Flickr: N A I T Paula de Matos & Jenny Cham

A Survival Guide for UX in Complex Environments

My name is Paula de Matos

I live in Cambridge

I am an Independent

UX Analyst

I tweet @Paula_deMatos

I am South African & Portuguese

I am an agile evangelist

What is bioinformatics?

2012

2013

Our recent papers: UX and Bioinformatics (open access)

Characteristics of a complex environment…

Flickr: Gigi C

Complex environments have data that is/ may be…

People in complex environments

Sweet spot?

Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering 1993

Intangible value of UX in complex environments

Flickr: Kristian Niemi

Finding the people can be difficult

Maps and networks

Multi-screen terminals for stock brokers

Flickr: Travel Aficionado

Examples

• 10 minutes

• Identify a facilitator

• Chat in your team

• Are there other characteristics of a complex environment we missed?

• Facilitator present back summary

Are you working in a complex environment? What are the issues you face?

Our survival guide…

Flickr: atkinson000

Survival tip #1: Understand the data and “big picture”

• Get interested

• Learn the basics yourself

• Make a new friend/s

Survival tip #2: Love thy stakeholders

• Understand

• UCD stakeholder champions

• UX buy-in strategy

• Incentives?

Survival tip #3: teach your development team the basics

≠

Folks at UX London 2011

Survival tip #4: mitigate ‘self-as-user’ outlook

Debra the in vivo pharma R&D

scientist

Fact: we are not the users

• Ask your buddy

• Research the interviewee so you can get the conversation flowing

• Ask when they don’t make any sense

• Record the interview

Survival tip #5: interview experts (e.g. in their own lab)

Gray et al. (2010) Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers

Survival tip #6: Try gamestorming with geeks (aka experts)

Example: empathy mapping

Example: speedboat game

Survival tip #7: Establish your Information Architecture

What happens if you ask...

What is important to you?

What do you want?

Engaging IA ‘head scratcher’ for target users (experts)

Stimulates discussion esp. dot vote to get consensus

Scenario

• You have been offered a great job (at an agency) in Cape Town, South Africa

• You are not sure whether to accept the position  

User Task

Tutorial: learn how to canvas sort

Flickr: Xevi V

You arrive at an information portal for Cape Town, what is the first thing you need to see to determine whether Cape Town is suitable for you/your family, so you can decide whether to accept the job offer.

Timings:

• 20 minutes team work

• 2 minutes for each team to report back

Scenario

1. In your groups, familiarise yourself with all the data cards.

2. Choose ALL the cards that YOU think are important and place them on the canvas.

3. As a team you need to whittle them down to 6 cards. Use dot voting to select the most important cards.

Step by step process outline

Dot voting: each individual gets six coloured stickers to vote for their favourite cards. The cards with the most stickers get to stay on the canvas.

4. Now that you have your six cards NAME your canvas.

5. Use post-it notes to describe what actions/interactions you would like to perform on your data cards and place them the right side of the canvas.

6. Describe how you got to the canvas where you came from using post-it notes (bottom left).

7. Describe where you would like to go to next using post-it notes (bottom right).

Step by step process outline

Synthesis and consolidation of artefacts

Canvas Sort Result #1: Relative priorities of data items and actions

Result #2: Model of the information architecture for the portal

Result #3: Ideas to take into sketching

Survival tip #8: quick & easy prototyping keeps ideas flowing & dev costs low

Our UX tips for surviving in complex environmentsSurvival tip #1: Understand the data and “big picture”

Survival tip #2: Love thy stakeholders

Survival tip #3: Teach your development (or agile) team the basics

Survival tip #4: Mitigate ‘self-as-user’ outlook (use refs)

Survival tip #5: Interview experts (pref. in their own lab)

Survival tip #6: Try gamestorming with geeks (aka experts)

Survival tip #7: Establish your Information Architecture

Survival tip #8: Quick prototyping keeps ideas flowing & dev costs low

Mapping survival tips to our case study

Knife image from www.sxc.hu/photo/816000

#1-3

#4

#5

#6-7

#8

Useful references

Complex UX

• Chilana, P.K. et al (2010) Understanding usability practices in complex domains. CHI 2010 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2337-2346

Personae

• Baron-Cohen, S. et al (2003) The systemizing quotient: an investigation of adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism, and normal sex differences. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London 358: 361-74

• William Hudson (2009) Reduced Empathizing Skills Increase Challenges for User-Centered Design CHI 2009 April 3–9, Boston, MA, USA

Gamestorming

• Gray D, Brown S, Macanufo J (2010) Game storming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers. California: O’Reilly Media.

Questions?