10 things users don't know about UX (and where to find them).

UX is trendy. UX is topical.

Let’s gather a little background on UX growth and the exploding trend using some readily available corollaries - free internet statistics. First lets look at Google Trends to understand the overall use of user experience in stories and articles and how that corresponds to growth in search terms and use.

Growth exploded in the latter half of 2010 and there are already exponential indicators for 2011.

Now let’s take a look at the jobs market as it relates to the need for user experience, as found in job descriptions being posted on the internet.

Nearly 5% of all jobs posted mention user experience.

Finally let’s take a look at one of the web-based communities and UX associations to see how the trends are unfolding there. IxDA now has over 24,000 members and there are currently more than 1,000 UX jobs posted on their job boards.

Job postings for UX on IXDA have grown to the point where members
demanded a separate forum for them and IXDA is effectively
monetizing the trend with 90-day ad placements..

Why is UX trending up?
The short answer here is because it's expensive to launch products and services that fail.  And that failure is becoming more commonplace when user demands for social interaction, simplicity and intuitive use are not met.  There is naturally going to be a certain amount of hype generated by pent up demand to raise a collective toast to great experiences. This same trend emerges in the way we share Superbowl ads and talk about good brand advertising or add our voice to recommendations for restaurants or books online. It is not hype for a user to expect a great experience.  It is not hype when business leaders build pragmatic cases to understand ROI prior to heavier upfront investments in technology projects.  It is not hype when former design snobs open the door to collaboration and discussion as broader team members. The link in the previous sentence takes you to a recent article in UXMag that pointed to an interesting opportunity that exists in the UX practice now to properly align to the broader impetus around customer experience and to formalize how the practices interlock. When we peel back this onion, what we do find is that there are some more thoughtful leaders trying to level-set expectations on what it means to be user-centric.

There is a shared expectation in place today that an investment in user experience will result in the following areas of research and discipline being applied against a project.  There may be some unresolved issues in certain project types relative to upfront investment amounts but at minimum we need to synthesize user knowledge into usable design and measure the usage in order to understand adoption.

1. User research – appropriate definition of target and impacted users and their frustrations, desires, needs and goals with both current and desire state.
   
   
2. Personas and use cases – the amalgamation of the audience types identified in the research constrained into usable, useful, coherent identities that can be used to map features, prioritization and scenarios to situations. 
   
   
3. Design and design thinking – the use of design to drive iteration in the project and to clarify outcomes to all stakeholders, as well as final form factor for the deliverables.
   
   
4. Optimization – learning from behavior, usability testing, A/B design and offer testing and other data inputs and outputs that support the design thesis and inform successful adoption and satisfaction.

The question is, where else do we need to look in order to truly understand the delivery of a great experience. What other resources and inputs provide an equally pragmatic POV to users when properly engaged? Where can we draw on information that lends itself to inspiration?

A recent Gizmodo post featured a somewhat familiar video under the headline, “In Praise Of The People Who Make Gadgets Worth Using”. From a first mile (outside-in way of saying ‘last mile’) perspective, UX professionals may in fact be responsible for the ‘joy of using’ part, but the ‘worth’ part comes from a lot of disciplines and a lot of contributors to the overall promise being made by a brand which has embraced the provision of a category-leading digital experience.

But there are at least 10 more contributing, pragmatic, non-user inputs that support the story being told and ultimately inform decisions that need to be made. In fact, one could argue that these are just as critical to the success of any project built with the user in mind, since the conversation and actions that are being undertaken are critical to many areas of the business that go well beyond the success of the project or application being built.

1. Marketing – the role of the experience is generally going to be inclusive of offers and programs that are part of how the brand markets itself. Beyond brand impressions, this is often the primary intended action as either acquisition or loyalty unless the product is an online service itself.
   
   
2. The business goal – tension between user goals and business goals is ratified to common ground in order to meet the unique needs of both participants in an experience.  Beyond the user needs for the service or product itself, this may add unique needs for social interaction, service dialogue or transaction capabilities in the delivery of the interfaces provided.
   
