welterweightUX

Lately, I’ve heard some seasoned UXers bemoan the dearth of user testing and data collection going on in a lot of modern UX practices.

The internet has been around for quite a while now. People (erm, users) have had enough varied experiences that a lot of the tried and true “best practices” are no longer relevant. Or at the very least shouldn’t restrict what we do. Strategic experimentation has helped make things fun. It’s pushed thing forward. And it’s helped make our jobs interesting while at the same time enchanting our audiences.

But there’s a real danger in unchecked innovation.

UX people are obviously trying to craft unique, well-reasoned experiences. We’re good at thinking things through, considering the whys and hows. But, as @mkedobbs said after last night’s mkeUX meetup, all the innovation and creativity in the world is for naught if you don’t have tangible proof that it’s useable.

So here’s the thing: Let’s not get hung up on user testing, etc, but let’s not forgo it. We need to put what we’re creating in front of users before they’re forced to use it in the batty metropolis of daily life.

Part of your UX advocacy with clients or within your organization needs to be
focused on fighting to let users speak in their own voice.

Testing does not have to be expensive or time consuming. A small sit-down yields massive results.

So, you know, to awkwardly rake up an old advertising slogan: Just do it.

Seriously though—have at ‘er.

Earlier today, @Abby_the_IA delivered her definition of UX as a one-two punch:

• Day to day job of UX: mold experience our client is delivering to be as usable and useful as possible within current climate and constraints
• Long-term job of UX is to help mold client mindset to bring the needs of the user into as much focus as best practices & business needs.

For a long time, I’ve been snoozing in the sunlight of the first idea she touches on: constraints.

It’s like Georges Perec’s A Void, a 300 page lipogrammatic novel, where he doesn’t —not once —use the letter “e”. Truthfully, I’ve never read the book (it’s on my endless to-read list, like the entirety of Donald Barthleme’s syllubus), but I love the idea of building something almost squarely on the concept of omission.

Constraint is a great tamer. You’re forced to be resourceful and smart with your creativity, and to be fearless with purging bloat and fancy.

In our UX work (and in life in general, I guess) we should never bemoan the boa constrictor-ish lot we’re sometimes handed. Sucky as it can be, you occasionally need to be nearly choked out in order to fully live.

I haven’t posted in a good, long while. Maybe you’ve noticed. But probably not?

I don’t really have excuses for it, other than laziness, the impending birth of a daughter, and the general fog-headedness that comes with searching for, interviewing for, and getting a new job.

So thaaaaat’s what’s bringing back into the blog realm. I have a new job. And I want to tell you about it.

The past: tech writing
4 years ago, I started as a technical writer at Trisept Solutions. I have a degree in Technical & Professional Writing. But up to that point, I’d just worked jobby jobs. Things to get by, pay a few bills. I wasn’t putting my degree to use at all.

In 2006, my wife (then girlfriend) was finishing up acupuncture school and we decided to move back to Milwaukee from Chicago. Cheaper cost of living, closer to friends/family. That sort of things. And I landed my job at Trisept, where I’d actually use the education my parents paid so much for.

Enter UX
Several months in, the company hired a Usability Specialist. A really great one named Deborah Sova. I had no idea what usability was. But Deb and I quickly struck up a rapport and she graciously took me under her wing, involving me in all her projects. Heuristics, user testing, the works.

It was the best, most intense education I’ve ever had.

About a year later, Deb left for a different and her role was handed to me. I continued to hone my skills, work on different types of projects, and just generally grow the UX practice within the company.

The freedom I had to learn at Trisept was astounding. I dove in deeply and lost myself in the nooks and crannies of UX. I got really excited about the field and realized that it’s exactly what I want to spend the rest of my working life doing.

Need for a change
After a few years in the UX role, I started feeling the need to diversify. Trisept creates technology for the travel industry. Both B-to-C  and B-to-B sites. Great stuff, but you need to grow to stay relevant, right?

The departure
So I started shopping around for new job. Keeping my ears open.

My good friend, colleague, and mkeUX co-conspirator, Mike Kornacki, had recently been hired as UX Architect at Johnson Controls (JCI). He promised me and Steve Grobschmidt that he’d keep us in the loop about any expanded UX needs at JCI.

Within three months of his hire date, he had us in the door.

I started as Information Architect a week and a half ago. Steve started as UX Lead earlier in July.

New things
I’m totally stoked about learning a new industry and continuing my UX education in a new domain. I’m also super excited to be on a UX team with people I genuinely respect and like personally (Gretchen Thomas is also part of it!). We’re being empowered to create the organization’s UX process from the ground up. Exciting stuff!

I’m sure I’ll be telling you more about it as I get settled. And hopefully the change of scenery will kick start me back into blogging!

We finally launched mkeUX.com last night! Very excited for it.

What is it? mkeUX is a loose connection of people who meet irregularly to talk about creating awesome digital user experiences.

If you live in the Milwaukee area, you should come hang out at one of our meetings. Or if you have a topic you’d like to discuss/hear discussed, let us know. We’re totally open to ideas!

Mad props to @yellowledbedder for doing an awesome job with the visual design.

We’re also out in other places:

• Twitter
• Facebook

Now…go look at the site!

