The term co-design refers to a philosophical and political approach to design best applied throughout the design life cycle [1].  Codesign builds on the methods and principles of Participatory Design which assumes ‘users’ are the experts of their own domain and should be actively involved in the design process. This article explores some of the methodological tools we use to enable codesign. Specifically, we explore the rationale behind some common workshop techniques used early in the design process, which combine the activities of research and idea generation.

The premise of codesign

Involvement of ‘users’ early in the research and ideation phases of the design process is often equated to “asking users what they want”.  (A certain quote oft attributed to Ford comes to mind). Codesign however, goes well beyond this. The premise is that ‘users’ become partners. Rather than being viewed as a source of information to be input into the design process, those impacted by the design are invited to work actively with designers to shape the definition and direction of the project. Participation can include sharing personal experiences and perspectives, contributing to the generation of new design concepts, the evolution of those concepts, analysis, interpretation, decision making, evaluation and more.

When taking a codesign approach it is our role as designers to facilitate that participation. At the beginning of the design process we work with users to understand the design project in relation to their everyday lives including their habits, rituals, dreams, attitudes and experiences. These then become resources for inspiring design concepts and direction. In order for people to actively and effectively participate in the design process they must be able to imagine, access, and express their experiences and expectations. Simply asking people questions is not enough to facilitate this process. This is because people are not explicit sources of information. As humans we are limited in what we can express by our existing frames of reference, we can only talk in the language that we know.

In addition, much of our experience and knowledge is tacit, or embedded in the everyday. Our habits, rituals, dreams and attitudes are not (necessarily) things that we can gain immediate access to in order to describe them to design researchers, we may not even be aware of them ourselves.  Codesign methods (also known as generative methods (Sanders 2000)) create a platform for this to occur by making things that are normally unobservable available as resources for design. While methods such as interviews and observations give us access to the explicit and observable, generative methods allow us to access the tacit and implicit aspects of people’s lives (Sleeswijk Visser 2009). They also set up a collaborative, discursive space between designers and users where ideas can be generated, explored and documented.

Codesign activities

As with any workshop, the specific activities will differ depending on the topic being investigated and the nature of the participants. However there are several qualities or principles that underpin most codesign activities that help to make people’s everyday experiences available and create a platform for sharing and ideation.

They are visual, expressive and creative

Codesign workshops make heavy use of visual materials as a way to assist people to make and communicate associations and experiences. This is because images are more accessible and quick to use (compared to written word for example) and participants are able to attribute their own meaning to them.  Random images can remind people about significant things they might not have considered or can act as metaphors to represent complex concepts. Images are also evocative and help to provide multiple frames and ways of seeing and expressing. They can be ambiguous enough to allow creative and unusual connections to be made and leave space for people to explore their own interpretations.

Building a “nudie” - a derivation of personas where participants create a visual version of a stakeholder to explore their perspective, needs and experiences. (Image care of Digital Eskimo)

The process of selecting images can also act to generate valuable discussion between participants. We often begin a workshop by asking participants to create a collage that describes their experiences about something related to the project topic (e.g., being a post graduate student, dealing with cancer, notions of giving etc). Visual storyboards can also be an effective way for participants to convey emotional experiences or journeys. In addition to what is created, it is the stories, memories and experiences that are shared when people communicate why particular images have been chosen or placed together that reveal significant insights.

Selecting images for a visual scenario that portrays the emotional aspect of an experience. (Image care of Inspire Foundation)

They are physical and tangible

The act of physically getting up, moving around and using our bodies and hands to make and do things, to select, create, stick, sort, gather, glue and compose, both individually and in groups, is a central part of creating space for discussion, sharing and idea generation. (Sanders in particular emphasises the ‘make’ aspect of generative methods). This can include three dimensional prototypes made out of playdoh or card for example, but it also applies to the building of collages, maps and story boards, or the process of acting out an interaction or experience. All of these activities can act as prompts that help participants to explore, remember, imagine and verbalise aspects of their everyday lives, feelings or experiences. The physical act of working in close proximity with other people and creating something together is also an important part of fostering collaboration, trust and sharing between participants.

Touch-points are grouped and categorised

A service described through the metaphor of a city

They support creativity through (appropriate) constraints

Part of enabling people to be creative and participate in the design process is in providing the right kind of constraints. Leaving things too open means participants struggle for direction or to get started, defining things too specifically leaves little room for participants to take ownership and create something that is meaningful to them. For example, when asking participants to generate or explore new campaign concepts or ideas, we will often have them incorporate a combination of words, images or concepts [2] or make use of physical props such as playdoh when developing their idea. These elements act as constraints that create boundaries within which participants need to work, but they also become inspirational start points that leave enough room for participants to apply their own creativity, strategy and ideas.

Planning out possible workshop activities and the props required

Activities such as building personas or scenarios also provide participants with a particular structure or format through which to think about, approach, explore and communicate aspects of the design. For example having participants build visual personas (e.g., nudies) or Facebook profiles can be a way to enable participants to explore and contribute to interpreting and connecting with that data. The concept and format of the ‘persona’ acts as a constraint that allows people to make sense of, and structure, information but allows them to do so through their own words and images. The scenario format, with specific actors and a beginning, middle and end also becomes a simple framework through which participants can create, communicate and evaluate new design ideas in context. In addition to the story itself the process of negotiating and considering the sequences of action involved and what should be included and represented and why, brings to light a range of details, experiences, needs and dependencies.

Exploring a concept through a visual storyboard or scenario

They are playful, fun and rewarding for participants

Fun is a deeply important aspect of participation. It is central to facilitating sharing, trust and confidence building and helping people open up. It is also part of keeping people’s energy levels up. If people are tired and the activities too serious, it is hard for participants to maintain interest or contribute in meaningful ways. This is particularly true if the topic of the workshop is sombre or serious. It is our role as designers to find a sensitive way of exploring such topics, but also one that allows people to open up and be creative. It can be very rewarding for participants to discover aspects about themselves they had not been aware of, or to think in new ways about a topic they had not stopped to consider before.  Participants often also value the opportunity to gain an understanding of other people’s experiences and perspectives. Ensuring the workshop is interesting and rewarding for participants is also critical when seeking participation and input to important topics that have a significant impact on people, yet can be perceived as potentially ‘boring’, unappealing or stigmatising e.g,. skin cancer, mental health, financial or social issues. Codesign workshops are key relationship building activities and sessions should always be enjoyable and energising (though also often exhausting) as well as ‘productive’.

A persona comes alive in this crime fighting scenario acted out through visuals and playdoh props

The outcomes

As part of enabling participation in the design process codesign activities aim to:

• Create a shared understanding and shared language between participants and designers
• Support a sense of immersion, dialogue and empathy for the perspective of those who will use and experience the design
• Generate rich personal, visual, and tangible material that is both subjective and designerly [3]
• Act as a source of inspiration and information for both designers and participants to work with in visioning future designs.

For these reasons the outputs from codesign activities differ significantly from interviews, surveys or observations. The subjective nature of what is produced through such workshops is important to supporting empathy and immersion into the design space whilst its designerly nature makes it a natural design resource, quite different to that of a written report. As designers we benefit from working with concrete things we can see and feel and imagery for example can be quickly scanned and absorbed (Mattelmäki & Battarbee, 2002). For designers, as well as clients and participants, material generated through such activities can be more accessible than traditional research outputs. They can also go beyond research feeding into idea generation and concepting.

In taking such an approach to design we, as designers, move from being experts to being facilitators. Our skills shift away from a focus on idea generation, to being able to facilitate design through collaboration. An important aspect of this is knowing what activities are appropriate, how to frame the activity (e.g., what are the right questions to ask) and what props and tools to provide as constraints.

To do true codesign, where participants become partners in the design process, requires a lot from us as designers, but also from our clients. There is a shift in (or relinquishing of) power that needs to take place to really allow participants to help shape and direct the design process. While this has not been the traditional approach to design, an increasing move towards co-creation and open innovation in mainstream businesses and local government environments will, we hope, create new and more opportunities for such an approach.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to our clients and participants, in particular the Inspire Foundation and Digital Eskimo.

