As designers we are naturally optimistic, always on the lookout for opportunities to design new and meaningful experiences. And recent years software and service development has given us reason to be optimistic. A sensation that something new and game changing is about to happen in software design has started to grow. We have gone from “there are loads of potential for new applications or services in this or that area”, to “there’s a bunch of apps for mostly everything”. And they’re working better, smoother and faster across platforms and services. We are nowhere near to be done with this paradigm, but the development is signaling that something is about to change. As more services and applications are being developed, purchased and downloaded, it has become problematic to keep track of and maintain the ones we have.

Desires have turned into expectations

For several years Veryday (formerly known as Ergonomidesign) has been working with Microsoft as design partners, and while doing so we have been able to watch the transformation process courtside. In the process of developing apps and strategies for various business areas, It has become clear to us that the metro interface and now the W8 OS means a new mindset for users and designer alike.

So thinking of the W8 OS which is the latest contribution to the software landscape, touch first thinking seems like a natural next step tying together the ecosystem of services and devices. Apple are taking comfortable steps in the same direction, and noteworthy in that context is the Launchpad introduced in OSX lion to resemble the springboard in their iOS – Although not introduced as the menu of first choice, I’m sure it will play a more important role in future releases. Google are also redesigning Chrome to be more touch friendly, providing a better experience on their Android OS, thus completing their cloud based OS ecosystem. All these developments are driven by users demanding more convenient and seamless experiences across devices.

These demands have turned into expectations of service offerings. However, while services and applications have grown more sophisticated, efforts to bridge platforms, aggregate information and facilitate exchange with other services have all been developed. While on the one hand these effort have helped users connect to the desired information, they are making simple applications increasingly complex to both use and develop.

Our digital backpack

Services try hard to make sure users are kept satisfied and often succeed in keeping them snared in their ecosystem. A problem when introducing a new service is that users already have a set of services that they invested their time and personal content into and trying something new often means having to do less of something else. Statistically while we download a lot of applications onto our smartphone and tablets, we only actually use a small number of these.

We have a number of applications on our devices we use for repeated use cases. Applications that we are faithful too tend to be used across platforms or as part of self-made ecosystem that engage different applications to accomplish an important tasks. We don’t really get rid of applications just get more of them. Can we have too many applications? Many of us already do.

Cross service experiences potentially allows one service to focus on its core experience, becoming a complete ecosystem by harnessing others services.

From monologuing to dialoguing

I believe that Microsoft has taken an important step, by creating a simple way for services to share information with each other, putting an end to service monologuing. It’s been made possible through what they call “Contracts”. For those who are not familiar with Contracts, its a way for any service to tell other services “this is the information I’m willing to share”, and reversely “hey can I get this from you?”. And adding the Bing search engine makes it much like the old card game Go Fish.

These cross service experiences potentially allows one service to focus on its core experience, becoming a complete ecosystem by harnessing other services. Which those other services may be will depend on the user and the use case. So by letting users find their own way of using the information exchanged between apps, they will come up with new use cases and ways that we designers could not anticipate. Allowing experiences to be extended across services, makes service experiences richer by utilizing information from others. An application becomes more of a starting point in an experience journey rather than an isolated island.

One can further imagine that experience journey as described above, will make specific services more viable as long as the touch point of the information provided can contribute to making enough other services better. Often, specific services that focuses on a core experience gives less reason for frustration than the ones that try and accomplish too many things.

Take for instance a video streaming service, that is specialized in delivering high quality video experiences. One of the core use cases is discovery, knowing which to watch. By adding the power of IMDB data, youtube trailers and social commenting, the song I’m listening to, the shortlist of a well renowned film critic, my location, what’s airing at the local cinema or recently on the news, or any other service that can help our associations while in discovery would greatly improve the selecting procedure.

No video service has the capability to be all of these and I’m glad they’re not trying. We find this information elsewhere, but I imagine getting access to that information right there and then would make the experience so much greater.

