User Research Portfolio3

Editor's Notes

• #2: “Positioning myself at the intersection of…My degree is in Cognitive Psychology. I am interested in the human behavior in work, play and casual situations.My first exposure to Human Factors was in an Industrial Psychology course where the professor presented the case of the design of aircraft controls that led to crashes. In one craft, pulling back lifted the nose, in another pushing the stick forward did the same thing. 50+ years ago the military was losing pilots who transferred between these craft with some minimum hours of training. Well under pressure, people perform the way with which they have had the most experience. They pull back and crash the plane. Later this was even more real to me when I was involved in Air Traffic Control training.As a result, I have spent a lot of my career making sure that software / hardware designs do not lead people to make mistakes. Especially mission critical ones.
• #3: “Positioning myself at the intersection of…My degree is in Cognitive Psychology. I am interested in the human behavior in work, play and casual situations.My first exposure to Human Factors was in an Industrial Psychology course where the professor presented the case of the design of aircraft controls that led to crashes. In one craft, pulling back lifted the nose, in another pushing the stick forward did the same thing. 50+ years ago the military was losing pilots who transferred between these craft with some minimum hours of training. Well under pressure, people perform the way with which they have had the most experience. They pull back and crash the plane. Later this was even more real to me when I was involved in Air Traffic Control training.As a result, I have spent a lot of my career making sure that software / hardware designs do not lead people to make mistakes. Especially mission critical ones.
• #4: Every new company is an opportunity to learn a new business domain.OBA was an opportunity to learn about multi-dimensional cubes, data mining, and Business Intelligence. This transferred nicely to the DUET project which was a Joint Venture with SAP. We wanted to expose queries from their database in Outlook task panes to support hard to do with SAP tasks such as Travel Management, Time Management, and Budget Management.At the Cobalt Group I installed usability processes into the company, earned the trust of account executives, project managers, designers and others who did not understand what usability could do for them and their products. Very interesting job cut short by 9/11.Expedia and Worldspan are travel reservation companies that involve high volume transaction processing and the display / comparison of prices and services. They are B2B and B2C. At Worldspan myself and an expert on their transaction processing facility did the analysis and planning for their online travel reservation application.MAPICS was formerly a division of IBM. I did design and usability for their conversion from character based UI to OO client and web based UI. They provide huge capacity inventory systems and business planning and control systems.At NCR I was involved in many customer site visits to gather design data for an online multi-media training program for the Office of Pipeline Safety for the use of combustible gas detectors. Planned and performed interviews, walked with pipeline technicians to detect leaks in the field and learned to use the equipment. Ghostbusters…
• #5: Every new company is an opportunity to learn a new business domain.OBA was an opportunity to learn about multi-dimensional cubes, data mining, and Business Intelligence. This transferred nicely to the DUET project which was a Joint Venture with SAP. We wanted to expose queries from their database in Outlook task panes to support hard to do with SAP tasks such as Travel Management, Time Management, and Management.BudgetAt the Cobalt Group I installed usability processes into the company, earned the trust of account executives, project managers, designers and others who did not understand what usability could do for them and their products. Very interesting job cut short by 9/11.Expedia and Worldspan are travel reservation companies that involve high volume transaction processing and the display / comparison of prices and services. They are B2B and B2C. At Worldspan myself and an expert on their transaction processing facility did the analysis and planning for their online travel reservation application.MAPICS was formerly a division of IBM. I did design and usability for their conversion from character based UI to OO client and web based UI. They provide huge capacity inventory systems and business planning and control systems.At NCR I was involved in many customer site visits to gather design data for an online multi-media training program for the Office of Pipeline Safety for the use of combustible gas detectors. Planned and performed interviews, walked with pipeline technicians to detect leaks in the field and learned to use the equipment. Ghostbusters…
• #6: Goal – apply the right methods at the right time to the right issues to drive products toward optimal design.There is no one way to do usability.We can’t use a mechanical factory approach The methods to be used depend on the problems to be investigated and: Time frame Money ResourcesApproach great design – don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the goodBecome a domain expert – know the software domain. Know enough to: Take the user’s place in the beginning Be able to talk to and question the user Be able to observe the user and gather meaningful, valid, reliable data Close contact with users – Get the user’s story of useobserve real work in real settings, not only simplified lab type scenarios. What are their contexts of use: social, environmental, mental, etc. Interact with users; interview, question, probe, express your real interestFront End Analysis and Ideation– Fix design errors at the beginning where they are cheap and don’t hurt other parts of the applicationDescribe the objectives for the product; multiple dimensions; UX, value to customer, value to company, position vs. competition, etc. Research – Begin with product team: What do we need to know? What are the team’s uncertainties/ Issues? What alternatives to consider? What are the limits on the design from time, resources, money, technology?User Oriented Design – Design for the Real WorldGoal Based – what are the user’s goals with the system in this situationTask and Workflow based – how do they do their work / play / search / entertainmentContext based – what are the situations in which they use the product; how do these affect design?