Notes

[1] The term codesign is now widely used within product, UX and Service design fields. The interpretation of codesign applied here is based on the principles of Participatory Design and is best represented by the extensive work of Liz Sanders. Check out Sanders’ extensive selection of papers on her website for more about the different types of generative design activities she’s been developing and evolving for the last 20 years www.maketools.com

[2] See for example work by Kim Halskov and Peter Dalsgård on Inspiration Cards. Depending on the context there are also a range of pre-existing packs of images and concept cards that can be used such as the Iniva “What do you feel cards” or AT-ONES Touch-point cards. We often make our own and it is possible to design the workshop activities so that concepts or words that are used in idea generation activities come from earlier activities with participants, allowing ideas to be built upon over the course of the workshop. This approach means that the concepts are meangingful to participants and that they have a direct connection and sense of ownership over them.

[3] Sanders map of design research methods demonstrates the significance of designerly methods. (See Sanders, Design Research in 2006 (pdf). Design Research Quarterly, 1. and 
Sanders, L. An Evolving Map of Design Practice and Design Research, Interactions (November – December 2008). 
In these articles Sanders talks about how older more established styles of research which rely on systematic data analysis whilst newer, design driven forms of research focus on tools for expression, reflection and sharing which embrace subjectivity and blur the boundaries between research and design. For further discussions on “designerly” approaches see also the recent Johnny Holland article by  Jonas LöwgrenDesignerly ways of working in UX and Erick Stolterman et al’s paper Designerly Tools (pdf) from DRS’08.

Further references that might be useful to those exploring the use of such techniques include:

Gaver, W., Beaver, J., & Benford, S. (2003). ‘Ambiguity as a Resource for Design’. CHI, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. ACM.
Gaver, B., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999). ‘Design: Cultural Probes’. Interactions, pp. 21-29.
Mattelmäki, T. (2008). ‘Probing for co-exploring’. CoDesign, 4(1), pp. 65 – 78.
Mattelmäki, T., & Battarbee, K. (2002). ‘Empathy Probes’.  PDC’02. Malmö, Sweden, CPSR.
Sleeswijk Visser, F. (2009). Bringing the everyday life of people into design. PhD Thesis Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft.
Sleeswijk
Visser, F., Stappers, P. J., Lugt, R. V. D., & Sanders, E. B.-N. (2005). Contextmapping: experiences from practice. CoDesign, 1(2), pp. 119-140. (See Sleeswijk Visser’s publications page for access to her papers)

The second and final day of UX Australia began with the inspired wake up working session, and continued with streams of talks more focused on showing both sides of the designer-client relationship, and insights on UX related fields ranging from AR to retail.

Morning Wake Up Working Sessions

In what was a fantastic idea from the organisers, the first session of the day consisted of workshops led by Jay Rogers (Traditional hand-skills for sketching), Gary Barber (Keeping sketching real), Caronne Carruthers-Taylor (Sketching user journeys), Symplicit (Wake-up design challenge), Different (Visioning) and Westpac (Touch-point card game).  Attendees loved the concept as a creative way to start the day, and we hope that other conferences pick up on the idea in the future.

Workshops - Westpac Touch Cards, and Jay Rogers teaching sketching

Real world challenges and how we tackled them, shown from two perspectives: us and our client

Michelle Gilmore, Wendy Barnao

This presentation delivered on its title with Glimore (UX designer from Neoteny) and Barnao (client side Project Owner for Asgard Wealth Solutions) sharing their perspectives and experiences of a recent challenging yet ultimately highly successful project. Barnao gave us a rare insight into what it feels like to be taken on the HCD journey for the first time and the role she played in helping the design team come to terms with, and gain access to, the complex world of financial services.

Gilmore stepped us through the lessons learned navigating the complex project and its multiple stakeholder agendas, challenging us to take more responsibility for ensuring designs live beyond the handover. How to work better with (rather than for) our clients was a recurring theme of the conference and this presentation took it one step further – sharing real obstacles faced from both perspectives, as well as strategies for doing better next time. (Many in the audience thought client/designer duos should be a regular feature). To keep the conversation going Gilmore’s team at Neoteny have created www.challengepile.com as a place the design community can capture and share project challenges and solutions.

The Value of Asking Why?

Dan Szuc

A question of value - remember when this was valuable?

Former Melbourne boy Dan Szuc literally opened up the family treasure chest with the start of his talk on value, having cleaned up his family home while here to find such relics as a (fully working) 1950s radio and a brick phone (that many in the audience found oddly good to hold).

In his highly interactive talk, he challenged designers to consider the value of their products they work with, what they do, and the need to design for things such as:

• value (self > product > environmental) and happiness “It’s hard to introduce happiness in your products if you as a designer are unhappy”
• knowing when to say no as cycle company Franscesco Betelli does
• embracing failing fast and keeping teams small in order to do so, as Google does
• creating a shared language and values between engineering, marketing, design

Szuc finished with the inspiring quote from Joshua Porter on 52 Weeks of UX

Creating long lasting value does not happen by accident. It is the purposeful application of sensible design for real people.

Creating mobile experiences that matter

Rod Farmer, Anton Sher

Farmer and Sher delivered an energetic, fast paced presentation demonstrating the acrobatic UX moves they performed in order to get the award winning 3 Mobile iPortal out into the world in 6 weeks, in total secrecy. While Farmer shared key design principles and the story of the project Sher shared the low down on the actual portal design. This presentation was packed with practical “how to” tips for designing for mobile (it’s about the total experience not just the UI), as well as being living proof of what can be achieved even under the most extreme constraints via “Mad Max UX” – despite all the challenges the app meet annual traffic targets within 4 weeks.
Take outs included:

• Mobile experience is about interaction between people, place & platform
• Think “situational planning#” – mobile experiences unfold over time, people snack, stop, start, change and get distracted – completely different to a sedentary desktop interaction
• Focus on personal over personalisation and context over features
• Always design at scale

#A big field but situated action texts from HCI are a good start point for the theory behind this e.g., Suchman’s seminal work or Jakob E. Bardram’s PlansAsSituatedAction.pdf

The Secret Life of Deliverables

Anthony Quinn
What’s a deliverable? Quinn reflected on his (and many “friends’”) experiences with the issues of deliverables in the black box of “large organisations”.
Some of the gotchas they keep in mind is the design maturity of the company (taken from B+D), implicit objectives, and clients not knowing how to critique (they get around this by both combining Jesse Jame Garrett’s Elements of User Experience to frame the deliverables, and the RASCI model -Responsible, Accountable, Supportive, Consulted, Informed – to help stakeholders understand their level of influence in any design decision.)

They concluded that deliverables are:

1. Produced to influence an outcome;
2. Recognise & respond to content
3. Draw out implicit perceptions, objectives/expectations
4. Manage stakeholder explicitly, continually/consistently
5. Ensure users of deliverables can articulate intent actions required to achieve desired outcome
6. Observe. orient, respond to change

The Westpac team are also creating a prototype toolkit of these learnings, which should be very interesting to see.

Emerging a content strategy from user research

Scott Bryant

Scott Bryant

Byrant turned the spotlight on his relationship with lorum ipsum asking how user research might be better applied to informing content strategy (not just navigation, design and interaction).

Taking principles from Halvorson’s book as a start point Byrant took us backstage into one of the most content rich online contexts – news – sharing video interviews with the people who “make content happen” within News Digital Media (NDM). Bryant used questions about the context of content, the use of user research and what content creators in his organisation were influenced by to investigate the role and nature of Content Strategy in this context.

He also showcased some of the experimental approaches to testing and measuring people’s experiences with content being taken by the USiT team at NDM such as clicktale.com, FB Like & recommend and www.tynt.com.

Defining the recipient journey: The role of software to support hearing restoration at Cochlear

Shane Morris, Toby Cumming, Jane Cockburn

Speaking from both the perspective of client and designer, this presentation showed the potential of UX to be used in conjunction with innovative medical technologies. Cochlear, an Australian company who create world leading hearing implants, identified an explosion in need for their devices in the near future, but a blockage because the current software requires specialist training for clinicians to use.

