Whitney grew up in New York City and was initially interested in Computer Science, loves writing but missed technology and discovered HCI at Carnegie Mellon. Whitney talks about core principles for all of the work we do, underscoring the need for UX practitioners to become better negotiators and persuaders; and to focus on helping the organization become better at identifying areas of opportunity for our customers.

Quotes

“…one of the core tenets of the HCI program at Carnegie Mellon is this mantra… ‘the user is not like me’. As I got to know other practitioners in the broader community, there are some philosophical similarities between us no matter how we approach the work or what our educational backgrounds are… I became fascinated with those principles [about which we all] agree… the core principles for all of the work we do …mobile, web [regardless of] the context…”

“Think about User Experience as the way in which an organization operates and have it being core to its ethos… understanding how to be a great negotiator and great persuader… we often lack confidence in selling those ideas to the higher-ups within our organization as well as to other departments who are not in the trenches with us everyday.”

“We need to have a hand in not only designing the product but in defining what the product is, so that really does make us product strategists in a lot of ways… [we] need to be involved in the process a lot earlier than many of us currently are… understand the business needs and be able to communicate with the product folks as well as executives in the organization.”

Whitney will be talking at UX Hong Kong 17 & 18 February 2012.

Notes

* Follow Whitney Hess on Twitter.
* Learn about others who will be presenting at the second UX Hong Kong conference.
* Learn about Whitney Hess.
* Learn about Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX
* Learn about HCI at Carnegie Mellon

Today on Radio Johnny Daniel Szuc speaks with Bas Raijmakers about his topics at UX Hong Kong 17 & 18 February 2012. Bas has a social science background and studies how people use media and technology from an ethnographic point of view. Bas talks about the importance of telling stories of the people we design for while integrating those experiences into the design processes. Bas believes that by focusing on the stories of those for whom we are designing at the start, we can lead teams to intelligent design choices throughout a project’s lifecycle.

Quotes

“It’s important for our field to learn from [other] projects and [take time to] reflect … and find ways to express what we learn as knowledge.”

“I feel… reflection and making should not be separate. While you are in the field or in the workshop, these thoughts about the value of the work we do, come up. These are reflections and come up because you are engaged in the work. Doing the work brings up great ideas and how important it is to engage with designers to come up with good reflections together.”

“… techniques, methods, and processes that are related to co-creation and participatory techniques are a way of getting beyond the borders of your own discipline and allow you to collaborate with people in other disciplines… it is here [where] I include the participants because they are experts of their own everyday life …”

Bas is from STBY and talks about the importance of telling stories of the people we design for everyday. He discusses how integrating those stories into the design processes allows us to stay focused on the experiences our users want; allowing the design team to create an experience that follows the stories shared.

Notes

* Follow Bas Raijmakers on Twitter @hellobas
* Learn about others who will be presenting at the second UX Hong Kong conference
* Learn about Bas Raijmakers
* Learn about the Global Design Research Network (Reach) -
* Learn about the Service Design Network
* Learn about This is Service Design Thinking: Basics – Tools – Cases
* Learn about the Design Adcademy Eindhoven

Today on Radio Johnny Daniel Szuc speaks with Geke van Dijk about her topics at UX Hong Kong 17 & 18 February 2012. Geke specializes, at STBY, in design research for service innovation. She talks about the move from lab based testing to up front research, the service economy, consistent customer journeys as well as the importance of focusing on empathy when designing for other people.

Quotes

“… we needed to go out and visit people in their places … where they were actually making use of the web sites and mobile apps … we noticed the stories we got … were much broader than just online usage … from the stories and tests we could help our clients much more in the early stages with the concept development by moving it earlier in development the process … but how does it fit in the wider customer journey? Working with design teams, we found the consumer insights we created in the research were very interesting… they always said if we would have known this earlier in the process we could have used it in the concept development … it was quite a deliberate move to do the research earlier on in the design process and go out of the lab into the field and have a wider and strategic view with the client teams as well.”

