Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Thanks ALL for the advice so far. As you are connecting the wires (thanks Paul), are there questions/process you apply to determine when to involve users. For example: Have seen research where questions are asked of the product and its users, where best practice, usability principles or better design would have helped in the first place i.e. it was not the right time to involve users. So there is an important value in involving users and a value placed on the questions you ask towards clear recommendations. So question: what cues do you look for to determine when to involve users as part of your user research planning? Does this form part of the magic? rgds, Dan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Often, user research can fall into a chasm because there is no up front thought put into how it can translate into the design. As others have said, the chasm can be avoided by thinking about what questions the research should be answering. So as a designer, ask yourself What do I need to know? followed by Of that, what don't I know? and then see if research can answer those questions. That way the research will be focussed and far more efficient. Not just research for the sake of creating a report that will sit unread on a shelf somewhere. Of course some people make a living doing that... ;-) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Thanks Richard and yes. Think you need to be upfront and clear with the people who are receiving and using the research that it will be delivered as something that can be communicated clearly and is a design piece in itself. Think there is lots to be said for pairing a User Researcher and Designer roles as they are complimentary skill sets. Some people are lucky to have both and perhaps thats another question all together. rgds, Dan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Interesting discussion you've kicked off, Dan. One thing you said (Think there is lots to be said for pairing a User Researcher and Designer roles as they are complimentary skill sets) triggered some thoughts. Read on... At one of my former companies I built a process for conducting cross-disciplinary, team-based contextual design research in a time-boxed, moderated format. As part of the process I made it a requirement that the research team contain a designer, a product stakeholder (typically a product manager), and a technologist. I also specified that the research team be facilitated. The team facilitator was intended to be someone who had deep experience in user/design research, team/interpersonal dynamics, and (ideally) some basic ability to manage projects. I also made it a requirement that the team members - the designer, product manager, and engineer - be excused from their day jobs for 3-4 weeks so they could focus exclusively on spotting opportunities in the field, working together to flesh out, prototype, and validate an offering to address the opportunity, and then building a rudimentary business case for the offering. I time-boxed the activity to three weeks - one for observing and spotting the opportunities; one week for working through the data and transforming it into design concepts and guidelines; and one week for building out a rough prototype, validating the design with more user input, documenting the personas, and doing a bit of due diligence on the business case (i.e., defining the addressable market, the competition, etc). We only ran a few pilots of the process at that company. The output was decent, but of course the leaders spiked the opportunities we identified...none of the leadership wanted to commit budget to building a new product line; not when they had numbers they had to hit that quarter. Typical story. Looking back, I realized that I vastly underspecified the magic place activities. So I'm very grateful to the the thread contributors for their suggestions, particularly Dan S (whose book is on my guilt pile of unread books), Dana C, and the others. If I spin up the process at a future company, I'll have good input for the magic place activities. Also, I need to write this process up and present it somewhere. Right now it's just taking up space on my hard drive. -Paul - - - - - - - Paul Sherman, Principal, ShermanUX User Experience Research | Design | Strategy p...@shermanux.com www.ShermanUX.com +1.512.917.1942 - - - - - - - Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Also I meant to name-check Will Evans for the excellent references he provided on this thread. (And for producing what is arguably the most @ss-kicking wireframing video on Youtube.) -Paul On Feb 3, 2010, at 9:43 AM, Paul Sherman wrote: Interesting discussion you've kicked off, Dan. One thing you said (Think there is lots to be said for pairing a User Researcher and Designer roles as they are complimentary skill sets) triggered some thoughts. Read on... At one of my former companies I built a process for conducting cross-disciplinary, team-based contextual design research in a time-boxed, moderated format. As part of the process I made it a requirement that the research team contain a designer, a product stakeholder (typically a product manager), and a technologist. I also specified that the research team be facilitated. The team facilitator was intended to be