Done in combination with Different and ACID, the agile-like project  – -   is still in progess, but so far has been very successful. The lessons they’ve learned so far are:

• Use the appropriate tools: the team had initially thought they’d use a living spec doc (a Sketchflow prototype), but realised that it became too unwieldy to update and reverted to a combination of paper for general testing, flash for key screens , and a standard document for all details.
• Team involvement: having personas on the wall, and bringing developers into testing has helped them get real sense of empathy. The best story the team had was of one of their developers role-playing the part of a six-year old girl, daydreaming and all!
• Stakeholder Engagement - UX process has helped engage stakeholders (marketing in diff. countries). Cockburn called this “crossing the bridge” with a common language. An unexpected side effect of creating personas was that they got adopted by both marketing and management to the point that they were all would refer to them by name.

Activating Customer Centric Culture

Ian Muir, Ean Van Vuuren
In this seriously meaty presentation Muir and Van Vuuren told the story of Westpac’s (ongoing) transition to a customer centric organisation. Van Vuuren described the journey from the business perspective – a move from ‘selling’ to ‘buying’, (i.e., how do customers buy houses/manage mortgages/credit cards…). Muir gave us the “how to” behind the process describing the steps along the maturity model and emphasising the need for a robust strategy that can withstand challenges from skeptics. This generous presentation demonstrated the value of a customer-centric model through very visible ROI including product uptake, such as their iPhone app which has done $1.1B worth of transactions with over 300,000 customers since March this year. Van Vuuren reflected on the inevitable resistance to change but highlighted the richness of rewards when things were done right: “whenever I’m feeling down I read the comments about our iphone app…”.

Designing for Touch Screen Experiences

Oliver Weidlich
Beginning with a poignant story of his elderly grandfather using an iPad, Weidlich led the audience through a useful primer on touch screens, and some pro tips.

Starting with some background information about touchscreen devices (most primitive touchscreens were resistive, but now being replaced with iPhone style capacitive screens), he gave the three key questions to keep in mind – screen size, screen distance, and available attention (these devices are rarely used without distractions). He also emphasised that tablets not only have new ergonomics to computer and mobile, but are also encouraging new behaviours (use in bedrooms and kitchens). Because of this, help screens (usually a sign of a bad UI) are standard to help users learn the capabilities of touch applications.

Based on his experience, he gave the following suggestions:

• Avoid outer positions (these may be accidentally hit when held, and generally aren’t as responsive as the centre
• Relax muscles (Latency – minimise scrolling with hub & spoke design
• Optimize interface for taps rather than swipes or drag)
• Use touch interaction guidelines such as http://lukew.com/touch , and http://swypeinc.com (a suggestion from the audience was http://gesturecons.com)
• Make visual feedback clear: as there are no hover states as we have in web.
• Optimise for one finger (but consider multiple)

Above all, his two big takeaways were appropriate target size and placement are key, and (as in all interaction design), sweat the details.

For future inspiration, he suggested the Instapaper guidelines and concept UIs such as Skin, haptics work, roll up screens, and finger-behind interfaces.

Joe Sokhol

Nailing it down: Specifying experience design so it can be built

Joe Sokohl

Delivered with some serious southern style Sokohl asked us to reconsider the role of specifications – suggesting that while the move away from massive inhumane 200 page spec docs is a good thing, it’s not about ditching the notion of specifying design altogether (especially in complex/remote work environments).

The core message was: make sure that specifications actually do their job. Sokohl argued that anything that impacts user experience is the domain of the UX designer, and it’s up to us to communicate those specifications effectively – that is: “just enough detail to enable the developer to understand the UX designers intent”. Sokohl pointed out the common disjuncture between what we deliver and the work that has to be done, providing some alternative approaches to conventional specs such as annotated wireframes and sketches and advocating for embedded specifications which provide the detail in the context of the design.

AR-UX: The generation of the pervasive User Experience

Alex Young

Young got beyond the hype of AR (she explained the field has exploded in the last few years but mainly in novelty ways such as brand presence) to talk about its various modes, constraints, and opportunities.

Of the types of AR:

• Public is generally used for art exhibitions etc. The Lego kiosk AR box was a mixed success, as people didn’t know how to activate the experience (some had markers missing, others just didn’t get it)
• Intimate (PC) is good for home – GE Ecomagination was a success at being entertaining, but an unexpected side effect was that schools loved it as it encouraged kinaesthetic learning
• Personal (mobile) may be browser based (e.g. Wikitude, Layar, Geneo) or object (Google Goggles) – great for finding places or gaming but main issue is discovering content.
• Private (ubicomp) – the standard sci-fi goggles – is virtually unused at present, however Young sees a future in this (see yesterday’s talk on biofeedback).

The challenges are very similar to those in mobile – context anywhere, rapidly changing technology,  new affordances and users, and utility – but with added ones of physicality (T-Shirts are problematic as people are different sizes), and expectations (she pointed out that Hollywood is now making near-future films such as Iron Man which makes cinematic quality AR look like it’s here).

Designs that ship: New tools for ensuring your UX work reaches its audience

Matt Morphett

Morphett’s presentation extended the theme of working better with our clients sharing tips, tricks and props from a recent project. Morphett presented a number of different tools including the User Stakeholder triangle used to map out with client various project motivations across the three core perspectives of business, architecture and users (check out the templates). The method encourages representatives from the three different stakeholder groups to recognise the inherent dynamic between their particular perspectives, and gives them a tool to negotiate productively around the different priorities and how they impact the project. Public posters at the client’s office showed the areas of focus for each week and fun, physical props including a Magic Wand (representing users), a squeezy spanner (representing engineering), & a Magic 8 ball (representing business) were employed to help stakeholders stop, reflect and consider the motivations and implications of different design decisions.
Key messages included:

• Provide a framework that helps to get the problems out on the table and lets all stakeholders work through them together
• Ask: Who could undo a design? Go as high as you can & get them involved
• Get key stakeholders from Architecture, Business & Users seeing the dynamic between their different needs & contributing to the solution

Creating innovative retail organisations

Richard Beaumont
The conference track finished with a fast paced presentation by Beaumont that documented his learnings from working with retail chains Tesco, Coles, and 1st Choice. The sheer volume of were  impossible for even the most ardent live-tweeter to capture, but what came through was that many strategies in retail are known to user experience (talk in the stakeholders’ language, consider all aspects of the journey and roll-out), but on a far greater scale (Tesco now works across the UK, Europe and Asia).

• Tesco’s innovation strategy is – consistency, having the best people, plans, objective, projects (they demand project management experience of all leaders), succession, sharing insights.( Tesco went to Asia, learned from hypermarkets there, brought findings back, learned to work on different scales)
• The paradigm shift for different scales -  particularly from big to small  – is hard. Most Tesco small stores didn’t make money for 2 years, learned from results.
• Bottlenecks are dangerous and inevitable (people lie about metrics)
• With competitor analysis, when taking photos in competitor’s stores “if you haven’t been thrown out, you haven’t taken enough pictures”
  Documentation needs to be clear, updateable, highly visual, that cover the whole shopping journey (this includes front and back, hours of ordering etc).
• Talking in stakeholder language is key – for example putting brand decals on the supermarket sold over the marketing director Stakeholders may often not ‘get’ visuals – 3D cutaways were most successful (3D models helped the designers more than anything).  3D videos get sign off, but often bring up questions for internal departments (too high-fidelity)

Other nuggets that came out of the questions were:

• Shops work with “passion items” (e.g. you need sponge to make a trifle) and make sure these are always in stock.
• In terms of shopping science, Paco Underhill’s company Envirosell is still the best around, and those who like his book Science of Shopping will be interested in his upcoming title What Women Want

if you haven’t been thrown out [of a competitor’s store while doing research], you haven’t taken enough pictures.

The day finished with giveaways – Morgan Kaufman and Sitepoint books, an iPhone and iPad, and even trip and flights to UX Hong Kong, as well as thanks to all involved (for the record, this was the rare conference where the wi-fi never went down, and where free espresso coffee was provided aplenty) and many taking one more chance to enjoy Melbourne hospitality.

For more resources, check out the the twitter stream, Flickr sets, and many sketchnotes available.