“Co-production at the moment of truth … when the customer meets that organisation … and in service design one of the key constructs is when that moment is co-created … your customers are constructing the service delivery themselves … you can’t really predict how people are using the services … you need to have an integrated network of services … you need [to understand] the way people are using [your products / services] is [not a fixed process].”

“People are in the service economy and they are using multiple channels to get into touch with organisations … but on the inside of the companies (the service providers) that’s still a big struggle … many organisations are still organised as silos … you have the internet dept, call centre, marketing dept … sometimes they are even competitive with the KPI’s between each other… customers want to move seamlessly from one channel to another and have a consistent customer journey.”

Geke specializes in design research for service innovation. She talks about the move from lab based testing to up front research, the service economy, consistent customer journeys as well as the importance of focusing on empathy when designing for other people.

Notes

* Follow Geke on Twitter @hellogeke
* Learn about others who will be presenting at the second UX Hong Kong conference
* Learn about Geke van Dijk
* Learn about the Global Design Research Network (Reach) –
* Learn about the Service Design Network
* Learn about This is Service Design Thinking: Basics – Tools – Cases

Today on Radio Johnny Daniel Szuc speaks with Whitney Quesenbery about her topics at UX Hong Kong 17 & 18 February 2012. Whitney talks about the importance of storytelling, choosing the right UX method towards finding answers, and as we look forward, practitioner knowledge about both design and technology is critical. Whitney also talks about the trend of creating for the “social good” and how appreciating this movement can strengthen our approach to design.

Quotes

“Storytelling is a direct line from my work in theatre … understanding how we are all telling each other stories, when we try to understand someone who uses the products we make, we are trying to envision the story that they are telling themselves, what is the scenario that they are in, why are they interacting with us at all, and how can we create products that make that story a wonderful, easy, good story … as opposed to a bad, awful, difficulty, barrier filled story.

… all of a sudden we are really thinking about people situated in their lives and how the things we make fit into that life rather than how the person gets jammed into the software.

Over the years we have a pretty rich set of tools, how we move through the process … each of those techniques is really an answer … the answer needs to be modified to fit that new question … so it’s about understanding what question you are answering and then being able to think really hard about the right way to get that answer.

Summary

Whitney Quesenbery discusses the importance of storytelling in making products, how to choose the right UX method in projects, how practitioner knowledge about design and technology (a hybrid) is becoming important and how we should all continue to focus on people when designing products & services.

Notes

* Follow Whitney Quesenberry @whitneyq on Twitter
* Learn more about Whitney Quesenberry
* Learn about

Today on Radio Johnny Daniel Szuc speaks with Tomer Sharon from Google, who grew up in Tel Aviv Israel, studied at Bentley in the USA, has been in UX for about 12-13 years and focuses on research including past work at Checkpoint software technologies in Israel and now based in New York working as a Design Researcher at Google. Tomer will be speaking about one of the biggest challenges for UX practitioners which is how to persuade stakeholders to do and act on research.

Quotes

“Getting stakeholder buy in for UX research projects … people learn how to do research, but the soft skills are something that are hard, dealing with stakeholders who will not listen or won’t co-operate is hard”

Important to develop empathy towards your stakeholders as you do for your users. Learn as much as you can about the people you are dealing with, what bothers them, what is important for them, you will be surprised that UX is not the centre of the world … there are other things that are important and if they ignore you, there is probably a good reason for that … not always … empathy is one thing, humility is another thing … you are not always right, I learn that everyday.

one topic I see is called product personality and seen recent example of this with Apple’s Siri … use Siri not for completing tasks but asking it sill questions and just for fun … they like its personality, having a product personality means that a product communicates some human personality attributes that I as a user fit within the right context … its hard to do right.

Summary

Tomer will be speaking about one of the biggest challenges for UX practitioners which is how to persuade stakeholders to do and act on research. How to get them involved from the moment you start thinking about a research project, knowing your stakeholders and involving planting seeds. He is looking forward to the good food in Hong Kong and meeting the local UX community to understand the different angles and aspects of what is important for people in other parts of the world.