So…

I see this evolvement as a more organic development of applications and services, where it suddenly becomes easier to find the voids and the empty spaces that are the opportunities for design. And despite the fact that i don’t need an application for everything in life, it suddenly makes more sense and becomes more viable to design applications that do one thing very well.

For users, service experiences can become more serendipitous, to find interesting content by using your own chosen services as filters. This will lead to better content. What is really exciting is that we can’t yet foresee how that mindset will be applied to more complex business challenges, “the internet of things” or new startup opportunities. It is a great time to be developing new services.

As Scott Berkun advises, stick with it until after the 10 minute mark.

Duration: a little over half an hour

Perhaps it’s simply the wishful thinking of a James Bond fan (I have all of the movies on DVD), but I find it interesting and useful to compare what I do to other lines of work. For example, last year, I compared user research to ghost hunting.

What can we learn from James Bond?

In both occupations, an expert is brought in to solve a problem. In one case, an evil madman and his deformed henchman are threatening to destroy the Middle East oil fields with a nuclear weapon. In another case, an electronics company wants to redesign its order management software. In both of these critical situations, we investigate the problem by conducting background research, questioning people, and observing behavior. We overcome obstacles to get to the truth and eventually conquer the problem.

Get the Briefing

After an exciting opening action sequence, Bond meets with M, the head of MI6, to learn about his new mission. M gives him the background of the situation, profiles of the people involved, and a direction of where to begin the investigation.

In user research, our M is usually the project manager or the salesperson –the individual who has had the most contact with the client during the sales process. It’s a good idea to have an internal meeting to get all the details and understand the project before the official kickoff meeting with the client. The last thing you want your team to do is go in unprepared and uncoordinated in your first meeting with the client.

Do advance research

Before engaging the enemy, James Bond examines exisiting documents and photographs, gathering background and situational information.

In user research, it’s also important to do advanced research to understand the client and the project. Examine the current interface, background documents, and talk with people familiar with previous research. You can ask the client and stakeholders better questions and you can better understand their answers if you’re well informed before the first meeting.

Don’t rely too much on technology

Bond meets with Q, the technology expert, to get the latest gadgets. And sure, the cool cars and laser watches are fun, but they only give him a slight advantage. Most of his success is due to his own wits, dexterity, and fighting skills.

Likewise, researchers need to be familiar with the latest user research technology (audio and video recorders, cameras, online testing tools, etc.), but the most value comes from people – both those you interact with and you through your skills, knowledge and effort.

Get help from others

We tend to think of James Bond as a loner, but in truth he gets a lot of help from other agents (i.e., CIA agent Felix Leiter) and by allying himself with others (i.e., Pussy Galore, Octopussy, Vesper Lynd, etc.).

User research can be conducted alone, but it’s much easier to have a partner to help you with note taking, handling the equipment, and providing another perspective. In fact, two is the ideal number of people for user research. In addition to helping run the sessions, a second researcher or designer is someone you can collaborate with to understand the findings and discuss solutions. Two heads are often better than one when you’ve both witnessed the same research sessions firsthand.

Get out into the field

James Bond doesn’t sit at a desk in a command center, observing spy satellite images and listening to communication monitoring devices. Even though that’s how a lot of espionage is conducted today, Bond knows that the most useful knowledge comes from being out in the field, talking to people and observing them in person.

Similarly, a lot of user research today is conducted in a usability lab, remotely through web conferencing and screen sharing software, and through unmoderated, web-based tools. But, like espionage, the best information is gained by going out into the field to talk with and observe people doing their usual tasks in their natural context. There’s no better way to understand users and their needs than by seeing their everyday jobs firsthand.

Observe remotely when you can’t get out into the field

In addition to going out into the field, James Bond can use remote surveillance, satellites, and listening devices to gather information.

Unlike spying, we have to get participants’ permission, but we can conduct usability testing and even contextual inquiries through web conferencing and screen sharing software. It may not be as good as being there in person, but it’s better than not being able to do any research or limiting the research to only the people we can travel to.

Spy on people

As a spy, Bond surreptitiously observes suspects. The advantage is that he can see what people naturally do when they don’t know they are being observed.  They don’t act differently; as they would if they knew they were being observed.