—-

Header image by Steve Baty
Joe Sokhol image by Alex Walker
All others by Penny Hagen

Melbourne set out to impress for this year’s UX Australia, held in the beautiful Langham Hotel. Year two of the conference had a feeling of building on the work from the inaugral event with confidence and assurance -  (even if the day began with many recovering from the pre-drinks before).  Some recurring themes of the day were business and design, wicked problems, and the emotional side of user experience, with the community coming to the fore with an active twitter stream and visual notes.

Keynote – The Dawning of the Age of Experience

Jared Spool

Jared Spool's Range of UX Skill

“Saying a website is ‘usable’ is like saying dinner was ‘edible’

Spool kicked off the conference with an entertaining and wide ranging talk (who knew that there were people called chicken sexers?) that covered user experience and business, design knowledge, and ways to create great UX.

He began with a rundown on the iPod/Sundisk/Zune scene (market share 75%, 7%, and 5% respectively), and a breakdown of the reasons – despite the iPod having inferior hardware and a troublesome OS, they have won on their service system (they are the top digital seller of music/third overall, and are the only manufacturer to have service stores) and an attention to brand.

He also touched on similar success stories (Netflix has far overtaken Blockbuster, and attracts new customers largely through their existing ones evangelising it), but more interestingly some failures, to highlight the perils of favouring user experience over business:

• Big Box Retailer lost 20% of revenue after spending $100k on redesign, took 3 1/2 years to recover.
• A 1,700 person law firm moved from static HTML to a Sharepoint site – no one could change anything, didn’t bill for a month (~$4m), and employees were near revolt
• An information site changed the findability from 4 clicks to 1, which would have been good  … except that the site make money on clicks! They had a 40% drop in page views.

Spool also touched on how design decisions can’t always be interrogated, as while research is useful, designers – like chicken sexers, sushi chefs, and midwives – often “just know” solutions through experience (see his related Johnny Holland post on Hands and Brains for talk on this as well). The intriguing suggestion here was that we should maybe consider the idea of UX apprenticeships. This becomes more important when we realise the range of skills involved in UX (see diagram on right).

Spool suggested we ask three questions to find great UX:

1. Vision – “can everyone on team describe experience of using the design 5 years on?”
2. Feedback – “in the last 6 wks, have you spent more than 2 hrs, watching someone use your or a competitor’s design?” Studies show that exposure time impacts success
3. Culture -  “In the last 6 weeks, have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?”. Scott Cook, the CEO of Intuit, holds ‘failure parties‘ – he presents an award to the recipient, teases them for 2 minutes – and then spends the next 28 unpacking what they’ve learned from the project.

and summarised that successful UX:

• integrates users & business,
• is learned but not open to introspection,
• is invisible,
• is cultural,
• ….is something we’re still learning how to do (and we’re getting better everyday).

Defining Experience Strategy with UX Designer as Protagonist

Anthony Colfelt

Colfelt gave a number of memorable metaphors for UX design in his presentation, backed up with his work at UX consultancy Different. Beginning with the solar system of UX (currently tech is the sun, circled by the business, which is circled by customer experience), he suggested that to counter this and allow user experience happen earlier in the project management process, UX designers should be like the ultimate protagonist – Arnold Schwartzenegger.

His key takeaways were that experience research should be like a shield (no holes, scientifically implemented) as it could then be used to avoid costly mistakes downstream.

Designing wide in Government: A recipe for doing the design of very, very complex concepts that impact on society

Darren Menachemson

To give a sense of the complexity of designing wide in Government Menachemson started with Horst Rittel’s notion of wicked problems. Menachemson gave insight into what is involved in tackling incredibly complex design spaces (such as systems for dealing with the whole health of a patient over a life time). Wide design starts with wide outcomes requiring us to focus on products and service in the contexts of systems – rather than a micro view (interfaces, interactions, etc). Many of the points resonated with essential service design principles, but a key (differentiating?) aspect  was illustrated through the perspective taken in the Citizen Journey map by the Design Council: the start point is the citizen’s journey in life (from which we can identify and leverage the points of intersection with government), not the citizen’s journey with the government (big big picture!). His tactics? : work collaboratively (but make sure this work is somehow accountable and has influence), stay away from the detail (for as long as possible) and cultivate a tolerance for ambiguity.

Getting new blood from old stones: How to get new insights from old data

Stephen Cox

Cox shared a different way of thinking about research and how it ties into our everyday work in this fantastic presentation delivered with some great home style video humour. Prompted by a need to bring vendors working on customer research projects up to speed with knowledge already possessed by Westpac, Cox shared how he mined old data (10 years worth!), found new high level insights and patterns and shared them through tools like bare bones personas. Rather than sticking to the status quo of research on a project by project level (tactical) his “insights framework” helps the organisation identify and seek operational and strategic insights from existing and future research data. This was also a call to action for design research vendors to get more strategic with their own expertise – research is cumulative, so start embedding strategic questions within project-level research that can help to inform and develop higher level knowledge.

Design Thinking – Is This Our Ticket to the Big Table?

Iain Barker

Barker started by asking the audience whether many called themselves either Design Thinkers or Service Designers (both only had a few hands raised), a fitting start for a talk that looked at the current business – but not design – darling, “design thinking”. Sharing a number of resources both for and against the argument:

• the IDEO definition
• Helen Waters at Design Week 2010 “For now, the business community seems to have the ball, and it’s running with it. But designers can’t afford not to be a part of this conversation”
• Kevin McCullagh at the Big-Rethink 2010 “There’s something odd going on when business and political leaders flatter design with potentially holding the key to such big and pressing problems, and the design community looks the other way”.
• The rather concerning statement from Bruce Nussbaum that “CEOs must be designers“
• Don Norman’s “Meanwhile exploit the myth [of design thinking]. Act as if you believe it. Just don’t actually do so.”

Design Thinking and Experience Design - can't we all just get along?

However, backed up with some amazing stats such as that shares in design-led companies outperform others in stock led indices by 200% ) he urged designers to perhaps just do design thinking work, (and be prepared to have to fight for design processes and against indoctoration) even if they’d rather not be called design thinkers.

Design Secrets Revealed

Todd Zaki Warfel

Originally called “the right way to wireframe” this rare behind the scences glimpse of what Ux’er’s do all day was was prompted by the lack of visibility around UX work. Unlike visual designers who show case on sites like dribbble.com or developers using Github, we’ve never seen the wireframes of the likes of JJG or Peter Moriville (though we have now!). Todd Zaki Warfel,  Will Evans, Fred Beecher and Russ Unger took up the challenge – shut up or nut up – to “pull back the Kimono” and expose their work practices.

What we learnt:

• They never work to requirements (“that’s for monkeys”) – use methods like the task analysis grid instead which put things in context and enforces a prioritisation
• Sketch, sketch and sketch some more – as a team – do it fast then (live) prototype
• Pitch and critique at every stage, with clients (practice can be required & as @Sandie_lewis tweeted “critique is about how well a design meets the design goals. Not about what you like or don’t”)

Check out the slides and the 4 minute video of the whole process below or with related videos:

Designing for Biofeedback

Erik Champion and Andrew Dekker

Champion and Dekker’s presentation on their research into biofeedback [academic paper, PDF]was an insightful look into future interfaces. Their study (as well as talking about zombies and psychology, the uncanny, and current biofeedback devices) adapted Half-Life 2 to adapt to skin (sweat) and heartrate feedback from users wearing a glove. The game used the feedback to change the game in a number of ways:

• The scene was monochromatic with a low heart rate, vivid at faster rate, and red with high stress
• Deliberately keeping breathing rate slow made the user see through walls.

Tests shows that gamers preferred the biometric version of the game. Champion and Dekker suggested that future applications for this include gaming, meditative purposes, and even public spaces.