Notes

* Follow Tomer Sharon @tsharon on Twitter
* Follow UX Hong Kong @uxhk on Twitter
* Learn about others who will be presenting at the second UX Hong Kong conference.
* UX in Asia
* Learn about Tomer Sharon’s new book “It’s our research”

Today on Radio Johnny Daniel Szuc speaks with Lou Rosenfeld about his upcoming talk and workshop at UX Hong Kong 17 & 18 February 2012. Lou talks about how he entered UXD, his focus today around topics like the silos of user research, site search analytics and how to look at experiences holistically.

Listen to the Show

Show Time: 20 minutes 55 seconds

Quotes

so may silos of user research going on … put the data together … to achieve true insight … companies over spending and under delivering with their research budgets today … look at how they can put it together in new ways rather than spending more money on more siloed research …

site search analytics, what people search on your local site search engine … it bridges a bunch of different research methods … its data, analytics data on one hand … lots of it … its behavioural, but its also highly semantic and descriptive, its people asking you in their own words what they want from you and your site, its a great opportunity to study if you are delivering.

people are studying Apple more seriously … rising awareness of Service Design, its been happening anyway … more and more people are trying to figure out how to plug things together in a holistic integrated way across channels and lines of business.

Summary

Lou discusses getting more value from organisational research, site search analytics and what this means for business, holistic understanding and important skills he is seeing in younger practitioners and what he is looking forward to in Hong Kong including the famous 962 bus and his enjoyment and search of “wontons”.

Notes

* Follow Lou Rosenfeld @louisrosenfeld on Twitter.
* Learn about others who will be presenting at the second UX Hong Kong conference.
* Learn about Lou Rosenfeld and Rosenfeld Media
* Also … Daniel Szuc and Jo Wong write about the importance of designing for change

Recently we returned from UX Australia 2011 in Sydney where critical and inspirational themes emerged in presentations, workshops and hall way discussions with people including Kim Goodwin, Rachel Hinman, Janna DeVylder, Steve Baty, Jon Kolko, Samantha Starmera, Whitney Quesenbery around topics including context, culture, change, global thinking and our role in community and leadership.

It got me thinking more about our role as User Experience Designers in all this towards driving change in delivering great products and services in the places we work.In a recent piece on “User Experience Design in Asia” Jo and I wrote -

People are starting to ask themselves: How am I perceived within my organization? How do I perceive myself? How am I and the work that I do positioned within my organization? People don’t always have clear answers to these questions. And some people feel powerless to make any real change through their UX design roles and the products they work on.

We also recently read this thought provoking piece in a Melbourne, Australia newspaper titled – “Jobs made Apple great by ignoring profit” saying:

I have come to the conclusion that what has made Apple so different is that instead of having a profit motive at its core, it has something else entirely. Many big companies like to pretend this is the case — “we put our customers first” — but very few truly live by that mantra. When the pressure is on and the CEO of a big public company has to choose between doing what’s best for the customer or making the quarter’s numbers… most CEOs will choose the numbers.

Apple never has.

As paradoxical as it is that the pursuit of profit is what causes the long-term failure of companies, I believe that Apple’s lack of focus on profitability has actually made it one of the most successful companies in the history of capitalism.

To refocus, this is not an article on how to be Apple, rather we believe that we all need to better understand our tools, beliefs and values at deep personal levels in the places we work, live and breathe in order to understand our place to lead change and the soft skills to do that.

So one may naturally ask – what has this got to do with me?

One may be happy enough doing the task or activity on an assigned project i.e. wireframe, usability testing etc. Why should one be prompted to think about personal characteristics needed to lead positive change?  Further, why does one need to look beyond team, organisation, community and my city, my country and the world to create positive change?

Under current …

We walked away from UX Australia 2011 thinking perhaps there is an under current of soft skills we as Experience Designers need to be more self aware about to get better at helping the people we work with “move” to a new place and to work on projects that really matter and truly add value.

So … why change?

People usually want to change when they are not happy with the current situation and either recognise or are introduced to a better future state. They may not always know what the future state looks like, be able to articulate it or even know how to get there. They may also think there is no great motivation to change as its just too hard to do.