Obviously, it’s not ethical for user researchers to spy on people in private locations. We have to get informed consent from participants, which requires us to tell them about the study. The problem is that knowledge of being observed affects behavior. There’s no getting around this dilemma; it’s just something that we have to accept and take into consideration.

Neverthless, we can learn from James Bond in leading discreet observations of people in public places. Unlike spying in private locations, there’s no law or ethical rule against simply observing people in public sites. Remain incognito and observe what people do naturally when they don’t know they are being watched. Take note of the environment, the interactions between people, the artifacts involved, and the problems they encounter.

Interrogate the right people

In addition to observation, James Bond gets much of his information by questioning people –using force if needed.

Obviously, user researchers can never use force (however tempting that may seem sometimes), but interviewing is a key method for gathering information. Start by interviewing your clients and other stakeholders to understand the current situation, the business needs, and the goals for the project. Although observation of natural behavior usually gives you better insights than asking people about what they do, it’s still important to ask questions to clarify your understanding of what you’re seeing.

Report findings to headquarters

Because he’s out in the field and could get captured or killed, Bond periodically updates M at headquarters about the progress of his investigation. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know what was going on with the investigation.

A user researcher is often out in the field conducting research, doing analysis, and creating deliverables. Weeks might pass between reviewing the final research plan with clients and the final presentation of the research findings. Without knowing what’s going on, clients sometimes wonder why research takes so long. Providing periodic updates makes your client and team feel like progress is being made. It also keeps them involved in the research, which makes them feel more invested in the findings.

Avoid capture and escape death

At some point during every mission, Bond gets captured and set up for an elaborate death, whether it’s to be cut in half by a laser, attacked by sharks, eaten by crocodiles, or burned alive by rocket exhaust. After the villain explains his entire plan and conveniently leaves the scene, Bond narrowly escapes.

Although we rarely come across evil villains, we sometimes do get challenged by a particularly difficult client or stakeholder. With these people, it’s important to keep your wits about you to avoid getting injured. At other times, we get captured by long-winded and opinionated participants who completely take over the session, pontificating on irrelevant side-tracks and resisting all of our attempts to regain control of the session. When you find yourself in this dire situation, remain calm and look for a way to wrap up the session. If you can’t reign in a difficult participant, then it’s best to simply end the session.

Defeat the henchmen

Bond villains are always protected and aided in their evil schemes by at least one particularly dangerous henchman. Bond has to fight and defeat the henchman, often several times, before finally confronting and defeating the primary villain.

In user research projects, the villain is the problem that you’re trying to solve (such as a poorly designed application that you’re trying to redesign), and the henchmen are the people and situations that get in the way of solving the problem (such as an IT manager who says the new application has to be created using SharePoint). To solve design problems, you often have to defeat these organizational “henchmen” that cause the problem to exist in the first place. Achieving this coup may require more than interface redesign; it may require changing business processes.

Kill, when necessary

Okay, this one only applies to James Bond. Although it may be tempting at times, unless you’re properly licensed by the British government, please refrain from killing participants or clients.

Sleep with beautiful women

Yeah, sadly, this one too only works for James Bond. There are Bond Girls, but there are no Research Girls (or Guys). It’s better to just keep your mind on the research.

Call in reinforcements

In addition to henchmen, Bond villains often have an army of fighters to defend their hollowed-out-volcano or underwater fortresses. Bond doesn’t attempt to defeat this entire army himself. He calls in British special forces units to fight off the villain’s army, while he focuses on defeating the villain and his main henchmen.

User researchers don’t solve user experience problems alone either. We find problems and recommend solutions, but we need an army of reinforcements (designers, developers, project managers, and clients) to fix the problems. It’s truly a team effort to solve user experience problems. Don’t attempt to go it alone.

Defeat the villain

At the end of the mission, James Bond always defeats the villain, usually surrounded by explosions and massive destruction. But Bond doesn’t always defeat the larger enemy, and some villains (such as SPECTRE leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld) return again in the future.