someone who had deep experience in user/design research, team/interpersonal dynamics, and (ideally) some basic ability to manage projects. I also made it a requirement that the team members - the designer, product manager, and engineer - be excused from their day jobs for 3-4 weeks so they could focus exclusively on spotting opportunities in the field, working together to flesh out, prototype, and validate an offering to address the opportunity, and then building a rudimentary business case for the offering. I time-boxed the activity to three weeks - one for observing and spotting the opportunities; one week for working through the data and transforming it into design concepts and guidelines; and one week for building out a rough prototype, validating the design with more user input, documenting the personas, and doing a bit of due diligence on the business case (i.e., defining the addressable market, the competition, etc). We only ran a few pilots of the process at that company. The output was decent, but of course the leaders spiked the opportunities we identified...none of the leadership wanted to commit budget to building a new product line; not when they had numbers they had to hit that quarter. Typical story. Looking back, I realized that I vastly underspecified the magic place activities. So I'm very grateful to the the thread contributors for their suggestions, particularly Dan S (whose book is on my guilt pile of unread books), Dana C, and the others. If I spin up the process at a future company, I'll have good input for the magic place activities. Also, I need to write this process up and present it somewhere. Right now it's just taking up space on my hard drive. -Paul - - - - - - - Paul Sherman, Principal, ShermanUX User Experience Research | Design | Strategy p...@shermanux.com www.ShermanUX.com +1.512.917.1942 - - - - - - - Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
For a limited time, in honor of this topic and of the start of Interaction10, I'm offering a free pdf download of Chapter 5 of Designing for Interaction on Structured Findings that is on this topic. It was was one of the new chapters in the second edition. Happy reading! http://www.designingforinteraction.com/D4I_ch5.pdf Dan Dan Saffer Principal, Kicker Studio @odannyboy on Twitter Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Thanks Dan. rgds, Dan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
When the reward justifies the effort, another aspect of connecting the wires between research and design involves an attempt at quantification. How prevalent is that persona attribute or behavior in our audience? How did that design component we came up with in the concepting session for the last release fare in terms of conversion? Do we have any evidence to support the notion that an augmented reality tennis shoe viewer will move the needle? Perhaps not during the magic moments, so that creativity can tap out, but shortly afterward. The qualitative data that many design research projects generate is very helpful for understanding patterns and sequences, but not at all useful for understanding prevalence, and therefore relative priority, except to define the key concepts that need to be operationalized and then measured. Paul Bryan Usography ( http://www.usography.com ) Blog: Virtual Floorspace ( http://www.virtualfloorspace.com ) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The \magic place\ between user research and design - tips stories
On Feb 2, 2010, at 12:28 AM, Daniel Szuc wrote: Hi: There is a magic place that exists between user research (speaking with your users stakeholders), taking all that goodness and designing the product with that in mind and speaking to it. Often, user research can fall into a chasm because there is no up front thought put into how it can translate into the design. So what has worked well for you? For example: * How do you translate findings from user research into design? * What do you plan for up front in your user research to help communicate your design? * What do you use to tell a story around and to the design? * How do you help sell the design and also speak to the issues? Note - I have deliberately left out speaking to a specific UX method, rather looking for tips stories. Look forward to learning from you all. rgds, Dan Hi Dan, I think there are two parts. First, you do have to think ahead to design the research you're doing to answer specific questions. What are the concerns about the design? Where are there gaps in what the team knows? What are they having difficulty making decisions about? Second, the best teams I've met look at what they've heard and what they've seen in the completed sessions with users through a meaningful and thorough process, going from observations to inferences to opinions to theories, which they then test. Going through each of those steps is incredibly important for solving the *right* problems, answering the questions the team went into a given study with. And this is the step that I see most teams missing. Instead, they jump from observing users to design direction, without the close examination of what happened and why. Great questions - Dana :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: Dana Chisnell 415.519.1148 dana AT usabilityworks DOT net www.usabilityworks.net http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Great topic. Success depends on connecting the wires between research results and subsequent action. Our approach for connecting the wires can be summed up in 3 points. 