Beyond Frustration: 3 Levels of Happy Design

How much happiness can you design in? Dana Chisnell urged designers to think about designing for happiness. In a presentation similar to her UX Mag article of the same name, she outlined what she considered her 3 levels of happy design:

1. Pleasure – a pleasing awareness, the of course, relationships, satisfying. Don Normal calls this visceral. She suggests that they have ‘treats’ [or Easter Eggs] and are thoughtful, and gives http://tripit.com , http://mint.com , and Virgin America as examples.
2. Flow – Understanding, contentment, time stops – immersion, key strengths emphasised, trust
3. Meaning - reflectiveness, commitment, belonging, contributing, making a difference (part of something bigger than you) – examples include http://zipcar.com

Change Agents at Object Gallery: A multi-disciplinary experiment in interactive physical installation design

David Gravina

Change Agents project

Can design change the world? Yes, but not without a road map and some tools. Gravina shared the public kick off of Digital Eskimo’s new Change Agent’s project (building on the theme of wicked problems introduced by Darren earlier) – the goal is to create an open source & free to share toolkit to help designers tackle the big issues. Digital Eskimo attempted a public form of collaboration with other designers via installations at Object Gallery and then ACMI. It turns out that post-it notes are a big hit for gathering ideas even in a gallery context! Gravina reflected on the opportunities and pitfalls of trying to engage people in big ideas in such public spaces and the dangers of giving people free reign with texters! While the ideas people contributed to the physical installations were intriguing, the real results were in getting other designers and architects on board the Change Agents project.

101 things I (should have) learned in interaction design school – the sequal

In the follow up to the hilarious-but-strangely-informative UX Australia 2009 talk (where they took rules from Matthew Frederick’s book 101 Things I Learned at Architecture School and attempted to apply them to interaction design), Morris and Morphett upped the ante in every way possible …. from a DIY (!) money grabbing machine on stage, to a host of 101 Things books to work from (now architecture, film, fashion, business, and culinary school), a Windows 7 app user-testing-from-hell session, and numerous mentions of the trials and tribulations of their http://ux101.com site.

Chaos reigned at UX Australia when Matt and Shane took to the stage ....

That said, most of the rules pulled from other design disciplines, ranging from customer allergies to studio locations proved fairly easy to translate:

• #77 from 101 Culinary: A customer’s allergy is a chef’s problem. Translation: know your users test a lot.
• #45 from 101 Film : Studio or Remote (for locations). Translation: testing in the field versus testing in a controlled environment
• #63 from 101 Film : Help the audience keep track of your characters (have original, pointed names). Translation: don’t have a flat unprioritised visual hierarchy;  think of user paths and  anoint landmark pages to  help people through your site.

—

Jared image by mssuec

Matt and Shane images by wheelyweb and NathanaelB

“To design is to have a ‘project’. Getting the design process moving is to expose and transform this ‘project’ in a conversation with those that it might eventually affect” (Buur, Binder, & Brandt, 2000).

In the early stages of design, rather than evaluate or validate specific user requirements or priorities, we are interested in exploring possibilities. As the opening quote suggests, we seek to engage with the various stakeholders the design project may eventually effect and gain an understanding of the unique design situation from their perspective. In Zimmerman et al.’s  (2004) framework for discovering and extracting knowledge during the design process, this is known as the Discovery phase of design. In this article we introduce Mobile Diaries as a field work method that can be utilised in the early stages of design to immerse into people’s everyday life.

This exploratory approach to self-reporting allows participants  to create and share a rich picture of their world, be they grandmothers, bankers, students, young parents or employees. In this article we describe Mobile Diaries, and provide examples of the kinds experiences they can enable.

A little background on self-reporting

In self-reporting, research participants are responsible for the data collection, allowing for the gathering of contextual data over-time and in situ, without the physical presence of researchers. Self-reporting can provide access into the private, personal and mobile aspects of people’s lives that are often difficult, or impossible, to access through traditional methods such as observation or interviews. The sustained personal reflection inherent in self-reporting makes available aspects that would otherwise remain tacit. So much of our lives are routinised and automatic, it is not until we are asked to document or consider certain activities that we are able to identify key junctures in our own understanding of a topic or a behaviour.

Self-reporting studies can take many different forms and the degree of formal structure is one of the things that differentiates approaches and determines the type of material collected. For example in the Electronic Sampling Method approach known as ESM (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983) or beeper studies, the participant is directed to systematically log specific things at specific times. In more open-ended approaches (such as cultural probes (Gaver, Dunne, & Pacenti, 1999) or visual diaries) data collection is only semi-structured around a particular topic. In this case participants are treated as active contributors and interpreters in the design process and select what, how and when to report. This encourages more playful and creative representations, important to an explorative and collaborative approach.

Over the last 10 years digital, online and mobile technologies have been incorporated into self-reporting methods in a range of ways (see end of article for some examples of other studies and platforms). These everyday tools can be easily integrated into people’s daily lives and support the generation of a range of different media forms such as video, images, text and audio.

Mobile Diaries

Mobile Diaries are a hybrid method that incorporate many of the creative and playful aspects of probes and emphasise the daily reflection of visual diaries. A range of different analog and digital technologies are used that allow participants to share and reflect on various dimensions of their day-to-day life.

A typical study

The exact design of the study (as always) is dependent on a number of factors such as:

• A definition of the problem space;
• The goals and objectives of the particular project;
• The theme of the study (e.g is it a personal project or focused on the workplace);
• Budget (how many people can we recruit and how, what kind of incentives might be required);
• The profile of the participants (e.g teenagers, adults or whole families); and
• Their current technology knowledge/competence and use (e.g how they might respond to the technology involved, how open are they to using new technologies).

Generally studies run from 1-3 weeks with between 1-10 participants. Topics explored depend on the study but could include, for example: sustainability in your everyday life; the role of mobile technologies in your life; or a ‘behind the scenes’ look at your job. Participants receive a ‘Mobile Diary Pack’ with various tools and instructions which direct the data collection around the particular design topic.

Mobile Diary Tools

A number of custom platforms have been developed to support online diaries, however, to date we have preferred to configure Mobile Diaries from existing platforms such as WordPress and Tumblr as this gives us greater flexibility over format, functionality and cost. Below we show the packs from a typical study (the list of available tools is growing and changing all the time, here we show typical ones we have used in the past).

During the study

Over the period of the study participants create collages, mind maps, videos and blog messages and send in mobile reports which appear on the blog. They also receive prompts, questions and reminders via the mobile phone and the blog.  The conversation is bi-directional: as we are receiving reports we are also responding with new questions or digging deeper into particular areas, and potentially redirecting the focus of the study as a result.

What do we see and learn?

The output of Mobile Diaries is a particularly provocative, experiential and sensorial insight into participant’s lives. As one of our clients described it “[we were able to] hear in people’s own words the challenges and learn about the context of sustainability in their day-to-day lives”. We share some examples below of the kinds of material generated and shared through this approach.

Life as it happens

Using their phone, participants capture images, text and audio and send this to the blog throughout the day. These reports give us a deeper appreciation of the activities that make up people’s daily lives and we are able to ‘see for ourselves’ actual examples and instances of things that might otherwise be anecdotal. Through these reports we can track events, locations, and a sense of participant’s emotions across the days and weeks. Over time, daily rhythms and habits emerge. The (near) real-time reporting increases the sense of immersion in people’s lives as we experience the activities ‘as they happen’ (Masten & Plowman, 2003).  This is complemented by more reflective accounts at the end of the day via the blog or with the video camera.

Personal Spaces and intimate stories

The use of video encourages in-depth descriptive accounts of events and surroundings from the participant’s perspective. The stills above are from one participant’s tour of their apartment building, which focused on areas relating to sustainability in the home. By giving participants video cameras and asking them to take us on a tour of their home we are able to explore and wander with the participant. This reveals some evocative spaces otherwise inaccessible to a design researcher; in addition to the explicit content being shared the video also conveys emotion and expression.

In another study focused on teenagers and their relationship to technology one participant gave us a tour of his shed, playing instruments as he told stories about the importance of this particular space to him.  These personal stories bring us closer to the participant’s world creating a sense of intimacy and proximity to the participants which is difficult to replicate in a one on one interview, discussion group or even during participant observations.

Inner thoughts and feelings, moments and metaphors

In addition to descriptions of external events and activities, Mobile Diary reports also capture emotions, feelings and inner thoughts. The examples above show emotional reactions and descriptions of personal feelings at particular moments in time. In some, the participant’s have used objects to serve as metaphors or symbols for representing emotions or ‘states’. This allows the participant to share inner thoughts and feelings that might have otherwise remained hidden. The open, honest and personal nature of these reports fosters empathy, often describing experiences we can relate to. That some are delivered in (near) real-time further increases the sense of connection; in that moment, we knew something of what the participant was thinking and feeling.