Change usually signifies movement or something different to people as they look to people to help show them the necessary and relevant elements to make change happen. Who should do this? Perhaps its our role to help people get there and to create tactics to move people and thinking. Perhaps its our role to help and mentor people to experiment and iterate to nudge change along in themselves and the places they work. An example of this is a unique event that took place in Israel in August 2011 called Lean UX Machine. Lean UX Machine was born in a surprising way and VCs identified a need for UX mentorship for Israeli startups from 12 local and international UX mentors,. It was the first time in Israel that people asked UXers to take the lead and mentor them.

What are some factors we can think more deeply about and recognise if we want to understand the places we work, towards changing them as part of creating better experiences?

Places & Projects

<strong>Its important that we recognise our role as “Design Facilitators” and get better at recognising the projects and places we work to see if they are in fact receptive to change. So what do we need to be aware of? (in no particular order)

• Recognition: do people recognize that the current situation is not working and that there can be another option?
• Alternative future states: what does it look like? Who is going to help design the future state?
• Open to learning: are there beginnings or evidence of an attitude that is willing to look at other ways to work? What will be the evidence of this?
• Leadership: is there a person in the business who is willing to help you outline a “User Experience Roadmap” and help invite the necessary people towards understanding and defining a plan as part of bridging new thinking into every-one’s hearts, minds and souls in the organisation.
• Places: what does the space people work in look like? Is it designed to encourage collaboration and open discussions? Do people look like they are energized and focused on improving the products they work on?
• Time: are people given the right amount of time to both attend to current products but also given time to help plan forward, improve and envision?
• Tone: how do people describe their work, colleagues, projects and the business they work for? Do they sound energized or deflated? Are there openings for change?
• Rewards: are people rewarded or punished for coming up with alternative ideas, bringing in needs and opinions of people from other parts of the organisation? Does the project plan provide the space to help design and iterate on problem sets?
• Team: how is the team structured? Are people with different skill sets and perspectives working together or is it left to a few people to own improving on the experience design?
• Management: does management encourage new thinking or does it crush it?
• The business and its legacy: What legacy exists in the current business? Is it useful, motivational or constraining? Where does it come from and has there been any signs of change that indicates the business is open to more change?
• Business models and goals: do you agree with them or do you see opportunities to help the business continue to profit in positive ways or is there also opportunity to design alternative options? Think of a business who disrupting traditional ways of doing things.

Your Takeaway — So if “culture” was a physical product, what does it look like and how do you get people around you to help design for it?

Your Role

We need specific skills and attitudes to help create change in the places and projects we work. So what are these? (in no particular order)

• Planning & facilitation: we need to stand in front of groups of people to provide activities that work on both tactical and strategic issues.
• Communications style: we need to embody the change we are aiming for. How do we want people to feel after they have worked with us? How do we want this energy to transfer to their colleagues and people outside of their team? How can our style teach people about how to create change in their work, products and onto the customer?
• Solutions not problems: we should listen carefully to existing problems as part of learning about how we can help. But we also need to be good at presenting possible solution states to help people shift their thinking and ultimately to help the business achieve their goals
• Shifting and challenging the status quo: its important to teach people to question and discuss alternative ways of doing things. Not for the sake of it, rather towards something better for all.
• Empathy: we work in a human field, so we should embed this in the way we work, in business and across every part of our engagement. How do people learn by our example

Your Takeaway – Identify the gaps in yourself that need to be supplemented with further learning to help create change in the places you work.

Spaces to play in

Recently we were invited to facilitate a workshop in Beijing to help bridge design research findings into design concepts. We were assigned a room and opportunity to not only deliver designs but an opportunity to show how teams can work together towards bigger goals.

Having a space that embodies a new way of working, learning and thinking is critical. It becomes the embodiment of the culture change you are creating.

So what should be in this space? Note – Will Evans has a wonderful article on “Design Studio methodology” that talks to some of this.