1) Begin with the end in mind At the start of every research project, we identify the people who are expected to take the results and turn them into a reality, and we ask to meet with them so we can identify the design parameters we can realistically impact. Ignoring them until it's time to socialize the results is a big mistake, because at that point they may actively deep six the results. The format of the results needs to be something they are prepared to own and carry forward. For our projects, this often involves conceptual wireframes with medium fidelity design components. 2) Provide specific, unambiguous recommendations Findings are great, but many clients don't know what to do with findings. They need specific recommendations, whether text or conceptual diagrams. One client actually forwarded me an internal thread that said, We're concerned that the experts are going to leave us something that is brilliant but then we don't know what to do with it. Can they sit down with us and discuss specific design changes? The answer was, of course, yes. If recommendations are brilliant but non-directional, people not intimately acquainted with the details will question the value of the exercise. 3) Give stakeholders a vivid picture of the issues Whenever possible, we include a small video reel that highlights the core issues. We often conduct in-depth interviews or ethnographic research in homes, workplaces, retail outlets, etc., so it's relatively easy to pull together video scenes that drive home the findings and support the recommendations. I've found that the busiest executive sponsor or design director will pay rapt attention to 3 minutes of video, but may get glassy eyes or start texting with the the same volume of presentation data. The details are only for the people who want and need them. In one presentation for a media company, the sponsors literally clapped after the personas presentation. Paul Bryan Usography ( http://www.usography.com ) %u2028 Blog: Virtual Floorspace ( http://www.virtualfloorspace.com ) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
This is a little out of left-field, and sort of related to this discussion on the resistance of the material: http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=32320 I've found that by leveraging Hypnagogia (more commonly known as the snooze button on your alarm clock) a heightened level of associative thinking can be applied to particular problems. Here's an excerpt from the wikipedia article on the subject Receptivity and suggestibility Thought processes on the edge of sleep tend to differ radically from those of ordinary wakefulness. Hypnagogia may involve a %u201Cloosening of ego boundaries ... openness, sensitivity, internalization-subjectification of the physical and mental environment (empathy) and diffuse-absorbed attention, Hypnagogic cognition, in comparison with that of normal, alert wakefulness, is characterised by heightened suggestibility, illogic and a fluid association of ideas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia I know it's a little cranola-crunchy.. but if I've been looking at a problem for a week and feeling stuck in a rut I will make time on a Saturday morning to ponder the options, more often than not I come away with new avenues to explore. food for thought - ymmv. /pauric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The \magic place\ between user research and design - tips stories
On Feb 2, 2010, at 12:28 AM, Daniel Szuc wrote: There is a magic place that exists between user research (speaking with your users stakeholders), taking all that goodness and designing the product with that in mind and speaking to it. Often, user research can fall into a chasm because there is no up front thought put into how it can translate into the design. So what has worked well for you? I address this a lot in Designing for Interaction 2 (mostly because it was a gross omission in the 1st edition). The steps are pretty simple, although hard to execute well: - Put research data on the walls (make it physical) - Manipulate the now-physical data and make them into Conceptual Models (personas are one kind of perceptual model) - Ideate based on the conceptual models, particularly around pain points and opportunities uncovered in research - Create design principles based on what is known from research, plus the best ideas from concepting Dan Dan Saffer Principal, Kicker Studio http://www.odannyboy.com @odannyboy on Twitter Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The \magic place\ between user research and design - tips stories