   
3. The competition – what others in the field are doing. It’s important when we look at competition that we look at anything and everything that is competing for attention, not just direct competition. For example, when people are thinking about investing, they are not only thinking about investment banking.  Look at all the areas people invest in and see what is currently capturing passion, mindshare and the attention of your desired constituent.
   
   
4. What users already like and use – what people know about and do already is often the inverse of the above, especially in the case of a new product or way of delivering service. By understanding the why and what of where your target audience is spending their time, you can better inform the decisions you need to make. This, like some of the other areas, may be covered by user research but too often this is narrowly focused on ‘what they use that you provide.' Motivational design and game theory may both apply here, but the point is not so much the design as the business and market trends that support decisions that you will make.
   
   
5. The glass – We use the glass as a metaphor for the device or system that user will consume the experience on, and to capture and relate the constraints and affordances of the target environment. How can effectively persist context, history, profile and preference across multiple devices and screens? How do you prioritize the most common and lead into the next wave effectively?  This is not so much a question of screen size and pixel depth as it is a question of task and context.
   
   
6. The platform – the complexity of back-end systems, their limited capabilities for great experience and business processes that they are built to support are at least in part why you are here. The bad news is that you can’t ignore them. The good news is that you can make them better. A good metaphor for this was discussed recently on Twitter - that experiences are akin to the razor market. UX (design) and the associated experiences are disposable – used temporarily, rapidly dulling and constantly changing. This is how digital agencies make money and how Adobe makes tools revenue in the category. UX (experience) and the associated systems and processes are more permanent - these are constraints and enablers and require the right adapter/configuration in order to use the design. As an example, it is this the sum of these parts make up the enterprise UX business as it relates to Adobe's focus on customer experience management.
   
   
7. The domain – domain-driven design actually surfaced as a technology approach to enabling better user experiences during the industry’s learning years. While it does not solve everything, what we do know is that the inference of domain is critical, and that the informed separation of domain from service and interface requires that you represent domain effectively. Some platform and tools providers infer this as a pattern and best practice.  IT teams have deep knowledge of the domain model and its association to underlying systems and should be the core contributor to this knowledge.  The consumerization of IT may lend itself to some rethinking of domain models, but that does not mean they are gone.
   
   
8. Data – data is the interface and data absolutely informs the interface. Historical, competitive, industry, market, geography, audience and technology trends are all surfaced as data that can be used along with your own analytics to drive broader insight about the conditions your new design will exist within. Embrace it, live with it, learn from it, and consume it continuously, especially after launch. Then share it with everyone who is a stakeholder in order to maximize learning and inputs into the final form factor.
   
   
9. The world around you – Close your laptop lid and go for a walk. Visit a gallery. Attend a wellness conference. See a movie. What are people doing, reading, studying, watching, visiting and talking about? What commonalities in these shared experiences can you extrapolate to your audience and desired outcomes? What persistent affordances cross over into your world in a way that will both inform and prepare your customers for your leg of the journey?
   
   
10. The designer's body of work – You are, or have hired, some brilliant designers. These brilliant designers are focused on transforming digital experiences based on two key inputs – everything you know or can learn about the project AND who they are and their past experience and knowledge. Today’s UX designers understand layout, color, brand, interaction, information architecture and even the constraints of development. Armed with these tools, their magic is going to play a big part in finding the right path, and we can benefit from some pure, unfettered ideation that borrows on the wealth of education and experience that is hiding in their portfolio. What we do know is that designers all appreciate great UX and that users increasingly appreciate the source of great experience.

This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list – nor does the list preclude that users or user experience professionals will often have knowledge of some of the workings in specific areas - the intent was to both push a little on the realities behind UX trend that favor design and usability in order to inform the overall discovery of requirements.

If I had one question of readers, it would be where do you find your inspiration and logic outside of the design process?  Or, perhaps when is user-centric too user-centric?

