UX London10 - 12 April 2013

Tom Hulme@thulmeDesign Director, IDEO

Don’t fight desire

‣ Don’t be frustrated if users “do it wrong”

‣ Find and embrace unhandled desire paths

Launch to learn

‣ Find the minimum viable experience

‣ Launch it

‣ You will be wrong

‣ Learn from that

‣ Don’t be precious

Two pizza team

‣ A concept from Amazon

‣ Teams small enough that everyone can be fed by two pizzas

‣ Everyone has line of sight to the customer

Jeff Gothelm@jboogieAuthor of Lean UX

Requirements are assumptions

‣ Articulate them as such and they can be rethought

‣ When the CEO says “do this”, you do it; when the CEO says “I think this”, you have a conversation then test the hypothesis

‣ "We believe building [this] for [them] will result in [this]. We will know we're successful when [this] happens."

Julia WhitneyHead of UX & DesignBBC

LondonOlympics 2012

‣ 30,000,000 timeline scrubs

‣ 25,000,000 full screens

‣ 21,000,000 chapter markers chosen

‣ 18,000,000 pauses

‣ Sport guides were conceived during user testing

‣ Bookmark titles were written manually

Ben Terrett@benterrettHead of Design, GDS

.GOV

‣ Heavy bias for designing in browser

‣ Very little wireframing

‣ Launch and test attitude

‣ gov.uk/designprinciples

‣ gov.uk/service-manual

‣ github.com/alphagov

Chris Heathcote@antimegaCreative Lead, GDS

Schelling Points

‣ Focal points; places that things find themselves

‣ That table by the door with your keys, wallet, phone...

‣ Personal Schelling points are wrists, shoes, necklace...

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”Eliel Saarinen

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Russell Davies

‣ russelldavies.typepad.com

Homesense bikemap Internet of middle class things

Jennifer Brook@jenniferbrookIndependent UX Designer

Prototyping Touch

‣ Prototype ≠ code

‣ Step away from your desk

‣ Get on a device early and often

‣ Prototyping is a great way for us to get OUR heads around the client's service

‣ bit.ly/uxl_touch

Genevieve Bell@feraldataUX Director, Intel Interaction & Experience Research Group

Genealogy of Talking Technology

SiriFurby Skynet?

Luddism

‣ Luddites were not anti-technology but anti-technology-that-replaces-people

‣ We fear tech that challenges notions of what's human

‣ We fear tech that challenges political, social or racial order

‣ Chart fear against wonder to find great experiences

Paul Adams@paddayGlobal Head of Brand Design, Facebook

Social Web

‣ First 20 years of the web were beta

‣ It’s being rebuilt around people

‣ The word social will go away

‣ Information published (and access to it) is going up exponentially, human memory capacity is not changing fast

‣ People are turning to their friends in the sea of information

Mobile

‣ The time when more people use your product on mobile than desktop is approaching - it has already happened on Facebook

‣ 4.5 billion people have never used the internet - when they do it will probably be on mobile

Photoshop lies

‣ You can't design a dynamically changing social system by drawing UI or screen states

‣ Build real prototypes with real data

Hypothesise, build, launch, measure, repeat

‣ Research may not be wrong, but it can't compare to real data

‣ You can’t predict social behaviour, so build and ship as soon as possible

‣ Use existing research - someone has already done it better than you can

‣ Build simply and quickly

‣ Ship daily or weekly

If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

Reid Hoffman

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Peter Merholz@petermeVice President of Global Design, Groupon

The Disciplines ofUser Experience DesignDan SafferGraphic by Envis Precisely

UX

‣ ...is not all of these disciplines, it's what's in between; it’s the discipline of corralling those into one whole

‣ ...should not have its own department, it’s everyone's responsibility

‣ ...uses design approaches, but not for design outcomes (akin to design thinking)

UX as Direction

‣ Facilitation as a skill is not appreciated

‣ A director ‘does’ very little - they lead, co-ordinate and inspire

‣ This doesn't mean UXers can't do the work

‣ Define your own role

‣ Lead, don’t follow

Jeremy Keith@adactioFounder & Technical Director, Clearleft

Wireframes

‣ Once about hierarchy, now it’s all about layout without much thought

‣ Fundamentally you are going back to the fixed canvas

‣ Jeremy/Clearleft try to avoid wireframing altogether

‣ Consider tablet-first design, it's close to both desktop and mobile

API-first design

‣ Think about functionality first

‣ Build a command line to your website

URL-first design

‣ URLs should be readable, guessable and hackable by humans

‣ Design your URL structure and you will have your website structure

‣ Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle

‣ RESTful URLs incorporate actions, e.g. www.files.com/file/myfile/save

Content hierarchy

‣ “If your website was a telephone hotline, what order would you say things in?”

