. For example, in Mario Bros. single narratives (horizontal scrolling) and exploration narratives (underground green warp tunnels) exist in the same space and provide users with options to achieve linearly or to explore deeper.

This Chinese Proverb was used to illustrate how layered content can engage and educate…

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”

This quote reminds us that it’s about finding the best blend of tools for our own storytelling. Maybe it’s simply text and images on a printed page, or a game, but as technology evolves we will have new opportunities to engage and educate.

(Submitted by: Delose)

Once again it is time for creative mornings! Follow @Knewton_ux...

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:06:02 -0400

Once again it is time for creative mornings! Follow @Knewton_ux for live tweets

Like a bawss

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:57:00 -0400

Like a bawss

Great quote… Nice work. spaught: Typography design I...

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:38:48 -0400

Great quote… Nice work.

spaught:

Typography design I created for my Computer Imaging class. Enjoy!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Article: Fast Path to a Great UX - Increased Exposure Hours

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:27:26 -0400

Article: Fast Path to a Great UX - Increased Exposure Hours:

Article by Jared M. Spool about having ongoing user research, where each team member (including stakeholders, managers, etc.) watch users for two hours every six weeks.

Users are...

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:17:51 -0400

another fill in the blank… thoughts?

Gamification can...

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:16:40 -0400

Finish the sentence. Please?

Hey thanks for the follow. I’ve just started getting into UX so your timing is immaculate! Any other Tumblrs you'd recommend following?

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 10:53:48 -0400

No problem! No time like the present right?

As a primer I would follow 52 weeks of UX & UX myths . Also I would just track all posts tagged with UX & User experience. All you do is search one of those and on the results page they will give you the option to track the tag. You will find some great posts and people to follow.

Good luck and if you have any more questions don’t hesitate to ask.