What do you do when there’s a fly in the urinal (sorry ladies, this may not pertain to you)? It must be something that appeals to the core of man’s basest instincts: to…ready…aim…fire! OK, perhaps not the most elegant solution, but effective. It’s in the stats…this simple solution keeps the bathrooms 85% cleaner!
I think this is an excellent example of a key user experience concept: to appeal to base instincts! In this example, there’s a problem: dirty bathrooms. There’s a desired user goal: to help user’s aim better. There’s a simple intuitive interface: a fake fly sticker near the target.
Understanding core human instincts is a great start in creating intuitive interfaces to solve problems such as: how to make users fill out forms…advance to the next page…and a multitude of user goals. It can help avoid such pitfalls as strange naming conventions and unorthodox page navigation structures. Here are top 3 suggestions to see if your page element or interface passes the “basic instinct” usability test:
Simple “Basic Instinct’ Usability Test
1. Ask test users what action or result they think a certain page element or interface does.
2. For that same element or interface, ask if there’s anything else they think that element might do or represent (this list should not be long!).
3. Ask other users how they would perform a certain task from start to finish, and watch if they instinctively follow your desired path of execution.
A lot of users hate the “new” Facebook UI. I admit, I was highly anticipating the new look for several months, but also couldn’t embrace it when it actually came out. I was among the minions seeking to protest this great injustice called the “new Facebook”. Why change a good thing?…but the better question…why give users a choice to switch back and forth between the old and new, rather than just forcing us to use the new? Does that mean that you guys aren’t really convinced about the new Facebook too? Are you guys just “testing out” this new interface as some kind of pilot program, and perhaps roll back to the old once you find users hate it?
I think Facebook users are confused. Case in point, as of today, 1,834,841 members in the “1,000,000 against the new facebook layout” group, 1,302,468 members in the “Petition Against the New Facebook” group, and 1,159,068 “I Hate The New Facebook” group.
Did Facebook shoot themselves in the foot by actually giving a users a choice in user interface options? What exactly was your goal Facebook?
Well, the above interview with Scoble and Facebook Mark Slee (lead project manager @ Facebook) answers a lot of the questions (props once again to Robert Scoble for the insightful interview). As revealed in the interview, the option to choose between old and new interface was not truly to give users an option (as evidenced by the eventual discontinuation of the old interface), but it was seen as a way to give user an opportunity to do A/B testing and see the new rich features built into the new interface that can’t be done with the old.
With this in mind…I tried the new Facebook with a renewed perspective to see the A/B comparison between old vs. new features. I was sold pretty quickly to the new interface. Through the noise of the masses, it seems that once again, Facebook has managed to help user’s rock.
It’s common wisdom among usability experts to listen to users…but is there a time to not listen to them? I just found a good talk from Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed and Gmail fame @ Startup School. He shares some pretty good concepts on when to listen to users, but more important, when NOT to listen to them. Here’s my 3 favorite takeaways from the talk:
When Not To Listen To Users
1. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” ~Henry Ford
Sometimes people don’t necessarily foresee the best solution. You need to analyze the core user problem.
2. Decipher user advice limited by narrow life experiences.
Things and contexts for success change. Keep in mind the souce of the advice and filter for context.
3. Listen to the enthusiastic voices
Tune into the few users truly enthusiastic about your product. Those users would have some of the best advice and suggestions.
If you’re a UX designer…a lot of times, you’re stuck communicating between the programmers and the business folks (in the case of Scrum…the “Pigs” and the “Chickens”). In small teams, you may even be the one responsible for PM functions. So how do you get your team on the same page while not having to invest too much time learning and maintaining Project Management Bloatware (ahem…MS Project, et al.)?
I don’t know about you, but I subscribe to the ’simple is better’ approach to project management (read “Getting Real” for web development inspiration). If it takes a PHD, or some sort of certification, to even understand your project management software, chances are your team will not adopt it. Project management software is supposed to help a team increase productivity. If the learning curve is too steep or it’s too tedious to use…it might even be counter-productive.
Here’s a list of tools to help manage projects and increase team productivity. In this list, there are just 2 main criteria I had: 1) It has to be accessible online so that all team members can have any-where access via web browser. 2) It needs to be easy to use.
5 Great Project Management Web Applications
1. Lighthouse - It’s mainly made for issue tracking, but we use it to easily manage development and task assignment. Simple interface, easy to learn.
2. Basecamp - Often called a glorified to-do list…but what more do you really need? A shared space for your team to track to-do’s. Brilliant.
3. Mingle - A self-hosted Scrum management software. I’ve requested a product demo twice and never got a call back…so haven’t seen it first hand. But, Zed Shaw (of Rails renown), who bashed almost everything about ThoughtWorks, actually liked this piece of software…so it might be worth looking into.
4. Assembla - Built with Scrum users in mind. Integrates with Git, SVN, etc!
5. MyQuire - This is targeted to any projects: software development, wedding planning, event planning, and pretty much anything requiring project coordination. Best part…it’s free!
This is the first time I’ve seen a “hi-fi” pen and paper conceptualization. Brilliant! In conceptualization phase, all we’re really trying to do is distill an idea in a clear way…showing, on a high level, why and how users will use our software. After initial conceptualization and buy in…we start working on wireframes, prototypes, etc.
Maybe this is a little overkill for initial conceptualization, but it brings to light just how effective pen and paper can be in communication vision!
Great work Sachi and Lee LeFever at CommonCraft.com…very clever!
“Getting Real” is a must read book for anyone building a web application. Although not specifically a usability book…it touches on development philosophies that UI/UX professionals need to be familiar with.
From the people who brought you Basecamp, Backpack, and Ruby on Rails…this book is a discourse on the right way to build great web apps. This is not a tech manual…it is a philosophy on how to get web software out into the world swiftly and successfully. And for the bootstrapping entrepreneur…you can read Getting Real…for FREE!
As a person who worked as PM for a company who insisted on doing it the “wrong” way…focusing on countless iterations of functional specs, drawing up useless flow diagrams, incessant planning…”Getting Real” is a breath of fresh air!
A common problem in the development cycle of any website…you don’t have enough programmers to finish the project and deadlines are coming up fast! What to do?! Well, one option is to hire more full-time programmers, but companies often face the problem of limited funds to pay such demanding salaries. Then, there’s the issue of attracting good talent to even come join your company.
Sometimes, the only way to get around this resource problem are freelancers. Enter oDesk.com. oDesk is a growing marketplace for technology freelancers. The good thing about oDesk is it tries to qualify their registered freelancers…rating their skill level and also featuring an ebay-like feedback system. It has a pretty thorough list of tech professionals you’d need, including programmers, information architects, project managers, designers, and even media professionals. It also comes with project management tools to help you manage your project and keep freelancers on track.
Need help in a hurry? I tried posting a request for a back-end programming job on oDesk (yes, it was free to post a job) and immediately got an inbox full of potential candidates. The downside though is that most respondents were overseas candidates (typically freelancers from India and Russia), but the upside is that they have pretty cheap hourly rates if you are willing to work sight unseen and on a different time zone.
I eventually decided not to go with oDesk in preference for finding local talent. Great system and resource though. I’ll definitely give it another look when more US freelancers start using the system.
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