For a user researcher, “defeating the villain” means recommending solutions to the problems found. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that those recommendations will be implemented correctly or at all. If we simply hand over our research findings and walk away at the end of the research phase, it’s likely that the problems will persist. That’s why you should remain involved throughout a project to fight the user experience villains as they continue to resurface.

Conclusion

By this point, you’ve either realized that user research and espionage have more in common than you originally thought, or you think that I’ve made a big stretch comparing the two. Either way, there’s no denying that we gained a different perspective and new insights about the user research profession. If you’re a user researcher, you may never watch a James Bond movie the same way again.

Problems thus arise when we try to define what user experience (interaction design, experience design etc also) is. Where it ends, what it concerns, and what it can claim.

Nathan Shedroff touches on this in a good post in Boxes and Arrows. And suggests that we regard experience design in its larger form.

The way I see it, at issue is the question of abstraction. At what level, and on what basis, do we accurately abstract from the specific (situated, contextual experience)? What methods and what theories privilege our claims to understand our observations; and from there to recommend or even predict outcomes?

Experience design claims to know better both a user experience as well as its design. The paradox therein being that no experience is designed. Experience is either in the Now, in which case it is event. Or it’s in the past, in which case it is reflected upon and then retold.

Design, by abstracting according to principles, experience, tradition, and constraints, seeks to improve and master. It seeks to design what will be experienced later. It is already a projection forwards in time of something contemplated and designed now. There’s no escaping the abstraction of design from experience. Experience design abstracts its interactions with the help of concepts, models, and other factors by which we can better anticipate outcomes. Our entire disciplined is a forward thinking, and hopeful projection of future interactions and experiences in some correspondence to models and concepts with which they were thought through (designed).

Here designers seem to bifurcate in at least two directions. Those who seek effectiveness and those who seek pleasure. Experience design either measures its success on the basis of functional adequacy — a utilitarian model of the value of human activity. Or it seeks satisfaction and happiness — an experiential view of human activity.

Brands engaged in experience design practices will tend to receive advice according to the philosophical bent of the designer: use, utility, functionality, effectiveness, or satisfaction, happiness, serendipity, desire. Put simply, quantity vs quality. Or that value which is easily quantified (and measured) vs which is enjoyed (and appreciated).

These are a vastly over-simplified dissection of the discipline.

But it has struck me, over the years, that designers will tend towards the object of experience or the inner experience of the object. Towards the design and aesthetics, the functionality and objectivity of a “thing,” or the inner meaning of the thing, as experienced uniquely by an individual. Object and subject.

Both are needed, obviously. For a design practice to seek a full and holistic appreciation of its own field, it must have a well-articulated and descriptive language for what it observes. And it must have an honest and self-reflective understanding of how it organizes its observations and from which it draws its claims.

There is a vast amount of understanding of how people interact, of how interactions become organized, of how patterns (habits, traditions, rituals, pastimes, games, etc) form and persist over time, and so on.

I can’t see any reason why those of us interested in the place of technology, as object world and as subjective experience, would ignore the work of anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and many others long working in the human sciences.

All design, at some point, must draw its boundary. How much does it claim and on what basis. Clearly we understand that the complexity of human affairs disguises a high degree of identity and repetition. Technologies sit within that complexity, and should not be regarded outside the context of their use if they are to be understood — as objective constraints on subjective experiences.

Unless we dig deeper and think harder about our own discipline, we risk losing the field to what much of design is, and always has been: a matter of taste.

She couldn’t do those things she loved anymore. Horseback riding was physically impossible, just like playing the piano. Those late night dinner parties were just too intensive. That hurt Maria, but what hurt her most was that her friends sometimes made comments that she looked so well. Her friends thought that Maria was winning the struggle against her illness, while in fact Maria’s treatment was not catching on. She was slowly dying.

While I did research on the context of struggling with a severe illness I learned that we lose one fourth of our social environment when we are diagnosed with a severe illness. That is quite a lot, especially in the time that you need that social contact the most. It creates support, self esteem and makes the illness more bearable.