• Paper, pens and other goodies: materials for people to express thoughts publicly. Photos and other visuals to get people to think beyond the confines of the room.
• Music: music is a lovely tool to use in breaks and to relax minds.
• Food and drink: feed people so they have good energies to do great work.
• Breakout areas: as places to relax and look at the view. Its an opportunity to step away from the work focus and take a breather.

Your Takeaway – have a space for people do their best work

A future world

To facilitate change we need to show people the place they are moving to. What does the old world look like? What does the future world look like? What do we need to do as a team to get people to both think and behave on the journey to the future world? So how do we do this?

• Time: give yourself and the team time to help them envision the future world. This can help create ownership in the journey to get there.
• Visual: the future world should be physical and something people in the team and outside of the team can see and point to as you walk the path.
• Realistic: include realistic activities that are visible so that the rest of the team can experience the journey to this future world. Map it to design deliverables that show movement and improvement that should in effect talk to success metrics for yourself, the team, business and community.
• Heart & soul: check in with people in the team to see how they feel about the journey to the future world. Are people still upbeat and energized? Do people need to stop for a rest? Do we all need to check again on where we are all headed?

Your Takeaway – know what your future world looks like and find simple ways to communicate it.

Or … from Roy Luebke, Innovation and Strategy Consultant in an article titled “Linking Design, Marketing, and Innovation” -

Innovation is a result. Achieving innovation requires a combination of user research, competitor research, and market driver research (i.e. social, technical, economic, environmental, and political/legal evolutions) and analysis of these elements to make sense of the customers’ world and then creatively solve the challenges people have while operating in these worlds. Effective solution development and delivery requires the skills and talents of both marketers and designers, not to mention engineers, accountants, and customer service people as well. It is marketing and design people, though, who should be on the leading edge of opportunity discovery and customer problem framing.

In conclusion … Be water my friend

Conversations in our recent travels suggests the following characteristics at both an individual and organizational level:

• Flexibility
• Openness
• Creativity
• Humanity
• Empathy
• Humility
• Global Thinking
• Selflessness
• Objectivity
• Connectivity
• Add your own

Perhaps these characteristics and others not in the list speak to UX Values or Design Principles we want to live by and that talk directly to our practice, the people we work with, the businesses we run, the future business leaders we want and and the long term behaviours we want to change sustainably and persistently in people and places.

Bruce Lee summarizes:

Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

—–

Thank you:
Tom Wood, Ray McCune, Tim Loo, Neil Pawley, Gill McIntosh, Rob Findlay, Jin Zwicky, Raven Chai, Will Evans, Tomer Sharon, the Ekkli team, Bas Raijmakers, Geke van Dijk, Steve Baty, Whitney Quesenbery, Marc Rettig, Diana Adorno and Michael Davis-Burchat for your contributions and thoughts over time in the writing of this article.

Picture CC by Ian Mutoo

Today on Radio Johnny Daniel Szuc, in his continuing series on design in Asia, speaks with Adler Looks Jorge about how he got started on User Centered Design in Hong Kong. Originally from Portugal, Adler reflects on his experiences living and working within the multi-cultural society that is Hong Kong and how interactions with people and business has provided him an opportunity to look at solving design challenges from a diversity of perspectives.

Quotes

The trip to Hong Kong in 2006 made me excited about the mix of cultures, the differences and diversity and this sort of vibrance around the city. I continued my work as a design researcher at Politech University in Hong Kong and then an interesting position opened at Philips design in Hong Kong and have been there since 2007 as an Interaction Designer.

A place like [Hong Kong] is just perfect for any designer to get away from any one specific mind set and to realize there are so many different ways to see things. This is the core of my learning being in Hong Kong… the diversity along with the possibilities of meeting people… it’s a land of paradoxes where things come and go very quickly, compared to the rest of the world’s awareness of these things.

Branding is becoming recognized and seen as a very important element in any company. If designers understand the language of branding and partner with marketing they can really make a difference. This is something people recognize…design can influence product development…finding a common language where they can work together.

Summary

Adler shares his experience getting into the field of User Centered Design in Hong Kong and how the multicultural society has had a dramatic impact on broadening his approach as an Interaction Designer at Phillips Design.