• #7: Goal – apply the right methods at the right time to the right issues to drive products toward optimal design.There is no one way to do usability.We can’t use a mechanical factory approach The methods to be used depend on the problems to be investigated and: Time frame Money ResourcesApproach great design – don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the goodBecome a domain expert – know the software domain. Know enough to: Take the user’s place in the beginning Be able to talk to and question the user Be able to observe the user and gather meaningful, valid, reliable data Close contact with users – Get the user’s story of useobserve real work in real settings, not only simplified lab type scenarios. What are their contexts of use: social, environmental, mental, etc. Interact with users; interview, question, probe, express your real interestFront End Analysis and Ideation– Fix design errors at the beginning where they are cheap and don’t hurt other parts of the applicationDescribe the objectives for the product; multiple dimensions; UX, value to customer, value to company, position vs. competition, etc. Research – Begin with product team: What do we need to know? What are the team’s uncertainties/ Issues? What alternatives to consider? What are the limits on the design from time, resources, money, technology?User Oriented Design – Design for the Real WorldGoal Based – what are the user’s goals with the system in this situationTask and Workflow based – how do they do their work / play / search / entertainmentContext based – what are the situations in which they use the product; how do these affect design?
• #8: Goal – apply the right methods at the right time to the right issues to drive products toward optimal design.There is no one way to do usability.We can’t use a mechanical factory approach The methods to be used depend on the problems to be investigated and: Time frame Money ResourcesApproach great design – don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the goodBecome a domain expert – know the software domain. Know enough to: Take the user’s place in the beginning Be able to talk to and question the user Be able to observe the user and gather meaningful, valid, reliable data Close contact with users – Get the user’s story of useobserve real work in real settings, not only simplified lab type scenarios. What are their contexts of use: social, environmental, mental, etc. Interact with users; interview, question, probe, express your real interestFront End Analysis and Ideation– Fix design errors at the beginning where they are cheap and don’t hurt other parts of the applicationDescribe the objectives for the product; multiple dimensions; UX, value to customer, value to company, position vs. competition, etc. Research – Begin with product team: What do we need to know? What are the team’s uncertainties/ Issues? What alternatives to consider? What are the limits on the design from time, resources, money, technology?User Oriented Design – Design for the Real WorldGoal Based – what are the user’s goals with the system in this situationTask and Workflow based – how do they do their work / play / search / entertainmentContext based – what are the situations in which they use the product; how do these affect design?
• #9: Goal – apply the right methods at the right time to the right issues to drive products toward optimal design.There is no one way to do usability.We can’t use a mechanical factory approach The methods to be used depend on the problems to be investigated and: Time frame Money ResourcesApproach great design – don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the goodBecome a domain expert – know the software domain. Know enough to: Take the user’s place in the beginning Be able to talk to and question the user Be able to observe the user and gather meaningful, valid, reliable data Close contact with users – Get the user’s story of useobserve real work in real settings, not only simplified lab type scenarios. What are their contexts of use: social, environmental, mental, etc. Interact with users; interview, question, probe, express your real interestFront End Analysis and Ideation– Fix design errors at the beginning where they are cheap and don’t hurt other parts of the applicationDescribe the objectives for the product; multiple dimensions; UX, value to customer, value to company, position vs. competition, etc. Research – Begin with product team: What do we need to know? What are the team’s uncertainties/ Issues? What alternatives to consider? What are the limits on the design from time, resources, money, technology?User Oriented Design – Design for the Real WorldGoal Based – what are the user’s goals with the system in this situationTask and Workflow based – how do they do their work / play / search / entertainmentContext based – what are the situations in which they use the product; how do these affect design?
• #10: Goal – apply the right methods at the right time to the right issues to drive products toward optimal design.There is no one way to do usability.We can’t use a mechanical factory approach The methods to be used depend on the problems to be investigated and: Time frame Money ResourcesApproach great design – don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the goodBecome a domain expert – know the software domain. Know enough to: Take the user’s place in the beginning Be able to talk to and question the user Be able to observe the user and gather meaningful, valid, reliable data Close contact with users – Get the user’s story of useobserve real work in real settings, not only simplified lab type scenarios. What are their contexts of use: social, environmental, mental, etc. Interact with users; interview, question, probe, express your real interestFront End Analysis and Ideation– Fix design errors at the beginning where they are cheap and don’t hurt other parts of the applicationDescribe the objectives for the product; multiple dimensions; UX, value to customer, value to company, position vs. competition, etc. Research – Begin with product team: What do we need to know? What are the team’s uncertainties/ Issues? What alternatives to consider? What are the limits on the design from time, resources, money, technology?User Oriented Design – Design for the Real WorldGoal Based – what are the user’s goals with the system in this situationTask and Workflow based – how do they do their work / play / search / entertainmentContext based – what are the situations in which they use the product; how do these affect design?