Quite frankly I was stunned by this. Because I have a technical background, I know there are many amazing technologies which change the world rapidly, especially in the way we communicate. But yet we cannot utilize these technologies to communicate about our thoughts, feelings and health.

The Necklace

It was after that experience I started to design for ‘intimate communication’. The Necklace became the first design in this genre. It is a piece of jewelry for breast cancer patients. After each important moment in your struggle against this illness you add a new link. By gently pushing a link of the necklace onto your skin it withdraws a small blood sample without any feeling of discomfort. This link then changes color based on your blood values. The deeper the color of the link the healthier you are. Such information infused decoration allows you to see, at any time of the day, how your recovery is progressing and lets you communicate it with your love ones whom you learned how to read The Necklace. In this way this unique piece of jewelry symbolizes your personal story.

Design for Debate

The interesting thing is that The Necklace is not an actual product, but a tangible and interactive future scenario about that our intimate communication could be like within the next ten years. This design is currently on tour with the Nano Supermarket, a traveling exhibition full of speculative products which could be realized within the next ten years with the help of nanotechnology. During this tour I got a lot of mixed comments; either people loved the design, or deeply hated it. They explained how it could have helped them in their disease, or how they would hate to give up their privacy.

Because it is a tangible, interactive and realistic design people can engage and experience it. They can actually talk about it how it would affect their lives, because it is there, right in front of them. This was exactly the point of the design. It was not designed to be a future product, but to be debated about. Through these comments I learned a lot on how people experience communication in the context of health and on how they see products influencing this communication. It is a design for debate.

User Experience

I believe that we need such realistically crafted future scenarios in order to investigate what we want our future to be like; specially in the case of ‘intimate communication’ via technology. We can than start to create new dimensions in the way we communicate via technology and become closer. The user experience of these scenarios is therefore very important. They either make or break the illusion, and therefore the discussion. This experience is needed in Design for Debate.

As Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: “Objects are carriers of experiences and emotions”. Designers can and should create those objects. The people who engage with the objects then are able to create the future.

For many people, including designers, sustainability is the buzzword of the moment.  Over the last 30 years, however, there has been a growing awareness of the environmental problems caused by the exponential growth and human development worldwide. The higher demands placed on the planet due to the growing demands of such things as food, energy and materials is reaching epidemic proportions. In short, many of the problems affecting us today are happening at rates faster than we can curb and counter. Some of these specific problems include the high rates of consumer goods wastage, air pollution, energy production, transportation and the consumption of natural resources. These are only a few of the problems with which we have to contend. But as we begin to narrow the focus down to our specific roles as designers, some concrete examples of these problem include the ever-pervasive mobile phones as well as other electronics with their high rates of disposals. Subsequently, these high rates of product disposal dictate higher rates of natural resources needed to replace those discarded items. While not only applicable to mobile phones and consumer or electronic goods, there are easily identifiable examples with which almost everyone can relate. These example of wastage can also be applied to many other scenarios, and serves to compound the overall problem, when we begin to apply to our work as designers of products as a whole. What this means at a fundamental level is that as designers from all spectrum, we need to actively engage and find solutions for this growing epidemic. We need to have a clearer  understanding of sustainability and what it means for us if we are to remain progressively relevant. We need to understand:

• What it means to be sustainable in the context of our work
• How to embrace, advocate and strategize for more sustainable design practices
• Practice sound environmental design with impact in our work

The premise of sustainability  asserts that for us to continue to survive as a society, we must ensure that both present and future generations can continue to thrive without compromising the lives and existence of either generation. This means that as we go about the task of designing products and services, we should do so more consciously and responsibility  and comply to a principle of sustainable design – the ideal that what we do today cannot take away from enabling future generations to sustain themselves. There are many drivers also forcing us to pay attention and one of these is the growing base of users advocating for more eco-conscious design.