Action & Transformation

“Not only did it help us, the impact on participants and their way of thinking about sustainability was really interesting… the project really opened their eyes to their own patterns and behaviour and sparked some changes and definitely increased awareness” (feedback from client).

The process of self-reporting is an intervention designed to allow people to self-reflect and share aspects of their daily life; this process can also trigger participants to question their choices and everyday behaviours (Grinter & Eldridge, 2001).  The content of the Mobile Diary packs and the nature of the questions included can provoke new realisations and possibilities. For example, our self-reporting studies into sustainability in everyday life resulted in participants questioning personal behaviours and making changes in their lifestyles^[i]. For one participant, a discussion about sustainability with flatmates led to the installation of a composting unit in the household.

The interventionist nature of the method can be more intentionally activated through the inclusion of specific activities and questions within the packs. For example, in one study into sustainability we included sustainability challenges – new lifestyle habits -  that participants were asked to try and document throughout a week. These activities were particularly provocative at revealing emotional and infrastructural barriers to behaviour change.

And then…?

As the image below suggests, material generated from Mobile Diaries can be used in numerous ways. Mobile Diaries externalise aspects of people’s everyday lives through visual, tangible artefacts. These become shared resources that help us to understand current practices, provide a spring-board for ideation and allow us to envision how any future design might be taken up within the existing ecology of the participants life. For designers, the visual nature of the material allows for more active interpretation in ways not possible with written research reports.  For participants, the process of doing the Mobile Diaries means they are better equipped to reflect on and analyse their own practices, during follow up interviews and workshops (similar to primer tools), becoming active interpreters of the material and what it might mean for future designs.

The material generated through Mobile Diaries is not something to be reduced down into a traditional written report. The raw form of the material and the subjective picture it provides of the participants’ lives and world-view are essential to its immersive quality and its value for fostering empathy and connection with participants (Mattelmäki, 2005; Mattelmäki & Battarbee, 2002) ^[ii].

However, this does need to be balanced with normative business expectations of a ‘research outcome’, and the need to synthesise the data in a meaningful way for the client to then transmit to other stakeholders. Effective ways to share this tangible and personal material with those who were not directly involved is the subject of current research, e.g., (Sleeswijk Visser 2009). Our process includes the development of a multimedia ‘report’ that can support all the different formats of material generated. These reports introduce the participants through their own words and images, illuminate the themes that have emerged and identify some future possibilities to be considered. We have also found significant value in creating opportunities for co-interpretation of the material by clients and other designers, whilst this can be more time consuming, it is utlimately a more effective use of the material than simply ‘handing off the research’.

We have also found that the value of such methods is greater than their role as data collection activities. A personal connection is made with participants that can be of value well beyond the particular study. However, there is a tension between this and the day-to-day realities of client and agency practices and models which focus on deliverables and project phases, in between which there can be significant lags or breaks. There is still work to be done to articulate and communicate the value of such methods beyond their capacity to generate data ‘about people,’ and to embrace their ability to involve participants in a more ongoing and sustained way throughout the design process.

Mobile Diaries are a playful, immersive experience for the design team that allow us to discover something of the messy intricacies of participant’s daily life, valuable for both inspiring and grounding the design process as well as engaging directly with stakeholders. We’d love to connect with other designers employing similar approaches.

Acknowledgments

Big thanks to Chris Gaul for images & Will Evans for feedback and comments. Thanks also to Dr Toni Robertson and the @IDHuPLab at UTS, Digital Eskimo, Zumio, our clients & participants N.B Examples come from specific studies in which permission was granted for publication for the purposes of research. Our approach has been heavily informed by the ongoing research into generative methods inspired by Cultural Probes (Gaver, et al., 1999) and the work of Liz Sanders (www.maketools.com) as well as other research into self-reporting studies such as (Hulkko, Mattelmäki, Virtanen, & Keinonen, 2004; Masten & Plowman, 2003; Palen & Salzman, 2002).

References

Buur, J., Binder, T., & Brandt, E. (2000). Taking Video Beyond ‘Hard Data’ in User Centred Design. Participatory Design Conference PDC2000, New York, NY, USA.
Gaver, B., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999). Design: Cultural Probes. Interactions, 21-29.
Grinter, R., & Eldridge, M. (2001). y do tngrs luv 2 txt msg. ECSCW, Amsterdam.
Hulkko, S., Mattelmäki, T., Virtanen, K., & Keinonen, T. (2004). Mobile Probes. NordiCHI 04, Tampere, Finland.
Larson, R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1983). The Experience Sampling Method. In H. Reis (Ed.), Naturalistic approaches to studying social interaction: New Directions for Methodology of Social and Behavioral Science: Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Masten, D., & Plowman, T. (2003). Digital Ethnography: The next wave in understanding the consumer experience. Design Management Journal, 14(2), 75-81.
Mattelmäki, T. (2005). Applying probes – from inspirational notes to collaborative insights. CoDesign, 1(2), 83-102.
Mattelmäki, T., & Battarbee, K. (2002). Empathy Probes Paper presented at the PDC 2002, Malmö, Sweden.
Palen, L., & Salzman, M. (2002). Voice-mail diary studies for naturalistic data capture under mobile conditions.  CSCW, Louisiana, USA.
Sleeswijk Visser, F. (2009). Bringing the everyday life of people into design (PhD Thesis), Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft.
Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J., & Evenson, S. (2004)  “Taxonomy for Extracting Design Knowledge from Research Conducted During Design Cases.” Futureground 04, Melbourne, Australia.

Additional examples of other remote self-reporting techniques & studies & mobile/online tools

Digital Ethnography (pdf)

Digital Diaries

Digital Cultural Probes

Sticky Research (Video Diaries)

Revelation

7daysinmylife.com

[i] There is no way for us to tell how permanent these changes were, we can only be sure that particular practices were bought to people’s attention, and steps towards change were made.
[ii] The original Cultural Probes (Gaver 1999) were not designed to gather specific information, but rather to be a source of inspiration and empathy. Rather than being codified, transformed or translated into a report, probe material was designed to stand on its own as a rich visual resource for designers.

In our previous article, we focused on the first step to developing a User Experience (UX) strategy by presenting how user stories are generated, themed and prioritised, as a means of helping us to understand the shape of the project (what) and its purpose (why).  In this article we focus on the use of scenarios and paper prototypes to support a rapid and collaborative exploration of potential implementation approaches (how).

An Approach to UX Strategy

The goal of the strategy phase is to ensure that all stakeholders are similarly focused and aligned around project goals, i.e there is agreement in principle about the purpose of the project and the priorities for implementation.  A high level agreement to what the project is, why we are doing it, and how it will be achieved reduces the risk of budget blow outs or conflicts in the design phase by ensuring that all project stakeholders have similar expectations. In addition, it is only through an understanding of the scale and complexity of the project that the design team can accurately, or at least confidently produce a budget or estimate for the project.

Our approach to the development of a UX Strategy is motivated by three interrelated, pragmatic and theoretical drivers:

1. Firstly, getting the client team on board and in agreement during the strategy phase relies on these stakeholders having a shared understanding and vocabulary. Tools like scenarios and prototypes help to externalise issues and make them available for shared conversation.
2. Secondly, they also allow the project team to collaboratively and rapidly investigate options and expose constraints. The tangible and visual nature of these tools allows us and the client team to think, explore and discuss the potential project in a more concrete way by grounding conversations about the project in its context of use. This ensures decisions about approaches and priorities contained in the strategy are appropriate to the opportunities, boundaries and constraints of the particular project.
3. Finally, the third and perhaps most important reason is that tools like user stories, scenarios and paper prototypes frame the discussion about the project strategy from the perspective of the user experience. Doing this collaboratively is an opportunity to expose, explore and align the various agendas and perspectives of stakeholders and work through how they might come together in design. As a result clients are better able to understand the implications of project objectives and priorities, and refine them based on the impact this will have on the potential user experience.