‣ Identify the atomic units of content and order them

‣ At some point you say “...and then there’s everything else” - remove or conditionally load those things

Style

‣ Create pattern libraries horizontally to make it clear it’s not a real page

‣ Create style tiles and ask “how does this feel?” - start a conversation

‣ Layout is just one element, we over-emphasise it

‣ Layout is an enhancement, it’s not there by default

Marty Neumeier@martyneumeierDirector of Transformation, Liquid Agency

The Robot Curve

‣ The value andcost of workdecreases as itsmechanisationincreases

‣ Keep learning to moveback up the curve

‣ Your job is always being destroyed by new jobs

Metaskills

‣ Learning is theopposable thumbof the metaskills

‣ talentfinder.metaskillsbook.com

Imagination blockers

‣ Unexamined belief“This is the only way I can do it”

‣ Rigid mental mode“We've always done it this way”

‣ Lack of technique"I don't know how I'd do that"

Imagination blockers

‣ Fear of failure“What if I mess it up?”

‣ Shopping mentality“Everything is on a shelf somewhere”

‣ Right answer fixation“There's an answer out there, we just have to find it”

Process1. Discovery

2. Definition

3. Design

4. Development

5. Deployment

Process

‣ This is a big lie and we all know it

‣ The really good work doesn’t come from this profile

‣ Be honest with clients, tell them you’re not sure how we’ll get there but it will be [this] good

Process1. Confusion

2. Clutter

3. Chaos

4. Crisis

5. Catharsis

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”Alvin Toffler

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Ben Reason@breasyFounder, live|work

Manage the brief

‣ live|work often expand the brief to look at before and after, to find further opportunities and problems

‣ Give yourself permission to deal with things that aren’t digital, e.g. live|work found they could improve the mobile experience by making changes to the stores themselves

Hannah Donovan@hanCo-creator, This Is My Jam

Matthew Ogle@flaneurCo-creator, This Is My Jam

Problems

‣ 1st order problem = need

‣ 2nd order problem = play

‣ 2nd order products often rely on 1st order products for support, or even just appetite for the stuff

Problems in music

‣ 1st order = access

‣ 2nd order = discovery

‣ There are more ways to access music than ever before (Napster, iPod, MySpace, YouTube, Spotify, iTunes...)

‣ There’s still desire for discovery services

Trends

‣ It’s well known in fashion that trends are often direct opposites of what came before

‣ If you want to make something playful, a good exercise is to imagine the opposite

Richard Seymour@seymourpowellCo-founder and Design Director,Seymourpowell

The state of the art

‣ This may only be the 2nd time in 500 years the tech outdoes our imaginations

‣ Big businesses have slowed down because they see big things coming and they don't know what to do

Quentin Tarantino School of Ethnography

‣ Observation is better than focus groups

‣ People don’t know what they do

‣ Divert the subject’s attention away from what they are doing so you can observe their unconscious actions

Genetic manipulation

‣ It is coming hard and fast

‣ You can buy a red pill today that restarts collagen production in post-menopausal women, it needs no drug license because it’s classed as food

‣ Mass storage in DNA; immortal data

‣ Mushrooms that glow; biological lighting

Your life is absolutely littered with shit that doesn’t work”Richard Seymour

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Oath

‣ The templars had an oath to safeguard and helpless and do no wrong

‣ Designers don’t have an oath

‣ Shall we make one?

Marty Neumeier@martyneumeierDirector of Transformation, Liquid Agency

10 ways to get ideas

1. Think in metaphors. What else is this like? E.g. "The world is a stage"

2. Think in pictures. Draw stuff, draw the problem. Car lanes in the USA: fast and slow. In the UK: passing and driving.

3. Start from a different place. You can't just dig old ideas deeper.

10 ways to get ideas

4. Poach from other domains. An inventor walks in woods, notices burrs stuck on their clothes, looks under a microscope, notices holes and loops, invents velcro. Nature applied to clothing.

5. Arrange blind dates. Take ideas that don't go together and see what happens when they do.

10 ways to get ideas

6. Reverse the polarity. E.g. Yahoo homepage vs. Google homepage.

7. Find the paradox. Trying to stop people dumping in drains? Don't put up a sign, make the drain look like a fish.

8. Give it the third degree. Who says? So what? Why now? Ask like a 4 year old.

10 ways to get ideas

9. Be alert for accidents. An engineer noticed chocolate on a radar console melting, invents the microwave.

10.Write things down. You'll forget otherwise. Read your notes again to refresh your memory and make connections.