Today, users are more aware of the environmental issues that face us collectively, and their rising expectations in product and service design, is a  major trends and drivers of sustainability as a business essential. User experience and design is therefore strategically positioned to change our value offering by incorporating sustainability metrics as part of the overall design criteria. Accordingly, we have an opportunity to transform user experience and design from a commoditized offering into a value-critical service by incorporating sustainability into the existing and emerging  frameworks that drive our practices. We are gifted with a foundation in good analytic tools and methods that can be extended to collect additional data from users about their product usage cycles.  Furthermore, the trends and challenges for sustainable practices make the business case for adopting and implementing a sustainability framework that incorporates user experience as essential.  The key success factors for implementing a sustainability-led user experience is foundational and necessary if we are to survive as a field with evolved value.

At its core, the design of everyday products, solutions and /or services is the problem that underlies the environmental issues we face today, and which we will continue to face the future. Design and designers are part of the environmental problem and we should feature prominently in finding solutions that produce more sustainable creations. Whether it is the design of a poorly built product that breaks down because of poor material selection, or the decisions that we make to design a physical product over a comparable service subscription solution option, are all part of the kinds of decisions that we we will have to address as we move forward. These are all decisions that eco-conscious user experience researchers and designers will face in the future.

At a more detailed level, we need to begin to question the value and output of the designs with which we are engaged and consciously address many questions that are have design touch-points. Some of these questions include but are not limited to:

• What is the ultimate goal of the design?
• Is there really a need for the new design? In some cases this decision is out of our control. However we can become advocates where possible.
• Are there solutions that would require little to less materials – for example a web – based service subscription over a solution that produces material waste?
• If material are used in the solution, are the materials used in the product ethically sourced?
• If material are used in the product you must design, are these materials toxic?
• Can my users service these products if they break?
• Is the product durable?
• Is the product too heavy; is it portable?
• Will the product have an afterlife?
• Is the product energy efficient?
• If there is a User Interface component have you provided the user with energy saving and management options?
• What does this design mean for universal access?

All of these questions map easily onto sustainability goals that we can set at the onset of design by having a deep level of user understanding and needs through research. Today the push for more eco-awareness in society, and subsequently in design, has created a new class of consumers,  whose core values align with such things as:

• Avoiding pollution;
• Conserving natural resources;
• Eliminating wasteful products;
• Being energy efficient;
• Universal design and access.

These consumers (users) have different criteria for their product experiences; they demand integration of their core values, not only in the final products but also in the design process. Understanding this paradigmatic user trends is the role of user experience in the age of sustainability. How can we respond to the changing user needs and goals and how can we tie this back to our role in development and design? Therefore, it stands to reason that as the field of sustainability ripens into a practice, we need to take a deeper look through the lens of our own world and anchor ourselves solidly on this large and amorphous field called sustainability and respond to the collective views of a growing force of socially conscious users.

How can we engage?

Regardless of the type of designer you are (visual, experience, interaction, or other, you can engage initially by embracing some fundamental guiding principles to design. Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann About Face (2003) touches upon the topic of ethical interaction design which could be applied here and used as foundational guides to sustainable design. Cooper and Reimann list four principles that designers can use as guides to design. The principles in many ways resonate with the sustainability movement and are still relevant today. According to Cooper and Reimann, interaction design needs to follow these key principles. They should be:

• Ethical [considerate, helpful]: Do no harm; improve human situations
• Purposeful [useful and usable]: Help users achieve their goals and aspirations: Accommodate uses contexts and capacities
• Pragmatic [viable and feasible]: Help commissioning organizations achieve their goals; accommodate business and technical requirements;
• Elegant [efficient, artful, affective]: Represent the simplest complete solution; Possess internal (self-revealing, understandable) coherence and appropriately accommodate and stimulate cognition and emotion

Further, we must engage at the tactical and strategic levels to translate the changing relationship that businesses will have with customers to ensure we meet a new standard of user experience.  Beginning by employing the basic ideas purported in such old time favorite books like Cooper and Reimann is a great first step.  The growing base of informed and ecologically conscious users do not care only about functionality but impose their core values on the products they purchase and chose to use in their daily lives. As user researchers and product designer we hold the key to engaging with the wider movement of sustainability at both strategic and tactical levels.

Why else should we care?