From User Stories to Scenarios

Any of the high level user user stories generated as part of the early strategy phase could be implemented in any number of different ways. Different approaches to implementation will require different levels of investment and be more or less appropriate given the project context and constraints. So, once a list of user stories has been developed (as described in the first article) the next step is to identify the key scenarios. The intention is that by fleshing out a few specific key scenarios (combinations of user stories) during the strategy phase, it is possible to expose enough detail about the nature of the website that we can agree in principle to an approach with a shared understanding of where we are investing our time and why. In our experience fleshing out 4-6 scenarios will allow us to explore enough of the key aspects of the site/application. If not, then this is a sign that the project may need to be divided into smaller phases.

The intention of doing this work is not to find the solution or define the architecture per se, but rather to explore possible approaches and agree on an appropriate UX Strategy. We also hope to expose risks or contradictions between expectations and constraints (e.g budget).

… by fleshing out a few specific key scenarios (combinations of user stories) during the strategy phase, it is possible to expose enough detail about the nature of the website that we can agree in principle to an approach with a shared understanding of where we are investing our time and why… to explore possible approaches and agree on an appropriate UX Strategy.

Selecting Key User Stories

The user stories fall, more or less, into two categories. The first are that those that are simple, familiar or unambiguous enough that we can feel confident about budgeting them and resolving them as part of the design phase. These might include user stories that use common UI patterns that we are familiar with or that we have resolved many times before. The second group are more like ”black holes”. By that we mean ambiguous, complex or particularly unique to the project; if not better understood they will pose a risk to meeting deadlines or timelines in the design phase. Our goal is that by the end of the strategy phase we can a) be sure that they can be implemented and b) put a cost against them.

The process of fleshing out this latter group in more detail allows the scope and nature of the project to emerge through a focus on user experience. At the same time it exposes and challenges some of the assumptions and expectations held by stakeholders, or embedded in existing documentation.

The following is an example of a key scenario from the redesign of a university website:

As a potential student I can find out about the application process, find an available supervisor and apply.

This scenario is derived from these user stories:

• As a potential student I can find out about the application process
• As a potential student I can find an available supervisor
• As a potential student I can apply to study

The example scenario above was chosen because it represents a complex pathway that would be completed by a potential student over several weeks or months. Walking through such a scenario forces us to explore and confront a number of strategic, political, technical and user experiences issues.

Mapping out scenarios as user pathways

Once the key scenarios have been identified and agreed upon with the client, they are mapped out as user pathways.

Initial pathways are generated using a walkthrough process represented by post-its. We take each scenario and ask ourselves what would we would need to provide in order for that scenario to be achieved. We have to hand personas, business objectives, content examples, accessibility guidelines, and any relevant technical specifications to assist our decision making about how people might proceed and what they might need to do so.

Each step gets a post it/sketch to represent it, as shown in the image below. We aren’t working at the level of pages yet, just creating a trail of things that would need to exist in order for it to be possible to fulfill that particular scenario. This process allows us to think about the experience as a dynamic thing that happens over time.

Mapping Pathways

Analysing pathways

All the scenarios are mapped out in the same physical space and in relation to each other. If there is some cross over between the scenarios then that is shown physically by an intersection in the pathways.  It is likely that the pathways of earlier scenarios may have to be adjusted in response to what emerges out of the later scenarios. It is an iterative process and depending on the scale of the site, might take a few days to complete. In the image below, intersections in pathways were exposed via clusters of different coloured post-it notes.

Identifying Pathways

Rather than exploring or defining the approach to design or user experience from the perspective of features, this process allows the shape of the site to emerge through an exploration of user activities. Particular patterns about potential use can then be identified, which feed back into the strategy development process. For example, we are able to see that particular areas of the site, or pieces of content contain information relevant to most stakeholders, while others have value for only a small number. These patterns can inform decision making about priorities for the site and help clients to come to agreement in principle on approaches to various aspects of the project, including where time and money is best spent in the short term.

Drilling down through prototypes

Visualising the user pathways also reveals underlying technical and content needs and raises questions around feasibility, content and functionality. In some cases the issues and questions raised are better understood at a more granular level, i.e how they impact on specific interactions via the interface. Paper prototypes or mock ups are then used to rapidly drill down into these “high risk” areas. The image below displays an example of a paper mock-up used to explore possible ways of supporting a searchable index of university scholarships.

Sketch Prototypes

Seeing the potential user experience mapped out in this way provides the client with a different perspective on the project and this allows them to discuss the project the different ways. For example, this process will  expose how a scenario or user story, currently prioritised by the client team translates in design into a potentially very complex requirement, or requires the availability of a certain set of content not currently available. It can expose tension or conflict between a priority objective and what it would actual take to make that happen.

Often at this point, project realities begin to sink in and project teams are forced to realistically assess what could be achieved in the allocated time frame and budget. The visual pathways, mock ups and paper prototypes become visual and tangible aids to explain the issues and options, and support discussion, negotiation and resolution about appropriate approaches and priorities. We have found this technique is very effective for generating and supporting constructive discussions with the client when decisions about priorities are needed. The client has the opportunity to understand the impact of various decisions and requirements about technology or content in relation to the user experience. This supports the development of design principles and guidelines, and helps clients come to an agreement on approaches to particular aspects of the site or application. It can also lead to a revision or shift of emphasis for the project objectives.

The process of thinking through actual prototypes provides these stakeholders with a new way of seeing and new language for describing what is most important. As a result the client team is better placed to decide and describe the most valuable outcomes and confidently direct resources towards the most important elements of the project.

Summary

Creating an effective User Experience Strategy requires the alignment of perspectives such as technical, business, content and brand with that of the user experience. In this article we have described how we support clients to develop a User Experience Strategy that takes into account all these perspectives, based on an understanding of how it will translate into design.

We believe that a core part of developing a design or User Experience Strategy is about interpreting how ‘abstract’ business goals are translated into a specific design project. Scenarios and prototypes are light weight, visual tools that can be used to assist clients to rapidly envision the potential experience for users. They bring a tangible quality to conversations that can otherwise be ambiguous, allowing team members to collaboratively think through project goals and approaches to implementation. They force us to deal with the concrete issues of use in situ, provoking and facilitating critical conversations about overall strategy, opportunities and constraints prior to moving into the design phase. Most importantly they frame questions and decisions about functionality, brand, content and technology in relation to the impact this will have on the potential user experience.

As designers, we deal with users perspectives and the concrete situated issues of use as part of our daily practice. These collaborative tools enable the user perspective to sit at the centre of the discussion and decision making for our clients as well.

Acknowledgments
The reflection on methods outlined in this article was largely made possible through project work completed on behalf of Digital Eskimo, a social design agency in Sydney whose Considered Design methodology makes embracing these methods and approaches possible. We would also like to thank our clients UNSW, Melbourne Journal of International Law and Inspire Digital and our project partners Zumio and Redrollers for their generous commitment to sharing the design experience and process, and to all the participants who give time to our projects.

Collaborative design methods play a key role in aligning team members towards a shared and strategic project vision. In this article we describe how user stories stimulate and facilitate discussion and decision making with clients in the development of a User Experience Strategy. In our context (the development of online projects) the User Experience Strategy becomes an ‘in principle agreement’ on the shape of the project (what), its purpose (why), and provides potential implementation strategies (how). It takes into account all perspectives (e.g business, technical, marketing, brand) but privileges the intended user experience.

A collaborative approach enables clients to actively participate in the process, increasing the likelihood of achieving a collective vision for the project. This article focuses on the first step in the journey towards collaboratively developing a User Experience Strategy and is concerned specifically with how user stories are generated, themed and prioritized. Interested in more? We will be talking about this subject at UX Australia 2009 at the end of this month.

Background

Working agency side, our involvement as User Experience professionals in a project often starts after the client has already invested in developing initial project assets. These might take the form of requirements, objectives, user profiles, user research or feature lists for example. There might also be pre-existing content or collateral if an existing site or service is being replaced.

While this information goes some way to describing the future project, it does so via the different agendas of marketing, technical, business, or brand; each asset takes a different perspective and is presented in its own ‘language’.  These different perspectives can effectively point in different directions, making a holistic view of the project difficult. It can also mean stakeholders hold different visions of project outcomes. Engaging in design at this point means risking significant tensions and costly delays down the track.

