Equal opportunities in User Centred Design?

IDEO, The worlds greatest proponent of User Centered Design have released a ‘toolkit’ to promote a human centred approach to social development projects.

It’s full of top tips… one of which seems worryingly chauvinistic…

If you can’t read the image, it kindly reminds us; “To ensure there is a balanced gender perspective involve female staff in all aspects of this process” … (eek!)

I’m sure IDEO had the best intentions, but with half of the world’s humans being female, do we really need to be told to include women in a Human Centred Design process ?

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Back in Black

Since being back in New Zealand I’ve heard people reckoning we are a few years behind Europe and the States in terms of the acceptance of UX.

I’m back in London for a few weeks, consulting for Flow Interactive, … so if it’s true we kiwis are behind, I’m in an industry crystal ball here.

It’s great to be back in the saddle at Flow, the place where I first heard some of the many acronyms that have proliferated as the industry evolves. (UCD, UX, UE, IA, IXD, CHI, HCI… where do you want to get off?)

All these labels and sometimes glorified job titles aside, in the last few years in London, the biggest change I’ve noticed in the industry is the shift from usability to user experience.

Usability studies are often the first encounter clients have with a User Centred Design process, but these are notoriously carried out too late in the process to be of use. (telltale sign: more ‘oh shit’ than ‘a-ha’ moments)

Switched-on clients have adopted UX as an early strategic tool to gain insight, minimise risk and build competitive advantage.

As clients are exposed to user centred approaches and the results they bring, they aim to integrate UX across their entire product lifecycle. You know they see the true value of UX when they involve UCD in the earliest stages of a project

…Meanwhile ‘user testing’ (another horrific and misleading term) has become somewhat commoditised, seen by some as a ‘tick-box’ exercise routinely built into the development cycle particularly of websites. Usability is no less important, but less mysterious and more self contained.

If this is what NZ has to look forward to, then it looks like we have to push our clients over the usability hump, to see the full value of a User Centred approach
…And stop baffling them with acronyms.

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The oldest trick in the customer experience book

Every Tuesday NZ business strategist Lance Wiggs issues ‘Three ways to improve your business’, Last week at number two is ‘Meet your customers’.
This simple advice represents the grass roots of a customer-centric approach to building a great experience for your customers, and competitive advantage for your business.

So, if this approach is simple yet crucial to design and business, why do we have to be reminded?

In the world of retail, gaining customer insight is; there for the taking, known best practice and as old as shops themselves.

In traditional retail, understanding customer behaviour is a matter of key staff keeping eyes and ears open. At base level, switched-on store managers can track and respond to demand and popularity of products simply by watching them fly off the shelf (or not). Front of house employees with their ears ‘on’ can gauge reaction to new product lines and track customer requests to inform potential new products or services.

Online, without face to face contact with your customer, you’re blinded to these insights and opportunities.
…of course web analytics can paint some of the picture, and tracking keywords in your site search can take you closer to the mind-set of your customer…

…but ultimately these aren’t stats or keywords, they are people and  it’s about meeting them, understanding the attitudes that drive behaviours in and around the context of your product or service, and their wider goals relating to what you offer.

This means qualitative research at an individual level. By building empathy with your customers, you can gain valuable insights into their motivations, monitor changing attitudes and expectations to inform vital changes to your proposition. …just like shopkeepers have been doing for thousands of years.

Lance’s timing is good however, as too many online businesses have failed to keep eyes and ears on their customers.  It’s an old and proven approach, and it ain’t going anywhere soon.

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Prepare to be disappointed. Customer service in an over-subscribed city

I’m en route to London and am bracing myself for the reality of ‘the nation of shopkeepers’

London shopkeepers’ best intentions to deliver great customer experience are challenged under the weight of the massive demand. With this volume of customers to serve, there’s no time for the personal touch.

And from a shop workers viewpoint, why bother? It’s a constant anonymous flow of customers and tourists you’re very unlikely to see again.

I’ll soon get used to this, lower my service expectation and be delighted if I even get a hello at the checkout. When your sights are set so low, it’s amazing how little is required to make a difference.

In New Zealand, good sales staff will greet you with a smile, look you in the eye and seem genuinely interested. Often you feel like you are the only customer in the shop or on the phone, you have their attention and it even seems personal.

When returning to NZ from a global metropolis I really notice our hometown advantage, and it takes some acclimatising. “why are they so interested when I’m just buying the milk?”

I’m already looking forward to the first few trips to the shops on my return.

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UX Research participants. Harder to pick than a broken nose?


Recruiting the right participants is a numbers game, so I was unsure sure what to expect returning to New Zealand from London.

All the insights, opportunities and reality-check moments which emerge from customer research or usability studies can be thrown down the pan if you’re not talking to the right people.

If your target sample is iPhone users who’ve downloaded from the appstore, that’s a pretty clear ‘consumer’ type brief. You probably won’t struggle to find a few of these and can’t go too far wrong.

…But what about when your client’s product is business to business and still at concept stage? You know the demographic, market segment, and perhaps the industry the potential customer base work in, but you need to know they are ‘warm’ to your product.