Against the backdrop of the growing criticism and the negative social and environmental implications of globalization, many companies have become active in reporting on activities undertaken to prevent these externalities of production. The trickle-down effect that will eventually have all layers of industry having shouldering some level of responsibility has led to an onslaught of new job titles such as a recent Amazon job posts:  Sr. Sustaining Engineer, Sustaining Product Design Engineer, Product Design Sustaining Manager. We need not even look far to see that companies in the Design space, such as Artefact are already taking strides into embracing sustainability as a part of their design cycle. On the reporting front, take for instance trends in Europe and Japan where sustainability reporting accompanies regulatory requirements and government encouragements. The number of reports that now include social reporting alongside financial, has increased considerably. Understanding and viewing the wider sustainability initiative through the lens of our own practice is important to evolve user experience and design as fields of practice and remain relevant as key decision drivers in the product lifecycle in the end.

There are already a large number of posts discussing user research planning and structure so I didnt really see the need for one more. What I did want to document, is the ‘people’ aspect of the research and summarize which techniques that worked well for me.

1. Listen – If I say listen, this is a bit obvious, but I am surprised at how many people that don’t really listen during user tests. Whether this is to get through the test as fast possible or an over concentration on the task at hand, people sometime fail to listen. To assist the dialog I often try to use the same terminilogy as the participants. An exmple of this is when I interviewed bus drivers as part of a new instrument panel study I asked them which term they used to describe the panel anc continued to use the same term. (Interestingly, this was not the same term the manufacturer (client) chose to call it.)

2. Use two people to conduct a user test if possible. This will depend on the client, scope of the project and overall goals but overall results improved. This will allow one person to facilitate the interview itself and fully concentrate on the test person. I find that test persons are quite sensitive to distracted facilitators and the overall quality of the results are better. The second person can then concentrate on documenting the research and making sure the technology is working (which is often a challenge).

3. People don’t open up until they are comfortable. For some test persons this never happens, but for most some simple techniques can insure this happens fairly quickly. If the test scenarios don’t require it, try to keep the lighting as low as possible. I try to have ample space to conduct the interview. No one likes to feel cramped. Water, coffee, fruit and candy all help to get test persons to exchange freely. In general, I often start the interview with a few non-intrusive background questions. It is important to view the interview person as an individual and not just a ‘cog in the research machine’.

4. Don’t help too much. I am quite guilty of this. Very often we designers, after spending countless hours thinking about a solution, have a difficult time just letting people be in their attempts to understanding the interface. The goal of the research to to get feedback of the process and the outcome and things take time.  Be patient – just give it five minutes, before jumping in.

5. Don’t use a script. When testing people try to be as authentic as possible. The same rules apply to presentations as well as interviews. When someone sits and reads a script, test people sense this and I believe react accordingly. Very often the script is pre approved by the client to insure that everything is included in the test. In this case, I usually take the script and distill it down to a few keywords and then ‘talk’ around each these trying to weave the questions in tot the discussion. Improvisation is key here.

These are what I have come up with so far.

If you have any more good tips let me know.

Today on Radio Johnny Jeff Parks talks with Veronica Erb about her presentation at the 10th anniversary of UX Week hosted by Adaptive Path. Veronica shares her experience sketchnoting at conferences and events around the world. She talks about how sketchnoting can be a great way to record information from presentations, practice your drawing skills, and improve your listening skills. Veronica also underscores how sketchnoting – unlike traditional note taking – is flexible enough to allow the designer to shift their strategy to highlight a variety of concepts quickly and easily.

Quotes

I like to say that sketchnoting is taking notes with more flair and focus than the notes you’d normally take…in addition to taking notes in the handwriting you usually use, you can also use fancy hand-lettering, draw the person who is presenting, or draw images that are happening while you’re listening to a presentation…It helps you listen and understand better…as well as practice something that is really valued today as a User Experience designer, being able to draw.

When I sketchnote I use one pad of paper, which is usually wire bound because it sits flat…and then I use one pen which is usually black…The great thing about using just one pen, you’re not going to be messing around and trying to switch to a different pen…because it’s a pen you can’t erase it so it’s a lot easier to remind yourself that you’re just drawing a descent drawing, not a perfect drawing.

