Rod Motta - User Experience Visual Designer » user experience

Experience Mapping

Rod Motta — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:05:23 +0000

I really enjoyed The Anatomy of an Experience Map article by the Adaptive Path folks. A very useful and comprehensive analysis that effectively illustrates the process of mapping out ideas, objectives, goals and the journey of going through it, without cram too much in. It’s very useful for large projects.

Rail Europe experience map

For smaller projects, however, we could simplify this map into a flowchart with intended outcomes (ie. what you want the user to think and feel at each point). Then we could do some focus testing to compare the actual results against the intended outcomes.

There’s also a great reference to Tufte. All the data and information is out there. Its a matter of organizing it in context to each other and presenting it visually to allow it to communicate exactly what the goal is.

An intuitive design is…

Rod Motta — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:28:44 +0000

Recently, I had the opportunity to watch Jared Spool’s great talk on First Use Experience. In his talk, he argued that an intuitive design is:

When the user is focused on their objective and not on the actual interface itself
Invisible (user only pay attention to something intuitive when it’s actually not intuitive. What makes something intuitive is actually something personal. We have to know something about the people we are building for
When Current Knowledge and Target Knowledge are at the same place. There are two ways to accomplish this: Raise Current Knowledge to meet Target Knowledge (Training), or reduce Target Knowledge to meet Current Knowledge (Simplifying)
Is all about focuses on experience. Trend/ Pattern we see over and over again: Technology > Features > Experience
Is a result of constant team critique, and critiques are essential to creating intuitive designs.

Identifying Users’ Trigger Words

Rod Motta — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 20:57:42 +0000

Jarred Spool wrote an interesting article, back in 2004, about the right trigger words for your user.

Do you want to find out what those words are? Start by asking them. Visiting your users in their natural environments is probably the best way to start.

Jarred’s team found that personas are a great way to communicate trigger words to everyone on the design team. A persona is a detailed description of a user the team wants to ensure is successful on the site. Listing, within the persona, the trigger words that person would use helps us, the designers, understand how the users’ own language will impact the final design.

According to Jarred, his team never conducted a usability test that didn’t yield tremendous insight into how users react to the links the team is using. It becomes obvious immediately when links are missing the clues the users need to go forward.

This powerful trio — field studies, personas, and usability testing — are a great way to start identifying the trigger words that work for your users.

Dieter Rams on what makes Apple special

Rod Motta — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 02:20:33 +0000

Dieter Rams, who was featured in critically acclaimed documentary Objectified is one of the most influential design gurus in the world. He has created countless products for Braun, the German white goods company. And he is a man who has influenced Apple’s head of design, Jonathan Ive. Here’s a piece of what he wrote exclusively for the The Daily Telegraph about what makes Apple special:

“Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses. Probably the first example was Peter Behrens and his work for the German company AEG, in the early part of the 20th century. He might be considered to be the founder of corporate identity. Adriano Olivetti was close behind as he transformed his father’s Italian company, Olivetti. Having become aware of this scarcity at the start of my career in the 1950s, I am sorry to report that the situation does not seem to have improved to this day.

I have always observed that good design can normally only emerge if there is a strong relationship between an entrepreneur and the head of design. At Apple this situation exists – between Steve Jobs and Jony Ive.

I am always fascinated when I see the latest Apple products. Apple has managed to achieve what I never achieved: using the power of their products to persuade people to queue to buy them. For me, I had to queue to receive food at the end of World War II. That’s quite a change.

They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously.”

When Jonathan Ive talks about Rams designing “surfaces that were without apology, bold, pure, perfectly-proportioned, coherent and effortless”, he could equally be talking about the iPod. “No part appeared to be either hidden or celebrated, just perfectly considered and completely appropriate in the hierarchy of the product’s details and features. At a glance, you knew exactly what it was and exactly how to use it.”

Ive goes on to say that “what Dieter Rams and his team at Braun did was to produce hundreds of wonderfully conceived and designed objects: products that were beautifully made in high volumes and that were broadly accessible”.

Apple is probably the only tech company with a head of design. This makes them both a tech and an industrial design firm… And actually marketing can be added to the mix…

Keeping best practices in mind when creating an optimal call to action

Rod Motta — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:57:18 +0000

The design of a call to action can be broken down into 4 simple elements — size, shape, color, and position. Each plays a vital part in determining how effective the call to action is in directing the user.

Don’t make your users work or think, or they’ll leave. It’s not that they aren’t smart, it’s that they want access to information quickly without spending unnecessary time searching for it.

Don’t overdo it with multiple, competing calls to action on every page. Decide what your primary target is and then define a clear objective per page. Your content should have answered, “What’s in it for me?” and your call to action should now answer, “What do I do now?”

What is great design if it isn’t delivering a message?

Rod Motta — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:05 +0000

If the purpose of design is to help us solve a problem then the message helps us to understand what the problem is.

How often do you come across a t-shirt with nothing but words on it and yet everyone wants one? How important of a role does design play versus the actual message being delivered?

So many designers spend so much time trying to prettify everything without realizing why they are actually doing it? Are you really enhancing the message or are you simply putting lipstick on a pig?

Design encompasses a lot of individual components brought together to solve a problem. The message is simply one of those components, but without it the solution that the design is trying to offer can get lost.

Things to think about – designing the sign up experience

Rod Motta — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:28:09 +0000

These few tips on designing the sign up experience on your website are also the basic outline for Joshua Porter’s book designing for the social web. He has a lot of other very important info but I think these few really help the process of specifically thinking about the sign up experience:

Describe WHAT it is
Show HOW it works
Show the end result
Explain WHY
Give examples of WHO is using it
Use Testimonials or Case Studies
Get Specific
Give numbers

Quick thought on the “real time” web

Rod Motta — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:33:49 +0000

The best use for real time communications on the web is not to simply bring in the most recent information on a topic, but rather to make clear that others are experiencing or interacting with the same content at the same time.

How would sites or web apps be different if you could see who else is there with you in each moment?

The power of personas – a fun cartoon explanation

Rod Motta — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:10:59 +0000

Check out this awesome job of explaining user personas through a fun comic created by Brad Colbow. Some topics are more easily understood when presented this way. (at least for me). The comic style brings what is essentially a “slightly” dry subject to life.

A list of more resources about user personas and mental models are listed at the end of the post.

But seriously, we need more ponies on our websites ;-P

Web Accessibility no longer an afterthought

Rod Motta — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:36:36 +0000

Yesterday I came across this interesting web accessibility article at CNN.com, talking about how big internet companies such as Yahoo and Google are embracing it.

We should all start an accessibility push in our organizations, here’s why:

There are about 60 million people in the U.S. who can’t use a computer to get on the Internet in the normal fashion. For those people, a mix of screen reader software, keyboards with special buttons, and even motion-sensing Web cameras must take the place of the mouse and QWERTY keyboard.

With a rapidly aging population in many parts of the world — notably the U.S. — accessibility requirements will become useful for today’s crop of baby boomers as they grow older

In order to do business with the U.S. government, companies must comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which insists that electronic and information technology products sold to government agencies be designed with disabled employees in mind, and that government services produced by contractors consider disabled citizens in equal measure.

Performance, internationalization, and accessibility are not a feature, they should all be standard.