Different perspectives on the project.                           Different agendas impacting in the design phase

Reframing the project

By collaboratively developing a User Experience Strategy with clients, we can create a shared and holistic vision for the project that guides us through the design phases of the project. Central to a User Experience Strategy is the perspective of the people who will actually use the Website. Part of developing the strategy is re-framing the project from a user experience perspective.

Looking at the project from a client perspective

Looking at the project from a users perspective

The client perspective often starts as an abstracted, inside out view of the project via feature lists and technical specifications.  A user perspective on the other hand looks at the project from the viewpoint of those who will use it. By re-framing the project in terms of the intended user experience we shift to this perspective. This perspective is necessarily more concrete because it forces us to take context into account. In order to effectively think through the project from the user’s point of view we must think though some of the variables of the situation in which it will be used. This is the role of tools such as personas and scenarios; they work to ground the project in the real world, ensuring we don’t design in a vacuum.

Creating user stories

User stories are collaborative design tools which help the team to think through what the project needs to deliver from the perspective of those who will use it. User stories are generated by means of a critical translation of all existing project information (e.g scope, project objectives, business requirements, content analysis, comparative analysis, brand guidelines). User research is also analyzed through this method and the majority of the user stories are generated from this resource.

User stories (derived from agile development practices) are short statements that include the role of the user and the activity they wish to perform: the achievement of some goal, in the context of some constraint. They articulate the future system from the perspective of those who will use it (see examples below). Personas and scenarios provide supporting background and context.

Example of how user stories are created from existing data:

Requirement: Display all new news content on the homepage

gets translated into:

“regular readers are able to easily see all new news content”

Or a feature description like: Podcasting

might get translated into:

“As a member I can subscribe to news stories about gardening”

It is common in the early stages of design for clients to communicate a solution as a way of communicating an intention. E.g. “users can see their shopping cart from every page on the site”. What we want at the start of the design process, however, is not a proposed solution but rather a clear understanding of what the project, and the users, are trying to achieve. User stories place the focus on what the user is trying to do, not how the system delivers it. User stories frame the problem space without identifying the solution.

During the strategy phase the user stories remain high level. They can be broken out and refined in more detail for estimating and implementation in later project phases.  At this stage of the project we also capture business goals as user stories, naming the institution as a stakeholder e.g. “As [client] I can promote the institution”. This ensures (and reassures the client) that all the objectives and emphasis in the original project assets are captured, though these kinds of user stories are likely to be replaced out over time by related stories that take a users perspective. There are some things that are not converted into user stories, for instance standards, business rules and specific technology specifications (e.g database descriptions, browser specifications etc). These are resources to return to later, as it becomes necessary to interrogate those particular aspects in detail.

Theming Stories

Once all user stories are generated, grouping and theming the stories provides a top level picture of what the site contains and reveals an initial ‘loose’ structure. It enables team members to confirm that all bases are covered and indicates the major types of patterns and flows the site is likely to support (e.g searching, looking up contact details, applying for scholarships).

In the next step, user stories are edited from a list of all the things we could have, to the things we should have. Determining what the project should do is central to developing an effective strategy. The user stories become the framework for supporting these strategic discussions about project purpose, goals and approach.

Prioritizing User Stories
The aim of the prioritization process is to enable the client team to come to an agreement on the overall goals that (in principle) must be met by the site and why. Many factors motivate clients when prioritizing the scope of a project; cost and time are common motivators, but personal preferences can also play a part. The focus on user experience provided by user stories helps people to think through the priorities in a different way. This is in part because they offer a common language that all team members can access. Talking “through” user stories also allows the client team to better understand the implications and differences between various decisions and approaches.

The value each user story has to the project depends on its relationship to the primary user groups (represented in our case by personas) and to the overall project goals. User stories are evaluated individually and in relation to each other, through open discussion with the client team. The following sort of questions occur during this discussion:

• What kinds of things would we have to do to get this done?
• Is it really important that these stakeholders (users) are able to do this?
• Is it actually possible for us to support this activity currently?
• Is it important enough to us that we should consider infrastructure/policy changes?
• Can we meet these goals another way?
• Do we need to meet these goals now?
• Is this a short or long term project goal?

Essentially, this is a discussion where the client team thinks through how the project would “look” with or without certain user stories. The aim is not to decide how the user stories should be met but rather to allow a more holistic view of the project goals and constraints to emerge. As the implications of meeting different user stories are considered, team members can get a sense of how their choices about priorities impact on the overall shape and form of the project. Based on these discussions clients are prompted to rank user stories, using the MoSCoW_Method of method of Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Wont Have . This means all issues are captured for future reference, but the most important issues are clearly stated and agreed to by all.

Our role in this process is to facilitate the discussion and guide decision making so that agreed project goals, primary stakeholders and prioritized user stories align and support each other. Sometimes a user story will appear important, yet it won’t align with the stated objectives. In this case it is our role to ask questions like: “This user story doesn’t support you to meet your currently stated objectives, so does the user story need to be re-prioritized, or do the objectives need to change?

Why User Stories?

Flexibility, accessibility and manageability
Compared to other project documents, user stories are conceptually very accessible, they are also fast to generate. Clients can easily edit existing user stories and add their own, regardless of their technical capability. Depending on the project, users can also be directly involved in the generation of user stories. From a project management perspective, they reduce potentially hundreds of pages of documentation to just 4 or 5, making them suitable for circulation and as a shared resource for discussion and feedback.

Cohesive and exhaustive
The translation of core project information into user stories is a relatively easy way to get an early handle on the project. Reading through the user stories gives a much clearer sense of “what the project is” than lists of features or content and functional requirements. Clients can easily read through the list and ensure that their concerns have been captured. In the early stages of a project we can often be anxious of missing things, and this methods allows all possibilities to be easily collated into one place.

Common language
User stories become a common language for the client team as well as the design team. They remove the emphasis on solutions and features, and instead frame the discussion around what the project is trying to achieve. This helps clients to focus conversation around the future design possibilities, rather than be held back by existing constraints or agendas. This is particularly important when there is a conflict between different client stakeholders as it allows team members to refocus the conversation on the end goals and work backwards from there.

Shift perspective on the project (for everyone)
Lastly, and most importantly, user stories fundamentally shift the perspective of the project from a list of abstract (and potentially arbitrary) requirements to a description of user focused activities; these are necessarily more concrete and tangible and allow the stakeholder team to conceive of the project in different ways.

The UX perspective provided through user stories becomes a framework through which we can examine and explore the future project strategically and holistically. The process of prioritizing the user stories with the client team becomes a strategic intervention, facilitating discussion around project goals and purpose. The project goals and possible ways of achieving them simultaneously emerge as a result of thinking through the project from a user perspective.

Next…

In this article, we have outlined the initial step in collaboratively developing a project User Experience Strategy via the generation and prioritization of user stories. However, any single user story could be implemented in a number of different ways during the design and build phases. Different approaches will require different levels of investment, and be more or less appropriate given the constraints. Prior to moving into design a better sense of the actual scale of the project is needed. To to this we use visual, tangible and collaborative design tools such as paper prototypes, which allow team members to think through core user pathways and key interaction elements in more concrete ways. While user stories help us to get a shape of the project (what), its purpose (why), these tangible design tools support a shared conversation about potential implementation strategies (how). These steps will be presented in a future article.

Acknowledgments
The reflection on methods outlined in this article was largely made possible through project work completed on behalf of Digital Eskimo, a social design agency in Sydney whose Considered Design methodology makes embracing these methods and approaches possible. We would also like to thank our clients UNSW, Melbourne Journal of International Law and Inspire Digital and our project partners Zumio and Redrollers for their generous commitment to sharing the design experience and process, and to all the participants who give time to our projects.

UX Australia

Michelle and Penny will be giving a presentation called “Emerging a user experience strategy: People, pencils and post-its,” at UX Australia 2009. Their presentation will outline a collaborative approach to developing a User Experience Strategy: a shared vision for the project that aligns all perspectives (e.g business, technical, marketing, brand), but is driven by the potential user experience.