To add some resources - That magic space is so huge you could drive a tractor trailer through it. Start here: Deconstructing Analysis Techniques - by @docbaty, provides a decent overview http://johnnyholland.org/2009/02/17/deconstructing-analysis-techniques/ There are an additional 4 or 5 articles. Then move on over to Jon Kolko's Exposing the Magic of DesignL A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis http://www.methodsofsynthesis.com/ And just for fun, read Michael Beurittes article in Design Observer and read Michael Bierut's This Is My Process http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=4717 If you need complete books dedicated to the magic box - there are some of those - though a bit more academic and written for the ID crowd, but still good - one I personall love is LeCompte's Analyzing and Interpreting Ethnographic Data Cheers, ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems Will Evans | Director, Experience Design tel: +1.617.281.1281 | w...@semanticfoundry.com http://blog.semanticfoundry.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/semanticwill aim: semanticwill gtalk: semanticwill twitter: semanticwill skype: semanticwill On Feb 2, 2010, at 4:24 PM, Dan Saffer wrote: On Feb 2, 2010, at 12:28 AM, Daniel Szuc wrote: There is a magic place that exists between user research (speaking with your users stakeholders), taking all that goodness and designing the product with that in mind and speaking to it. Often, user research can fall into a chasm because there is no up front thought put into how it can translate into the design. So what has worked well for you? I address this a lot in Designing for Interaction 2 (mostly because it was a gross omission in the 1st edition). The steps are pretty simple, although hard to execute well: - Put research data on the walls (make it physical) - Manipulate the now-physical data and make them into Conceptual Models (personas are one kind of perceptual model) - Ideate based on the conceptual models, particularly around pain points and opportunities uncovered in research - Create design principles based on what is known from research, plus the best ideas from concepting Dan Dan Saffer Principal, Kicker Studio http://www.odannyboy.com @odannyboy on Twitter Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The \magic place\ between user research and design - tips stories
Clearly I need to ignore the list and get back to IxD10 since my brain is incapable of multitasking. Cheers, ~ will On Feb 2, 2010, at 4:35 PM, Will Evans wrote: To add some resources - That magic space is so huge you could drive a tractor trailer through it. Start here: Deconstructing Analysis Techniques - by @docbaty, provides a decent overview http://johnnyholland.org/2009/02/17/deconstructing-analysis- techniques/ There are an additional 4 or 5 articles. Then move on over to Jon Kolko's Exposing the Magic of DesignL A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis http://www.methodsofsynthesis.com/ And just for fun, read Michael Beurittes article in Design Observer and read Michael Bierut's This Is My Process http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=4717 If you need complete books dedicated to the magic box - there are some of those - though a bit more academic and written for the ID crowd, but still good - one I personall love is LeCompte's Analyzing and Interpreting Ethnographic Data Cheers, ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems Will Evans | Director, Experience Design tel: +1.617.281.1281 | w...@semanticfoundry.com http://blog.semanticfoundry.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/semanticwill aim: semanticwill gtalk: semanticwill twitter: semanticwill skype: semanticwill On Feb 2, 2010, at 4:24 PM, Dan Saffer wrote: On Feb 2, 2010, at 12:28 AM, Daniel Szuc wrote: There is a magic place that exists between user research (speaking with your users stakeholders), taking all that goodness and designing the product with that in mind and speaking to it. Often, user research can fall into a chasm because there is no up front thought put into how it can translate into the design. So what has worked well for you? I address this a lot in Designing for Interaction 2 (mostly because it was a gross omission in the 1st edition). The steps are pretty simple, although hard to execute well: - Put research data on the walls (make it physical) - Manipulate the now-physical data and make them into Conceptual Models (personas are one kind of perceptual model) - Ideate based on the conceptual models, particularly around pain points and opportunities uncovered in research - Create design principles based on what is known from research, plus the best ideas from concepting Dan Dan Saffer Principal, Kicker Studio http://www.odannyboy.com @odannyboy on Twitter Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Thanks Dan. This is particularly interesting - Create design principles based on what is known from research, plus the best ideas from concepting I see this helping get more people aligned around a product framework that may map to the UX Vision and/or how products fit together strategically potentially to business goals. Have seen many, many instances, unfortunately, where Product/Design Teams work in isolation of each other and dont have anything to link them together resulting in a broken UX. Be pleased to hear more about how you document and communicate design principles. rgds, Dan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The magic place between user research and design - tips stories
Hi Dan, To learn what the product development field knows here, a good entry phrase is fuzzy front end. Though I like your term magic place better. http://www.google.com/search?q=fuzzy front end Victor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