Realistic expectations for enterprise user experience

Back in 2009, I started to tackle the problem of slow adoption for user experience methodology and design thinking in the enterprise and government.  While both enterprise and government had unique needs from a UX perspective, it quickly became clear to me that they had more in common with each other than all other UX areas of practice, i.e. internet startups, media companies, mobile applications, etc.

Ultimately the craft and tools are the same regardless of where it is applied. The difference I am referring to between enterprise UX and consumer applications is perhaps akin to the differences one might find between a commercial aircraft and a two-seater prop plane.  Inevitably in different domains there are a unique set of constraints and complexities that come with designing application interfaces and these are magnified when we expand across the spectrum of an intended user experience.

The second part of the complexity in the enterprise domain is that there are a significant percentage of people in leadership, marketing, product and development roles who do not believe user experience is important at all.  Perhaps rightfully so, given their role and the company they work for, they focus instead on cutting cost out of the supply chain, reducing the cost of taking products or services to market and speeding projects out the door in order to maintain competitive footholds.  Let’s put that thought aside for now, mostly because there are a growing number of business professionals who do see great experiences as differentiators, design thinking as a way to either save or grow a company, and user experience as the evidence of a broader focus on great customer experience.

UX professionals may be partially at fault for this problem in the enterprise – the purity of craft and focus has lent itself to disregard for the complexity of the realization for the ‘user at the center’ edict that they work so hard to craft.  Few user experience documents, wireframes or prototypes come with a set of options to make it easier for IT to implement nor safer for the business to adopt.

Having realistic expectations is left to the overall owner of the project who now sits between three equally squeaky wheels each with unique problems, constraints, needs and goals that are often at conflict with the user.  Registration forms, for example, are consistent and constant proof of the tension between UX, IT and business needs.  At the simplest level here are three distinct views I have seen come up again and again in discussions about a registration form:

1. Business: The business would like to capture as much data as possible, generally in order to qualify that someone is a lead or valid customer.  Much berated fields like household income and company size are examples of a business need.
2. IT: Technologists may want the form to be completely distinct and separate from customer databases from an architectural perspective.  This is a measure of protection for customer data and avoids expensive look-ups and connections to back-end systems.
3. Users: Users want as few fields as possible, auto-population wherever possible and no personally identifying information whatsoever , until such time as they are actually providing that out of necessity. i.e. shipping address.

I honestly believe that the best way to establish guidelines for effective adoption of user experience within the enterprise is to consistently balance the needs of the 3 groups from the onset.  Over time this has the effect of actually seeding user-centric capabilities into IT systems and business processes, and has the short term effect of quickly arriving at needed approvals to move forward with projects.  A project that is well heeled in the corporate culture that funds and supports it, is not only more likely to see the light of day, it is actually more likely to succeed and to be revisited and optimized over time.

There is already an expectation for agility between the business and the needs of IT.  BPM and SOA already co-exist; in fact many thoughtful leaders (how I like to think of thoughtleaders) argue that the two are inextricably bound together in all successful IT departments that serve global, profitable companies.  Now we add this new complexity of pure customer focus and the craft of user experience.  Fortunately there are two associated skillsets and outcomes that help with the translation of need to expectation and its resulting outcome.

Between UX and IT we need to establish and observe guidelines for Information Architecture.  This ensures IT has a voice in the realization of great experience and ensures that users have a voice with the systems they interact with.  Done correctly, IA frees the flow of user information in exchange for information assets and digital properties in a harmonious trade-off of complexity and utility.
Between UX and the business we take advantage of existing business processes (BPM) to build models of ideal interaction and this is the point of inflection for Interaction Design to assert it’s command and control over unruly processes.  When we design beautiful interfaces and adopt familiar metaphors for interaction, this serves as a dialect for success and turns the infinitely complex into the seemingly effortless.

In the middle of these three distinct and different worlds is the land of realistic expectations – the acceptable complexity for users, the attainable throughput for business, and the desired governance for IT.  If three shake hands first and agree to disagree where necessary then we have a path for enterprise user experience that should prove successful – interaction after transaction after optimization.