Had this dream last night where someone (stupidly?) booked me to give the keynote speech at a conference. I was confused about why I’d been asked and terrified of how I’d blunder though it.

A phony. That’s what I felt like.

Presentation day: The reality
Anyway, the presentation day came. I have no idea what I was talking about or what I said, but I did it. There was applause, but no real excitement.

I’m not a dream untangler, but I here’s what this one meant to me: You are not an expert.

Funny, because that’s what I tell myself (and others) all the time.

Look, this is what I do
I have definite insight to what users expect and need when using websites. Through user research, I’ve been able to get inside their minds. When I meet with stakeholders before involving users, I can distance myself from opinions or personal preferences and play the role user-hugging devil’s advocate awesomely.

This blog is not science
There are sites out there dedicated to the scientific, numbers-based analysis of user behavior and preferences. This is not one of them. I’m not a scientist.

And most of what I post on this blog is not based on any kind of scientific evidence. Rather, it’s cobbled from what I see users do out in the field. That’s what shapes my insight into user behavior.

Be a flip-flopper
The other day, I met with a Business Analyst who asked me a question about an element of a tool we’ve been working on for a few months. Apparently my response contradicted something I said in a previous iteration.

Context is crucial to good user experiences. There certain guidelines, sure, but in the real world, any principal can—or should—be swayed or dismantled by even the most minute refinement.

Only jerks are afraid to flip-flop. So never be afraid to alter your feedback if you’re confident it will help your user, given a change in context.

It’s the right thing to do.

Yesterday, Comet Branding hosted the PR & Social Media Summit here in Milwaukee. My job is not focused on social—I went was to get a deeper sense of how social media and user experience (UX) overlap and what one can learn from the other.

Community is not all-encompassing
Have you heard this before? “We need to make this UI so easy to use, my 80 year old grandma can use it.”

Nonesense. How often would your 80 year old grandma really use what you’re designing? Maybe sometimes, but not often.

The goal shoul dbe to identify and research who actually is going to use your product. Then, design around their expectations, not everyone’s expectations. Set your sights at the ceiling, not the stars.

We should always strip things back to their core and make them insanely usable. But while doing this, we need to remember that we’re angling for a niche, not hugging the whole world.

Amber Naslund from Radian 6 mirrored this in the social sphere. Companies, she said, often make the mistake of thinking they MUST be absolutely everywhere— Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

The truth is that your community probably isn’t everywhere. Maybe they’re still only on MySpace (whaaa?). So be it. Focus your energy on nurturing them. Don’t stress about coddling the masses on other networks who don’t give a shit about what you’re saying.

Strategic experimentation
George Wright, formerly of Will It Blend, soon of Traeger Grills, said something very…um…obvious, but pithy: Things are only obvious after they’ve been done.

UX is not about having concrete answers. It’s essentially about 3 things:

• Identifying problems
• Looking at them from all angles
• Offering up a solution

Sure the solution may tank in the real word (even if it’s been vetted through user testing). Big deal. Mistakes are awesome tools for helping you avoid mistakes next time.

We shouldn’t be conservative. Ever. Sure, we need to stick to some tried and true principals. But they always need to be put twirled and whirled until they fit into the proper context.

Have a well-reasoned idea? Try it out. Tweak it. See if that works better. The real answer to any problem you/your users have may be miles off from your first approach. Keep trying until you dig up the obviousness that was there all along.

More, more, moooore!
I’m just scratching the surface of what I learned. Frankly, there’s slim chance you’ve even read this far. But! If you want hear more about what I learned, get in touch. I’d be happy to fill you in.

Also, the presenters’ decks are on Slideshare, if you want to make your own connections.

Thanks to Comet Branding & Lightburn & Marquette & everyone else who made the event happen.

New blog on contente.org. It’s called Warriors!! Come Out and Play! and it’s about the user experience ghetto.

We need content to be the kernel of everything we do. It dictates how information is structured on sites, and influences how users interact. [read the whole thing]

Want to see something awesome?

This morning, this:

Became this:

Pretty sweet, eh?

It looks infinitely slicker. And it is. But really, the changes we made to improve the UX of the Funway Holidays site were super small and came about really quickly.

Our process
Here’s were the steps we took:

1. Funway asked for suggestions to improve their homepage.
2. I conducted a full heuristic evaluation of the page.
3. We met a few days later so I could explain my findings. Funway saw the relevance in to the majority of them.
4. I sat down with our very talented designer, @robertgeiger, and we mocked up the existing site, with the suggested changes implemented.
5. Met with the Funway team to show the mock-up. They loved it.
6. Robert did 3 visual  re-skinnings of the site.
7. Our teams met to decide on a final design (it was almost unanimous)
8. Robert coded the design.
9. The new design went live!

Now, in this phase, we focused only on fixing the homepage. We’ll be using that as a baseline for rethinking the other sections of the site over the coming year. Pretty exciting.

Quick & easy
This project is proof that you don’t have to spend a whole lot of time or money spiffing up your site. All you have to do is thoroughly analyze it with the needs of your audience in mind, then put a great designer to work to apply some fresh paint.

Voila!

You have something that’s not, at its core, all that different, but that looks magically better. And most importantly, bumps up the overall user experience by leaps and bounds.