User Experience & Web Product Design

UX & Web Product Design

Presented by Steve Hickey — fresh tilled soil

fresh tilled soil

User Experience &Web Product Design

fresh tilled soil UX & Web Product Design

About Your Instructor

Hi, I’m Steve Hickey.

I design and develop apps/sites for Fresh Tilled Soil.

I write, speak and teach.

You can find me on Twitter @stevehickeydsgn


Course Structure

• session 1: What is User Experience Design?

• lunch

• session 2: Starting at Zero: Methods & Artifacts of UX Design

• session 3: Your First Test: What to Build and Why


01 What is User Experience Design?UI vs UX and select principles of user experience design


UI VS. UX Design

User Interface Design is:A component of User Experience Design. It’s the look and the feel, the form.

User Experience Design is:The bigger picture. How well does the site/app function? Is it pleasant to use? Can a user accomplish their goals with ease?


UI VS. UX Design

How does a user feel while using it?


UI VS. UX Design

They are both incredibly important.

Excellent user interface design is part of what creates a great user experience. But you can have a great UI with a terrible experience. The opposite is harder, but also possible.


Select Principles

Let’s talk about some of the things that a great user experience designer must keep in mind when building a truly amazing product for the web.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it should spark a conversation.


The Robustness Principle

Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

alistapart.com/article/your-website-has-two-faces



In other words, there are certain constraints that must be embraced to balance human needs with computer needs for a robust web application.

• It must accept input in a human-friendly fashion.

• It must accept the burden of translating that information to a computer-friendly format.

• It must be clear about what human input is reasonable.

• It must provide feedback on this input.




Err towards serving the user.




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The Pareto Principle

For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

measuringusability.com/blog/pareto-ux.php



In other words, focusing on the top 20% of your bugs and design problems can fix 80% of the problems encountered by your users.

Or, 80% of your users will only use 20% of your features/options.

measuringusability.com/blog/pareto-ux.php



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Fitts’s Law

The time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the

target and the size of the target.

codinghorror.com/blog/2006/08/fitts-law-and-infinite-width.html


Fitts’s Law

In other words, the farther away a touch/click target is from where the user starts, the larger it needs to be in order for it to be quickly and accurately reached.

Two ways to make frequently used items easier to click/tap:1: Put them near the edge of the screen.2. Make them larger than other items.

codinghorror.com/blog/2006/08/fitts-law-and-infinite-width.html


Fitts’s Law


The Principle of Least Astonishment

When two elements of an interface conflict or are ambiguous, the behavior should be that

which will least surprise the user.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment



In other words, the best result of an action is whatever the user is most likely to expect, not the result that comes through in depth knowledge of the system.

This will change from system to system. Mac OSX users could expect something different than Microsoft Windows users. Android and iOS have different design patterns for

different interactions as well.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment


Dieter Rams: Principle 10

Good design is as little design as possible.

vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design



He also stated this as “less, but better.” Many people would refer to this as simplicity.

vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design


Joshua Porter: Principle 6

One primary action per screen.

bokardo.com/principles-of-user-interface-design/



Screens or states with more than one primary action become confusing. It’s better for any screen to have one primary reason for existing.




Great design is invisible.




An interface shouldn’t distract a user from what they are trying to accomplish, which is the reason the interface exists in the first place. Turn the special effects down a notch.



BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model

Three factors drive behavior: motivation, ability and triggers.

ability

motivatio

n

HighLowLow

High Target behavior

Triggers fail here.

Triggers succeed here.

behaviormodel.org/



The amount of motivation and ability required vary based on how much of the other is present. These must be combined with an effective trigger for a target behavior to happen.

All three are required to persuade a user to do something.

behaviormodel.org/



Motivation happens on three spectrums:

Sensation: Pleasure <> PainAnticipation: Hope <> Fear

Social Cohesion: Acceptance <> Rejection

behaviormodel.org/



You can increase ability in two ways:

Train Your User: Harder to do but sometimes necessary.Make The Target Behavior Easier: Usually the right thing to do.

behaviormodel.org/



In other words, make it simpler.

Think of simplicity as a function of your scarcest resource at the moment in which you want to accomplish something. Time and money can both fit this model.

behaviormodel.org/


Resources

You can read a lot more at these sites:

Joshua Porter: bokardo.com/principles-of-user-interface-design/Dieter Rams: vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design

Jeremy Keith: principles.adactio.com/BJ Fogg: behaviormodel.org/


02 Effective Methods For Crafting an ExperienceThe habits of highly effective UX designers


Methods

Every UX designer’s process is different, but the way successful ones approach their process include some useful commonalities.


1. Be Prolific

Your best idea is never your first. Don’t tell me it is, I don’t believe you. Come up with 5 ideas. Come up with 10. Come up with 20!


1. Be Prolific

The point is to get the obvious out of your system. Once you’ve gotten past that you can really start to be creative and innovative.