Sketchnoting is a practice and a process. It’s NOT something that every time you do it, it has to come out with this beautiful product at the end.

Notes

* Follow Veronica on Twitter
* Veronica’s Sketchnotes on Flickr
* Sketchnote Army provide great examples of sketchnotes.
* The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde
* Sketchnotes: A Field Guide for the Busy Yet Inspired Professional by Binaebi Akah
* The IPEVO P2V camera
* Sunni Brown on Doodling at TED

When taking that deep understanding we must understand if the trends we are seeing are the edges (or even outliers) or the norm. The common elements that cause the variation (often very large variations) are often driven by culture (as well as sub-cultures) and personality types.

Many of us who were early to blogging and many other social platforms were very much outliers and at or beyond the edges. We built and designed tools and services based on our personality types and traits. When you have 1.5 billion people the internet getting 70 million or even 200 million people that are similar to the edge case traits can be somewhat easy. What is really difficult is that next 90 percent. Keep in mind people use social tools very differently. What has worked for the very early innovators through early adopters is extremely different from the different personality types that will follow.

This gap in understanding that the world is not like us has not become real to many building social tools. But, to some it has hit hard, very hard. Much of the early Web 2.0 theories about social web patterns were looking at the edges and mistaking them for the norm. This was relatively easy to see if you have a background in social analytics and adoption trending through a society at scale.

To get beyond the edges you have to go deep, very much like danah boyd has done with her work. The work danah has done is deeply helpful as it surfaces the difference in understanding across personality types, age ranges, and many cultural influences. She deeply understood the problem that most people on line (youth and adults) were not openly social as was (and sadly still is) the common assumptions of things to come. Privacy and small groups is much more common. Today we see Facebook privacy setting with 70% or more with “Friends Only” or tighter for sharing information ([Pew’s Privacy management on social media sites” report).

Gamification

This understanding the edges and norms differences is also incredibly helpful for things like gamification, which can cause really nice upticks in usage of social services with the innovator and early adopter types (in the Technology Adoption Lifecycle, that is the core of Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm framing). But, for the rest of the users it is either non-influencial or is deeply problematic. The mix of benefit and loss is essential to understand. At IA Summit I had quite a few discussions with UX people trying to fix the communities that were damaged by gamification in the long run after a nice initial uptick. It is a tough problem and a real issue to grapple with. This is incredibly noticeable on inside the firewall communities as there is a fixed user base and you can easily see who participated and how over time and the shifts (well, you do need access to the data, which some vendors don’t provide access to).

Today many of the one year to four year old social software deployments in organizations have gone through the edge types and been finding gaps in their services and tools offered as they work to get to the norm types.

The tools must change and adapt to the edges and the norms and the two user sets don’t really work in the same way. We have a lot of seeing, thinking, understanding, and building a better path for the mainstream folks as we bring people along on this fantastic transformation those of us on the edges have been through the last 20 years and more.

What’s interesting here is that while this all seems tactical, by pushing for a collaborative, cross-functional process UX designers are becoming grassroots strategic players. They are shifting the culture of their organization one project team at a time and pushing for a more agile and sustainable process. As these techniques take hold, the organization becomes more productive, efficient and effective. The organizational perception of the UX designer becomes more of a design facilitator, a UX *leader* and ultimately a company leader. This is the grassroots success that buys strategic access at higher levels of the organization.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether Lean UX is something new or a tried-and-true methodology that’s been practices for years. Even less important is what name you or your organization give it. As long as you’re working in this collaborative, iterative fashion you are approaching validated designs in a much more efficient way and no one is going to criticize you for not “doing” Lean UX or Agile or Agile Fall or whatever you call your process.

By working this way you are building new communication channels with other practitioners in your organization. These new channels facilitate the building of shared understanding which does not always have to manifest as a written document. Sometimes a conversation, a whiteboard sketch, a phone call or meeting can serve the same purpose as a Word document.