Businesses with customer experience managed.
IT teams with wildly successful, instantly adopted applications.
Customers that are engaged and pleased with the way their goals are being met.

I find it both notable and no accident that from an enterprise perspective Adobe is building a story for customer experience management with a strong focus on user experience that is enterprise class, on a legacy of BPM leadership and on top of a set of enterprise server products that are built with and support the best practices of SOA.

A Fourth Value for an Identity Pattern in Three Parts

I was on a thread today regarding the use of screen name or username as a way of identifying a user. Clearly there are patterns, or maybe one pattern with variations, in web application design that revolve around user identity management.

This confusion is compounded by using online services, such as Google, Yahoo!, eBay and other services who have established their identity models based on engineering-centric requirements.

I came across a great post in the Habitat Chronicles that essentially documents the historical belief that lead to conjoining the requirements of engineering (establishing sessions, retrieving database records, etc.) with the users requirements of recognizability and self-expression. But, this approach can actually discourage participation due to the fear of exposing personal data.

Yahoo! where I used to work found that users consistently listed that the fear of spammers farming their e-mail address was the number one reason they gave for abandoning the creation of user created content. This feedback ultimately led to the very expensive and radical re-engineering of the Yahoo identity model.

The author, Randy Farmer, found that a tripartite identity model would describe the needs expressed by most online services and more importantly, would be forward compatible with current identity sharing methods and future proposals.

He diagrams this most efficiently as:



Randy Farmer's Tripartite Identity Pattern postulates that the three components of user identity are: the account identifier, the login identifier, and the public identifier.

Read more about each of the elements and some interesting feedback on the pattern here.

Another interesting pattern in this regard is the use of a claims-based identity model. This revolves around the idea of claims i.e. a piece of information about an individual that is in doubt and must therefore be proved. Using an identity model based around claims allows individual identities to hold many disparate roles which can relate to different organisations as part of a wider ID metasystem. The way in which these claims are asserted and proven can be handled by a variety of technical solutions and services.

Microsoft's (where I also used to work) ASP.NET team documented the Geneva Framework as used for building claims-based applications and services for ASP.NET applications. Features include:

• Security Token Services (STS)
• Federated authentication from ASP.NET applications
• Object Model that facilitates claims-based authorization form ASP.NET applications

The above definition was taken from the below URL, this webpage also gives a more in-depth look at what is a claims based system is and how the Geneva framework fits in.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd278426.aspx

Microsoft's Passport service which I worked on for a few years at Microsoft is a good example how this can work to provide identity services between applications.

Who Cares? Where is this going?

Federated and open identity systems ultimately lend themselves to a new identity pattern that I have yet to see documented, but I actually think I see it in use quite frequently, mostly when I comment on blogs. Frequently the comment I post is able to retrieve information such as username or real name and an avatar without ever exposing personally identifiable information that could be used for rude behavior such as spamming or harassing someone. However, what strikes me as the untapped potential in this emerging pattern is the concept of 'ownership' of my contributions as it relates to the persistence and distribution of that identity.

Activity as a function of Identity

If there were a fourth element to the tripartate identity that was activity this would complete the social pattern. I could consume or represent that identity in the context of contribution, content or context as appropriate and as subscribed to by the user who owns the activity and identity.

This would enable a double-click on an identity that could perform interesting new social functions:

• Aggregate user output in the context of an experience essentially allowing me to view contributions of an individual expressed as an identity
• Assimilate interest and behavior and express this as a contextual metaphor (e.g. a score, a weighting, etc)

This is actually already taking place in emerging social networks and leading edge news/blog sites and in my opinion brings new value to the definition of identity.

...to be continued.

Handvetica - comp-y awesomeness

Found this great font for decks and docs around UX and UID work. I know it would be good for the right site or print piece as well, but this definitely keeps the handmade approach without having to resort to all the comic sans lookalikes which are hard to take seriously.

You can make a title png or grab the whole font here.

It was handmade in Switzerland by Studio Kmzero, who have authored a few more excellent contemporary and well designed fonts. You can see those here.