This is when a good recruiter is worth gold to the credibility of your User Experience project.
The ‘face to face’ research component is sometimes only a slice of a User Experience or User Centred Design project but the insights gained and direction provided can have a powerful effect on the end product. Being certain that these insights come from the right place and are based on truths is essential.

Finding a sample truly representative of your potential audience, achieving a realistic spread of demographic and many other factors across a small sample of people is a professional art form. Rather than asking yes/no screener questions, they’ll use subtle but revealing attitudinal questions to weed out the less useful participants.

I’ve recently worked with a company in Christchurch who had this level of attention to detail and came up with the goods on a tight brief.

If you are looking to find a solid and accurate sample, I can recommend you get in touch with Karen at Opinions info@opinions.co.nz

Do you know of any good recruiters for User research or Usability in New Zealand? or viewing facilities around the country ?   … or perhaps you know of some to avoid…
I’d be interested to hear.

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Best laid plans. Blueprint for a charity home page

To help the client team moving forward I’ve produced a home page blueprint for the website built during Full Code Press.

With web projects requiring information architecture and overall user experience input it’s often as useful to justify the strategy and principles behind recommended approaches as it is to implement them.

Rainbow Youth helped us to understand their audience, now they need to pick up the website and run with it. It’s important they understand the strategy behind the home page and the function each element performs in relation audience motivations and expectations.

Since the Full Code Press event the Codeblacks team are providing tweaks and ongoing direction for our client, Rainbow Youth before the new site goes live.

To Share the goodness and our findings, …I have made a copy of the web page IA-UX blueprint available for those who work with the design of charity websites.

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Code Blacks’ winning website built on empathy

Yes, the New Zealand ‘Code Blacks’ team has retained the trophy.

Full Code Press is a competition big on challenges:
Build a charity website from scratch in a mere 24 hours with a team you’ve barely met in a tiny room in the middle of a seething exhibition hall for a mystery client, with reporters and cameras hovering and under the sleep deprivation of an all-nighter…all this and against the formidable Australian team.

My challenge as UX lead: How to apply user centred design principles under all those constraints?

I figured we’d take some leads from competitor analysis, undertake regular guerrilla user research (reality checking our design with people from the audience) to make sure we were heading in the right direction with information architecture, copy and visual design, and even iron out any usability issues.

How wrong I was.

With the clock ticking and a team hungry for UX direction,  IA and page layouts needed to be locked down within hours of kick-off. Time pressure ruled out the chance to validate our designs, so without any real user research we were left to fly seat-of-pants applying best practice.

I often turn down ‘expert review’ work when it’s clear a user centred approach is required, so this really tested my principles. It felt a little like being on a DIY home makeover show, where corners are cut and the clients end up with a half-arsed job they will have to re-do as soon as the cameras stop rolling.

But our clients from Rainbow Youth were different… They understood their audience.

Our clients shared theirs and others personal anecdotes inspiring empathy amongst our team, providing first hand audience insights, giving us the confidence to charge forward with a clear picture of their goals from using the site and the values to be conveyed through the user experience.

Picking ‘randoms’ from the audience to give feedback on our design may have worked on a high level, but empathy for and understanding of the end user put us in a great position to cater for user needs while achieving the support and fundraising goals of the charity.

It’s amazing what is possible in such a compressed timeframe when you have direct access to a client who themselves are user advocates.

I look forward to comparing notes with Patrick from the Australian team to get his take on UX under pressure.

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Full Code Press. 24 hrs to build a great web experience

Next week I’ll be part of an NZ team competing in Sydney against the Aussies to build a website for a charity at CeBIT’09

We’ll have just 24 hours from initial briefing to completion so we’ll cover the full journey from paper through to pixels, against the clock.

My role as User Experience guy is to play the user advocate. Making sure the Information Architecture maps well with the goals and needs of both the audience and the charity.

I’m thinking along the lines of ‘Le Mans’ UX design race;

  • standing start
  • all nighter
  • …but only one set of tyres
  • and no change of driver

Formal User Research and Usability methods are out, number eight wire is in …It’s time to improvise.

The event is called Full Code Press and our team are the Code Blacks.

Australia vs New Zealand, live at the CeBIT 09 conference in Sydney, 12-13 May.

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Kiwi teacher’s User Centered Design approach wins over students (and Microsoft)

A geography teacher from an Auckland school is hailed as the ‘most innovative teacher in the world’. Delivering lessons via students mobile phones.

Nathan’s approach:

  • Understanding his audience
  • Observing their behavior
  • Building empathy with their needs
  • Harnessing their input

…and ultimately innovating learner experiences in an education system stymied by tradition.

Here are some cues from the article as to how a User Centered Design approach helped him reach this great outcome:

“No matter how much technology advances, high-quality teaching will always be linked to having a good relationship with students”

‘learning through information technology and student involvement. Students helped – by telling him what they felt was most appropriate or interesting’

There’s a video on MSN charged with Nathans enthusiasm for the way he’s been able to respond to the needs and behaviours of the students, by the power of observation.

He says the students who inspired the new method have embraced the technology and experience.
Pass rates have risen from 50-60% up to 80-90%.  Hard to argue with that sort of result.

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