eBooks: a reader is not just a device
Posted: December 31, 2011 Filed under: eBooks, user experience Leave a comment »I spent most of 2011 keeping my eye on trends in eBooks: of all the technological innovations going on, eBooks seem the most likely to affect both my work as a librarian and my leisure time as a reader. And 2011 has been a big year for eBooks, with lots of media attention devoted to new devices, from the iPad 2 to the Kindle Fire.
With all the focus on devices, though, I feel like what’s missing is a deeper understanding of the end users. The term “reader” has come to refer to the tool, not the person using it. The same tendency to overlook the individual reader seems to apply to discussions of eBook distribution, where the struggles among Amazon.com, publishers, and libraries grab the headlines.
What I’d like to see in the year ahead is more user-centered commentary on eBooks, informed by a more nuanced understanding of the different kinds of people who read and their very different needs and goals. The rabid mystery novel consumer who goes through a book a week, the business traveller who only reads on long-haul flights, the student reading for school, the parent who reads with her kids, the book club member, the teenage graphic novel fan – when you consider the diversity of users, it begins to seem obvious that there may not be just one device (or one way of accessing books) to rule them all.
Looking back over the mass of eBook information I digested in 2011, a presentation from Kobo’s Michael Tamblyn stands out for its unique focus on the characteristics of the different types of people who read eBooks. Based on Kobo’s user data, the findings are fascinating for the differences they reveal in device preferences, purchasing behaviour, and reading habits.
Tamblyn concludes his presentation with the line: “Know the reader. Sales will follow.” Even for those of us who aren’t selling and just want to understand the shift to eReading, “know the reader” seems like good advice.
Prototyping web apps: nobody loves a wireframe
Posted: March 16, 2010 Filed under: design, usability, user experience Leave a comment »Darren Delaye and Michael Leggett, user experience designers from Google.
The advantage of prototypes is that they allow users to experience interactions, not just layout, look, and feel.
To reduce complexity, choose examples of linear experiences to prototype. Don’t try to represent every possible interaction pattern. Then make the key examples as high-fidelity as possible, but “be scrappy” – iterate a lot.
Slideshow prototype: put mocks into a slideshow, then show the slides in a browser. Extremely easy to create and great for presenting the experience, but not easy to pass on (it’s really a demo rather than a usable prototype). To share it, you can make a video of yourself running the slideshow.
Hotspot prototype: create click targets within the mockup. Advantage is that it’s multi-branched and you can show more scenarios.
HTML prototype: use HTML where needed for the key example interactions, then use images to fill in the rest of the prototype. (Example: menu links are clickable, but the menus that display are images.)
Prototype as commercial (to sell your idea, convince people it is worth doing) vs. prototype as spec. A prototype plus discussions can be the final spec.
Search patterns: tangible futures for discovery (Peter Morville)
Posted: March 14, 2010 Filed under: design, search, user experience | Tags: design, search, user experience Leave a comment »Peter is a librarian (!) turned information architect.
“The single biggest opportunity to make positive change is through search.” The return on investment can be significant – higher sales, lowered reliance on customer support.
A search system includes content creators, metadata and indexing, tools (algorithms), interfaces, and end-user psychology and behaviour.
In mobile search, we nudge people towards browsing – many mobile applications are so new that people don’t know what to search for. We have to help them understand what’s possible.
Search is a hybrid of design, engineering, and marketing. There are complex interdependencies and changing requirements. It’s a problme that is never solved. It’s a project and a process that never ends.
Beyond usable: accessible, useful, desirable, findable, credible, valuable.
Morville created the search patterns library in Flickr. Patterns include narrowing, expanding, thrashing (when people modify their searches over and over again, trying to get good results).
Auto-complete: why wait for the results interface to start helping users? Suggest options as soon as they start typing.
“Best first” is the most important search pattern – the most relevant results must be at the top.
Speed is critical – that’s why Google has invested in performance and still displays the time it took to do your search at top right. Search must be fast.
Social data helps inform relevance ranking. (Our number of copies ranking works like this. Example of Books & Authors, where this doesn’t work.)
Mentions challenge for libraries of exposing licensed databases. How do we design an experience that doesn’t rely too much on where the data comes from?
Faceted search: facets serve as a custom map to search results that helps users understand what they’ve found. It also clarifies the options for next steps.
NCSU is using Summon in beta to integrate federated search of their databases.
Amazon iPhone app – good example of faceted searching presented in a mobile interface.
Amazon gives you limited facets with initial search results, richer facets once you begin to refine.
Attention to detail and continuous incremental improvement contribute to a great search experience.
iPhone apps already let you search by sound (song recognition) or search for things that look like an image. Input from users does not have to be verbal.
The Right Way to Wireframe, Part 2
Posted: March 13, 2010 Filed under: design, user experience Leave a comment »Presented by Fred Beecher and Will Evans.
Couldn’t get in to the session I wanted (again!), so I’m at part two of the wireframing extravaganza.
Another example of sketching the interactive flow before actually wireframing (“wireflows”). This is definitely a good concept to take away.
Something I’m thinking about right now, even though it’s not the focus of this presentation, is how important it is to focus on the interactive aspects of a web page. This sounds so obvious, but it’s something I have not done well enough in my own process and in working with stakeholders. (It must be easier for e-commerce organizations to keep interactions front-and-centre in their design process because they are so fundamental to making money. At any rate, the designers presenting here seem to take the centrality of interactions for granted.) In my organization, we seem to spend too much time talking about what we want users to “know” or “realize” rather than what we want them to do.
The presenter is now saying that visual design “is not lipstick” – it is an opportunity to evolve the interactive design. You can, say, move a button to create visual balance, as long as you then test to ensure that the interactive process still works.
Interesting to see how large a role old-fashioned pen, paper, and post-its play in the early stages of the process for all these designers.
Requirements analysis: measure twice, cut once. Stakeholders lie. Users lie. Observation is better than interviewing or surveys.
The Right Way to Wireframe, Part 1
Posted: March 13, 2010 Filed under: design, user experience Leave a comment »Presented by Todd Zaki Warfel and Russ Unger
This session is about the how. There is a lot of talk about the what and why – “we’re doing great things,” “we’re changing the world through design!” But no one in the UX field shows their work. We all work on proprietary and confidential stuff. Have you ever seen a wireframe from Jesse James Garrett, Peter Morville, or Jared Spool? This is a call to the UX field to “nut up or shut up” – show your work and let people see what you’re doing, critique it, and learn from it.
Arguments over wireframing versus prototyping and what is the best tool (Visio, Axure, Omnigraffle) are beside the point. The goal is to produce an artifact that functions as a communications tool.
The test case: lend4health.com, a microlending service to connect people who need health care with potential funders.
My takeaways from this:
A technique I’ve never tried is storyboarding an interaction through a 6-8 frame sketch.
Now wondering if the idea of showing your work could be a good way of helping clients understand the process of UX design and the reasoning behind UX recommendations.