1. Be Prolific

teehanlax.com/story/medium/


2. Collaborate

Nobody works well in a vacuum. When you don’t seek outside opinions you can get trapped and focus on things that may not be as important.


2. Collaborate

Other opinions will break you out of your mental traps and improve your work.


2. Collaborate

designstaff.org/articles/product-design-sprint-day-2-diverge-2012-10-26.html


3. Iterate

The best way to test your assumptions is to make something. You’ll get a lot of stuff wrong, but there’s no better way to learn about your problems and move beyond them.


3. Iterate

Fail early and often and you’ll set yourself up better for eventual success.


3. Iterate

azarask.in/blog/post/iterative_design_isnt_design_by/


4. Be Flexible

As you work you’ll realize that previous assumptions needs to be changed. You shouldn’t think of deliverables as a checklist, they are a web of connected items.


4. Be Flexible

Each change has the potential to affect every other deliverable.


03 Artifacts of an Experience Design ProcessThe things we build


Definition Statement

1. What is the product’s experience? 2. What is the product meant to do? 3. What is the product’s audience?

iosworkshops.com/


Definition Statement

This should be short. A couple of sentences, a brief paragraph at most.

It is the guiding principle of what you’re building.


User Types & User Personas

User types rely on existing data and informed assumptions to decide what distinct types of users you have and what they will want to accomplish.

They aren’t complicated, they’re just a quick way of remembering the differences in your primary users and their objectives.



User personas are much more involved, requiring research and interviews with actual potential users, and typically take weeks or months to compile.

Findings are compiled into categories, then assigned traits, habits, names and photos so that they are visible and easy to remember as you work.



uxmag.com/articles/personas-the-foundation-of-a-great-user-experience



Whether you decide to deal with user types or user personas is a question of resources and time, but using at least one of them tends to remind you that your users are real.


User Stories & Features

As a { type } user, I would like to { task/objective }.

These become your features. Have you come up with a feature idea that doesn’t fit into a user story? It may not be nearly as important as you thought it was.


User Stories & Features

https://www.apptrajectory.com/


Site Map & User Journeys

Features are going to fit into logical groups that define pages and flows. Placing these into a site map will help you create the appropriate relationships between components, and

show you just how simple or complex your plan is.



User journeys define how a user moves through your app or site to accomplish tasks. Basically, take your user stories and translate them onto your site map.


Wireframes & Sketches

Your wireframes are the blueprints for your product. They generally consist of layouts of the pages and flows you listed previously.

They help make sure all functionality is available, and that there is a logical hierarchy. Beyond those basics, wireframes really shouldn’t be used to dictate design decisions.



Wireframes don’t even have to be high fidelity to be effective. Sketches can make excellent wireframes if they’re complete and well rendered.

As another advantage, sketches are much faster to produce and iterate through than other, higher fidelity methods of wireframing.


Prototypes

Prototypes are a bit more advanced than wireframes. They mimic completed functionality to the point that you can run tests with a user.


Prototypes

They can be as small as a single piece of functionality, or they can mimic a completed product in every meaningful way. They are used to test a product without building it.

A good prototype helps you decide what to build.


Prototypes

alistapart.com/article/dive-into-responsive-prototyping-with-foundation


Prototypes

These products can help you prototype:

Foundation: foundation.zurb.comBootstrap: twitter.github.io/bootstrap

Ratchet: maker.github.io/ratchetFlinto: flinto.com

Briefs: giveabrief.comPOP: popapp.in

Xcode/Storyboard: blog.mengto.com/prototype-xcode-storyboard


User Tests

A user test helps you validate whatever you decided to build.

You can test a finished product and get lots of great information, but the greatest advantage is conferred when you are able to start testing early.

We’ll discuss this more in the next section.


04 What to Build and WhyYour first test


So, what Should I build?

Whatever you can. Sometimes that’s not much. But ask yourself this:

Would you rather invest years and millions of dollars into building something only to find out nobody can figure out how it works? Or even worse, that nobody wants it?


Prototype

For us, the answer is often a prototype. We aren’t back-end developers, we don’t employ back-end developers. If we aren’t working with a dev team yet we still need to build

something to test. Fortunately, front-end tech makes it easy to fake a back-end.


Minimum Viable Product

For startups and product companies a minimum viable product is often the answer. An MVP is popular in Lean circles. Building one means building the smallest thing you can

learn something from. Build it, test it, learn from those tests, build something new.

It is the smallest amount of effort you can go to and still get valid lessons from it.


Usability Testing

Regardless of what you build, you should test it with real users. Assumptions are often wrong, and nothing will uncover that faster than a user test.


Steve Krug’s Maxims of User Testing

A morning a month, that’s all we ask.

sensible.com/rsme.html



Start earlier than you think makes sense.




Recruit loosely and grade on a curve.




Make it a spectator sport.




Focus ruthlessly on a small number of the most important problems.




When fixing problems, always do the least you can do.




Read this. Thank me later. I’ll let Steve know I’m expecting his commission check.


User Experience & Web Product Design

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