• #25: If you ask me what I am most proud of, it would be this study and the interactions with participants to make sure they had exposure to a range of features that satisfied needs which previous research had identified as important. I learned:People create a few types of diagrams.They typically use a handful of shapes per diagram type.They have pain trying to find the six shapes they need on 5 different stencils.They have several workarounds to have access to their typical shapes. This knowledge contributed to the Quick Shapes feature.Understanding user work practices and task flows is a key part of my approach. Because ODG did not do customer research or task analysis at the point in the release where I was assimilated into their group, I included task related observations and questions in my studies. This proved to be critical because I discovered some task flow patterns whereby users would never engage some features.What made this study such a peak experience? The combination and integration of features gave participants an unsolicited superlative user experience. One participant sat back after working on a task and said: “Wow, that was a treat.” As a group they were just taken aback with how this constellation of features improved their productivity, reduced the work they had to do to accomplish results and lessened the frustration they typically experienced. I’d like to show a short clip of one of these participants.
• #26: I’d like to briefly discuss each of these studies and how they fit together.During this same period, I ran other research along other lines:Data GraphicsVisio ServicesStructured Diagrams, CFF and the new Container concept
• #27: This study was at the end of a year of work and research. We worked on two main tasksTaking Visio to the Fluent UI, the ribbon.Designing / developing new and enhanced features.How did we get to the point where the features were mutually supporting and presented the user with a coherent approach to their work?We evolved a good design by asking good research questions and paying close attention to the participants even when we would have preferred other choices.We could do more, but they told us to do less.
• #28: In Visio, for the product’s lifetime, shapes have been in the shape’s window. This is a pane on the left side of the drawing window. Should we follow Fluent UI guidelines and put a shapes gallery in the ribbon, aka PowerPoint? Or do we fight for the right to be different?We should be different.
• #29: This study was at the end of a year of work and research. We worked on two main tasksTaking Visio to the Fluent UI, the ribbon.Designing / developing new and enhanced features.How did we get to the point where the features were mutually supporting and presented the user with a coherent approach to their work?We evolved a good design by asking good research questions and paying close attention to the participants even when we would have preferred other choices.We could do more, but they told us to do less.
• #30: Can we achieve what the spec requires:When deleting shapes, connectors are currently not deleted if not selected.For O14 we want to delete dangling connectors but not irritate the user.Can we formulate decision rules based on user input for devs to implement?According to the spec, the feature is successful if:“No relevant user data is lostThe user does no manual cleanup to the results in “common” casesThe automatic behavior reduces the number of steps a user must take to delete a shape in complex casesChanges to the user’s diagram are minimizedManual replace shape is no more difficult than it is today. (Note that the Auto-Connect “connect to neighbor behavior” makes it easy for the user to recreate connections.)”User convincingly stated: Don’t make things worse. Delete connectors when it is obvious. Respect my decision making and realize I may want to use than dangling connector.
• #31: This diagram was used in the study. This version shows the participant where to insert shapes and delete shapes. Indicated here, but not for the study were the horizontal and vertical mis-alignments that they were to fix.There are also spacing inconsistencies to fix which I didn’t want to show for sake of not cluttering an already busy diagram.These arrangements could be handled individually by selection and use of the align or space button, or with one click, and no selection, on the Smart Align and Space hero button.
• #32: Problem with Smart InsertCurrent task flow cuts the adjoining shapes and moves them apart. This destroys the trigger for Smart Insert.User task flow impacts probability of users engaging the feature.There is no UI for this feature until you hit the hit zone.Geoff’s recommendation (and PM agreed): education, PR, in-app training, promotion, user assistance, etc.My manager said: “We would never make any recommendation like that.” Manager was looking for a design solution. There isn’t one. You don’t grab the feature graphically and then apply it. It can be discovered by accident, but, to me, that is a poor way to have a feature announce itself to the user.Delete, on the other hand, works like a miracle.User deletes a shape and the diagram heals itself without their having to work. It is automatically engaged with the typical user task flow.
• #37: Some of the contributions I brought to the study were:Observing the impact of task flow on discovery and success with some of the new features.Probing behind the user’s first remarksAsking the users to make connections between features that supported each other, but not in obvious ways.Bringing my past experience with other studies and users to bear on the tasks for this one.
• #38: The pattern is a way to turn a group of recommendations into an approach.The pattern describes a solution to multiple problems without dealing with their exact specifics.This pattern is a modification of one standard format that has been defined for UI design pattern experts.Patterns have long been used in object oriented programming, but have come into user interface design and even into management practices. They originated with Christopher Alexander in architecture (bricks/mortar).
• #39: A UI pattern becomes a tactic for resolving fuzzy situations. It’s not a formula. It’s not a heuristic. Patterns have much more focus and direction than heuristics.
• #42: They could tell that these enhancements to the product would have a huge positive impact on their work with Visio.One of the things that I did was to ask them questions that directed them to engage and understand the relation of features so they would get a more holistic experience of working with the product. Participants vary widely in their facility with the product. Some have never engaged features that have been in the product for 10 + years. Pasteboard cache…. Never place a shape outside of the drawing page.Rather than tell them what to do, I would ask them how some condition occurred, or what some UI element meant, or if they wanted something different how would they change it, etc.