Adler also discusses how critical it is for the designer to facilitate understanding of the value of design – without lecturing – to the multidisciplinary teams that make up nearly all organizations. He stresses that while this can be a frustration for many, the opportunity to be seen as a leader of ideas should take priority. Modeling this concept in the real world, Adler has been leading meetings with fellow Interaction Designers in Hong Kong to share ideas and approaches.

Show Notes

* UX Hong Kong

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Today on Radio Johnny Daniel Szuc, in his continuing series on design in Asia, speaks with Michael De Regt at Philips about his experience working in Hong Kong. Originally from the Netherlands, Michael shares experiences about cultural differences – corporate and lifestyle – in addition to different approaches to the design process in Asia compared to Europe and other parts of the world.

Quotes

I still feel that Hong Kong is a very busy place to get used to! I expected a bigger change coming from the Netherlands but I must say Hong Kong is completely accommodating to ex-pats and to people coming from other countries to work here… On the other hand if you’re not from Asia …so you tend to only scratch the surface of real China because I know under the surface there is still a traditional Chinese culture going on in Hong Kong.

There are always big discussions when a decision needs to be made about what would the user think? Anyone can have a different opinion about it and designers should look at what [others] think during the build. Those insights with examples, studies, etc allows for a good decision to be made.

I do believe being [in Hong Kong] a big part of the work we do here – that is different in parts of Europe – is in pre-product development. As a designer you have to be quick on your feet… and really quite pragmatic… you have to speed up your thought process on designs. You spend working time outside work or in the early morning to create concepts and analyze.

Summary

Michael shares his experience working in Asia. He talks about specific attributes or characteristics that he’s found successful while working in Hong Kong. Specifically he notes the speed with which products are developed and the ability to be agile and creative in all design solutions.

Michael also discusses the opportunity for designers to play a key role in product development beyond the pixels on the screen. A few ideas include seeking the chance, whenever possible, to immerse themselves in meetings and discussions with business leaders. In addition Michael shares how designers at Philips take a leadership role with multi-disicpplinary teams in brainstorming and explaining the value behind specific design choices.

Show Notes

* UX Hong Kong

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In this conversation, Daniel Szuc talks with UX Hong Kong speaker Rachel Hinman, senior UX researcher at the Nokia Research Center in Santa Monica, California.

Rachel discusses designing for mobile including the need to keep focused on contextual experiences both within and outside the mobile device; the importance of acknowledging the increasing demands of all users to be able to seamlessly transfer data; and the necessity of balancing technical specifications with the reality that we are designing these devices for other human beings.

Quotes

We like to call mobile devices mobile phones but they’re really not phones anymore…a phone is not like a laptop computer…it’s extremely unpredictable…so you have to be conscience of what that means for the experience.

I think we what we should strive for, or move towards, is an experience that is more about knitting a person and their content…something that is developing a sense of an awareness of the surroundings as opposed to going into their space on their device.

How do we develop better “through lines” is a really interesting topic and trend because people want to be able to move things very easily from one device to another or have some sort of universal way of accessing all their files or information. What does that future start to look like?

Summary

Rachel describes the challenges and incredible opportunities in designing for the mobile experience including the convergence of all mobile devices and the ability to quickly and easily transfer information.

Rachel notes that people don’t really care about the “plumbing” of operating systems/features, though this has been the focus of most discussions when designers discuss the mobile experience with users because we use these terms and ideas.

Shifting the conversation to the contextual experience means we are able to look not just at the technical specifications but also the human elements that are necessary in the creation of any great design.

Show Notes

* Follow Rachel Hinman on Twitter.
* Rachel Hinman’s upcoming book by Rosenfeld Media The Mobile Frontier – A Guide for Designing Mobile Experiences
* Learn about others who will be presenting at the first annual UX Hong Kong conference.
* Watch videos on Flickr that Daniel Szuc put together in promotion of the conference.
* Daniel Szuc talks about UX Hong Kong in a recent Radio Johnny episode.

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